Hi, I’m John LeMasney, a father, artist, photographer, and new resident in Charlottesville, Virginia. I have the honor of announcing that Jefferson-Madison Regional Library (JMRL) has agreed to let me speak in a free technology series in their beautiful downtown location. I love technology, and want to share what I love about it, continuing the work I’ve done for 20 years in the Northeastern part of our country. If you have a topic or a venue that you’d like covered, please contact me, and let’s make that happen. Let’s do something great together!
John LeMasney cc-by lemasney
Making Photos Great for Free.
Wednesday January 4th from 6-7pm
In this session, come and learn about how to take your digital photos and transform them into art with Virginia based artist, designer, and photographer John LeMasney. With great free tools for photo manipulation, illustration, and catalog management, you can do what the professionals do without the costs. Come and learn about photo technique, lighting, and more, while growing your toolbox beyond point and shoot.
Okay google, what year is it cc-by lemasney
Introduction to Internet of Things and Home Ecosystems.
February 1st from 6-7pm
In this session led by Virginia based artist, designer, and photographer John LeMasney, come and learn about the leading ecosystems that have emerged as AI assistants in the home. We will discuss all the major platforms like Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple Siri, but we will focus deeply on the present and future state of Google Home, Google Now, ChromeCast, Chromebook, and related items in the Google Ecosystem in a in-session demonstration. If you are interested in having your lights blink when your partner leaves work, having an always listening all intelligent assistant in your home, or learning automatically that you need to leave a little early due to local traffic, you should join us!
wordpress statistics and analytics
Analytics, or the art of discovering your audience.
March 1st from 6-7pm
If you have a web site or presence in social media, that’s great! How many people visited it today? How about last week? Where did they live? Were they 15, 30, or 50? How many people saw that Instagram post? What is your most popular pin on Pinterest? What browser were they using? Analytics is any system that gives you insight about the way that your content was used. Let Virginia based artist, designer, and photographer John LeMasney help you answer all of those questions and others when you learn about analytics tools in social media, publishing platforms, and other places. We will discuss many platforms for analytics, including Google, social media, and more.
IFLL initial logo study by lemasney
Design for the Non-Designer.
Saturday April 1st from 1pm-2pm
In this session, come learn about digital visual communication with Virginia based artist, designer, and photographer John LeMasney. You likely did not encounter a lot of visual communication training in school, if you went to school in the US. The problem there is that successful contemporary mass communication is expressed today by artists and designers with specialized skills like visual literacy, software tools, and a sense of brand and audience awareness that graphic design can amplify. Design is important today, and if you are not sure where to start, here is a good place.
nowhere placemark geolocation by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
nowhere placemark geolocation by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
I was alerted to Toby Greenwalt’s great blog theanalogdivide by Sophie Brookover of Library Link NJ, in which Toby just proposed a series of design problems as they relate to libraries. I love a good design problem. Here he introduces the first problem, and below I answer it in my own way.
“Your first challenge? Create a online library card signup. You could say that signing up for a library card is our equivalent of what websites refer to as onboarding – the process with which a user becomes part of that site. Sites invest significant work-hours and enormous sums of money to make this process as appealing as possible?
Libraries? Not so much. Whether through requiring in-person visits, confusing policy, or resorting to PDFs, libraries tend to get in their own way when it comes to attracting new users. We can do better than this. I’d like to use this inaugural Challenge to prove it.
Your criteria:
Design a workflow that a hypothetical user would use to sign up for your hypothetical library. You’ll need to use this design to address the issue of proving residency.
If there’s a policy that needs to be set in order to make your design work, you’ll need to explain that policy.
Any medium is OK. Pencil-and-paper. Google Form. Flowchart. Photoshop mockup. Working prototype.
If you draw inspiration from somewhere, cite your sources. I’d love to hear a bit about your process.
You must have your design published by Monday, May 5th. Remember to email me (toby at theanalogdivide dot com) with the link. If you don’t have your own web space, feel free to send me the design and I’ll publish it here.”
~ theanalogdivide » Blog Archive » The Librarian Design Challenge –
So my answer is as follows:
Advertise a shortened URL (via whatever advertising channels you wish) to a Google Form in which you allow a new patron to fill out a form. Form logic should require all required fields, such as full name, address, email, and phone number, etc. If payment is required, payment information can also be collected, but should occur later in the process, after address is verified.
As you may or may not know, all google forms publish results to a spreadsheet, which can be exported to a CSV for use in a mail merge.
Daily or weekly, a mail merge can be used to create mailable postcards with a unique code (autogenerated) that is sent to the address of the new patron.
A patron who receives the postcard at the indicated address will submit the code and payment information to a second URL (encrypted) if any payment is required. The code validation reasonably proves residence to the degree that this is possible through electronic means.
Upon code submission and or payment processing, the patron’s new card is mailed out, or made available for pickup, depending on the patron’s preference.
This mimics Google’s own location verification process for business registration listing in Google Places service https://support.google.com/business/answer/2911778?hl=en&visit_id=637299706572194876-2550561397&rd=1).
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Please visit part 1, part 2 and part 3 to read the rest of the chapter so far.
