A very interesting article by Marcia Bates tracing the history of where library and information science fits into the academic disciplines… Bring this out when someone asks if we’re ‘science’ or not.   The information professions: knowledge, memory, heritage http://www.informationr.net/ir/20-1/paper655.html#.VSBrBvnF-Sp Marcia Bates Department of Information Studies, University of California Los Angeles, 2320A Moore Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA   Abstract Introduction. Along with leading to growth in the numbers of people doing information work, the increasing role of information in our contemporary society has led to an explosion of new information professions as well. The labels for these fields can be confusing and overlapping, and what does and does not constitute an information profession has become unclear. Method. We have available a body of theory and analysis that can form the basis of a review of this new professional landscape, and enable us to clarify and rationalize the array of emerging information professions. Analysis. Work by the author and others on the philosophical nature, and core elements, of the information professions is drawn upon and applied to the current professional scene. The nature of information itself and of information-related activities are defined and closely analysed to produce models of the disciplines and the work elements within the disciplines of information. Results. The analysis makes possible the incorporation of popular new information disciplines into an overarching framework that includes pre-existing fields as well. Conclusions. The analysis provides a perspective that clarifies the relationships among the information disciplines as well as their relationship to other professional activities in society. Stephen

80 Twitter Tools for Almost Everything http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/twitter-tools/ "Discover Users, Content & Trending Topics Swayy. It takes a look at your user’s behavior, data, content and signals to figure out personalized recommendations on what to post next. Buzzsumo. Want to know the kind of content that works and where to find them? Find out about this as well as major industry influencers with this app. Twipho. Search through Twitter via photos. Punch in a keyword to start your search, or follow the @twipho to see what photos are trending. Topsy. The tool’s Social Search, Social Analytics and Social Trends give you an overall big picture of what is hot and what is not on Twitter. Trends 24. A simple tool that shows you what topics were trending in an hour-by-hour breakdown for the past 24 hours. Sonar Solo. Watch what the world is tweeting about in a circular interactive graph. Contains info on how many tweets and how fast these tweets are coming in. Trendsmap. Trendsmap shows you the trending hashtags based on their interactive map. Just zoom in to get more detailed location-based tweets. ITrended. Get reports on some of the biggest Twitter trends that took the world by storm. Heatmaps are included. First report is free. Storify. The tool that lets everyone be a reporter, Storify is the tool to use when you are trying to cover breaking news or a live event. Nuzzel. Find out what your friends have been sharing on Facebook and Twitter in the past 24 hours from the app or from a newsletter sent to your email. Tag The Bird. Wonder what is trending in the Twitterverse? Find out what was trending today, this week, month, year or for all time. Wefollow. Wefollow finds out what your interests are and calculates your prominence score based on who is "listening" to whom Brook Daily. Pick people you are following and this tool will send a daily digest of their 5 best tweets to you via email. The Latest. Follow @latest_is to get links from interesting newsmakers on Twitter. Their list of top 10 most popular links gets updated in real-time. Schedule Tweets Hootsuite. A hongkiat.com favorite, Hootsuite lets you stay on top of all your tweets with an easy to use scheduling app and interface. Buffer. Available as an extension, Buffer makes custom scheduling and scheduled retweets a breeze. Tweet 4 me. Send DM to Tweet 4 me along with what time you expect the tweet to be released and that’s it - they will handle your tweets for you. Manage Followers and Lists Unfollowers. Analyzes your community and tells you if you are following the right people that will help you boost your influence. Manageflitter. Sort followers by criteria, find who unfollowed you, find new users you can follow, manage multiple accounts and more. Electoral HQ. Build, manage and explore Twitter lists for topics and people that interest you. Entourage.io. Find your most influential followers, analyze the strengths of your competition and check out anyone’s entourage to see their influence. Tweepi. Distinguish between those who did not follow you back versus spammers and inactive users (sources of clutter), sort users and get suggestions on who to follow. Doesfollow. A simple tool that tells you if a Twitter user is following another Twitter user. Crowdfire. Find out who recently unfollowed you or did not follow you back, the relationship between two Twitter accounts and sort your followers to whitelists and blacklists. Twitterfav. Analyzes your content and tweets what matters to your followers for you. Touted as a Twitter growth tool, Twitterfav does your tweeting better than you. Analytics MyTopTweet. Find the top 10 most popular tweets for any Twitter account including yours. Twtrland. Use this to expand your network on Twitter. It helps you discover the influencers in specific communities, their best content and the impact they can provide. Social Bro. Find the followers that matter, the best times to tweet, the influencers that can help your cause and more. Followerwonk. Sort followers, find influencers, analyze data, get interactive charts on followers and unfollows. Tweriod. Find out the best period to tweet to your followers. Twitonomy. Get detailed analytics and insights on tweets, RTs, replies, mentions, hashtags, keywords, followers and more. SumAll. Get your data summarized and visualized for your analysis with SumAll. Aside from Twitter, SumAll also does data analysis for e-commerce, e-mail and traffic data. Commun.it. Fancy a community manager for your Twitter community? Coca-cola and Microsoft are already using it to turn the tweeting battlefield into a relationship-building ,actually social platform. Social