The authors would very much like to add your experiences with federated search to the book:

We are writing a book entitled “Federated Search: A Librarian’s Guide”. We are searching for library practitioners with implementation experience to get a complete picture of what the profession is looking for and what the current / forthcoming options are. These contributions will be combined with a guide on selecting and implementing a federated search tool. The aim is to illuminate all of the decisions necessary in order to alleviate the pitfalls of the process.

If you are interested in contributing your experience with implementation to the book, please contact me (kewllibrarian02 [at] gmail [dot] com) asap!

Thanks,
Alexis Linoski

It’s important to understand that, on a certain level, the new culture is making it up as they go along. On the other hand, much of the etiquette is really being adapted from early social networking sites like LiveJournal, and even from instant messaging (IM) and email etiquette.

Chris Brogan, co-founder of PodCamp, online community builder and contributor, and all-around networking guy, posted a really interesting and to-the-point post titled “Considering Social Network Etiquette” today, with the open invitation to all to participate in the conversation via the comments. The post covers a few sites like Twitter, Pownce, Facebook, and LinkedIn, but the discussion is certainly not limited to these sites.

Ask your questions. Debate the merits of the etiquette tactics discussed. If you’re experienced and feeling like sharing, definitely participate. Consider this your chance to write a “Dear Abby” to the social networking world on how to interact, or even just to read along and learn a little something.

Twitter is a community of friends and strangers from around the world sending updates about moments in their lives. Friends near or far can use Twitter to remain somewhat close while far away. Curious people can make friends. Bloggers can use it as a mini-blogging tool. Developers can use the API to make Twitter tools of their own. Possibilities are endless!

Twitter accounts are free, and you don’t need a mobile phone to use it, you can do it entirely on the web, if you want. Although Twitter can send real-time posted messages, called “Tweets,” to your phone, it can also send them to you via instant messenger (IM). You can post Tweets to your account from your mobile phone by text message, web access on your phone (there’s a special mobile-friendly URL: http://m.twitter.com), or by IM on your computer, if you don’t feel like visiting the web site. As is the way of text messaging, Tweets are limited to 140 characters, including letters, numbers, and punctuation, so you need to choose your words and text shorthand wisely.

A WBUR (an NPR station) broadcast of On Point on April 27, 2007, included Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, as well as several other guests and callers to talk about The World According to Twitter. The episode is a good, easy overview of the Twitter/hyperconnected social networking mindset, as well as different points of view and questions people have about Twitter, along with mentions of other social networking sites (including LibraryThing). Listen to the archive of this broadcast (Listen on Windows Media Player | Listen on RealPlayer), it’s worth the 48 minutes.

There are several Twitter folks who are doing interesting things with their Twitter accounts, which you can read even if you don’t have a Twitter account of your own. Casa Grande Library in Arizona, under the username cglibrary, posts links to catalog records for books in their collection and their various blogs. TwitterLit posts the first two lines of a book, “so you don’t have to,” and includes links to the Amazon page for the book. BBC News and CNN also have Twitter accounts, where short news story summaries are posted with links to full stories on the sites.

Like most technologies on the web, it’s indicative of a user trend. While not every library or librarian can or needs to find an application of the service, or want an account, it’s worth knowing that this is a type of mindset in our diverse constituency, and that these tools exist.

That said, I do encourage you to play with it, even if it’s just to read a specific Twitter feed (you can even subscribe to a feed via RSS, if you want to follow it in a news reader). And if you find yourself with an account and wanting Friends, you can use nifty tools like TwitterSearch to find people you know. You can find me on Twitter under the name andreamercado.

I’m writing to suggest a library link for your blog. I’m a librarian at the Finkelstein Memorial Library in Rockland County, New York, north of New York City. One of our patrons and her mother donated her late father’s drawings to our library and we have made them available online.

[Link to the collection]

It’s an interesting story. David Friedman was a Holocaust survivor. Friedman documented his agony and torment during the Holocaust through a powerful series, “Because…They Were Jews!” While he was working on this series he found comfort by visiting local libraries and sketching the people he saw. Timeframe: 1962-72.

Friedman’s words: “I needed to forget about the concentration camps and the horror that was there. So it was a pleasure to go to the library.” There’s a poignant human interest story here; showing libraries as a place of relaxation and sanctuary.

I would argue that this is more than a lovely human interest story. This is an example of librarians telling a story, something that Karen Hyman so often speaks about, a low-tech option for offering digital photos (fast-loading HTML, thumbnails for quick viewing, an HTML slideshow that simply refreshes the page and doesn’t require a special plug-in), and definitely taking content from the community and presenting it to the rest of the community in a new and interesting way. It’s providing context for content and communing with patrons. That’s Library 2.0 if I’ve ever seen it.