How does one use Pinterest?
fig 07 – architecture search results
Searching – the search engine in Pinterest is a fantastic starting point to help build a board. If you are looking to develop conversations about your vast bicycling historical artifacts collection, maybe start with a search on vintage bicycles. By searching on topics, keywords, and tags from your ILS collection in Pinterest, you’ll be able to find pinners with like minds, boards related to your topics, individual pins that speak to your collection, and sources to gather more visual information for new pins.
Research – Once you add a pin and it is part of your curation in a board, the pin gives you other resources such as the person who pinned it (who may be a source of other related pins and worth following), other pins from the domain where it was pinned from (which you can bookmark in your browser), and other boards containing the pin (which may be existing collections similar to the one you are building). Finding like-minded pinners and organizations on Pinterest is a large part of the power of Pinterest as a social network. You connect, share, and learn through imagery.
Discussions – the point of social media is to engage, and discussion is a great way to do that. Great pins spark great discussions, and can be a place for you to develop deeper or different relationships with real or virtual patrons. If you are followed by and follow patrons on Pinterest, you may even get to the point where you share pins individually between them and the library, which strengthens that relationship, but also potentially grows the understanding of your brand and theirs.
Collaboration – Pinterest makes it easy to invite people to curate together. If you’ve ever wanted a low-threshold way to bring staff together around a topic, invite patrons to develop programming in a low-risk way, or invite an untapped demographic to engage with your library, Pinterest’s group boards may be a great way to do that. Create a board about Children’s Services, Emerging Technologies, Technology Programming, Learning Resources, or other topics to begin to show your interest in those topics.
Curation – Pinterest is a platform for curation, collection, organization, citation, classification, and review. That should all make perfect sense to a librarian. You can use Pinterest as a second catalog, but one that catalogs everything that your library does and cares about, not just the assets.
fig 07.5 – more from lemasney.com
Campaigns and Programming – if the main way that you are marketing your events and programming is via paper fliers inside your library, consider just pinning those fliers (in digital form) to a programming board or boards as a way of seeing if it increases awareness and participation. If discussions, repins, likes, and follows happen, that would be great too.
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The following posts were written and proposed as a book chapter on Pinterest for Libraries, but the chapter was not accepted. Sad, except that now it means that I have some content to share publicly with you! Over the next few days, I’ll be publishing the chapter as a series of posts.
John LeMasney of LeMasney Technology and Design Consulting will discuss Pinterest, a visual social bookmarking system that is often dismissed as simply a place for wedding photos and pictures of vegetarian recipes. Pinterest is a way to collect, curate, share and discuss photos and videos of any kind, and this article will discuss 10 ways you can use it to engage patrons and other stakeholders in the visual brand, items, and topics at libraries. You can increase the visibility of your programs, and give people new ways to click through to discover and borrow your assets.
A Pinterest glossary
fig 01 – lemasney on Pinterest
I thought that it would be useful to start with a short glossary of terms related to Pinterest for the uninitiated. There is a culture to Pinterest, and with any good culture comes a kind of vocabulary.
Pin – A pin is a single shared image or video on Pinterest. A pin consists of a digital image or video, an optional link to the original site, and a description for the pin, up to 500 characters long. Great pins are attractive regardless of their context, but their context, history, and source should be present. Think of a pin as a way to inform people of information literacy, scholarship, and ideological respect in addition to the basic idea of the pin itself. Libraries can use pins to share elements of their organizational brand: what makes them unique as a library.
Pinning – Pinning is the act of sharing a pin on Pinterest. Pinning can be done exceptionally well or rather lazily. Pinners who care will add metadata, a reasonable description, links back to source sites, and encourage discussion. Pinners who are just passing the time will put up a single word description, not consider the link or source, and not respond to discussions, repins, and other cultural niceties. A library pinterest effort might include an emerging technologies librarian as the sole pinner, but there is a potential for richness when administrators, staff, and patrons are all invited to pin.
fig 02 – also pinned to
Repin – A repin is the act of taking a pin that already exists on Pinterest and sharing it on one of your own boards, effectively giving it a vote of confidence and admiration. Repinning is a kind of moral engine on Pinterest, helping people’s pins to reach larger and larger audiences. When libraries repin pins, they show that they are looking at other people’s pins, making a decision about their alignment with that person, and inviting them to check out the library’s pins. Repins are important in building a community.
fig 03 – the pin it button
Pinmarklet – A combination of the words Pinterest and Bookmarklet, the Pinmarklet is a javascript button that you copy to your bookmarks bar and click whenever you are on a site where you find something worth sharing. It greatly simplifies the pinning process compared to the “share pin” feature on the site itself. Libraries who use pinterest should consider adding the pinmarklet to staff computer images, so that they are encouraged to pin library related pins.
Comment – each pin on Pinterest has the ability for anyone to comment. By commenting, you effectively notify the pinner of your interest in the content, and give them the opportunity to begin a conversation with you. One can argue that the very point of social media in any form is to begin a discussion. If you pin a new acquisition and have it link through to your ILS, that’s an invitation to borrow that item. If you start a discussion to talk about why the media was acquired for your collection, you engage not only patrons and potential patrons, but also give the opportunity for a better understanding of why your library makes the choices it does.