Rank. Rank and sort your followers by their location, interest, specific criteria, or by how engaged and valuable (in terms of reach) they are to your brand. Crowdriff. A Chrome plugin that gives you the info that matters, tweets, retweets, following and followers, top mentions, top hashtags for any username, in real time. Bluenod. Build communities with the right influencers and track events as they happen. Social bearing. It’s still in beta mode but it strives to provide quality tweets, hashtags, top influencers, users and more with their toosl. Also upcoming, geo-located tweets and maps. Rowfeeder. If you run campaigns and contests often, Rowfeeder helps you track participation and displays the data in Excel. Also good for market research. Tracking Hashtags and Mentions Hashtagify. A search engine for hashtags, Tweetbe tells you the best hashtag to use to reach your followers. RiteTag. Are you using the right hashtag? You will know which hashtags are good to use and which are overused with RiteTag. Available as a Chrome extension. Twazzup. A search engine for Twitter, find popular posts, photos and links that matter to you, in real-time. Mentionmapp. Find out who interacts with you more than others in this interactive map of wonder. Tweet Binder. Sorts your hashtagged tweets for you while giving you detailed analytics on which categories win the popularity contest. Seen. If you don’t know how a hashtag can tell a story, you should check out Seen. It collects the best photos, videos and people that will tell the story for you. Twilert. Keep track of the Twitter hashtags, keywords or brands that matter to you via email alerts. One Million Tweet Map. Stay on top of 1 million tweets happening right now. Every second, 50 of the oldest tweets are replaced with 50 latest. Follow the numbers on the interactive map to find what is trending. #tagboard. Sorts what people are saying via hashtags and displays them on large TV displays for events and broadcasting purposes. Private Tweets. Private Tweets introduces a bit of privacy into Twitter by allowing only the people you mention see your tweet. Group Chatting ChatSalad. Find a list of all the upcoming chats that are happening in the next few days, and get the times in your local time zone. Twubs. Get a Twub page and send your audience there to start chatting. The feed is customizable, the host’s tweets stay up top and Twubs tells you the local time for the chats. Twchat. Each hashtag gets a room and you can find Twitter chats that are currently happening or is happening soon. Beatstrap. Live-blog as a team instead of going at it alone, with the help of Beatstrap. Works on desktop and mobile. Nurph. Want to host a chat? This tool lets you run analytics if you do. Also allows participants to RSVP to an event. Tweetchat. Stay on top of your Twitter chats with this tool. Updates in real-time. Pro version (coming soon) has a troll-bocking feature. Group Tweeting Group Tweet. Allow more than one user to tweet from the same account. Analytics show the participations of each user and measures their individual engagement. Hootsuite. Get team mates in on the tweeting. With Hootsuite, tweets can be moderated before it gets out on its scheduled time. Twitter Clients Kiwi App.net. An alternative Twitter client for Mac, this one comes with continuity, keyboard shortcuts, unified or separated timelines (your choice) and more. Carbon For Twitter. An Android Twitter client, Carbon keeps it elegant, simple and everything is on the same page Tweetdeck. Track and engage your followers on multiple custom timelines on your feed. Allows multiple users to manage the same account. Available forWindows, Mac. Yorufukurou (Night Owl). A Twitter client for Mac, it lets you manage multiple accounts, and create tabs for the result of each query you were looking for. Twitterrific. An award-winning Twitter client for Mac and iOS devices. UberSocial. Available for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, write your tweets in full with no worries about the 140-char limit. Links, images and media play inside the app. Janetter. Available for both PC and Mac, Janetter supports multiple accounts, multiple timelines in the same view, multiple designs, URL shortening and more. Plume. A Twitter client for Android, Plume comes with widgets, colored tweets, and the ability to tweet from your homescreen. Tweeki. A Twitter client for Windows, it allows for cross-device syncing, so you can sync multiple Twitter accounts on any device. WordPress Plugins Twitter. The Official WP plugin for Twitter which allows embedded tweets, embedded Twitter video, Twitter cards, analytics, and ad conversion tracking. WP to Twitter. When you update your WordPress blog, or share a link, this plugin updates Twitter for you complete with URL shortening. It also displays your recent tweets on a widget. Kebo Twitter Feed. It takes only one minute to put in a twitter feed, with Kebo. All you need to know is how to click. oAuth Twitter Feed For Developers. Does the heavy-lifting in a required authentication process so developers can just grab the list of tweets they need. Other Twitter Tools Bio Is Changed. Get notified if someone changes their bio or profile picture. Like Explorer. Find out how popular a particular article or site is amongst 6 social sites including Twitter. TweetieByte. Want your tweet history in the form of an infographic? Try this! Clicktotweet. Write your message and generate a link with this tool. The link can be tracked over time. Plus when other users click ont he link it appears in their status box. Twitter For Chrome. A Chrome plugin that lets you do all your Twitter deeds without leaving the browser. Twitterfeed. Feed your content via RSS to social network sites like Twitter. Tw Birthday. Find the day a user joined Twitter. #FirstTweet. Find out what your first tweet was. Get ready to cringe. Save Publishing. Searches for the best quotes in an article to include in your tweet. Available in a bookmarklet. Tweekly. Get your tweets on a weekly basis based on what you want to see not on what Twitter thinks you should see. Backtweets. Search through old Twitter archives for tweets that carry URLs linking back to your site. Tweetymail. Basically, you use email to use Twitter. Tweet, reply to DM, follow users, get notifications, get alerts for Twitter lists, mentions and searches — all in your email. Now Read: 10 Useful Hashtag Tools For Social Media Marketing" Stephen

