Check out two new posts over at Libraries and Transliteracy. The first Take the Plunge Integrate Social Media Into the Classroom highlights 4 tips for integrating social media into the classroom.

The second Teens, Texting and Social Isolation by fellow contributor Tom Ipri looks at a recent report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project and a New York Times article about teens and texting.

Creative Commons licensed photo used courtesy of My Silent SideSimilar Posts:

• Introducing Transliteracy Georgia Public Library Service & Georgia Library Association
• Libraries in a Transliterate, Technology Fluent World #intlib10
• Commentary On the Digital Divide from the Chief Executives of Netflix & CommonSenseMedia

Similar Posts:

• Social Media Revolution
• What is Social Media Now?
• Social Digital Global Shift

My personally selected top 10 from the links I shared on Twitter from 3/19/2010 thru 3/25/2010

1. Youth in Nigeria leverage social media to organize and document massive rally against government via @dmlcentral:

Twitter users Gbengasesan and Bubusn posted pictures of the march, and live footage of the event was available at ustream. The demonstration had an online presence unprecedented in the history of Nigerian protest: Facebook, Twitter, and Nigeria’s extensive blogging networks were all mobilized in support of the event (of particular note were the Facebook group Save Nigeriaand the demonstration organizers’ website Where is Yar’Adua?).Nigerian Curiosity even reported that the hashtag#enoughisenough was the number three trending topic on Twitter (though she pointed out that not all the tweets referred specifically to the demonstration in Abuja).

Many in the online community expressed their support for the marchers.

2. Overdrive’s New Program for Visually Impaired Readers – the first thing I did after reading this is email my Overdrive rep and tell him we want to sign up! LEAP allows your library patrons to access and use Bookshare.org, a service limited to students.  The partnership between Overdrive and Bookshare will extend Bookshare services to patrons of libraries who provide Overdrive service to their patrons.  There is no additional cost.  If your library offers Overdrive service email your rep and tell her you want to sign up for LEAP!

3. for those who think Google is the devil - How I Became (Mostly) Google-free in About a Day - I’ll confess I think Google owns my soul or at least has a lien on it, but if you’ve been thinking of kicking the Google habit this is a must read.

4. watch this! SMS for Life – Common Craft – great explanation as always

5. On stereotypes and the echo chamber - great post from Kate on the echo chamber in which she notes

I’m sure no one’s missed the irony of all of us talking about the echo chamber to each other

6. Broadband access for all is essential to meeting the information needs of communities in a democracy – Eric Newton comments on the FCC’s National Broadband Plan and  The Knight Foundation report Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy

In the digital age, countries without high-speed broadband will be left behind, their citizens able to vote but not knowing why they should; able to work but not knowing how to find a job online.

7. User-Centered Innovation Is Not Sustainable

User-centered innovation has helped conduct us into an unsustainable world. The reason is sustainability is not embedded in the anthropology of our existing culture, society, and economy.

8. The most important things in libraries are people via  @LISNews

9. Six reasons to be skeptical of the Net Gen label & stereotypes - if you are talking or thinking about digital natives or the digital generation this is a MUST read.

1. It exaggerates the gaps between adults and youth.
2. It hides more important intra-generational differences.
3. It ignores potentially important socio-economic and cultural differences.
4. It ignores important second level digital divides.
5. It is based on unfounded assumptions about current approaches to teaching.
6. The evidence doesn’t support most of the key Net Gen claims.

