Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Library Girl (original song)

A little music video for you by Reina del Cid. Susan found this and posted it to Facebook, but I enjoyed it too much not to share here as well. This reminds me of my days as a page when I was in high school and as a circulation assistant when I was in university. :)

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

'Tis the Season: Great Book Sales

I don't usually talk about sales on this blog, but I happened to notice a few book sales you may find of  interest--check these out:

Information Today - library, information management and knowledge management titles

Michael Sauers has posted about the Information Today sale on books from Internet Librarian 2010 conference being extended to January 31, 2011: 40% off the retail price on all books. That is great news!

I am reading The Accidental Taxonomist by Heather Hedden which I picked up from InfoToday at KM World. For anyone into taxonomy, I highly recommend it!!

I  also purchased the new edition of Building & Running a Successful Research Business by Mary Ellen Bates which has been having great word-of-mouth reviews from colleagues, and Open Source Web Applications for Libraries by Haren Coombs & Amanda Hollister (shown in the image above). Lots of holiday reading in my future.

Looks like I need the new edition of  Michael's book Blogging and RSS: A Librarian's Guide to add to my collection, too!

Rosenfeld Media - user experience design titles

Rosenfeld Media, the maker of fine books on user experience design (also affectionately known as UX)  currently has a 40% off sale on their books, epubs and webinars until January 1st. I have several of their titles on my shelf for reference. They are gorgeous books, beautifully designed and bound, with practical, well-written content. I try to pick up the latest ones every time I see they have a sale.



Neal-Schuman Publishers - The Tech Set series for libraries

I noticed the series my book Effective Blogging for Libraries is part of,  The Tech Set series, is currently on sale 30% off from Neal-Schuman if you purchase the whole 10 book set (there is an ad on the front of the website). The deadline isn't indicated, so you might want to check with them directly.

In Canada this series is distributed by OLA Store. I checked with them, and they will extend this sale to Canadians until the end of the year as well. Contact Ryan Patrick of the OLA Store directly at rpatrick@accessola.com for the sale price. (Thanks, Ryan!).

What about you--have you seen any good book sales? What work-related titles are you looking forward to reading?

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Understanding Influencers

Following my friends in the social media PR world on Twitter and at in-person events, I often hear the talk about identifying influencers and reaching out to them. But who exactly are influencers and how can you identify who they are?

In Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, he examines this to some extent: the people with wide networks who can help spread the word on something he calls Connectors.

Stephen Abram
has posted a great movie from R+I Creative about influencers (which I have re-posted below), and along with it has posed some questions for library folk:

Libraries are a very misunderstood ‘brand’. In some respects we are that “book, books and nothing but books” image and positioning. How do we make the library brand broader in our users’ consciousness?

Do we understand the influencers in libraryland?

Who among our users are influencers?

...

Who are the library opinion leaders – those who infuence library folk and those who influence broader social networks?

It's not very often I see people in libraries reaching out to influencers specifically, apart from perhaps well-planned marketing campaigns to raise funding for something. What about day-to-day, do we know who are influencing our library users? Who are setting the trends, who are identifying the trends? Do we try to connect with them, learn from them, and perhaps even influence them?

In libraryland I certainly see Stephen himself in this role, but there are plenty of others. The trick is to look beyond our immediate roles, our immediate world, look to other groups, other communities, other industries, to see what is happening. So often ideas are pollinated from one area to another, you can literally see an idea spreading, morphing, becoming adopted over time. That is how futurists are many times able to make predictions, they look to see what already exists somewhere else and thinks about how that will have an impact down the road.

Anyway, regardless of whether you are in the library world or not, this video is very interesting, entertaining and informative:


INFLUENCERS FULL VERSION from R+I creative on Vimeo.

This movie is a keeper--great catch, Stephen!

So, who influences you? How do they influence you--are they people you have contact with on a daily basis, are they people in your family, in your workplace, in your industry, or in the media?

Monday, December 06, 2010

A Day in the Life of a Digital Nomad

Last week I had the privilege of kicking off Toronto Public Library's conference day for its Information Services Team staff. I wanted to talk about the new collaboration tools as well as providing an overview of social media tools, but putting it into a meaningful context.