5 Tips to Take Your Business Brochures Up a Notch https://www.marketingtechblog.com/business-brochures-design/ Use AIDA   Stephen

A call to action is like asking them to get a library card, attend a program, sign up for training… advertising your services with a CTA is not going the distance… 20 Ways to Write a Call to Action http://www.searchenginejournal.com/20-ways-write-call-action/128530/ Instant Gratification Pull at the Heartstrings Situational Problem Aggravation Implication & Effect People Want to Belong How it Works Focus on the Features Focus on the Benefits Sell the Savings Using Fear Individualize the Message Use a Cliffhanger Make it a Game Offer a Bonus Stroke the Ego Build Some Hype Toot Your Own Horn Stopping Power Picture This Check out the details in the post. Stephen

10 New Rules of Customer Advocacy http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/Column/Marketing-Master-Class/10-New-Rules-of-Customer-Advocacy-103224.htm "One of the most important assets of any marketing program is a roster of satisfied customers willing to share their positive experience with your brand’s products or services with the press, prospective customers, and analysts. Even brands [like libraries] that have a ready supply of customer advocates sometimes fail to make the most of them. Sales people are connecting with prospects, and prospects are connecting witheach other in more ways than ever, so marketing teams must provide advocacy and reference content to best showcase the customer and their successes. Ready to shake up your customer advocacy programs? Here are 10 new rules that every marketer should follow: Move advocacy to the sharp end of the marketing spear Look for strong stories in unexpected places Give your customers a good reason to be an advocate Use data Be creative in your storytelling Capture pertinent details once, amplify in many ways It’s a two way conversation Make your advocates the star of your program Focus on the quality of your stories, and not the quantity Repurpose what you have"  An advocacy program focused on listening to your customers, creativity in storytelling and building reference strategies that help customer businesses to grow will deliver quantifiable marketing benefits to your sales teams and to your customers." Read the details: http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/Column/Marketing-Master-Class/10-New-Rules-of-Customer-Advocacy-103224.htm Stephen

5 Ways to Engage with Your Community http://www.searchenginejournal.com/5-ways-engage-community/128652/ 1. Find Your Fans on Social Media & Build a Community Around Them 2. Have a Friendly Environment 3. Have Them Participate 4. Have Some Fun 5. Thank Your Community Members Read the details: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/5-ways-engage-community/128652/ Stephen

Keep This Handy: The 10 New Rules of Crisis Communication https://www.marketingtechblog.com/crisis-communication/   Stephen

