Tangentially Speaking: Authorly Take-Aways from a Librarians’ Conference

tangentiallyspeaking

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So, a quick poll:

Who among my readers knew that librarians not only need a Master’s Degree in Library Science (MLS) or in Library and Information Science (MLIS), but also require ongoing continuing education?

Okay, I guess that was more a rhetorical question than an actual poll… but anyway….

In point of fact, we do.  In order to remain certified as a Professional Librarian in the state of Maryland, I need ninety (yes, that’s 90) hours of continuing education every five years.  So, this past Wednesday through Friday I found myself in Ocean City, Maryland with a  hotel-ful of other librarians from Maryland and Delaware for the annual library conference sponsored by the Maryland and Delaware Library Associations.

Which was awesome.

I got to hang out with friends and former colleagues, as well as network and meet librarians from all over not one, but two states.  And attend a half dozen awesome learning sessions, a couple yummy banquets, etc.  And in the evenings, I had a quiet place all to myself in which to get some concentrated writing time in on my novel, distraction free.  Yay!

At this point, you’re probably thinking, “That’s great, Karen, but what’s the point?  Why do I want to read about the great time you had at that conference?”

I’m so glad you asked.  😉

What I want to do in this blog post is share a few things I learned in some of the sessions I attended that could be of interest to authors and bloggers.  More specifically, some awesome-sounding tools and resources mentioned that could prove useful in developing a social media presence and in other writerly areas.  A few of these tools I’d heard of or used before, but many  were completely new to me and I plan to check them out myself in the weeks and months to come.

The first two resources were mentioned in a session on User Centered Design for Web sites, presented by Ben Kutil.  You’d be surprised at the kinds of things you need to know as a librarian.  And yes, as a tech-enthusiast I was in my element.

  • uinames.com – At the touch of a button you get a randomly generated name.  You can ask for a particular gender or country of origin or go completely random.  What great inspiration for naming a character!  FYI, the “UI” stands for user interface, and it’s designed with User Interface Designers in mind, but I think it’s just as cool for authors.
  • uifaces.com – Real avatars people have shared for use in user interface mock-ups.  I’m thinking they could serve as inspiration for characters… not that there aren’t already tons of great pictures all over the web you could browse through.  But you get the idea.

And there were a ton of useful resources mentioned in the session I attended on Social Media, which was presented by Erica Jesonis from the Cecil County Public Library.  The focus of the session was on increasing engagement on your current social media outlets, which is wildly pertinent not just to librarians, but also to authors, and really anyone on social media.  So here goes.  I haven’t personally checked these all out myself, so if you’re familiar with any of them, I’d love to hear what you think.  And of course, if you find one here you come to love, I’d be thrilled to hear about that too.

  • HootSuite – a tool for scheduling social media posts, as well as for following search terms to see what’s popular at the moment and for finding content to share of interest to your own followers.  It calls itself a “Social Media Management Dashboard.”  I’ve heard good things about HootSuite before, but have yet to give it a try myself.
  • Hashtagify.me – a great tool for digging up related hashtags and seeing which are the most popular, for use in deciding how best to “hashtagify” your own social media posts.  I’ve used this one a little before, but it looks like it’s capable of so much more than what I’ve used so far.  Will have to explore it some more when I find the time.
  • Topsy – for use in searching “the social web” (photos, videos, posts, links, etc) as well as analyzing trends in what’s popular.
  • Keyhole – for tracking hashtag, keyword, and URL use on popular social networks in real-time.
  • Snapseed – a photo editing app available from both the Android and iOS App stores.
  • InsText – another app available on both platforms (Android and iOS) for editing photos, with a focus on easily adding text to your pictures.
  • Recite This – Lets you convert text to beautiful images quickly and easily.  Sounds great for use on Facebook, where images get preferential treatment.  😉  The site’s tagline is “Turn a Quote into a Masterpiece.”
  • Canva – a web-based tool for graphic design, supposed to make great looking results incredibly easy.
  • Picframe – an App available on multiple platforms for easily combining and framing photos and sharing them socially.
  • Infogr.am – a web based tool for creating your own infographics and charts.
  • Lapse It – an App for Android and iOS that allows you to create time lapse videos with your mobile device.
  • Animoto – can be used for making video slideshows out of still pictures and video clips.
  • Storify – for creating a mashup of related social media posts that come together to tell a story.

As I said, I’d love to hear if you find any of these tools useful.  I expect I’ll be experimenting with some of them as I find the time.  Thanks for stopping by.  :)

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