A Happy announcement in the form of a one act play/conversation:

As David Lee King and Michael Porter approach one another, the air crackles with dorky electricity.

Michael: “Hey, have we met?”

David: “Ummm, yeah. Don’t you remember those Internet Librarian Conferences, or when we presented at the Seattle Public Library Staff Day last month? We went out to dinner. Twice.”

Michael: “Ohhhh! Riiiight! That WAS you, wasn’t it? Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. So what do you know, old friend?”

David: “I know you’d better start remembering things, Jack! Oh, also, we have some exciting news to share with LibraryLand.”

Michael: “Is this another one of those self promotion posts that you find on LibraryMan.com all the time?”

David: “Well, yeah, but this one is better. This one has me in it, too.”

Michael: “That would be better. You are a very handsome man.”

David: “And bright too. As bright as the day is long.”

Michael: “Hmmmm….. Of our many outstanding qualities, humility is our most admirable.”

David: “I’ll say!”

Michael: “So can we get around to the announcement yet?”

David: “I suppose so, though I can fill a blog post with witty schnozz all day long.”

Michael: “One’s man’s witty is another man’s yawn.” I don’t know what that actually means, but people say that to me all the time.”

David: *yawns and stretches his neck*

Michael: *ahem* “So the announcement?”

David: “Yes, yes! Well today Michael and I got a letter from Kathleen Hughes, who is the editor of Public Libraries magazine. She said “I’m happy to let you know that the Public Libraries Advisory Committee would love to welcome you aboard as the new Internet Spotlight columnists. Your first column, for the March/April issue would be due on Jan 26. The column can be up to 2000 words.”

Michael: “Wow! That’s cool! We’re going to be the new authors of the Internet Spotlight column in Public Libraries magazine?! Didn’t Steven Cohen write that for years?”

David: “He sure did. And he did an awesome job, too.”

Michael: “So it takes two of us to fill his shoes?”

David: “They told us we had to bring our own shoes, ’cause we couldn’t fill Steven’s.”

Michael: “Well I love shoes, but that is a lot of pressure, man!”

David: “I know! We have the gig, but now we actually have to write good stuff.”

Michael: “Oh that should be easy for us. You are a very hard worker.”

David: “And handsome, don’t forget how handsome I am.”

Michael: “Exactly.”

David: “Why don’t you tell folks exactly WHAT we’ll write about?”

Michael: “Oh, what WON’T we write about? Now is the most exciting time ever for library professionals, in large part because of “internety” things. So that’s what we’ll write about: practical, cool, thought provoking “internety” things.

David: “Dude, “Internety” isn’t even a word! You don’t really want to start off talking about nonexistent words, do you? What kind of precedent does THAT set?

Michael: “I told you that you were a hard worker! You’re already doing a great job of editing and we haven’t even written a word yet!”

David: “You’re right, aren’t you? I really am awesome.”

Michael: “Hear, hear! So anyway, about the Public Libraries Magazine gig, I basically expect this column to mostly write itself.”

David: “I heard the internet can do that now.”

Michael: “Well then that’s what our first column should be about!”

David: “That’s not funny. This is serious business!”

Michael: “It really is though, isn’t it? We’ll be able to share practical technologies and highlight internet tools librarians can really use in their everyday work!”

David: “Well I don’t know about everybody else, but you’ve got ME ready to use the internet!”

Michael: “Me too!”

David: “What?”

Michael: “Exactly.”

David: “I am so going to edit what you write.”

Michael: “Whew! Thanks goodness. I’m looking forward to it.”

David: “Me too.”

Michael: “So when will the first column show up?”

David: “In the March/April issue!”

Michael: “Will our pieces be in the May/June, July/Aug, Sept/Oct, Nov/Dec issues too?”

David: “Yeah buddy!”

Michael: “Sweet!”

David: “Totally sweet!”

Michael: “David, you have to promise me our articles will sound more professional than this conversion.”

David: “Well of course! Thankfully nobody can hear this conversation so I think we’re okay.”

Michael: *clicks off tape recorder in pocket*

(Thanks to Michael Porter for this pic and to Michael Stephens for this pic), and see Michael’s version of this post, too!

C&RL is going open access! They plan on placing articles online six months after publication of the print version, which is a fine place to start. Good for them.

And for kicks – here’s an extremely old article of mine, from 1998: Library Home Page Design: A Comparison of Page Layouts for Front-ends of ARL Library Web Sites. If nothing else, someone might get a kick out of reading it and comparing today’s library websites with my findings from 1998.

I have an article in February’s Computers in Libraries magazine about Kansas City Public Library’s new Subject Guide, topic-driven content push.

Here’s the blurb from InfoToday:

Little Boy Blue Goes High-Tech: Providing Customers with Topic-Driven Content
“Looking for a way to organize your Web links to maximize patron usage and minimize staff time? This article tells how the Kansas City Public Library’s Web team created Subject Guides–Web pages that contain a variety of content focusing on a single topic–to help users quickly find information.”

Enjoy the article! And while I’m at it, I’ll be at the Computers in Libraries 2005 conference coming up in march, speaking about targeting specific groups of customers with your library’s website. Should be an interesting talk. Here’s the blurb on that, as well (taken from the preliminary program):

Targeting Library Web Sites to Specific User Groups
10:30 a.m. – 11:15 a.m.
David King, Web/IT Project Manager, Kansas City Public Library

Meeting the needs of all users in one library site is often an impossible task. When should libraries develop Web sites or Web site areas that target special groups of users? What does a targeted Web site look like? David King focuses in “ready, aim, fire” and outlines methods for identifying how to meet specific user communities such as usability studies and mining Web usage statistics. He looks at ways to tailor sites to meet particular needs and discusses methods of marketing and promoting Web sites to specific audiences by using special tools such as RSS, IM, and/or e-mail. Find out how you can delight library Web site visitors by designing targeted sites that meet their needs.