librarianing – Page 8 – A Most Unreliable Narrator

So, You Want To Be A Librarian/Archivist: Job Hunt Part II: DOs

In my last post, I ranted about the process – which is all fine and dandy because I’m sure more of that type of thing will pour forth from me as I continue on this job hunt. [Repeat after me: Student Loans Will Not Pay For Themselves.] But what I thought about on my way to work this afternoon was HOW I prepared for the job hunt. I got a plethora of ideas from friends who have already been through the process, but a listing of what I did could help someone else.
DOs

Get your resume together a month or two before you begin applying and have more than one person review it. In my case, I had two people who have professional editing experience and they were ENORMOUS help making sure my Is were dotted and my Ts were crossed. Regardless of your prep time frame, the idea is that you have enough time to write the resume, submit for editing and work future revisions.
Once the resume is more or less together, be aware of the fact you may have to change it as you hunt for jobs. I have caught grammar, spelling and other errors even after the final proofing because sometimes we just simply miss things. I also have updated sections when new things occur (giving a presentation, adding/removing software from my technology list). The .pdf version of my resume was uploaded a month ago and I’ve already made several revisions after that one. The idea in point number 1 is get 90% of it in shape as you will add/remove stuff as necessary. This point it remind you not to get too married to that “supposed” final version.
Confirm your references (professionally and personally) and then create a single sheet, separating them by professionally and personally. You should have their name, title (for the professional ones), name of company/library/whatever, work address, work phone number, and preferred email address. For personal, I have name, address, phone number and email. CONFIRM THAT WHO YOU PUT DOWN AS YOUR REFERENCES WILL ACTUALLY DO IT.
Use the same letterhead on your resume as you do for your references list. Keep it consistent (i.e. if you change one, change the other).
I have a .doc AND a .pdf version of my resume and references list, you should too. Word PC07/Mac08 and Open Office allow you to convert from .doc to .pdf seamlessly. There are also plugins and websites that will do this for you. And remember, if you update your resume/references list, make sure to update the .pdf version as well!
Create a digital portfolio that includes your resume, coursework, presentations, and other relevant stuff. (DO NOT PUT YOUR REFERENCES LIST ONLINE AS THAT IS JUST STUPID. ONLY HAND IT OUT TO EMPLOYERS IF/WHEN THEY REQUEST IT.) You can do this using WordPress, Blogger or even Tumblr. I had more than a few friends who utilized Google Sites to create their digital portfolio. This illustrates you know how to use “emerging”¹ technologies, HTML (to some degree), and a CMS. It doesn’t have to be fancy, it doesn’t have be perfect. Keep the URL professional (not iizawesomsauce.tumblr.com) and ONLY use it for job hunting/professional stuff. Don’t post “OMG, James McAvoy is HOTTTTT!” on the same space you’re handing to future employers. Be smart.
On the digital portfolio versions of my resume, my address/phone are blacked out. Make sure to do the same. If an employer wants/needs that information or you are being headhunted, they can email you to ask for it. Do not be an idiot and willingly publish your home address/phone number online.
Also make sure to include your digital portfolio URL in the letterhead of your resume/references and cover letters.
Resume is created, you’ve got your online portfolio created, so the next thing you need to do is create a spreadsheet to keep track of where you are applying. This will make it easier to see where you’ve applied, where you need to apply and when to do (if any) follow-ups. I have eight columns on mine in the following order: Company/Library, Position, Salary, Web Address, End Date, Resume Submit Date, Type, Status, Followup. Explanation of some of the ones I am using: Salary is to keep track of who is paying what (when mentioned), also helps me gauge what the market is currently paying out for certain types of jobs. Lots of positions are accepted via corporate HR sites and are assigned a position number – this include this as well in the Position field. Resume Type: Did I apply online, email it, fax it or what?
If you’re applying for the same type of jobs, after your first cover letter is written, you should then have a template for the rest of them. Make sure to change the addressee information, job title and do some tailoring to fit the specific job you are looking for. Also make sure to use the same letterhead you created for your resume and references list.
Also make sure fonts and stylistics are consistent across your materials. If you’re using Verdana in your resume, don’t use Comic Sans MS in your references list.
My reference list (professional and personal) have requested that I email them links to the jobs I’m applying for so if they get called, they can speak more intelligently about recommending me for that particular position. Since I’m applying for jobs in batches, they get regularly updated emails from with job titles and links.

This is enough for now — am I thorough? You bet. I just like making sure my Is are dotted and my Ts are crossed. Justin (TheFiance), however, likes to refer to me as being “anal retentive,” but if I have to get out there and get the ROCKSTAR LIBRARIAN/ARCHIVIST job, the only way to do that (other than with my sparkling wit) is to make sure I’ve got alllllllllll my bases covered.