I got the idea of talking about my collaborative work, tools and computer gear that I use in my consulting when I was reading Mitch Joel's 2009 book Six Pixels of Separation. Mitch talks about the concept of "digital nomads" who are mobile enough to work from anywhere. I don't believe Mitch originated the concept, but the way he expressed it (see some of the first slides for the quote) made the idea click.


I had a lot of fun putting this presentation together, and hope TPL's staff found something useful in my discussion and the Q&A. I welcome more comments here or via email conniecrosby@gmail.com.

Sunday, December 05, 2010

KM World 2010 Workshop: Social Media Inside the Enterprise

I had the privilege of presenting a new workshop at KM World 2010 in Washington, DC last month. The workshop was an introductory survey on social media inside the enterprise. I promised the participants I would share my slides (below). Unfortunately what you don't see in the slides is all the fantastic participation by those who took the workshop. What a fantastic group! I invited people to share their experiences to help inform others attending the workshop, and everyone was very forthcoming. I thank everyone who took the workshop, and encourage you to stay in touch either in the comments here or by email to me conniecrosby@gmail.com and let me know how your projects go.   Social Media Inside the Enterprise

Friday, October 22, 2010

Practical Applications of Web 2.0 Technology for Law Libraries

I had the privilege today of being the closing speaker at COLAL, the Conference for Ontario Law Associations' Libraries, put together by LibraryCo.

I took the opportunity to try out an alternative presentation software called Prezi. Prezi allows you to put together all the content on one screen, kind of like a mind map, and then set a "path" through the content that the presentation follows as you click through. The application is definitely Web 2.0, based on a web platform, but the paid level allows for a version of the software to be downloaded to the desktop. I just used the free web-based version here. It took a little bit of work to learn how to use Prezi, but once I got the hang of it I had fun putting this together.

The presentation is below. You can either follow the path I used when I spoke, or you can move around and zoom in and out to explore the content I have put here. To view, I strongly suggest clicking on "more" on the bottom right and selecting "full screen". Then you have the chance of clicking through screen by screen, or clicking "more" and then "autoplay".

Note I also promised the group a list of links referred to in this talk and some additional content. It is getting late tonight, and that is going to take a bit of work, so I am going to add the links later. In the meantime, enjoy my prezi!



What do you think of this format? What was I missing in the content? I'd love to hear your take on it!

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Connie Crosby Update: September 14, 2010

Last night I threw caution (and makeup) to the wind and recorded another late night video to catch you up on a few things. Notes and links are below the video--lots of great content here. I could have written several blog posts from the links below, lots of videos for you! Yes, I look tired. It is mostly that darned cold I picked up on the weekend. I'll be 100% real soon, not to worry!


Connie Crosby Update: September 14, 2010 from Connie Crosby on Vimeo.


Late Night Links

  1. PodCamp Montreal
  2. Video recorded sessions from PodCamp Montreal are available as links from the schedule
  3. My Slaw.ca post yesterday Social Media: Neither Social Nor Media. Discuss
  4. Jennifer C. (@CanuckLibrarian on Twitter)
  5. Didier Labonte (@reidid)
  6. Xavier Beauchamp-Tremblay (@XBT
  7. Xavier is also an organizer of the Legal IT conference
  8. Discussion about the PodCamp concept on Bob Goyetche's blog We Need Camps for Creators 
  9. If you are in Toronto, watch the Rotman School of Management events calendar for fantastic speakers
  10. If you can't make it in person, Rotman has selected video from past events
  11. Douglas Coupland
  12. Generation X
  13. RootsxDouglasCoupland
  14. Toronto Wiki Tuesdays
  15. Sean Moffitt
  16. Mike Dover
  17. Wikibrands (to be released December 17, 2010)
  18. Wikibrands Facebook Page
  19. uStream recording of Sean Moffitt and Mike Dover at Toronto Wiki Tuesdays, September 14, 2010 
  20. Video of Sean Moffitt interviewed by Robert Lavigne after the talk
  21. R.E.M.
  22. Library of Congress National Recording Registry
  23. National Recording Registry - page about audio montage of all songs included in the Registry in 2009
  24. Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation Preservation Award presented to R.E.M.
  25. KM World 2010
  26. My workshop at KM World will be Monday, November 15 at 9 am - W8 – Social Media Inside the Enterprise: Blogs, Wikis, Video, & Microblogging

Thursday, September 09, 2010

Candidates for SLA 2011 Board of Directors

Hi folks! Well, I'm not completely AWOL, just rocked off my socks with work. That's a good thing, right? But I do truly miss popping by the blog and sharing my thoughts with you. The urge to blog is strong, it is. Some quick musings tonight:

I love that the Special Libraries Association has its candidates for Board of Directors each year record video to share their thoughts and give the members an idea of how they perform under the pressure of presenting on video. The quality gets better every year, too.

