The BIG Read

Three NEFLIN libraries have received Big Read grants by the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS). The Big Read is an initiative from the National Endowment for the Arts designed to revitalize the role of literary reading in American culture by uniting communities and inspiring students to be lifelong readers.

• Nassau County Public Library residents will be reading the Maltese Falcon
• Putnam County Schools students will be reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
• Suwannee River Regional Library residents will be reading The Call of the Wild

Each library system will use its grant money to sponsor a series of programs and events based on the book they have chosen. Here is a look at what Nassau will be doing.

23 Things Revisited: Join the Online Discussion

Still abuzz over NEFLIN’s 23 Things project?

Join this online discussion to share your feedback. Hear from the participants about what their experiences were like. Which things were your favorites? Least favorites? Which things were most useful back on the job? Register to be sent access information.

Virtual facilitator: Jennifer O’Neill
Thursday, July 23, 2:00 - 3:00 pm

23 Things @ NEFLIN Exceeds Expectations

NEFLIN started out this program by having the creator of 23 Things, Helene Blowers, speak at the NEFLIN Annual Meeting in September 2008. Helene talked about how she was trying to get her staff involved in understanding many new technologies in a fun, creative way, but was having little success. She came up with the 23 Things idea and…fast forward to today. The 23 Things has since wound its way around the world with hundreds of libraries in dozens of countries have completed the program.

The “23 Things @ NEFLIN” program ran from January 15 – April 15, 2009. Over 350 NEFLIN members from 40 different libraries participated. By the end of the program 134 staff completed the entire 23 Things. This participation and completion rate are above the usual measures for this program.

The most exciting discovery was from the participants who finished the program. According to an end of program survey, prior to 23 Things @ NEFLIN, participants had done the following:

• Created a blog. 7%.
• Commented on a blog. 10%.
• Contributed to a wiki. 6%.
• Subscribed to an RSS feed. 8%.
• Joined Facebook or MySpace. 13%.
• Listened to a podcast. 14%.
• Watched a YouTube video. 22%.

We can now state that 100% of those who completed the program did all of the above, plus much more. We believe that hundreds of NEFLIN members are now more comfortable with web-based technologies and can better assist their patrons. The “23 Things @ NEFLIN” program is freely available on the web if anyone wishes to do it on their own. Visit the site at: http://neflins23things.blogspot.com/

2.0 for Books - Part 5

21. Flickr can be used to great advantage to engage users in reading and books. One clever contest on the web was the creation of pictures of “book piles” based on a theme. These were very creative. Another cool idea was creating an API for the creation of a visual ‘book wall’ made of book covers. I can imagine a neat pictorial display based on colour matching book covers. Use your imagination to create really neat virtual displays to promote books to virtual users – just like you do in the branches. Don’t forget author pictures.
22. Personal reading lists from library professionals can have great power. How do we promote our staff as the great differentiator of libraries from Amazoogle? For one we need to put their pictures and names on our websites and promote our folks. For another we need to let them blog and sign their posts. And for another we need to encourage them to create professional personal social networking pages in MySpace and/or Facebook. This will help us to promote books by promoting the library world’s great staff and professionals and connecting them to users!
23. The nascent BiblioCommons project in Canada has launched at, among others, Oakville Public Library. Using the collection information housed in the SirsiDynix OPAC real end users will collect their own reading lists, advise others locally, and write reviews and more. It’s exciting to see communities engage with reading around their local library. Watch this one closely.
24. LibraryThing for Libraries also allows you to draw on the collective intelligence of your patrons and LibraryThing members. You can include recommendations and tag clouds. You can let your patrons take part, with reviews, ratings and tags. There are now 50 libraries using LibraryThing for Libraries.
25. Can you leverage the power of the long tail and promote more books in your collections? Of course you can! Author interviews, pictures, videos, book talks, podcasts, webliographies and more all sit at your fingertips. Two things challenge us. On the one side some libraries have long hold lists, and on the other end we have books that haven’t circulated well recently. Web 2.0 can help books circulate. Too many holds and continuing to promote access to something we don’t have available merely frustrates users.

Oh, and also now do the same thing for your DVD’s! Just start with the trailers on YouTube and blog it and maybe those 2-year-old DVD’s on the rack will start circulating again!

