“I only use e-mail for my business and to get sponsors,” Martina Butler, the host of the teen podcast Emo Girl Talk, said during a panel discussion here at the Mashup 2007 conference, which is focused on the technology generation. With friends, Bulter said she only sends notes via a social network.

From C|net – Kids say e-mail is, like, soooo dead
by Stefanie Olsen

The booth was pretty slow but the majority of visitors said they used libraries. From an outreach standpoint, we were preaching to the choir. The best part was getting to see some friends… [ Hey, Emily! ]

I think libraries should have booths at music festivals or car shows. Anyone want to help me run a library themed booth at Viva Las Vegas 2008? How about a library camp at Burning Man?

Silicon Valley Puzzle Day on Saturday, February 24. SV Puzzle Day features crossword puzzle tournaments, ala the movie Word Play, as well as Sudoku and other logic puzzle tournaments, is not to be missed for puzzle buffs of all ages in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I was hired to take photos. Unfortunately our policies currently prohibit our using Flickr or Snapfish or any other photo hosting resource. Bah! As a quick-and-dirty, I created a quick photoalbum using Dreamweaver and left the rest to the library to sort out the formatting. It’s not pretty but it works in a pinch.

Check out the photos here.

It was funny and bizarre enough that I visited the website, and sent it to a few friends, trying to fit as many true to life personal details as the website would allow. It’s unsettling on the phone, however I think it loses a little through email, and especially if Samuel won’t pronouce your name, your life doesn’t quite fit predicatable life profile, or you just don’t know enough personal details to make it funny. As a viral marketing tool, it worked, I felt compelled to send a few people by phone and a few by email.

The library needs a viral marketing tool along the same lines, something that’s just whacked enough for people to want to send to their friends and while shamelessly plugging the library, something like an audio mad-lib.

Currently watching: The Late Show with David Letterman with guests, renowned sock puppeteer, Jack Fisette, Whoopi Goldberg, and Fatboy Slim who just so happens to have an interpretive tennis-ball juggler.

Also (via Slashdot), the WSJ has a brief article with Jakob Nielsen discussing email newsletters and RSS. A recent study on usability of email newsletters vs RSS, available at the useit.com, show that 82% of users don’t know what RSS is and recommends using the term News Feeds to explain what it does. Good email newsletters are treated like a service, like an actual publication that people are expecting and anticipating. Design and usability are a huge factor in how that information gets across. Their study also shows that users spend an average of 51 seconds reading a newsletter but they are really just scanning it and the highest percentage is just scanning the first two words of a heading.

Getting any message across is going to be difficult, but by offering interesting and usable articles that are available across multiple platforms (RSS, email, web, and print) and published at predictable intervals will pave the way for libraries to effectively share their services. I was thinking that we could have shorter articles in the print version and offer longer ones via email and RSS. That way a six page mailer could be cut down to two or four and we can avoid info overload especially since people don’t read the entire thing unless they are interested in a specific article.

Saturday is generally a big day in terms of circ and activity. I probably needed to do more marketing, a press release for both would have been nice.

We held a Dance Dance Revolution Tournament this afternoon/evening that was pretty well attended with 25 teens. Most of the credit goes to a teen volunteer, Tasha (Rock on!), for marketing it at school and the campus DDR Club. Pizza, prizes, and DDR on the big screen TV. As an added bonus we had Katamari Damarcy on the LCD projector to kind of fill the time when people were on the DDR. Everyone seemed to have a good time especially when they found out they each got a prize. Kelly, a teen librarian friend of mine, brought her husband and step-daughter. Angie, a local high-school librarian, came to check it out too. Thanks guys!

A number of younger kids showed up and they really wanted to play too. So we’ll just have to do one just for kids. Not sure how we’d organize it but I think it is in the future.

Marketing lessons: don’t count out word of mouth, do a press release(didn’t happen), direct market to audience, ie. high schools, teen community centers, local establishments that cater to teens (didn’t happen enough). Z’all good though.

Pictures coming soon.

These are all pretty much improvements over that last survey conducted in 2002. The survey and results in PDF form can be found here.

There is hope that libraries are still relevant. But we have a lot of work to do. $41 per year is not much and that is only 52% of respondents. With many states requiring a two thirds vote to pass any local tax, libraries have a long way to go to be appropriately funded.

What does this tell us? That we need to continue to offer books, great collections, computers and electronic resources, and programs for children and adults. We need to keep marketing library services and programs and showing that we are an important part of every community.

As a marketing tool I did a quick (17 minutes beginning to end) display of books about the Pearl Harbor attack and World War II with the printout of the frontpage of the New York Times on December 8th, 1941 and the article about the attack itself.

See a screen print of the headline from Proquest Historic Newspapers New York Times