I am posting two from the Candidates for 2011 Board of Directors that stand out for me, not only because Jill Hurst-Wahl and Ulla de Stricker are friends and fellow consultants who have generously shared with me a lot of what they know, but also because I like the way in which they express how we are part of something bigger, a network of librarians and information professionals who are stronger as a whole than we can be individually. Ulla's analogy is particularly well thought-out.

If you are a member of SLA, I encourage you to check out all the candidate videos. The polls close September 29 at 2 pm PT/5 pm ET.

Jill Hurst-Wahl (candidate for Director):




Ulla de Stricker (Candidate for Chapter Cabinet Chair-Elect):

Friday, May 28, 2010

I Am Not Radical Enough

I don't take things far enough. I haven't pushed the envelope enough. You see me and you think "wow, she is doing a lot." But really, I'm not doing enough. 

I have not done enough to provoke you. I am just too middle-of-the-road-nice and likable.  I have not done enough to get you angry so that you leap out of your seat and feel compelled to act.

How do I know? What is my measure? It is because I do not hear from you. You are not engaged, you are not commenting. This blog is over 6 years old. At first I thought "oh, it is because librarians are shy about being online."  But I see plenty of librarians on Facebook and on Twitter and on listservs talking up a storm.  But on the blogs you fall silent.

Many ideas pass through this blog, and you think "ah yes, something new to learn." But, what do you really learn? Do you take any of this and use it?  

I have not done my job. I have not gone far enough. I have not provoked you. How can I change this?


Photo: Free Children of The Revolution Punk Girl With Fun Mohawk by Pink Sherbet Photography, original photography by D Sharon Pruitt, made available under Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Martha Murphy on Media Mining the Internet

I first met Martha Murphy of the Fire Sciences Library at the Office of the Fire Marshal in one of my classes at the Professional Learning Centre (now the iSchool Institute) at the University of Toronto a few years ago.

Martha has been a leader in thinking creatively on how to use social media tools in both research and the dissemination of information to her stakeholders.  This recent presentation gives a good overview of some of the tools she is using. In it she discusses the use of these tools for:
  • mining information
  • building your personal image and reputation management
  • providing customer service
  • crisis communication
  • brand awareness


I suggest you also view the other presentations by Martha Murphy for additional ideas.

Update:  As proof that "great minds think alike" I noticed Wendy Reynolds posted a column on Slaw.ca yesterday discussing another presentation she did as a panelist with Martha Murphy for Showcase Ontario. 

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

New on Slaw.ca - a Redesign and an Anniversary

If you haven't visited the Slaw.ca blog lately, you must drop by!  Simon Fodden has led us in a fabulous makeover giving the site not only a new look but also new content. We now have a whole new distinguished cadre of columnists writing on justice issues, legal information, legal marketing, legal publishing, legal technology, outsourcing, and the practice of law. The re-development of Slaw was kindly assisted by a grant from the Law Foundation of Ontario.


This has meant the rest of us daily bloggers have had to pull up our socks!  My latest two blog posts were inspired (no surprise to you, dear readers) by my latest foray into conferences and presentations:

A Tale of Two Conferences:  CALL 2010 and LSUC Solo and Small Firm (May 17, 2010)

Information Work Versus Knowledge Work (May 24, 2010)

I have to say, all the conference sessions I attended and people I have spoken with over the past few weeks have given me a lot to think about. And I am feeling inspired again about blogging. Hopefully that will be reflected both here and on Slaw.

And in case you missed it, we recently celebrated the 5th anniversary of Slaw with a little party captured in this video put together by Canadian Lawyer magazine:



Incidentally, that is me running around with the macbook in the video. I was connected to Steve Matthews in B.C. via Skype so that he could see and hear what was going on at the party. We did our best to all say a few words to Steve who is a vital part of Slaw.

