I've been on a tear recently about the lack of library advertising & promotion.
We should PROMOTE THE H*LL OUT OF LIBRARIES -- our services, our resources (full-text of the New York Times online? Baltimore Sun? Contra Costa Times? We've got it: free!!), our books (x thousands, millions + interlibrary loan) ...
Why don't people know we have all these great resources? Because we don't TELL THEM!! Here are some humble -- if expensive -- ideas for how we could / should promote ourselves:
- Advertise on billboards at local ball games (hockey, soccer, baseball):
* "want to find out more about your favorite player? find out @ the library!"
* "want to improve your bowling skills? learn how @ the library"
* "want to read about games you missed? read back issues of *your local paper* @ the library"
- Advertise in airports (train stations, bus terminals):
* "read thousands of travel books @ your library"
* "borrow your next novel @ your library -- and save money!"
* "help your kid do his homework @ your library"
[some cities even have branch libraries in train stations!!! MORE of this, please!]
- Advertise on facebook:
* "save time! find articles faster @ your library"
* "borrow books, DVDs, games, CDs [whatever you offer!] @ your library"
* "get books, articles from ANYWHERE without paying a cent @ your library"
We have to get over this horrible resistance we have to promotion, marketing, advertising. We also have to be ready to provide good service, and we have to find the money for this. Ideally it would be a national campaign -- whatever we do to promote libraries in general will benefit small public libraries, school libraries, academic libraries, and probably even corporate / special libraries.
[/rant]
April 08, 2007
April 06, 2007
Favorite Reference Sources?
This is an informal poll, for the LIS crowd.
If you were stranded on a desert isle, and you were lucky enough to continue doing reference for your current constituents, what 5 reference sources would you want to have on hand? You're lucky enough to have both high-speed Internet access as well as a safe, climate-controlled space for up to 5 reference works. :-)
Mine?
- Statistical Abstract of the United States.
- The Statesman’s Year Book.
- Dorling Kindersley Ultimate Visual Dictionary.
- MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (and its cousins, Turabian & the APA Style guide) not for favoriteness, necessarily, but definitely for usefulness.
And I reserve one player to be named later.
If you were stranded on a desert isle, and you were lucky enough to continue doing reference for your current constituents, what 5 reference sources would you want to have on hand? You're lucky enough to have both high-speed Internet access as well as a safe, climate-controlled space for up to 5 reference works. :-)
Mine?
- Statistical Abstract of the United States.
- The Statesman’s Year Book.
- Dorling Kindersley Ultimate Visual Dictionary.
- MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (and its cousins, Turabian & the APA Style guide) not for favoriteness, necessarily, but definitely for usefulness.
And I reserve one player to be named later.
April 04, 2007
Let There Be Light
All in the Mind has done it again, this time providing a two-part series on the Blind Brain. I've only listened to part one, but I could barely concentrate on driving because the story was so fascinating.
Natasha Mitchell spoke with three scientists deeply involved in the areas of vision, the brain, and plasticity:
- Australian psychologist Zoltan Torey, whom New Yorker readers will remember from the 2003 Oliver Sacks story "The Mind's Eye; What the blind see" as a blind man who replaced his own roof. Torey speaks in detail about how he 'sees' after having been blinded over 50 years ago.
- MIT's Pawan Sinha, who runs Project Prakash, whose goal is to "...help curably blind children, especially in India, access the surgery they need to see, and study how their progress in the effort to gain insights into how the brain learns to see." Fascinating insight into how people can regain sight (mostly those born with curable vision problems), and what happens in the brain when they do.
- Harvard's Amir Amedi, who is studying "brain stimulation techniques to study the brains of blind people" along with Alvaro Pascual-Leone (who's written / studied a lot about brain plasticity).
Absolutely *fascinating* research all around. The All in the Mind site includes the audio version of the show (streaming & a downloadable mp3), a print transcript, brief info. about the show, and links to research by all three of the episode's guests.
If I were a grading kind of girl, I'd give this show an A.
Natasha Mitchell spoke with three scientists deeply involved in the areas of vision, the brain, and plasticity:
- Australian psychologist Zoltan Torey, whom New Yorker readers will remember from the 2003 Oliver Sacks story "The Mind's Eye; What the blind see" as a blind man who replaced his own roof. Torey speaks in detail about how he 'sees' after having been blinded over 50 years ago.
