A day in the Life of the ALIA President....

Follow Jan Richards, ALIA President, while she blogs about a day in her life, the challenges she faces at work and the balancing act between her 'real' job and ALIA

For more information - http://www.alia.org.au/blog/?p=145

Twitter hash #libday4

The Idea Champions Weblog

Idea Champions is a consulting and training company dedicated to awakening and nurturing the spirit of innovation. They help individuals, teams and entire organizations tap into their innate ability to create, develop and implement ideas that make a difference.

Check out this very funny blog entry:

The Top 100 lamest excuses for not innovating

ALIA News

Here are some sites recommended recently by ALIA:

INTERNATIONAL
Taking Stock - the Future of Public Library Service
Unison and the University of Cardiff have published a report called Taking stock: the future of our public library service. The 'our' they are talking about is the UK public library service, but there are plenty of ideas to consider for Australian libraries.
The report looks a range of issues including measuring value and quality, book stock, facilities, and staffing. You can read the complete report here:

http://www.unison.org.uk/acrobat/17301.pdf
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The Future of Reference Services - Survey
A quick survey about future of reference services:
How critical is reference to the survival of libraries? Should the library profession do more to promote reference services? In less than a minute you can tell the library profession what you think about reference services by taking a "60-Second Survey."


Survey

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Great Endings Begin at the Library
Reconnect with reading! Check out the reading campaign poster used by Cuyahoga County Public Library at:

Cuyahoga County Public Library website

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Reading on the Rise
Reading on the Rise, the National Endowment for the Arts' new report documents a significant turning point in recent American cultural history. For the first time in over a quarter-century, our survey shows that literary reading has risen among adult Americans. After decades of declining trends, there has been a decisive and unambiguous increase among virtually every group measured in this comprehensive national survey.

http://www.arts.gov/research/ReadingonRise.pdf


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Libraries Responsible for a Drop in the Crime Rate
Libraries sow urban peace in Colombia

http://www.comunidadesegura.org/?q=en/node/41565


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WEB RESOURCES
The Distance Between Two Points
Do you or your customers ever need to calculate the distance between any two cities or points in the world in kilometres, miles and nautical miles, and the initial compass bearing/heading from the origin to the destination? Click on the link below to find out more.

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/distance.html

And find out current times around the world by visiting:

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/
This one is really useful - I use it all the time before calling family overseas.
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The world's 50 most powerful blogs
From Prince Harry in Afghanistan to Tom Cruise on Scientology and footage from the Burmese uprising, blogging has never been bigger. It can help elect presidents and take down attorney generals while simultaneously celebrating the minutiae of our everyday obsessions. Here are the 50 best reasons to log on:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/09/blogs


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New Search Engine
It's hard to argue with results. A study by Microsoft Research reveals that presenting a screenshot in conjunction with a text result allows a user to locate desired web pages faster and easier in almost every attempt. Our brain is designed to filter, distinguish, associate, and select information first and foremost visually. middlespot.com is designed to take advantage of this strength by providing a patented interface that helps you determine the relevancy of your results with greater efficiency and accuracy.

http://middlespot.com/


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Search Engine Optimisation Tips
The SEO tips found by following the link below should assist you in forming a basic understanding of how to create human friendly web pages, which are easily understood by the most popular search engines.http://www.ezau.com/latest/articles/0147.shtml

Also check out search engine optimisation tips for libraries at:

http://www.guartic.com/search-engine-optimization-seo-tips-for-libraries


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100 Top Sites for 2009
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/dec/18/internet-websites


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10 librarians' blogs to read in 2009
http://lisnews.org/10_librarian_blogs_read_2009


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Europeana is back online
Within Europeana you can search through millions of digital items provided by Europe's museums and galleries, archives, libraries and audio-visual organisations.
Searching in Europeana is simple. Just ask yourself who, what, where or when you are interested in and type these words into Europeana's search box.

http://www.europeana.eu/portal/using-europeana.html

Shanachietour

I attended Library Innovations on Friday at SLNSW and had the chance to hear about 10innovations from libraries around NSW and to meet Erik Boekesteijn and Jaap van de Geer from DOK, Delft Public Library. They were amazing, full of energy and enjoying the public libraries around Australia. Check them out:

The SLNSW has tagged links to the Shanachie Tour photos, blog etc. at

http://delicious.com/tags/PublicLibrary Services Shanachie Tour [look for the tag shanachietour]

And here are some of their videos:

Link to videos here

Latest from SLNSW

Civic surf is a UK project to encourage civic leaders to write blogs about their organisation.
Civic Surf
There are links to some blogs written by councillors as well as one by a CEO.

