Don’t Tell Santorum

Locavore is in their now too. Not butch and femme though…

The Alison Bechdel Interview Bechdel-fun-spine – The Comics Journal.

WolfWalk from NCSU Libraries

WolfWalk is a mobile library project that enables users to explore North Carolina State University campus history using a location-aware interface optimized for mobile devices. The application supports a map view with geotagged placemarks for over 50 major sites of interest on the NCSU campus, and a browse view for quickly locating a known site by name.

Presentation about the WolfWalk project today at the Academic Librarians 2010 conference in Ithaca, NY: “Geotagging, Geolocation, and Augmented Reality: Opportunities for Libraries to Create in Situ Learning Experiences.” Rats, that I can’t go, but can follow on Twitter.

World’s smallest library

GENIUS TOWN – The old fashioned phone booth that was converted into the world’s smallest library.

Phone box has new life as library… “This facility has turned a piece of street furniture into a community service in constant use.”

Based in the community, but not community-based

How local is local?  Interesting post from a great blog I recently stumbled on from Kevin Harris called  neighbhorhoods, noting that libraries are “based in the community but not community-based.’

Hyperlocal Libraries in Netconnect

Library Journal’s Netconnect has published my article called “Hyperlocal Libraries.”  I haven’t seen the print version yet, but my article isn’t the cover story, I think it just has the same title as the cover.  To give you the gist of it, here’s an excerpt, this is a bit where I start laying it on a bit thick…

Every community is, in its own way, buzzing with activity, and local librarians can dare to press their ears to the hive. There is no shortage of material that locally curious libraries can strive to make more accessible online, from the traditional (oral histories, postcards, death certificates, draft cards) to the more techie (blogs, mashups, tweets). Let Big City Newspaper (if it even survives) serve up Pop-Tarts, while libraries focus on all the different types of bread being baked at home—the things that capture the truly unique personality of their communities and things that will not likely be available elsewhere.

InfoGods, CitySquares, Center’d

Bet there’s a librarian in there… Image from bighappyfunhouse.

MLS Report: Libraries are a Vital Community Resource in the Information Age…

“Libraries build community in many ways,” noted Laurie Brooks, Associate Deputy Director for Library Services. “Whether through preparing children for school, helping small businesses thrive, providing technology training for seniors, or imparting a new language, libraries are essential community resources in the information age. The Library Grants to States program provides an important opportunity to plan and support these vital community-building initiatives.”

CitySquares: Your Neighborhood, Online…

Our aim is to not be just a business directory or city guide, but to be the ultimate resource for local communities. Whether a county in Montana, a borough in NY, a village in Vermont, or a neighborhood in Seattle, we want to get all the information about that community, that locale, online. Get the geopolitical information online, municipal information, local government, post office, libraries, public schools, trash and recycling collection schedules, historical facts, playgrounds, parking lots, public transportation, local school lunch menus, athletic program information, July 4th fireworks locations, and so much more.

center’d… “helps people plan any event or activity, and find new places to go and things to do based on the advice of trusted friends.”

Online Education Database provides a nice list of digital library collections that focus mainly on localized and regional histories of towns, cities, counties, or regions within a given state.

Can Libraries Compete with Newspapers?

From Barbara Quint’s April Searcher’s Voice column:

“Library websites should include a news service that keeps people informed on activities in and around the community. Much, if not most, of the news might only need online gathering and winnowing. Local government announcements on dot-gov sites could become regular feeds. If you still have a local newspaper, then directing people to it through headline feeds could help to swell both the library’s and the newspaper’s web analytics stats. Local bloggers and “citizen-journalists” could provide another feed, possibly tagged with a caveat for opinion-laden submissions. You might also add feeds from Google News and/or Yahoo! News…”

Libraries that just don’t see themselves in the news biz should stop thinking about the “news” as just articles published in newspapers.  Check out the Sacramento Bee’s Investigation Center, especially the “Databases”section where they aggregate local data about: State and Local Government, Crime and Courts, Schools and Colleges, Health, Real Estate, Elections.

This is a newspaper aggregating local data.  And SacBee doesn’t create all this local data, they just unify it, bring it all together on one place.  Sounds like something local libraries would be good at!  The Pikes Peak Library District is already doing it on their Community Information page.

Local Twitter Tools

There are lots of ways to identify local tweets/ers and a site called Online College Degree has created a nice list, 50 Useful Twitter Tools for Writers and Researchers, including (via):

Nearby Tweets: Check out Nearby Tweets to seek out local Twitter users.

Atlas: Use Atlas to see tweets on a map.

GeoFollow: Using the GeoFollow directory, you’ll be able to find users in specific areas.

CityTweets: See real time Twitter activity for cities on CityTweets.

Twittervision: Check out Twittervision for real-time geographic tweets.

TwitterLocal: On TwitterLocal, you can find tweets in a designated location.

Localtweeps: Check out Localtweeps to find Twitter users near you.

Twellow, Twitter Advanced Search, backing into it using Google are others.

Syracuse.com is aggregating tweets about Syracuse and Central NY.  Any libraries doing this for their cities, towns, neighborhoods?

Libraries as Online Hubs that Aggregate Local Community Information

Here’s a conversation librarians should be in on…  The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy in partnership with PBS Engage is looking for input on questions like:  “What are the information needs of communities in our American democracy?” Go join in or just read the comments.

Mark Glaser at MediaShift has reviewed the input received so far and has this to say:

Problem: Where can people find the local information they need, whether it’s about a school board meeting, a new construction project or a nearby robbery? Solution: A community hub, with all the information aggregated in one online source and pushed out via libraries, in-person meetings, community radio, small run print publications and cable access TV.

That’s great, but instead of just pushing them out, why not libraries as the creators of such local hubs?  That comes later in the post:

One of the least noted aspects of creating a community hub is the vital importance of the public library in town. The library has always been a beacon of information in communities, providing books, CDs, videos and Internet terminals at low or no cost. They can take the next step and become community learning centers, helping people with digital literacy and finding information online.

Libraries can and already are and should be doing this!

FILE Magazine – The Collection – into literature

FILE Magazine – The Collection – into literature