Twitter for Beginners

• After you’ve created an account, go to settings in the upper right corner. Click on all the tabs and fill out as much or as little information as you want.
• For instant credibility, change your picture immediately. If you have a default image, people will think you’re a spammer and/or have no idea what you’re doing so it’s not going to be worth their time to follow you.
• You can change your twitter “handle” (aka username) at any time, but use this sparingly so you don’t confuse your followers.
• Be engaging, especially when you first start. For example, don’t just talk about the pancakes you ate this morning, find your favorite recipe (or post your own in a blog!) and link it for others. Remember that Twitter is about sharing – it’s a little give, it’s a little take. Be willing to open up and be yourself a little bit. People are curious about you!
• You can set your account to be public or private. Private means that only the people that you approve can see your tweets and messages.
• If you have a public account, remember that people can see your responses to other people when they are viewing your profile.
• DMs are short for Direct Messages. Use this when you want to talk with someone privately. You should also use this when a conversation continues at length – you don’t want to bore your audience. You can only DM a person if they are following you, but you do not have to follow them.
• Use bit.ly to shorten links – save space in your precious 140-character tweet!
• You can always un-follow people if they talk too much, don’t provide useful information, etc. Click on their twitter handle, then click on the wheel button for a variety of options.
• Too many tweeters overwhelming you when you first log in? Create lists and use them well! List management is the last option underneath the text box.
• Curious about what people are saying about x? Use the search option! Search options are above the lists on the right column. This is an excellent tool for businesses to use for customer outreach and brand monitoring.

Facebook for Beginners

Helpful tips and tricks to remember:

• Fill out as much or as little information as you want. Don’t want to share your birthdate? Just make one up. You can be 29 again! For greater privacy, use a special email created just for Facebook.
• Use a picture of your dog, your favorite book, or your favorite vacation spot!
• Privacy settings – learn them, use them!  Click on the down arrow next to “Account” in the upper right corner, then use the Account and Privacy Settings. Here, you can decide who sees your information, how much they see. You can narrow it down to just one person that you don’t want seeing your updates, or make entire groups. You can control who posts to your page, or who tags you in photos or videos.
• Too many friends overwhelming you when you first log in? Sick of seeing the same junk from a certain someone?  Create lists and use them well!  When you’re logged into Facebook, click on the upper left Facebook image, click on Friends,  then “Create Lists”.
• Got a friend request that you don’t want to answer to? Is it your boss? Is it a long-lost ex? A clingy acquaintance? When you get the request, do NOTHING. If you click on ignore, the person will be know you’ve declined because they will be able to send you another friend request. If you do nothing, you can feign confusion and pretend you missed it. Forever.

Foursquare Information for Fairfield Public Library

I’ve been talking a lot about Foursquare but never fully explained it, and now that everything is finally in place, I shall do so now, but just a quick version. (I was hoping to make a video, but that won’t happen til much, much later.)

So, Foursquare is a location-based social network. What’s this mean? It means that you connect with your friends just like you would on Facebook or Twitter, and the only thing you do on Foursquare is you “check in” to locations as you are visiting them. This means your friends can see where you are at all times. It’s a handy tool for stalkers – Stalking Made Easy 101. Note that Foursquare requires a GPS-enabled mobile device. It can be done with regular texting, but it’s not that fun or practical…

Why on earth would you want to let people know where you are, you ask? Funny you should ask that! Well, it’s a neat way to try to meet other people – when you check into a location, you can see who else is currently checked in. Or, you can see who else is in the neighborhood near you. For example, last month I was up at the Sports Authority in Milford, then I went to the Stop & Shop next to the Mall. As I checked into the Stop & Shop, I discovered a friend of mine that I hadn’t seen in a long time was right next door at the mall – so I sent him a quick text and said, “hey! I’m next door, got time for lunch?” (He ate already.) Just some examples of the benefits of Foursquare.

Also, you earn points, and you can earn badges and chances to get specials, or become Mayor of a location for checking into locations. Foursquare hasn’t figured out what to really do with the points yet (they had a special once where you could turn in points for a charity cause), but the badges are fun to earn and the specials and Mayorship perks can be pretty neat. Also, when you’re checking into a location, it will also show nearby specials – so for example, if someone has checked into the Chase Bank next door, it will pop up with a special about the Fairfield Public Library too!

