Pinterest is an interesting tool, for sure.  It allows you to curate (“pin”) pictures from around the web, for from other users, and organize them into themed collections and categories.  While users can comment on their own and others’ pins, the appeal of the site is almost entirely visual.  (I recently described it to someone as “image porn.”)  Seeing the incredibly diverse number of things that people pin is fascinating, and I often find myself repinning (think of it as a form of sharing, much like reposting on Facebook) what others have pinned.

The number of uses and categories is seemingly limited only by your own creativity.  While I often find myself wandering over to Facebook as a small break from regular work, I now have added Pinterest to my rotation of “stuff to look at for fun.”  I anticipate that I will soon fill up my “Cool Ideas” board with stuff I find there.    Organizing ideas, recipes, DIY projects and many, many more.  I have found that I really love Pinterest, when I didn’t think that I would.

The point that keeps running through my mind is, though, “how would a LIBRARY use this?”  To be honest, I don’t have a good answer.  A library could pin book covers, but there’s no function that will allow you to link it back to its catalog.   Local history pics might be kind of interesting but, again, no ability to link back to the library, or to related pictures.  Pictures of programs aren’t really the right kind of content for Pinterest, which is primarily about pure visual appeal.   However, I have seen some individual librarians make very good use of the site; book display ideas, teen program ideas and even a group board for library and information science, featuring cool libraries and library-related pictures.

What does this mean to me, Laura?

• All of your content is public and viewable to anyone.  However, even when Pinterest goes public, the chances of someone seeing something you’ve pinned are fairly low (unless they specifically follow you); only items that get pinned by hundreds of people make the “Popular” board.
• Should your library run out and score a Pinterest invite?  At this point, I’d have to say “no.”  If your library wants to share pictures of things it’s doing, Flickr is a better fit. If you want to try it out though, I’m giving away invites to the first 5 people who comment (appropriately, people) on this post–don’t just holler “First!”  Lameness gets you nada.
• Have ideas about how a library could effectively use Pinterest?  Share!

It’s that time again–time for MeanLaura’s annual roundup of sites you can be wasting your time on, instead of actually working.  After all, the novelty of Angry Birds and Cityville does wear eventually.

DISCLAIMER:  There is probably no educational or CE value in this post anywhere.  Enjoy.

• Incredibox:  By far, the most addictive music-making site I’ve run into in a while.  Create your own, unique choir using beatboxed sounds.  The more you play with it, the more “bonuses” you earn–pre-created animated mixes that are cute and entertaining.
• The Kid Should See This:  I’m almost embarrassed to admit how much time I’ve let my son spend on this site, but it’s truly addicting for both kids and adults.  The site is self described as “Off the grid-for-little-kids videos and other smart stuff collected by Rion Nakaya and her three year old co-curator.”  Carefully-curated YouTube videos of unique visual and/or athletic feats or science experiments, appropriate for kids of all ages.
• Flame Painter:  “Oooh, pretty!” Very cool Javascript painting tool that let s you make nifty psychedelic artwork.  Some of the tools are going to be more complex than little kids can handle, but let’s be honest–you’re going to be the one doing the playing, anyways.
•  This is Why I’m Broke:  Bacon candy canes?  Check.  Google Nike sneakers?  Check.  Netflix for ties?  Yep, that too.  All real products (alas, costing real money).  Even if you’re already broke, you’ll be stunned and bewildered by just what you could buy if you had money.
• God as Computer Programmer:  This one isn’t interactive, but anyone who has done any programming or scripting will get a kick out of this Q&A.  Some important theological questions can be answered, if you think of God in a different light.
• Strange Maps:  Into cartography, but need something different?    Want to know where “pop” reigns in the U.S, versus “soda?”  Middle Earth in Russian?  This site will provide enough interesting maps to help you waste as much time as you need to.
• Portable North Pole:  Make a custom video from Santa, that you can send to anyone, kid or adult.  I used this to send a video to my son (and, you get to choose which list the person is on–naughty or nice–and the video ends differently, depending).  The technology has advanced so far, the integration of your child’s data and even photos is practically seamless.  The production values are very good, and you even have the option to buy a high-quality version for  your own keepsake later.  My seven-year-old son watched this with no disbelief whatsoever and knew, of course, it was the real deal.  After all, Santa had pictures of him and knew all about him.  The only bad moment was when he discovered that Santa had him on the “naughty” list…

What does this mean to me, Laura?

