Entrepreneur Magazine defines side hustle as “a way to make some extra cash that allows you flexibility to pursue what you’re most interested in.”^[2] Online marketplaces can offer patrons a venue to sell new or used items, as well as their own creations. Consider developing classes for some common platforms, including:

• Etsy: A self-described “global creative commerce platform,”^[3] Etsy is a popular marketplace of handmade items.
• eBay: One of the largest online auction and shopping websites in the world.
• LetGo and Carousell: These snap and sell services allow you to quickly take a picture of an item and create a listing using an app. These services require that you meet in person, rather than arrange shipping.

When developing these classes, you’ll want to ensure your curriculum covers some core concerns. Among these are:

Creating a listing: What are the best practices of each service? What are the elements of a successful listing? How does one upload a photo and when should one pay a premium to use additional photos? Discuss the use of keywords to improve discoverability. Cover how to write a catchy headline and effective description.

Marketing: Aside from discussing how to upload photos, you should also spend some time on how to take them! There are entire website dedicated to bad eBay listings; often a poor photo central to the catastrophe! Instruct your class on how to create a simple light box, or better yet–offer one as a public service! What are the costs/benefits of a promoted listing? Finally, discuss social media. While this can be a topic for a separate class, you should touch on the ability of sites like Etsy to integrate to Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

Shipping and taxes: We often consider shipping and taxes as a consumer, but they are also a common concern among sellers. Shipping can easily impact profitability for a seller. Be sure to go over postal scales and how to print mailing labels. While libraries shy away from directly providing tax guidance, there is, of course, good referral information for Etsy, Ebay and other services.

Protecting yourself: It’s not just buyer beware! Sellers should be aware of how to manage issues involving scams, failure to pay, unwarranted negative feedback, and general disputes. Shipping insurance is a necessary topic.In the case of in-person meetings, educate patrons on SafeTrade Stations, where they can do their business safely. Finally, familiarize the class with their chosen platform’s seller protection policy.

By teaching a tech side hustle, your library has an opportunity to quickly deliver value to your patrons in the form of additional income. The outlined classes and similar ones offer a gateway to entrepreneurship that can grow into full-fledged businesses. Along that journey, the library can continue to offer assistance in the form of business counseling, tax assistance, supplementary classes (such as social media marketing), and a wide range of electronic and print resources with business applicability.

References

^[1] http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/9951-long-hours-multiple-jobs.html

^[2] https://www.entrepreneur.com/slideshow/230431

^[3] https://www.etsy.com/about

The post Teaching the Tech Side Hustle first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

Irlen describes these visual problems as Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome (SSS) and includes such problems as dyslexia. From my reading of Superlearning (1979) and Superlearning 2000 (1995) by Sheila Ostrander and others, I had become aware of many techniques to learning as well as those learned in education courses for teachers but using colors for reading was new to me.

The correctional library programs, for which I was director, had developed a reading lab which houses special reading materials and uses peer tutors to help inmates and school students with their reading difficulties. I spoke with Laws, who was also a Certified Special Education Teacher and we began to discuss what we might do at the state prison. She was hired as a consultant through a Department of Education grant for “Innovative uses of Technology in Education.” This program would allow us to develop a program based on the use of visual testing and use of colors in reading training. An acquired color machine allowed printed text and graphics to be focused onto a TV monitor with selected colored backgrounds or letters. These would be switched until an optimum combination was found for each student. With the machine we could also alter the size of the letters. By coordinating information from school TABE tests, our library brought together twenty-eight men who volunteered to be part of this program and Laws began meeting one-on-one with the inmates.

She would test the men for their current reading ability and their ability to see through various color overlays or color backgrounds with enlarged type on the color machine. Laws would also test for right and left brain coordination. After doing this for each inmate, she would write a “prescriptive” program for each. Exercises, including eye, breathing and relaxing, reading lists, color overlays, and sometime relaxing music, were all part of the prescription. Twenty-six of the twenty-eight students, we found, could read or see words better with the color overlay, one or two with larger print. Gary, (pseudonym ) on the other hand was found to have no sense of “visualization.” He couldn’t remember what he learned from one day to the next. He hardly could talk, as words did not come to him because of brain damage.

Laws started helping Gary by asking what he was interested in – Cars. He had been a mechanic and knew a great deal about cars. Laws drew a picture of a car and had Gary tell her what the parts of the car were – the hood, the trunk, the bumper, wheels. After about eight items, she wrote the names of the parts with arrows to the drawing of the car. Then she had him make up a large drawing for a book. Each time he and the tutors met, he would learn more words that went with the parts of the car he knew. About two months after this all started, I was present when Gary was able to put together about ten words into a sentence. Not only could he retain the words, but he was beginning to relearn how visualization could help him learn. It was the beginning of retraining the wounded brain. By the time the program ended, Gary had a vocabulary of about 30-50 words.

