Cycling For Libraries
I will represent the University of Texas at Austin and bizologie on the 2012 Cycling For Library tour. Karen Holt from the UT Libraries and editor of the Librarian Lifestyle blog will be accompanying me on this adventure. The un-conference offers a week and a half of library workshops, debates, and tours with a diverse
LinkedIn Maps
Here at bizologie we are suckers for all things map-tastic, so we can’t resist talking about one more that just crossed our radar. One of our favorite resources, LinkedIn, has come out with a map site in which you log in to your account from this page and see a nifty cloud of color-coded relationships
Pinterest for Business Research
Clearly, we all love Pinterest. It’s the fastest growing social network and shoppers spend more money via Pinterest than Facebook. But can you do more than pin recipes, shoes and interior design? Well, yes! You can do business research! Now of course, it’s not the first place we’d turn for business research, but you can
LOHAS: Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability
LOHAS is an acronym for Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability. According to the LOHAS.com website, the organization “focuses on educating and building community around the central theme of healthy and sustainable lifestyles for individuals and societies.” Even more importantly to bizologie, they offer business resources on the growing $290B LOHAS market. LOHAS not only shares
The Financial Times Lexicon
Building on this earlier post about Investopedia’s great function as a business dictionary and beyond, another excellent resource for terminology is the Financial Times Lexicon. Like Investopedia FT also offers some other nice bells and whistles besides a dictionary alone. Select a term, e.g. “intellectual capital,” and beneath the defintion you’ll find a link to
Casual Friday: New Clothes For All Your Gadgets
As you can tell by Librarian Lifestyle’s recent Style Profile of bizologie’s own April Kessler, we love to shop for clothes. And we like our gadgets to be as well dressed as we are. Here are some clothes for all your different gadgets that we think will make them runway ready.
We love this Great Gatsby Kindle cover designed by Kate Spade–very librarian chic!
Channel your inner Holly Golightly with this Tiffany Box iPad case:
Turn your favorite Instagram pictures into an iPhone case from Casestagram:
The Stowaway iPhone Case from Incipio stores credit cards and cash:
Who wouldn’t want to walk around a conference showing off this Zac Posen patent leather tablet case?
Another great Kate Spade case for iPhone depicting a perfect Sunday Morning:
The Botene shop on Etsy makes cool cases for several gadgets. We love this lime and brown eReader case:
Cycling For Libraries
I will represent the University of Texas at Austin and bizologie on the 2012 Cycling For Library tour. Karen Holt from the UT Libraries and editor of the Librarian Lifestyle blog will be accompanying me on this adventure. The un-conference offers a week and a half of library workshops, debates, and tours with a diverse group of international librarians. This unique format combines library discussions with 373 miles of bicycling from Vilnius, Lithuania to Tallinn, Estonia. Yep, that is right, we’ll be biking through the Baltics and solving global library issues!
The 107 librarians participating come from 26 countries and work for national, public, academic, and special libraries. In addition to participating in discussions, all librarians are required to present on topics in their areas of expertise. Karen and I will promote the UT Libraries Human Rights Documentation Initiative and present on topics like using social media for business research and creating public programming events with artists and musicians.
Here’s the route — we cover 3 countries in just 10 days:
- Vilnius
- Vilnius to Trakai, bus-transport to Riga
- Riga
- Riga to Sigulda
- Sigulda to Valmiera
- Valmiera to Valka/Valga
- Valka/Valga to Otepää
- Otepää to Tartu
- Tartu, bus-transport to Rakvere
- Rakvere to Lahemaa National Park
- Lahemaa National Park to Tallinn
I’m excited about this trip and the amazing opportunity. I do have to admit that I am not much of a biker and I’ve committed to biking around 30 miles per day. I started my own couch-to-tour training last month and now I’m up to 15 miles. Still have a ways to go, but the trip has been great inspiration to get moving!