1. Vague sarcasm here.

So, You Want To Be A Librarian/Archivist: The Job Hunt (Possibly Part I)

In the list of ridiculous things that I consider to be dehumanizing, job hunting is one of them. And by ridiculous I mean that I, myself, find this process ridiculous because the level of bullshit and hoop jumping and dehumanizing because I’m beyond irritated that we, the applicants, get judged by missed punctuation and our activities online. But we, in turn, cannot judge our potential employers (well, at least publicly) for the exact same things for the fear of their potential wraith.
(As an aside, I recently became a member of a kind of small, specific professional organization. Discovered via my website logs that they not only had Goggled me upon receiving my membership form but before cashing my check, they passed along my website to other people in their office since I had log entries form each of their individual work stations. So I, in turn, Googled them. They were silly enough to name their workstations after their personal names, so that made it even easier!)
Don’t totally misunderstand me on this point: I get that employers really do want people who follow directions and that yes, people who send in resumes covered in clip art with a bright pink background should NOT be considered for the job or that people who routinely apply for positions they are certainly not qualified for should be rejected. I get that HR has a lot on their plate and that sometimes it does take the picayune points to separate the wheat from the chaff.
I’m venting because sometimes the ridiculous gets to be so, well, ridiculous! Especially when I’ve spent the last two days applying for positions and I felt like I spent more time jumping through arcane online HR systems, digging for HR contact info than actually spending time working on cover letters or compiling stuff for the application itself. I did a lot of cursing out loud today and vague venting on Twitter because this IS 2010 – shit should just work. What becomes even more stressful is when the employer has a listing for a “emerging/digital/technical technologies/project librarian/archivist/curator” and while one location might define it as X, another place will define it as Y and the requirements are TOTALLY opposite of what the title suggests and this is especially true when the job title is identical at multiple positions.
I realise that this is how the game is played and that while I’ve been out of the #biggirljob loop for nearly a decade, I had not realized that really was as convoluted and as much of a mess before. To help alleviate my stress levels, I’ve started doing the following:

Every single domain I own has an invisible counter on each of the landing pages (since sometimes the click-through on a domain is not necessarily accurate), and I just put one on my on resume page. If you’re finding me either directly by site, link, or keyword, I will more than likely know. I will also know if institutions are actually visiting the additional information at my resume page. I also have raw access to the logs if I wish to analyze traffic.
I’ve began Googling HR representatives/directors/whomever for each of the positions that I’ve applied for and tailored (when necessary) my cover letter to hit upon specific points of interest that not only reflect the job but also their personal interests (if that particular HR person is the direct contact, etc).

And this is what becomes even more frustrating – I can’t discuss on my own blog what I feel about X because I think X sucks nuts for requesting Y for their application process when Y isn’t really necessary. I can’t discuss why the HR system at S is redundant because it not only asks for upload of CV/Resume but also requires the user to transpose all that information into an online form. (This was even more frustrating when the directions clearly spelt out that uploaded CV/Resume would replace the filling of forms but nope, sure didn’t!) Or that numerous positions online application is nothing more than a PDF file and that they want you to fill it out (but it’s locked) and signed (you can’t sign the file unless you actually have it unlocked and the line available) and have it emailed. (Numerous places use the later technique for “online application” and I was just boggled by this – what’s the bloody point?!).
I don’t get it but I still must continue because the student loans will not pay for themselves.

What the eff can you do with a MLIS/Archives/Library Science degree?

Earlier tonight a friend passed a question on to me from Aardvark in which the person asks, “What can you do with an MLIS other than become a traditional librarian or archivist?”
I think this is a very valid question so after I answered, I went to ye old Google¹ to see what other people were saying and interestingly, I got more hits for online library school programs (reputability low), people asking/bitching/complaining at Yahoo! Answers, Twibes, Tribes, and other communities about where to go to school or why their existing school sucks then answering the query. Also interestingly, very few people praised their school based upon my ultra scientific skimming of the communities that I found. Even after changing the search query a bit, I still could not dig out from under the iSchool/LibSchool snow jobs that nearly EVERY school seemingly puts out on how SUPER CRAZY AWESOME THEIR SCHOOL IS. In short, I could not find a really decent answer.
So I’m keywording the hell out of this entry and hoping it helps gets indexed asap.
So, after reading Part the First on “So, you want to be a librarian?”, you’ve applied to library school and you realise, this kinda sucks! You don’t want to deal with the crazies in public OR academic (these are considered the “traditional paths” in librarianship), and by crazies I’m not talking about just the patrons. Or perhaps you’re doing your MLIS and getting an archival certificate (as I am doing) OR you’re doing your MLIS and subject specialization OR you have another masters/phd in another field (which I also have). So, what the eff can you do with your damn degree if you don’t want to go into “traditional” librarianship/archives? Actually, you can do a crazy amount of other careers without ever having to step foot in a traditional library. Here are some of the options:

