Yankee in Canada.com

Connie Crosby and I will be teaching a new course at the iSchool Institute starting in January.

Introduction to Social Media for Organizations

Bring your organization up to date by learning how to develop a social media plan, taking into account its larger strategies and objectives. Learn about monitoring the web for mentions of your organization and conversations that are of interest, and joining in. Consider your organization’s key audiences or communities, where they are online and how to engage them. Learn about online community building, and measurement that is meaningful.

This is a full day introductory overview session with a focus on strategy and methods rather than specific tools or tactics.

Learning outcomes for participants:

• How social media efforts can fit into your organization’s existing strategies.
• How to monitor social networks for conversations about your organization and other topics that are of interest to you.
• How different audiences or communities have different levels of engagement online, and how to reach out to them.
• Planning your organization’s method for responding to queries and comments and engaging in conversations.
• Methods for online community building.
• Looking for measurement that is meaningful.

Prerequisite:
Participants are expected to have a basic knowledge of blogs, wikis, Facebook and Twitter.

Target Audience:
Management or executive level employees in library, non-profit and other organizations that want to start new social media engagements or improve existing engagements.

Marketing or PR staff in information-related organizations such as libraries who want a broader perspective on how their organizations can get involved in social media.

Registration is now open!

As promised, here are the resources I mentioned during my talks at Internet Librarian.

C106: Mobile Future

Mobile statistics

• U.S. Teen Mobile Report: Calling Yesterday, Texting Today, Using Apps Tomorrow (Nielsen)
• New tools coming for U of G course designers (University of Guelph)
• Mobile Applications: Preparing for the Appocalypse (Borrell Associates, Inc.)

C302: Value-Added Research

Media monitoring and content analysis links

• The Content Analysis Guidebook by Kimberly A. Neuendorf (Cleveland State University)
• Dow Jones Insight
• LexisNexis Analytics
• FPInfomart
• Newscan
• MediaVantage
• Cision
• Overtone
• DNA13
• Carma
• Interwoven
• MediaMiser
• ManyEyes
• Radian6
• Sysomos
• Media Analysis (The Pew Charitable Trusts)
• Content Analysis (Wikipedia)
• IABC Measurement Commons (Blog from the International Association of Business Communicators)
• Human Content Analysis vs. Software based Content Analysis (Media Tenor)
• 11 ways to visualize changes over time a guide (FlowingData)
• 9 ways to visualize proportions a guide (FlowingData)
• 7 basic rules for making charts and-graphs (FlowingData)
• Data visualization: Modern approaches (Smashing Magazine)

I am very excited to be presenting for the first time at Internet Librarian, October 25-27, 2010.  Here are summaries of my workshop and two sessions:

W15: From Media Monitoring to Media Insight (Pre-conference Workshop)

(October 24, 2010 / 9:00 AM–12:00 PM)

Media monitoring as we know it is evolving. Learn the latest methods, tools, and techniques used in the world of communications, politics and public affairs to extend your existing monitoring service with insight and analysis for better decision making. This hands-on workshop introduces you to simple and advanced tools you can use immediately. It includes a survey of the latest tools and applications and illustrates their use with real world products and services. This workshop will be of interest to competitive intelligence professionals and anyone looking to ramp up their media monitoring service and to impress their customers.

C106: Mobile Future

(October 25, 2010 / 4:15 PM–5:00 PM)

Co-presenting with Joe Murphy (Yale University) and Chad Mairn (St. Petersburg College).

What are some of the mobile programs currently in development? What are other organizations doing that libraries can learn from? Hear what our experienced and forward-thinking panel highlights and what we should be paying attention to in the next year to shape our plans for a mobile future. An interactive discussion of topics from the day will be included.

C302: Value-Added Research

(October 27, 2010 / 11:30 AM–12:15 PM)

Co-presenting with Amy Affelt (Compass Lexecon) and Qin Zhu (HP Labs Research Library).

Many corporate librarians use specialized clipping and alerting services to deliver value through a tangible, pragmatic information product. Daily information alerts that are tailored to individual requestors’ interests delight constituents on a daily basis, meeting their needs by playing an active, consistent role in their success. Affelt details how e-book readers such as the Amazon Kindle and the iPhone can help librarians quickly and easily look for, clip, and archive critical information, explore techniques for streamlining and organizing information through the use of these devices so that it can be delivered to requestors when and where it is needed and explains the process of integrating content from librarians’ e-book readers to requestors’ smartphones. Lee discusses going beyond media monitoring to provide insight and analysis. Zhu discusses discovery tools and processes used to put information into context.

