I love just about anything that will organize my crazy life for me, and I especially love those services that collate and push data, so I don’t have to go chasing after it. A few…
Comments closedWhat Does This Mean to Me, Laura? Posts
(You can see Part One here.) Last time on MeanLaura, I shared stories from library IT staff about moments they had with non-tech staff that were frustrating. This week, I’m sharing more stories, this time…
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A little while ago, I put out a call to the public library IT community to share their best (worst?) “Head meets desk” moments. You know, those times when they drove out to a branch,…
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While there’s lots of ground-breaking technology happening right now, sometimes it’s the little things that catch my attention. I sign up for all sorts of new web things. If it’s in beta, I usually want…
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It’s that time again! Time for MeanLaura’s annual collection of fun things on which you could be wasting your workday. Surely, you’ve given up solitaire by now, and there’s only so much Words with Friends…
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From a usability perspective, layout has always been important. If the tasks people come to do the most often are hidden, people leave your site, frustrated. Recently, with the advent of mobile devices of all…
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Yes, Sulia is yet another social network. However, unlike many of its brethren, Sulia makes no attempt to promote itself as the “next Facebook” or a “Twitter-killer.” Which is a positive, since its chances of…
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This is one of the rare occasions where I would like to simply take all of the text from someone else’s blog post and simply plunk it here. Since I can’t really do that, I…
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I need some help from all of you, this time round. If you are an IT professional in a library, or a staff member who has to deal with technology all day, you have probably…
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The answer to that question is, in short: Sorta. Kinda. Maybe. This week, Facebook announced a new feature for Facebook Profiles (individual users–people–not Facebook Pages for brands/organizations). Users now have the option to “promote” their…
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“Exclamation points, you see, are evil. “ James Chartrand, Men With Pens I’m fairly certain that I’ve talked about this in nearly every web-related workshop or presentation I’ve ever done; despite this emphasis, I still…
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Advertising your library online is tempting. The expertise required to set it up is minimal, and the allure can quickly overwhelm you when you realize that most of it is PPC (pay per click), meaning…
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Lately, it seems that all I, as a web developer, hear, is about mobile web usage. There’s been a lot of posts on the Web about the forthcoming mobile apocalypse (Mobipocalypse?), where people will browse…
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I know, it’s convenient to use the exact same, exact content for your library’s Twitter and Facebook accounts. And, yes, I know social media takes a lot of time! But, if it’s worth doing, it’s…
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In my job, I work with a lot of library logos. Especially because, when possible , I design around the logo. I don’t like to just create a template and stick a logo in it. …
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Recently, a friend complained to me that the email signature of one of her coworkers was ridiculous. It included a quote, a plug for one of the library’s services, a graphic and several other unnecessary…
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I was recently asked to come up with a session for new library directors, about how to improve their libraries’ online presences. Not just websites, but their social media work as well. At first, a…
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Generally speaking, most library staff I work with understand that, when you take an image off a digital camera, it’s huge. It’s easy to see that it’s huge; often, the photo may take up more…
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Recently, I had the unpleasant experience of discovering that one of my custom graphics was appearing, without permission, on a library’s website. It appeared that the library had simply copied the graphic from the original…
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Love it or hate it, yet another major Facebook shift is upon us–the advent of the Facebook Timeline format for Pages (it’s already been involved with our personal profiles for some time, as Facebook time…
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Many libraries give a lot of thought to how their website looks, and some even spend a significant time thinking about how people actually use their sites. However, one aspect that often gets overlooked…
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Every so often, a new social media site starts to make the rounds on the hype circuit. The latest of these is a new service called Pinterest. Pinterest is still in beta, and is…
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It’s that time again–time for MeanLaura’s annual roundup of sites you can be wasting your time on, instead of actually working. After all, the novelty of Angry Birds and Cityville does wear eventually. DISCLAIMER: There…
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Google Plus has been around for at least five months or so, and has taken off faster than any other social network ever has. Meanwhile, companies and organizations have been waiting anxiously for the service…
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This week, the OPLIN 4Cast took a look at how social media does or does not affect attention. I thought I’d supplement that with something else that tends to lose people’s attention on the Web.…
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Yesterday was a Sunday, which usually means that I can be found sitting at my computer, working on my second book, while the rest of the world enjoys…well, everything else. Suffice it to say, spending…
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I want to admit this, right up front. This is more of a rant than my usual, more considered posts. I want you to stop checking into your own library on Foursquare. Or Gowalla. Or…
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I’ve been doing a lot of teaching about social media lately, and one of the points I drive home constantly is that human beings are inherently selfish. When presented with anything new, the question in…
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“Though art may be subjective, Web design is not. In Web design, there is a right way and a wrong way to approach layout, navigation, copy, white space, and other critical website components.”—Andrew Follett A…
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This weekend, millions of children will be searching their yards in search of eggs and goodies allegedly left by the Easter Bunny. Chances are good that, if you’re a parent, you’ve already been noshing on…
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I wasn’t able to share this at my Computers in Libraries presentation (not enough time!), so I wanted to post it here. What other issues do you see that consistently plague library websites?