Information Architect
User/Usability Experience Design
Datamining
Cataloging (Original and copy)
Web design (I mention this because a portion of MLIS programs now offer/require web design classes since so many “traditional” libraries need people with web programming background)
Taxonomy/Folksonomy specialist
Digital librarianship/archival work (working in mainly digital formats, for preservation/cataloging/creation/etc)
Conservationist
Project management
Content development
Knowledge management
Records management
Indexer
Consultation on any of the above

These are just the tip of the ice berg, but should be enough to whet your appetite.
You can also go into specializations, such as being trained specifically for youth orientated, urban libraries, etc etc. There is also special libraries, which tend to be libraries in hospitals, businesses, law firms, museums, historical societies to name a few that may require or will require additional education. For example, to work in a law library, many firms are now requiring a JD as well as the MLIS. If you have an additional masters/phd in another subject, you can easily teach at a university. A lot of academic libraries are looking for adjunct/tenure faculty/staff with additional specialization degrees to work as a subject specialist and/or teach in the field as well.
And another thing — don’t discount your passions either. A number of archival jobs I’ve started to apply to for when I graduate in May have been in the rock’n’roll business and one of the requirements was a love of pop culture. Who’d a thunk that all my years of listening to crap radio, watching trashy television, and overly copious magazine and website reading would pay off!?! But it does go to show that whatever you’re passionate about can also be translate into helping you find that dream job, preferably one away from the snot-nosed kids, the pushy patrons, and the crazies who may or may not be your co-workers.

1. Google is our overlords, I’ve drunk the koolaid — please take me to your leader!

For Businesses: Feeding Your Blog Into Facebook

[This was first published at AMPed.]
One of the great things about social networking is the ability to transparently publish information across various social networks simultaneously. When I update my personal blog, without additional interaction by me, updates are sent to my Facebook, Twitter and FriendFeed accounts. This is done via the magic of APIs and the widgets that utilize the existing sites API information
API is short for “Application Programming Interface,” and essentially allows third party developers to create new ways, or mashups, of the existing technology with other technologies – hence the transparency of publishing my content from my blog to other sites. One could argue that this ability is at the heart of Social Networking since personally I’d be less inclined to re-post my content repeatedly on other sites, which means more work for me and also takes out the “Gee-whiz!” factor when introduced to new mashups or widgets that will do it for me.
The interesting thing about all of this, however, is that when it comes to Facebook, how I am regarded as an individual is completely different to how Archive Media Partners (AMP) is regarded as a business. On most other networks, business and individuals are treated nearly identical when it comes to creating a presence on that network but Facebook, however, has a different model. Facebook has always maintained that there needs to be a separation between the two, which is especially crucial with how Facebook disseminates personal information as well as the concern over privacy controls.
While that topic can be a blog post (or even a series!) in its own right, we want to look how to get a business’ information into Facebook with the same ease as an individual. The first example of this is having your blog automatically update to Facebook when new content is published.
With an individual account, there is a variety of ways to do this via applications native to Facebook as well as widgets that can be installed. For a business, it is a little bit trickier. Here is how to do it:

Login into Facebook and click on Pages at the top. This will take you to the a listing of all the pages created for the business. Click on the page you wish to modify.
Once you click on the page you wish to modify, you’ll be presented with a variety of settings. In this section, you can modify which applications are visible on the published page. Scroll down and under Applications, look for Notes. Make sure that the link to Notes has been activated.
Click on Edit underneath Notes. Once in Notes, the note settings are located to the right. Click on import a blog link.
On this page, Facebook will gives the song and dance about importing a blog, mainly that the blog you are importing is your own. Well enough, in the box below the warning, where it saysWeb URL, paste the RSS feed of your blog into the box and below it, check the box for authorization.
Facebook will then refresh the page, showing the latest blog entry and will ask you to confirm the import. Thus, click onConfirm Import button.

And you’re done!
You can go to your page and test that the blog entries are showing up, but this is probably one of the more elegant ways of getting your blog feed into your Facebook wall. You can also remove the feed if you decide not to use it or update/change the feed as needed.
For more ideas on how to use Facebook as a business, look atMashable’s Killer Facebook Fan Pages: 5 Inspiring Case Studies that illustrates how other companies use Best Practices when using Facebook, including feeding a blog into a Facebook wall.