10. Work Smart: Do Your Worst Task First (Or, Eat a Live Frog Every Morning) via @dmlcentral – you know how much I love time management and productivity tips

Creative Commons licensed photos used courtesy of bowbrick on flickr. Similar Posts:

• Top Ten Links Week 4
• Top Ten Links Week 44: Echo Chamber, Enthusiasm Gap, Broadband, Learning,Being Famous and More
• Top Ten Links Week 5

My personally selected top 10 from the links I shared on Twitter from 2/19/2010 thru 2/25/2010

1. RT @VenessaMiemis: 16 free ebooks about social media via @fredzimny. Just look at this list of titles and authors :

1. Building a Social Media Team, Amber Naslund,
2. ContentCory Doctorow
3. Customer Service, The Art of Listening and Engagement Through Social Media, Brian Solis
4. Fish Where the Fish Are – Mapping Social Media to the Buying Cycle, Chris Brogan
5. Getting a Foothold in Social Media, Amber Naslund
6. Let’s Talk: Social Media for Small Business, John Jantsch
7. New Media and the Air Force, United States Air Force Public Affairs Agency
8. Social Media and Network Starting Points, Chris Brogan
9. Social Media Time Management, Amber Naslund
10. Social Media Tips: Sharing lessons learned to help your business grow, Jeff Hayzlett
11. The Art of Community, Jono Bacon
12. The Essential Guide to Social Media, Brian Solis
13. The New Rules of Viral Marketing, David Meerman Scott
14. The Simple Web: A Philosophy for Getting What You Want, Skellie
15. The Social Media Starter Kit, Amber Naslund
16. What is Social Media?, Antony Mayfield

2. RT @VenessaMiemis: new post – reimagining human/social capital & how to spark innovation - Tapping the Network to Facilitate Innovation – How can the power and scope of social networks, combined with a human capital inventory, be used to facilitate shared creation and innovation?

3. RT @FluffTheBunny: Unlink your feeds – A Manifesto – as someone who is driving slightly (or slightlier) crazy by friends who dump their tweets into Facebook I can’t agree more!

4. Incredibly proud to be involved in the new Libraries & Transliteracy blog with @Tombrarian & @buffyjhamilton – oh come on, you didn’t think I could leave a mention of this out did you? I’m SO excited about this project!

5. RT @rww: On Facebook, You’re Really You - “Psychologists found that “faking it” online is tougher than previously imagined.”

6. No One Knows What the F*** They’re Doing and Feeling Like a Fraud – great read! via @griffey – I don’t know about you but I feel like this all the time, I’m just waiting for someone to notice I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve discussed it with friends and some people have called it the impostor syndrome (don’t look at wikipedia’s definition its too

7. RT @zephoria: UX Magazine (@uxmag) has published my “Streams of Content, Limited Attention“ today: Hope you enjoy! – An important read from danah boyd on information flow and “four challenges, points where technological hope and reality collide.”

8. Why are you apologizing? – Like all of Seth Godin’s posts this one is short but gets the point across. Don’t apologize for something you’re doing. Either don’t do it, or do it and don’t apologize.

9. How Social Is Too Social? – not everything is better with friends.

10. Empowering Parents & Protecting Children in an Evolving Media Landscape –  Another important read from danah boyd et al “The FCC published a Notice of Inquiry (NOI) on the important topic of empowering parents and protecting youth in an era of an evolving media landscape.  John Palfrey, Urs Gasser, and I took the opportunity to respond to the NOI on behalf of the Youth and Media Policy Working Group Initiative at the Berkman Center. What we wrote should not surprise any of you who are following our work, but our research-grounded response may be of great value for those of you who are interested in this topic.  For this reason – and because we all believe in transparency – we have decided to publicly share the document that we crafted.”

Similar Posts:

• Top Ten Links Week 22
• Top Ten Links Week 4
• Top Ten Links Week 29- Logo Contest, Speaker Tips, Finding Time, The Value of Privacy, and More

This Those of you who were in my Web 2.0 for patrons presentation might remember a woman in the audience mentioning the classes she teaches at her library. I promised to get with her and share the follow up. I emailed her and found out that Liz Hubert is a Adult Services Librarian at the Barrington Area Library in Illinois

This is the information Liz shared with me.