For those of you interested in digital preservation you may be interested in the discussion of digital continuity strategies - or how to make sure digital information continues to be available
Digital Continuity Strategy

Statistics
A recently released report alos highlights that many people think the information on the internet is more important than information from a range of other sources - have a look a this blog post summary of the report.
What people think of the Internet

New Blogs to check out!

Streaming video
You can watch Art after hours talks from the Art Gallery of New South Wales on YouTube http://au.youtube.com/user/ArtGalleryNSW

Blogs of interest
Read Muslib and you can follow Margaret Whittaker (from City of Sydney Library) as she goes on her reseach tour of public music libraries for her ALIA study grant award http://muslibproject.blogspot.com/

Future proof blog is a place for people to learn more about the NSW Government digital recordkeeping strategy and to share information about their own activities, projects and experiences in regards to digital recordkeeping. It is also a place to ask questions and offer advice to others who may be going through similar experiences. This is provided by State Records. http://futureproof.records.nsw.gov.au/

The Australian National Maritime Museum has a different kind of blog - tracking the voyages of the new Endeavour http://anmm.wordpress.com/

London School of Economics Library Standards

Have a look at the London School of Economics Library Service Standards.

They have included the relevant statistics.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/library/SLDs/OurServiceStandards.htm

Thoughts to ponder

You might be interested in this blog post from the Guardian about why poets travel on trains http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2008/sep/26/poetry.trains.oriordan
It also explores some ideas around writing poetry.
Are there particular things which lend themselves to being read on shorter train journeys (mainly communting for work) or longer train journeys (for a variety of reasons). Or is reading on the train a thing of the past?
How would a reading list for reading (or listening) on the train be?
What would you include?

Update from SLNSW re Library 2.0

Streaming video
The Topeka Rotary Club in Kansas does live video streaming of their meetings, and you can catch up with any meetings you missed later on. Have a look here http://www.downtowntopekarotary.org/ Do you have any local organisations doing this?

Jackspeak
Jack speak is the new Royal Navy blog http://jackspeak.royalnavy.mod.uk/ It is unusual in the blog posts it combines (Afghanistan, logistics and leave). You can read the profiles of the bloggers http://jackspeak.royalnavy.mod.uk/profiles/ (including an admiral).

Update from SLNSW on blogs to watch....

The Natural History Museum is providing a blog so that people can follow the conservation work being done at Scott Base http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/earth/antarctica/blog/?p=237 As the items being conserved can't leave the Antarctic the conservators have to travel to the items. I am most interested in this one as I worked in their Library in the early 90s!
Future perfect
Jan Chipchase does research for a leading mobile phone company about communication. You can follow his images and thoughts on his blog future perfect http://www.janchipchase.com/ This blog helps encourage different ways of thinking about solutions and of thinking about communication.

Week 4 RSS

1. What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?

I like the way the info comes to you, which is good in theory but needs to be used with care to avoid information overload.

2. What sites did you select for your RSS reader?

Originally I just clicked on a lot of news feeds and the PhM picture of the day. It was eye opening to realise that some people would actually want two rugby league feeds, two rugby union, two soccer, three cricket and four sport feeds - just in case one missed anything, all to one's desk top, like all the time!

3. How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your work?

I think it's another useful tool to know about, it seems to be an essential part of blogs and it's even on my flickr site.

4. How can libraries use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?

We can provide updates from our readers' advice blog.

5. Did you find any good examples of other library blogs?

Yes and I added some to by blogs eg Yarra Plenty Local Studies blog and I admire the Sutherland Library blog with it's page tabs, but the html is proving just a little difficult at this stage!

To read or not to read....

We all have "rules" as to how far we will go in a book before we give it up as a lost cause. I thought you might enjoy know my rule. I loved the book The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Naturally I then devoured the Postscript to the Name of the Rose which is Eco's musings on how and why he wrote the book. In this essay, Eco explains that while the first 100 pages of The Name of the Rose are quite dense and detailed - the rest of the book is your reward. This has always stuck with me and I now read the first 100 pages of any book to see if the rest of the book is my REWARD!

What do others think? There have been some thoughts on this matter posted on the Library's Readers in the Mist blog that you might like to compare:

http://readersinthemist.blogspot.com/2008/07/to-slog-through-book-or-not-to-slog.html