Social Media Clutter? Must We Add Four Square?

February 11, 2011 //
A lonely man on the four square field.

A random lonely man on the four square field.

The below infographic has been bumping around (It came to me via Stephen’s Lighthouse, who got it here.).

four square growing

It’s good news for Four Square. Is it good news for us? Is it yet another social media time drain we have to adopt to survive online?

At the moment, I personally don’t really get Four Square. Why would someone want to be mayor of a retail outlet, like Starbucks or wherever?

In that light, Four Square looks like a thin game layer draped over an overt marketing carrot-and-stick. Looking at the top check-ins that the infographic lists, it’s clear that Four Square wants to make sure businesses see the value.

Four Square could be a new outlet for vacuos, vain consumer culture. But, that’s what people we were saying about Twitter a couple short years ago.

As one friend noted, Egyptians are using the Internet to free their country and we’re using it to show we went to Wendy’s. That’s the point. It took a few years for people to find ways to do such impressive things with  Twitter and Facebook.

I may not start my Four Square account this weekend. I’m still not completely sold on Twitter (but it’s growing on me). There is a part of me that will try anything (at least for a while) once I have the time.

Should libraries get in on Four Square?

There are so many competing social media demands, that taking on a new platform can drain other efforts. It’s important to weigh the cost/benefits of getting involved and to develop a manageable, adaptable, and achievable strategy.

Librarians are already hatching ideas and talking about it.

 

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Categories Public Libraries, Technology, User experience, web tools

Side-Project Sidelined? A Confession from an Entrepreurial Librarian

February 9, 2011 //

Pins I make!There are two things I can speak on with a certain amount of moderate professional authority: library stuff and making t-shirts.

Besides a budding LIS-worker, I am the owner and operator of Winged Beast Outfitters. What is Winged Beast Outfitters? It’s a graphic-fashion-design side project I started back when I was teaching. I sort of love it. Besides being a creative outlet, it’s sort of like playing Civilisation (except the game’s hooked up to my wallet).

The 2011 season starts this weekend (in Montreal for those who are interested in coming by).  It’s set to be a great show in a new venue for me. I’ll have some new products, and the return of old favourites is inevitable.

It’s not all bliss. Reconciling my lovely small business and my library career can be a challenge. I’m not just talking about time management and work-day focus (there’s lots of stock, reasonable tips on that). It can be hard, but I have a good handle on that.

I’m talking job search.

In interviews, I’ve often left my business out because it complicates the message I want to give potential employers. Or when it does come up, I get so excited it can railroad my answers.

Not to mention that Winged Beast Outfitters, or any small business, does not always fit easily onto a resume. In my case, it’s not LIS work. Because it now overlaps a lot of my previous  professional experience, the time-line looks funky on the page. It seems to muddle the flow of my resume and draw away from my LIS experience.

I really do believe there is tons of crossover relevance. All the project management, financial planning, event organizing, customer service and research skills are there and in full force, not to mention social media, marketing and web-design! And there’s record analysis(sales reports and trends) user needs analysis (seriously, you have to know your audience to an almost intuitive degree). And frankly, you have got to be self-motivated and creative to even stay half-way afloat. Read the rest of this entry »

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Categories About Me, Employment

Crowd Sourcing Maps and Volunteer Geo-Information

February 8, 2011 //

Map of London

Hand-drawn map of London by Stephen Welter

The New York Public Library hosted a neat looking panel today.

Future Library: Socializing History with Maps, Hosted by The New York Public Library

Event Description:

Speakers:

  • Matt Knutzen, Geospatial Librarian at the New York Public Library
  • Alex Rainert, Head of Product at Foursquare
  • Jesse Friedman, Product Marketing Manager at Google Maps and Earth
  • Jack Eichenbaum, Queens Borough Historian[NYPL’s event listing]

It’s a shame when you hear about something interesting, and it’s too late, and it’s in another country. Where are the teleporters, already? Science, I’m looking at you

Moving on, it’s exciting to imagine maps being used like wikis.  It’s a field that has largely been dominated by businesses and advertising, but there is a lot of potential here for less commercial uses. OpenStreetMap is an open source project already doing this.