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Many times, only half-jokingly, I have told people that I have the memory of a sieve. That is to say, none at all. I suspect that, in this age of the information barrage, I’m not…
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If you’re a library network admin, you are probably familiar with complaints concerning slow download speeds on your local network. “The Internet is crawling today! What’s wrong?” At OPLIN, this is certainly familiar to us,…
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When the folks I work with at OPLIN suggested this topic, my first reaction was “Isn’t that too basic for MeanLaura to be covering?” All of my colleagues assured me, sadly, that it wasn’t. And…
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Quora is somewhat new (heck, it barely left beta 6 months ago), but already has gained major traction. Wikipedia describes Quora as an “online knowledge market. ” If you’re familiar with Yahoo! Answers or Ask…
Comments closedThe holiday season is upon us. Yes, you’re still working, but I’m betting that your brain is still curled up in bed (visions of sugar plums optional). The weather outside is frightful and cabin fever…
Comments closedThe temptation is overwhelming. After all, libraries are friendly places, right? We wouldn’t want our patrons to think they weren’t welcome. It’s so nice and friendly to put a big “Welcome to our library website!”…
3 CommentsIt’s no secret, yet it’s not widely talked about. There’s a divide in library staff. It’s not between degreed and the not, and it’s not digital. It’s not about who uses Twitter and who doesn’t.…
5 CommentsRecently, I heard about how a public library recently found itself in some very hot water. It ran afoul of a very large provider of stock photography. The library used a licensed photograph from a…
2 CommentsWe all know that libraries are in a major budget crisis. What we don’t always know is how to cut costs. Well, I won’t make any claims that I can answer that question, either. What…
1 CommentWhat it comes to image editing, for either web or print, Photoshop is arguably the king of the roost. But let’s face it–Photoshop is darned expensive, and has a learning curve shaped like Mount Everest. …
4 CommentsI admit it; I’ve put off writing about Second Life for a while. Mostly because I’ve gotten very tired of uninformed people making judgements about it based on the hype, rather than the reality. Last…
1 CommentIt’s the week before Christmas. Let’s be honest here…most of us are not thinking about work. If Twitter and Facebook are any indication, most people I know are physically at work, but mentally they’re caroling…
Comments closedI’ve had the experience in the past several months of being both a regular presenter and regular attendee of webinars. I’ve learned quite a bit, being on both ends, and I would like to share…
3 CommentsYes, it’s finally coming. The last official release of HTML was in 1999 (yes, you read that right, 10 years ago) at version 4.01. At long last, the W3C* is almost finished with the specifications…
Comments closed“The idea is as simple as its application is difficult. If all cans, books, shoes or parts of cars are equipped with minuscule identifying devices, daily life on our planet will undergo a transformation. Things…
Comments closedI crowdsourced this week’s post. I asked (via Twitter/Facebook) library staff to tell me what their favorite technology is, and why. Here’s most of what I got: “I’m digging on Excel right now because I…
1 CommentWhen Michael Jackson died on June 25, millions of people flooded onto Google News to find the latest information about what had happened. The spike in traffic was so massive that Google suspected a malware…
1 CommentIt’s a pain, but security is each user’s responsibility, not just the tech’s.–Bobbi Galvin, OPLIN One of the most common misconceptions library staff typically have about their email accounts is that nobody would want to…
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