Social Networking

One Book, One Twitter...It's Not Your Grandmother's Book Club

Don't believe what you read, says author and editor Jeff Howe in the Christian Science Monitor. "The Internet is not destroying literature." If anything, he argues, "the new medium could breathe new life into a few old ones."

To prove his point, earlier this month Howe kicked off "One Book, One Twitter," which Howe hopes will become "the largest collective reading exercise in history." As Howe explains in book industry trade magazine Publishers Weekly, "This summer, thousands of people from all over the world are reading Neil Gaiman's 'American Gods.' They will then discuss the book using Twitter, a new-fangled technology that's doing for the epigram what Anne Frank did for diaries."

Howe says he got his idea from Seattle's celebrity librarian Nancy Pearl who, in 1998, launched the "One City, One Book" group read concept, now adopted by many other municipalities as well.

Discussions in 140 characters or less...what are your thoughts?

Life Without Online Privacy

Despite the invitations and cajoling of many friends, I put off joining Facebook for quite a long while. And then I caved.

I've enjoyed connecting with dozens of people I would not have located otherwise, but Facebook's inconstant privacy policies and questionable use of private information is getting under my skin.

Here's why ...
http://uflstaffpicks.blogspot.com/2010/05/life-without-online-privacy.html

John Gehner, The Urbana Free Library

The Perils of Automatic Copyright Protection

A cautionary tale about copyright, and the automated systems that enforce it.

If you post a video on YouTube, using one of their very own video creation tools, don't you expect it to go up and be viewable without any problems? Because of YouTube's Content ID system, it might not be so easy ...

Read the full story here.

Every. Single. Tweet. Now on the LOC Blog

Ars Technica reports: The Library of Congress is archiving for posterity every public tweet made since the service went live back in 2006. Every. Single. Tweet.

The LOC announced the news, appropriately enough, on Twitter. Twitter isn't just about being pretentious and notifying the world about the contents of your lunch (though it's about those things too).

Matt Raymond, one the Library's official bloggers, notes that "important tweets in the past few years include the first-ever tweet from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, President Obama’s tweet about winning the 2008 election, and a set of two tweets from a photojournalist who was arrested in Egypt and then freed because of a series of events set into motion by his use of Twitter."

But even those billions of other tweets and retweets, the ones about how you just got back from the worlds' most epic jog or how you're sick at home with the crocodile flu or how your crappy Internet connection just went down again and you can't take it any more—those matter too.

Try the blog (it was down when I tried); the LOC says on Twitter:
" Sorry, LOC blog having some disruptions. Twitter acquisition story also on Facebook" about 1 hour ago via web.

The New York Times weighs in on Twitter on LOC. -- Read More

SaveLibraries.org, Two Weeks Old and Going Strong

Want to keep up on what's happening with efforts around the country to help save libraries? There's a great new site for that, appropriately named Save Libraries. Their motto is "When one library is in trouble, ALL libraries are in trouble." This project is being run by Lori Reed and Heather Braum. They can’t do this alone and are looking for additional help creating and maintaining the content on this site.

Save Libraries is a grassroots effort to compile information about libraries in need of our support. Save Libraries will aggregate information about current advocacy efforts, archive advocacy efforts, and provide links to resources for libraries facing cuts. The project began barely two weeks ago, and is already attracting attention.

Please email us at savelibs (at) gmail (dot) com for questions, comments, or concerns. Please tag your Web content with savelibraries to make it easier for us to find and collect it.

Kudos to none other than our own Blake Carver and LISHost.org for donating hosting for this site and getting WordPress up and running within minutes. This site is dedicated to advocacy for libraries–getting the message out about why libraries are important.

We’re looking for advocacy information, testimonials from patrons and staff, photos, videos, anything to help save our libraries. Please pitch in!! Use the tag savelibraries or #savelibraries on Twitter. If you would like to contribute to this site please email savelibs@gmail.com.

#andypoll

twitter[1]For awhile now, I’ve been firing off poll questions on Twitter. It’s been pretty random at the start (in terms of questions), but it seems to have caught on. Twitter’s search engine won’t let me see the old results, but I have been able to find the questions so far since people have been nice enough to use the new retweet function. Here’s the list:

Social Media Booklist from the Delaware Library Catalog

Every new media initiative is supposed to herald the death of the printed format and the irrelevance of the library, but providing access to information about technology has been a mainstay of the public library ever since the first forward looking librarian created a call number for the first O'Reilly manual.

Windmill Networking recently produced a reading list for significant books on business and marketing applications of social media- and Delaware public libraries had most of them in their collections. A newly created reading list brings them together in an easily-referenced link, and State Library staff will maintain and curate it- along with crowdsourced help from Delaware's social media community!

Full story at the link.

Top Twittering Public Libraries

According to NFI Research, these are the top public libraries on Twitter who

  • 1) regularly update their page and communicate with their followers
  • 2) use Twitter to advance/promote communication with their community
  • 3) have a proportionate number of followers to following and
  • 4) are currently active on Twitter.

    This list is updated regularly so if any public libraries would like to be added, please send information to list@nfiresearch.com. Got any top twitterers among our readership?

  • LISTen: An LISNews.org Podcast -- Episode #98

    This week's podcast looks forward into the past with a replay of archival audio of President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressing the US Congress after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The dateline for this episode is the 78th anniversary of the event.

    Also presented in the podcast was a brief discussion of the late-breaking story of Comcast's attempt to acquire a controlling interest in NBC Universal. There was originally going to be discussion of remarks by Rupert Murdoch concerning why news online should never have been free in the first place. The Comcast-NBC matter took precedence.

    Related links:
    FDR's speech at Archive.org
    This installment of Profile America
    MSNBC reporting on the Comcast-NBC matter
    Greg Sandoval at CNET discussing the Comcast-NBC matter
    One Reuters story on the Comcast-NBC matter
    Another Reuters story in the matter
    Discussion at the Erie Looking Productions blog of the recent coverage of remarks by Rupert Murdoch
    MSNBC relaying an AP report on Google's new attempt to restrict how users can reach news sites
    Linux Outlaws, a show produced by Sixgun Productions

    17:12 minutes (6.9 MB)
    mp3
    [audio-player]

    BookRix – A Community For Book Lovers & Wannabe Authors

    MakeUseOf.com story, about the new site, Book Rix, a social network for bibliophiles.

    "Commonly all book lovers sites revolve around a community. An online ‘town square’ meet-up to see what others are reading and why they reading it. If you club together a few likeminded book lovers, you are bound to come across a lot of books.

    BookRix is just such a book lovers website, a community platform where you can read, rate and rant away on books. BookRix is also a place where new authors can present their own works. In that respect BookRix acts like an online publishing house for free via the medium of the browser."

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