Welcome to iLibrarian

Mashable has created a one-stop hub for all things Twitter with its new Twitter Guide Book. This aggregated directory of news and resources will be continuously updated by the folks at Mashable.

A new report on mobile technology adoption and libraries was published by University of Cambridge, authored by Keren Mills of the Arcadia Programme.

“The majority of respondents primarily use their phones to make calls, send text messages and take photographs, although they like to know that the other functionality is potentially available. respondents’ use of different forms of media on their mobile phones was mostly limited to viewing photographs. Some used their phones to listen to music or watch videos, but very few used them to listen to podcasts or audio books and only a small number read ebooks or journal articles. Some respondents commented that they prefer to use their iPod or other media player to access these other forms of media.”

Daniel Hooker at Sociallibrarian writes about 10 ways library schools should be teaching social media. This interesting post discusses the benefits of incorporating social media instruction into library school curriculum. Here are the first five ways that LIS programs could be teaching new media, be sure to check out the full post for more.

1. Promoting Content
2. Interviewing
3. News Gathering and Research
4. Crowdsourcing
5. Publishing with Social Tools

Michael Brito, social media strategist and community builder at Intel, blogs for Mashable about 10 Twitter Best Practices for Brands. The article discusses the art of using Twitter effectively for your brand. Here are his top 5 recommendations, be sure and check out the full post for more:

1. Do your research before engaging customers
2. Determine organizational goals
3. Utilize either a branded or personal profile
4. Build your Twitter equity and credibility
5. Track metrics and conversation trends

The Duke University Libraries is now offering the most comprehensive university digital image collection specifically formatted for an iPhone. Through DukeMobile 1.1, the University’s suite of iPhone applications, the libraries are sharing digital materials from 20 collections - nearly 32,000 images in all.

From their press release:

“It includes thousands of photos and other artifacts that range from early beer advertisements to materials on San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury scene in the 1960s. Although a growing number of scholarly institutions offer images and other material online, Duke is the first to offer collections that take advantage of the iPhone’s design, navigation and other features.”

The Teaching Degree.org blog posts about 100 Tips, Tools, and Resources for Teaching Students About Social Media. This useful guide offers tips and resources for educators for instructing students about new media sites. Here are just a few of the 100 articles listed:

• How Social Networking Affects the Student Life Cycle — From Applicant to Graduate.
• How to Manage Your Reputation Online.
• Online Media Law: The Basics for Bloggers and Other Online Publishers.
• Learning and Working in the Collaborative Age: A New Model for the Workplace.
• Personal Branding 101: How to Discover and Create Your Brand.

A recent post on the Netvibes blog titled Using public pages as virtual libraries! contains a list of 11 libraries that are using a Netvibes start page as a public portal or virtual resource center.

via Novus

Photo Credit: Brent Humphreys

Fred Vogelstein writes about the Facebook-Google rivalry in the July 2009 issue of Wired Magazine with Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network’s Plan to Dominate the Internet — and Keep Google Out.

“Today, the Google-Facebook rivalry isn’t just going strong, it has evolved into a full-blown battle over the future of the Internet—its structure, design, and utility. For the last decade or so, the Web has been defined by Google’s algorithms—rigorous and efficient equations that parse practically every byte of online activity to build a dispassionate atlas of the online world. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions a more personalized, humanized Web, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source of information, just as it is offline. In Zuckerberg’s vision, users will query this “social graph” to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire—rather than tapping the cold mathematics of a Google search. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center. In other words, right where Google is now.”

Laura Carscaddon & Colleen S. Harris write for Library Journal about Working the Social: Twitter and FriendFeed: Let these social networking services do the filtering for you.

“Information overload is so five years ago, but the problem it describes is all too real. Fortunately, there’s hope yet for the savvy librarian: Twitter and FriendFeed turn information dissemination on its head, using friends and subscribers as a filter for the best, most credible, and most engaging information out there. As Clay Shirky said at the Web 2.0 Expo keynote in January, the problem isn’t “information overload. It’s filter failure.””

Selene M. Bowlby writes for Mashable about the Top 10 WordPress Plugins to Promote Your Social Media Profiles. This list includes plugins that help bring in updates from your social profiles, your lifestream, and even enable your blog commenters to promote their profiles. Here are the top 3 plugins:

1. DandyID Services
2. Social Media Page
3. Social Profilr

Aliza Sherman at Web Worker Daily writes about the 10 Golden Rules of Social Media and invites others to debate and refine them. Here are her top 5:

1. Respect the Spirit of the ‘Net.
2. Listen.
3. Add Value.
4. Respond.
5. Do Good Things.

Be sure to check out the full post along with the 100+ comments.

The Hongkiat blog has put together a mega-list of 100+ Alternative Search Engines You Should Know. This helpful guide categorizes these niche search engines into the following types:

• E-Book & PDF Search Engines
• Audio/Music Search Engines
• Video Search Engines
• RapidShare Search Engines

If you’re having difficulty keeping track of all your social media profiles, you may want to check out Web Worker Daily’s recent post about Options for Managing Many Online Identities. Charles Hamilton recommends several helpful aggregators such as DandyID which is a simple service that will let you specify your online identity for over 330 social networks. See the full article for more.

The Chronicle of Higher Ed talks with Adam Smith, director of product management at Google in this podcast discussion. The two talk about “Book Search, the proposed settlement in the authors-and-publishers lawsuit against it, what it means for academic authors and researchers and so-called orphan works, and fears of a Google monopoly”.

David Chartier writes for Wired Magazine’s Dual Perspectives about The Future of Social Media - one in which the social Web breaks up the silos and enables true data portability.

“The vision of a web where users are no longer locked up with their content away from others just because they picked a different social networking service, is a big one. “We’re essentially creating virtual reality, except that it’s more of an intellectual, informational reality,” Laporte muses. “It’s hard to imagine what this world will look like … but it’s really about breaking down barriers that, up ’till now, have been about the scarcity of resources and information. Now those are coming down.”"