Librarian of Fortune

Say what???

When I give workshops for librarians about the reference interview, I always talk about the "bum cite". You know... the book The One-Minute Manager gets requested as The Sixty-Second Supervisor - that sort of thing. Sounds right but is completely wrong.

I just found the perfect example, and it's with my own book. The second edition of my book, Building & Running a Successful Research Business, was just cited in a syllabus as "Establishing and operating a successful information consultancy".

Awesome mangling of the title! Entirely same idea, all the wrong words. Reference librarians, beware!

Building Brand YOU

Susanne Markgren, digital services librarian at SUNY, Purchase, has an excellent slide deck on using social media to build your personal / professional brand.

"Creating an Online Portfolio: improve your skills of self promotion"

The presentation includes topics such as what employers look for in job applicants' online profiles and how to build a portfolio (note, not just a Facebook page or LinkedIn profile, but a 3-dimensional profile). If you market yourself or your business online, check this presentation out.

Who's more clued in, Old Spice or Fast Company?

Blog post about how companies use social media effectively (Old Spice) and really cluelessly (Fast Company).

Fast Company is a well known forward-thinking business magazine. Conventional wisdom says they should have succeeded in a social campaign. P&G is the corporate behemoth behind the brand Old Spice. They should have had trouble with a social campaign. Turns out, that is exactly backwards.

Wanna be an info-entrepreneur?

As I was answering a questionnaire for Kim Dority's LIS Career Options LinkedIn group, I started thinking about how someone can prepare for starting an info business.

I realized that one of the most challenging part of being an info-entrepreneur is having to (or being able to) challenge yourself on a regular basis. Since most people aren't in the habit of moving past their comfort zone, I think the best preparation is to do just that.

Seek out opportunities to stretch yourself. Volunteer to do public speaking, especially if the thought of it scares you. Take on leadership roles within your workplace or your community. Start adding value to everything you do – become familiar with writing executive summaries, creating charts and graphs from statistics, developing slide decks, and so on.

In other words, get accustomed to the feeling of being at the edge of your comfort zone, and yes, it takes practice.

WWMEBD, or, where's the info profession heading?

In April, I was invited by the SLA student members of the GSLIS program at Simmons College to host a conversation about where our profession is heading and how to position ourselves most effectively. I had a fabulous time, and met some LIS students who are going to be great assets to their employers.

You can listen to my presentation and the Q&A here. And yes, there were actually signs on the hallways pointing the way to WWMEBD. Obviously, it's time to start ordering wristbands...

Are you a wonk or a nerd?

My latest Info-Entrepreneur Newsletter invites you to consider whether you are marketing yourself as a detail-oriented nerd or a big-picture (if in mind-numbing detail) nerd.

Bing gets a brain!

Thanks to the inimitable Tara Calashain's ResearchBuzz, I just learned that Bing finally supports advanced search operators. This Advanced Operator Reference page provides a quick overview of the operators.

Granted, some of them have been hiding in the background for a long time -- the hasfeed: operator is one of my favorite hidden gems.  [Here's how it works -- to look for a page that has an RSS feed and that has the word apiculture, use the query  apiculture hasfeed:  ]

Some of the other operators offer some interesting possibilities... Take the norelax: operator, for example. Bing's default with a search query of five or more words is to "relax" the requirement that the fifth and later words appear in each search result. Norelax:search_term tells Bing that this search term, even if in a string of four or more other words, must be in each search result.

Then there's instreamset:, which lets you combine fields in which you want to limit your search words. If you want to limit your search to words in the title or anchor, you can use instreamset:(title anchor):search_term  You can include any combination of title, body, anchor and URL.

If you think Bing's only for casual use, check out these advanced search operators.

Great example of social media guidelines

Intel has a publicly-available set of guidelines for its employees using social media. It's sensible, coherent, and clear. If you're looking for ways to convey some grown-up rules, check out Intel's Social Media Guidelines.

Intel's Rules of Engagement include:

• Be transparent
• Be judicious
• Write what you know
• Are you adding value?
• Be a leader
• If it gives you pause, pause