I know your next question will be privacy concerns, so here’s what people can do to alleviate those concerns:
A) Don’t use your real picture.
B) Don’t use your real name.
C) Don’t allow anyone other than your friends to see where you’ve checked into (much like Facebook privacy options).
D) Don’t allow Foursquare to post to anywhere else other than Foursquare (there are options to post to Twitter and Facebook as well).
E) Don’t check in until you’re almost leaving -this is what I do. As a warning, this can sometimes backfire. For example, I had checked into the aforementioned Sports Authority as I was getting in my car to leave, only to discover that they were giving a $10 discount to anyone who checked in! So like a jerk, I went back inside, asked them to return the stuff and make a new purchase. (They were nice about it.)

What the heck does this have to do with the library? Well – both the Main Library and the Branch Library are on Foursquare. It’s finally been made possible for me to become manager of the Main Library on Foursquare, and I have finally been able to set up the specials. We haven’t been able to properly announce it for a while, but here are the specials we have: for every 5 checkins, you get a free reusable Fairfield, Connecticut shopping bag. If you become mayor, you will get a 1GB USB thumb drive.

Now, this falls on the staff to verify the patron checkin. If a patron comes in and says “hey I checked into the library! Gimme my bag!” you say “hooray! go to the reference desk!” If you are at the reference desk, you say, “hooray! show me your checkin!” At that point, the patron should whip out their nifty cell phones or whatever they have, and they should be showing you the Foursquare app that says “you’re now checked in to Fairfield Public Library” or something similar. Then you can hand them a bag. At the Main Library, the bags and the USB drives are down where the disks for sale are kept (patrons can purchase a USB drive for $10, just fyi). If a person becomes Mayor, which will take a while, it will say “Congrats! You’ve just stolen the title of Mayor of Fairfield Public Library from Lauren B.!” or something similar. The person checking in will then have a crown next to their name.

Phew! Just think, this was only a brief overview.

To see more of the library on Foursquare:

http://foursquare.com/venue/501417

http://foursquare.com/venue/1415396

If you have questions, don’t hesitate to ask. Actually, don’t ask me until November, since I’ll be in California until then. I will likely hold a class and/or make a video to help clarify what Foursquare is about in the future. But for now, remember to say “hooray!” to people checking in, and send them off to the ref desk for their prizes. Two weeks ago we did have someone checking in, and he was quite delighted to have received a bag from us. Hopefully the trend will continue!

Whoa!

Have I really not posted since Christmas? Oops. Well, the good thing is, my life is going full speed ahead. I’m in the middle of moving to a fabulous new apartment, and today, I’m actually in a WordPress workshop taught by the super awesome Polly-Alida Farrington, so I’ll be messing around here more as I get re-inspired.

Oh, and Patch 3.1 is out for World of Warcraft! Miriella’s new goal? The sea turtle mount of course! I spent a solid 4 hours or so fishing last night, so I do believe I’ll be documenting my fishing adventures once more.

Stay posted!

Yoga

Strength. Grace. Balance. Flexibility. Stamina. Power. Elegance. Yoga. It makes me feel beautiful, ugly, fat, skinny, flexible, stiff, pliable, sexy, not-so-sexy, stressed, and relaxed, all at once, all at the same time.  It’s exhilirating and intimidating. I love every second of it; I love challenging my body to balance, twist and turn in ways that few others can achieve.  I’m getting back into the swing of life, and one of the things I’ve enjoyed most is yoga.  As I was doing yoga last night, for the first time in months, I thought of all those aforementioned emotions and feelings I felt during my session.  I just needed to pass that along, thanks for listening.

For my faithful readers wondering where I’ve gone off to, well, my life got quite the upheaval in 2008, and completely turned upside down a few months ago.  I don’t want to jinx anything, but so far, it seems for the better.  I haven’t been able to bring myself to blog, even though I should have, because I’ve had so many emotions, thoughts, feelings rushing through me all at once.  I couldn’t quite figure out how to express it all in one sitting, so I didn’t even try.

