Category Archives: web 2.0

Best Practices for Blogging

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | April 3, 2013 - 8:29 pm | , , ,
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social-media-tree-small

I agreed to teach a session on “Best Practices for Blogging.” In case others are making these kinds of presentations, or other libraries are just now starting blogs (hey, we have a couple of new blogs, so surely others must, too, right?), I thought I’d share the best practices I’ve pulled together and leave the floor open for others to comment and add theirs. I’m focusing this talk on blogs by library staff, for patrons. But these best practices are also applicable to other kinds of blogs (and, arguably, I should follow more of them, here). Also, I’m really not … Continue reading →

Professional Online Presence

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | February 19, 2013 - 8:46 am | , ,
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Social Media Monster

I’ve wrestled with online communication and professional identity before, both publicly and in private. I’ve tried maintaining separate “professional” and “personal” Twitter streams and even separate Facebook accounts. (And then I realized that the overlap between “friends” and “colleagues” was too much for such an approach to be sustainable.) I’ve made Facebook rules, such as “no friending professional contacts,” and then I’ve broken them, and now I have completely reversed them: I go out of my way to friend professional contacts. So it was with interest that I read Daniel Cornwall‘s and Starr Hoffman‘s posts on “Professional Online Presences.” Daniel … Continue reading →

Product Review: FitBit (but this post is secretly about libraries)

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | January 18, 2013 - 1:03 pm | , , , , ,
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This isn’t normally a product review blog. Nobody sends me free samples (including FitBit). But I kind of want to write about the FitBit One because it connects to some of my library-related thoughts, recently, and because (spoiler) I really, really like it. And I know it isn’t technically the latest and greatest FitBit has to offer—they have that new wristband, to compete with the Nike Fuel. Or is that not out yet? Anyway, I looked at wristbands and ended up going with the One. It was the right call, for me. First off, before we get into the interface, … Continue reading →

Social Media Plan

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | November 14, 2012 - 8:43 pm | , ,
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I’m trying to update MPOW’s Social Media Plan (yes, less than a week after getting the first draft of the Web Plan into the Web Team’s hands—and I still need to make the edits we agreed on, to that; frankly, I’ve done so much planning, lately, it’s a wonder anything’s gotten done). And I’m finding that, far more so than two years ago, social media has gotten messy. I have to say, the problems we’re having are mostly very good problems to have. It’s just making the document hard to write. Currently: We have people who blog, people who post … Continue reading →

Evolution of a Website

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | August 1, 2012 - 11:15 am | , , , , , ,
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Because I’m working on my “fourth year”* tenure and retention** file, I’ve been reflecting, lately, on the progress I’ve made while here. And, in particular—unsurprisingly—I wanted to see what kinds of changes the website has undergone. I didn’t do a great job of grabbing screen captures, early on, so this is not a perfect reflection of every step in the site’s progress. I know there’s an intermediate step between the first two, where “More »” went away, and a Site Search popped up beside Site Index, briefly, among other things. My note-taking, back then, was good enough to confirm that … Continue reading →

National Poetry Month

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | May 1, 2012 - 4:11 pm | , ,
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I sometimes find myself feeling a little competitive (in a friendly way!) with another library in my state university system: their social media has tended to be quite good, they have a banana tree, their library has a giant raven statue(!!) outside and might just generally be prettier than ours, they once made librarian trading cards (link goes to a general pool of cards, not to theirs specifically), and they put up a “Poet Tree” last year, to celebrate National Poetry Month. They are a fairly small academic library staff that nevertheless find time to do some pretty fun things, … Continue reading →

Google Plus for Education

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | February 14, 2012 - 4:40 pm | , , , ,
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And now, after looking more into it and organizing my thoughts (as much as I ever do—see photo on left), I find that I actually have more than half an hour of content to cover, in my Google Plus for Education talk. Much more. But the online session is set to shut down right after 2:30, I believe, so I’ll have to restrain myself. (The in-person session went OK. Not amazingly, but not badly.) Here are the links I’ll share: Google Plus Cheat Sheet Michelle Stephens’s talk (57 minutes) on using Google Plus with students – covers the pros and … Continue reading →

Google Plus and Teaching

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | February 8, 2012 - 10:00 pm | , ,
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I sort of got volunteered to give a talk on Google Plus (seriously, I missed a meeting of UAA’s Elearning Working Group (“Elearn”) to go to my library’s holiday party in early December, and I found out in January that I would be giving a half-hour presentation via Elluminate Live on February 17). I see how they decided to volunteer me: I’m on Elearn’s Social Networking in Education subcommittee, and Google Plus was the social network I researched. I did the bulk of the work in putting together a pros & cons list, on using G+ in place of some … Continue reading →

Mini-Vacation

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | December 16, 2011 - 11:43 am | , ,
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Hi, I’m Coral, and I’ve been off Facebook for more than a week. OK, I haven’t actually gone a week without logging in. I’m chair of my library’s social media committee, so I had to go in for that. I run (inasmuch as it takes running) Interlibrary Lush – Anchorage (who, by the way, is getting together this Saturday at 7:30 at Henri Hawaii Lounge), so I had to go in and administer that page once or twice. A couple of discussions in the ALA Think Tank caught my eye, so I logged in for those. And I got one … Continue reading →