PLA Blog – Word-of-Mouth Marketing
The four key elements to a successful word-of-mouth marketing campaign are: a clean, memorable and consistent message; a good product/GREAT customer relations; a prepared and committed sales force, people who are willing to testify and a plan.

Library Journal – Everything I Need To Know I Learned Online
Online communities can help librarians save time, establish professional links, and reconnect with the roots of the profession

Boing Boing: Economist: assault on filesharing by entertainment biz is senseless

This news analysis piece in the Economist says attacking the technology behind file-sharing could stifle innovation without tackling the industry’s long-term problems.
And perhaps the decline in global sales is indicative of a far greater problem for the music industry—consumers simply think that many of its [...]

Why and How to Use Blogs to Promote Your Library’s Services

Librarians have had to learn how to do a lot with just a little in order to promote awareness of their programs and services. They have seized the opportunities to market libraries in the real world via traditional media: newspapers, corporate newsletters, [...]

librarian.net:DRM isn’t just ineffective, it does active harm

the EFF states …[DRM] has been in wide deployment for a decade with no benefit to artists and with substantial cost to the public and to due process, free speech and other civil society fundamentals.

Boing Boing: Record sales up, P2P sales up — RIAA’s story doesn’t add up
According to the RIAA, CD sales are increasing. Now, the RIAA also says that P2P destroys music sales, so it follows that if they’re selling more CDs there must be less P2P, right? Uh, no — file-sharing is up, too (so CD [...]

Edward Vielmetti Hears From His Library…and he Blogs It

I’m sure Edward was a big library user before he got this e-mail, but now he will probably be a bigger one now. Plus, he’ll tell his friends about what his library is doing with RSS. Can you say free PR?

librarian.net:way to make a good impression, librarians!

No seriously. Found this blog post from Fil, a member of the “video game community” talking about meeting some librarians at a symposium about the future of libraries.

I hate not having the ability to give items the attention they deserve.

Engineering Information – Ei UPDATE Online NewsletterRSS: Moving Into the Mainstream

RSS, or Real Simple Syndication/Rich Site Summary, is rapidly moving into our professional and personal lives as a way to keep track of the ever-increasing flow of new information. As a current awareness service, RSS allows for one-stop shopping. Recently, Ei started testing RSS feeds [...]

Yes I read other sites, I’m just cleaning out some of my drafts file. There are a couple of weeks left before I go back to work. I’m still waiting for my eye to get to where I can get new glasses.
Boing Boing: Game developers’ amazing rants on the state of the industry

You have [...]

Boing Boing: US gov’t to apply DRM to public, non-copyrighted info that you already paid for
…the Government Printing Office, is proposing a new set of policies that will drastically reduce free access to government information. Three librarians from the University of California San Diego have written an article about the details.

On a different topic, are [...]

Always Fresh: Fast Content For Library Web Sites with Really Simple Syndication (RSS)
Keeping a library web site up to date with fresh content is a challenge for any webmaster. Learn how to publish, merge and format RSS feeds into instant web content. Discover how libraries have made specialized pages featuring article titles of new journal [...]

Building Communities in the Palm of your Hand discusses the ways libraries can become more pda/smartphone friendly, and therefore more user friendly.
This is particularly an important subject for health sciences libraries. PDA’s are very popular with doctors and when they need information they want it immediately with as little trouble as possible. My library [...]

LibraryTechtonics: Presentation tips
Because everyone needs to present sooner or later.

Boing Boing: Canada’s copyfight explained, demystified
In Canada, the entertainment industry has decided that Canada’s copyright (which has been updated dozens of times since it was first introduced” is outdated and must be updated to look like American copyright law, but even worse. For example, Canada’s rightsholders want to replace “notice-and-takedown” (an ISP has to remove [...]

Digital Web Magazine – Databases Behind Shops covers the basics of SQL with examples.

Peter Scott’s Library Blog
ITI-InfoCentral.com is the new digital archive of Information Today, Inc. Search, browse, preview and purchase from over 25,000 full-text news reports, articles, interviews, and critical reviews about the companies, products and people in the library, electronic information services, and digital content industries. ITI-InfoCentral.com links to ITI’s archives, from September 1987 to the [...]

Boing Boing: Musicians don’t earn living from copyright, copyright hurts creators
The excellent free peer-reviewed net-journal First Monday has published an exhaustive survey of the earnings made by British and German musicians. Their conclusion? Copyright doesn’t give creators a living, and in many cases (such as clearing samples) it costs them more than they can afford.