Librarian by Day

My personally selected top ten from the links I shared on Twitter 4.30.2011 through 5.6.2011.  In no particular order:

1 TEDucation: 5 TED Talks Librarians Should Watch (and Why) Andy has put together a list of 5 must see TED talks.

1. Ken Robinson – Schools Kill Creativity
2. William Kamkwamba: How I Harnessed the Wind
3. Malcolm Gladwell – What We Can Learn from Spaghetti Sauce
4. Mark Bezos – A Life Lesson from a Volunteer Firefighter
5. JR – Use Art To Turn the World Inside Out

2. It’s not the mistake. It’s how you deal with it by @dontgetcaught I’ve written before about mistakes and learning from failure. This post from Denise talks about how making a mistake while speaking and how to recover from it.

In music or dance, when one performer lets a mistake stop her, it throws the rest of the people off who are performing with her–and that can throw the performance. And even if you’re the only one speaking, a mistake that stops you stops the audience and becomes the focal point.

But the speaker who can figure out, fast, how to keep going will have the audience on her side–either because they don’t know what happened (often) or because they admire how you kept going. (That’s happened to me before when I had to make lemonade out of lemons at a talk.)

3. Transliteracy & Making Your Own Luck – A Guest Post by Jamie Hollier @ValentineLuLu I can’t remember if I’ve talked about it here before, but the Libraries and Transliteracy Project is featuring guest authors, this one by Jamie Hollier discusses the work she is doing as the project coordinator for the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) that is being administered by the Colorado State Library

4. Register for ALA’s first-ever Virtual Town Hall!

The first ALA Virtual Town Hall will be held on Wednesday, June 1st from 3:00 – 4:30pm CDT on the ALA ILINC webinar platform.  All members are invited to participate in this online-only event featuring a discussion about e-books and the future of electronic access in libraries, a presentation by President Roberta Stevens on advocacy initiatives during the past year, and Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels presenting on the “State of the Association” and progress implementing the ALA 2015 Strategic Plan.  A special “Open Forum” time will allow participants to ask questions about any Association topics.

Please pre-register for this event at https://ala.ilinc.com/register/tzvwtkr.  The Virtual Town Hall is designed to solicit ideas, comments and questions about the Association from members.  Reports from the Task Force on Equitable Access to Electronic Content (EQUACC) co-chairs Michael Porter and Linda Crowe, and the OITP e-books Subcommittee Chair Bonnie Tijerina will also be posted in advance of their presentations for review and comment.  Time will be reserved during each segment of the Town Hall for questions, comments and reactions to these reports and presentations by participants.

5. Balanced LIfe — 8 Reasons Why Twitter Can Boost Your happiness – I’ve talked in the past about the ways that Twitter will make you better at your job, a better employee and benefit your library but now thanks to this great article by  Gretchen Rubin author of The Happiness Project you can learn how it makes you happier too.

1. Twitter allows you to pursue your passion
2. Twitter distracts you if you’re feeling blue
3. Twitter can get you laughing.
4. Twitter helps you maintain loose relationships and strengthen strong relationships.
5. Twitter lets you help other people
6. Twitter lets you conquer a device
7. Twitter lets you share those funny little observations that float through your head.
8. Twitter makes gathering information easier.

6. A Customer Service Nightmare: Resolving Trademark and Personal Reputation in a Limited Name Space – danah boyd talks about usernames, domain names, urls, personal branding and online identity. Its an important read for everyone but especially, if like me, you use a handle or username. I’m librarianbyday just about everywhere. Except LibraryThing (which is part of why I don’t use it) Facebook. Someone beat me to those. But what if  a company formed with the name Librarian by Day? (I shudder to think what they might be selling).

Who has the legitimate right to a particular identity or account name? What happens when the account is inactive? Or when the person who has the account is squatting? Or when there are conflicting parties who both have legitimate interests in an account name? Or when the account owner has died?

6.1 How safe is your Twitter name? this is sort of a follow up to the previous link but equally important and scary!

7. Happiness Advocacy, Or, How Positive Psychology Will Save Us From Zombies

Happiness. That feeling you get from StuffOnMyCat.com or Skyping with a far away friend. Side effects include: joy, contentment, glee, elation, and surges of confidence, hope, and gratitude. That happiness. If you’re ready to throw in the towel (or this in the garbage), kindly allow me to clarify something. This ain’t yo’ momma’s (or for that matter my momma’s*) self-help book so don’t get all judgmental. If MacGyver can stop a bomb with a toothpick, we can save the world with happiness. ‘Fiction!’ you say? It’s even been scientifically proven. You see, it’s all in the technique, my friends.

8. Doctorow’s talk to ALA’s Privacy & Youth Conf. Digital rights, privacy, filters, & jailbreaking via @shifted@thelib

Speaking to ALA’s Privacy and Youth Conference from London via Skype, Cory Doctorow offered attendees a thought-provoking assessment of the privacy landscape for young people today. His “radical proposition” that libraries become islands of networked privacy best practices — places where young people are educated and empowered to take charge of their digital lives — provided provocative fodder for conference participants’ discussions. Do libraries have a role to play in educating youth about the privacy violations they face at our own institutions? In their own homes? Should we be teaching kids tojailbreak? How can we document the problems and inefficacy of internet filtering technologies, which so often stifle young people’s intellectual freedom and compromise their privacy?

9. IP-Address Is Not a Person, BitTorrent Case Judge Says – nuf said

10. Who Are Your Top 10 Borrowers? (ie: stop treating everyone the same..) via @theREALwikiman @sallyheroes Great post. Read it. Think about it.

Growing your library isn’t just a worthy goal; it is a necessity for your survival. But growth requires focus – a focus on your number one market. A business doesn’t grow by treating all customers equally and neither should libraries.

Now, before you respond with: “but we’re part of council and we must serve all our residents and ratepayers”, or “but how can we treat our students differently, they all deserve our attention”, hear me out. I’m not suggesting you ignore parts of your target market, or that you treat them unfairly. What I’m suggesting is that you focus on your most valuable users within that target market.

Not all users are the same. Some borrow, some read newspapers, some surf the net, some ask for help, and some attend events etc. They aren’t all the same, you don’t treat them the same, and neither should you try to.