Something New in Scarlet

I'm taking part in 23 Things for Professional Development and seeing if I can relaunch this blog with a different name over here. Changing blog names/sites so often is a terrible idea, but I'd prefer something more memorable than a Desk Set/Bunny Watson joke. Now if I only I hadn't waited so long on the Miss Scarlet from Clue idea...

Seth Godin On The Future of the Library

A link for personal reference: Seth Godin's blog post on the future of the library. I have a feeling I might quote it for a school project someday. It has some very good points, succinctly written.

The library is no longer a warehouse for dead books. Just in time for the information economy, the library ought to be the local nerve center for information. (Please don't say I'm anti-book! I think through my actions and career choices, I've demonstrated my pro-book chops. I'm not saying I want paper to go away, I'm merely describing what's inevitably occurring). We all love the vision of the underprivileged kid bootstrapping himself out of poverty with books, but now (most of the time), the insight and leverage is going to come from being fast and smart with online resources, not from hiding in the stacks.

The next library is a house for the librarian with the guts to invite kids in to teach them how to get better grades while doing less grunt work. And to teach them how to use a soldering iron or take apart something with no user serviceable parts inside. And even to challenge them to teach classes on their passions, merely because it's fun. This librarian takes responsibility/blame for any kid who manages to graduate from school without being a first-rate data shark.

My First Dictionary

Today's loosely library related link is My First Dictionary, which makes me laugh because I am just that kind of person. It looks a lot like the simple dictionary I had as a kid which had illustrations demonstrating the meaning of words. The format is similar, but the content is not.

As you can see, the font on the images is pretty large, so maybe don't look at the site with someone looking over your shoulder who might be offended by terms like 'dead hookers'.

Get Off My Lawn and Blog

Verne G. Kopytoff write for the The New York Times: Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites like Twitter.

Fewer kids are blogging now and instead turning to Twitter and Facebook to express themselves, which seems kind of sad. Twitter's 140 character cap on posts is just too small. Facebook's limits are better, but I suppose I'm still sad to see blogging on the decline.

Former bloggers said they were too busy to write lengthy posts and were uninspired by a lack of readers. Others said they had no interest in creating a blog because social networking did a good enough job keeping them in touch with friends and family.

The article goes on to make some interesting points about Facebook and Twitter being used in a complementary manner with Blogs to advertise and get word of mouth out as well as stating older folks don't tend to defect as much.

David Lee King's 10 Presentation Tips

As I continue with my library science program, I'm finding that presentations are being stressed as important. I wasn't expecting that when I entered the program! Librarians - all kinds - have to learn how to make good presentations. They have to learn how to make people believe something they didn't believe yesterday; it's a survival technique to make sure libraries and librarians (and information specialists) keep getting funding and keep getting acknowledged as important.

Some people in my program are better at presentations that others. They tend to be the ones who volunteer to present for group projects, and you can see their skills improve with each presentation. Those presentations help them stand out from the crowd, give them practice with selling their ideas, or ideas in general. It's like being a wallflower at a dance - sure, you might be more comfortable, but you're more likely to be overlooked.

I don't like presenting. I'm not afraid of it and I am willing to do it and I make myself volunteer to do it, but I can't say I find it fun very often (Children's Readership Advisory book presentations are an exception). I'm not all that outgoing a person, either; I'm pretty shy. (Yes, a shy librarian. Who'd've thought?) I guess my tip would be to treat presentations of any sort as a performance: you are acting, you are pretending to be a presenter, and your acting can trick people into thinking you're comfortable.

David Lee King is a much more accomplished presenter than I am, and he has a whole list of tips for presenting.

10 Tips to Do Presentations Like Me:

1. Don't Use Templates
2. Use Presenter Notes
3. Use Presenter View
4. Learn Your PC
5. Use Screenshots
6. Do What You Said You'd Do
7. Tidy up Those Transitions
8. Rehearse
9. Interact with the Audience
10. It's a Performance

Oh hey, look at that last one.

New Librarian Blogs to Watch in 2011

From LISNews: Tell Us About Your Favourite New Librarian Blogs.

I can only assume my lack of inclusion on this list is due to this blog not being new. Or the fact that I am not a full-fledged library tech. That's okay. That's fine, it is, my feelings aren't hurt. Much.

I kid.

In any case, welcome to any new readers or pokers or peerers from 2010. Keep reading in 2011, bookmark, tell your friends, and be sure to check out the blogs suggested above, too.

