I know…Blog Day was yesterday (Aug. 31), but this is a holiday weekend, so…Happy Labor Day (in North America) and happy belated Blog Day!  Here are five blogs that I’ve found that might interest you:

1. Sterling Performance — Part of BNET and written in the UK, this blog is about leadership. Recent posts include Time to Hurry Up?, Why Everything’s Urgent Now, and For Compelling Visions, Keep it Simple.
2. The View from Harvard Business — This is also part of BNET.  Recent posts include Entrepreneurs Should Love a Recession, A Few Productivity Tips From Lifehacker’s Gina Trapani and Avoiding Tainted Love: How Pixar Builds Sustainable Creativity.
3. Drew’s Marketing Minute –Based in Iowa, recent posts include Marketing through the eyes of Harry Potter, Where should you spend your marketing budget in ’09? and Why do you exist?
4. The Berkun Blog — Written by Scott Berkun, recent blog posts include How do you teach leadership in high school?, More on learning from mistakes and How not to set goals: Steve Ballmer, a case study.
5. TEDBlog — TED’s tagline is "Ideas Worth Spreading." The blog is a mix of text and video.  Recent posts include The making of an activist: Ory Okolloh, How kids teach themselves: Sugata Mitra and Psychology’s final frontier: Staying sane in space.

By the way, if you have come across a blog that we all should know about — or remind of a blog that we should be reading — please leave a comment! 

Technorati tag: BlogDay2008

There are several ways to read this blog.  You can:

1. Come to the blog’s web site and read it.
2. Have new blog posts appear in your RSS reader.
3. Have new blog posts delivered to you in email.

The second and third options send new blog posts to you, so you do not have to remember to come and check the blog’s web site.  For many people, having blog posts delivered to them has been the key to keeping up with "what’s new."

If you are using an RSS reader (often called a blog reader or aggregator), then you can add the this blog to your reader.  Popular RSS readers include Bloglines and Google Reader, although there are many, many more (and many are free).  Each will have a way to add or subscribe to a specific blog.  Generally, they will ask for the blog’s URL or the URL for the blog’s feed (http://sla-divisions.typepad.com/sla_lmd/atom.xml).

There are many ways to receive the blog posts in email.  One utility that I use (and it’s free) is FeedBlitz.com.  If you look at the bottom of the page, you can see a place to type in this blog’s URL and subscribe to the feed. Notice that you can receive the feed in email as well as through some instant messenger (IM) services (headline & URL only).

Of course, you can experiment!  Try subscribing to this blog in several ways and then decide which one really works for you.  If you are unfamiliar with RSS readers, etc., that could be a great way of becoming familiar.

Likely you’ve heard about the four-hour work week (see article).  It is likely impossible, but it is likely very possible to shave a few hours off your work week (and those of your colleagues).  This blog post gives a few ideas (yes, a few you’ve heard before).

This is very interesting.  Likely mistakes we all make at some point.  The first two reasons are:

1. They’re too long.
2. They don’t reference the prospect’s pain.

Okay…you might have guessed those two, but what about #8:

They’re missing testimonials and client references.

To read about these and to see the entire list, go here.

I see on the Free Range Librarian’s, Karen Schneider, blog that Karen asks if email lists are still useful – or are they "last century".  And I must confess that I immediately felt very old – as I vividly remember when the SLA Toronto Chapter got its first list – way back when!  How handy it was!  No more mailing around to individuals!  What a great social network (to use a current phrase to apply to a time before the phrase existed) it was!  But I also immediately thought of the LMD list – which, perhaps fortuitously given the comments on Karen’s blog, has never been over-active.  This is one of the many questions that I am sure Ulla deStricker and her strategic planning team will explore next year in our quest to uncover the future of LMD.  But I thought I would interject this thought here in advance … what do you think of email lists in general and the LMD list specifically?  Are they "so last century" … or does the LMD list serve its purpose to communicate to our audience?  Please comment!

http://freerangelibrarian.com/2007/11/07/email-lists-are-they-last-century/#comments

Regards, Juanita – LMD Chair-Elect

For those out there interested in economics / capital markets / money markets, you may be interested in those post by Dave Pollard: http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2007/10/01.html#a1995

Dave is well-known as a KM guru and has spoken at SLA conferences as well as other info industry conferences.  He applies here his very clear and concise writing style to the current economic situation in the US with his take on what’s next.  On the assumption that this is not just fear-mongering – and I don’t think it is – what do you think will be the impact on special libraries?  (to put a very narrow focus on what could in fact be a worldwide disaster)

Okay – a little late for BlogDay – this list has been the source of some subsequent discussion ("how objective is objective"… "what is "favourite" – or "favorite" – anyway" … etc)  But I found this list interesting …

http://oedb.org/library/features/top-25-librarian-bloggers-by-the-numbers

Happy reading!

-Juanita

This is the third anniversary of Blog Day (August 31).  Today bloggers around the world will mention blogs that they want to tell their readers about.  In keeping with the spirit of Blog Day, here are seven blogs worth checking out!

Alkamae – This is a blog with tips and other information geared towards women entrepreneurs.  There are also interviews with women entrepreneurs (entitled "Accidental Pren-her: Stories of the Unexpected").