Disqus Commenting System

[This was first published at AMPed.]
One of the things that makes social networking is the ability to comment and share whatever it is you’re reading or interacting with to others in your group, whether by email, Facebook, Twitter or social bookmarking sites. On the flip side, one of the downsides is that for nearly every site you interact with, you almost always have to create a login to participate. This is not necessarily a bad thing in that it allows you to control what information about yourself that is available to the site admins, it allows the site admins to also gauge who is using their service and it is helpful if you consistently frequent the same sites on a regular basis.
Personally though, I’m fairly lazy. If I want to comment on a blog or a site, and that blog or site requires me to create a new login, I’m more apt to just not say anything at all rather than go through all the fuss of creating said account. In that respect, OpenID was created with this in mind by creating a universal login that if a blog or site allowed you to login with your OpenID, that’s one less account you have to set up. This is good in theory but in practice, as far as I could tell, it has not been used that extensively. Even major sites such as CNN and The New York Times still require you to create an account on their system to comment or to view special materials, which then defeats the purpose of using OpenID.
This is where Disqus comes in to fill the gap. Disqus is a commenting system that enables your users to comment on your blog or site by logging in via a network they are already affiliated with, such as Facebook, Yahoo! or Twitter (and even OpenID!). Users are not required to create another account on all-in-one service such as OpenID because it is assumed that your readers will have an account on another, existing system. With the rise of such services now making public their APIs, it is becoming fairly common to use your Facebook or Twitter account to login to another service instead of having to create an account on that particular service. For example, the geo-location social network BrightKite, uses Facebook’s API to allow users to login instead of creating a new account.
When we started AMPed, there was some discussion as to what to do about enabling commenting on the site, including but not limiting to time frame the comments would be open, how to handle spam and whether or not a person would be required to register. When I quizzed people as to whether or not they would use the commenting feature, many stated that they would but like me, refrained from doing so due to the having to create yet another account problem. Commenting is not just about espousing one’s opinion on a topic they were interested in but it is also about opening up a conversation. Blogs tend to get thought of as a one-way communique instead of as a community and that was something we wanted to change.
Disqus, in short, is awesome. Not only is it another widget that works directly out of the box but the transparency within the WordPress blog is fantastic. I didn’t have to go through and configure each post individual or hack PHP to get it work, it just did it on its own. As Disqus allows people to login and comment with Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and more, users are not relegated to creating an account on the system.
With Disqus, you then then control what systems people can login with, such as allowing only Facebook or Twitter, turning off anonymous counting. You can also, like the default commenting system within WordPress, decide when to shut comments off from older sites and how to handle spam. Disqus also allows trackbacks, like default WordPress, which they call reactions. This also allows you to see who is linking to your blog and why.
While Disqus fulfills our needs on AMPed, there are some glitches with how the system is set up. Here is what you need to know:

You have to create a Disqus account in order to use the plugin on your blog. This is, again, not necessarily a bad thing as you can control advanced options and settings on Disqus’ website. This also allows people who have existing Disqus accounts to also comment on your site.
In order to use Facebook and Twitter integration for commenting, you have to have an existing Facebook and Twitter accounts in order for this to work. The reasoning behind this that since Disqus is using Twitter’s API to allow the commenting, it must authorize to an account to get the API to work. While I understand the technical details behind this, this still seems a bit clunky to me. For AMPed, I had to create a Facebook page to get the Facebook API to work and we were fine as we have an existing Twitter account.
The settings in WordPress are located in Dashboard->Settings->Disqus which is actually nothing more than a front to the Disqus homepage. You’re still required to login to Disqus’ site to control things and the “manage” settings in WordPress is nothing more than the API and uninstall feature.

Bottom line: The integration into the website is flawless and it gives our readers more control on how they want to participate in our community, Disqus is a great gap filler on how to handle commenting on websites. While the installation of the widget was flawless and transparent, the managing and set-up of the widget is a bit clunky. But for the cost (free) and what it does, Disqus is a great tool to have in your WordPress widget toolbox.

Haystack: The Online Archive of Colby-Sawyer College

[This was first published at AMPed.]
It’s all well and good to get super excited about technology, but without examples of these technologies in action, what’s the point of being super excited? With that being said, every Friday AMPed will be showcasing a website that takes these technologies and really makes them work, whether in design, implementation or as a mashup. These are websites that are taking their outreach and content to the next level by making their sites not only more aesthetically pleasing but also more interactive with their audience.
This week, we’re showcasing Haystack, the online archive of Colby-Sawyer College. What is great about Haystack is that not only is it aesthetically pleasing, easy to browse and navigate, but it also uses social networking tools to allow the reader to re-share the information to Delicious, Digg, Facebook and other sites. Haystack also relies fairly extensively on open source software for their backend.
We’ll let Kelli Bogan, the archivist at Colby-Sawyer, explain more:

