Last of 23 things....Now onto 57 Varieties

1. What do you think about social media in the library?

I think it is useful. But more importantly, it is inevitable! We will be using it, interacting with patrons who use it, monitoring our profession through it, etc. I like the fact that we can use it and are encouraged to learn about it collectively instead of just ad hoc mentions now and then from astute coworkers.

2. What do you wish FPL was (or wasn't) doing?

YouTube Book Trailers, booktalks, podcasts of programs, videos of puppet shows, using social media to make ourselves more relevant day to day to our patrons.

3. Have you learned anything from this program?

Yes!

4. If so, what?

My short list includes!

TinyURL = brilliant
Slacker beats Pandora hands down
I am still confused about the technology we need to do podcasts
I am disappointed that we can't use YouTube in this city
If we give people the chance to check out our Lego photos online, they will do it!
We get MANY more hits on our website than I ever thought we did.
Facebook is a good place to be for our library and especially for short, recent bursts of info.
I'd like our catalog to be a better mesh with social media (somehow, don't ask me.....)
Let's take advantage of as much of it as possible to make ourselves highly relevant!

5. If not, what could we do better?

Print on Demand! for libraries?

For this assignment in the 23 Things, I decided to look into Print on Demand.
Since we get lots of demand for stuff we don't own, I thought this might be a direction some libraries may go. I was thinking that if the patron wants to pay the freight, we can bill them.

BUT, if we wanted to own the "new" book at the library, maybe the patron could pay $10 (the cost of an I.L.L.) and we'd eat the rest of the cost and do a fast, guerilla cataloging job on the new book. Slap an RFID tag on it, create a short catalog record and when the book is returned, finish the task.

The machines are really costly, however. But maybe we'd be a first adopter and get a coolio grant for one??

Check out Espresso Book Machine! $75,000 for the machine! Whew! It's a division of Ingram. Maybe they'd give us a deal if we order lots of books from them? Anyway, a POD machine could be in a college or university library and the pinhead students could pay for a book printed out of the machine. I'd LOVE to go see one of these things work.

Does this count as a 23 Thing?