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Looking for some funky new fonts? Look no further than dafont.com. They have over 7000 fonts with nice instructions on how to install a new font. Many of the fonts are free, but some do involve a charge to download. Pricing information is clearly shown, just something to be aware of.
Kosmix is another search engine with its own unique spin. It offers a suite of five specialized engines: Health, Video Games, Finance, Travel, US Politics, and Autos. Click on the engine you want to use, enter your search terms, and you are led to a list of results. Along the left-hand side of the page, you will see different categories to choose from. These are specialized categories depending on the specific search engine you chose to run. They break the results of your search into handy sections of interest. This is definitely a search engine worth trying out. If you are looking for specialized results in any of their categories, this may be just the engine for you.
Pixsy is a search engine that specializes in photographs and videos. View the latest news, browse by categories, and see your favorite celebrities. The interface is clean and easy to use and the website offers lists of tempting videos and photos to view. You can see the sense of humor in the site, which is a treat. I like a website that doesn't take itself too seriously.
Farecast is a travel site that offers very different information for those traveling by air. You can still search fares as with most sites, but their best feature is their airfare predictions. If you have any flexibility in your travel, you will want to take a look at what the chart looks like for airfares. Amazingly, the search I put in showed that tickets would fluctuate as much as several hundred dollars within a few days! Recommend this one to your library patrons who struggle with larger travel sites to find the fares they are looking for. The graphs make it so much easier to understand!
Medstory is a search engine that specializes in health and medical topics. It is about to be purchased by Microsoft, so it is positioned to become one of the premiere medical sites online. Enter a term to search and you don't just get the list of websites, but you have the option to refine your search either by selecting drugs, conditions, procedures, or personal health. If you click the Research tab at the top, you will find connections to clinical studies, experts, and fields of study like molecular biology and anatomy. It is a very nice presentation of information offering a variety of ways to look at a search and narrow it down to exactly what you need. Add to it the ability to email your results or tag them quickly on del.icio.us, and you have a great site to add to your arsenal.
The New York Times Reader takes Microsoft technology and creates a very interesting, intuitive interface for the newspaper. It is so slick! Yes, you have to download the software and probably some Microsoft updates to run it, but I found that it is worth it. The reader is set up to function just like a print newspaper with sections and articles, but without all of that folding and refolding. You can quickly move from one section to the next, turn pages, read from one article to the next, or just pick out the headlines that you are most interested in. The reader doesn't offer content not available on the Times website. What it improves is the feel of the interface and ease of use. Give this a try if you read the New York Times often or even occasionally. I think it is worth the download.
I had thought about putting up my PowerPoint slides, but they are so very numerous and borrow so much from others that they don't add much to the discussion. The one slide I did that is all mine is Library Director 2.0. I sat and wrote it while waiting for my turn before the City Council this Monday. It was a 2.5 hour wait, so I had plenty of time to think.
So here is my concept of Library Director 2.0.
Less hierarchy more flexibility
We need to flatten out our often very pyramid-like library hierarchies and enable more on-the-fly decision making by our staff. In this way we can become a lot more flexible. Our patrons don't begin to understand that we have a governing board, much less that there is a director, an assistant director, department heads, professional librarians, para-professionals, clerks, and pages. And why should they? We need to simplify, allow decision making by all staff levels to the extent possible and let the point person be the one to deliver the service without having to move people up the hierarchy.
Trust staff – no micromanagement
In my early career, I was lucky enough to be taught how NOT to be a director. I worked for a very intense micro-manager who had absolutely no trust for any of her staff no matter where they fell on the hierarchy. Trusting staff has to be at the core of what we do as directors. We have to trust them to interpret when a patron complaint should be referred to someone else, trust them to deal with the situations they want to, trust them to make decisions about forgiving fines, dealing with disruptions, and extending service beyond the norm. That is their decision as a professional working in our library whether they have an MLS or not. They must be given the parameters, but supported in making the tough decisions where there needs to be flexibility. If we can't trust our staff to a radical level, how in the world do we expect to ever trust our patrons to any level at all? And if you have staff that you can't trust to that extent, what are they doing working at a public library?