In November of 2008, Colby-Sawyer College launched its digital library, Haystack to showcase materials from the college archives and to reconnect alumni to the institution. With seven name changes and a varied institutional history as a secondary school, women’s junior college, women’s four year college, and a co-educational four year college, Colby-Sawyer College has a unique history that often leaves older alumni feeling disconnected from the institution. Haystack lets alumni become active participants once again by allowing users to add tags and comments to photographs, historical diaries, correspondence, yearbooks, and other historical documents relating to the college and its founding family, to embed these images on social networking sites like Facebook, and to email the images to friends and family.
Haystack uses Scriblio, an open source Content Management System based on WordPress. Scriblio allows users to find materials through faceted searching and browsing which lets the user narrow their search through visual cues and to easily add or remove search constraints. Users can also see what other people have been looking at, what items have recently been commented on, and items that are similar to the one that he/she is looking at; all of these features allow the user to explore the materials in a nontraditional way.
What does the future hold for Haystack? The goal for the first year after the launch was to put as much material as possible into Haystack; at present, there are nearly 4,000 images uploaded and available. Now that the archives has a better sense of how Haystack is used by our alumni and what types of materials they are interested in seeing, our digitization focus for the next year is to scan all of the yearbooks and to continue to put as much of the Colby-Sawyer College Photograph Collection up as we can. We also have a couple of exhibits that we are experimenting with—a family tree for the founding family and a college time line. We would like these to be more than just static exhibits, but we haven’t quite figured out how to make them dynamically interesting yet.
As far as site development goes, we would like to add audio and video capabilities since, currently, these can only be incorporated into exhibits, not into item level entries. We also are working to add EAD finding aids to the site; this will allow us to make the finding aid the “parent” of each collection and users will be able to link directly from the finding aid to an image, creating another way to access and browse the collection. Finally, we would like to create an advanced search (in response to feedback we have received from users) and a way to see all of the keywords under a specific category in “Browse.” Our hope is to continually improve Haystack and to make it a site where our users are excited to visit and contribute.

Day in the life of a MLIS student. #librarydayinthelife

Back in July, a slew of librarians wrote about their experiences covering one day (or some cases, several days) of their day to day life as a librarian. And by slew, I mean dozens and judging by the PbWorks page, maybe hundreds? Not only were the blogs collected into PbWorks, but they were also tweeted and reshared on Twitter with the hashtag, #librarydayinthelife.
The point of this exercise was to illustrate how wildly different the tasks and jobs were from a plethora of librarians and library staff, clearly showing that while the MLIS degree to some extent can be pretty generic, what is expected of us really varies on the location and job title we are given. And if this little exercise doesn’t showcase that we as a profession are beyond the bun-glasses-orthopedic shoes stereotype and the flexibility of the job really IS there, then I don’t know if anything really will.
With all of that being said, I wanted to desperately put my two cents in but at the time, didn’t think my life as a grad student then would prove to be that totally useful. Since the fall semester has started (and erm, is actually almost ending), I thought that now would be a good time to contribute.
My background: I don’t think I’m a typical student in that I’m also involved with lots of extracurricular activities outside of my classwork, with some of it mostly relating to my job and some do not. I’m currently taking a full load of classes, work 20 hours a week at the graduate library reference desk, work part-time for a professor as her social media specialist (hours vary), am involved in several organizations, also sit on a committee, and am working on my archival practicum. I live about 15 miles away from school, which also throws upto 30 minutes each way of travel time. Also, my weeks tend to fluctuate: Either I have all meetings and stuff inbetween work and classes or it is empty for me to do homework in. Sometimes there is a nice balance, but not always.
Tuesday, November 17

07:15 – 08:15 AM: Up, mainlining coffee and getting stuff together for the day. Leave the house at about 8:15ish to stop and get my daily Slurpee and drive down Woodward to Wayne State.
09:00 AM – 1:00 PM: Reference desk. What I can get done during this time period varies depending on how many questions are coming at me per hour. Today was an especially busy day with averages of about 10 questions per hour, nearly double of previous weeks averages for this time frame. I do face to face and telephone reference, most of it quick or ready-reference, with the occasional extended reference thrown in. Reference questions tend to be directional (aka quick), computer help, book search, or being asked for help on writing papers. I’m also typically logged in online via gTalk and Twitter and do homework when it’s really slow.
01:00 – 02:00 PM: Lunch break, read homework while I ate.
02:00 – 3:00 PM: Meeting with a professor about an upcoming large project that is due in December. I researching a local historical society and why (or why not) they are important not only to the community but to the archival profession. After that was done, we spent the rest of the time gossiping about music and MLIS accreditation.
03:00 – 04:30 PM: Virtual reference committee bi-weekly meeting. One of the senior librarians put together a staff meeting committee, with me being the only grad student, to research and explore alternatives to our existing VR software, Docutek. I was tasked with looking at IM alternatives, testing Trillian Astra and looking to the power of Twitter and GoogleWave to finding out what other people are using. I reported back and based upon my research, they will be testing out LibraryH3lp.
04:30 – 05:30 PM: Coffee with my friend Lauren. Lauren applied for an on-campus GSA position (graduate student assistant, a position I currently hold) and we were dissecting the interview before we headed to class.
05:30 – 8:15 PM: Intro to archives class, held every Tuesday. We had a speaker on Records Management come in and spoke for the entire class period.
09:15 – 12:00 AM: Went home and did several errands on my way home. Once I got home and out of my “oppressive clothes”¹, posted weekly discussion summary to Blackboard for my online class, discussed the VR meeting with my fiance and then settled on the couch for a few hours with dinner, House and The Big Bang Theory.