 12 Principles of Animation http://www.alanbecker.net/portfolio/12-principles-of-animation/ Stephen

How to Successfully Launch Nonprofit Infographics Online http://www.nptechforgood.com/2015/03/29/how-to-successfully-launch-nonprofit-infographics-online/ 1. Upload your infographic in full-size as an image (not a PDF) to a landing page. 2. Crop and size sections of your infographic when promoting on social networks. 3. Ensure that your infographic is share-able. 4. Ensure your landing page is mobile responsive. 5. Prominently feature calls-to-action on your infographic. 6. When promoting your infographic via email, send subscribers to your landing page. View the details: http://www.nptechforgood.com/2015/03/29/how-to-successfully-launch-nonprofit-infographics-online/ Stephen

Managing up 101: How and when to take initiative at work http://mashable.com/2015/04/10/basics-managing-up/ "Managing your boss requires that you gain an understanding of the boss and his or her context, as well as your own situation…At a minimum, you need to appreciate your boss’s goals and pressures, his or her strengths and weaknesses." If you’re unsure what more you can possibly do to open the lines of communication or assist your boss further, considering his or her perspective is a great starting point." Stephen

Over the last six months Nonprofit Tech for Good has bookmarked over 50 fundraising tools. Libraries are habitually short of funds. It’s one thing to complain, commiserate with peers or blame your prime funder (largely tuition fees or taxation like property axes or mil rates) or to point out the situation without a call-to-action. It’s another thing to pilot and experiment with things to do something about it. Some libraries have had success with Kickstarter or IndieGoGo but those sometimes appear profit-oriented, which sometimes doesn’t align with library value systems. This list of not-for-profit fundraising sites might be useful for your initiatives. 9 Fundraising Tools to Watch in 2015 http://www.nptechforgood.com/2015/04/11/9-fundraising-tools-to-watch-in-2015/ 1. SnapDonate 2. Promise or Pay 4. Kids Give 5. Good World 6. Give App 7. Dollar A Day 8. Charitweet 9. @Pay Other options: CanadaHelps™ Fundraising - CanadaHelps.org‎ Adwww.canadahelps.org/Fundraising‎ Raise Funds For Your Cause Online. Free Online Tool For Donations.  8 Kickstarter Alternatives You Should Know About - Mashable mashable.com/2012/12/06/kickstarter-alternatives/ Dec 5, 2012 - Some of Kickstarter’s competitors are gaining traction in the crowdfunding market. These services could give Kickstarter a run for its money in … 10 Best Kickstarter Alternatives - CrowdCrux www.crowdcrux.com/10-best-kickstarter-alternatives/ Before deciding which platform to launch a project on, we recommend checking out the guide we’ve put together to help decide which crowdfunding website is … Let everyone know how they work for you - good or bad. Stephen

This Is How the Future Looked 122 Years Ago Airships, winged aircraft fill the sky. A wireless message from Mars projected in front of a large group of scientists and politicians. Busy scene of a rooftop airship port. Means of travel: ships in the air and on water Large round screen for home entertainment. Control board is on the wall.   See more: http://gizmodo.com/this-is-how-the-future-looked-122-years-ago-1697028010 Stephen

How Millennials Get News http://www.science20.com/news_articles/how_millennials_get_news-154032 "A survey by the American Press Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research may have answers. People ages 18-34 consume news and information in strikingly different ways than did previous generations, they keep up with "traditional" news as well as stories that connect them to hobbies, culture, jobs, and entertainment, they just do it in ways that corporations can’t figure out how to monetize well. Among the study’s findings: Fully 69 percent of Millennials report getting news at least once a day-40 percent several times a day. Millennials say they acquire news for a variety of reasons, which include a fairly even mix of civic motivations (74 percent), problem-solving needs (63 percent), or social factors (67 percent) such as talking about it with friends. Contrary to the idea that social media creates a polarizing "filter bubble," exposing people to only a narrow range of opinions, 70 percent of Millennials say that their social media feeds are comprised of a diverse mix of viewpoints evenly mixed between those similar to and different from their own. An additional 16 percent say their feeds contain mostly viewpoints different from their own. And nearly three-quarters of those exposed to different views (73 percent) report they investigate others’ opinions at least some of the time-with a quarter saying they do it always or often. Facebook has become a nearly ubiquitous part of digital Millennial life. On 24 separate news and information topics studied, Facebook was the No. 1 or No. 2 gateway to learn about 20 of them. While Millennials are highly equipped, it is not true they are constantly connected. More than 90 percent of adults age 18-34 surveyed own smartphones, and half own tablets. But only half (51 percent) say they are online most or all of the day." Read more: http://www.science20.com/news_articles/how_millennials_get_news-154032#ixzz3XODYRnm3 Stephen

