Tame The Web

I spent part of the afternoon today reading through a wonderful book called Blog Blazers: 40 Top Bloggers Share Their Secrets. After writing my dissertation on the motivations of early adopting librarian bloggers, it’s nice to see such a broadly diverse group of well-known bloggers sharing similar thoughts about their writing and what makes a good blog tick. Author Stephane Grenier interviews 40 bloggers – many of whom may be well known to TTW readers including Seth Godin, David Armano and Jessamyn West, all sharing their insights in the book.

I’m especially fond of the question Grenier asks many of his subjects: What tips can you share on writing a successful blog post?

Seth Godin’s answers include: Use lists (NICE!), Be topical, Break news and write posts that will be readable in a year.

David Armano weighs in with Find your voice, Do something different, Be true to your brand, Provide value and Only write what makes you happy.

Jessamyn offers these tips –  amongst my favorites of all time for bloggers – Be kind, Be original, Be thoughtful, Be part of a community, Ignore bad juju in its many forms.

I’d suggest this book as a good, informative and FUN read for folks looking to get into blogging, interested researchers looking at bloggers or those working with social media in their institutions.

In Michael’s Library 2.0 class, I had the opportunity to read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, and I wrote up the lessons I thought libraries could take from it as they seek to better themselves in a Library 2.0 world. Here’s the condensed, bloggy version of what I took away.

Lesson one: The Aeron chair. This chair was break aesthetically from how office chairs had always looked, but despite some initial outside skepticism, the design team persevered because they knew they had created a great project; the chair came to be the company’s biggest seller. Similarly for libraries, it is important not to reject ideas for fear of disruption or anything being different. Maybe people will grumble about a new website design at first because the way they’ve always gotten to things isn’t there now. But if it adds more features, allows for more interactivity, gets captured better by search engines, etc., dealing with some short-term uncertainty is ok. You set yourself up for more long term success.

Lesson two: New Coke. The disaster that was New Coke came about in large part because Coca-Cola designed it to do well in taste tests where it was sipped. But people don’t drink Coke by the sip, they drink it by the can, and the impression after one sip is much different from the drinking a whole can. Libraries should also be careful about how they get feedback from patrons. Do your survey questions capture how patrons experience the library? If testing your site, maybe they can find the Help section on your website when you ask them to, but will they think about finding it when you don’t explicity tell them to?

Lesson three: The sculpture’s fingernails. They didn’t quite know how they knew, but several art historians could tell that a sculpture purchased by the J. Paul Getty Museum was a fake; one of them said something about the sculpture’s fingernails just didn’t feel right. They were right. Just like something can feel fake, it can also feel real, spot-on, exactly right. This post from Sarah Houghton-Jan is exactly what I mean. She says about the Vancouver Public Library front page, with pictures of library users and quotes about how they use the library: “Something about it resonates with me, and all I know is that I like it.” That’s just the sort of reaction we should be going for, with designs like that which immediately hit people and say, this is the essence of the library, this is what we do.

Chris Oien is a library science student at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota.

It’s in my stack of books for winter reading and wil be included in my classes next semester. In the meantime, I’m enjoying Jenny Levine’s report of author John Palfrey’s talk in Chicago:

5 characteristics

1. “I blog therefore I am”
express their identity online and offline – they don’t distinguish between the two
avatars as another version of identity
one difference is “subscribe to *me*”

2. multitaskers
a lot of debate over multitasking and what it is, but they’re doing multiple things at once
example of game in which boys tried to maintain as many IM conversations with as many girls as they could at once

3. consumers to creators
interact with digital format – seems self-evident, but presumption is immediate access because digital (eg, digital camera vs a disposable one); movie theater vs YouTube, print vs searchable text
presumption of media in digital form and that it’s social and shared

held a contest to design the logo for “Digital Natives” project at Harvard Law School – got 136 entries (32 from the kid who won), just for the glory (no prize)

4. mash up different media, putting different forms of media together

comes down to a series of technologies – RSS, Google Docs, lightweight collaborative tools

