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7 Ways Your Public Library Can Help You During A Bad Economy: Handy short article on the ways library services and resources can help people at ANY time, not just during a bad economy.

1. You can get pretty much any book at the library
2. Yes, we have movies
3. Kids Activities
4. Save Money and maybe your life!
5. Make new friends
6. Find a new job
7. Libraries listen to consumers!

Really interesting comments from library users listing lots of additional services that they find valuable. I loved this comment in particular:

Using my local library has been one of my resolutions for 2008 and I can report that its going great. I’ve saved a ton of money by reading books from my library vs. Amazon.com. I use Amazon.com to research and keep track of titles and when I’ve read one of those titles from the library I check the “I own it” so I can get better recommendations.

Can’t wait for the day we all have catalogs that have those sorts of “amazon” features….. someday soon?

(via LISNews)

Hey there, all you school librarians!! Don’t miss this chance to participate in the School Library Journal’s 2.0  learning program and explore the world of 2.0 tools and learning.

The program, All Together Now: A 2.0 Learning Experience, is free and starts Monday July 21.  This is a self-guided program, but you’ll have lots of company to share your ideas and experiences with.  And Michael Stephens of Tame the Web will be offering guidance and advice throughout the program via a blog.

The program wraps up in early September, just in time for you to put your new skills and ideas to work during the school year.

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7/21/08 - NOTE: To get started visit the program’s blog

Have you ever picked up the phone, called a friend or colleague and said ‘go to xyz web site’ and then tried to say things like “click on that link at the top left”. “no not that one, the other big yellow button”, “see that thingie at the bottom” and so on. I have and it can be frustrating.

Flowgram is an interesting new service that I found out about today thanks to Greg Schwartz. It falls somewhere in the realm of screencasting services, though maybe we need a new term for this type of tool. (Maybe there already is a term?)

With Flowgram, you open up web pages, add highlighting to point out different parts of the page and add a narration to the pages. All this is done with live web pages.

When you share this with others, they see the live web pages with your highlighting in their browser window, with a small toolbar at the top of the window with  start and pause controls. What’s really intriguing, and a bit confusing at first, is the ability to stop the presentation, go off and explore the web pages that are on the screen and then return to the Flowgram to resume the presentation.

I haven’t created any Flowgrams myself. The service is still in an invite-only beta version.  I’ll be curious to see how this service develops. I can see it being very useful for quick instruction and sharing of content with others.

Greg’s Flowgram showing some tips on using FriendFeed.

And another Flowgram - this on one What is a Flowgram.

I have to admit to a love-hate relationship with Twitter, the microblogging “what are you doing?” tool that many people are, shall we say, twittering about. Some days I love being tuned into all the goings on in my community there, other days, I just need to tune out.

140 characters, enough to say where you are during a conference and find out who wants to meet for dinner. Or to find out where there’s a great session going on so you can leave the deadly dull one that you ended up in by mistake. I’ve used it a lot during conferences and had great meetups with colleagues I would have missed otherwise.

On a day to day basis, it’s very useful for sharing breaking news, alerts about interesting blog posts, posing questions and getting fast answers. Many organizations are using it to connect with customers, patrons, supporters. Political campaigns use twitter to alert supporters to the latest campaign news. Libraries use it as one more way to distribute updates about services and events. Library professional groups use it to get news out to members and the library community at large.

What you get out of it, depends on finding friends and colleagues who share your interests. And like any community, you have to give to get. So I try to respond to questions when I can and share new resources that I come across. In return I’ve gotten help with questions of my own. Will I stay with Twitter forever? Will I be fickle and love it and leave it? I don’t know, it has had some problems keeping up with traffic lately. If they continues, people will certainly move on to another tool that serves the same purpose, and there are other ones out there! For now, I’m finding Twitter a useful way to connect with friends and colleagues.

To find out more and see some great examples of how libraries are using Twitter, read Elyssa Kroski’s terrific article in School Library Journal, All a Twitter: Want to Try Microblogging? It’s an excellent introduction to Twitter. And even if you don’t get into using Twitter yourself, it’s definitely a tool to be aware of.

I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at nursing homes, assisted living centers and senior living centers lately. I’ve seen some wonderful places and some not so wonderful ones. Today, I came across a new concept for skilled nursing homes that blew me away. Green House® homes, skilled nursing homes with a heart.

THE GREEN HOUSE® model creates a small intentional community for a group of elders and staff. It is a place that focuses on life, and its heart is found in the relationships that flourish there…. Its primary purpose is to serve as a place where elders can receive assistance and support with activities of daily living and clinical care, without the assistance and care becoming the focus of their existence… The Green House model is intended to de-institutionalize long-term care by eliminating large nursing facilities and creating habilitative, social settings.

Looking through the photo albums on their web site, these homes really do look like homes and are the polar opposite of what I’ve seen in some nursing homes. Here’s hoping this and similar concepts prove successful and become affordable for all. Dignity in aging. A simple wish.

In something for nothing Aaron Schmidt explains how his library is using Zoho Creator for a handy and effective summer reading program sign up form that is embedded on the library’s web site. After the kids sign up, they’re taken to a page where they can download a reading log and get other info about the program. Very cool. Could be used for many other types of sign up. Free, simple, easy, effective.

As Aaron said: “I’m all for making library services easier to use, but making people’s lives easier is an even better goal.” Couldn’t agree more.