Say you want to find out where libraries are placing their social media buttons on the portal. Is it at the bottom of the page? Top right? Elsewhere? How do you find out besides polling users? Can Google help?

I'm trying a little social experiment with the new FaceBook group feature. I've setup a FaceBook group for library related people (Librarians, "Shambrarian", whatever). Things to note. 1. I'm the admin, but in effect it only means I can change the Facebook group name & set it up to be opened, closed or secret . The current setting is closed, which means non-members can see who are in the group, but not any content.

Xtranormal has the tag line "If you can type, you can make movies" and it's really that simple! Just select a background, select 1 or 2 characters, type in dialogue, select a couple of camera angle and special animations using point and click and you get a  cartoon animated movie with no programming required.

Every library has problems that everyone knows about and are common user complaints but are ignored because the problem seems to be too huge, too large , too costly, too impossible, too everything to fix.

Say you have a new service or page you want to advertise, what possible places could you put it? As libraries expand their reach online, it's no longer as simple as putting a link on your webpage.

Recently, I started to realize that our page on the proxy bookmarklet (a bookmark that allows quick access to full text articles via the library's subscription even when the user doesn't use the library portal as a starting point) is extremely popular, despite being burred deep in our current portal design.

My recent blog post on "heretical thoughts" where I played devil's advocate and expressed doubts and how libraries weren't yet successful in getting users to use mobile services. Comments were pretty favorable, it seems I was saying something that many were thinking privately as well.

Location based services like FourSquare, Gowalla , Loopt enable users to check-in at different venues. For those unfamiliar with the concept, people basically "announce" online that they are currently at a certain location. They are still not quite main-stream yet, though with Facebook adding Facebook places this might change.

This is a blog devoted to covering new tech that might be used for  libraries to benefit users.

In a previous post entitled, What are mobile friendly library sites offering? A survey. I surveyed over 40 mobile friendly library pages. Since then this number has almost doubled, and I expect that the list here will top 100 by the end of the year. Of course, mobile friendly sites or library web apps are not the only option.

First off, for those reading this from a RSS feed reader, do note that there is something wrong with the RSS feed and as such my last post "12 good library videos that spoofs movies or tv"  from last week is not showing up in the feed. Anyway this week I celebrate 3 years in librarianship. I'll spare you the whole mock soul-searching with the obligatory "look back at my career" &