Wednesday, November 18

07:15 – 08:15 AM: Same as the day before: mainlining coffee, showering and getting dressed to head out. I get to leave a few minutes early, which is always a bonus.
09:00 AM – 03:30 PM: My long day for reference desk pimping. Spent most of my downtime trying to hack stuff together for lib schooled., which was failing. The relief librarians were nearly 30 minutes late (I was to leave at 3pm). Only planned on spending a few hours working on my website but ended up getting sucked into spending most of my time at the desk on it. I caught up on some email, prepped stuff for the student chapter Progressive Librarians’ Guild meeting scheduled for tonight.
03:30 – 05:45 PM: Planned on working on homework for the week but wanted to finish this entry. Continued to do prep work for the PLG meeting tonight. Did some quality web browsing. Caught up on more emails.
06:00 – 07:00 PM: Meeting with my advisor on course selection for next semester.
07:00 – 09:00 PM: PLG student monthly meeting. I’m the v-p and with the president having been MIA (deservedly so) due to her recent marriage, things have been a tad crazy.
09:00 PM – 12:00 AM: Head home, decompress from another 12+ hour day, get out of my oppressive clothes¹ and sleep. Only to start over all again tomorrow.

1. Meaning I got into yoga pants and a tshirt.

Twitter Tools

[This was first published at AMPed.]
The one thing that I love about technology is the discovery of something awesome regardless if it is software, hardware or a mash-up application that enhances my overall experience. But what makes the tech even more cool is when the technology just works the way it does without any additional futzing by me.
Keeping that in mind, one of my favorite widgets for WordPress that does just this is Twitter Tools by Alex King. Twitter Tools is kind of a misnomer in that it sounds like contains a suite of options for Twitter<->WordPress functionality when it really boils down to two things:

Turn your posts into tweets.
Pulls existing tweets into a post.

Why is this widget important? With Twitter having grown over 1000% in the last year, everyone and everything is on Twitter from national news networks, companies and brands, to celebrities and politicos and definitely not lastly, right down to Joe and Jane Anybody. The one constant thing all of them are doing is harnessing the way Twitter works and pushing beyond its boundaries by incorporating Twitter into their other social networks and web presences and vice versa. For companies and brands, this also means that they are doing outreach to clients, potential clients, staff and more by utilizing the power of social networking and integrating it into their professional lives. Why send just a company newsletter to clients when you can also keep them abreast of new technologies, updates, interests as well as interact with them in this new social playground.
What exactly does this mean? Social networking takes a lot of time and work, but it doesn’t necessarily have to. Let’s say Jane Anybody is on Twitter, Facebook, and has a blog. Let’s say she wants to be able to push her blog onto Twitter automatically without having to login to Twitter every single time she writes a new entry. Let’s also say that Jane doesn’t want to have to futz with shrinking the URL, rewording her title if it is too long and then reminding herself to login and to post to Twitter after she is done writing her blog entry. She wants an application this will do all of this for her with one push of a button.
This is where Twitter Tools comes into play.
As mentioned, Twitter Tools is the all in one client that will automagically push new blog content to your Twitter account AND will pull content from your Twitter account, which you can then showcase your Twitter-fu in a neat sidebar widget that you can add (thanks, again, to Twitter Tools) or as a daily post, which will post automatically to your blog.
You can search for Twitter Tools directly at the WordPress Codex, download and upload to WP-Plugins/ folder on your WordPress install or even easier, you can search for Twitter Tools via the Plugins->Add New search tab on your WordPress dashboard. The second install option is even easier as WordPress will automatically download and install Twitter Tools (or any plugin available via the Codex) without having to use (or know) FTP. Just search, select and okay the download and WordPress does it all for you — which is also pretty cool.
Regardless of which way you choose to download Twitter Tools, once it’s installed, go to WordPress Dashboard->Settings->Twitter Tools. From here, once you authenticate your Twitter account and change the option on “Enable option to create a tweet when you post in your blog” to “Yes,” Twitter Tools can be pretty much left alone. From this point forward, every post created on your blog will automatically ship to Twitter, with shortened URL, when your post is published to the blog. Twitter Tools also works with post-date (in the future) and pre-date (in the past) feature via WordPress but also keep in mind that in choosing either of these options, the date stamp on your Tweet will match the date stamp on your blog entry and pre-date entries will be fed into your Twitter stream appropriately, therefore they will not show up as “new” tweets in your timeline to your followers.
Here are some other nifty things about Twitter Tools:

