November 2007
Volume 28 No. 5

Stacey is the November speaker for San Jose State's School of Library and Information Science Coloquia series. On November 28, she will be in conversation with Dr. Ken Haycock, SJSLIS noon to 1:00 pm on campus. Directions

Past Coloquia presentations are on the Coloquia series page. Stacey's presentation should be posted on or after Wednesday, December 5.

Stacey Aldrich describes her interests and background in an interview in the current California State Library newsletter, CSL Connections, Fall 2007.

CLA 2007 - October 26-29, 2007
Marketing, forecasting, technology trends, social networking, partnerships, and demographics seemed to be the hot topics at this year’s CLA.

Some picks from some CLA Master Speakers

Bob Treadway – Blueprint for the Future: 20/20 Foresight
Follow the economic, social, demographic, and school news in your community, talk to staff in other departments, school teachers and administrators, and others with an ear of the community and imagine both an immediate crisis and the ideal for your library, to start an ongoing environmental scan for some basis for forecasting and planning. Your knowledgable networking may also raise others' awareness of your library to help them.

For example, if your library is in an area impacted by foreclosures, with streets of unsold houses, your patrons might need programming on rentals and credit and use the library as a gathering place instead of their residential streets. Statewide trends that affect all libraries are the increase in older adults, seeking to continue working or using their skills and brains in volunteer work, while at the same time being unable to work because of chronic disease or job loss. Constantly update your environmental scan, and try to imagine the unintended consequences.

To get an executive summary of Treadway's CLA talk, with his insights on libraries, email futures – AT – trendtalk - DOT - com and ask specifically for the executive summary of the 20/20 Foresight presentation at CLA 2007 in Long Beach.

Shel Israel– Staying Relevant in the Online Age
Co-author of Naked Conversations, which discusses business's use of blogs, Shel Israel uses the title of a prospective sequel for his blog - globalneighbourhoods.net. In his November 2 post, OpenSocial and Building Global Neighbourhoods, he comments that “the Internet is being structured around small circles of friends, usually containing no more than 400 people” who influence each others’ decision-making.

His talk was about his conclusions from a social media survey he did for SAP earlier this year. Among his findings: 89% of businesses see blog importance rising, and 22% of the top 100 websites are blogs. Using social media, Israel conducted over many interviews and gathered more information using Facebook and Linked-in. His postings about the research process are in the section SAP Research Report.

Starting December 1, Israel will start the process for the continuation of the survey. He wants to know "how social media has been used by marketing and PR to succeed or fail," how heavily regulated businesses "participate in social media," and legal and ethical issues in blogs. He would be delighted to have comments relating to your library's selection of blog content.

His CLA PowerPoint slides are posted on SlideShare.net – another example of DIY web publishing.

Chip Heath, co author of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, aimed to help listeners create library memorable messages. "Sticky" messages have these principles:

1. Simplicity - No beef under the pickle of a non-Wendy's burger. Toddler "reading" a book.
2. Unexpectedness - Nordstrom's overnight tailoring of a new suit the day before a job interview. The media tab in the Gale databases.
3. Concreteness - Jared's pants were too big after he slimmed down by eating low-fat Subway sandwiches. Student's paper earns an A+ because it uses and cites excellent database selections in proper format.
4. Credibility - Testimonials by "one of us" - Jared and the job seeker. Comments from beta-testers. Pithy quotes from satisfied patrons.
5. Emotions - Charities get more money with an appeal by a child than by a report of statistics. Live Homework Help's "before" student tears his hair.
6. Stories - Stories create vision of outcome and set the tone for action, e.g. a literacy success story.

Internet Librarian - October 29-31, 2007
The Internet Librarian conference (IL) is well documented on the web. The conference had official bloggers, attendee bloggers, an active wiki and photos on Flick'r. Scrolling down the official InfoToday blog can quickly give you a flavor of IL2007. Almost all presentations are posted.

Aaron Stephens, director of the of the North Plains Public Library, who blogs on WalkingPaper.org, pointed out to receptive school librarians that gamers are reading and researching to improve their game. Gaming reinforces risk-taking and experimentation, collaboration, prioritizing, multi-tasking, persistence, and decision-making skills, according to InfoToday blogger, Dave Hoffman, who posted his impression of Aaron Stephens' talk on October 29, 2007.

An hour or two reading through the posts will enlighten you and give you some updates on topics like mashups, RSS and web marketing

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Zoho
Free software for a variety of uses - wikis, chat, meetings, and more. The SLA IT Division blog mentioned Zoho's free meeting software in the course of July 31, 2007 discussion on another free meeting software, Yunguu. Sylvia Guevara, in "Zoho Creator: Innovation in a Web 2.0 Environment," (b/ITe, August/September the SLA IT division's newsletter) includes an example of the database contract management system she set up using Zoho's Creator. It appears to be adaptable to any library's database or subscription collection management needs.

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Earthquake Tosses Books at SJPL
The 5.4 earthquake on Tuesday, October 30, 2007, prompted an immediate evacuation of SJPL's 8-floor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library and dislodged over 300,000 volumes from the uppermost floors. The library re-opened the next day at 9:30am after the building was deemed safe, with access limited to the lower four floors.

Immediately, all SJPL and SJSU staff of the joint library, some in Halloween costumes, who weren't covering a public service desk, pitched in to shelve the books - about 900 staff hours. The library was back to normal the following Sunday. To see pictures of the tumbled books and an angel re-shelving them, go to the library's November 5 newsroom post.

Accessible Demo of Library 2.0 at the Santa Clara County
and Los Gatos Public Libraries
Last spring, Henry Bankhead, now principal librarian at Los Gatos Public Library, presented on Library 2.0 to the The Foundation Center. Featuring examples from mainly the Santa Clara County Library, his PowerPoint presentation is a succinct, de-mystified explanation of Web 2.0 for a non-technical, non-librarian audience.

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