The findingDulcinea Blog

As Libraries and Librarians Are Cut, We Need Them More Than Ever

Congress recently reintroduced the SKILLS (Strengthening Kids’ Interest in Learning and Libraries) Act, a bill that aims to get at least one library media specialist in every public school by the 2010-2011 school year. By doing so, it sent a strong message: that leaving students in an unstaffed room with computers, books and other media, without guidance on how to use that media, is unacceptable.

Even as schools across the country continue to cut their library staff and book budgets, more and more schools are adding computers to the classroom. Now that students have more access to the Web than ever before, how are they suppose to make sense of all the digital information they encounter on a daily basis?

As findingDulcinea founder Mark Moran points out on his blog, founding Dulcinea, “As good as your kid may be on Facebook, she is not born with a digital M.L.S. These skills are learned, not instinctive, and the only way for students to learn them is for someone else to guide and teach them.”

This is where today’s school librarian comes in. Forget the “1950s bespectacled stereotype,” Moran writes. Today’s library media specialist is on the cutting edge of information literacy and poised to share expert digital research skills with students and teachers.

In support of educators looking for quality Web resources to share with colleagues and students, we launched Web Links, a collection of useful Web sites organized by school level and divided into student and teacher pages.

We also offer “10 Tips for Researching on the Web,” a list of quick suggestions that can help you find what you’re looking for faster, and help you make sure the source is reliable.

Colleen Brondou

All I Need to Know I Learned from Social Media Boot Camp

For a long time I resisted buying into the whole social media hype. Facebook? Why would anyone want to see who my friends are? Twitter. Please. I really don’t care about the Pop-Tart® you ate for breakfast.

Eventually I learned that social media is more than posting photos of your weekend or sharing the contents of your meals. It has a future and if you want your career to have a future, you can either hop on the truck or watch it bounce by with all those (gasp!) happy, chatty strangers.

So I gave in. I opened a Facebook account, then a StumbleUpon account, then Twitter, Digg, Delicious, Reddit. And last Thursday, wonder of wonders, I participated in a thing called Social Media Boot Camp, a generous project designed by Chris Heuer and Howard Greenstein, founders of Social Media Club, who normally charge much more for the advice they give.

As a social media pioneer, I’m not claiming guru status. I’d like to pass on what I learned at the camp from its founders and other savvy advisors:

1. Whether you’re looking to market a Web site, a product or another service, Chris Heuer advised audiences to identify their best customers. “What characteristics define them? Find those characteristics and try to recreate them.”

2. Howard Greenstein, also a founder of SMC and a columnist for Inc., advised the audience to realize we’re working in a “gift economy.” If you learn something valuable or discover a new tool, share it with others. And for journalists and other bloggers, he added, “Find and write great articles that help people.”

3. Dan Zarrella researched the nature of Twitter and explained “How to Get ReTweets.” A tweet is a message you send on Twitter, a retweet is a message that someone else sends and you share with your friends politely, marking the tweet with a "RT" to note it wasn’t your own thought. The most common word seen in retweets is “please,” as in “please retweet.” According to Zarrella, if you want people to share an article you’ve written or discovered, all you have to do is ask.

4. In another discussion group, Larry Aronson and E.B. Moss asked participants, “What can you do to humanize your company?”

They cited the example of charity: water. When Scott Harrison turned 31, he asked all of his friends skip buying presents and donate $31 to help build wells in Africa. As a thank you, he sent them photos of villagers staring at fresh wells with amazed faces. The next year, others took up his cause asking their friends to do the same thing.

5. And lastly, Chris Heuer reminded, “Serve your market.” While it may seem obvious, a lot of people get caught up in meeting their own needs and forget to listen to their customers. “Help people, save time, make money, get more done, be happy, find meaning, connect with others and find greater satisfaction.”

Thanks for reading and good luck putting these suggestions into practice.

Shannon Firth
Senior Writer and former technophobe

I've Graduated from College. Now What?

Over dinner a few weeks ago, I listened to a group of my closest friends lamenting the economic crisis and the death grip it held on their efforts to find jobs. One friend pointed out that I was unusually calm, despite the fact that I had hardly started my job search and that those companies to which I had applied had turned me down. She suggested that I, with my optimistic temperament, write an article for findingDulcinea about how frenzied graduates should relax and try to have fun looking for jobs in today’s economy.

Weeks later, after a particularly painful evening of scouring idealist.org only to conclude that I am probably not skilled enough to even manage a hot dog cart, I came into work discouraged and exhausted. The Editor-in-Chief asked how things were going, and I confessed that the job search was taking its toll. When she suggested the same thing my friend had—that I write a graduates’ job search guide—I was stunned. Who am I to tell my peers how to find a job? I haven’t even found one for myself yet! I’ve lost all focus of what I want to do after graduation and have experienced only failure in my search efforts so far. But she insisted that I AM an expert, because I am in the thick of it, or as she put, “in the forest” (implying that the job search is a dark, wooded area … fair enough).

Writing this three-part series has turned out to be the most useful thing I have done to advance my personal career search, far exceeding the seminars I’ve attended and the hours I’ve wasted aimlessly browsing my university’s job postings online. I learned about job search Web sites that I never knew existed, many through findingDulcinea’s existing career Web guides. I took a personality quiz (to ensure that the Web site’s evaluation tools were reliable, obviously) and found that I might be well-suited to a career in advertising, teaching or consulting. I hit the jackpot when I found a series of videos hosted by Pricewaterhouse Coopers; every tip was a new gem that I have since incorporated into my search tactics.

