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LyricRat
Just found an awesome new reference tool…LyricRat is a site that will take a snippet of lyrics that you give it, and then tell you the song, album, artist that the lyrics are from.
My favorite bit? If you tweet a lyric to @lyricrat, they will reply with the song and a link to the lyricrat site!
So very cool, and easy to use. Huge fan of services like this that provide a service in an almost completely transparent way: no sign up, no log in, no barriers.
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Blogging for Nonprofits and Libraries
On Thursday, August 6th, I’ll be taking part in a TechSoup webinar on Blogging for Nonprofits and Libraries, along with Allyson Kapin. It will be at 11AM Pacific/12PM Mountain/1PM Central/2PM Eastern in the US (adjust for your particular global timezone), and I hope that anyone who’s wondering how to get started blogging joins us for a fun discussion!
The webinar is free, and you can sign up here if you are interested.
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Automated book scanner
I so want one of these for my new library!! Why? No idea…we’re not a Research 1 school, not an ARL, but the idea of loading this thing up and just letting it run as an art project makes me happy. And yes, I’d love to digitize some of our public domain books with it, even as few as we have.
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Amazon, Zappos, and Libraries
So yesterday brought the news that Amazon acquired Zappos. For those not familiar, Zappos is a company that sells shoes (primarily, although they now sell other things) and is known for its nearly insane customer service. Seriously, they will do just about anything they can to make sure you’re happy, and are responsible for crazy customer service stories. This story about Zappos sending a woman flowers is maybe my favorite customer service story of all time. My other favorite thing about them is their “Pay new employee to quit” program.
As a result of the acquisition, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos released this youtube video
Take a minute, and watch the video…it’s worth it.
So Jeff explains a bit about the deal, and why Zappos and Amazon are a good match. According to Jeff, he only knows these things:
- Obsess over customers
- Invent
- Think Long Term
- It’s Always Day 1
Why do I mention this on what is ostensibly a blog about library science stuff? Because I feel strongly that our future isn’t in content, really…it’s in services. No one does service better than Zappos. If we take Zappos customer service strategy (do anything to make the customer happy) and the four things that Jeff Bezos knows about running a company, how could we change libraries for the better? What can we do to be the Zappos of information?
I got ambushed by the Dutch Boys at the OCLC Blog Salon at ALA Annual 2009. Evidently, so did lots of other people…the video below is the result.
OCLC Blog Salon:Shenanigans with Shanachies from Jaap van de Geer on Vimeo.