I’ve been using Twitter some over the last few months (follow me at angelalib). So, I really liked this article that lists many different types of things you can do with twitter. It covers cross-posting your blog into Twitter, using your Flickr account with Twitter, using Twitter as a Gmail notifier or alarm clock, and much more.
Just found another nice list of tools that work with Twitter:

• 25+ Incredibly Useful Twitter Tools and Firefox Plugins

There is a nice article about libraries in Digital Web Magazine this week: Getting the Most Out of Your Library. It covers everything from library catalogs to Worldcat and other databases to special collections to the LibX Firefox toolbar, all the while showing how libraries can be helpful for web designers/developers.

From the New York Times article “Palin’s Start in Alaska: Not Politics as Usual:”

“Shortly after becoming mayor, former city officials and Wasilla residents said, Ms. Palin approached the town librarian about the possibility of banning some books, though she never followed through and it was unclear which books or passages were in question.

Ann Kilkenny, a Democrat who said she attended every City Council meeting in Ms. Palin’s first year in office, said Ms. Palin brought up the idea of banning some books at one meeting. “They were somehow morally or socially objectionable to her,” Ms. Kilkenny said.

The librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, pledged to “resist all efforts at censorship,” Ms. Kilkenny recalled. Ms. Palin fired Ms. Emmons shortly after taking office but changed course after residents made a strong show of support.”

I’ve been working on a customized implementation of MediaWiki to use for library policies and procedures in technical services. It will be part of our public website, so it needed to fit into its design, incorporate WYSIWYG editing, and only be editable by staff with user accounts. It isn’t live yet, so here are a few screenshots from the test site.

Sample public page

Sample page when logged in

Edit screen

Making Library Web Sites Usable: A LITA Guide by Thomas Lehman and Terry Nikkel

It gives you practical advice in clear, non-technical prose, plus success stories from 18 academic, public, corporate, and government libraries. Read it and you will learn what usability assessments are, why they are important for libraries, why you should do them regularly, and what the most common challenges are. You will also learn all of the necessary how-tos, whats, and whys for the most common assessment techniques and how to interpret your results, document findings, and effectively communicate results and recommendations.

Late Library Books Can Take Toll on Credit Scores (New York Times)

• Lots of interesting Readers’ Comments on the story

The December/January 2008 issue (pdf) of the Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology has a special section on Virtual Reference Services. Contents of special section:

• Introduction by Yungrang Laura Cheng, Guest Editor
• An Informal History (and Possible Future) of Digital Reference by Joseph Janes
• Virtual Reference to Participatory Librarianship: Expanding the Conversation by R. David Lankes
• Evaluation of Online Reference Services by Jeffrey Pomerantz
• Implementation of Professional and Ethical Standards by Pnina Shachaf
• On the Trail of the Elusive Non-User: What Research in Virtual Reference Environments Reveals by Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Marie L. Radford and Timothy J. Dickey

A few blogs about chat reference or for librarians providing chat reference:

• Ask a Librarian Blog
• Digital Reference @ UM Blog
• L-net:  Oregon Libraries Network Blog
• Maryland Ask Us Now Staff Blog
• MINITEX Digital Reference Blog
• QuestionPoint: 24/7 Reference Services

The Association of College and Research Libraries announced a new online seminar: Introduction to Website Usability (January 28 – February 16, 2008). It is aimed at librarians who are interested in doing usability testing but don’t know how to get started.

I thought I’d take a couple screenshots of the University of Alberta Libraries Facebook application that I mentioned a couple weeks ago. I really like how it displays its catalog results within Facebook – down to the item level. The app on the profile page is unremarkable – it provides a link to the application page. However, the application provides quite a bit of functionality.

Here is the catalog search in the application:

Here is the results page after doing a search in the catalog:

And here is a catalog record page:

Nice! Clicking on New Search, Reserve Desk, and My Account all keep you within the Facebook application as well. There are more features to this application, so it is worth checking out. Also, this app has over 500 users!

Link: University of Alberta Libraries Facebook Application