I’ve got a few passing thoughts though, and perhaps down the road I’ll elaborate more. For one, there’s quite a debate about getting a master’s degree online, and getting one IRL – that is, In Real Life – in-person, if you will.  I have had the fortune (but currently paying it back…) of experiencing both. Contrary to what most may think, I actually had a closer-knit group of classmates getting my library degree online than I did with my classmates in person while getting my computer science degree.  While part of it can be attributed to the nature of the classes themselves (you can’t have as many lively discussions and debates on how your animation is portrayed during your Flash presentation as you can with say, a banned book), most of it is, quite frankly, what you personally put into it.  Much like anything else in life, your results are the product of your efforts. 

Secondly, Apple’s released some new iPod stuff – one of which is the purple Nano.  And yes, it’s being shipped on its way to me now.  And Dell also has a 15 inch laptop available in a very girly purple/flowery cover.  So it seems the business world is hearing my pleas of “TAKE ALL MY MONEY NOW!” and bringing the purple out. 

I had a few more thoughts that I was thinking, but they seem to have gone into hibernation for the evening.  It is, after all, almost 3am – an early night for me!

It seems I gave myself an early birthday present – I swore I’d blog again, for my birthday – and my own present’s arrived a few days early.  How thoughtful (and surprising) of me to treat myself so early!  Happy Birthday to me! And to you, my dears, thanks for reading on with me.

CiL2008 – Google

Greg Notess – SearchEngineShowdown.com

Google Database Spread: integration: images, news, video, etc.   Most users don’t bother clicking on anything up top (web, images, maps, etc).  So it tries to change the algorithm to help users find what they really want.

Database changes to Google:

Dec 2006 – web, images, video, news, maps, blogs, books, froogle, “even more”
Nov 2007 – added blogger, documents (but blogger took us right to blogger and not search)
April 2008 – shifted names around, brings the more popular, more important ones up like video, groups, scholar. – will always shift things around in the best interests of the user and/or sponsor

Remember that Google can be customized – you can change filtered search, the number of items that are displayed, etc.  so if you say “go to google and search for xxx” you two would not ever necessarily get the same results. 

More google changes: google ui tests, moving content blocks, added related searches, scrolling ads, removed rss & atom feeds from web. expanded sub-site links.  Fresher results (thought that doesn’t necessarily work), date search limits, added more file types like Google Earth, Flash, Autodesk. 

Advanced search has been streamlined and works much more smoothly and makes more sense to people.  Not so complicated.  Can add licensing, languages, etc. 

Google Book Search: added worldcat records. added links to implement into your own website.

Google News: duplicate stories removed, new sort options, video news, hosted ap news, advanced source suggestions as you type

Google Reader Searches: subscribed feeds (about 500 posts) – lets you search through all the ones that you’ve fed, and the ones you’ve already read as well.

Google Scholar: added elsevier titles, most frequent authors list.

Zero Phrase Search: Google change – they’re working on changing results – sometimes it will say No results found and will just search for the phrase without quotes - sometimes it won’t tell you no results found.  Many other sites will give suggestions, tell you what else to search for, or just say not found.

Yahoo! directory categories gone from results. support of semantic formats. stopped numbering results. added “more from this site”. Search assist.  Images - includes Flickr!

Ask.com – good to get overview, extra privacy sessions.

Exalead – allows truncation, proximity, but has not expanded too much yet and database a wee bit outdated – still has great options to narrow down and limit results.

Gigablast – new launch, freshness dating.

Cil2008 – Learning From Gaming

Presented by Chad Boeninger, Ohio University Libraries

Libraries:
What do we do now? borrow ideas from facebook, myspace, youtube, amazon, ebay.
Provide services with blogs, wikis, im, video, podcasts, SL, more.

We need to understand games – what makes them so engaging, why do we play them? how do games change players’ views of their environment.

April 29 – Grand Theft Auto IV comes out!

Giles Whittel: Video games, I’ll never buy one.

Video gamers can perceive reality much more differently than non gamers do.

From Steven Johnson: Everything Bad is Good for You: “what you never hear about mainstream coverage of video games is that it’s hard!  How much time do you spend and you don’t have fun – you may be confused, disoriented, you may be stuck?  If this mindless escapism, it’s a strangely masochistic version.  Who wants to escape to a place where you are frustrated 90% of the time?”

What’s our Job as librarians?
Figure out: Who plays games, what are they playing? what can we learn? how can we apply gaming concepts to library services and functions.

Who plays games: more male – 62%.  Age of gamers – 18-49 (large pie slice!)

Average gamer: 33 years old, has been playing for 12 years.  Women over the age of 18 represent 30% whereas younger males under 18 are only 23%.