Other popular free(but not commercial free) resources, like Google Maps or Bing’s equivalent, can be an underused tools for pushing community information out to library users and visitors.

Imagine walkable or bikeable tours you could follow via smart phone, with info links, archival photos galleries, recorded personal testimonials, and other information. Online maps can be turned passing on community knowledge that is often lost or fragmented by .

Or arts walks. Or even digitally augmented literary scavenger hunts combining geo-caching and book releases.

Like most web-based tools, I’m pretty sure the most en-genius ideas haven’t been thought of yet. The opportunity is there for any locally minded persons who want to plant a few flags in the digital world.

Also, how cool would it be to be a Geospatial Librarian. I want one of those business cards!

***Addendum***

Stephen Welter’s portfolio site. Why not promote the analog approach?

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Categories Library Bric-a-brac, Public Libraries, Services, Technology, User experience, web tools

Amazing News! Dinosaurs survived 700,000 years past meteorite strike

February 8, 2011 //

Dinosaurs at the end?

From Canada.com

A fossilized sauropod bone, dated by a team of Canadian and U.S. scientists to 64.8 million years ago, appears likely to force a serious rethinking of the demise of dinosaurs, which were supposed to have been wiped out in a catastrophic meteorite strike no later than 65.5 million years ago — 700,000 years before the death of the giant, vegetarian beast that left its femur behind in present-day New Mexico…

The new findings, Heaman told Postmedia News on Friday, appear to support Fassett’s theory that at least some dinosaurs survived the catastrophic impact and persisted for hundreds of thousands of years…

But it hasn’t been “ironclad evidence,” he noted. “What was missing was some way to directly date the bone itself. Up to now, it’s just never been possible, so this is the first real success.”[full article here]

Even meteors can’t stop dinosaur greatness. Who doesn’t love paleontology tidbits like this? No one!

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Categories Amazing News!

Reference Bomb – Tasty, Ol’Timey Devastation

February 7, 2011 //

Molasses Disaster

At work, some kind coworkers invited me to sit with them (which was nice, because I’m new). The conversation, twisted, turned and landed on disasters. Landslides in Italy. Then floods in Australia.

This lead to a more unbelievable catastrophe: the Boston Molasses Disaster.

Not one of us had all the details, but we worked together and came up with this (without reaching for our smartphones):

It happened back around the 1920s.

It was caused by the brilliant idea of painting a massive molasses tank black. Heat combined with the expansionary properties of such a viscous fluid, and boom, you get an ooey-gooey black flood.

Something like 2 million gallons of the stuff were spilled down the streets of the city, wrecking buildings and causing havoc.

Rumour has it that you can still smell the molasses on hot days.

It was a sticky, tasty, destructive and collaborative reference bomb! Bam!

Molasses! Destroys! Interpretive plaque.

Where's an interpretive plaque when you need it?

Further Reading:
Wiki entry on the disaster.

Boston Public Library’s flickr gallery on the disaster.

****

What is a reference bomb? Find out here!

Email me your Reference Bomb experience! info@dropthereferencebomb.com

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Categories Reference Bomb

Essex County

February 5, 2011 //

The CBC’s Canada Reads starts broadcasting next week.

For those who don’t know:

Started in 2001, Canada Reads is CBC’s annual battle of the books, where five Canadian personalities select the book they think Canadians should read. Each personality selects a book to defend and the books are eliminated one by one until a winner is declared. The debates air on CBC Radio One. Jian Ghomeshi has hosted Canada Reads since 2008.

In 2011, the contenders are:

I’d love to see Essex County win. Not simply because I’m a fan of graphic novels getting love on the literary stage, but also because books so forthright and well crafted are rare in any format. It’s a frank, haunting, causality of lives. Complicated and unresolved – the characters are rendered in the rough and sketchy style, where detail seems as once scarce and almost overwhelming.

Essex County Sample

I used to live in Windsor, Ontario, which abuts the actual Essex County. Lemire captures the sense of a wide-open farmland that can feel so isolating and confining at times. It’s not the Essex County everyone experienced, but Lemire’s is palpable and recognizable.

Anyways, that’s my vote.

