Robin Broitman at IIG has put together a Superlist of What NOT To Do In Social Media, linking to eye-opening examples of blunders made by major corporations and individuals when launching social Web initiatives. Learn by (bad) example and avoid the social media mistakes listed in this handy guide including:
A recent article in the New York Times reports that e-books are steadily gaining popularity and according to publishers such as HarperCollins, Random House and Simon & Schuster, sales of these digital publications have tripled or quadrupled in the last year. In Turning Page, E-Books Start to Take Hold, Brad Stone and Motoko Rich discuss the rise of the Amazon Kindle and other electronic book readers.
“Amazon’s Kindle version of “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” by David Wroblewski, a best seller recommended by Ms. Winfrey’s book club, now represents 20 percent of total Amazon sales of the book, according to Brian Murray, chief executive of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide.”
via Micro Persuasion
(CNN) -- The "semantic Web" does not sound like it's fun and easy to use, but it could make surfing Web 3.0 a more rewarding and interactive experience. Some believe it could even lead to a new form of artificial intelligence.
Spotlets pop up on a 'semantic Web' kiosk run by a pair of German researchers.
The idea behind the semantic Web, very broadly, is that things on the Internet will be described with descriptor languages so that computers can "understand" what they are.
An object might be a marked as a car part or a person, for instance. If objects were thus identified, an enormous network of linked data would emerge and machines, with their vast processing speeds, could suggest surprising and useful links that the human mind could never come up with, posing the possibility of a new sort of artificial intelligence.
The semantic Web is considered a key part of the upcoming "Web 3.0." It's starting to occur here and there, but widespread adoption is still a long way off.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/12/17/db.semanticweb/index.html
UT-Austin Libraries has a huge eBook collection, about 600,000 titles in all. Lindsey Schell, Librarian for Journals, English Lit, and Women’s Studies, has had plenty of experience in acquiring eBooks for UT-Austin.
In this interview, Lindsey and I discuss the variety of eBook collections/platforms at UT, the successes and challenges of their eBook program, purchasing eBooks through Patron Driven Acquisition, and other neat and cool things about eBooks. So, if you have eBooks, want to expand your collection, or are on the fence about starting an eBook collection, give it a listen. You’re bound to learn something. And, hopefully you’ll be jazzed about eBooks!
Other NSR interviews can be found on our Interviews page.
Thinking about starting a wiki for your library? Read about the different ways that four companies are making the most out of wikis and reaping the rewards of these collaborative tools in Wikis That Work In The Real World. Here’s a bit about just one:
“Angel.com, a 70-employee subsidiary of Micro Strategies that provides interactive voice response software, has more than 10,000 internal- and external-facing SocialText wiki pages. That’s from about 100 employees, customers, and partners with access.
One customer-facing wiki acts as a knowledge base for Angel products, while others for employees include video tutorials, training quizzes, and space for collaboration efforts, from developing marketing ideas to planning company picnics.
New employees get an hour of wiki training and set up a personal space that’s like a social networking profile.”
If you’re new to the microblogging phenomena and you want to jump on the Twitter bandwagon, find some great tips in How to be a Twitter All-Star by Denise Zimmerman. This article passes on wisdom from Twitter stars who are effectively using the application for branding and audience engagement.
“For example, on Election Day, Flying Dog Brewery tweeted that if you buy something from the store and enter promo code “I Voted” you get 20 percent off. In exchange, Flying Dog saw a spike in store sales and directly traced those sales through the promo code. That success can be credited to a loyal and enthusiastic consumer base and promotions that reflect the spirit of the brand and trusted relationships.”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 15, 2008
Brandie Baumann, communications coordinator
bcrpress@bcr.org; 800.397.1552
AURORA, COLO — BCR, BiblioLife and Ingram Digital are pleased to announce a new program designed to help libraries improve access to their collections through digitization. BCR’s Shelf2Life program digitizes pre-1923, U.S. published monographs and offers those and other previously digitized materials in both digital and print-on-demand formats. Brenda Bailey-Hainer, President & CEO of BCR, says of the program, “The Shelf2Life program allows us to offer a new service that benefits libraries and cultural heritage institutions as well as the opportunity to be part of an innovative partnership.”
The Shelf2Life program grew from a desire to help libraries and other cultural heritage institutions make their unique collections available in digital format. “The University of Colorado Boulder Library sees this program as an opportunity to bring our hidden collections to researchers, students and general readers regardless of where they are located,” commented James Williams, Dean of Libraries at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “Making these titles available as print-on-demand and as e-books allows delivery to all types of information seekers and provides an invaluable return-on-investment for these types of information resources.”