Lego Star Wars Video!  Princess Leia and Chewbacca – Encourages exploration and to test things out – touching switches opens doors or drops cash! – rescuing Han Solo. Lego Star Wars – using the movie – a concept that we already know to apply and to defeat rancors – you know 3PO and R2D2 can control machines.  Use that knowledge to accomplish the missions. 

Ohhh God of War looks like fun.

Games are immersive environments, encourage learning while doing. 

Libraries have always been places to explore information – how can we encourage more exploration in libraries?  We need new nonmenclature: information literacy, reference, catalog, periodicals, reserves, databases, stacks, bibliographic instruction.  We need consistent interfaces across libraries!

What do we expect from our users? Users are accustomed to exploration, exploration in games yields feedback – positive or negative – gamers learn through tiral and error.  What does exploration in libraries yield?  We need to expect that they have “tried and died” so they come to us on the ref desk.

Immersion in libraries: How do we create environments that attract, engage, and retain our users?  The library as immersive space: Learning/Information Commons – make it more inviting to users.  Add a cafe.  Lots of technology.  Movable furniture encoruages customization of the workspace.  Does your library have wireless?  Do we offer laptops for use?  Wireless connectivity allows users to go to the spaces they prefer.

Customizable interfaces – make it your own.  My EbscoHost, MyYahoo, Facebook, My Library.  Customizable search interfaces.  Allow users control of their virtual library environments.

Learning While Doing: Practice Makes perfect.  Games encourage mastery – multiple difficulties w/unlockable content – how can we take advantage of this in libraries?  Library Instruction: Must incorporate hands-on experiences.  immediate application of content.  Relevant and timely – no more generic orientations.  Try experimenting with different methods for different subjects and classes.

Flickr – displays tagging in use – helps them to understand (sorta) library subject headings.  We need smarter systems in catalogs.  In the absence of smarter systems, we need point-of-need help – screencasts, like in games – they often have quick tutorials on how to accomplish something you’re on.

People want interactivity – not just be spoken to.  People want instant help.  Libraries’ best options for Instant help: embed chat and widgets all over the place on your site!  Email just isn’t good enough – it’s not quick enough, and maybe you’ll get an answer back some day….maybe you won’t.  Must also provide ways to help them to help themselves!

Leveraging games in libraries – why haven’t we talked about designing video games for libraries?  Do we have time and money? is a game scalable to what we try to teach? would they really want to play? what would this game look like?

Second LIfe – low initial investment, easy to start.  But do your patrons even care about virtual worlds? – In his survey – not really.

Librarians make great gamers:

1. We enjoy great fetch quests!  What? You want this? Here’s 37 ways to retrieve this article!

2. When we level up, we face another boss!  Vendors, new ways of getting what you need with new versions.

3. We like trial and error approaches to solving problems! 

Suggested Readings: The kids are alright by John Beck.

What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy by James Gee.

Everything bad is good for you by Steven Johnson.

“Don’t bother me mom, I’m learning!” by Marc Prensky.

Fast and Easy Site Tune-Ups

With Jeff Wisniewski: Web Services Librarian, University of Pittsburgh

Slides available at conference website about a week at the end of the conference.

I think I missed a few because I came in late…

• Add photos to contacts – it’s quick, easy, adds a personal element.
• Change boring old contact info into exciting hCards at http://microformats.org/code/hcard/creator
• Replace every instance of “Click here” with something like “blah blah is available here”
• Firefox extensions: Tails and Operator(?)
• Help your server – if you use directory links add a “/” at the end of your links.
• Web 2.0 Stylr for creating nifty logos and text images
• Be an icon icon!  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Clear for tons of free icons
• Firebug + YSlow
• Cache – get as much content into caches as possible.
• For server admins: Server config files: set certain file types to stay fresh and not expire:  Image file types, css, js files, pdfs.
• Yahoo! High Performance research shows that combining small images into an image map: combining multiple smaller images into a single image speeds downloads due to fewer http requests.
• Eliminate inline scripts.  Calling scripts from external files will speed page download time. – Except for your homepage: inline scripts for your homepage – making http requests is much more expensive than the size of the data coming down.
• Spring cleaning: tidy your homepage: http://validator.w3.org/#validate_by_uri+with_options
• Does your CSS overfloweth?  Use CleanCSS!
• Move important information out of the “blindness” zone – important information should be mid-center. 
• Google webmaster tools – page titles – site link > Diagnostics > content analysis > title tag analysis – tells you pages w/duplicate titles, non-informative titles, titles that are too long, etc.
• Global find and replace: Rewrite page titles with the following format: Document title | Section Name | Library Site name (i.e. Interlibrary Loan Policies | Library Services | Danbury Library)
• Forms: Add labels to your forms: 1) Accessibility: read by screen readers and 2) user friendly: check box text and not just text box is clickable
• Use radio buttons and check boxes appropriately (one option only or multiple options allowed?)
• Add social bookmark links: http://ww.toprankblog.com/tools/social-bookmarks/