Many of the other students made remarkable progress as well. At the start of the program, one other inmate was adamant, no one could help him to read. He not only became a model student (less disruptive) at the prison school, but became an advocate of the lab and started helping other students increase their reading ability. Within two months, twenty-six men were reading at least 2-3 grades, if not more, above the ABE tested level when they started working with Laws.

There has been much research on visual and brain cognition, and software from many agencies has helped. Not all the software out there allows for color background or varying text color. Many computer programs in the assistive technology arena are for reading comprehension, not for help with vision. One program which includes adaptive facility for vision and colors, Easy Reader, is now available via Dolphin.

Libraries that aren’t yet involved need to get on board with assistive software for reading. With the visual and brain training techniques we now know of, I believe crime and disruptive behavior in schools and cities could decrease. Having worked ten years with inmates, I believe the frustrations, lack of achievement and concurrent disruptive or unacceptable behavior in adults are more likely to be directly related to the lack of reading ability than any other outside event or condition.¹ Even though reading may not solve all behavioral problems, we can strengthen the whole country through a focus on correcting reading problems through the newest technologies and machinery we already have available.

References

1. Are Reading and Behavior Problems Risk Factors for Each Other? Paul L. Morgan, George Farkas, Paula A. Tufis, and Rayne A. Sperling.

The post Reading With Colors first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

With a Twist

The NYPL archive is no ordinary collection. At 673,744 items strong, the NYPL now offers an amazing added value feature. Last month it released a Public Domain Collections initiative, giving users instant access to the collection’s 180,000 public domain items . All the works are available in high-resolution format, encouraging re-use. Repurposing the works is, in fact, the whole point. According to Greg Cram, NYPL’s associate director of copyright and information policy, “We are trying to make it so users can not only see things, but can make determinations about whether to use them in new ways”.[1]

Something for Everyone

The effort is spearheaded by in-house NYPL Labs and enables users of all skill levels to easily manipulate the collections. The more advanced users can take advantage of programming interfaces (APIs) to create their own tools for manipulating the collections. Recent projects include Urban Scratch-Off, in which users scratch an aerial photograph of New York, lottery-ticket style, to reveal aerial shots of the city in 1924, and Mapping Cholera which tracks the 1832 epidemic using geodata harvested from maps belonging to the library. ^[2]

For the rest of us, NYPL Labs offers some fun, ready-made apps for interactive use of the collections, including:

Mansion Maniac This app allows users to “explore the floor plans of some of the city’s most extravagant early-20th-century residences,”[3] sourced from the Apartment Houses of the Metropolis collection.

Navigating the Green Books This app enables users to map out trips they would take to places listed in the Green Books (hotels, restaurants, bars and gas stations where black travelers were welcome).[4]

Street View, Then & Now: New York City’s Fifth Avenue Here, users take a tour of Fifth Avenue past and present, and compare photos from the 1011 Fifth Avenue from start to finish with 2015’s Google Street view. [5]

Remix Residencies

And that’s not all! NYPL labs offers a “Remix Residency” to drive innovative use of the collection and to encourage the production of new tools for re-purposing the collection. Each residency includes a $2000 stipend, access to NYPL curators and staff, and a workspace. NYPL Labs seeks submissions for projects that provide “new ways of looking at or presenting public domain materials—or allow access to the information . . . currently locked within the static images”.[6] Submissions may include mappings, visualizations, generative art, games, bots, or other interactives.

Rijksstudio

The NYPL public domain collection and NYPL Labs initiative is a more information-oriented version of the Rijksmuseum’s artsy Rijksstudio initiative, where users can download high resolution copies of over 200,000 copyright-free masterpieces and using free online tools can tweak, crop, and otherwise manipulate them to create printed pieces like bracelets, bags, cards, lampshades, wallpaper, or even iPad covers. ^[7]

Information Consumption vs. Production

With the advent of the Internet and the proliferation of personal digital technology, we now consume information on an unrivaled scale. By empowering information consumers to also act as information producers, NYPL Labs and Rijksmuseum are doing their part to ensure the democratic balance of the information universe.

References:

[1] Greg Cram. “New York Public Library Invites a Deep Digital Dive” by Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times, January 6, 2016.

[2] Jennifer Schuessler. “New York Public Library Invites a Deep Digital Dive,” New York Times, January 6, 2016.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] “NYPL Labs Remix Residency,” New York Public Library, accessed February 16, 2016.

[7] Peter Gorgels, “Rijksstudio: Make Your Own Masterpiece!” Museums and the Web 2013, N. Proctor & R. Cherry (eds). Silver Spring, MD: Museums and the Web. January 28, 2013. Accessed February 16, 2016.