Internet Librarian Advance Program

View the Internet Librarian Advance Program at http://www.infotodaycom/il2010/program.asp.

The SLA Toronto Student Group hosted a terrific “Marketing Your Skills” event this evening.

There were a few resources I mentioned that I wanted to make available here.

• Positioning Information Professionals for the Future (SLA Alignment Project)
• Competencies for Information Professionals of the 21st Century: Revised edition, June 2003 (SLA)
• What Color Is Your Parachute? 2009: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers by Richard Nelson Bolles
• Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz
• First Have Something to Say: Writing for the Library Profession, By Walt Crawford
• Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton

The Librarians is a hysterical 6-part comedy series from Australia about the most non-politically correct, more or less completely dysfunctional library on the planet – except for yours, right?

Enjoy the promo!

Posted on behalf of Bill Purdue.

Librarians invade the "Answer" sites

Monday, 9/10/07–All Day

Supporting Wiki: http://answerboards.wetpaint.com 

I’d
like to invite any and all interested librarians to be a little bold and have a little fun by going to online "Answer" sites, such as:

• Yahoo Answers
• Amazon’s Askville
• The WikiPedia Reference Desk

(see a list of others at http://answerboards.wetpaint.com/page/Registry+of+Answer+Boards?mail=1127)

…and then MARKET!

This means making it clear that this question was answered by a
librarian/library professional/etc. End each answer with the mention
your own library, your VR service, etc. Add the link. Mention that
readers should consider their own libraries, too. Promote it to local
media. Keep in mind how many people don’t even realize that libraries offer reference services. Let’s surprise and delight them with our quality.

I’d like hundreds of librarians to do this. Thousands? Why not?

Be
clear…you’ll almost certainly be helping patrons who aren’t yours,
but I see this as an opportunity to make the reference librarian
community more visible. I’d like to see a number of us remain engaged
in the answer services, on the chance that the users will have us in
the backs of their minds when they have questions they don’t want
everyone to see. As such, I’m not expecting to see a huge "blip" in our
reference/VR stats because of this. But who knows?

The point is to meet some folks where they otherwise wouldn’t expect us.

What to do next?

First of all, pass this message along to anyone who might remotely be interested.

Second,
this is a very informal "action," so you can just mark the date and
start answering, but you may also want to visit the Wiki and put your
name up as a participant: http://answerboards.wetpaint.com/page/Participating+Librarians. I’m very lonely there right now!

While you’re on the wiki, share. Think of good marketing "tags," signatures, etc. that we can use.

Most of all, visit the various answer sites, see if you need to set up an
account. Try answering a few questions. A couple of us have already
done this and we’ve already got a few "Best Answers" under our belts.
See the "Exemplary Answers" section of the Wiki. Post one if you’ve got
one!

Then, on September 10, get ready to "Slam the Boards!"

–Bill Pardue

Will Sherman over at degreetutor.com has posted his article, "Future of Librarians"  which he based on a number of interviews he conducted, via email, with librarians and information professionals.

Sherman has also posted a page where you can contribute your thoughts and ideas to support the discussion.

Will Sherman over at degreetutor.com has interviewed (via email) a number of librarians and info pros on the future of libraries and librarians.  My interview has been posted.

Thanks Will!

Embedded Library Services: An Initial Inquiry into Practices for Their Development, Management, and
Delivery [pdf]
A Contributed Paper for the Special Libraries Association Annual Conference

David Shumaker, Clinical Associate Professor
School of Library and Information Science, Catholic University of America
-and-
Laura Ann Tyler, Research Librarian
LMI Government Consulting

Shumaker and Tyler’s new paper, recently presented at the SLA conference in Denver, is a great read for any information professional, but it’s of particular importance to new information professionals and students as well as seasoned info pros looking for a change.  I only recently realized that I have never been anything but an embedded librarian my entire career.  Strangely, I always wondered why there was huge disconnect in what I was being told by other info pros, what I was reading in library literature and what I experienced at work.  Most of what I heard and read was about working in libraries with other librarians and info pros.  Even the SOLO environment didn’t quite fit because many of my colleagues who are solos work in a one-person library.  Realizing my embedded status has made me look at my career very differently, in terms of the skills I need to hone and the professional development opportunities I choose to learn from.  For me, Shumaker and Tyler’s work was a breathe of fresh air.