Walmart building is now library

McAllen Public Library: Photographic tour of new main library

While shelving at the Middletown library today, library director Gehlen Palmer showed me an amazing slide show produced by the McAllen Public Library in Texas. The slide show presents a photographic tour of its new main library.

Middletown library project halfway toward completion

That the Middletown Senior Center/Library project is near its halfway point toward completion is welcome news to this library volunteer.

Kate Wolf Festival has ‘green’ emphasis

Jonathan spent this past weekend at the Kate Wolf Festival, where he worked in our friend Evan’s clothing booth. The festival takes place each year at Black Oak Ranch in Laytonville, home to the Hog Farm and Camp Winnarainbow circus camp.

Journalism Accelerator: social media post worth bookmarking

The “four-step guerilla guide to social listening” on the Journalism Accelerator blog is an entry worth bookmarking. The author, Jacob Caggiano, presents an overview of social “listening” tools.

From the moment I set up Google Alerts for online mentions of my name, I was engaged in social “listening.” And as detailed in the overview, there are many more tools at a social media manager’s disposal.

Caggiano divides social media monitoring into a four-step process, with tools reviewed at each step of the way: Discover, Analyze, Manage and Integrate.

Among those mentioned, I use Tweetdeck when managing Twitter activity for two Northern California newspapers. It helps me track staff reporters’ tweets and designated hashtag activity, alerts me to mentions and allows me to post updates as one or both of the newspapers.

I look forward to experimenting with some of the other tools that are detailed in the blog. I think the JA overview will be of value to people in a variety of industries who wish to monitor social media more effectively.

Zombie Journalism: Newsrooms should promote ‘reading local’

Blogging at Zombie Journalism, Mandy Jenkins suggests that as outsourced news grows, local newsrooms should promote buying (and reading) local.