Here’s a relevant topic for libraries: how to get the most from your Facebook and Twitter accounts.  Did you know that 225 million people have Twitter accounts, and 51% of people 12 and over have Facebook accounts?  Here are some ideas and suggestions to make social media effective for your library.

Twitter – A key question:  what can you say in 140 characters?  Another idea: retweets are free advertising for your library!  People are talking about your library now, and you should be part of the conversation.  So don’t be passive and build an audience using Twitter.

Facebook – This is a good way to provide information about your library, including news and event notifications.  You can also ask for feedback from your customers.

Recommendations:  Provide staff time so that your Twitter and Facebook pages will be up to date.  Follow people back on Twitter, and respond to comments made on social media so people will see that you are interested in their comments.

Note:  I’m glad this is a blog post and not a tweet because I’m way over 140 characters!

In that vein, I am going to present to you a summary of their top ten benefits of tough economic times in reverse order;

10. Refresh Your Organization- This is the opportunity to look at the positions in your organization to see if the needs can be met through making positions more diversified or by changing the roles and services provided by the positions. You should be asking yourself if there is a need for the position, how else it can be filled, what else can be done? How much of the work is really relevant and how much is just filler? Its important to make the positions more fulfilling and satisfying by utilizing the talent that the employees.

9. Developing Staff Skills – Tough times can give libraries the opportunity to learn and grow from each other. Instead of paying for coaches and consultants, you can utilize the knowledge of your staff to train other staff members. Its important to allow staff to cross train other staff in a various roles and positions to give them the opportunity to grow and help people on multiple levels. Allowing staff to work together to teach each other can also help staff work more effective in teams, improve moral, or to work more collaboratively.

8. Make New Friends- In the good times, all these good friends existed out there but we weren’t talking to them. Now, in the hard times, we need to renew these friendships and make new friends. It’s important that you rely on local organizations and that you encourage them to rely on you for the resources that both can share. For example, the library can supply the community space for a food or hunger organization and the organization can provide the program.

7. Finally Write That Grant – Get someone who has an affinity for writing, has attention to detail, and most importantly has an interest in writing a grant. It would be helpful to get someone on your staff to help review state and federal grants so that they get trained (for free) about the grant writing process. You can also utilize volunteers who are looking to keep their work experience solid while they are unemployed to write grants.

6. Say It Better (Improve Communications) – good old fashion face-to-face communication. These times we have gone through have created so much fear and libraries are relearning the importance of communicating effectively to staff. Simple things, like leaving your door open, can help staff change their perception of you.

5. Kill Mission Creep – The most important skill a manager has is to demonstrate confidence with a clear message and knowing what they want. You want staff to get behind your initiatives and know where the library is headed. It’s important to revisit the strategic plan to make sure that all staff is working towards the same goals. Bad things start to happen if the only thing your working towards is keeping the doors open. Figure out what is it you really want to do and do it really well instead of trying to do to many things part way. In order to accomplish this, you should figure out how to say no to things that lie outside of goals of the strategic plan.

4. Enjoy Spring Cleaning (Leaner Facilities) – There is a lot you can do to fix up and change your facility for little to no money. Take this opportunity to clean out and throw away what you don’t need and to create a leaner space. Remember the adage, there is a place for everything and everything in its place and having too much “stuff” around the building leads to less efficiency. Explain the why’s of why a leaner space is a better space. For example, decrease the number of flyers on the desks and teach staff to be better salesman with face-to-face interactions.

3. Weed’em and Reep – Many libraries are weeding significant portions of their non-fiction collections to make room for more computers and chairs or other resources that patrons may need at a higher level. Perform a turnover analysis on all of your collections and anything that is low should be considered for downsizing.

2. Meet New Needs and Create New Users – Its important to have fun and change with the needs of the community to gain a new set of users. If people had an experience that is relevant to their lives, its more likely that they will vote in favor of the library when it comes time to go to the taxpayers for funding. We have created many rules to preclude patrons from using the facilities and we should be starting to change to more welcoming spaces.

