libraries, media, advocacy and more
CNN’s December 2013 article “Be Gone Selfie! And Take Twerking with You!” set off my pet peeve about hashtag abuse. While the CNN article is about the over-use of certain new words, not hashtags, it reminded me how frustrated I get when hashtags are misunderstood, misused and generally abused. What’s a hashtag? In practical terms, […]
One of my Branch Managers has a beautiful gallery space in the lobby of her library, but it’s difficult to photograph work on display there because the whole front of the space is glass and windows. Side-view photos of the full exhibit space work just fine: But if you try to take a photo of […]
Does your library use Meetup? A year and a half ago, one of our then new librarians launched a totally new (to us) program – Book Dating. It’s been delightfully successful (press coverage has definitely helped), and sometimes we’ve had almost 40 people attend an event. But after a year, promoting Book Dating has presented […]
In my exploration of tumblr as a useful media platform, NOLA to New York is my favorite find of the day. It exemplifies of one of the best uses for tumblr – info-sharing that can then be shared to a much wider audience. And it’s just a really good project in general. “Alvin had a […]
As post-Hurricane Sandy chaos and recovery continue, tumblr suddenly seems useful in a way that it never has before. Fitting the Message to the Medium In 2008, although I had played around with twitter, I didn’t yet get it’s usefulness. But then in November 2008, the Orange County Register used twitter to aggregate eyewitness and […]
I spend so much time writing for work, that I’m terrible about blogging for myself. So I’m going to challenge myself to write one blog post a month this November, and maybe in the process I’ll figure out how to write something useful, yet short and manageable on a more regular basis. Today’s Library to-do […]
This post is the result of a response to a comment my friend John – who is not a member of ALA – wrote on my post from last April, Should We create a National Library Association?, asking whether American Libraries need a public advocacy group, dedicated to raising public awareness of the importance of […]
Last fall I made a series of pretty good library marketing videos, about some of the folks who make the library work. I tried to make them fairly tight – less than a minute and a half long – and anecdotally entertaining. In general, they got a good reaction. But despite posting them on our […]
Last week, my mother’s cousin sent this report about the very tiny El Rito Library, in New Mexico – where public library funding is precarious. She’s originally from Ohio, where public libraries have greater financial support from the state. What strikes me most about my aunt’s letter is that the public library’s annual budget is […]
reading, thinking, writing 