registering for a conference

i always find the “emergency contact” question hilarious. but then i got to thinking, if i needed help and was not in my hometown, who should i contact?
then it occurred to me…

i really do trust my network.

your privacy is in the way of my ads

so i’m not new to the internet. it’s been, errr, over 25 years since i’ve been talking to strangers through my computer. i’ve also met a bunch of friends, so you know, the good outweighs the bad.
and i use social media a lot. A LOT. i have talked and blogged about how i fully believe that twitter got me my first job. and how it has helped me meet awesome folk. and how it inspires me daily. so i understand social media. and, not being a n00b, i realize that this diagram, is fairly accurate:

but i do expect social media companies to be straight with me. to tell me when terms of service change, and to tell me when other things, things that are way more important to me than money, like say, WHAT I SHARE WITH PEOPLE, changes. so recently… this happened.

1. linkedin

INORITE? i never thought these guys would get all sneaky. but if you have a linkedin account, be sure to check out this post and be aware of which groups can use your name and photos in their ads on linkedin. (note: read the updates – especially if you run a group.)

2. facebook

alright. i’ve had lots of issues with facebook changing privacy settings on me with no notice. so much so that i now check them every 2 weeks, cuz i don’t trust them. this change is making the rounds now, but i feel like this was actually enabled in the winter? anyway, now all of the phone numbers on your mobile are synced with facebook. you did kinda agree to this by installing the app, but you probably didn’t notice. anyway, to nuke it, just follow these instructions.

all this to say

read everything. i never read the terms of service for itunes, and i’m pretty sure steve jobs n’co now own my house and my first born. i was willing to take that risk in the past, but you know what? i might actually want to keep my first born! if i can’t have a monkey butler, the least i can do is have a kid i can train to get beer from the fridge – right?

so i vow, from this day forward, to read TOS and all the small print for all social networks, and i think you should too. cuz while i like sharing most of my life with everyone, there are somethings my mama don’t need to know.

NB: i’m less worried about facebook these days, since Anonymous is set to take them down on november 5.

i really can’t wait to see what happens.

recently said to a non-librarylander

it’s about the content
not the container*
once folks stop caring about the physical form information takes, the better off we will be

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by sciascia

*sorry rare books colleagues. i lurve you muchly and think you do awesome work. but imma digitize that stuff and make it available to everyone asap via the intertubez, k?

libraryland needs more of this

jenica posts about the state of cover letters for libraryland gigs and gets a whack o’comments.

and then? someone actually does something about it! (and you all know how much i lurve folks that do something.)

please consider contributing to open cover letters if you have a letter that particularly rocked.

stephen x flynn, i see you just MLIS’d. welcome to the party. keep doing things.

Guest editorial: Emerging technology as an enabler

[posted with permission from Feliciter 56(5)]

It is probably safe to say that emerging technology is a topic that is amply covered in our professional parlance. There are journals, magazines, blogs, social networks, conferences, workshops, and courses devoted to the many aspects of emerging technology that impact the way we deliver resources and services to our user communities. So in putting together this special issue on emerging tech, we were tempted to cast our net widely and collect stories that highlighted the best and most innovative examples of emerging tech in use in Canada’s libraries today. After all, who doesn’t love being regaled by tales of the newest, shiniest technologies they have never heard of?

Not the two of us, surely. We are both on the early-adopter end of the spectrum and we both sport our “geek” badges proudly. We have been known to get excited about everything from the newest gadget to the latest W3C specification (HTML 5, anyone?). So we would be the first to admit that emerging technologies are exciting, fun, and most importantly, what make us love our jobs. However, the very last thing we wanted to do was pull together an issue on emerging tech that focused JUST on the tech. Not only would such an issue be outdated the moment it hit your doorstep (such is the pace of technology development), but such an issue would also miss the point pretty spectacularly. The point? That emerging tech is as much about people as it is about the technology itself. It’s about what technology enables people to find, do, learn, create, share, and accomplish.

For this issue, we’ve pulled together a slate of articles that highlight some thoughtful ways in which libraries are harnessing emerging technologies to enable their user communities to accomplish all those things. Cecily Walker kicks things off with her discussion of what should be one of our most important considerations when thinking about how our users interact with us, regardless of whether the touch-point is virtual or in person, with her article entitled A User Experience Primer. In Building Communities with Large Group Methods and Social Media, Ryan Deschamps provides insight into some ways in which libraries can truly position themselves as community builders and enablers by borrowing ideas and practices from the world of social media. John Fink takes a growing trend in academic libraries and applies a technology to assist in the solution in his article, Using a Local Chat Server in your Library. Rob Zylstra and Stephanie Thero show us how they used a very user-centred approach to developing for a brand new technology to respond to community needs in their article, Libraries Evolve to Stay Connected: Building the YourLibrary iPad App. And finally, in Livres numériques : Le papier est la meilleure plateforme, Patrick Lozeau reminds us that the sky may not be falling when it comes to printed books.

We hope this issue leaves you with plenty of thoughtful ideas about how you can use technology to enable your community to find, do, learn, create, share, and accomplish.

- Amy Buckland & Amanda Etches-Johnson, Guest editors

fun thing: wordnik

i have the good fortune of attending Books in Browsers at the Internet Archive (also known as the “fathership” – assuming the “mothership” is the Library of Congress). the conference was attended by librarians, publishers, authors, developers, and other people who are interested in making sure stuff that’s written gets read.
one of the presenters is none other than Erin McKean. if you haven’t seen her TED talk yet, i’ve embedded it below. one of my all-time faves.
Erin’s new project is called wordnik.

Wordnik is a place for all the words, and everything known about them.

in her presentation she explained that since dictionaries try to cover the most useful words for the largest group of folks, they frequently leave out the newest and rarest. Wordnik does the opposite. essentially it is a crowdsourced dictionary (including real-world sentences) that aims to have all of the words in the English language. amazing. a context-driven dictionary? i think i’m in love.

but the best part? IT HAS AN API. (and soon there will be an iOS SDK.)

zotero @ zero

this week i nuked my zotero library.*

that library was created in 2006 when i was starting my MLIS – and all the zigzagging that involves, and then it went on to follow me through my first year as a liaison librarian (and the ZOMG WHAT AM I DOING I DON’T KNOW ANYTHINGness), and now my current gig (and the OHAI ROADMAP-LESS JOB).

basically, it was out of control.

• i would use it to track items that i needed for both personal (home-buying information, health information for friends n’family, the awesome exploits of friends, etc), and professional reasons (research, professional development, future-thinking things that get my bass thumping).
• the “to read” folder was filled with 100+ items that i, ummm, was never going to read.
• the folders were a disaster and i didn’t use tags to it was 39 kinds of chaotic.

so now i am rebuilding it from scratch. and i am relieved. i’m sure it will again get bloated and out of control, but for now, i feel more efficient with it. and i have vowed to use the notes feature to scribble things to myself, and to make better use of folders and tags.

and to always be a fan of zotero, because it really has made oh-so-much of my life easier.

*errrr, i backed it up first, then nuked it. i ain’t no dummy.

impressive

well done BYU!

i need a like button for this pic

so facebook wants to put like buttons all over my intarwebz.
boo.
i agree with sarah.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by Sarah_G

another reason to attend #pcmtl

this is the blog badge they created:

that may, or may not, be Trust Agents booty