McKinsey: No Ordinary Disruption: The four forces breaking all the trends No Ordinary Disruption: The four forces breaking all the trends from McKinsey & Company Stephen

The Internet’s Most-Read Stories, All In One Chart WHAT DOES THE INTERNET THINK ABOUT? THIS GRAPHIC VISUALIZES ITS MOST-SHARED ARTICLES AS THE CONTENTS OF A HUMAN MIND.   http://www.fastcodesign.com/3044369/infographic-of-the-day/the-internets-most-read-stories-all-in-one-chart Stphen

79 Theses on Technology. For Disputation. http://iasc-culture.org/THR/channels/Infernal_Machine/2015/03/79-theses-on-technology-for-disputation/ "Alan Jacobs has written seventy-nine theses on technology for disputation. A disputation is an old technology, a formal technique of debate and argument that took shape in medieval universities in Paris, Bologna, and Oxford in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In its most general form, a disputation consisted of a thesis, a counter-thesis, and a string of arguments, usually buttressed by citations of Aristotle, Augustine, or the Bible. But disputations were not just formal arguments. They were public performances that trained university students in how to seek and argue for the truth. They made demands on students and masters alike. Truth was hard won; it was to be found in multiple, sometimes conflicting traditions; it required one to give and recognize arguments; and, perhaps above all, it demanded an epistemic humility, an acknowledgment that truth was something sought, not something produced. It is, then, in this spirit that Jacobs offers, tongue firmly in cheek, his seventy-nine theses on technology and what it means to inhabit a world formed by it. They are pithy, witty, ponderous, and full of life. " "So here they are: Everything begins with attention. It is vital to ask, "What must I pay attention to?" It is vital to ask, "What may I pay attention to?" It is vital to ask, "What must I refuse attention to?" To "pay" attention is not a metaphor: Attending to something is an economic exercise, an exchange with uncertain returns. Attention is not an infinitely renewable resource; but it is partially renewable, if well-invested and properly cared for. We should evaluate our investments of attention at least as carefully and critically as our investments of money. Sir Francis Bacon provides a narrow and stringent model for what counts as attentiveness: "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention." An essential question is, "What form of attention does this phenomenon require? That of reading or seeing? That of writing also? Or silence?" Attentiveness must never be confused with the desire to mark or announce attentiveness. ("Can I learn to suffer/Without saying something ironic or funny/On suffering?"—Prospero, in Auden’s The Sea and the Mirror) "Mindfulness" seems to many a valid response to the perils of incessant connectivity because it confines its recommendation to the cultivation of a mental stance without objects. That is, mindfulness reduces mental health to a single, simple technique that delivers its user from the obligation to ask any awkward questions about what his or her mind is and is not attending to. The only mindfulness worth cultivating will be teleological through and through. Such mindfulness, and all other healthy forms of attention—healthy for oneself and for others—can only happen with the creation of and care for an attentional commons. This will not be easy to do in a culture for which surveillance has become the normative form of care. Simone Weil wrote that ‘Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity’; if so, then surveillance is the opposite of attention. The primary battles on social media today are fought by two mutually surveilling armies: code fetishists and antinomians. The intensity of those battles is increased by a failure by any of the parties to consider the importance of intimacy gradients. "And weeping arises from sorrow, but sorrow also arises from weeping."—Bertolt Brecht, writing about Twitter We cannot understand the internet without perceiving its true status: The Internet is a failed state. We cannot respond properly to that failed-state condition without realizing and avoiding the perils of seeing like a state. If instead of thinking of the internet in statist terms we apply the logic of subsidiarity, we might be able to imagine the digital equivalent of a Mondragon cooperative. The internet groans in travail as it awaits its José María Arizmendiarrieta. Useful strategies of resistance require knowledge of technology’s origin stories. Building an alternative digital commons requires reimagining, which requires renarrating the past (and not just the digital past). Digital textuality offers us the chance to restore commentary to its pre-modern place as the central scholarly genre. Recent technologies enable a renewal of commentary, but struggle to overcome a post-Romantic belief that commentary is belated, derivative. Comment threads too often seethe with resentment at the status of comment itself. "I should be the initiator, not the responder!" Only a Bakhtinian understanding of the primacy of response in communication could genuinely renew online discourse. Nevertheless certain texts will generate communities of comment around them, communities populated by the humbly intelligent. Blessed are they who strive to practice commentary as a legitimate, serious genre of responsiveness to others’ thoughts. And blessed also are those who discover how to write so as to elicit genuine commentary. Genuine commentary is elicited by the scriptural but also by the humble—but never by the (insistently) canonical. "Since we have no experience of a venerable text that ensures its own perpetuity, we may reasonably say that the medium in which it survives is commentary."