virtually a librarian

A new blog dedicated to discourse on social mobile practices and their intersection with youth and consumer culture got started earlier this month. Called Shift6 (or ^6), it’s written by a group of bloggers, including social network guru, danah boyd. From danah boyd’s blog:

Shift6.net is an “open brand” lab project by the creators of Blyk. Just as “shift 6″ equals “insert here” on your keyboard, Shift6.net is meant to pool ideas about what’s going on in a collaborative and productive way that is transparent and available to anyone who is interested in these issues.

I’m convinced small screen devices, and particularly mobile phones, are going to have a big influence on the way libraries do business in the not too distant future. This is definitely a blog to watch.

So, over the weekend, I decided to quit with the procrastination and make the switch to WordPress. It was all too easy, really. I managed to install WordPress in a flash, import all my content from my old Blogger blog, find a template I was pretty happy with… And then I tried to fix my feed situation so I could still use my existing FeedBurner feed.

I worked through the setup info on the WordPress help site, I Googled, and I installed the plug in… But no matter what I did, I couldn’t make it work.

So I did something I pretty much never do: I asked for help. At BlogOz, someone mentioned that Ninja Blog Setup are great for back-end work. So I emailed them. And (on a Sunday, no less) I got an email back from them in about 20 minutes. The problem was something silly that I’d caused (extraneous text in my permalink structure). I’m not sure that I would have noticed that. But the Ninja Blog man did, and he fixed it, fast. And, it was cheap.

he moral of this story: Next time a technical problem gets the better of me, I know who I’ll be getting in touch with. Sure, I’m all for learning new skills, but seriously… three hours on a Sunday afternoon could be spent on so many other things. And sometimes it just takes a pair of fresh eyes to pick up something silly.

Best of all, they told me what the problem was and how they fixed it, so I did learn something, after all.

Sarah Houghton Jan has posted slides from a presentation she gave at a recent conference, called 20 Steps to Building a Thriving eBranch. The whole presentation is incredibly useful. I spend a lot of time talking and thinking about what I call our “online branch library”, and it’s great to see all the threads come together in a comprehensive, practical presentation. I’ll definitely be referring my colleagues and team to this. Indeed, it’s the first item I’ve added to our team’s new del.icio.us account - and i’ve tagged it MustRead.

What really stood out for me was this quote:

The library’s website, and by extension its entire web presence, is no longer an ‘extra,’ just another PR outlet, or an add-on to your other ‘real’ library services. It is its own branch. Treat it as such, or perish.

Something to ponder…