Probably not much, unless I’ve left your favorite out.  Let us know what fun and cool sites you found this year in the comments!

Want to see the 2010 List?

• There is no way to add more than one administrator to the page.  For example, I currently administer OPLIN’s Google+ page; if I’d like to share the responsibility, too bad.  If I get run over by a bus, OPLIN’s in trouble–there’s no one else who will have access to the page.
• It’s incredibly easy to post to the wrong account.  If you’re the administrator, you have to login to Google+ as yourself in order to post to your library’s account.  Google+ makes it way too easy to post something to the wrong account.  You may, inadvertently, end up posting something to your library’s account that was meant for your personal one, and vice-versa.  The user interface for switching is hard to find and gives few or no clues about which account is currently active.
• If you share a personal account, in order to have more than one admin, you can’t tell who posted what.  Personal accountability, when you’re working with an organization’s public voice, is critical.  If someone posts something they shouldn’t have, how will the library know who it was?

What does this mean to me, Laura?

• Go ahead and get that Google+ page for your library.  There’s no reason to put off claiming a presence there.
• However, go forth with eyes wide open.  Make sure you’re very clear on who the administrator will be, BEFORE creating the page, and know plainly who will be making updates making that account.
• Realize that Google+ pages is in a very primitive stage right now.  Undoubtedly, most or all of these issues will eventually get resolved; there’s too much pressure in the social media sphere right now for Google to ignore them forever.  Keep your ear to the ground, especially for announcements about the ability to add more than one administrator.

All too often, when I look at a library’s website, what I see resembles the following:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Praesent nisl odio, suscipit quis imperdiet et, dignissim ut augue. Sed adipiscing rutrum porta. Ut a erat sit amet nisl posuere tincidunt. Nam eu nulla arcu, vitae congue enim. In lacinia mollis hendrerit. Nullam urna turpis, iaculis ut iaculis aliquam, congue in lacus. Etiam varius facilisis erat sit amet euismod. Morbi id gravida ipsum. Integer posuere felis sit amet lorem bibendum nec ornare ipsum tempor. Aliquam lorem augue, ullamcorper sit amet pellentesque et, viverra a sapien. Cras vitae urna nec urna accumsan consequat ut ornare massa. Pellentesque vehicula lacinia massa, sit amet dapibus leo accumsan quis. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. 

Got that?  Me neither.  And, it wasn’t because it was written in fake “Lorem Ipsum” Latin.

If you’re like the typical online visitor, your eyes simply glazed over because you were presented with a huge chunk of text.  Jakob Nielsen, long considered the godfather of web usability, found that people read, at most, 28% of a webpage.  Now, that says “webpage,” not “web item.”  So, if your library’s homepage has other stuff on it besides that hunk of indigestible text, you’re in big, big trouble.  Nobody is reading your verbiage, and now they’re not looking at most of the other content there, either.

Nielsen also found, in that same study, that people only read the entire page if it is 25 words or less.  Knowing that, you might simply throw up your hands and say “We’re screwed.  We can’t possibly narrow our entire front page down to 25 words!”  Well, yes, you’re right.  You probably can’t.

Think about the last time you read an entire webpage, from top to bottom.  What’s that?  You can’t remember?  Chances are, you may never have read an entire page on the Web.  Nielsen found, as far back as 1997, that people scan the Web, they don’t actually read.  What are we scanning for?  That’s easy–we’re looking for things that stand out and/or are relevant to us, individually.  As libraries writing for the public, we can’t always predict what keywords will attract an individual–but we sure can make what we post online easier to digest.  Here’s some help:

• Think of writing for the Web like serving a pizza.  You probably wouldn’t serve someone an entire pizza, unsliced.  It’s too much to manage at one time.  Nobody (Cookie Monster doesn’t count), generally speaking, shoves an entire, uncut pizza pie into his mouth.  Usually, we slice up a pizza.  Even then, slices are too big for our mouths to handle; we are forced to take small bites before we can chew and swallow.  Your writing needs to be like that:  small, digestible bits.
• Bullet points and headers are your friends.  Break that text up into just the highlights and assign each highlight  a bullet point or a header.  People are inherently attracted to bullet points–they’re like flashing Christmas lights.  People also are more likely to read a small bit of text that is just a (very) short summary.
• Live by Krug’s Third Law of Usability.  “Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.”  Yes, you read that correctly.  If you are editing properly, you should be left with only 25% of your original content.