You can turn Twitter Tools on/off individually in each post, which will override the default. In this case, we have changed the default to “Yes” which means that each and every post will automagically post to Twitter when it posts to your blog.
Twitter Tools automatically installs widget functionality that you can drag into your sidebar by going to
WordPress Dashboard->Appearance->Widgets without knowing how to code.
You can also enable the ability (via the Twitter Tools configuration page) to have your tweets for the day automatically pulled from Twitter, compiled into a single post and having that post posted not only to your blog but also tweeted back to your Twitter account (like your other normal blog posts). And no, King says, this apparent cyclic function will not cause a firey ball of doom.
For those of you who are more into doing things by hand, King also gives instructions on how to hack up and style Twitter Toolsrather than be dependent on the theme installed. This means if you would rather have X amount of tweets appear or if you would rather have them show up in a footer, or somewhere else on your blog, King provides how-to’s and explanation how these hooks will work.
Support: One of the nice things about WordPress is the community built around it for support if you get stuck on doing something and with Twitter Tools, there is no exception. You can use the support Codex and post a question there, you can alternately Google for an answer or if it is dire emergancy and you simply cannot wait for responses, there is the WP HelpCenter, which is a pay service.

Bottom line: Twitter Tools is an easy way to get Twitter integrated into your blog and to push blog posts to your Twitter account without knowing how to code, futz with extra settings or more plugins. It works right out of the box and can be installed and set-up within a few minutes. This is definitely a “Must Have” in your WordPress toolkit.

The Beginning of the Search of “What is ‘IT’?’”

[This was first published at AMPed.]
One of the first things I did when I found out I was accepted into library school was to Google for blogs, wikis and podcasts from others like me: new to be librarians and archivists who were in or had recently graduated from their respective programs.
I figured it was 2008, surely there would be loads of blogs, Facebook groups, listservs to name a few places for this sort of thing.
I was wrong – there wasn’t really squat. Let me rephrase that, I found lots of things from other people looking to apply TO library school but nothing really detailing what it was like being IN library school. And what I could find on being IN library school fell into two camps: One camp was the very vague, mainly one-liners on random blogs and other social media sites such as, “I really like collection development.” Or there would be the opposite end of the spectrum where students used social media sites for research results or gave detailed accounts of their projects but then wouldn’t include reference materials of any sort for their readers to do further independent reading.
And the thing is, I didn’t really think I was looking for something really that vague or obsolete or unusual: I’m a new library and archivist student. I’m looking to connect with others like me. Why was this so difficult?
This is not to say, completely, that these type of blogs/wikis and the like were not out there; I eventually did find one or two that lead me to a few others, which lead me to a few moreand so on. But in reality, I felt like I was missing some super secret handshake that all my fellow students seemingly were totally getting. And it’s also not that I didn’t ask – I did ask on mailing lists, blogs and to my professors: What is the best place to keep up to date on library and
archival information? And you could almost hear the pin drop, at least on the mailing lists. Many others also asked the question before me on several lists and not a single person answered, even when others would pipe up, “Me too!”
By the time the school year was nearing to an end, I had joined (it felt like) a dozen associations from the ALA to the SAA to all the subgroups and student committees. I was receiving so much email, that I had to create a new Gmail account to keep track of it all. The Twitter explosion had taken off and I was obtaining feeds from
librarians and archivists through it and other social networks. At a tech unConference that was held shortly after I finished my first year, I posed the same question to the ending panel and was given a minute list of websites that I was already following and reading.
And it still, shockingly enough, didn’t feel like I had the pulse on of what the heck was going on in my chosen career path.
For nearly a year, I was chasing this library and archival holy grail of sorts to make sure I was in “the know” of everything was going on in these professions. I couldn’t read, listen or write fast enough to keep up. If I was honest, half the time I felt like I was missing out on huge chunks of “need to know information” because I wasn’t paying close enough attention.
Recently, after nearly a year of this kind of OCD behavior, I was having a conversation with someone when I was lamenting my thought process on this topic with her. “But Lisa,” she said, “You ARE it. Do you have any idea how many people look to you as you have the pulse on what’s going on?”
Oh.
OH!
I used this overly long example to illustrate a point: “IT” is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. In my quest to know “IT” in library and archival sciences, I had become “IT” without knowing it. Once I got my friend’s point, suddenly the need to seek out so much information didn’t seem as important as it used to. Sure, I felt vaguely disappointed there was no secret handshake but the pressure to get all that information that I was supposedly missing, lifted from my shoulders and I felt like I could breathe again.
This concept is very Buddhist, but it’s also very true. When new technologies arrive, whether mechanical or digital, the media and the tech evangelists tend to blow up that particular technologies importance while deeply underscoring that if you’re not using X technology, clearly you must be an old fart or not hip enough to get the lingo or the technology itself.
This is all poppycock, of course. No one can possibly know everything – it is virtual impossible to be an expert on everything; especially in the digital world. But what you, the reader, can do is to know that even by searching out for “IT” on the subject of your choice, you probably have a greater understanding than those around you on the topic.
Even the media, at best, is a neophyte of sorts in this regard.
AMPed plans to take a look at “What is it?” by examining aspects of this ideology from variety of perspectives and experiences. As each one searches of “IT,” so then does the definition of “IT” change – we hope you’ll enjoy reading them as much as we do.