Monday, May 17, 2010

The Role of Web 2.0 in Legal Services via the Internet

Three weeks ago I spoke on a panel at the Legal IT 4.0 conference in Montreal. I spoke alongside Olivier Charbonneau of Concordia University and Michel Gamache of Heenan Blaikie in Montreal; we explored the role of Web 2.0 and whether it is becoming a threat to legal knowledge.

In my part of the presentation, I took on the idea that Richard Susskind put forward in his 2008 book The End of Lawyers? whether the work of lawyers will be replaced by non-lawyer people supported by sophisticated Web 2.0 systems.

Is Web 2.0 a Threat to Legal Knowledge? -- Legal Services via the Internet


View more presentations from Connie Crosby.

I have additional thoughts on the topic to share, but am going to save them for an upcoming post on Slaw.ca. In the meantime, I wanted to get this online to share with you. Please note most of the other presentations are available from the Publications page of the Legal IT conference.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

CALL/ACBD/MichALL 2010 Presentation: Legal Research Free and Fast! - Web 2.0 Sources

This works well as a companion presentation to the panel talk I gave yesterday: online sources and search tools of the Web 2.0 variety in the legal industry. Grab your RSS feed and use it with some of the things you learned about in yesterday's session!

I only have a few minutes to post this, so hope to say a little more later on. These slides will also be posted to the CALL/ACBD/MichALL 2010 conference website once the dust settles.

Some additional sources mentioned by Catherine Sanders Reach in her talk yesterday:
I'm sure there are others out there--what are your search tools and tricks for social media searches?? Please share with us!

I thank MichALL for the opportunity to take part in this panel discussion!

Monday, May 10, 2010

CALL 2010 Presentation: Media Monitoring and Current Awareness - the New Tools

I was one of three panelists today in a CALL2010 (Canadian Association of Law Libraries annual conference) session entitled Media Monitoring and Current Awareness: Tools in the Information Explosion. I explored some newer tools that people should develop some familiarity with including some features of Google Reader, Yahoo! Pipes, widgets, the semantic web, and mobile tools.

I will share my slides via the CALL conference website, but in the meantime am sharing them here so everyone can grab the links and start exploring! A couple of "goofs" in this set of slides: you have a slide towards the end which is actually my notes which was not in the live presentation. That's okay since the notes seem coherent and put things into context. The other is the list of sources says (1/2) and there is no second page--I ended up putting the two pages of sources together on one. Will correct this for the CALL website version!


I neglected to explain how I have actually USED Yahoo! Pipes myself. I helped one of the law firm libraries set up practice group pages, and in addition to links to pertinent websites and legislation for each group, I located a number of good sources in each area that had feeds and consolidated them with Pipes, then used the Pipes badge to post the resulting headlines onto their practice group intranet pages. I aimed for key, reliable sources that produced about 5 or 10 new headlines a day when put together. So, some of the Pipes created had 5 feeds, others had a dozen feeds.

When speaking at the LegalIT conference 2 weeks ago in Montreal, I heard additional good things that Michel Gamache at Heenan Blaikie is doing. I hope his presentation gets posted to the LegalIT website soon so you can see what he has done (and I hope he doesn't mind me mentioning him personally!). He's doing a lot of good things with respect to delivery of information in his firm. The tool Dapper mentioned in my presentation is courtesy of Michel.

I also mention Viigo.com in my talk about mobile current awareness--thanks to Wendy Reynolds for reminding me of this great resource yesterday!

One great question from Mary (which I wish she had asked publicly) was the question of copyright in using all these RSS feeds. The quick answer is, if a feed is made available publicly, then the assumption is you can use it unless otherwise stated on the website. In the case of search results from Google tools, Google likes to be credited as a source of the feed; in this case I usually put a credit note on a webpage beside any widget or feeds I set up using a Google tools such as Google Alerts or Google News. Of course, Google itself isn't exactly a primary source but more of a conduit or consolidator of sources. If anyone has additional thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them!

There is also the question of setting up other tools to monitor sites and create RSS feeds from pages that do not have explicit feeds--what is the copyright covering use of feeds in this way? I don't know the answer and welcome your thoughts on this.

Being here at CALL and hearing all the excitement around many of the new tools makes me realize I have been learning a lot but not sharing what I know! I am coming away with a new resolve to blog more often in this space.

Tomorrow I am on a panel talking about "fast and free" legal research sources and will again share. It is a nice tie-in with my talk from today.

