Neglect

Oh I've neglected it again! In July I was all, "I won't abandon you again, my dear blog!" and then look what happens. Two months later and I'm MIA. Sorry blog. I still care for you.

Themes of neglect in our online lives seems to have become a recurring theme in my life. Here in my personal online life, I've neglected the blog. In my professional life, I decided to make an official Twitter account for the library, only to find that someone else on staff had done so--and then posted twice, on the same day, in May. Never posted again.

So, I tracked down the creator, found the password, and now our little zombie Twitter is up and eating brains with the best of them. (Don't you love Halloween and all the monster jokes that come with it?!)

Technologies like Facebook, Twitter, or many other social media tools are so easy to use that many people sign up and promptly forget about them. That, or they sign up and then they can't figure out how to effectively use it and abandon it. There are lots of reasons for this, but one seems to be the age old problem: peer pressure. Group think.

Everyone else is doing it.

At WiLSWorld, every single presenter made the same point, in one way or another: don't adopt a technology that doesn't serve your patrons. Don't adopt something because it is "cool." Don't do something because some other library that you admire does it.

DO adopt tools that will effectively serve various parts of your population. Our Facebook and Twitter presence means nothing to those patrons who come in every single day. They don't need a reminder about the booksale. But it does serve our patrons who come in once a month, and then only to pick up their holds.

Remembering to use technology effectively,and to keep it current can be hard. I love technology, I love social media, I love the interwebs, but even I find it hard. Like anything else, it takes discipline! I've started spending the first 20-30 minutes of my workday scheduling Tweets and checking up on followers, @ responses, etc. What about you? How do you keep on top of the social media world?

School Design & Social Change

Felt & Wire is seriously hitting it out of the park this week. Check out this amazing project that pairs students with college and professional design mentors and helps them use design to change their school and address social issues.

My high school experience was pretty great. I wasn't cool, but I had such amazing friends that I thought we were cool. It didn't matter if we were popular, because we were so clearly the most awesome group of people around. (I am sure many people felt this way, but for real, Tosa East class of '04, my friends were the best.) What made us feel that way was that there was always room for a new friend, always room for us to be whoever we wanted to be, and always room for us to screw up or have emotional breakdowns or date the wrong person or totally humiliate ourselves. That kind of breathing room is rare in high school. Do I think design can change that? Eh. Do I think empowering teens to change their environment, with any given toolset, can? Yes. Yes. Yes.

Frankenstein Letterpress

It isn't Halloween yet (but I'm already dreaming of it!) but a recent post on Felt & Wire made me think of everyone's favorite monster, Frankenstein. It's in reference to this awesome Print is Alive poster created by Martin Venezky and ThirdBay Letterpress. You should definitely check out the interviews about both the text and the art. Their description of the printing process makes you realize that print (as in old fashioned printing, on actual presses, not digital printers) is truly a living process. Small variations occur, the process works to make something new, and the end result is a poster ready to hang on a wall in your home.

photo source