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Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette cuts local delivery


We received a note today that "Due to economic conditions, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will no longer be delivered to our area, with the exception of the Sunday edition." As you recall, The Baltimore Sun, stopped delivery to our area several weeks ago as well.

The economics of the recession reminds me of a donut. We can get delivery of international papers and the local papers (this week), but not regional newspapers.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

NYT Article Skimmer


Check out the layout of the NYT called the Article Skimmer. A nifty new way to "skim the paper" for the headlines you want. What do you think?

Twitter @ your Library

I admit, I have been having a hard time trying to figure out how to use twitter in a useful way at the library.

So far the best public use idea is to post "tweets" of titles around a genre, say British Mysteries. Then ask the public (followers in twitter lingo) to reply back with their favorite titles in that genre. We would end up with a list of titles, that may serve as recommended titles to other followers as we follow each other or retrospectively search the twitter-verse for the genre of the week.

The best idea so far for use by library staff is as a replacement for our IM clients on the staff machines. If all the branches followed all the other branches on twitter, they would all see the same question or request at the same time. With IM, its a one to one communication, twitter would allow one to many communication. The assumption would be that the branch that coudl answer the request first would do so, thereby fulfilling the customer's request faster.

What do you think of twitter in the library? Is it just one of those technologies that just don't jive enough with the work of the library?