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Link to all 25 Things 2.0 can do for Books

P.S. I fixed the numbering of Part 3. It really was #'s 11-15, but it looked like #'s 6-10 were posted again.

Two workshops from Florida Times Union trainers

Public Records Information: Florida's Best at Your Fingertips

Explore the most useful online public information resources in Florida. From the county circuit court clerk’s office to the governor’s office, you’ll connect with resources that can help info seekers research property, criminal backgrounds, licensed professionals, health facilities, schools and much more. This hands-on session also will look at some of the better federal resources online that can be very useful for researchers.

Trainer: Joe Adams, Florida Times-Union
Tuesday, August 4, 9:00 am - 12:00 noon

Using Jacksonville.com

Learn more about Jacksonville.com, the most viewed news Web site on the First Coast. With archives dating back to 1998, there are dozens of ways to ferret out information, including archived obituaries, previous news and databases. A move earlier this year also began better categorizing news and making smaller, more searchable chunks of information available to search. We’ll walk through the site and what resources are available for librarians and researchers.

Trainer: Joe Allen-Black, Florida Times-Union
Tuesday, August 4, 1:00 - 4:00 pm

Need 4 more registrations to avoid cancellation.

See all NEFLIN classes here.

2.0 for Books - Part 4

#16 is not to be found. Just 4 today then. -- Brad

17. Have you checked out MySpace Books? What are MySpace users recommending to each other? Using this as a collection development tool for teens is just a start. Can you add this sort of functionality to your library’s MySpace page? It’s where big groups of users are and they’re readers.
18. Have you seen the new Facebook Fan pages? Are you set to experiment with a fan page for an author or book? Just start with an event and move on from there. Set up your own or use one that’s already there. What are the popular authors in your community?
19. Of course it has become just a normal part of libraries that we have direct access to the OPAC from our MySpace and Facebook presences. This is great and certainly reinforces books as major program at the library. Since so many readers are tied to each other through social networking sites we can be part of this recommendation infrastructure.
20. The web 2.0 trend to Software as a Service and Application Hosting environments allows for a great number of improvements to our user experience for book choices. Enhancements to book and record displays, such as those provided by Syndetics or Novelist, truly make the choices easier for the end user, and especially for the virtual end user.

2.0 for Books - Part 3

11. Blogging is a no-brainer for promoting books. Besides linking to the many great book blogs (biblioblogs) you can do your own. There are a number of great examples of book blogs in libraries. Librarians are recommending books all the time. How cool is it to not only make that personal recommendation in person but to take the time to jot down a few sentences and post it with a book cover and link to the OPAC? If everyone in a library system did that -- and signed their work -- we'd have thousands of recommendations in short order. And we'd have trusted local community recommenders developing personal engagement strategies with our cardholders. Cool. It's all about books.
12. One of the classic 2.0 technologies is RSS, really simple syndication. Instead of having to handcraft new book lists and subject and topical lists, why not use RSS off the catalogue by call number, or through a Boolean search? Connecting individual RSS feeds to users is great. Even better is using RSS to redefine outreach at your library. Just imagine adding RSS feeds of new gardening books to local nursery websites and botanical gardens! Add RSS feeds of specific collections to museum special events! It's only limited by your imagination and the ability to build community relationships.
13. Podcasts are a fun way to connect with your communities about books. It's the poor man's community cable show! I've seen many libraries doing 5 minute book promotion podcasts and building listener bases apace. You might even consider interviewing local authors and poets to promote their works in your collections. Local college and university professors might have interesting perspectives too. It's another option to use 2.0 tools to promote your collections.
14. Wikis are a wonderful new tool that is very 2.0 and free. Build a wiki to organize community book recommendations and promote it to all cardholders. Eventually this sort of tool can inform collection development too. For now, just get community recommendations about non-fiction, hobbies, science fiction, mysteries, romance, and the rest! People love to share and the library is a trusted place to share with.
15. You can even consider using Amazon (and B&N or Borders) to access more user reviews. Several libraries have created API's to link to these and some allow patrons to buy books through affiliate programs and earn a slice of the revenue.

