HARO - Help A Reporter Out

I'm experimenting with a web 2.0 tool by media/PR guru Peter Shankman. The free tool is for both reporters and sources, called Help-a-reporter-out (HARO) . As a "source" for library issues, I've registered and will get 1-3 e-mails a day. Most will be irrelevant and ignored.

How does HARO make money? According to a MoneyWatch article, HARO membership gets three emails with press queries each business day, and those emails are sponsored. Do the math: Three emails/day times five/week times fifty-two weeks/year = 780 ad placements (3 x 5 x 52). Interesting. Comments from reporters and sources alike are positive. Let the experience begin!

Banned Books Music Video - Dfilm

Devolver MovieMaker (formerly DFilm) was easy and fun to use. I made a quick mini-movie on "Banned Books". Check it out and encourage them to add a book-themed (library) backdrop option! Lots of potential for advocacy, not just a fun toy. Fun is a powerful way to make a point.

YouTube Award Winners 2007

YouTube is amazing. Here are the award winners for 2007. One of these days, a library advocacy video will win a prize. Or, maybe the librarians should have an awards nomination and winners for categories especially for library topics! Why not?

ALA or CLA award categories could include: humor, advocacy, "how to" search, professional development, program promotions, etc.

Story Boards and Videos

We've all enjoyed videos from YouTube, TeacherTube, Google Video, and such. But how do you go about creating your own special video? Afterall, a short video with just the right images, messages, music, and more can do wonders for getting the attention (and funding) your library deserves.

Here are a few sites that include "how to" lessons, online tutorials, and tools such as story boards.

• San Diego COE offers a Video Storyboard pdf to educators
• Photostory3 - a free download from Microsoft
• Microsoft Movie Maker. "How to"
• Kid's Vid
• Peachpit
• DiscoveryLearning/UnitedStreaming: MovieMaker Tutorial that uses UnitedStreaming images
• Atomic Learning - series of mini tutorials - well done!
• Ed Tech Masters project - dated, but well presented.
• Digital storytelling and tools
• Apple iLife and iMovie

The technology is the easy part. What you want to say and how to say it is the hard part.

Biblio Smile Kids

A clever California school librarian whose blog is called "Biblio Smile" has been experimenting with Flickr. She took a fun photo of students holding a craft they created at afternoon storytime. The photo is a great example of being "cybersafe" -- no photos of kids' faces! Great picture. It calls for a whole series of Biblio Smile Kids... such as

• BSK on library floor listening to an author.
• BSK at library workstations.
• BSK holding their favorite books.

ALA announcement on READ T-Shirts for avatars

I signed up to get ALA News so I'd get their announcement on the Yahoo! Avatar READ t-shirts. It appeared first on their list of lots of news. That was cool.

But what I also learned from the ALA announcement was that there is an ALA site for the general public called "I Love Libraries." I'm sure its been around for some time, but I just learned about it! It was also a clever way to direct readers to their public site, with fun links and donation opportunities. Another link on this page is "Careers in Libraries." Another link is "Librarians on YouTube." ALA is really getting hip! What a perception changer... hummm.

Virtual "READ" T-shirts for Librarian Avatars

Now, thanks to the new "READ" T-shirts for Yahoo! avatars, you will know just what to wear for summer 2.0 fun!

Members of the California School Library Association and their friends who are participating or planning to participate in the free, online course, School Library Learning 2.0 have a special T-shirt for Yahoo! Avatars that promotes literacy and reading. Here is where to find the stylish "READ" T-Shirt.

• Go to http://avatars.yahoo.com/


• Select the tab marked "extras"


• Click on "issues and causes."

The first T-shirt choice is a "READ" T-shirt for male and female avatars. Thanks go to Amanda at Yahoo! Avatars and Rachel at ALA Graphics for making magic T-shirts happen!

E-Mail Messaging (e-mail to cell phones)

I've become a fan of e-mail messaging. It is the only way to reach and get a response from high school or college kids, given they prefer text messaging and instant messages over e-mail.

Academic librarians have started to experiment with instant messages for reference service, but it has it other uses. It might be fun to experiment some more -- ask for student AND TEACHER cell phone numbers when they check out a book or come to a meeting or class in the library. Follow up with a short and sweet message to their cells at 10digitcell@txt.att.com.

Download the Txt2Connect tutorial (for parents and librarians, too!) What could some of your messages look like?
(From LIBRARY@school.org) Check it out. New books arrived.
(From LIBRARY@school.org) Check it out. Book Club meets today.
(From LIBRARY@school.org) Check it out. Guest author in town.
(From LIBRARY@school.org) Check it out. Book overdue.
(From LIBRARY@school.org) Check it out. Read. Succeed.
(From LIBRARY@school.org) Check it out. Eat. Sleep. Read. Repeat.

See also: Cell Phone Revolution on Campus - the Chronicle of Higher Education carried an Report released by New America Media, a national collaboration of ethnic news organizations. The report reveals data about 600 16- to 22-year-olds and how they feel about marriage, their future, and other pressing issues in their lives. Not surprisingly, school is the main cause of stress in 33% of the respondents' lives. Also, the largest proportion (27%) said music and fashion are the most important characteristics that identify their identity. Survey done entirely by cell phone.

Week 9: LibraryThing and YouTube (#19, 20 Thing)

Week 9 is the final week of SJLibrary 2.0 and the first exercise asks us to look at LibraryThing, something I did back in Week 6 when the focus was on tagging. We were invited to look at MoBuzzTV.com for a story on LibraryThing, but I couldn't find the story even when searching their archives. MoBuzzTV has lots of interesting and short technology stories.

Another assignment (#20) is to check out YouTube and look for other similar sites. Humm.. this also seems like a repeat for me from Week 6. Two of my favorite "library themed" YouTube videos are Library Dominos and Ray of Light. Library Dominos is short, mostly silent, yet sweet. ray of Light has great music and is "a day in the life of a library" - a real treat and tribute to all who work at the St. Joseph's County Library.

More fun...with ImageChef

Here's a fun image from ImageChef. I hadn't seen this book image when first exploring the site, but one of my first "comments" to my blog alerted me to this. So, here is an appropriate book title for the 2CoolTools blog...

WEEK 4: Bloglines (#8 Thing)

As I understand it, using Bloglines is a FREE news aggravator that allows me to get a bunch of RSS feeds and also allows me to make my blog public so others will be more aware of my blog (not this blog, but my other one, http://advocate4libraries.blogspot.com.) I opened a Bloglines and will see what will happen. At this point, I'm more interested in seeing if folks from other parts of the U.S. will discover my library advocacy blog.

I already get a bunch of news feeds sent to my AT&T Yahoo! DSL (MyYahoo!) page, so I'm not eager to add 10 more here. I do get several library, business, CDE, SF, and other news feeds so I know what they are -- some are not contributed to frequently, but that is OK.

PS: I looked at some of the other SJ blogs and posted a comment or two, just for fun.