Happy 200th Birthday Abe!

At the College of Lake County, we celebrated Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday by serenading the large print of Lincoln on the second floor of the library. A group of hardy Lincoln devotees sang happy birthday to Abe and shared some brownies and cookies.
Click on the photo to get the full effect. Don't look for yours truly-- who do you think took the photo.

CLC Librarians Applaud Obama Inauguration

We are glad to be helping welcome in the new administration. The CLC community had several viewing areas for the Obama Inauguration, so we joined in as you can see with the link below.

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=265839&src=3

"To Use a Librarian or Not to Use a Librarian ..."

I know many of us are faced with the challenge of explaining why librarians are needed in the age of Google. I thought maybe Shakespeare might help, so I adapted some of his advice.

To use the library or not to use the library, that is the question:

Whether 'tis easier to find a needle in a haystack in Google

Or to take arms and use library databases designed with students in mind.

What dreams may come from using library resources

Of devoutly to be wish'd for good citations, easily found (and emailed to ourselves) before we sleep

For who would bear the thousands of useless search engine hits,

The insolence of unreliable data,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life of Internet use,

When good grades, more time, and better friends come from using the library website.

(with apologies to fans of William Shakespeare)

Marketing Via Online Tools and Applications

Since marketing is largely a collaborative process, both through partnerships with other organizations and other librarians, online tools and applications offer some exciting opportunities. For example, Google Docs seems like a strong application for people who want the flexibility of accessing their data files from anywhere, much like del.icio.us gives people access to their web links from anywhere. It is also a powerful tool for sharing documents, forgoing the need to email attachments in this virus-filled age. Of course, you do have this capacity through applications like google groups, which I have used on collaborative library projects when I worked with librarians in New Jersey and Cincinnati. I think Google Docs is a strong tool to use, as long as participants can ensure that the material is secure, as you don't want your material searchable on the google search engine.

LibraryThing looks like a good place for librarians to organize their book collections and share thoughts on these books. I think it would have helped me as a cataloger when I was creating subject tracings for some of those hard to define novels, especially science fiction.

LastFM: looked like a promising place to bring together one of my loves, radio listening. When I checked out the web site, it looked liked it was geared primarily to the music side of radio, rather then the discussion side of radio. I prefer the discussion side of radio, as it tends to be more idiocyncratic and also more local, as most talk radio seems to be local (of course not all). I think the more local, unique, and informed our voice (both as librarians and as citizens, the better).

Twitter: looks like a strong social networking site, especially for the "on the move" set, who need to keep the gang up to date on where they are. Twitter may save young people a lot of money, as they might not need to be texting a whole group of people where they are going (using all the texting costs), as they can just post something on Twitter and ask their contacts to check there. May be a short hand way of blogging, in a way.

Instant Messaging at the Library

For those of us above a certain age, instant messaging by way of AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, and Google Talk are a foreign language, but, based on statistics, it is a language that we need to be learning. Many of our younger patrons spend a lot of time messaging and it fits in perfectly with their multi-task lifestyles. People are online and they want library services to be available to them without getting offline.

As a reference tool, I feel it is a mixed bag, with some people accessing the library in a new, meaningful way, while many others use the library's IM function as a way of engaging librarians in a wild goose chases or in questionable electronic dialogue.

Many times, it is probably easier for users to call the library or go in to the library, as electronic reference has limitations. Nevertheless, with the ability to add links and pictures, etc., instant messaging can fill an important reference niche and open people up to the other library services.

Online Social Networks and Libraries

Online social networks, like Facebook, Myspace, and Linkedin are tremendous opportunities for librarians, if we can figure out how to market ourselves strategically and authentically. By authentically, I mean that we can embrace the concept of social networks providing answers to people without feeling threatened that somehow libraries will become irrelevant. In particular, Linkedin seems to be a site where people turn to each other for answers. For example, LinkedIn Answers provides the opportunity for registered users to query each other about business, educational, or other issues.

Many library users, especially younger users, spend a lot of time on social networking sites. This will not change. The question is can libraries change to intergrate social networking in an effective manner.

Uses of del.icio.us in library marketing

del.icio.us is becoming more relevant to libraries as a marketing tool. For example, I searched the term "impressionism" in del.icio.us and got 809 results in as opposed to almost 5 million in google. So many fewer, but still access to the most popular sites, like wikipedia, so perhaps librarians could use del.icio.us as a select search engine.

del.icio.us might also be used as a way to present web-based pathfinders to Internet sites.