We do not currently have a wiki or a blog for our patrons, the program is entirely face to face and people can take (or choose not to take!) what they wish. Very shortly, we’re going to be putting videos of all of our classes on our webpage. Those will be linked with handouts so that people can watch the class and follow a written description at the same time.
I choose classes to teach based on the popularity of the service or website, how often I have questions about it at the desk, and how useful I think it will be to our patrons.
I take a very basic approach to all of these classes. Unless I’ve noted otherwise, in each session (usually an hour) I help students set up accounts and show them the basics of the service (for example, I show them everything from friends to walls to account settings in Facebook). Here’s a list of classes I’ve taught.

• Delicious
• Bloglines (we started out teaching Bloglines but we now teach Google Reader primarily)
• Flickr (we showcase this one because we have our local history collection on Flickr-more than 15,000 items)
• Shelfari
• Internet Safety (buying and selling online, scams, junk mail, etc)
• Blogs
• Digital Scrapbooking (we’ve used several services for this)
• IGoogle
• Facebook (account creation and basics)
• Advanced Facebook (account settings and privacy)
• Craigslist/Freecycle/Etsy
• LinkedIn
• Internet Dating (we’re offering this one with a singles mixer in February)
• Skype/Meebo
• Wikis
• Google: Beyond Searching (Images, Maps, Labs, etc)
• Shutterfly
• Yelp
• Web Media (Pandora, Last.fm, Hulu, Boxee, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc)
• Twitter
• Business Twitter

These classes have really been a hit at my library. They generally fill up right away and there are often wait lists. I do my best to be as casual as possible when I teach them-I want people to feel comfortable asking questions. I have my email and phone number on my handouts so that people can contact me with questions or refreshers. I’m now also offering open sessions a few times a month so that people can come in and ask questions about anything they’re having trouble with.

She said  they advertise upcoming classes on Twitter, Facebook, in their newsletter, and plasma screens in the library.  Class size is usually 10-12 students at a time, but occasionally as large as 30-40 .Similar Posts:

• Micro Interactions, Conversations, & Customers: Sweet Tweet Strategies
• Dreaming, Designing, & Using Mobile Library Platforms
• Every Library Should Have a Sandbox to Play In

CC image courtesy of Bill Gracey - Gone to Mexico on flickr

The issue of control comes up over and over again when we talk about the online world. It recently it came up at Internet Librarian in many different ways, including:

• How do I stop a staff member from wasting time on Facebook?
• How do we control what staff are saying online?
• Management wants everything posted online (Twitter, Facebook, blogs etc) to go through PR.
• We don’t want employees to be able to access social networking sites?
• What about privacy?
• We can’t allow just anyone to post a comment without approving it first.
• How do we know a student is who they say they are?

I have answers to all of these questions, but these questions aren’t what this is about, what they represent is, control. Or the illusion of control.

The desire for control comes from fear. Fear of change, of the unknown, of doing things differently, of a situation not created by us, of taking risks. It is human nature to fear these things, it’s how we’ve survived.  So is adaptation and times are changing, just as they always do, and we need to adapt.

In the internet age your image/brand no longer belongs to you. It belongs to your customers. The things they have always been saying are now online for the whole world to see. The content and commentary they post about you may rank higher in search engines than your site or content. You can’t stop them. Every attempt you make will be like fighting the Hydra, cut off a head, two will grow back. I promise.

Prevent comments on your website? They’ll start their own blog or Twitter account or website. Implement a filter to block social networking sites? They will find a way around it (and you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face).

Stop wasting time trying to get control, you might be fooling your boss or the board or yourself, but you are not fooling your staff or more importantly your customers. Better yet, when you stop spending time trying to get control or pretending that you have it, it frees you and your time to address the real issues.

Still not ready to let go? Think about these questions from Andrew McAfee :

• Are you ready and willing to let more internal voices communicate and shape your brand over time?
• If not, why not?
• Is it that you don’t trust your people, or your customers?
• Is it that you don’t want any negativity at all to appear on your digital properties?
• Or is it that you’re afraid there might be too much negativity?