Transparency
Open up decision making. We have a policy that I try to adhere to as strictly as I can where department head meetings and other committee meeting minutes will be distributed (via the staff blog) to the entire staff at the same time and within 48 hours of the meeting. I try to do it within 24 hours, but sometimes my schedule doesn't permit that. The minutes make our conversations and decisions public to the library. Our staff need to know what we are discussing, where we are headed, and feel free to respond to what we as the leaders are doing.
Involve all levels of staff in conversation
We have two brand-new committees, Customer Service and Merchandising & Marketing. All levels of staff are represented in the committees, and some of the best ideas have come out of the people who traditionally would not have had a seat at the table. Not only that, but because they have a stake in the decision process, they immediately set to work implementing the recommendations. It is wonderful to work with a staff so willing to share ideas, think outside the current way we are doing things, and then go right to work for the benefit of our patrons.
Explain decisions fully and honestly
I have worked for directors and with directors who don't like confrontation. Well, I don't either. But sometimes it must be done. With so many people sharing ideas and thoughts, I must still be the director and make the final decision or make a recommendation to the board. It is wonderful when I agree with the staff, but that isn't always the case. The fastest way I can undermine all that I am trying to do with staff input and creating conversations is to not be honest about why I am not supporting the common consensus. I liken it to ripping off a bandage. It is much better to do it quickly than to hesitate. So I am bluntly honest when I need to be and don't talk about the facts. Honesty is the best way to go and will lead directly to transparency because you have nothing to hide. Hide behind your library board or just let the matter be dropped without resolving it, and you will find yourself building larger and larger webs of lies to protect the fact that you are not being honest in the first place.
Create a structure that supports quick decision making and implementation
I am still working on this. I think that our committees being made up of all levels of staff helps with this, as does the fact that we listen to our patrons and I always have my ear to the ground listening for new things coming. We were fortunate enough to really implement wireless at exactly the right time for our patrons. With that as the example of a perfect implementation, we have a lot to live up to in the future. I only hope that we can continue to anticipate our patrons' needs. I firmly believe that the next big thing is going to be RSS feeds. Someone is going to finally get those page-like RSS feeds to really rock and then everyone will be using them. Libraries need to be poised with RSS feeds ready to go or be in the horrible position of playing catch-up.
Train staff and encourage them to learn and share knowledge
I encounter librarians often who like to hold on to their knowledge because then they have "their jobs" and no one can take that away. Amazing to me in a profession where we are supposed to be information portals! Anyway, we have to keep our staff well-trained, aware of changing technology, and have them sharing their own specialized knowledge with each other. I am much more likely to recognize a staff member for sharing information than for being excellent but isolated in their knowledge. Training staff these days is so much more than just learning Word or Excel. Our staff is learning Drupal right now, something that would not have been anticipated even a year ago. They have learned to blog and how to IM in the last six months. It is a never-ending process with new tools coming out constantly. The next point is the way I approach it.
Allow play time with technology
This is so important. The concept of PLAY. Staff need play time before they "go public" with a technology. They need sandboxes, space to make mistakes, time to ask questions, and a feeling of safety where they can simply learn at their own pace. I am trying to implement 15 Minutes to Tech at our library, but it has not been fully adopted yet. I think that taking a small piece of time and giving it over to exploration is a great idea. There is so much out there to be aware of!
LISTEN LISTEN LISTEN
I know directors who tell their staff not to come to them with problems unless they also have a solution. I think that is the fastest way to stop conversation and idea sharing. Sometimes problems are so complex they don't have solutions, sometimes that person can see the problem but are not in a position to see a solution, and even more importantly sometimes a problem just needs to be aired and discussed to be seen in a different way. My most important and difficult job as an opinionated director who has a strong sense of what libraries "should" be doing, is to take that step back and listen to my staff. To give them the space to voice their thoughts without being defensive, without interpreting, without any haste to react. Yes, I bite my tongue often. Yes, I sometimes have to have a moment alone afterwards to sigh or groan or yell. But I listen. And then I respond with what I hope is honesty, openness, and trust. I don't micromanage, but I do listen. My door is always open unless someone is in speaking with me. It is open in more ways than physically and my staff knows it.
Offer structures for feedback; staff blogs, department forums, etc.