Stay tuned for more info about Cycling For Libraries. Over at Librarian Lifestyle, Karen and I will be writing posts about the tour and of course we will cover our new obsession with bicycle fashion.
LinkedIn Maps
Here at bizologie we are suckers for all things map-tastic, so we can’t resist talking about one more that just crossed our radar. One of our favorite resources, LinkedIn, has come out with a map site in which you log in to your account from this page and see a nifty cloud of color-coded relationships that LinkedIn generates using your contacts.
The great thing is that it’s interactive. Zoom in and click on a node (i.e. a person) and see all of their shared connection to you. You can also assign labels to the clusters to help you remember, for example, what the green cloud means and what the orange cloud means.
So it looks good, but what does it do if it doesn’t land you a job, or tweak your resume, or pinpoint your salary range? My advice is to take a few minutes to examine the nodes that are not densely interconnected. A handful of your links in disparate clusters might have really long lines that span a couple of colors (if these were airplane flights, they’d be the ones going from New York to Hong Kong).
By investigating those nodes you might find that people you wouldn’t consider knowing one another are in fact connected. I myself discovered a couple of surprising links in my contacts between people that I know at different institutions. And from that knowledge you’ll have fodder to start interesting conversations during the next office happy hour, which could lead to all sorts of new opportunities. Cue the Kumbaya!
Pinterest for Business Research
Clearly, we all love Pinterest. It’s the fastest growing social network and shoppers spend more money via Pinterest than Facebook. But can you do more than pin recipes, shoes and interior design? Well, yes! You can do business research! Now of course, it’s not the first place we’d turn for business research, but you can still learn plenty of interesting things about a company on Pinterest. You can find out about a company’s culture, how they interact with their customers and what things they value. You might even pick up on future company plans. Even venture capital firms have Pinterest pages. Here are a few Pinterest pages and boards we think are good examples of using Pinterest to learn about companies and industries:
Bessemer Venture Partners: Bessemer is a large venture capital firm and you can learn a lot about them on their Pinterest page. They’ve got their portfolios and exits pinned, and they even have boards dedicated to portfolio companies by industry.
Pinterest is a great place to find infographics. Here’s a board dedicated to Social Media & Internet Infographics:
HomeAway, a site for vacation rentals, engages their customers not only with vacation homes to stay in, but also, contests and interior design ideas:
This board is dedicated to “Brands, Businesses & Blogs”–this is a quick way to see how lots of different companies are using Pinterest:
There’s even a page to help businesses succeed with their Pinterest campaigns:
LOHAS: Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability
LOHAS is an acronym for Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability. According to the LOHAS.com website, the organization “focuses on educating and building community around the central theme of healthy and sustainable lifestyles for individuals and societies.” Even more importantly to bizologie, they offer business resources on the growing $290B LOHAS market. LOHAS not only shares information but also provides practical tools and techniques for people to implement into their businesses.
The website has tons of news and aggregates data on the industry. For example, they have info on green marketing, sustainability trends for 2012, fair trade, and green consumers.
The HUB by LOHAS is a business network for companies in the LOHAS industry to connect, collaborate and seek opportunities. They say it’s like LinkedIn for LOHAS companies and organizations. You can see the online business directory of over 600 companies, but to get detailed info and to be able to connect you must become a member. Companies can apply online and have to be approved.
The Financial Times Lexicon
Building on this earlier post about Investopedia’s great function as a business dictionary and beyond, another excellent resource for terminology is the Financial Times Lexicon. Like Investopedia FT also offers some other nice bells and whistles besides a dictionary alone. Select a term, e.g. “intellectual capital,” and beneath the defintion you’ll find a link to search the FT.com website for articles that feature the word or phrase. You can also save you favorite buzzwords and see their evolution in a Watchlist which you can access by registering for FT’s free-level subscription.
And best of all, some enterprising employee-who-knows-java made a widget for anyone who wants to embed the FT Lexicon on their business education type website, and they even included tips for customizing it via CSS or HTML. Thank you, FT!
