One of the keys themes of my blog is how to use free tools to get alerts of news of interest. More specifically, I have made a series of posts trying to figure out how to use tools to find and engage with library users who are online posting, tweeting etc about your library. I first mentioned the idea in Dec 2009 , and followed it up with "Scanning mentions of the library - Twitter, Google alerts &

Note :This was blogged in July 2010, since then most of the reference managers have improved substantially so the information here can be considered outdated. Interest in reference managers is increasing due to the increased competition in the area.

As you can probably tell from the blog name "Musings about librarianship", I clearly didn't give much thought to what I would be blogging about when I first started blogging in March 09 as the title is generic enough to cover almost anything about librarianship. The tagline which I added much later "Keeping track of interesting and cool ideas that might be used by libraries for benefit of users." is marginally more enlightening.

Early this year, I blogged about using Zbar iPhone app as a barcode reader to search your library. You scan the barcode of a book with your phone and it would extract the ISBN and search the library catalogue. You could put a setting in the iphone app and it would work for almost any library catalogue.

I know I'm a bit late to the party but recently , I came across Helene Blower's "New digital divide" via @digicmb.

I have shared in the past techniques that allow you to be aware of what users are saying about your library online. By using free tools, one can easily set up a system that alerts you in real time when your library is mentioned and gives you the opportunity to respond immediately if you wish.

The rise of web 2.0 sites has led to the idea that sites should be customizable and personalized. FaceBook which was recently crowned as the most popular site on the web by Google, allows users to customize their Facebook accounts by adding and moving around Facebook apps. Users can also add tabs of apps they want to see etc. How do libraries stack up in this area?

Introduction By now Twitter accounts for libraries are old news, I  run a Twitter League of Library accounts, and it easily topped over 600 accounts  (Note the service is quite unreliable , statistics reported there often lag, so I'm not actively maintaining it, besides adding libraries that request to be added). For more libraries on Twitter lists see Twitter lists by Lindyb for Academic libraries &

In an earlier post ,  I talked about using Twitter, Google and other tools to scan for mentions by users of libraries online. I noted that Twitter in particular was effective due to its real time nature, and that unlike Google alerts, Twitter hits tend to be far more likely to be relevant, as the former often contained false hits, compared to a 140 character tweet which are more focused.

Everyone knows mobile is hot now, and many libraries are scrambling to add mobile friendly pages. Currently the most complete listing of libraries with mobile sites can be found at the Library Success Wiki site , which lists over 40 such sites. I thought it would be helpful to look at these 40+ sites to see what are the common services that have being offered to mobile users.

Musings about librarianship (this blog!) has being nominated for the Salem Press Library Blog Award ! Though I have being suspicious, I have decided to take this in the spirit it was intended. Thank you  for nominating this blog whoever you are, it's nice to be recognized even this once.