Cheers,
Connie

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

Facebook Privacy Settings How-to from David Lee King

Okay, I don't mean to make this blog all about Facebook, but a lot of people I know use Facebook and perhaps don't know about the recent privacy setting changes.

Every Tuesday the awesome David Lee King of the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library puts together a video in a series he calls "Tech Tuesdays". This week he walks through the new privacy settings on Facebook. It is well worth following David's blog if you aren't already. I always find he is about a year or two ahead of me in anything I am doing, so a good person to watch on where things are heading for libraries and all things new media!

Sunday, April 04, 2010

Targeting Facebook to Different Audiences

I can't believe how long it has been since I've written to all of you! March was a whirlwind, and April promises to be much the same.

I noticed this video in Tod Maffin's latest newsletter and thought I would share with all of you. It answers a big question I have had for a while--how to accept all those Facebook friend invitations but not necessarily share everything with everyone. I originally tried to keep Facebook only for personal friends, but over time a lot of business contacts and people I have not yet met have invited me to be their friends. I've been wondering what to do.

In this video Tod shares what he calls "Friend Splitting", putting friends (i.e. friends, family and contacts) into different groups and both watching the groups as separate feeds and allowing them to see different content from your page without starting more than one account. It is a fantastic solution. As Tod points out in his newsletter, a lot of people create more than one Facebook account to achieve this, but it is against Facebook's terms of service and they will close accounts if they find you having more than one.

Anyway, watch this short screencast to see how it's done.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Connie Crosby Update: February 15, 2010

Connie Crosby Update: February 15, 2010 from Connie Crosby on Vimeo.


Some of my mentions in this episode:
  • ChangeCamp meeting in Toronto on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 working on a civic engagement toolkit. While the session is full for participants, we are looking for volunteers to act as scribes as I mention in the video. If you have a laptop with good battery and would like to join me in liveblogging at a table via Scribblelive.com feel free to contact me and I will pass your name along. Scribes show up at 4 pm, and the show gets underway around 5:30 or 6:00 pm. I mention one of the people leading us in the evening, Mark Kuznicki, who inspires me to do more in leading and connecting people.
  • PodCamp Toronto - will you be joining us? February 20 & 21, 2010 at Ryerson's Rogers Communication Centre.  The Schedule is now live so that presenters may add their sessions in.
  • Personal Brand Camp 2 - an event including Humber PR students learning about social media and how to build an online presence. I am giving Michael Cayley a hand with this. This event will be held in conjunction with Third Tuesday Toronto on February 23, 2010, a speaker series about social media for the PR industry, courtesy of Joseph Thornley. Our speaker for the evening will be Mitch Joel on (what else?) personal brand.
  • Ontario Library Association's OLA Superconference, February 24-27, 2010. Look for me at the Knowledge Ontario booth where I will be helping out periodically.
  • Over on Slaw.ca I usually post every Monday. This week's post:  Google Buzz Already Raising Privacy Concerns.
And did I mention my book? No? I've been proofreading the final proofs! We're almost ready for the printer! 

Cross-posted over on my business blog Connection.

Monday, February 01, 2010

Big Swag & Mixed Feelings

I received some big promotional swag today from a major U.S. legal publisher, Thomson Reuters Legal, for the launch of their new product WestlawNext. I share my thoughts on it in this video.


Connie Crosby opens WestlawNext Promo Swag from Connie Crosby on Vimeo.

See Sarah Glassmeyer's blog post On Vendor Swag which she posted today on this topic as well.

 Photo: Thomson Reuters Legal's President &  CEO Peter Warwick at media briefing for WestlawNext at LegalTech NY earlier today. Source: Westlaw on Twitpic

Feb. 2nd update: I should have included a link back to Simon Chester's blog post on The Future of Westlaw over on Slaw.ca. He was one of the group who went to Eagan, Minnesota to preview the new product, and he has been tracking some of the conversations that came out of that visit.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Connie Crosby Update: My New Brainchild

Something a little new: catching you up on all I'm doing (well, except real client work!) in a chatty video.  Let me know what you think--is this of interest? Should I do this again? Are there questions you would like me to answer??

Cheers!  
Connie


Connie Crosby Update: My New Brainchild from Connie Crosby on Vimeo.

Links to a few things mentioned:
Also posted on my blog on the Crosby Group Consulting website.