Board – A board is the curation space on Pinterest, where you add, share, comment, and collaborate on pins. Your boards for your library should be essentially a visual version of your catalog, but also a business card, a note of thanks, a reminder of programming, and an insight into what your library really is, behind the buildings, people, and things in it.
Shared board – Boards can be co-curated by 2, 10, 100 or more pinners. You can invite other pinners that share the common interest of the board. The board’s creator may remove pinners at any time, or pinners can remove themselves. For libraries, shared boards are great opportunities. You could have a “patrons’ picks” board, in which only patrons post. You might carry a theme for the month, like “flying” or “government” and make boards that invite experts amongst your staff and patronage in those topics to pin what they know.
Follow – Pinners can follow boards that they like, with the key benefit being that they see new pins from those boards prioritized on their homepage. Pinners can choose to follow another pinners individual boards, or can follow the pinner wholesale. One can unfollow tiresome boards at any time. It is essential that you follow people with the library account. Following shows that you are not just interested in yourself, and also makes your home page far more interesting. When you follow people whose pins are related to yours, you see more of those kinds of pins when you open Pinterest.
Private Board – One innovation that Pinterest implemented in response to users was the ability to pin to a private board, which can also be a shared (collaborative) board. Their key example in explaining the function was to do party planning without the party’s purpose knowing about it, but many others cited that the prurient or otherwise controversial nature of some pins makes one less likely to repin them if others are watching. Private boards solve that issue. As a library, you might have private planning boards for upcoming events where you can collect pins related to the idea. Then when it is time to advertise the event, you can make the board public.
Like – One may like a pin rather than repin it, which adds it to a liked list, a kind of board in itself. Liked pins have all of the function and purpose of a pin or repin, but are useful especially in cases where the pin does not easily fit into your existing boards. You might like things that you do not necessarily want to associate with your library directly, e.g. an academic science library might want their boards to focus on science topics, but they might also ‘like’ pins about food. If the food is science related, even better.
Pinner – A user on the Pinterest system; one who pins. In creating an account for a Library, it is better if your personal Pinterest account is not used, so that you can separate your personal brand from the library brand. In fact, it is better to have a Library as a business account in Pinterest, so that you can get the added benefits of that mode (below).
Certified users and business accounts – you can associate yourself with a particular URL by going through an authentication process that allows you to gain statistical insights about pins from your web site. Libraries on Pinterest should consider this process since they may want to know if people are clicking on pins to visit their ILS for instance. Polaris, amongst other social media aware cataloging systems, allow for the pinning of assets by patrons right from the catalog if enabled.
I recently had the opportunity via LibraryLinkNJ to speak on the topic of Consumer Device Support in Libraries at several of their Tech Speed Dating gatherings, in which librarians from across the state of New Jersey come together to learn about the technologies they might love. It is a platform for dissemination of new technologies and best practices, but also potentially a place to introduce an idea. My idea: New library policy documents about the support for Consumer Devices in Libraries. Please take a look at this document, and use it as you wish, as it is Creative Commons – Attribution licensed. If you use it as is, you need do nothing. If you decide to change it, please mention that is was by John LeMasney via lemasney.com and thanks!
49 of 365 - updated library logo 2 by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
49 of 365 – updated library logo 2 by John LeMasney via lemasney.com
So, at the request of Steve Garwood, a famous and resourceful New Jersey Librarian, I decided to rework the eighties-era Library Logo. I felt the same way as Steve: The Library logo below is something I align with, philosophically, in that when I see it, I love it. I’d like to get a tattoo of it. I think of it as an extension of who I am. At the same time, I wish it was more contemporary in nature, reflecting some of the curvature and relaxation of iconography of the 21st century. In order to keep the general look and feel of the logo, I used the original logo as a starting point, and simply moved elements to shape the new logo. The color is the same. The major difference between the two is a difference I see every time I walk into a library today: a more prominent presence of laptops. When I think about the key ways that libraries have changed, and how they continue to change, I think about the way that the libraries I love most are less about books and more about learning, community, service and sharing. Very often, technology is employed to that end in libraries. Here is the original logo for comparison, after an insightful brief history.
“The image debuted in its official capacity in the 1982 ALA publication, A Sign System for Libraries, by DeVore and Mary S. Mallery, and was the cover story of the September 1982 issue of ALA’s member magazine, American Libraries. DeVore’s original design scheme for the image (similar to the image shown below) was an opaque white silhouette against a blue (specifically, PMS #285 blue) background.” ~ National Library Symbol History & Implications | Walking Paper – http://goo.gl/d6mQiL
Library Symbol (1982) DeVore and Mallery
I wanted to mention and thank both Steve Garwood, who inspired the rework, and Jane Ferrick, who gave good insights about my figure’s original posture, and the specific appearance of the laptop, both improved. To be honest, before Jane’s suggestions, my figure was practically laying down and using an ultrathin laptop, which appeared as other things. There is also an interesting echo in the laptop of the book in the original symbol.
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