The program works through close collaboration between the libraries, BCR, BiblioLife and Ingram Digital. Participating libraries work with BCR to identify materials to digitize or supply files of previously digitized titles. BCR uses its new imaging center to scan the books utilizing custom software developed by BiblioLife. BiblioLife then post-processes each title assuring a quality digital book. BiblioLife delivers the e-book to Ingram Digital who adds the title to its MyiLibrary platform. Titles may also be delivered to Lightning Source so that the book can be offered as a print-on-demand title. Rich Rosy, Vice President and General Manager of Ingram Digital’s Institutional Solutions, says, "With Ingram Digital providing virtually unlimited access to digital content, students will have the ability to access content that has been previously unavailable. It's very rewarding to be able to work with BiblioLife and BCR on the Shelf2Life program to create a real win for everyone, especially libraries. That's why we're here."
Libraries and other cultural heritage institutions can gain access to these once-hidden collections by subscribing to the collections through the Ingram Digital MyiLibrary platform. Readers who want a print copy of the book can purchase a copy through one of Lightning Source’s participating retail partners. Libraries and bookstores worldwide can also order copies wholesale via Ingram's industry-leading ipage® portal. Mitchell Davis of BiblioLife, says, “Online discovery and print-on-demand give these books a new life that was unthinkable just a few years ago. Over the next five years, we aim to work with BCR and their member libraries to bring back into print over 600,000 unique and currently unavailable works that are an important part of our cultural legacy.”
About BCR
BCR brings libraries together for greater success by expanding their knowledge, reach and power. They offer a broad range of solutions and their hands-on, personal attention to each member enables them to deliver effective and timely solutions that help libraries keep pace with new developments in technology and services. BCR is the nation’s oldest and most established multistate library cooperative. Since 1935, the BCR team has helped libraries learn new skills, reach patrons, increase productivity and save money. BCR (Bibliographical Center for Research) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit headquartered in Aurora, Colorado. For more information, visit www.BCR.org or emailinfo@BCR.org.
About BiblioLife
BiblioLife launched the BiblioLife Network (BLN) in May 2008. BLN is a pragmatic end-to-end ecosystem aimed at addressing the huge challenges facing book preservationists around the world. BiblioLife provides funding to libraries and archives for digitization hardware, software, post-processing, QA and book packaging in a highly scalable and efficient work flow process. In addition to receiving institution wide digital access to their own content, libraries and archives also receive a share of the revenue created from BLN global merchandising and distribution of content they provide for the program. The BLN includes libraries, library networks, archives, subject matter experts, and online communities. For more information visit www.BiblioLife.com or email info@biblilolife.com. BiblioLife is a trade name of BiblioBazaar II, LLC.
About Ingram Digital
Ingram Digital is an Ingram content company. The Ingram content companies provide a broad range of physical and digital services to the book industry, and immediate access to the largest selection of books and book-related products in the industry. The content companies are Ingram Digital, Lightning Source Inc., Ingram Book Company, Ingram International Inc., Ingram Library Services Inc., Coutts Information Services, Ingram Periodicals Inc., Ingram Publisher Services Inc., Spring Arbor Distributors Inc., and Tennessee Book Company LLC. For more information about Ingram Digital, visit the website www.ingramdigital.com.
Black Wednesday saw three of the largest U.S. publishers announce massive layoffs and restructuring, and it seems there will be no end to these types of changes as the economy continues to spiral downward.
Macmillan, which publishes authors like Thomas Friedman and Janet Evanovich, is cutting 64 jobs — just under four percent of its work force.
From the Associated Press:
“Going forward we are tightening our belts in response to the current recession, but we are also reorganizing and rethinking our business to position ourselves for the long term,” Macmillan CEO John Sargent wrote in a company memo, a copy of which was obtained Monday by The Associated Press.
In a move he said the publisher had been looking into for months, Macmillan will combine its seven children’s companies into a single division, the Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group, effective Jan. 1. Macmillan also plans reductions through a “centralized business and production group for its adult and children’s publishing companies,” according to the memo.
The Associated Press also reports that Macmillan’s presence at BookExpo America will be reduced, while the use of digital technology will increase in an effort to cut costs.
For those of you who are as crazy about making lists as I am, you may want to check out this article from Mashable titled 40 Great Resources for Making Lists. Doriano “Paisano” Carta details 40 useful organizational tools which are categorized into the following list types:
I've written before about the paucity of good ROI studies on the value of academic libraries. Therefore I was happy to see this new study published in LIBER Quarterly:
The Library as Strategic Investment: Results of the Illinois Return on Investment Study
Paula T. Kaufman, University Librarian and Dean of Libraries, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Abstract
"University administrators are asking library directors to demonstrate their library's value to the institution in easily articulated quantitative terms that focus on outputs rather than on traditionally reported input measures. This paper reports on a study undertaken at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that sought to measure the return on the university's investment in its library. The study sought to develop a quantitative measure that recognizes the library's value in supporting the university's strategic goals, using grant income generated by faculty using library materials. It also sought to confirm the benefits of using electronic resources and the resulting impact on productivity over a 10-year period. The results of this study, which is believed to be the first of its kind, represent only one piece of the answer to the challenge of representing the university's total return from its investment in its library."
