Month: February 2008

SEMLS workshop on Wednesday

Posted on by jessamyn

I’m digging into social software for libraries again as I prepare for a workshop I’ll be giving on Wednesday at the Southeastern Massachusetts Library System. Usually when I do this I try to find good examples of social technology being used by librarians in whatever region I am speaking in. In Dubai this was a terrific challenge, in the SEMLS location it will be harder just to pick one or two examples. Look at their website and how nice it looks and how fresh the content is! In Googling around to find a good link for my talk, I also found their wiki, the del.icio.us tag for their learning 2.0 project and their tech watch and news blogs.

The other little piece I’m adding is some statistical perspective. Fred Stutzman — whose blog is always a great source of data about social sites, particularly Facebook and the privacy/identity issues involved with them — found that by digging around in a Pew report about peple’s use of the Internet during the presidential campaign, he could glean information about people’s use of social networking generally.

22% of Americans use SNS. Broken down by age range, 67% of those age 18-29, 21% of those 30-39, and 6% of those 40+ use SNS. Based on 1430 respondents, margin of error should be about +/- 3%. This is a nice statistic for those who have been relying on self-reports and press accounts.

Keeping current, working with websites

Posted on by jessamyn

One of my favorite things about writing for Computers in Libraries is that I now get a subscription to the magazine. All the blogs and RSS feeds and tweets in the world are really no match for being able to read “how to” stories from people working in totally different libraries than me. I feel like I pretty much get the issues involved with running rural, pre-OPAC, barely-online libraries and I hope I do a decent job showcasing them here to at least give people an idea of what’s involved and what’s at stake. However, I have never worked in a library with a self checkout system or a DVD service machine, or even a digital audiobook collection (though we’re working on one!). It’s a bit of a shame that most of CiL’s articles are locked behind a subscriber wall, but here’s a decent article about a library that is almost local to me and their experiences with their first self-checkout system.

My contract with CiL allows me to self-publish after ninety days which is what I intend to do if I remember. My first column/department about web stats came out in January and my most recent one about open source software will be out next month. In the meantime here is a tip I wish I’d known sooner… I recently set up one of my libraries with a tiny website for free. Dreamhost.com offers free webspace to qualifying nonprofits. This is real webspace with one-click installs for things like Mediawiki and WordPress. If you have a 501c3 exemption letter and a little bit of patience, take a look at their wiki to get the rest of the details. A little more information is available on the Drupal site. I know people have had good and bad experiences with Dreamhost, but sometimes selling people on trying something new — and for my library a website was definitely something new — is all about removing as many barriers as possible and letting them see the utility in it themselves. If you’ve been waffling about webspace, or webspace costs, try it out. I have no affiliation to Dreamhost, for what it’s worth.