2.0 for Books - Part 2

6. Are we ready to promote eBooks for fiction? What would work here? Is this one of those events -- "Reading on your Blackberry, Treo, or iPhone" -- that will attract another market segment to the library? Is this one of those opportunities to use IM, TXT and e-mail to connect with borrowers?
7. How about audiobooks? What crew needs these? Commuters stuck in traffic for hours might appreciate the ability to borrow and listen through their car sound systems. Can we promote this on drive to work radio and have them borrowing online by noon? Seems like a great place to promote online card registration too!
8. Can our great storytelling folks take out-of-copyright classics and create wonderful podcasts for kids? Can we make the first library podcast stars? Seems as simple as recording a few sessions in the library and posting them online to our blogs. And YouTube a few too.
9. Are we ready for using streaming media in a strategic way? Can we load these into our websites and promote local or bestselling authors? Syndetics already includes author interviews in our enhancement feeds. You can find many authors on YouTube and TeacherTube etc. Seems like a great way to engage people with reading to extend the book experience into author videos, reviews, critiques, etc. What books do we want to promote? If we assemble a quick link list on a blog every day we'd have hundreds in every library quickly.
10. How about movie tie-ins with books. Many of our books have come from or inspired movies. Can you add the movie trailer from YouTube or the studio website to your promotion piece? If we did this and enticed someone to a series of books we hold (Think LOTR, Harry Potter and Trekkers and Trekkies alone!)

25 Things 2.0 Can Do For Books

I read with interest this set of "musings" from Stephen Abram. While I am attending the ALA Conference this week and learning about many 2.0, or even 3.0 things, I thought this would be a good refresher on using new technologies to enhance your book collection.

While the title is 25 Things 2.0 Can Do For Books, I am going to break them into five chunks. It is hard to digest five things a day, let alone 25. Enjoy!

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What have you done for a book lately?

You've probably done a lot! You've cataloged them so they can be found. You've made bibliographies so people can find other books they may like or need for research. You've recommended books to patrons and friends. You've written book reviews. Maybe you've done an index to a book, or edited one, or written one. You've done book talks. Great! Library folks have been doing this sort of stuff for centuries and doing it well.

We do books so well. We just can't get any better, any hotter, any more admired and loved!

Really?

I visit and see so many libraries - physical and virtual - and see so many innovations that excite me and promote books, reading and what we do so well. I also see a lot of folks who claim that new technologies are unnecessary in libraries and especially anything TwoPointOh! I fail to see the distinction and I don't think it's just me. Library practice demands that we look for anything that improves our mandates to promote learning, community, research, and reading.

Of course anyone can improve and do better. That's why we call it information practice. You just keep practicing as professionals - just like medical practice, nursing practice, teaching practice and accounting practice. Professionals get better, though never perfect, with practice. There's no denying that our traditional practice is a great thing. We protect, preserve and serve the human cultural and research record and connect users with the right books, at the right time, in the right place. That's awesome. Then again, good information practice thinking demands that we ask what are the negative issues with the traditional way we practice and how can we get better or complement it?

Traditional practice with books is not as scalable as we might want and our users might want. How do we get readers' advisory to scale as well in libraries as Amazon does on the web? Traditional practice offers a personal touch with a human being. Can we extend that personal touch beyond the walls? Many of our advisory and recommendation activities are largely anonymous or at least lack the personal branding that excites connections betweens readers and advisors. If we really care about books (and reading), can we use the new tools on the web to put our service options on steroids? Why 2.0? Well, because it offers the first real opportunity to use technology to go beyond search, storage and retrieval and actually engage with readers in a scalable way beyond our walls and beyond physical book formats.