The Canada Reads debates will air on CBC Radio One on February 7, 8 and 9 at 11 a.m. and again at 8 p.m. (2:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. in Newfoundland).

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Categories Book News

Library SoundTrack Fridays! – Entire Cities w/ The Mountains & The Trees

February 4, 2011 //

I was torn, so I’m posting two picks from my weekly data-fixing soundtrack.

Toronto’s Entire Cities!


Some people compare the singer’s voice to the Hold Steady. There’s the same prediliction of blues rock, but filtered through Canadian indie-folk congeniality.

I also strongly suggest their song “Gimme a Ride“.

And… The Mountains & the Trees, hailing from Corner Brook, NFLD (home of the McDonald’s my family would drive to when I was little. Seriously, we had to drive 45 minutes to get a cheese burger. Thanks mom and dad.),

What can I say…  just sort of nice.

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Categories Library Soundtrack

Do You See What You Need?

February 4, 2011 //

A great little info-graphic from Information is Beautiful (my favourite info-design site):

But, this is not necessarily a new concept (from the I.is B. post).

This structure has been around for a while. (In fact does anyone knows who first came up with it?). The only new thing is relating it to visuals. And giving it a nice font.

One interesting thing. If you visualise information without designing it, you often end up with a mush or a meaningless thicket.

A lot of times, as part of the reference process, “information” and “data” are considered enough to meet user needs, leaving the higher levels of the triangle to the user’s discretion.

As librarians increasingly become moderators or brokers of information, staking a claim on those higher tiers may be worthwhile. Information design can do a lot to achieve this.

Libraries are in the information sharing business, so considering how we present information visually is pretty important. I’m a big fan on the role design can play in representing complex ideas. The ability to take raw information and make it informative is something that makes good information design invaluable.

It may seem like a superficial concern, but information design is going to be more and more relevant.

The list is the simplest and most ubiquitous tool for returning information to users (be it via search engine, OPAC, or written lists of suggested titles).  Even tag clouds are essential elaborate lists, but they are moves in the right direction.

The drive towards the semantic web (one day, maybe?) will lead to increased  expectations from users.  Search tools and providers will  have to consider more complex and subtle contextual inputs. Because the results themselves will be increasingly nuanced, the dynamics of how this information is presented will be crucial.

I’ve really no idea about how this will turn out. But, since search engine results are essentially laid out the same now as in the 90s, I’d be open to any sort of evolution.

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Categories Library Bric-a-brac, Services, Technology, User experience, web tools

Bibliotheca Alexandria Safe-ish

February 3, 2011 //

Egyptian Muesum Protected by Army Egypt’s been in the streets for a week now (and it’s clearly getting crazier). With the Egyptian Museum threatened and under the army’s protection, what about another valuable (albeit, less famous) cultural and knowledge centre: the reduxed Library of Alexandia.
Good news:

The library is safe thanks to Egypt’s youth, whether they be the staff of the Library or the representatives of the demonstrators, who are joining us in guarding the building from potential vandals and looters. I am there daily within the bounds of the curfew hours. However, the Library will be closed to the public for the next few days until the curfew is lifted and events unfold towards an end to the lawlessness and a move towards the resolution of the political issues that triggered the demonstrations.[from the BA’s site]

They’ve posted a photo gallery of citizens and librarians banding together to protect the building.

History shows that times of upheaval are not particularly kind to libraries and museums.

I have my fingers crossed that the outcome will be different this time. Here’s to speedy, safe(r), and democratic peace in Egypt.

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Categories Library News, Security

Boston PL’s Flickr Stream

February 3, 2011 //

Palestine Line

The Boston Public Library has been developing a pretty amazing and eclectic photo gallery up on flickr, all stuff scanned from their archives and special collections.

I’m partial to the Travel Poster collection. There’s also impressive Match Cover and Stereograph sets.

SterographIt’s a pretty extensive (almost 17 000 items)  example of a library using popular social media software to push out parts of collections normally inaccessible to the average library visitor.

Also, it’s just plain neat.

Houdini scrapbook

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Categories Library Bric-a-brac, Public Libraries, Technology, web tools
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