David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

Hacking, Making, & Creating at the Library – a webinar

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I gave this presentation last week at a webinar for the Southeastern New York Library Resources Council. There were a LOT of great questions afterwards. Lots of libraries are thinking about hackerspaces, makerspaces, etc … and trying to answer the “why” – as in why should we do this? What’s available? What are other libraries doing?

This presentation gave an overview of what’s happening, and also gave some tips on where to start.

Fun times!

EveryoneOn – a Digital Literacy Campaign

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Have you heard about the EveryoneOn campaign? I saw some early info about it, then didn’t hear anything else. But I met some people working on the project while at SXSW, and it actually does sound like a great idea (assuming they can get buy-in from local libraries)!

So – here’s some info they sent me to explain what’s going on:

The goal of the campaign is to help get every American online so they can enrich their lives through access to more job opportunities, education, government resources and saving time and money.

The messaging for EveryoneOn includes the promotion of libraries as a vital tech hub in the community. The campaign sentiment is “we love the Internet” AND “we love libraries.” Especially on the social media communities, we’re sharing a lot of data about the role of libraries in digital literacy and also promoting the types of innovative services they provide. The training center locator (searched by zip code) includes many libraries, so this is helping to connect libraries to their communities.

Libraries can get involved by:

  • Helping to spread the word about the campaign – Like/follow us on FB and @everyone_on, share digital literacy success stories on our FB page.
  • Submit themselves to the EveryoneOn locator if they have digital literacy courses by emailing us at [email protected].
  • Encouraging people who are new to the Internet to go to EveryoneOn.org for resources, sign-up for an email newsletter, and then like/follow on social as well.

All of the info on how to get involved is aggregated in an online toolkit for libraries and partners, and a new site with digital literacy resources can be found here.

One BIG thought I had was this – how does this benefit libraries? In talking with the two people I met, they thought that libraries were already working hard to bridge the digital divide, but not everyone knows about it. So this  national Ad Council campaign has the potential to give the issue … and libraries a lot of much-needed visibility.

Sounds cool to me – definitely worth finding out more! Here’s a video connected with the project:

My #ideadrop presentation During SXSWi

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Video streaming by Ustream

While I was at SXSW in Austin, TX last week, I had the pleasure of giving a presentation/interview/livestream at the #ideadrop house. The video is embedded in this post.

What’s the ideadrop house? From the livestream text:

“On 3/8, DLF brings you a live stream of the ER&L + ProQuest #ideadrop house in Austin, TX. The #ideadrop house is a space dedicated to library and information professionals to experience the diversity of SXSW speakers in the context of libraries and library-related technologies and topics.

Influencers, thought leaders, artists, hacktivists, academics and creators join the #ideadrop library house during March 8-12 at SXSW Interactive to discuss many topics including: SOPA/PIPA, free speech, privacy, open access, archives, values, humanity, civic start up efforts, civil liberty, liberty, network freedom, information access, open data, museums, community engagement, ux, social media, digitization and open source technologies.

Live streaming made possible by the Digital Library Federation (DLF)”

So – Lisa Carlucci and I talked about online conversations and community in the library world – fun talk! Make sure to watch and listen … then leave a comment here!

Google Reader is Going Away – We Will Survive!

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Google just announced the demise of Google Reader – a tool I use to read RSS feeds with, and am in pretty much every single day. That’s probably how many of you guys read my blog, too – darn that Google!

But never fear – Stephen Abram is here to help! He has gathered some relevant stories, blog posts, and alternatives together, so you and I don’t have to - go read his post. Looks like I’ll be checking out Feedly, NewsBlur, and The Old Reader for sure.

Here are some other ideas for subscribing to my blog and others:

  • Get a new feed reader (see above).
  • Subscribe with email – great if you don’t subscribe to too many blogs and news sites.
  • Subscribe with Twitter or Facebook. Many blogs and news sites (mine included) post a link to Twitter when a new article is posted. Sort those into a “geek library” list, then go visit it once a day or once a week. Problem solved!

Other options? Let me know in the comments. And – thank you for reading! You’re awesome!

Pic found at Silicon Valley Business Journal