25 Things 2.0 Can Do For Books, Just Books

1. How are you doing Book Clubs now? Do you have support for print book clubs? Are there recommended books that you keep in a book club bag? Do you include a copy of the publisher's book club or reading guide in the bag? Do you link to good guides for book clubs on the web for all types of book clubs? What does the virtual book club support look like? Can they share reviews, comments, etc. online?
2. Have you tried an audiobook club? Just license an audiobook for the whole community and let many folks read it at once. If you can't afford the license find one of the many book podcasts or audiobooks that are free on the web and add them to your collection. Have you tried a book club using e-books? Do you have a webpage with your top 12, 20, 30 eBooks and reading guides for each? This seems like a good way to get beyond the not-enough-copies problems.
3. What are your web tie-ins to promote reading and book clubs? How big is your collection of reading guides, book club support, webliographies, blog posts, one-city-one-book ideas from other libraries? Can you mine these for ideas to promote parts of your collection like bestsellers from 2 years ago whose circ is are slowing down? Nothing is sadder than an unborrowed book except for a whole load of the same book taking up shelf space.
4. Who takes Star turns at your library? Have you promoted with names and pictures specific staff or even the director? What would your Blogfluence score be in your community? Who is your Oprah? Are there different folks for teens, adults, kids, men, movies, etc.? Are their reviews and selections promoted inside the library and virtually? Can they be on a READ poster? Do they have personal web pages and social sites?
5. How are you promoting eBooks for non-fiction? If you have a Books24x7 collection of technology eBooks, have you created a GeekZone club to promote the collection? Alternatively, can it be a Tech for Dummies/Idiots club or service for those who want help? How about car manuals online? What's the target market there? Think about your eBooks and use 2.0 promotion tools to get them used.

ACLD All Staff Meeting

I had the pleasure yesterday of participating in an All Staff Meeting at the Alachua County Library District in Gainesville.

I did a brief recap of 23 Things @ NEFLIN and then gave out recognition items to the 57 ACLD staff who completed the program. 57 is really good, since this represented 42% of those who completed the program overall.

Some other thoughts from the meeting:

• Sol Hirsch, Director, read about a dozen letters/postcards/e-mails from the public that expressed appreciation for specific staff or programs at the library.
• Cindy Dorfeld-Bruckman and Paula Worthy celebrated 25 years of service with the library.
• The "Library Partnership" branch is having their Grand Opening today at noon. More on this in the coming weeks as this looks like a model program for a public library and social service agencies to work together in a true partnership that has great potential for their community.

Get a Sneak Peak at the new Florida Electronic Library

On August 1, the Florida Electronic Library will unveil its new look and implement the new Cengage-Gale PowerSearch 2.0 platform. PowerSearch 2.0 gives comprehensive access to authoritative reference and periodical information from a single starting point.

Attend an online sneak peak of the new Florida Electronic Library and take a test drive of PowerSearch 2.0 to see the more visually appealing interface that gives users a Web-like experience and includes features that will appeal to and empower library patrons, students, and other researchers.

Friday, July 24, 10:00 - 11:00 am in the Online Classroom. No registration needed. Click here for access information.

Twitter for Librarians

Monday morning and I just spent one-hour taking a NEFLIN webinar with speaker Nicole Engard. Nicole spoke on Twitter for Librarians.

Some thoughts from the session...

"Twitter syntax". Invaluable. Finally I get what the @, #, RT, etc are for.

Handouts from today's session.

Howard County Library on Twitter.

Twitter gets a bad rap as "today I ate a hot dog" site.

Twitter makes a terrible first impression (Agreed).

Why not just use e-mail? There are 600 people I am following on Twitter, and I don't want to e-mail them all. Forces you to be brief.

Twitter updates can go to your Facebook page.

Twitter is a way to keep in touch with friends, family, colleagues, anything you are interested in.

Lots of (book) authors on Twitter. Can use them to drive traffic to your library's website, blog or Twitter account.

Can put widgets for Firefox, Mac, IE, etc much like Instant Messaging widgets.

TweetDeck. Helps organize your Twitter account.

You can conduct polls on Twitter. twtpoll.com

You can "twitter" your Flickr or your Library Thing.

Twitter Policy (of one company): Our Twitter policy: Be professional, kind, discreet, authentic. Represent us well. Remember that you can’t control it once you hit “update.”

Awful Library Books (just an aside).

5 Ways for your Library to Fail at Twitter.

Good job, Nicole.

I am on Twitter at: neflinbrad

Union Public Library - Grand Opening

What a great day! Yesterday, Patty and I had a wonderful experience attending the grand opening of the Union County Public Library in Lake Butler.

