Daily Thoughts 8/1/2011

The Two Sisters, oil on canvas, Pierre-August Renoir, 1889

Daily Thoughts 8/1/2011

Today has been a steady day.  I updated the Twitter account, checked the displays, and checked the donations.  There were a bunch of urban fiction books that were donated as well as some classics.  I also checked the Ereference.  We get lots of Local History questions in Ereference.

I am looking at doing some social media things for the library which should be interesting.  I started working on a a Facebook page for the library today. It is very different doing an institutional facebook page compared to do a personal Facebook page. It also feels different between doing a personal Twitter account and an institutional Twitter account.

I stayed late tonight to discuss technology in the library.  We talked about the computer lab, laptops, internet connections, the website, and a variety of different subjects.  A lot of patrons would like more wireless access and more laptops.  We also discussed possibly purchasing some magazine subscriptions for the Sony Ereaders which seems like an interesting idea.

Daily Thoughts 3/19/2009

Mary Wollstonecraft Tate author of The Vindication of the Rights of Women

Daily Thoughts 3/19/2009

This morning, I read some more of Social Software In Libraries. It was kind of interesting. They had a link to http://www.librarysuccess.org/ a best practices wiki for libraries. While I was glancing through it, I noticed that they had something called an unconference. I am not quite sure what this is yet. Apparently, Brooklyn College and the Metro New York Library is doing an unconference on June 3, 2009. I am going to see if I can go. http://libcampnyc.pbwiki.com/

I also read a bit more coming home. The book focused on sites like Facebook and Myspace for libraries. In my experience most librarians who use Myspace in a library setting are young adult librarians. I am not that fond of Facebook, but I have seen a number of libraries on Facebook. Linked In was another social network that was mentioned. Linked In is very much a professional network, more than Facebook. I don't use Linked In here because it really does seem to require an open identity to work properly.

Google just made 500,000 of its books that were on its server that were in the public domain available to Sony Ereaders. In a way, this does not surprise. Amazon has scanned 1 1/2 million pieces of books for look inside the book. This makes Amazon a direct competitor with Google in scanning books. It is a move designed to make the Sony Ereader more competitive with the Kindle 2. I find the idea very interesting. http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090319/ap_on_hi_te/tec_google_sony_reader

Today, I spent quite a bit of time on the reference desk. I also made a rough draft of a user survey. I am hoping that it is something worthwhile.