Anyone who knows me can tell you that I’m pretty biased when it comes to going overseas. In my opinion, any experience in a foreign culture will make you a more interesting, well-rounded, thoughtful, understanding, independent and expressive person. In my research for the third part of my series, “Work, Intern or Volunteer Abroad,” I learned about dozens of language immersion opportunities in other countries and have since decided to move to Costa Rica for several weeks this summer to learn Spanish.

So thank you, findingDulcinea, for helping me with my own job search. Hopefully the features I wrote will help other recent graduates get on the right track or, at the very least, will inspire them to form a more positive attitude about the process.

Erin Harris
Writer (Ed: and Beloved Intern)

Read the first two articles in Erin's series:

The Post-Graduation Job Search: Find You Fit
The Post-Graduation Job Search: Taking Action

Turn Career Woes into Wins—Even in a Recession

While sending out our daily newsletter today, I was struck by our two lead stories of the morning: “How to Survive a Layoff” and “Recession Making Even Undesirable Jobs Attractive.” While most job talk is dire of late (check out TechCrunch’s Layoff Tracker), I found both these stories quite hopeful. A layoff is no joking matter. But it can be a philosophical matter. To inspire you, here are some “best of” articles tackling job terminations and transitions from around the Web.

“The Way to Work: Exiting Gracefully” has advice for leaving a job that anyone can learn from, noting that you should always keep emotions to a minimum as you exit. No matter how bad it seems, you may need your old contacts in the future. So leave a good impression.

Bankrate advises on the financial quagmires of the layoff in “What to do once you’ve been handed a pink slip.”

If you’re looking to make a good impression on future employers, “your blog is your resume” says Fast Company reporter Robert Scoble in the article “If you are laid off, here’s how to socially network.” Make your blog work for you. That goes for the rest of your online presence, too.

AllBusiness has advice on how to be prepared for layoffs, and what to do if they affect you. The article also has tips on how to change tack once faced with the prospect of unemployment.

Financial Nut puts the emphasis on the resume. Even if you haven't been laid off, think about how to update your resume now and how to build it out. Financial Nut also stresses the importance of networking with friends, family, colleagues and strangers.

Whether you were laid off or are just looking to explore a new career, get more help from our Career Transitions Web Guide.

Women Firsts in 2008

As most of us know, Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton were big achievers in 2008. But there are many other women from around the world who set milestones this year. FindingDulcinea teamed up with WowOwoW, otherwise known as The Women on the Web, to profile 20 such women, including Olympic swimmer Dara Torres, New Hampshire's first female senator Jeanne Shaheen, Clinton, Palin, and 16 more. 

Visit WowOwoW's photo essay to see pictures and learn essential facts about the women.

Visit findingDulcinea's special section, 2008 Firsts for Women, to learn more about each of these women's lives and how they achieved their unique accomplishments.

Liz Colville

Senior Writer

Audience Development

How to Do Good

With Wall Street in crisis and the economy in a downturn, nonprofits and volunteer organizations need help more than ever. Now is the perfect time to contribute your time and money to those who need it, and these Web resources can help you step up your efforts to do good.

Idealist.org is a good place to start. A project of the group Action Without Borders, it offers a wealth of resources for volunteers and nonprofit organizations alike.

Network for Good and VolunteerMatch both make it easy to find volunteer opportunities that match your interests in your region.

Charity Navigator evaluates philanthropic organizations so that you know whom you can trust with your hard-earned cash.

GoodSearch allows you to search for and donate to the cause of your choice.

Soojung Chang
Senior Writer

Here are a couple of findingDulcinea resources:

Web Guide to Philanthropy and Nonprofits
Volunteer Opportunities for Kids 

Making Work More Fun

No matter what career path you've chosen, the banality of office life gets to the best of us. The office represents rules, structure and challenging concepts like “multitasking” (which only octopi are good at).

In the years I’ve spent surfing the Web for a living, I’ve found some easy ways that you can make your job—and office life in general—more fun.

Russell + Hazel (above) sells a line of beautiful stationery and paper products, including planners, a variety of ruled pads, adhesive notes, boxes, folders and more.

Remember the Milk is a fun and simple way to manage your to-do lists. You can send and receive reminders via text message, IM and Twitter, and can also sync tasks with Google Calendar.

ThinkGeek sells caffeinated and caffeine-themed products, office supplies and other delightful objects that make cubicles seem like a worthy real estate investment.

Office Fun, the brainchild of cable station TBS, is devoted to helping you lighten up at work. You'll find fake business cards to ward off unappealing strangers or amuse your friends, quizzes, office origami, games and video features to while away your lunch break.

Office Playground has a whole host of stress-relieving objects and office-themed gadgets that will serve you and your co-workers well when you need a pick-me-up or are in the gift-giving mood.

Grooveshark is a much raved-about new site that streams music and pays royalties to the labels. The database is enormous, so if you’re allowed to listen to music at work, this site will provide an endless soundtrack.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer

Catch up on our article series, “The Way to Work,” for more tips on office life, or our Getting Things Done web guide.