From this (January 23, 2008)



To this (July 1, 2009)



300 residents of the community turned out for a great event to celebrate the opening of this new library. Some interesting facts I came away with:

• This town loves their library!
• They were able to build the library for $82 per sq ft, instead of $175 per sq ft that jobs like this usually run. How? Donations, partnerships with local businesses that provided discounts on supplies, and most importantly labor provided by inmates with the Dept of Corrections.
• The First Christian Church purchased the old library building in 2007 and allowed the library to continue operating there until June 2009. The church paid all the money up front and never bugged the library about moving.
  
• The Library Director, Mary Brown, and the library staff love their library, and the community they serve.
  

Here are some photos I took on NEFLIN's Flickr Page. (Where noted I added a few from fellow photographer Hans Li who got some shots I was unable to get).

Congratulations to Mary and her staff for all their hard work over the past few years to make this new library a reality.

Front Page Article on JPL

The Florida Times-Union wrote their lead article in today's newspaper (and on the main page of jacksonville.com) on the proposed cuts facing the Jacksonville Public Library.

The article does a good job of providing background on the growing patronage of the library system over the past few years, while dealing with a shrinking budget. Hopefully this article will encourage Jax residents to contact the Mayor's office about his proposed cuts to the library's budget.

Twelve Magic Phrases for Communicating with Spanish Speaking Patrons

Would you like help reaching out to your Spanish speaking patrons? This workshop will allow you to learn the very basics of communicating with Spanish speaking customers in an interactive, fun yet powerful workshop. You’ll get some basic tools to handle language and cultural barriers, learn and practice words, phrases and short dialogues that will open the door to your Latino patrons. You will also learn basic library vocabulary and phrases that will help you give directions and understand customer questions.

The Twelve Magic Phrases include

greetings

introductions

language

apologies

help

directions

library cards

check out/return

time and schedules

commands

thank you

goodbye

Trainer: Susanna Baumann, LCS Worldwide
Date: Thursday, July 30

Time: 9:00 am - 4:00 pm

Location: NEFLIN in Orange Park

Register Now

See all NEFLIN workshops at www.neflin.org

Libraries and Beyond

The theme of the 2009 SEFLIN Regional Conference is New Technologies: Libraries & Beyond. The Conference will be held on July 30, 2009, at the Kovens Conference Center on the Florida International University Biscayne Bay Campus, Miami.

· Registration fee is $165 for Non-SEFLIN Members

· Registration includes a continental breakfast and lunch.

The keynote speaker will be Marshall Breeding, Director for Innovative Technologies and Research for the Vanderbilt University Libraries. Conference sessions will cover a wide range of topics including library automation after Web 2.0, using mobile devices to support library services, and social media literacy.

The conference web page includes a description of all programs. It is New Technologies: Libraries & Beyond Web page. The event Conference Registration allows easy online registration and selection of concurrent breakout sessions.

Get Your Geek On

Geek the Library is a community-based public awareness campaign designed to highlight the vital role of public libraries for individuals and communities, and raise awareness about the critical funding issues they face.

The website, which uses ”geek” as a verb, encourages the public to share what they geek, and the answers range from worms to football to schooners and beyond. This public awareness campaign shows that everyone is passionate about something — yep, even worms — and that the library supports them all.

So what do YOU geek?

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I first spied this on the TBLC blog last week.

Here is some info from the Geek campaign website:

"OCLC is partnering with public libraries in parts of Georgia and Iowa to launch and test this community-based public awareness campaign. A small number of additional communities will be added later this year. In early 2010, OCLC will disseminate the awareness campaign materials and messages, along with information from the pilot campaigns, in order to support libraries across the country in their own community awareness efforts."

The Geek campaign hopes to inspire a conversation about our incredible public libraries and their urgent need for increased support. We hope you tell people what you geek, how the public library supports you and your community, and that everyone in your community benefits from the services your local library provides."

Patty to Chair FLA Committee

NEFLIN's own Patty Morris is the new Chair of the FLA C.E. Committee (or Florida Library Association Continuing Education Committee).

Congratulations to Patty for being recognized for her work in continuing education and training. She has lots to do as FLA seeks to expand their C.E. offerings beyond their annual conference.

Cool Timer

I was on a conference call recently and one-third of the folks showed up late. The reason I was on time, my brain remembers everything (NOT!).