Sample ROI calculations included:
"More than 78% of tenure-system faculty who have grants used citations to the scholarly literature in their proposals.
Over 50% of grants awarded to the campus came from proposals that included citations to materials accessed through the library.
The average grant income at Illinois is approximately $64,000.
Multiply these 3 numbers to calculate the average grant income generated through the use of the library of just over $25,000.
Multiply this average amount of grant income by the number of grants expended in 2006 at Illinois and divide that by the total library budget to arrive at a return on investment of $4.38 for every dollar invested in the library."
With the demise of Pownce in two weeks . . . it's interesting to note that Twitter has been growing at 343% according to Nielsen:
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/leading-social-networking-sites-still-growing
If you select a single blog, FeedVis focuses on that blog and redraws the word cloud for you with a slick AJAX effect. The size of the word shows frequency (per thousand words), as you'd expect. The color indicates recent shifts in popularity. If a word has been used more in the selected time period than overall, it shows up as green. If a word has been used less frequently in the selected time period than overall, it's red.
You can interact with this data yourself at http://jasonpriem.com/feedvis/index.php?account=varnum. Of course, you can also create your own by exporting an OPML file from your favorite RSS reader (no more than 100 feeds can be imported at once, however).
Whether you agree with the show's political perspective or not, Democracy Now! is undeniably one of the best produced and distributed independent media projects in the world right now. If there are more high profile collections of media distributed under the innovative Creative Commons License, we don't know what they are. Creative Commons is a variation on traditional copyright that switches permission to republish content to opt-out with publisher applied conditions.
Sponsor
Traditional copyright, as currently defined in the United States and increasingly around the world, requires by default explicit permission before any reuse of content is legally allowed. There are a variety of variations of Creative Commons, but Democracy Now for example is being distributed under a license that allows any reuse without further permission as long as that reuse includes attribution of credit to the original source, the reuse is in a noncommercial context and the original content is used in whole with no derivative works are made. It's one of the most conservative variations there is - but it's still Creative Commons.
Sponsor
The report, which is available for free until January 31, 2009 if you register at Netpop, provides an extremely rich amount of data.
Netpop, for example, found that the typical social networker is female (57% vs. 43%), between 18 and 29 years old, employed (55%) or a student (23%), and single (48%). The average social networker uses the Internet to connect with more than 18 people one-to-one in a given week, and with close to 110 one-to-many.
Interestingly, those broadband subscribers who don't contribute to social networks tend to be male (57%), married (57%), and older. They also connect with less than 3 people online per week.
Social networkers spend an average of about $101 online, while those who don't contribute to social networks only spend $80. On average, social networkers are also interested in a more diverse range of topics, with music, friends, movies, and games being the most prevalent interests.
Netpop also compared Facebook and MySpace users. Most of the results there aren't highly surprising, but they do provide hard evidence for some of the more anecdotal stories we have seen about the two services.
Facebook users, for example tend to skew towards the 18 to 29 year olds, while MySpace users span all age groups. Facebook also has more users with college degrees (74% vs. 56%) and these users are less likely to be married than MySpace users.
MySpace users, however, spend more time online during the week (5.5 hours vs. 5.1 hours) and also remain more active during the weekend.
In terms of interests, MySpace users are more interested in NASCAR, astrology, and gardening, while Facebook's users are predictably more interested in school, science, and investing.
Netpop concludes the report with a longer discussion of what this means for online advertisers. A lot of this advice is right along the lines we have already discussed in earlier posts: engage with users on social media sites, give consumers a voice, enable companies to listen and learn, and allow your 'fans' to influence others.
With over 40 million Americans now contributing to social networking sites in one form or another, this is clearly a lucrative market for advertisers, but also one that is very different from more traditional online and offline media sources
Just in time for your holiday shopping, another source for free ebooks - Finding Free eBooks - a blog, from Christine (no last name listed).
Plenty of other free ebook sites exist. For a list of the top 20, see Hongkiat.com’s list, also linked from the NSR blog.
According to a survey conducted in the UK by NetLibrary, most libraries do intend to increase the acquisition of eBooks in the coming years.
The highlights:
300 libraries responded
for more information, contact uk@oclc.org
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