- MIT's Pawan Sinha, who runs Project Prakash, whose goal is to "...help curably blind children, especially in India, access the surgery they need to see, and study how their progress in the effort to gain insights into how the brain learns to see." Fascinating insight into how people can regain sight (mostly those born with curable vision problems), and what happens in the brain when they do.
- Harvard's Amir Amedi, who is studying "brain stimulation techniques to study the brains of blind people" along with Alvaro Pascual-Leone (who's written / studied a lot about brain plasticity).
Absolutely *fascinating* research all around. The All in the Mind site includes the audio version of the show (streaming & a downloadable mp3), a print transcript, brief info. about the show, and links to research by all three of the episode's guests.
If I were a grading kind of girl, I'd give this show an A.
Library Journal's Best Sci-Tech Books, 2006
Interesting list of the Best Sci-Tech books of 2006 in the March 1, 2007 issue of Library Journal:
Science's Big Picture // Best Sci-Tech Books 2006
By Gregg Sapp — March 1, 2007
"From our prehistoric past to the promise and perils of our future, the top science titles of 2006 offer plenty to ponder."
The list includes some titles of interest to armchair cognitive scientists, such as (links to WorldCat; reviews on the LJ site):
Science's Big Picture // Best Sci-Tech Books 2006
By Gregg Sapp — March 1, 2007
"From our prehistoric past to the promise and perils of our future, the top science titles of 2006 offer plenty to ponder."
The list includes some titles of interest to armchair cognitive scientists, such as (links to WorldCat; reviews on the LJ site):
- Mithen, Steven. The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body. Harvard Univ.
- Firlik, Katrina. Another Day in the Frontal Lobe: A Brain Surgeon Exposes Life on the Inside. Random.
- Kandel, Eric R. In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind. Norton.
- Dennett, Daniel C. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. Viking.
April 03, 2007
Difference Between the Future & the Past?
New Scientist reports on several studies which suggest that there may not be such a difference between the future and the past, at least in our brains. From the free abstract on the New Scientist web site, author Jessica Marshall writes:
"IMAGINE your next vacation. You are relaxing on a beach, waves lapping at the shore, a cool breeze wafting through the trees and the sun caressing your skin. Fill in the details. What else do you see? Now, remember yesterday's commute. Again, a picture emerges. You are on the train or in your car, or maybe just wandering from your kitchen to your desk. Can you remember what you were wearing? Perhaps you have forgotten that part already.
"Without breaking sweat, you can hurtle yourself backwards or forwards in time in your mind's eye - what is known as 'mental time travel'. One of these visions really happened and the other was fantasy, yet the act of conjuring them up probably felt very similar. It's as if, embedded somewhere in your brain, there is a time machine that can take you forwards and backwards at will."
Turns out that fMRI's show very little difference in the brain when people are thinking of something in the past or imagining something in the future.
From an evolutionary perspective, this might make sense, according to University of Toronto neuroscientist Endel Tulving: "It is hard to imagine how personal recall alone might be evolutionarily useful, but if remembering how cold and hungry you were last winter helps you realise the benefits of putting food away for the next one, or convinces you to plant a few of your grains instead of eating them all, you stand a much better chance of surviving than someone who cannot project themselves backwards and forward in time. 'I cannot imagine how civilisation could emerge from brains that cannot imagine the future,' Tulving says."
Fascinating in its own right, but this has implications for reference librarians faced with patrons who mis-remember dates, names, and other essential components of their reference question. Marshall paraphrases Harvard psychologist Daniel Schacter: "False memories are not memory deficits at all but by-products of a normal, healthy memory." Not only are our patrons not intentionally misleading us, perhaps their mis-remembering is actually normal -- and even evolutionarily based.
At a minimum, it might make me more sympathetic as I try to help people who swear the article was published in 1990 or 1991 -- when it turns out to have been published in 1988.
Future recall: your mind can slip through time - being-human by Jessica Marshall in the March 24 2007 issue of New Scientist. Available through LexisNexis in your library, or for a fee on their web site.
"IMAGINE your next vacation. You are relaxing on a beach, waves lapping at the shore, a cool breeze wafting through the trees and the sun caressing your skin. Fill in the details. What else do you see? Now, remember yesterday's commute. Again, a picture emerges. You are on the train or in your car, or maybe just wandering from your kitchen to your desk. Can you remember what you were wearing? Perhaps you have forgotten that part already.
