As of 2009, the 3 hottest darlings of social media right now are Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed (in order of size). My tenative thesis is that of the three, Facebook is probably the hardest for libraries to use as a tool for engaging users compared to Twitter or Friendfeed. First some background.

In my last post , I talked about libraries using Lifestreaming to aggregate all their social media/web 2.0 accounts. In particular, I talked about Friendfeed. Friendfeed is typical of most lifestreaming services in which updates from different sources will be listed one by one in a list, one on top of another.

We recently started a small scale experimental presence on Friendfeed (official announcement) . Friendfeed is one of the most popular life-streaming services out there.

One visitor to my blog, commented that she couldn't make heads or tails of my postings because it was too technical and obscure (opensearch plugins??). To remedy that, I'm going to post some " beginner" level posts that should be accessible to everyone.

Introduction I have being heavily using opensearch searchplugins to help speed up access to common used searches at the reference desk. I take it for granted, most people already have Google, Wikipedia, Youtube, Amazon etc. But what else should you add? 1. SearchPlugin to my Institution's OPAC This one is obvious.

In a previous post, I discussed the different ways, one can add support to searching OPAC and other library subscribed databases.

In a previous post, I discussed the different ways, one can add support to searching OPAC and other library subscribed databases. The four methods were Opensearch plugins , custom toolbars (Conduit toolbar , Google toolbar , Libx) , Smart keyword searches and Search bookmarklets I already discussed opensearch here, in this post I will discuss the three custom toolbars I'm most familiar with Conduit toolbar , Google toolbar , and Libx.

In a previous post, I discussed the different ways, one can add support to searching OPAC and other library subscribed databases. The four methods were Opensearch plugins , custom toolbars (Conduit toolbar , Google toolbar and Libx) , Smart keyword searches and Search bookmarklets I will begin with Opensearch. Opensearch This is by far the most popular method.

Introduction How can libraries encourage the "google generation" to use anything else besides Google? I have no clue either but for sure increasing accessibility to such searches is a key. Think about it. How many users do you think know the library portal url straight off?

Introduction Say you are conducting a survey and like most surveys you include a final open ended question. Again assume you have a large number of such responses (over 200), how do you analyze such unstructured data? This is a problem faced by many librarians, whether they are running standardised Libqual+ surveys or their own home-brew survey. One way of course would be to do content analysis.

Want to collaborate with a user, or fellow librarian but you are both not at the same location? No problem try one of the following tools 1. Wikis Wikis are of course all the rage these days. Besides the two free ones offered by NUS (see here and here), you can also try wetpaint, wikispaces etc. Wikis allow you to edit each other's document, to track and revert changes. To put comments on the discussion place etc.