—Frank Kermode We should seek technologies that support the maximally beautiful readerly sequence of submission, recovery, comment. If our textual technologies promote commentary but we resist it, we will achieve a Pyrrhic victory over our technologies. "Western literature may have more or less begun, in Aeschylus’s Oresteia, with a lengthy account of a signal crossing space, and of the beacon network through whose nodes the signal’s message (that of Troy’s downfall) is relayed—but now, two and a half millennia later, that network, that regime of signals, is so omnipresent and insistent, so undeniably inserted or installed at every stratum of existence, that the notion that we might need some person, some skilled craftsman, to compose any messages, let alone incisive or ‘epiphanic’ ones, seems hopelessly quaint."—Tom McCarthy To work against the grain of a technology is painful to us and perhaps destructive to the technology, but occasionally necessary to our humanity. "Technology wants to be loved," says Kevin Kelly, wrongly: But we want to invest our technologies with human traits to justify our love for them. Kelly tells us "What Technology Wants," but it doesn’t: We want, with technology as our instrument. The agency that in the 1970s philosophers & theorists ascribed to language is now being ascribed to technology. These are evasions of the human. Our current electronic technologies make competent servants, annoyingly capricious masters, and tragically incompetent gods. Therefore when Kelly says, "I think technology is something that can give meaning to our lives," he seeks to promote what technology does worst. We try to give power to our idols so as to be absolved of the responsibilities of human agency. The more they have, the less we have. "In a sense there is no God as yet achieved, but there is that force at work making God, struggling through us to become an actual organized existence, enjoying what to many of us is the greatest conceivable ecstasy, the ecstasy of a brain, an intelligence, actually conscious of the whole, and with executive force capable of guiding it to a perfectly benevolent and harmonious end."—George Bernard Shaw in 1907, or Kevin Kelly last week The cyborg dream is the ultimate extension of this idolatry: to erase the boundaries between our selves and our tools. Cyborgs lack humor, because the fusion of person and tool disables self-irony. The requisite distance from environment is missing. To project our desires onto our technologies is to court permanent psychic infancy. Though this does not seem to be widely recognized, the "what technology wants" model is fundamentally at odds with the "hacker" model. The "hacker" model is better: Given imagination and determination, we can bend technologies to our will. Thus we should stop thinking about "what technology wants" and start thinking about how to cultivate imagination and determination. Speaking of "what technology wants" is an unerring symptom of akrasia. The physical world is not infinitely redescribable, but if you had to you could use a screwdriver to clean your ears. The contemporary version of the pathetic fallacy is to attribute agency not to nature but to algorithms—as though humans don’t write algorithms. But they do. This epidemic of forgetting where algorithms come from is the newest version of "I for one welcome our new insect overlords." It seems not enough for some people to attribute consciousness to algorithms; they must also grant them dominion. Perhaps Loki was right—and C. S. Lewis too: "I was not born to be free—I was born to adore and obey." Any sufficiently advanced logic is indistinguishable from stupidity.—Alex Tabarrok Jaron Lanier: "The Turing test cuts both ways. You can’t tell if a machine has gotten smarter or if you’ve just lowered your own standards of intelligence to such a degree that the machine seems smart." What does it say about our understanding of human intelligence that we think it is something that can be assessed by a one-off "test"—and one that is no test at all, but an impression of the moment? To attribute intelligence to something is to disclaim responsibility for its use. The chief purpose of technology under capitalism is to make commonplace actions one had long done painlessly seem intolerable. Embrace the now intolerable. Everyone should sometimes write by hand, to recall what it’s like to have second thoughts before the first ones are completely recorded. Everyone should sometimes write by hand, to revisit and refresh certain synaptic connections between mind and body. To shift from typing to (hand)writing to speaking is to be instructed in the relations among minds, bodies, and technologies. It’s fine to say "use the simplest technology that will do the job," but in fact you’ll use the one you most enjoy using. A modern school of psychoanalysis should be created that focuses on interpreting personality on the basis of the tools that one finds enjoyable to use. Thinking of a technology as a means of pleasure may be ethically limited, but it’s much healthier than turning it into an idol. The always-connected forget the pleasures of disconnection, then become impervious to them. The Dunning-Kruger effect grows more pronounced when online and offline life are functionally unrelated. A more useful term than "Dunning-Kruger effect" is "digitally-amplified anosognosia." More striking even than the anger of online commentary is its humorlessness. Too many people have offloaded their senses of humor to YouTube clips. A healthy comment thread is a (more often than not) funny comment thread. The protection of anonymity one reason why people write more extreme comments online than they would speak in person—but not the only one. The digital environment disembodies language in this sense: It prevents me from discerning the incongruity between my anger and my person. Consistent pseudonymity creates one degree of disembodiment; varying pseudonymity and anonymity create infinite disembodiment. On the internet nothing disappears; on the internet anything can disappear. "To apply a categorical imperative to knowing, so that, instead of asking, ‘What can I know?’ we ask, ‘What, at this moment, am I meant to know?’—to entertain the possibility that the only knowledge which can be true for us is the knowledge we can live up to—that seems to all of us crazy and almost immoral."—Auden" Stephen