Networking for Introverts (and Extroverts)
This excellent presentation by Marcy Phelps at the Special Libraries Association Rocky Mountain Chapter Virtual Lunch, was titled Power Networking for Introverts, but really is applicable for even the most extroverted. Making a real connection at a networking event or association meeting can be difficult for anyone. Learn some myths of networking and how you can make the most of the time you spend networking. To see the archived virtual lunch presentation, visit the Rocky Mountain Chapter.
I like how Marcy redefines networking as connecting. As librarians we are good at making connections for people and helping them find the information they need. If we think about those goals for networking, and not what we can get out of it by marketing ourselves, I think that makes it easier. Phelps also recommends putting your social network to good use too. Join groups and make recommendations on LinkedIn and use Twiter hashtags.
If you are an introvert like Marcy, fear not. She explains that you are actually better networkers, because you are much more likely to listen. If you are interested in more information about Introverts and their rise to the top, Marcy recommends the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
As the founder and president of Denver-based Phelps Research, Marcy Phelps provides business research and analysis for marketing professionals and info pros. Marcy is the author of Research on Main Street: Using the Web to Find Local Business and Market Information (Information Today, Inc., April 2011). She also blogs about turning information into insights at www.MarcyPhelps.com and publishes ResearchNOTES, a monthly email bulletin with tips and sites for web searching.This is not the first time bizologie has featured the good works of Marcy. Check out the post about her book Research on Main Street.
Research Basics: NAICS
There’s nothing like an impending election to make our government look bad, but on occasion they get things right, like data production. Point in case the NAICS Code, which stands for North American Industry Classification Scheme. In business research NAICS Codes are a handy-dandy tool for 1) isolating industry news/reports, and 2) creating company lists based on, as the title implies, how a business is classified.
You can include the NAICS Code as piece of limiting criteria in some of our favorite databases like Business Source Complete, and ReferenceUSA. In the first screenshot shown below, the NAICS option comes up in a dropdown list in BSC. 
Also because NAICS falls under the umbrella of all-things-Census, you’ll also see it featured on the Industry Statistics Sampler website. Just choose your code of interest to see downloadable report offerings for how that industry is faring.
How do you get your hands on the code you need? Visit the NAICS homepage and use the search box above the “2007 NAICS Search” button to enter a word, e.g. “sunglasses,” and you’ll receive a list of codes related to your term. The image on the right shows the extent to which you can drill down using the NAICS website. Click on a code to see even more information about how it’s used to make sure you’re on the right track.
One important note is that some databases and business tools might still reference SIC (Standard Industry Classification) Codes, which were last updated in 1987, and which NAICS replaced in 1997 (FAQ). For the fine points of difference between SIC and NAICS, visit its History page. On the off-chance you need to translate between these codes, visit the Concordances page.
Casual Friday: Tech N Style with Mikala
Whew! After a week of recapping our TLA experience, we’re ready to start the weekend. Our friend Mikala is back with advice on personal processors, turbans and man bags. Oh Mikala, what would we do without you? You can keep up with Mikala’s Tech N Style Series as well as her Disappointing Gay Best Friend Series (Tyler, our love for you is endless) on her YouTube channel.
Leveraging Your Skills: Rewrite Your Resume & Market Yourself
Last week at the Annual Conference for the Texas Library Association, we had two Directors of Career Services come and talk about ways job seekers can expand their resumes to appeal to a broader audience of hiring managers in and out of libraries. Karen Landolt, Director of the Career Design Center for the College of Natural Sciences at the University of Texas Austin and Tara Iagulli, Director of the Career Services Office for the School of Information at the University of Texas Austin, discussed everything from building your personal brand to reworking your resume to interviewing. They have lots of great ideas for getting your resume noticed, including what recruiters look for, as well as interview tips. Below you’ll find their presentation and handout.