1. Adjust Your Attitude – A fish stinks from the head down. Managers and leaders who are up against the challenges of the economic downturn and are negative will not inspire staff to rise above the challenges to solve the problems. By solving the problems from a positive space the manager creates a sense of team and comradely. Even if you’re not in a leadership position its possible to lead through your attitude towards staff and situations.

We are also still recruiting bloggers for the conference. No experience is required, but great writing skills are desirable. Drop us a line through the contact form with your name, title, library, and blog URL (if you feel like sharing), and we’ll get you all set up. If you have submitted your information to me already, you’ll be hearing from me very soon.

Are you heading to Midwinter? What are you looking forward to most? Least? Feel free to leave us a comment and let us know. And don’t forget to hit the 2008 Midwinter Meeting Wiki when planning your trip!

Monday morning’s speaker was Geoff Livingston, co-author of the book Now is Gone: A Primer on New Media for Executives and Entrepreneurs, and contributor to the blog of the same name, carrying on the conversation started by the book. This morning’s breakfast was a discussion of the differences between audiences, communities, and stakeholders, and how using social media varies from types of user bases. Geoff posted a sort of preface to the Breakfast on his blog, which bloomed into quite a discussion online, and translated to a discussion at the event, which was very, very cool to watch.

What I realized after attending the Social Media Breakfast, as I munched on my bagel and lox, is that for quite some time the PLA Blog definitely has an Audience, a group of people consuming the content. The discussions that came from posting the Service Responses (Stakeholder-oriented feedback), and the comments we receive during conferences are the closest we’ve come to being Community. However, what hasn’t happened here is an all-out Community effect, a full-duplex give-and-take of discussion, ideas, whatever floats your boat as the reader.

So my question is this: In your opinion, what would encourage the growth of community interaction here on the PLA Blog? What would get you posting comments, submitting stories, case studies, questions, and pictures from your libraries, and just generally make the blog more interactive? Do you see this blog as a potential for Community, or is it strictly straight information for you? Is your idea of public librarian Community elsewhere?

I’m very interested in your responses to these questions, whether it’s in the form of comments here on this post, response posts on other blogs, or in email, and I’d like to try to incorporate these responses somehow in planning for the blog going forward. Let us know what you think!

If you’re interested, drop us a line through our contact form as soon as possible, including your full name, title, library or organization and blog URL (if you have one/feel like sharing it), so we can get you all set up.

For our readers who can’t join us in The City of Brotherly Love, keep an eye on the blog for reports from sessions, meetings, parties, and more!

ABOUT THE PROGRAM
The University of Pittsburgh and the American Library Association were pleased to announce in 2006 the creation of the Spectrum Doctoral Fellowship program funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and designed to increase racial and ethnic diversity among our profession’s next generation of LIS leaders.

ABOUT THE FELLOWSHIP
The Spectrum Doctoral Fellowship provides full tuition and annual stipends of $20,000 to Fellows for the first two years of study.
Partnering programs provide full tuition and stipends to their Spectrum Fellows for all remaining years of study. Six inaugural Spectrum Doctoral Fellowships were awarded in 2007. We are pleased to announce that Fellowships are available for individuals beginning doctoral studies in the Fall of 2008. To underscore the fellowship program’s emphasis on leadership, all Spectrum Doctoral Fellows will attend the expense-paid E.J. Josey Doctoral Leadership Institute held in conjunction with the 2009 annual meeting of ALISE, the Association for Library and Information Science Education, and named for the University of Pittsburgh Professor Emeritus acknowledged as one of the LIS profession’s leading diversity advocates.

ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS
To be eligible for a Spectrum Doctoral Fellowship:
* Applicant must be a citizen or permanent resident of the U.S.
* Applicants should be of American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino or Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander heritage.
* Applicants must exhibit intellectual curiosity, interest in the LIS field and its sub-fields (i.e., archival science; academic, school, or other types of librarianship, medical informatics; etc.), evidence of academic excellence, effectiveness as a communicator, the ability to excel as a scholar or executive administrator in the LIS field, and a strong commitment to diversity.
* Applicants need not have received a Spectrum master’s-level scholarship to be eligible, but must meet the requirements of each participating program to which they are applying.
* Applicants must be admitted to one or more of the ten participating PhD programs by February 1, 2008.

The ten participating programs are University of Pittsburgh, University of Arizona*, University of California at Los Angeles, University of Michigan*, Rutgers University*, Simmons College*, Syracuse University*, University of Tennessee at Knoxville*, University of Texas at Austin*, University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Applicants must apply to one or more of the participating programs by the January 18th deadline and must inform programs that they have applied for the Spectrum Doctoral Fellowship. Participating programs have agreed to make early admission decisions on Spectrum Doctoral Fellowship applicants, but in order to be considered applicants must complete applications to LIS programs by January 18th and must notify the programs of their interest in the Spectrum Doctoral Fellowship as well. Note this may not be the posted deadline for a particular program.

* Indicates Participating Programs with no 2007 Spectrum Doctoral Fellow in residence. Preference will be given to applicants who have applied to participating programs that do not currently have Spectrum Fellows.

QUESTIONS
Please contact Program Director, Dr. Toni Carbo, Professor, University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences and Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, at with questions regarding the Spectrum Doctoral Program.

If you have questions regarding the online application process please contact Gwendolyn Prellwitz, Program Officer, ALA Office for Diversity & Spectrum at 1.800.545.2433 ext. 5048.
email:
website: www.ala.org/diversity

As you think about your resolutions for the New Year, why not resolve to make your library a great educational asset within your community? This webinar will show you how to leverage social networking tools such as del.icio.us and Librarything to enable knowledge sharing and create collections of information around professional development. Ten key themes are presented to empower library staff as well as to increase a library’s value within the community. Presented by guest speaker Ed Rossman, adult services librarian at Shaker Heights Public Library and author of Castles Against Ignorance: How to Make Libraries Great Educational Environments.

Be Safe, Not Sorry: Protecting Your Data
PC Magazine Learning Center self-paced course, four 30-minute webcasts

Are you doing everything you can to protect your data? Malware—from viruses to spyware—continues to plague many businesses, not to mention internal security threats. Does your small business have a holistic security strategy in place?

Don’t have a plan to secure your business data? Let the expert editorial staff of PC Magazine teach you everything you need to know. Attend this course of four dynamic online webcast lessons each of which includes practical downloadable coursework.

Even though we aren’t “businesses” per se, libraries are large organizations dealing with computers — public and staff — and their issues. This course, which you can do at your own pace, offers something a bit deeper than your average article about vanilla virus protection, and will give you excellent fodder for your next coffee with the tech folks.

If you like guided tours and hanging out with other librarians, check out the Tours section of the conference site. Quite a variety of quality experiences is available, some with multiple times to choose from, including:

• Life & Times of F. Scott Fitzgerald Tour
• Stillwater, Minnesota tour
• Take on the Twin Cities! tour

You can also hit the FREE Special Early Literacy-focused Tour on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 10am. The Minneapolis Public Library will offer guided tours of its new downtown library building at 300 Nicollet Mall with special emphasis on the Children’s Library and early literacy environments. The tour will highlight areas of the library that address early literacy learning needs as well as give ideas on how to enhance early literacy environments in your library. This tour is limited to the first 100 people who register via email! Send an email to to sign up.

In other speaker news, the speakers have been announced for the ever-popular author lunches. Just a nibble of the speaker list includes Meg Cabot (author of The Princess Diaries series), Arthur & Pauline Frommer (of the famous travel guides), and Nancy Pearl (book recommender extraordinaire!). For the full menu, visit the Meal Events section of the conference site.