LISNews: Ten Stories That Shaped 2010

Back in 2009, LISNews posted their list of the ten stories that shaped that year and this blog covered at least half of them! When it was only three months old!

LISNews has posted their list for 2010, which includes:

1. YouTube Sensations
   
2. Libraries and DVDs and Netflix, Oh My
   
3. Piracy Crackdown
   
4. Under New Management
   
5. Gizmo of the Year: iPad
   
6. I For One Welcome Our New Media Overlords
   
7. Web 2.0 Fatigue
   
8. Sign of the Times: Libraries = Offices for Unemployed
   
9. Google eBookstore Opens
   
10. Wikileaks Freakout
    

While I did not bother posting about the Old Spice Guy bit, I did have a mock version. I also had Gordon Pinsent reads Bieber, which wasn't a sensation but should have been. I will count that as one.

I didn't bother with the story about DVDs and Netflix, mostly because we didn't even have Netflix in Canada until recently. Nothing about the specific piracy concerns mentioned in LISNews, but a bit aboutWarner getting sued for Antipiracy Piracy as well as Confessions of a Book Pirate. Something about calling for new privacy laws as well. Maybe point five?

Outsourcing libraries! That's a solid one!

I made fun of iPads but failed to report on how libraries were using them. Point five. New media, case covered, one point. Web fatigue? The last time I mentioned it was in 2009 in a disparaging manner. I still think there's too much arm-flappy wailing, so no point there.

While I mentioned libraries being important for the unemployed and their job searches in at least one college essay, I failed to mention it here as far as I know - that's another zero. I talk about Google so often I have a 'google again' tag. Believe it or not, I actively try not to constantly blog about Google, so I did not mention this topic. Zero! One mention of WikiLeaks, but nothing on the freakout. No point there.

The total is... 4. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Books in Browsers Conference

And now that I've sung the praises of book-based social media sites, here is an excerpt from this article about the Books in Browsers conference.

Nicole Ozer of the Northern California ACLU spoke eloquently on the dangers of gathering data on what people read. “If you build it, someone will come calling, asking for information.” Other speakers, though, argued that many readers will trade some amount of privacy in exchange for more features and greater possibilities. If a website helps you find the next book you want to read, perhaps giving it your reading history or some portion thereof is a price worth paying.

Nicole Ozer also writes Bytes and Pieces, which seems to be all about technology and civil liberties and will probably be incredibly useful for one project or another.

Happy Blogiversary

This blog turns one year old today!

Over the past year, I have blogged kind of almost sort of every day, with large gaps. I am talking to myself pretty much. The blog has been renamed once and moved once. A Twitter feed has been added, allowing me to talk to myself even more. Awesome!

(Also, hi Natasha if you actually did make good on your threatpromise to drop by.)

Sweet Valley High Drinking Game

Oh, wow. My sister had a pretty long run of the Sweet Valley High books and I wound up reading them as a kid. They seemed okay at the time, even if they were girly (ewww), but in hindsight some of that stuff was just awful. Erin at Forever Young Adult has been rereading the books and reviewing them. With a drinking game!

I did not remember how crazy this stuff was.

Regina, having never experienced cocaine before even though her mom was a model and her parents are rich and she went to school with rich kids all her life, is all “why are you carrying around powdered sugar?” Everyone makes fun of her ignorance, which leads her to deciding to sample the cocaine. She snorts two lines, and then has a heart attack and dies.

Man, Regina Morrow kicking the bucket. That was maybe the one storyline that I can actually remember! It was sad, because Regina was so pretty. Or something like that. Anyway, if you ever read these books, this is hilarious. It's hilarious even if you just want to see what Young Adult fiction was like in the 80's. Not quite Degrassi crazy, but pretty crazy nonetheless.

Turn Your Blog Into a Book?

Having just finished another post, an ad on the 'yay you just published a post' page caught my eye:

Turn your blog into a book!
Blog2Print from SharedBook turns your blog into a soft cover or hard cover book. You pick the cover, add an optional dedication, then preview and you're done. Prices start at $14.95.

Now I'm wondering what the difference between a blog and a journal is. I could pay $14.95 (and probably more, since that's USD and I'm Canadian) and get my blog published as a book with real, actual pages I could smell. And absolutely none of the links would work, and none of the articles linked would be included, and isn't that the point of a blog? Isn't it just a journal otherwise? If you make a new word for a new thing, use that word properly and don't lump other things in with that word.