5. an international perspective
“couchsurfing” Google Maps mashup – 89,000 friendships created

And this post from Lindsay, one of my St. Kate’s LIS768 students:

• The way Digital Natives are interacting with information is changing rapidly. Librarians need to stay educated—be aware of the technology so the conversations/education seminars are relevant to Digital Natives. “This participatory digital environment requires all of us to become more media literate” (128). “We ignore the social norms of Digital Natives at our peril” (148). “Those who come to understand the dynamics of information production in the digital era will be better prepared than anyone else to thrive in the integrated digital world. And the best way to learn these dynamics is to participate in information production directly” (159).
• Use older Digital Natives to stay informed and current on how to engage Digital Natives—to create a community-based solution to the complex and continually evolving issues created by new information and technologies. “Tap into—and celebrate—the creativity of the Digital Natives to help solve the problem” (105). “And it is Digital Natives who are best poised to engage in this process” (125).

As TTW readers may know, I write a lot about the power and potential of blogging in our profession. My dissertation “Modeling the Role of Blogging in Librarianship” examined the motivations of early adopting bibliobloggers while my work with ALA Library Technology reports offered the hows and whys for blogging libraries. I recently got a review copy of Library Blogging by Karen Coombs and Jason Griffey. I must say it fits the bill as a perfect “How to” guide for librarians  from two practitioners and bloggers that’s up to date and pretty darn inclusive.

The opening chapters give the lay of the blogging land and highlight what libraries have done with blogs. It’s a good overview and is rather timely with the examples shared. Because technology, including blog software and CMSs, moves so fast, it’s hard to capture anything in book form that seems current. The companion Web site helps this by including fresh new examples. Wordpress.com is explored at length (great for my purposes). I did find the coverage of Movable Type to be surprising, but maybe libraries are still using the platform?

After a detailed section exploring blog software and RSS at a most granular level, the final chapters of the book are the most important to me: what are the implications and uses for blogging?The authors offer some wonderful “thinking out loud” pieces to ponder. What does it mean to participate in “blog culture.” How do we follow the Blogger’s Code of Conduct? What policies and procedures enable successful blogs?

The last chapter is called “Future Possibilities.” The authors explore what we might do with free software such as Wordpress? In my mind, there’s no limit where our imaginations might take us with some of these tools. Coombs and Griffey key in on this with brief explorations and thoughts of newer blogging tools beyond just library examples to the realm of archives, collections and community.

If you are starting a blogging project in your library or teaching blogging, I’d recommend this one for sure as an up to date choice. I’ll be using it as a classroom resource in my teaching.

For more, visit http://libraryblogging.com/ and add the feed to keep up with additions to the examples used in the book.

Disclaimer: The authors used a snazzy screenshot of TTW visiting Australia in the book!

An expose of the long history of Walt Disney World in Florida. It was both fascinating and hilarious at times. AND there were many nuggets about planning, organizations and a guest-centered focus. Here are the passages I highlighted in relation to libraries:

“Not long before opening, Operation also considered not allowing the hotels to have their own parking lots….[the managers of the project got together] to compile a list of reasons why off-site parking would fail–guest services reasons, arguments that Operations could understand.”

Sometimes, looking at the negative impact on guests (users) of a new policy might sway admin decision making.

I’ve long advocated for managers and library administration to dive in to the trenches as needed. I think directors and managers should be able to staff desks anywhere in their buildings. I was happy to read this:

“In busy periods the salaried folks would fill shifts stocking store shelves or flipping hamburgers next to hourlies. In addition to providing much-needed manpower such cross-utilization reminded everyone that they were all part of the same team. And that every role was equally valuable in creating magic for guests. Cast members would also be regularly transferred to different departments or attractions to keep things fresh.”

And finally this gem:

“Disney didn’t like messages or signs that made guests uncomfortable, such as “don’t touch” or “You break it, you buy it.” 

I read some good books this summer and will share them here as I have time. I am also using many of these for a context book assignment in LIS768 this fall.