What does this mean to me, Laura?

• Writing well for the Web usually means putting your ego in a drawer.  No matter what you do, people aren’t going to read most of what you write.  Write anyway.
• Narrow down what you write to the absolute essentials.
• Bet you read the bullet points, above, and not a whole lot of the text above them.

• It’s a scary tech word, like something the IT person deals with  (via @epersonae)
• It refers to the container, not the contents.
• It sounds harder to use, like work instead of play (via @mutabilis)

So, I got to thinking about this yesterday. (Should have been writing, I know, I know!)  I looked over at my smartphone charging off my laptop, and I realized that, when I want to do something productive on my phone, I use something called an APP. I proceeded to tweet the following (yes, yet more procrastination)

Honestly, I wonder if library research database use would skyrocket if we just stopped calling them databases & started calling them apps.

Shortly thereafter, a veritable flood of retweets and responses came flying in. (Wow, I wasn’t the only person locked to their computer!)  Many added their agreement and additional points in favor of calling these apps.  (The discussion is just getting started, using the hashtag #callthemapps.)  Turns out I wasn’t the only one to have thought of this:  Heidi Roycroft, a middle school librarian, has been calling them apps this since last fall.  (Great minds think alike?)

“There’s an app for that!” says Apple.  Well, yes there usually is.   After all, what is an app, more than a specialized electronic resource?  According to Wikipedia, an app is:

Application software, also known as an application or an “app“, is computer software designed to help the user to perform singular or multiple related specific tasks.

Just because the application is often accessed via the browser, does that really make a huge difference?  I’m thinking not.

People generally know what an app is.  Databases?  Not so much.  What’s wrong with calling these things something the public recognizes and probably associate with things cool or useful?

Sheehy suggested that we start a national revolution around changing the name of databases to “apps.”  Are you with us?  Comment here, or join the conversation on twitter with the #callthemapps hashtag!

I want you to stop checking into your own library on Foursquare.  Or Gowalla. Or Facebook Places or Google Latitude or whatever location-based app you’ve got.  Just stop it.  You’re missing the point of these things.

I know, I know, being mayor of your workplace is really cool, and you need at least 10 mayorships to get the Super Mayor badge in Foursquare.  Your workplace (i.e., the library where you work) is a really easy score.  After all, you’re there almost every day, right?

But, here’s the problem…

Why should I stop checking in to my own library, Laura?

• Location apps are also meant to help encourage customer loyalty. I’m mostly a Foursquare user, so I’ll use that as my example.  When I pull up a location on Foursquare, I can see if that location or nearby venues offer specials.  Nearly all of those specials are along the lines of “On your nth numbered checkin to our place, you can get a free thingy.”  In other words, “You come here more than once, you get something nice because you’re loyal to us.”  Now, your checking in to your own library doesn’t prevent someone else from getting a special, and your library may not even offer location app specials anyway.  But this point has bearing on the next points, so hang in there with me, ok?
• Being the mayor of your own library means someone else CAN’T be. It’s like Highlander:  “There can be only ONE.”  If you’re the mayor of your workplace, this means that no one else can be, until they somehow check in more times that you do.  If you work there daily, how can someone else (not an employee) steal the mayorship?
• Ideally, you want people to come to your library, and competing for they mayorship or a badge or whatever is another reason to do that. Libraries thrive on loyal customers, just as any other business or institution does.  By holding down the mayorship without any real possibility of outside challenge, it could be discouraging patrons from checking in.  If I see that a venue I check into has a mayor and that I’m “only” 153 days away from the mayorship (meaning, the mayor has checked in here that many times), I may not bother to check in the next time.  That’s fewer checkins for the venue and a potential feeling of disgruntlement for me.

You want someone in your community to be the mayor.  Its one small way to build customer loyalty.

