Reference desk duty is probably the most interesting part of my day, as I get to interact with users. One thing that interests me greatly is how different librarians setup their systems to respond to users. As I see it, there are two main competiting interests. On one hand, you want to be able to work on your own library assignments during idle periods.

How do you share links, resources with your library patrons? In the past, the default option would certainly be through email. There is nothing wrong with sharing links through emails, though it seems to me a more structured and organized way would be better.

A couple of months back , I wrote a post entitled Creating custom search boxes for library use. This is one of my top 10 most popular blog posts and also one of the posts which I'm most proud of because it is one of my few posts that I feel is pretty original. In that post, I figured out a way to create search widgets/boxes for practically any database, which can be embedded in many places including subject guides.

Summary Google reader has introduced two interesting features, "share" which allows uers to share interesting feed items to users who follow you on Google reader (or to the shared item page) and the newer "Send to" feature which allows you to send interesting feed items to be posted on various services including delicious, facebook and citeulike.

Web 2.0 services like Slideshare, Youtube are now an accepted part of the web, and Libraries are using them as a matter of course to embed their presentations onto webpages. However, updating these presentations, often involve a two step process, you upload your presentation on the service, then you edit your webpage with the html snipplet. If you need to regularly change the presentation that appears on your web page this gets old pretty fast.

Haven't had much time to blog this weekend, as I was busy running a pilot survey for my Phd (more about that in the future), but I will just share 2 wild/random ideas I have about email. Gmail and LibX In my last post, I talked about how LibX is very useful, for acquisitions work, in particular how it can do autolinking of isbns. "Any page with an isbn is recognized and converted into a clickable link.

Technical services in libraries which encompasses back-room work like acquisitions, document delivery and cataloging are often deemed as the less 'sexy' part of librarianship. Yet, satisfying and even delighting library patrons depends critically on having an efficient and effective technical services departments which explains why many libraries are embarking on projects to streamline and improve their services.

Introduction Today's libraries interact with users and obtain feedback in a dizzying number of ways from email to sms, instant messaging, twitter, skype, Facebook and comments on blogs. But most of these methods are private (e.g other users cannot see an email sent to your library) or in the case of comments on blogs/wall posts on Facebook the feedback obtained is unstructured. Why allow users to see feedback from others?

Thinking of creating interactive maps for your library? Dynamic 2D map at WSU As the video above shows, this is a very innovative system used at the Wichita State University library. It handles items without LC class, multi-level maps, eresources and many other features (see more demos here). Dynamic 3D map at NUS Libraries I seldom post about work at my own library, but will make an exception this time.

In case you were wondering, the answer is No. I'm not. Still, I was looking through my google analytics account and noticed a couple of hits from an unfamiliar site. Clicking on it and I saw this Yes, I made it to a blog "Top 100 list"! Not too shabby considering that there were at least 600 library related blogs in 2008 and should be over 1,000 by now according to this comment by Walt crawford.

Introduction In this rather long post, I will talk about the different sources one could add to stay on top of one's research area. These include RSS feeds from traditional databases (citation alerts, table of contents of favourite journals), library opac feeds of searches and new additions, book vendor sites (e.g Amazon) book sharing sites (e.g LibraryThing), social bookmarking sites both generic (e.g.