social software

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31 Day Comment Challenge: Days 8-11

Saturday, May 10th, 2008

Rather than boring you to death with 31 Comment Challenge posts, I’m trying to condense a bunch of the activities into each post so if you’re bored, you can easily skip these.
Day 8: Comment on a blog outside of your niche
My husband is definitely a car guy. He watches car shows, reads car magazines, […]

31 Day Comment Challenge: Days 2-7

Tuesday, May 6th, 2008

In case you were wondering, I haven’t given up on the comment challenge! I’ve just been rather involved in the comment storm that’s taking place on my blog right now.
I definitely didn’t do all of these activities “by the book” but my goal with this is really to be a better blog citizen and think […]

31 Day Comment Challenge: Day 1

Saturday, May 3rd, 2008

The first activity in the comment challenge is to do a comment self-audit. Here’s mine:

How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week?
It is so variable. Probably on average I comment on three blogs a week. Sometimes I don’t comment at all, sometimes I comment a lot. Sometimes my comments are […]

Comment Challenge: 31 Days to Being a Better Blog Citizen

Saturday, May 3rd, 2008

One of my favorite blogs is the Bamboo Project Blog by the brilliant Michelle Martin. Michelle writes about social software in the non-profit sector, e-learning, workplace learning and more, so while it’s not a library blog, there’s a whole lot to be learned there. Now, she is coordinating a project called the 31-Day Comment […]

On not so SWIFT otters and instilling a fear of failure

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

I went to the discussion about the SWIFT conference platform, which I haven’t discussed publicly on this blog (though many others have on theirs — and many of them offer quite astute observations). I do think it is a deeply flawed tool that doesn’t provide value. I knew just about everyone in the feedback session […]

Computers in Libraries (CIL2008) - My Brain is Full

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

the group - for Connie

Originally uploaded by cindiann

I had a really wonderful time at Computers in Libraries, as always. While there are always certain talks where the delivery is disappointing or where you don’t learn anything, I went to a lot of talks that were […]

I won’t be your April fool

Friday, April 4th, 2008

I’m a pretty tolerant person, but there is one thing in this world that bothers me more than anything else: dishonesty. I am extremely trusting and will take what people tell me at face value. When I find that I’m being deceived, it really makes me angry and frustrated. When I suspect that I’m being […]

Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0

Sunday, March 9th, 2008

First Monday has a great issue covering Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0. The articles look at Web 2.0 phenomena (user-generated content, interactivity, social networking, etc.) from a socio-political-economic perspective and bring up some interesting paradoxes inherent in the movement. So far I’ve read “Market Ideology and the Myths of Web 2.0″ and “Loser Generated Content: […]

Building 21st century librarians AND libraries

Sunday, March 9th, 2008

There were three recent posts that got me thinking a lot about the growing necessity to have tech-savvy people in public services positions. The first was Dorothea Salo’s post about how many librarians outside of Systems see learning about (or doing anything with) technology as being something outside of their sphere of responsibility. The second […]

Assessing social technologies in libraries

Thursday, February 21st, 2008

A Facebook friend messaged me yesterday with a library 2.0 assessment-related question that I didn’t have the answer to, but was curious about myself. So I thought I’d put it out to the hive mind:
“[I was] wondering if you knew of any libraries who are doing a great job at assessing the impact or use […]

My FAQ and the expert versus the hive

Sunday, February 10th, 2008

In the past two weeks, I’ve received around 10 emails asking for my advice on various topics. Sometimes these are questions that have easy answers. Some are asking for more involved advice that I’m happy to offer. Others are asking for things that would require an unreasonable amount of time and effort on my part. […]

Marketing to bloggers

Sunday, February 10th, 2008

Word-of-mouth marketing is a very powerful thing. When you can generate buzz for your product among the people who are using it, what they say about it will probably do more good than any traditional marketing campaign. So, it stands to reason that when you have a new online product or service, bloggers can be […]

Flu trumps blogging (and pretty much everything else)

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008

I probably owe a lot of people emails and I’ve been wanting to write up my tech trends and talk about some of the cool things I learned at the OLA Superconference last week. Unfortunately, I’ve come down with the worst case of the flu I’ve ever had, which has turned me into a coughing, […]

Some great Library Technology Reports

Friday, January 25th, 2008

As I’ve been spending more time than I would like in waiting rooms over the past few weeks, I’ve had the chance to catch up on some reading; namely Library Technology Reports.
Michelle Boule wrote a terrific LTR called Changing the Way We Work, in which she covers tools for online collaboration. Michelle is really […]

The essence of Library 2.0?

Thursday, January 24th, 2008

I found John Blyberg’s post, Library 2.0 Debased, very interesting and in many ways, a breath of fresh air. I agree with him on a lot of levels. I agree that mistakes have been made. I think there has been a lot of confusing rhetoric about Library 2.0. I think a lot of people lost […]

Getting ready for Building the Social Library Online

Saturday, January 19th, 2008

Our classroom!

Originally uploaded by librarianmer

On Wednesday, the class I’m teaching for San Jose State University begins. It’s the first for-credit graduate-level course I’ve ever taught, so I’m really excited about it (and a little nervous). I spent the Fall developing the classroom and spent winter […]

Understanding the culture of social networking technologies

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

Andrea Mercado and Kate Sheehan have both written insightful posts about the importance of librarians being aware of the culture of the social technologies they’re getting involved in for outreach purposes.
From Kate:
It’s easy to become enamored of social networking sites and Web 2.0 toys to the point where they seem like a panacea for […]

We have wiki!

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008

Library Research Guides wiki

Originally uploaded by librarianmer

A while back, I wrote about the challenges I had in finding the right platform for our subject guides. Well, I’m pleased to say that I just linked to our subject guides from the front page of the library […]

Don’t take what you know for granted

Friday, January 4th, 2008

As liaison to all of the distance learning programs at our University, I frequently deal with our Interlibrary Loan Librarian. We can’t do traditional book interlibrary loan with our distance learners because the loan times do not allow sufficient time for us to ship the materials to the student and for the student to consult […]

A personal ad for open source project help

Monday, December 24th, 2007

For several years, I have used Feed2JS. It’s a great tool that makes it easy to display an RSS feed on any web page and to style the content to match the page. Many libraries are using Feed2JS on their own websites; some host it on their own server (that’s what I do), while others […]

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