We have an active staff blog that so many people contribute to. It is amazing. And the most unlikely people on staff take to blogging and reading the blog. Those that I would expect to embrace it can be the most resistant while others who aren't geeky at all find the format familiar and comfortable. Our comments are turned on. Our part-time staff are encouraged to read and contribute. And best of all, it gave our staff a place to play with the technology before implementing Drupal!
It all comes around to the same place - equality, openness, honesty, trust and communication. That is what I think Library Director 2.0 is all about. We must do it with our staff before we can even think of doing it with our patrons. But once our staff is being treated this way, it will be so natural for them to approach patrons with a 2.0 spirit.
I spent the morning giving a presentation about Library 2.0 to other members of our library system. The room was full, and I am positive that I got people thinking from their responses. I will be sharing my handouts and PowerPoint probably tomorrow with the caveat that I stole blatantly but gave credit. :)
My question for those of you who have done this sort of presentation before is what to say to those people who claim that they don't have time to do any of this. I tried to emphasize the fact that I was not insisting that they blog or IM. Rather that the approach their patrons, their community and their own jobs with a fresh perspective that is Library 2.0. Still, the person persisted in saying that there wasn't time for what I was talking about and that I didn't understand the pressures they are under as a small library director. Sigh. Any good responses?
Here are the ones I tried that didn't work, meaning they just had the person arguing more emphatically:
Don't do the technology, do the overall concept of 2.0.
Take the technology in small steps and make it part of every day.
Play, reduce the pressure and have fun with it.
Not doing this now when we are all learning it together puts you behind and catching up takes a lot more time and effort than learning it progressively now with the group.
It does take a changing of priorities, but that may be a good thing.
Any others??
Using movie ratings to decide if your child should see a movie is a very risky business. To take some of the risk out of the decision, you can visit Kids-in-mind, a website that offers ratings of movies based on sex/nudity, violence/gore, and profanity. Each area of concern gets rated on a 1 to 10. Add to it the detailed reviews and you get a fairly comprehensive look at each film. They review all sorts of movies, not just those specifically for children. Recommend this to concerned parents or adults who don't want sexuality or violence in their films.
Gamevial offers free online games. They include Flash and Shockwave games with sports, puzzles, exploration, arcade, and classic games. Make sure you download the Shockwave player before you start trying to play.
The Finance and Investing RSS Feed Directory offers RSS feeds specifically on that subject. You can search feeds by keyword or browse by categories that include banking, bonds, debt management, investment, loans, rates, stocks, real estate, and venture capital.
The Presidential Timeline of the Twentieth Century offers an interactive timeline filled with digitized content from the collections of twelve Presidential Libraries. The site includes Hoover, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush the Senior and Clinton. It is an intriguing mix of dates, factual information, digitized documents and photographs.
DrugLib is a handy resource for prescription and over-the-counter medications. It offers a variety of ways to find the drug you are interested in researching: alphabetical by name, by condition, most frequently searched, and by category/class. When you find the drug you want, the site offers links to basic drug information such as contraindications, side effects, precautions, and a summary of what the drug does. But it also has links to recent news, published studies and clinical trials, offering a lot more information than many other drug sites.
Ever find exactly what you want on Google or Yahoo and then when you click the link you are on a different part of the site? Well, the Be the Bot service fixes that issue for you. On their site they explain that Google and Yahoo give websites "headers" which allow them free access to sites that otherwise require purchasing access or registering a membership. If you use this site, it uses the header technique and you can see the sites as they are presented in Google or Yahoo. Slick and simple.
Animal Planet has a very handy dog breed directory. You can either browse alphabetically by breed, or enter your lifestyle preferences into the search engine and find dog breeds that suit you best. Each breed has historical information, temperament, upkeep, health, form and function. You are also referred to related dogs to compare.
Citebite is a great idea! You paste in a chunk of text from a website and put in the URL of the site and then Citebite gives you a link that will return you to your selection with your quotation highlighted. Perfect for using when referring colleagues to a specific section of a larger text. Much easier than saying, scroll past the photograph and it's the fourth paragraph past the McDonald's on the right.
This is a great place to come if you are not yet running a blog or are considering changing to a different blog platform. They offer comparisons of all of the main blogging systems: Blogger, Movable Type, WordPress, and many less-well-known ones. Additionally, people contribute to discussions in the forums and you can create a personalized search of the blogging platforms by specifying your individual priorities and needs.