Decompressing Tech unConference: May 15, 2009 #techuncamp

The other morning while getting ready for work, I was thinking about the beginnings of this entry which originally started out with, “Recently, I went to my first conference…” which was not necessarily correct as I went to a student journalism conference back in the mid-’90s in D.C. and did the LinuxCon circuit across the US (San Jose -> Atlanta -> New York) in the late ’90s and early ’00s. So no, this was not my first conference. But it IS my first conference as a librarian, so we’ll begin with that.
On May 15th, Heidi¹ and I went to Tech Camp unConference at Michigan State as it was local-ish, free, and the content was right up my alley. After dithering about what to bring with me and getting that all sorted, Heidi and I piled into my car and drove the 1.25 hours to E. Lansing.
Why this conference rocked:

The Tech unCamp was a wonderful mixture of students, new grads and established librarians who had at least one thing in common: They were all passionate about technologies and or bringing emerging and new technologies to their library. With the experience level running from neophyte to supreme geek being, the range of experience was wide open and I learned a lot.
Libraries should look to Ann Arbor District² (also shout outs to Grand Rapids Public ³) on how public libraries are using existing and emerging technologies in order to do outreach and further along interaction with patrons and staff. Peeps should also look to Lawrence Tech in the academic vein about how academic libraries are using social networking and web 2.0 to the benefit of students, patrons and staff.
Drupal v. Joomla v. WordPress as CMS: Drupal for large enterprise sites with Joomla as it’s redheaded stepchild brother and WP coming up fast and furious on the backend as the Open Source CMS. I participated heavily in this discussion, discussing my work with Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History Archives where I helped launch their WP site and how they used it. This discussion also really helped clarify why libraries are using certain technologies over others, especially why the big push towards Drupal.
Web 2.0: Natalie Zebula, the tech librarian at LTU, led the discussion on using Web2.0 in libraries (I was the mad secretary, partially fueled by large amounts of caffeine) where in this discussion group we talked about all things web and tech related from dragging staff and patrons into the 21st century by introducing new teaching methodologies and services to how to do outreach in the 21st century world.
Talks on using social web, information architecture and how to do social outreach: the final event of the day was the panel hosted by peeps in variety of capacities from social network and research to IA to using social networks in the real world. The IA stuff was huge draw for me because I started taking an IA class this summer, Heidi is also into IA (and she’s been a great resource in filling in things I’m missing tech wise) and it seems to also offer up a lot of stuff I’m heavily interested in — stuff that I did not know even had a name and now I know it does, which just proves I’m not even remotely insane! Heidi and I talked to Dan, the IA dude, after the camp for a bit in the parking lot and discovered that Dan and I moved in similar circles socially back in G-Rap in our younger years (and that he’s also nine days older than me). The world IS incredibly small.

Overall, this was a great introduction to conferencing for the newly inclined (such as myself) and was also highly informative. Not only were the discussions about the use of real world technologies in the library setting but also in other professional and personal settings. Personal experiences with social networking and web 2.0isms carried over in a lot of the talk that was going on, which isn’t surprising when you think about it. Much of what drives a lot of these technologies IS people’s curiosity and whether or not they work for them.
This explains, I think, how technology evangelism begins: All it takes is at least one person who is passionate about X, whatever X may be before it starts spreading to their circles (and so forth and so on). ExFiance #2 and I got on the TiVo bandwagon back in 2000 when his aunt and uncle had one of the first beta TiVos. The ability to PAUSE LIVE TV and the ability to record and hold hours and hours of shows for long periods of time sold us on this new fangled gadget. We were busy “young professionals” and missed a lot of what was on because we were out being busy! With TiVo, that changed the way we saw and viewed television.
Within a year, most of our local social network owned a TiVo once they saw not only how useful but also how incredibly geeky it was. Why plan your lives around a television show, TiVo tells us, when you can plan your shows around your lives. Now a decade later with knock-offs offered by cable/satellite companies, it’s almost hard to imagine a household without a DVR in some form or another. But stance on the technology revolution is for another day.

1.We met on Twitter, realized we had many of the same interests as well as we both attend Wayne State for lib school AND we both worked on campus. Tis a small world, indeed! Also, Heidi graduated from the program! Woot!
2. Eli provided his slides from the conference but part of what makes it interesting is also his speech!
3. I did various interviews months ago with peeps at GRPL and I knew that they were getting on or were driving the bandwagon with emerging tech THEN as they were one of the first libraries I knew who are active on Twitter. GRPL also blogs, games, and uses emerging tech for outreach to their patrons. Word to my old home library!