Pimp My Library: April 2007

It's all about the bling here. Move on up into the 21st century! Make your library the happenin' place for your community. Sure, it's challenging, but you're up to the challenge. So come on -- pimp your library!

Friday, April 27, 2007

Goddess o' Bling!

Nothing adds a little bling like a TIARA!
Our fearless leader at HRLC, Joanne Roukens, has won the LIBRARIAN OF THE YEAR award, at the NJLA CONFERENCE this year!

She certainly is a SUPER LIBRARIAN! ;-)

Mucho congratulations, Joanne! It couldn't go to a better person, and how about that tiara!? Your collection is really growing now....
I KNOW there is a picture of Joanne in her tiara someplace and as soon as I find it, it's goin' on here!

Congrats!
Amy & Mary

Labels: "librarian of the year", amy kearns, conference, njla

¶ posted by Amy J. Kearns, MLIS @ 3:09 PM 1 comments

Thursday, April 05, 2007

Peep show at the library

In honor of the Milliken Library's study of Peep behavior at an academic library (http://www.millikin.edu/staley/peeps/), my colleague Trisha and I decided to do a version of the study at a small public library in northern New Jersey.

During the course of our research we discovered that Peeps are not only curious about the latest books, but they are also secret fans of chick lit. They like playing chess, doing jigsaws, and engaging in group research. We also found that they are very willing to help out with library tasks, when asked. Their willingness to volunteer for even the most boring tasks of weeding and collecting delivery statistics should not be overlooked.

For more info on how the Peeps behaved in our library study, please visit: http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/mary_martin00/slideshow?.dir=/4cdbre2&.src=ph

for a slideshow.

¶ posted by Mary Martin @ 9:26 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Pimp Your Page - INSTANT 2.0!

This is a way to quickly and easily, FREELY pimp your page and make it "2.0"!

A nifty little widget from meebo.com (that great little site that lets you IM across all platforms). It lets you embed a little chat window RIGHT ON YOUR WEBSITE - any website, blog, wiki, your library home page, etc....

It's called meebo me! and you set it up from within meebo.com - you can go to accounts or meebo me! from the homepage. It allows for some customization, as in what the name is on it and the colors and size.

See it on my blog

Here's what it looks like from my blog page when someone types in a message and hits enter (they typed Hi, what time do you close tonight?):

And here is what I would see when signed into my meebo.com account:

And I can type right back with an instant answer!

WHY!?

This little widget lets you place a way for people to communicate with you instantly and from right where they already are.
They don't have to sign up, register, have an e-mail account, or an IM account
They don't have to hunt around for contact information (which, of course, you have prominently placed right at the top of you homepage anyway!)
They don't have to stop what they are already doing
It adds one more way for you to communicate with your patrons in a way they probably are already!

Pluggoo.com does it too!

See my friend Kurt's page

When you're away, you can set the away message - users can leave a message for you which shows up when you sign back in.

Plugoo doesn't let you be signed into multiple IM accounts at once though, meebo me! does!

Go ahead - try it!

¶ posted by Amy J. Kearns, MLIS @ 2:18 PM 0 comments