UPDATE:  Thanks to Larry Fischer (@larry_fischer) for making this know to me:  Being mayor of your own venue is actually against Foursquare’s Terms of Service http://support.foursquare.com/entries/199356-what-if-my-employees-are-the-mayor

*******************************************************

Think different.  (Please don’t sue me, Apple.)

This isn’t precisely a technology post. Additionally, it’s not even about Apple products at all. This is some fodder for rethinking some things; perhaps a lot of things. You get to decide which things those are.

I was once asked what advice I would give someone just starting out in public speaking. Would joining Toastmasters help? Speaking in front of a mirror? I’m still not sure what the best advice would have been, but I explained how I came to be comfortable with presenting. In my first career, I was an environmental/outdoor education teacher. My job was to keep inner city kids interested in things like the life cycles of frogs and the dietary habits of turkey vultures*, possibly while it was cold, pouring and said kids had no Gortex raincoats. One learned very fast to make these topics interesting, or 1) the final evaluations from the visiting parents and teachers would rip one to shreds and 2) The kids would probably beat them to it out of sheer boredom**.

However, “interesting” is a tricky word and can mean something different from one person to the next. I discovered quickly that I needed to replace that word with the word “relevant.” It was my job to make my classes relevant to those kids, to the point where they not only weren’t bored, but could make some kind of personal connection to the information I was providing. Without that personal connection, that information would almost assuredly go in one ear and out the other. In other words, it was my professional responsibility to give them a reason to care.

So let’s bring this around to libraries. Of course, we’re concerned about our own relevancy in this increasingly digital era. But I think we get very focused on this aspect and can lose sight of the fact that we, too, have a professional responsibility to give people a reason to care. Sure, right now many libraries are seeing large increases in usage. The sagging economy has suddenly propelled us to relevancy in the eyes of people who are trimming budgets. However, I want to bring this down to a more micro-level approach. Think about individual services you provide in your library and how they are promoted.

Remember, my job wasn’t to make every kid that came through our program want to join the Sierra Club, it was to connect them personally to the environment as a whole through connections to smaller, digestible parts. Libraries could be doing the same thing. For every event your library wants to promote, ask the question, “What does this mean to me, Public Library?” In this instance, “me” is the average patron who has way too many demands on her time, is desperately seeking a job, trying to sell his house, finishing a degree…you get the idea. What will the average “I don’t have time” person gain from this? Will this storytime expose my child to literacy activities that will help him in school? Will my cover letters stand out? Could my house sell faster or for more money?

At the most base level, every patron is asking, knowingly or not: “What’s in this for me?” If you can successfully answer that question for them, you have made that personal connection. Personal connections can result in more broad-based support.

So, think a bit differently. Every time you interact with a patron, are you connecting them to something that’s truly relevant to them, or just pushing something the library hopes people will come to?

_________________

*Turkey vultures are actually very cool birds. Most predators won’t mess with ‘em because one of their primary methods of defense is voluntary regurgitation; yes, that’s right—they throw up on their enemies. And, remember what turkey vultures eat. Carrion. Fun times. (And of immense interest to kids, of course.)

**I actually LOVED this job.

What does this mean to me, Laura?

Just telling people about your library’s stuff isn’t enough.  The name of my blog is what it is for a reason.  People need to know, plainly, what the payoff is going to be for them.  If the payoff isn’t clear, you’re doing it wrong.

How does your library make the payoff clear?

“Though art may be subjective, Web design is not. In Web design, there is a right way and a wrong way to approach layout, navigation, copy, white space, and other critical website components.”—Andrew Follett

If you’re unfamiliar with the idea of computer/media-related Easter eggs, the idea is that a hidden message, joke or even a game is placed in a a computer program, and can only be found if you know where and how to look.  Below, a few to try (and, hopefully, they all still work):

• Google Easter eggs:  15 best hidden jokes
• Mozilla Firefox easter eggs
• Facebook easter eggs
• Adobe Photoshop CS5 easter egg
• The Easter Egg Archive–easter eggs in software, videos, games, music and more

*C’mon, I am NOT the only one who munches on the Easter candy before their kids do…right?

** I assure, you, MY brain is entirely focused on my work.  Honest.  Really.  Look, I’m writing this, aren’t I?