More Facebook

Well, adding the Facebook widget to my library's home page is increasing our Facebook fans dramatically. What a cool tool! We'll see how many fans we get by summer's end.

I follow many other libraries around the world with my Facebook account. It's cool to "friend" or "fan" them, and see what they post, what they are doing, etc. It's a quick way to stay informed of what other libraries have going on.

I was already a member of 3 groups: Texas Library Association Members (self explanatory), NextGen Librarians (a network for "young" forward-thinking librarians), and Lipstick Librarians (just a random, fun librarian clique). In honor of this "thing," I have added a couple more:
1. Librarians and Facebook (where I can hopefully get more ideas about how to use Facebook to promote my library)
2. American Library Association Members
3. Library 2.0 Interest Group (a group interested in using Web 2.0 technology in libraries)

Facebook

This "thing" was a piece of cake because I have had a Facebook account for about a year and a half now. At first I was apprehensive because Facebook does not allow me to code HTML into my page and change the look, but once I got over that I found that I liked it much better than MySpace.

A few months ago I was asked to create a Facebook page for the library. When I went to do so, I found out that the administrator has to link from their personal profile. I am a bit paranoid about mixing work and personal social networking, so...I broke the rules and created another profile for my work persona. Now I am just trying to get the word out to our patrons that we are there so they can "become a fan" and find out about programs and events. Today I found a cute little widget that I could embed into the library's website that shows a few wall posts, fans (first name only), and the "become a fan" button. I uploaded it today, so we'll see in a few weeks how well that has worked!

Sara Miller

Create Your Badge

RSS Feeds

How does this differ from Thing 6? Hmm.

I have added the Cataloging Futures blog and the LOC blog to my Google Reader to see if I like them. I don't have much else to comment on here, so I will list some of the RSS feeds that I find particularly useful for work. Maybe someone else can discover something new that way.

Earlyword: The Publisher/Librarian Connection (This will often give me a "heads up" to books that have been promoted on television or radio and that patrons might be looking for soon.)

Library Journal Reviews (Self-explanatory)

Publishers Weekly Reviews (Ditto)

Love the Liberry (This is a blog written by a group of library employees that post about funny interactions or questions they get at the reference desk. Often I can relate...)

Shelf Check (library cartoon I like better than "Unshelved")

Librarian in Black (Sarah Houghton-Jan's blog about libraries and technology)

Stephen's Lighthouse (from Sirsi-Dynix's VP Stephen Abram, there are often interesting bits about libraries and technology here as well)

Blog Readers

I have been uging blog readers (or feed aggregators) for quite a while now. For personal stuff, I like MyYahoo because I can easily customize the look of the page and organize all of the information I like to glance over in the mornings (national & local news, weather, The Onion, The Smoking Gun, etc.). I organized a MyYahoo page about 3 years ago after my brother told me about it and I have used it faithfully ever since.

Then I heard about Google Reader, and I decided to start using it for work items about 6 months ago. There are SOOOO many library feeds that I try ("try" being the correct term) to follow, and Google Reader makes it much easier for me to do so. The up side: I handle collection development and I LOVE having book reviews delivered to me automatically via Google Reader. The down side? When I have been away from my desk or busy working on other things for a couple of days and I see I have 11 billion new items. It's somewhat overwhelming. Perhaps I am trying to follow too many feeds, yes?

Image Generators

These were really fun. My husband bought one of those "Topsy Turvy" things that let you grow tomatoes upside down this weekend. We were playing around and he put it on his head like a hat. He ended up looking like some demented redneck Dr. Seuss character and I snapped a pic. The pic is funny on its own:

It's even better after I played around with some of the image generators in Thing 5.

More Flickr

I LOVE de-motivators, so this one was my first pick. I think I will get a lot of use out of this one. This was a hilarious photo that I already had saved in my computer (NOT anyone I know...), so I made a motivational poster out of it. The photo is a little grainy, will have to search for one with better resolution. You get the idea, though.



Now THIS I could have some fun with. Another photo that I had saved, so I added the caption. Scary baby, huh? I will definitely bookmark this for later. I could have a lot of fun with this tool on our staff wiki.







Spell with Flickr is a very cool tool, but I will have to think harder about useful applications for the library. Perhaps it's too early in the morning and I haven't had enough coffee.

Flickr

I have been using Flickr for our library for some time now, primarily starting the photostream last year during our Summer Reading Club. Here's a link to the stream:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/27475023@N03/

I posted links to the photostream on the library website and patrons seemed to get a kick out of it. One of the questions that is always in the back of my mind is...do we need permission from individuals to post their pictures on the internet and use them to promote the library? I am usually the one taking these photos, and I have always asked permission of parents before taking photos that prominently feature their child, but what about those photos that show larger groups of people? Are there privacy issues at stake?

Summer Reading Club kicks off today and I will DEFINITELY be taking more pictures and adding them to the stream.