The post With a Twist: Old Works Get a New Life at the NYPL first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

The tech center, since officially opening on November 7, 2015, has seen over 15,000 visitors, with over 800 people attending programs and events. On the Do Space’s blog, the Executive Director, Rebecca Stavick, writes that she hopes that the space will inspire Omahans to feel “empowered to lead the nation in innovation.” It’s actually a part of their Vision Statement: “Do Space, as the heart of a community technology movement, inspires Omaha to lead the nation in innovation.” Appropriately, Rebecca Stavick previously worked for five years as a Staff Development Specialist at OPL and in her free time on Open Nebraska, an organization she cofounded that focuses on technology education and emphasizes open access; it will also be partnering with the tech center in the future.  It seems like Do Space is a perfect marriage of Stavick’s two previous roles, and she is the perfect liaison to bring both the OPL and Open Nebraska on board as community partners.

John B. Horrigan, in Libraries at a Crossroads, points out that there are “some 30% of those ages 16 and over [that] think libraries should “definitely” move some print books and stacks out of public locations to free up more space for such things as tech centers, reading rooms, meeting rooms and cultural events; 40% say libraries should “maybe” do that; and 25% say libraries should “definitely not” do that.” So how can other libraries develop either an affiliation with a center like this or create one within their own space if possible? The important elements for public libraries to take note of in Do Space are the community partnerships that lead to the space developing and going from just an idea to fruition. YOUmedia and the Maker Lab at Harold Washington Library in downtown Chicago, for example, are both grant-funded and offer technology programs as well as equipment to mess around with. They partnered with groups like the Digital Youth Network  and the MacArthur Foundation as well as Motorola and the City of Chicago in order to develop spaces for teens and adults to tinker, learn, and grow in, and it’s free to use just like Do Space. Public libraries need to continue to work towards empowering their patrons to develop their information and digital literacy skills, and sometimes reaching out to the community at large can make something really special happen!

Sources:

Horrigan, John B. “Libraries at the Crossroads.” Report by the Pew Research Center, 15 September 2015. Web. http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/09/15/libraries-at-the-crossroads/. Accessed 7 January 2016.

Kelly, Bill. “Will A Nebraska Community Tech Center Force Us To Consider Libraries Without Books?” NET, November 30, 2015. Web. http://netnebraska.org/article/news/1001826/will-nebraska-community-tech-center-force-us-consider-libraries-without-books. Accessed 7 January 2016.

Peet, Lisa. “Rebecca Stavick, Omaha’s First Digital Librarian.” Library Journal, April 27, 2015. Web. http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2015/04/people/rebecca-stavick-omahas-first-digital-librarian/. Accessed 7 January 2016.

Resources:

http://www.dospace.org/space

http://omahalibrary.org/

http://www.chipublib.org/maker-lab/

http://www.chipublib.org/youmedia/

http://digitalyouthnetwork.org/

https://www.macfound.org/

The post Tech Centers Are Coming to a Library Near You! first appeared on Public Libraries Online.

While the library director assumed I was going to fill this position, she was surprised when I told her I didn’t need to fill it. This meant, however, that the technical services department was losing a position. I was repeatedly told by library managers and staff, “if we lose a position, it isn’t coming back.” And, more importantly, the library organization as a whole didn’t want to lose those full-time hours.

So, my first major decision was to voluntarily given up a position, and, knowing that in all likelihood, it will never come back.

I decided to take the long-view. If the largest chunk of library funding is in staff and stuff, and assuming cuts are going to strike sooner or later-depending on the political winds, I am going to lose staff or lose stuff anyway and I would rather these decisions be as deliberate and purposeful as possible

I was never worried about filling the position.  There are many qualified and capable people who could handle working in technical services. However, examining the previous years’ annual reports showed that circulation is dropping (not significantly or troublingly– but the numbers don’t lie). I also know that technical services departments are changing along with our profession. Old processes and workflows will evolve. With the slow-yet-gradual decrease of funding for print material, fewer materials will eventually be ordered. Processes are changing and shifting toward managing digital content. This is a huge benefit in our department because electronic content needs very little, if any, processing.

These were all my own thoughts, but, in making this decision I learned that my staff also believed we didn’t need to fill the position. This is a close-knit group and some have worked together for decades. The individuals involved, when asked directly, all stated that they thought our department could absorb the job duties. They are aware of the trends affecting our department and organization and were proactive in helping me decide a course of action.  And, luckily, the hours and position went to another department so the whole library benefits.

I said at our last staff meeting that the person retiring was irreplaceable so how could we replace her.  We didn’t even try.

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