I use a software program called Cool Timer. It is a free download that you can run on your computer when you need a timer, alarm clock, or stopwatch. I mainly use the timer feature which does a countdown in the background and then pops up a message when the timer reaches zero. It has saved me many times. Check it out!

NEFLIN Workshops from NNLM

Will Duct Tape Cure My Warts? Examining Complementary and Alternative Medicine

The goal of this class is to increase understanding of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM). Students will learn the history of CAM and its impact on medical practices. They will learn how CAM is used, how to avoid “bad science” and how to look up evidence of the effectiveness of CAM therapies. Objectives

• Have knowledge of the definition and types of Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Have greater knowledge of the history of CAM and it's impact on medical practice
• Have greater understanding of usage of CAM
• Increase confidence in evaluating health websites Increase skills in avoiding “bad science” found on the Internet or in the news
• Become more proficient in searching for evidence of the effectiveness of CAM

Trainer: Dale Prince, National Network of Libraries of Medicine
Date: Monday, July 27
Time: 9:00 am - 12:00 noon
Location: Bradford County Public Library, Starke
Register here

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PubMed for the Rest of Us: Searching the Medical Literature for the Non-Expert

Learn how to search MEDLINE using the PubMed interface. This includes:

• Basic searching
• Advanced searching using the Limits Tab and some field searching
• How to obtain full-text journal articles using Loansome Doc (document delivery)
• The Journals Database for locating journal titles
• The Single Citation Matcher form for quick citation matching

Trainer: Dale Prince, National Network of Libraries of Medicine
Date: Monday, July 27
Time: 1:00 - 4:00 pm
Location: Bradford County Public Library, Starke
Register here

See all NEFLIN events at http://www.neflin.org

Anyone can be a Leader

ALA has opened their Emerging Leaders program to non-MLS library staff. Check it out!

Get To Know Google

Update. Thanks to the 23 folks who joined me for the webinar. We had some interaction, some learning, and some fun. Some + Some + Some = A Lot of Some-thing.

This seemed to be a good experience for both trainer and participant. Expect more NEFLIN content in the future.

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Who has used Google this week raise your hand? Okay, everyone can now put down their hand.

I'm going to be doing a free, one-hour webinar for NEFLIN members tomorrow entitled "Get To Know Google". Thursday, June 25, 10:00am - 11:00am.

This is my first foray into teaching a webinar using NEFLIN's web conferencing service. While we have been using this service for a year to provide a number of programs, I look forward to providing our face-to-face workshop content in this environment. Come join me!

Registration and workshop description.

NEFLIN Technology Conference - Photos

NEFLIN's own Jeannie Owens.

When this is the first person who greets you...you know a good day awaits!




I added photos from the Tech Conference to
NEFLIN's Flickr site.

Thanks to Jennifer O'Neill for taking these!

I tried to do a caption when the photo listed just one individual.

CLENE Events at ALA Chicago

Going to ALA in Chicago? The CLENE (Continuing Library Education Network and Exchange) Round Table has a lot of wonderful stuff going on: Programs, Preconferences, a Discussion Group, and more! We hope to see you at one of our programs and, as always, you’re invited to join us at our Board meetings to participate, observe or just drop in to say hello.

PRECONFERENCES on Friday July 10
Both CLENE Preconferences are SOLD OUT!!

AM Preconference: Making it Stick: Designing, Delivering, and Surviving Presentations

PM Preconference: Punch it up with Pictures: Presentations with Visual Power

CONFERENCE PROGRAMS BY DATE

Saturday, July 11

Creating a Culture of Learning in Your Library, 1:30-3:00

How To Develop a Mentoring Program, 3:30-5:30

Sunday, July 12

Training Showcase: Best Practices for Continuing Library Education, 1:30-3:30
Richard Mott of Jacksonville Public Library is a participant in the Training Showcase

Monday, July 13

Staff Development Discussion Group, 1:30-3:00

BOARD MEETINGS (all welcome to attend)
CLENE Board Meeting I, Saturday, July 11, 8:00-12:00
CLENE Board Meeting II, Monday, July 13, 8:00-10:00

See the CLENE Conference Wiki for locations and more information.

NEFLIN Technology Conference

Lots to share from this event on Friday. For now here is a link to the agenda and presentations.