Feedback (Please Fight) (Suggestion Box)

Feedback (Please Fight)

I really liked the comment telling me my blog is tedious and needs to include a lot more of my own voice. I need to see more comments like this. I want combative statements about what I can do to improve this blog.

There has been an incredible drop in readership. Some people are calling what I am writing tedious and pedestrian. Reveal more about yourself and what you do. Liven things up.

Please take the time to comment on all aspects of this blog. Unless I see comments from you about what you want, I can't make this blog more to your liking. I want comments that make me think and force me to reveal things which I find interesting.

Controversy is a good thing for this site. I want to include material that is controversial. Please let me know what you think.

I was reading Impact by Ken McArthur and he says it perfectly about customer service. First you have to answer peoples needs. Then you have to listen to their suggesstions. If you have no suggestions for me to listen to, I can't give you more of what you want. Then you have to implement what people have suggested.

No feedback. No implementation. We keep a notepad at work at the reference desk. We write down books which we don't have on the notepad for purchase. We also make some comments on suggested ideas. The notepad is a hideous green color, but despite its color, it is still very useful.

Right now, I feel a little like I am begging for money. Amazon has a donation program where you can request money from bloggers. I would feel remiss to do this. http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=542032

I am not going to beg you for money. But, I do feel like I am going to request a little bit for feedback.

Zoomii (A New Format For Online Bookselling)

This is a weblink to a new form of online bookselling. It sells Amazon books on a bookstore map which is very browsable. You can search the covers by subject or browse around the online store. It is very interesting to me. I intend to spend some time looking at the different sections. It looks like pretty much all the selections are new material on popular subjects. It might be useful to use it as a selection tool.

I intend to spend some time writing about it some more tomorrow. I liked the resolution of the covers. I think it will take me a while to get used to the navigation.

The cover search engine is the best feature so far. I like it much better than the storefront. I think it is quite interesting. You put in your keyword, look at the bookcovers, then click on the cover to get a description of the book.

There are a lot of categories of books that are never reviewed and you have to look over the books to buy them. This is especially true of subjects like home improvement, electronics, plumbing, hvac, and other technical books. So, this could be potentially very useful. I may use it to look up these kind of subjects.

http://zoomii.com/#home

Morning Thoughts, Society of Midnight Wanderers, Afternoon Thoughts

A Bookcase

Morning Thoughts

The process has started. I spent a little time this morning discussing the idea of collection development with the new director. She made a few suggestions for me to follow. I think things could become very interesting shortly. Tomorrow we have a meeting to discuss collection development at noon with my department. I have been working up to this slowly. I hope it gives me the break which I have been seeking for a while. I already have been handed more collection development responsibilities. This is what I hope I get more than doing more programming. The least I am asking for is a partial change in title to Reference/Collection Development Librarian.

I also handed in a few books which I had read this weekend. I read some more of Ken McArthur's Impact. It gave a suggestion to write down every single skill which I could think of that I had. If it was a skill no matter how trivial, I should write it down. Also, it told me to focus on doing five things every single day towards achieving a goal. I did not have to succeed at them, I just had to try them. Again, the exercises and the daily suggestion make it leagues ahead of many business self help books.

I think I found another event to go to. Metropolitan New York Library Council is holding a networking reception with a tour of the New York Public Library Schomburg Center For Black Culture. I think it will be very interesting to go to.
http://metronylibrary.augusoft.net/index.cfm?fuseaction=1011&CategoryID=2&SubCategoryID=44

Society of Midnight Wanderers

I wrote my first post to the Society of Midnight Wanderers. It is a form of poem if you can call it that called Backward and Forward In Time.
http://midnightwanderersociety.blogspot.com/2008/09/backward-and-forward-in-time-thoughts.html

Afternoon Thoughts

A couple of books came in for me which I reserved, Stalking the Unicorn A Fable of Tonight by Mike Resnick, and Green Investing by Jack Uldrich. Also, the film Persepolis came in through interchange. I am really looking forward to watching Persepolis, the graphic novel of the same title was quite enjoyable. I often write these things down so I can know what I read at a given time.

I also requested Too Many Curses by A. Lee Martinez. It is humorous fantasy. Earlier, I reviewed The Automatic Detective on this blog. I like his writing. It has a strong sense of sarcasm and black wit to it. He also wrote Gil's All Fright Diner. He can write humor in fantasy, science fiction, and horror settings.

Some Light Thoughts, Palin and ALA (American Library Association)

Some Light Thoughts

Yay, there is a link from the Space Vulture book site to my review.
http://www.spacevulture.com/reviews.html

Life cannot be too serious.

Palin and ALA

The American Library Association made a statement that they were not allowed to politically discuss Sarah Palin's librarian issue.

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6593850.html

Interesting. I wonder who threatened them about their 501c3 status. Apparently, they may lose their status as a nonprofit organization if they discuss political issues. Now, I really know where my bread is buttered.

Groundswell Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies By Charlene Li (Forrester Research) and Josh Bernoff

Groundswell Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies By Charlene Li (Forrester Research) and Josh Bernoff

Groundswell is about social technologies. According to the authors on page 9, Groundswell is,
"A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations."

Using Wikipedia instead of the Encyclopedia Britannica would be an example of Groundswell. Going to a free technical support forum on the internet instead of reading the manual for your camera would be Groundswell as well.

This book is a practical book about how corporations have succeeded in using "groundswell" in their business transactions. For example, Proctor & Gamble created an online community called beinggirl about growing up for teenagers to sell feminine products like tampons. All of the examples are from corporations. There are over 25 different cases in this book. It is a nuts and bolts book.

There is no theory in this book. It gives a working model on you can market, participate, strategize, and profit in the the groundswell environment. To give a better context of what this means, Charlene Li is the vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research in Web 2.0 and Social Computing. Josh Bernoff is the Vice President and Principal Analyst for Technographics. I am not sure what Technographics is...

The business model includes charts, graphs, and other indicators of ROI (Return on Investment). I don't particularly understand it. It sounds like consultant, analyst, or MBA talk. Pieces of this book are way over my head. But then it is printed by Harvard Business Press, and c2008, Forrester Research.

The parts of this book which were understandable were the lists of action steps they created to use groundswell. For example, on P. 114, they have a very interesting list of what it takes to succeed in building a corporate blog.

Despite being a complicated business book, the book is not dry. The writing is quite lively. I especially liked the section on the AFOL (Adult Friends of Lego) and http://www.lugnet.com/ International Lego Users Network. The image of an adult building a lego star wars star destroyer comes to mind. It is the epitome of geekiness.

There was one corporate example that bothered me a little bit. Best Buy has an internal corporate network for its sales and marketing people called Blue Shirt Nation. In the history of World War II, the falange or Spanish Fascists were called Blue Shirts. It is a corporate gaff which most people would not pick up.

The authors claim that the Groundswell will permanently change the corporate landscape. I agree with this. Collaborative tools and systems thinking are quickly moving into every aspect of everyday life. I see the world speeding up and many things becoming on demand. It is both disconcerting and exhilarating.

The book has bibliographic notes, a case index with a variety of companies, and a subject index. here are numerous charts and graphs throughout the book. I don't understand many of these because I am not an MBA. The book has a website at groundswell.forrester.com