12 Ways Successful People Handle Toxic People http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/243913 "Toxic people defy logic. Some are blissfully unaware of the negative impact that they have on those around them, and others seem to derive satisfaction from creating chaos and pushing other people’s buttons. Either way, they create unnecessary complexity, strife, and worst of all stress. Studies have long shown that stress can have a lasting, negative impact on the brain. Exposure to even a few days of stress compromises the effectiveness of neurons in the hippocampus—an important brain area responsible for reasoning and memory. Weeks of stress cause reversible damage to neuronal dendrites (the small "arms" that brain cells use to communicate with each other), and months of stress can permanently destroy neurons. Stress is a formidable threat to your success—when stress gets out of control, your brain and your performance suffer." "While I’ve run across numerous effective strategies that successful people employ when dealing with toxic people, what follows are twelve of the best. To deal with toxic people effectively, you need an approach that enables you, across the board, to control what you can and eliminate what you can’t. The important thing to remember is that you are in control of far more than you realize." 1. They Set Limits (Especially with Complainers) 2. They Don’t Die in the Fight 3. They Rise Above 4. They Stay Aware of Their Emotions 5. They Establish Boundaries 6. They Won’t Let Anyone Limit Their Joy 7. They Don’t Focus on Problems—Only Solutions 8. They Don’t Forget 9. They Squash Negative Self-Talk 10. They Limit Their Caffeine Intake 11. They Get Some Sleep 12. They Use Their Support System Bringing It All Together Read the details: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/243913 Stephen