"Without breaking sweat, you can hurtle yourself backwards or forwards in time in your mind's eye - what is known as 'mental time travel'. One of these visions really happened and the other was fantasy, yet the act of conjuring them up probably felt very similar. It's as if, embedded somewhere in your brain, there is a time machine that can take you forwards and backwards at will."
Turns out that fMRI's show very little difference in the brain when people are thinking of something in the past or imagining something in the future.
From an evolutionary perspective, this might make sense, according to University of Toronto neuroscientist Endel Tulving: "It is hard to imagine how personal recall alone might be evolutionarily useful, but if remembering how cold and hungry you were last winter helps you realise the benefits of putting food away for the next one, or convinces you to plant a few of your grains instead of eating them all, you stand a much better chance of surviving than someone who cannot project themselves backwards and forward in time. 'I cannot imagine how civilisation could emerge from brains that cannot imagine the future,' Tulving says."
Fascinating in its own right, but this has implications for reference librarians faced with patrons who mis-remember dates, names, and other essential components of their reference question. Marshall paraphrases Harvard psychologist Daniel Schacter: "False memories are not memory deficits at all but by-products of a normal, healthy memory." Not only are our patrons not intentionally misleading us, perhaps their mis-remembering is actually normal -- and even evolutionarily based.
At a minimum, it might make me more sympathetic as I try to help people who swear the article was published in 1990 or 1991 -- when it turns out to have been published in 1988.
Future recall: your mind can slip through time - being-human by Jessica Marshall in the March 24 2007 issue of New Scientist. Available through LexisNexis in your library, or for a fee on their web site.
Peeps Show
It's that time of year again, kids — the peep emails are filling up the in-box. Here are some of my favorites:
Peep Surgery in which the Peeps get anaesthetized and have reconstructive plastic surgery, and we learn that Peeps are made of fluffathelium.
Peep Research in which the Peeps go to the library at Millikin University, and we learn that they read The Journal of Peep Studies and Peeple.
A Peep into the Conservation Lab in which the Peeps are able to help in many areas of conservation, and we learn that "'No Food or Drink' policies are discriminatory, and are strongly discouraged."
Happy spring holiday!
Peep Surgery in which the Peeps get anaesthetized and have reconstructive plastic surgery, and we learn that Peeps are made of fluffathelium.
Peep Research in which the Peeps go to the library at Millikin University, and we learn that they read The Journal of Peep Studies and Peeple.
A Peep into the Conservation Lab in which the Peeps are able to help in many areas of conservation, and we learn that "'No Food or Drink' policies are discriminatory, and are strongly discouraged."
Happy spring holiday!
April 01, 2007
Librarian Essentials: beverages, food, and ...
Lovely video about librarian migratory habits, created by Williams College librarian Nick Baker. I met him at the most recent librarian gathering event in Baltimore.
March 28, 2007
Veterinary Audiology
Some interesting research going on at UConn: "A UConn hearing expert has adapted human audiology technology to dogs and opened what may be the only site in the United States that offers hearing loss testing for canines."
Read more about this fascinating work in the UConn Advance.
March 26, 2007
Yahoo's Personalized Shortcuts
Great InfoTip from Mary Ellen Bates about Yahoo's search shortcuts.
Not only can you use shortcuts like weather baltimore (if, say, you're going to Baltimore for ACRL this weekend) to see the weather forecast for Baltimore or traffic hartford -- and check out Yahoo's List of Shortcuts), but you can create your own.
Mary Ellen tells us a few she's got, like !wiki, which is sort of like Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky", wherein !wiki evolution takes you to the Wikipedia page on evolution, without passing Go!, and without looking at a bunch of results on Yahoo!. The redirect is so fast I can't even grab the yahoo URL to show you -- you'll have to try it yourself at Yahoo's search page.
She says it's simple to create your own, following Yahoo's instructions. Check out Mary Ellen's Librarian of Fortune blog, too.
Not only can you use shortcuts like weather baltimore (if, say, you're going to Baltimore for ACRL this weekend) to see the weather forecast for Baltimore or traffic hartford -- and check out Yahoo's List of Shortcuts), but you can create your own.
Mary Ellen tells us a few she's got, like !wiki, which is sort of like Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky", wherein !wiki evolution takes you to the Wikipedia page on evolution, without passing Go!, and without looking at a bunch of results on Yahoo!. The redirect is so fast I can't even grab the yahoo URL to show you -- you'll have to try it yourself at Yahoo's search page.
She says it's simple to create your own, following Yahoo's instructions. Check out Mary Ellen's Librarian of Fortune blog, too.
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