A demographic portrait of Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook users →
Great demographic breakdown of the major social networks. Must-read for social media marketers.
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organic chemistry = DEATH
A follow up to Monday’s post about student sentiment in libraries during finals. I learned an acronym!
While some would consider this shocking to find in a library, I consider it a win. We provided a canvas that allowed students to blow off some steam during finals, and a platform for students to communicate with each other.
And don’t worry, they probably learned something in spite of themselves.
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Finals is to library as Easter is to church: finals is when you see students that only come to the library once a semester.
We use Hootsuite Pro to manage our social media accounts, and I use it to generate a really basic weekly sentiment analysis report that tells us what kinds of language people are using when they tweet about us. Real sentiment analysis is a very difficult thing to do well, and involves setting up your own taxonomies, training your software to categorize relevant phrases accurately, etc etc. So I take Hootsuite’s sentiment analysis with a grain of salt. However, there does seem to be a clear trend: during finals, students vent on Twitter. And when they vent, it often involves talking smack about the library. This comparison shows typical sentiment for finals, when students say things like, “I’m going to jump off the roof of the library! #finals #killme.”
I guess it’s good our Humiliation Shame numbers are still low?
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This networking bingo card came from a recent mixer of information and library science students. I thought it was an interesting—and unintended—snapshot of the cultural practices of LIS students these days.
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“Necessary Technology”
So there’s a new library at my school. These abstractions reflect colors and shapes from the architecture and design.
C4D : Ae : Ps
Fan art?
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Oh my goodness this is cool.
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The price of copyright crime in New Zealand? Only $617 →
In the US, when illegal downloaders have actually gone to trial, they have faced massive six-figure penalties, like the damages figures against Joel Tenenbaum ($675,000) and Jammie Thomas-Rasset (first $1.92 million, down to $222,000).
Now New Zealand is starting to see results from the copyright tribunals it set up under a controversial 2011 law, which allows for copyright owners such as RIANZ (the New Zealand equivalent of the RIAA) to go after users, but for a maximum of $15,000.
Turns out, it’s going to be very tough for them to get even that amount in New Zealand. The first confessed music pirate has been nailed under that law, and she’ll have to pay $616.57, or about $512 in US dollars.
z» via ars technica
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poco a poco: RDU Baton Recap →
pamo:
I participated in RDU Baton on Tuesday and I had a lot of fun.
What is RDU Baton? From NewRaleigh.com
RDU Baton is a collaborative photo relay that allows participants to access an Instagram account and share pictures of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill each day. At midnight, the next… -
Hard not to be excited about coming to work these days! The #HuntLibrary opened January 2. To put it lightly, my colleagues and I worked incredibly hard to pull this off! It’s been really fun to finally see students using it. #raleigh #ncstate #ncsu #libraries #innovation #collaboration #architecture #Snøhetta #education / on Instagram http://instagr.am/p/VEeL73jh_8/
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every time i blink: NCSU: Hunt Library →
I’m planning a MAJOR trip for this Friday, you guys. My alma mater just opened a kick butt library on Centennial Campus and I can’t wait to grab a coffee and go explore.
I wanted to learn a little more about the building before my visit, so I hopped online to do some investigating. Much to my surpise, I saw that NCSU is implementing one of the BEST social media campaignsI have ever seen.
They’re encouraging students and visitors to Instagram photos of the insanely gorgeous library for a chance to win an iPad mini. Look at these photos! My PR mind is blown. This campaign engages their audience, generates excitement and draws attention…to a LIBRARY!
So, so brilliant. My own pictures to follow after my trip.
It’s been a blast to see these photos - we’re glad others are enjoying them!
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Sports in College Social Media
I keep an eye on the #NCState hashtag just to see what people talk about. It doesn’t take any quantitative analysis to see that people talk about sports, mostly. Whenever the Libraries’ social media profiles get a big inexplicable traffic spike, it usually indicates something of ours got mentioned on an online sports forum.
These tweets about the new library illustrate the prominence of sports in NC State-related tweeting. When our new football coach retweeted something from the University’s profile, it got 3 more retweets and 3 more favorites than the original. Coach D also has 1800 more followers than the official account.
Pretty rad that the new coach is into 3D printing!
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Some of the initial feedback on the Hunt Library design makes me think of our library staff as “space consultants.” We suggest the right spaces for our students’ goals: sometimes you need quiet, sometimes you need social, sometimes you need inspiration, sometimes you need knowledge. We can do all those things, but patrons haven’t yet discovered all those spaces. Librarians should be trained for spatial reference.
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MP3 files written as DNA with storage density of 2.2 petabytes per gram →
It’s easy to get excited about the idea of encoding information in single molecules, which seems to be the ultimate end of the miniaturization that has been driving the electronics industry. But it’s also easy to forget that we’ve been beaten there—by a few billion years. The chemical information present in biomolecules was critical to the origin of life and probably dates back to whatever interesting chemical reactions preceded it.
It’s only within the past few decades, however, that humans have learned to speak DNA. Even then, it took a while to develop the technology needed to synthesize and determine the sequence of large populations of molecules. But we’re there now, and people have started experimenting with putting binary data in biological form. Now, a new study has confirmed the flexibility of the approach by encoding everything from an MP3 to the decoding algorithm into fragments of DNA. The cost analysis done by the authors suggest that the technology may soon be suitable for decade-scale storage, provided current trends continue.
» via ars technica
Yet I’m a librarian and I still lose data to hard drive crashes. Petabyte schmetabyte. How about some digital preservation strategies?
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The Book Mural At Circle City Books, Pittsboro, N.C.
Circle City Books in Pittsboro, N.C., has just completed an eye-catching mural: a side of a building covered in books. Huge, oversize books, with titles that even this myopic passerby could read.
What’s on it? Forty-eight titles, some of which are widely known: “Light in August” by William Faulkner, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou, and “Cold Mountain” by Charles Frazier.
Click here to see the complete list of books on the mural!
Wha! Pittsboro in the LA Times!
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The Get More Out of Google Infographic Summarizes Online Research Tricks for StudentsI consistently forget these tricks. Now I have a visual. Thanks, Internet.