Still not convinced? Or need to convince someone else? Try reading these:

• The Illusion of Brand Control
• Power And The Illusion Of Control
• M.I.T. Taking Student Blogs to Nth Degree
• Case Study: Setting Content Free at Ford Motor Company
• What you can control and what you can’t.
• Social Media and The Reality of Control
• On Social Media And Culture Shift
• Why the 54% of companies blocking access to social media should unblock
• The Hazards of Leading Culture Change

*Up Next – What you can do after you’ve accepted control is an illusion.Similar Posts:

• How to Monitor Your Personal Brand (For Free)
• How social media can hurt your library
• The Hazards of Leading Culture Change

A newly updated Did You Know video

Similar Posts:

• Library 101: More Than Just a Pretty Face
• Vooks = Books + Online Video = Tranliteracy
• The End of Publishing As We Know It

photo by DCvision2006 on Flicrk

We’ve all seen warnings and stories about people getting fired from their jobs because of status updates or photos on social medial sites like Twitter, Facebook and blogs.

CNN is has a new one with some social networking don’ts

1. Don’t announce interviews, raises or new jobs

2. Don’t badmouth your current or previous employer

3. Don’t mention your job search if you’re still employed

First I think number 2 should include – “or coworkers”, really nothing good can come of that either. But the point I want to add for librarians (library workers) everywhere is

4. Don’t badmouth your customers.

We all get frustrated, we all have bad days,  I understand that, but venting on social media sites isn’t the solution and it could cause real problems for your library.  Your customers may read what you wrote, they are more tech savvy than you give them credit for. In addition to some old fashioned hurt feelings this can lead to some real problems for your library. They could complain to someone at the library, which means staff will need to spend time dealing with this issue. They could email it all their friends or maybe the newspaper, this is bad PR no library needs.  Or they could just never come back, which is contradictory to the mission of libraries, and loosing patrons is never good for libraries.  Libraries don’t need bad PR, especially not now when so many are facing funding cuts.

If you don’t care about how it will affect your library keep in mind your boss may read what you wrote, there are endless ways this could happen.  I can’t imagine a library manager anywhere being happy that an employee is publicly badmouthing patrons.  There are a wide range of outcomes depending on what was said, how the library handles custom service issues, but being fired is a possibility.

Think being anonymous will protect you? think again.  Think having a private account will protect you? It might, unless there is a glitch & its made public, even briefly, or until you *friend* the wrong person.

Your best plan is not to put anything online you aren’t prepared for the whole world to see.  Just don’t do it. Think twice before you post that next Facebook or Twitter update or write that next blog post.

Additional Reading

• Be nice to Customers – even online
• How to Avoid Getting Fired by Facebook
• FACEBOOK FIRED: 8% of US Companies Have Sacked Social Media Miscreants
• How Your Library May Not Be Using Twitter But Should
• Twitter Tips: How to Safely Blend the Personal and the Professional
• Be Careful What You Post

Similar Posts:

• Control is an Illusion You Need to Let Go
• What Libraries Should Know Before Creating a Facebook Page – Libraries & Facebook Update 2
• Don’t Miss These Twitter and Facebook Guides from Mashable

An interesting video on Social Media, is it a fad or a revolution?

Thanks to Helene for sharing thisSimilar Posts:

• What is Social Media Now?
• 10 Golden Rules of Social Media
• Vooks = Books + Online Video = Tranliteracy

Webworker Daily has a great post on the 10 Golden Rules of Social Media Read the full post to get defitions of each

1. Respect the Spirit of the ‘Net
2. Listen
3. Add Value
4. Respond
5. Do Good Things
6. Share the Wealth
7. Give Kudos
8. Don’t Spam
9. Be Real
10. Collaborate

Social media tools are only that — tools. The real energy, spirit and power of social media is people. We are social media.

Similar Posts:

• How social media can hurt your library
• What is Social Media Now?
• I’m not narcisitic, you’re eavesdropping