LibrarianInBlack

Summer Newsletter Ideas

Struggling with ideas for your library's online newsletter?  Check out the wonderful Marketing Your Library's list of Top 10 Ideas for Summer Newsletter Articles.  And if your library's newsletter isn't online yet, why not?  Blogs make the perfect format for your newsletter - you can get output via both email and RSS for subscribers, you can display the headlines automatically on your homepage, and everything is automatically archived.  Speaking of subscribing, if you haven't subscribed to Marketing Your Library yet, let this serve as fair warning that it's a darn good idea.

FictionDB.com - free online readers advisory

In a time of increasing readers' advisory services in our libraries (public and school libraries, at least), free online tools that help our users are valuable commodities.  For however wonderful people think NoveList, What Do I Read Next, and other online subscription services are, the reality is that many libraries cannot afford to subscribe to these services.  For those folks, I have a whole list of favorite sites (forthcoming in a future LiB post, I swear).  For now, take a gander at FictionDB.com.  Last month it was relaunched with free access to its fiction book database with over 50,000 book lists and 200,000 titles.  The site also offers a select number of series lists, summaries, and more.  This is definitely rising toward the top of that list of mine.

Urban Library Journal goes open access

The Urban Library Journal will soon be available as an open access (read: free) publication, joining the many other open access library publications.

found via Digital Reference

O'Reilly dabbles in the DRM-free world

O'Reilly Press has started to offer a small number of their high-tech titles as DRM-free PDFs, 30 in all and 12 of which work on the Kindle.  Now, remember please that DRM-free doesn't mean "open access free."  You can choose to buy a print title or a DRM-free electronic title (or both).  The DRM-free e-copies cost less, typically.  The publishing industry has been dabbling in DRM-free content to see how it resonates with the market, and I think we will slowly see a slow release of the tight-fisted control, and the many problems and costs, associated with DRM.  Congratulations to O'Reilly for walking the walk.

Is FriendFeed making my life easier or harder?

I've been using FriendFeed, a social networking aggregate site of sorts, for a while now.  You can see my profile at http://friendfeed.com/librarianinblack.  I like the fact that I can consolidate many of my presences in one place - it gives me a place to point people to to see all the different places I'm listed.  But it doesn't cover all the sites I use.  Currently, it doesn't include Ning, Skype, or non-Google IM clients.  I'm sure there are more, but those come to mind. 

I also like the fact that I can get a display or feed of what my FriendFeed friends are doing - what they're putting on Flickr, posting on their blogs, Twittering, etc. (especially since I've given up all hope on using Twitter myself).  I also like that comments and conversations can happen within FriendFeed about what we all see there. 

But I am left with two conundrums:

1. For most of the important info from my friends, I already get this information some other way - usually through a straight RSS feed I get in my reader.  So, for these friends, do I continue to maintain those separate RSS feeds and see some stuff twice, or solely rely on FriendFeed?
2. And for the friends who aren't using FriendFeed, do I maintain the separate RSS feeds and just have to go to two places for "friend updates"?

I am also wondering how most people use FriendFeed - do you view it in the live display (e.g. inside of FaceBook?) or do you get it as an RSS feed?  If as an RSS feed, do you view it in an aggregator when you get around to it or do you look at it through some live RSS updater on your desktop?

Finally, there is the puzzling and startling reality of all the different places we are, the differnet information we put out there, blending the personal and professional, and how aggregate services like these make it much, much easier for people to find everything about us in one stop.

The New Facebook Has Launched

The new Facebook has launched.  Not to shock anyone and buck the critics' trend, but I like it! (J/K, almost everyone seems to love it).

The new profile pages are much neater, with only key information and not the endless wall posts of yesterday.  The tabs at the top to navigate between the wall, photos, info, and other stuff is much easier to use and visually appealing.  As with anything that's tabbed resulting in "hidden" content, there's always the risk that some people might not see the tabs and thereby miss stuff.  But if they do, too bad I suppose.  I also like that you can add your own application tab to you profile if you choose - returning control over to the end user is always a good idea.

NEW PROFILE PAGE

And all the same stuff is there on your "home" page, but it's organized a little more thoughtfully.  My one preference would be that the grey bar (with your apps,  requests, status updates, etc.) be on the left instead of the right.  But that's just a personal pet peeve.  It might be the librarian in me, but navigation-esque things should always be the first thing you see - on the left.  Then, main content on the right.  Oh well.

NEW HOME PAGE

60 Gadgets

Looking for gadgety news?  Watch the 60 Gadgets in 60 Minutes presentation from Barbara Fullerton, Ed Vawter, and Dina Dreifuerst.  Many are not library related, but just plain fun so you might end up getting some good gift suggestions from the list :)

50 Recommended Firefox Extensions

I know I'm a bit late in running with this story, but this list of the Top 50 Firefox Extensions from the UK magazine site .net is another great one to peruse if you're looking for some ways to juice up your FFX.  This list as a bit of a geeky bent, more so than other lists I've seen.  Some of them don't work with the latest Firefox (as with some others not on the list), which is majorly frustrating.  Hopefully more of them will become compatible as people update the code.

Conference on Literature in Virtual Worlds

On August 4th and 6th there will be a Conference on Literature in Virtual Worlds.  Held entirely in Second Life, the conference fee is $65 per person.

EBSCO 2.0

EBSCO 2.0, the new interface and feature-rich interface to EBSCO products, launched last week.  Having seen some demos myself, I must admit to being very impressed.  It's easier to use than the old interface, doesn't look so "1995," and has some of the features users have been asking for for a long time.  The Krafty Librarian has a review and the EBSCO site has some useful FAQs if you're looking for a tour or some basic information.