Lifehacker — "Computers make us more productive. Yeah, right. Lifehacker recommends the software downloads and web sites that actually save time. Don’t live to geek; geek to live."  There is always something of interest in Lifehacker and frequently tips that will be very useful.

Linked Intelligence –  Likely you’ve heard of the networking site called LinkedIn. Maybe you’re using LinkedIn and, if you are, probably you feel like you could be using it better. This blog is dedicated to using LinkedIn well. Scott Allen, who writes this blog, even does Extreme LinkedIn Profile Makeovers.

Make Money Online with Dosh Dosh — Written by a Canadian, this blog is "about making money online, about what works and what doesn’t. Exposing fraudulent scams, Dosh Dosh aims to be the largest online repository of legitimate profit initiatives."

Startup Spark — This blog contains tips, advice and interviews geared towards entrepreneurs.  It is also the blog that maintains the Carnival of Entrepreneurs.

TP! Wire Service — Management consultant Tom Peters and his crew find news articles each day that may be of interest to managers, business people and entrepreneurs.  It can be worthwhile skimming the headings (since there can be many of them) and then reading only those stories that are truly of interest.

Young Upstarts — This blogs "seeks to provide a voice, and serve as an incubator, for small businesses in Singapore. "  This blog touches on topics of interest no matter where you are located.  

Technorati Tag: BlogDay2007

I thought I would start a list of the blogs that may be of interest to Leadership Div members.  Please feel free to add those that you lurk on / contribute to.  The following are the blogs I’m particularly addicted to …

Dave Pollard – How to Save the World:  Dave’s thoughts on the environment, his creative works … plus business / KM / social networking / etc papers http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/

Karen Schneider – Free Range Librarian:  Karen’s personal blog – sometimes with controversial opinions – lots of great links http://freerangelibrarian.com/

Jane Dysart & Rebecca Jones – Infobuzzz:  news from the world of conferences – from around the world http://www.dysartjones.com/

Steven Cohen – Library Stuff:  media monitoring for the library world http://www.librarystuff.net/

Stephen Abram – Stephen’s Lighthouse: your one-stop-shop for keeping up with everything  http://stephenslighthouse.sirsi.com/

Michael Stephens – Tame the Web: Michael’s musings – I love all the visuals  http://www.tametheweb.com/

Jenny Levine – The Shifted Librarian: Jenny’s always insightful and interesting (sometimes critical) opinions http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/

Bill Ives – Portals and KM: KM from a business perspective http://billives.typepad.com/

Nouriel Roubini – RGE Monitor-Roubini: to feed my personal interest in the markets and economics http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini

So, where do you lurk?

-Juanita, Leadership Division Chair-Elect

By Steve Kochoff, SLA NY Chapter President-elect

While reading Brigitte Hamann and Alan Bance’s book Winifred Wagner: A Life at the Heart of Hitler’s Bayreuth, I realized that I was one handshake away from shaking Hitler’s hand. Of course I wasn’t too happy about that dare I say, epiphany – I have shaken the hand of Wolfgang Wagner, one of Winifred’s children and the current manager of the annual Wagner Festival in Bayreuth. Yet this example demonstrated again to me what I would posit are "no-degrees" of separation, never mind six degrees!

My point in sharing this vivid "discovery" is that in the push-pull of our daily work lives I think we sometimes don’t distance ourselves enough to consciously recognize whose hands we are "shaking" both literally and figuratively.

My advice would be that in our work lives we "map" the hands that we shake, either directly or indirectly.
We need to consider where we sit in the reporting structure of our organizations, both for profit and not for- profit. Any number of special libraries and information centers might not report directly to top management, although some do. Nonetheless all are a "handshake" or two away from their top management and their boards.

Do we maximize that "closeness?" – Do we study the organization in which we sit, whose mission is supported by special libraries? Do we "map" the organization and characterize various "hands"that is, those who are avid library supporters, (for example, those the info center helped close a deal for the firm?) or, the passive supporters ("I always get what I need from the info center"); enemies ("that library is an expense and what does it do to contribute to the bottom line?" – or, "why do we need the expense of an info center for we can get all the info we need on the Internet?")

SLA President Rebecca Vargha has asked us to share our "sticky" stories. As a corollary, I’d add to that important campaign: continue to "consciously shake hands" in your organizations. It might sound a bit Machiavellian but survival of libraries and information centers is surely enhanced by helping all key players in an organization understand the value and the contributions that special libraries make to their organizations. Shaking hands, literally and metaphorically, should be as routine as turning on your computer. Our task is to continue our stories, lobbying and reminding our communities what we do for them so that we can help them overcome the "taking us for granted syndrome." Perhaps a "sticky story" will develop out of your newfound awareness of those whose hands you shake. So my challenge to all of our SLA NY Chapter members is: step outside yourselves, analyze and map the hands you have shaken and continue to shake, develop and share good elevator stories of how your work has helped the person or department, and make sure to tell your story to the people in your organization regularly.

Steve Kochoff, SLA NY Chapter President-elect and Regional Sales Director, Basch Subscriptions, Inc. He can be reached at stkockoff@hotmail.com.