SoundtrackNet is a site dedicated to the music of movies and TV. They offer reviews of soundtracks, lists of the best soundtracks of 2006, interviews with composers, and news. Additionally, they offer a podcast that you can subscribe to via RSS.
LitSum offers free summaries of literature. The summaries offer chapter by chapter content. Personally, I detest summaries of literature, but I know that some books can be a mountain to climb. It will also save library budget money on Cliff Notes.
Parentography is a site that connects families to information on family-friendly places to visit across the country. You can review local sites yourself, read the reviews of others, rate places that you have been to, share photographs, and more. The site focuses on services for children, restaurants, lodgings, activities, parks, and major attractions. Recommended for traveling families to discover what the locals consider worth rating and reviewing.
Healthmap offers a map of global disease alerts. You can choose your news source from the World Health Organization to Google News. Additionally, you can look at all diseases, or single out the ones you are most interested in knowing about. The alerts then appear as flags on the map. By clicking on them, you get the headline and a link to the full story.
Neighboroo is a site that lets you look at a map of the United States and see population change, population density, female/male ratio, life phase, politics, religion, housing, schools, safety, health, climate, income, age, ethnicity, and historical maps. It is fast loading, full of information, and easy to use.
Jott is a very clever idea for those of us who are always thinking of something when we don't have a pen at hand and then manage to forget it in seconds. You simply call Jott's toll-free number, say the message you want saved, and then Jott will email it to you or text it to your phone. Slick and simple.
Picklish is a download that allows you to create your own photo and video gallery using Flash. It runs on both Windows and OS X. I enjoy the way that the photographs are movable, clickable and then resize so that you can see your choice more clearly. This looks like a great option for collections of photos that you want on your library website.
yourminis.com is a site that uses Flash to allow you to create your own personalized webspace with content and links to popular online sites, RSS feeds, podcasts or videos. It is easy to use, allows you to import (and export) your OPML (or blog feed list), and lets you add individual blogs or subscribe to a collection of themed blogs. This is a very simple and graphic way to start reading blogs and may appeal to a different group of people than Bloglines does.
The FreeCountry is a site that offers free choices for programmers, webmasters and security. They have listings of free compilers, source code, programming tools, emulators and documentation. For those of us who are a little less skilled in high-end technology, they have lists of free applications such as word processors, image editors, drawing programs, CD and DVD burners, and hard drive maintenance.
I would love to see public libraries embrace the free software movement and adopt the software throughout their libraries. I did offer OpenOffice at my previous library but the patrons did not like it. They had difficulty opening their files, though not through any fault of the software itself. It was just different enough from what they were used to that it made it hard.
I personally used OpenOffice for some time and really liked it, though it made file sharing more challenging. Is any library out there running on freeware and loving it?
Found on Marylaine Block's Neat New Stuff list (which you should take a look at if you don't know about it already) is Homeschooling and Libraries, a blog that focuses on the complex relationship between homeschooling families and public libraries. If you are in a homeschooling community, this is the blog for you.
I really like the way they share not only online resources but also recommended books. They also focus on specific types of homeschooling like Christian and unschooling, rather than lumping all home schoolers together. This is the mark of a resource that really understands the breadth of home schoolers.
Portovert is a new magazine, currently available only online, that focuses on green choices for weddings. The premiere issue offers information on quick ways to make your wedding eco-friendly, decor, charitable gift giving, beauty tips, and where to have your reception. This is a unique angle for a bridal magazine, and certainly fills a niche.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art offers an interactive timeline of art history on their site. You can look at the timeline by periods, view special topics such as regional art or different media, and browse by specific artist or subject.
There are some sites that embody the power of the Internet. nuclear NIGHTMARES is one of these. It is a photographic and informational journey through the aftermath of Chernobyl 20 years later. Each photo has captions that you find by putting your mouse on the bottom of the image. This technique is very powerful, allowing you to see and absorb the image before reading the text. Beware, this site will darken your day with their power.
Homeschool Launch is a site all about home schooling. It offers breaking news affecting home schooling, a collection of home schooling blog feeds, and recommended educational sites.