hall of shame: ALA and NJASL

As an LIS student, I rely on professional library organizations for information for papers and online discussions. So, I was quite annoyed to find, for the 2nd time this month, a library organization has taken formerly free information on their website and moved it to a (paid) members-only section.

Hello? I thought:
library = free = access to information
Right?

I mean, I'm willing to pay for a hard copy. I realize these documents take money and effort (albiet from VOLUNTEERS) to produce. But, get with the 21st century already and throw up a free pdf on your site. Actually, in these cases, KEEP the free pdf that you ALREADY HAD (for FREE) on your site for months (or YEARS). Why move it to a member-restricted section of your site NOW? (i.e., A few weeks before the end of MY semester?!)

ALA, NJASL? You know what documents I'm referring to. I'll be waiting for your reply while I find a friend to email me a copy she wisely downloaded before you went all Amazon on me.

National Library Week on YouTube

Check out ALA's NLW promo videos on YouTube. This one is my current fav, but Go Fish is a close second. For some reason, they are posted under different user names. :-( Use this link for the username AmLibraryAssociation to see them all (I think). Enjoy!

remind me again. why am i doing this?

Okay, so maybe taking nine credits this semester wasn't my smartest move. After several weeks of very little sleep trying to juggle the workload, kids, job, scouts, PTA, and that guy who sleeps next to me and pays for all of this...I'm wondering, "Why, why, why did I decide to go back to grad school (again)?" A few minutes catching up on bloglines, and I have my answer. (Isn't the web a wondrous thing?)
[Found at Speak Quietly.]

tools for the inner librarian - website management

Yesterday, I wondered aloud, how can i find out who links to my site? Not surprisingly, I found my answer in Google's Webmaster Tools. I found lots of cool links to my site - even in Dutch, Italian, and Chinese(?). (Sorry, I'm still amazed that anyone has seen my site outside of my professor and classmates.)

So far, my online toolkit is fairly limited:

• Google's Webmaster Tools
• StatCounter

I'm using the free/online versions of each. Neat stuff. And very cool that it is free for novices like me to play with.

What other tools are out there? I went back to PLCMC's 23 Things, and was surprised that website management tools were not included in their list for librarians to explore. Actually, web development is not included in the list at all. Some might not be surprised by this, but this inner librarian--having just completed a killer course in multimedia web development as part of my online MLIS program--was more than mildly surprised. Most libraries are on the web. Do they track their statistics? What software do they use? Is it included in their OPAC subscription? But what about their home page? Blog? Calendar? Do they know who is using their site and how they are using it? How many libraries take this information seriously and how do they make use of it?

So, now I'm curious... and, apparently spending my afternoon online. ;-)