Looks like I’ll be putting a couple of these things to good use.  I wonder if I can get the staff to have their pictures taken.

 

Computers in Libraries 2008!

Whee!  Tomorrow I’ll be headed down to Virginia for this very cool conference.  First though, I’m making a pit stop down in Virginia Beach.  I’m taking my cousin with me, and we’re meeting up with her sister + family who are driving up from Florida to meet on the beach Friday night for a mini-fam reunion.  Sometime Saturday I’ll head back up north to Arlington for the event.

It’ll be my first time at a CiL Conference, and from what I’ve read, it looks like I’ll be learning so much and having too much fun at the same time.  My usual dilemma of these conferences is that I see the track listings and schedules and I always want to go to 4 presentations at the same time.  Far too much good stuff.  I’ll be attempting to keep a level head though, and stay focused on the Web Design track…though I just may need to sneak over into the Gaming track of course.

So far, my tentative schedule: 

Sunday:  

• 9:00 am – 4:30 pm: Web Managers Academy Pre-Conference Workshop.
• 5ish: Sunday Evening Gaming Session

Monday:

• 10:30 am: Hi Tech & Hi Touch (How can I pass up a session with Jenny Levine?)
• 11:30 am: Library Web Presence
• 1:30 pm: Torn between What’s New With Federated Search and The Global Librarian
• 3:15 pm: Widgets, Tools, & Doodads for Library Webmasters
• 4:15 pm: Torn between Library Staff Training and Industry Learnings & Libraries

Tuesday:

• 10:30 am: Innovation Starts with “I”
• 11:30 am: Drat! Drupal & Libraries or Libraries A-Twitter?!
• 1:30 pm: From Woepac to Wowpac (Hooray!  With Kate and John!)
• 2:30 pm: Harnessing New Data Visualization Tools or Leading Technology in Libraries?
• 4:00 pm: Video, YouTube & Libraries; 2.0 Pecha Kucha, or IM Service??!

Wednesday:

• 10:30 am: Learning from Video Games (whee!)
• 11:30 am: Open Source Applications or Gaming & Learning
• 1:45 pm: Google Tracking or Open Source Library Automation
• 2:45 pm: What’s Hot in RSS & Social Software
• 3:45 pm: Searching for Social Web

And then I drive home!  Hope to see you there!

Lol…well my decision is partially made for me.

Because Drexel’s websites (yes, they have a zillion websites and none of them make sense) are so utterly confusing, when I went to find further information on my classes, I discovered that two of the classes I chose earlier are only offered on-campus this Spring, and another isn’t available at all.  Then we decided that INFO 650: Public Library Service would not be particularly useful, seeing that I’ve worked in public libraries for the last 10 years now, and the fact that no class can ever REALLY prepare you for what’s about to hit you when you work in a public library…So lucky you guys, I’m down to the ones that everyone’s been pushing me to take anyway:

INFO 663 – Tech Process In LibrariesFocuses on management, policy, and organizational issues related to the administration of technical services in libraries. Includes acquisitions, copy cataloging, original cataloging, serials control, circulation, and preservation. Emphasizes management in an automated environment where traditional methods are being supplanted by new technologies and related organizational changes.

INFO 646 – Information Systems ManagementAddresses information technology-enabled change and policy issues in the management of information systems (IS). Stresses systems development, staffing and organization, technology infrastructure, project selection, justification and funding, and data. Studies the issues and their resolution in the context of an IS plan. Emphasizes communication about the issues to senior management.

So now, it’s really just down to professor rating and syllabus rating…though I don’t like the fact that I literally have just two to pick from.  /sigh.