ALA Library Fact Sheet 1: Number of Libraries in the United States http://www.ala.org/tools/libfactsheets/alalibraryfactsheet01 There are an estimated 119,729 libraries of all kinds in the United States today. No single annual survey provides statistics on all types of libraries. Figures for public, academic, and school libraries come from surveys by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), while the others come from Information Today’s American Library Directory. Specifically, the public libraries numbers come from the IMLS Public Libraries in the United States Survey, from the latest report in the series, Public Libraries in the United States Survey: Fiscal Year 2012 (December 2014). The numbers for academic and school libraries come from the NCES Library Statistics Program and the Schools and Staffing Survey surveys, respectively: Academic Libraries: 2012 First Look (2014); Characteristics of Public Elementary and Secondary School Library Media Centers in the United States: Results From the 2011-12 Schools and Staffing Survey for the number of school libraries in public schools; Characteristics of Public and Bureau of Indian Education Elementary and Secondary School Library Media Centers in the United States: Results from the 2007-08 Schools and Staffing Survey for the number of school libraries in BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) schools; and Table 421. Selected statistics on school libraries/media centers, by control and level of school: 1999-2000 and 2003-04 from the 2008 Digest of Education Statisticsfor the number of school libraries in private schools (more recent library media center data for private schools have not been collected because of NCES budget constraints). Figures for special libraries, armed forces libraries, and government libraries come from the American Library DirectoryTM2014-2015, which is a two-volume set currently published by Information Today, Inc. now in its 67th edition Numbers of Libraries in the United States Public Libraries (administrative units) 9,082 Central Buildings* 8,895 Branch Buildings 7,641 Total Buildings 16,536 Academic Libraries 3,793 Less than four-year 1,304 Four-year and above 2,489 School Libraries 98,460 Public schools 81,200 Private schools 17,100 BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) 160 Special Libraries** 7,179 Armed Forces Libraries 260 Government Libraries 955 Total 119,729 * The number of central buildings is different from the number of public libraries because some public library systems have no central building and some have more than one. Public Libraries in the United States Survey: Fiscal Year 2012 (December 2014) specifically explains in a footnote to Table 3: "Of the 9,041 public libraries in the 50 States and DC, 7,321 were single-outlet libraries and 1,720 were multiple-outlet libraries. Single-outlet libraries are a central library, bookmobile, or books-by-mail-onlyoutlet. Multiple-outlet libraries have two or more direct service outlets, including some combination of one central library, branch(es), bookmobile(s), and/or books-by-mail-only outlets." * * Special libraries include Corporate, Medical, Law, Religious, etc. NOTE from American Library DirectoryTM 2011-2012 (page viii): "Branch records for academic and government libraries are no longer counted within these breakdowns, causing some discrepancy when comparing figures with previous editions. This does not affect the total number of libraries listed in the American Library DirectoryTM." Please contact Lauri Rimler at Information Today, Inc. with any questions regarding this. This difference was initially reported and took effect in the 2010-2011 edition. For the purposes of ALA Library Fact Sheet 1, this counting difference actually most affected the American Library Directory‘s Total Special Libraries number; the 2009-2010 edition reported 8,906 Total Special Libraries, while the 2010-2011 edition reported 8,476 Total Special Libraries, the 2011-2012 edition reported 8,313 Total Special Libraries, the 2012-2013 edition reported 8,014 Total Special Libraries, the 2013-2014 edition reported 7,616 Total Special Libraries, and the 2014-2015 edition reported 7,179 Total Special Libraries. NOTE: Previous versions of this fact sheet can be accessed via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine using the originalURL <http://www.ala.org/library/fact1.html>. Additional questions about libraries in the United States might be answered on one of these fact sheets: ALA Library Fact Sheet 2 - Number Employed in Libraries, ALA Library Fact Sheet 3 - Lists of Libraries, ALA Library Fact Sheet 5 - Marketing to Libraries, ALA Library Fact Sheet 13 - The Nation’s Largest Public Libraries: Top 25 Rankings, and ALA Library Fact Sheet 22 - The Nation’s Largest Libraries. A Listing By Volumes Held. Last updated: April 2015 For more information on this or other fact sheets, contact the ALA Library Reference Desk by telephone: 800-545-2433, extension 2153; fax: 312-280-3255; e-mail: library@ala.org; or regular mail: ALA Library, American Library Association, 50 East Huron Street, Chicago, IL 60611.  

Most of these are already here… Library of the future: 7 technologies we would love to see http://ebookfriendly.com/library-future-technologies/   Stephen  

Millennials and Media http://www.publishingtechnology.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/US_UK-Millennial-Infographic_Site.pdf 1 page PDF US_UK-Millennial-Infographic_Site Stephen  

NEW STUDY FROM WASHINGTON STATE MAKES THE CASE FOR SCHOOL LIBRARIANS http://www.ilovelibraries.org/article/new-study-washington-state-makes-case-school-librarians "The results of that study, which was undertaken on behalf of the Washington Library Media Association, were summed up in a report, Certified Teacher-Librarians, Library Quality and Student Achievement in Washington State Public Schools (PDF).  Those results showed that students attending schools with certified teacher-librarians perform better on standardized tests and are more likely to graduate.  The reason, the report states, is that certified teacher-librarians "are far more likely to be directly involved in teaching curriculum-designed around Common Core standards." They are also "more likely to use up-to-date library curriculum developed in collaboration with general education teachers."  Information technology plays a huge part, since librarians "carry a heavy load of teaching responsibilities focused on information technology; skills that are necessary for success in higher education as well as virtually any profession in today’s world."" Stephen

A Day in the Life of Northern York Region Libraries Stephen

Research: Short Online Interventions Can Improve Student Achievement http://thejournal.com/articles/2015/04/29/research-brief-online-interventions-can-improve-student-achievement.aspx "Researchers at Stanford University and the University of Texas, Austin studied the effect of short, online interventions on high school students at risk of dropping out and found that students’ grade point averages increased after only two 45-minute sessions. The researchers used two types of online interventions, one involving the development of a "growth mindset" and the other involving the development of a "sense of purpose." The growth mindset is the belief that intelligence can be developed rather than being fixed at birth, and that struggling through challenging tasks is an opportunity to improve intelligence. In the study, researchers asked the students to read an article about the brain’s ability to grow intellectually through hard work and effective academic strategies. The sense-of-purpose intervention asked students to write about how they thought the world could be a better place; to read stories about the effect of academic achievement on their ability to make a positive impact on the world; and to think about how school could help them achieve their goals." Stephen

68% of millennials report digital eye strain. How to soothe the ache http://mashable.com/2015/05/05/digital-eye-strain/   Stephen