Image by Steven Combs via Flickr

Copy/paste this string (in bold) into your Google search bar: “crm database” “manager” (intitle:resume)
Yup that is me. The number 3 result on a Google search for CRM Database Manager. Read on for tips on how people can find you online. I imagine this will be helpful to job seekers.

———————————–

Like anyone else, I am interested in what the outside world thinks of me – especially when I do not have to solicit directly from them. Part of the beauty of the web is that, with the right tools, it is really easy to get a variety of statistics about the visitors to your website. My blog is a pretty basic operation and, though there are a trove of utilities out there, there are three places I primarily get my data analytics from.

One is my WordPress Dashboard under ‘Site Stats’ as well as two plugins I installed – WassUp Keywords and WassUp Stats.

Two is under my cPanel (a backend site maintenance utility provided to me by my web host). There are a number of packages there, but I typically use Awstats.

Third is Google Analytics.

I used to have a casual relationship with the statistics of my site. It is a personal blog. There is no commerce. It is interesting to see who is visiting from where, what they are viewing, my most popular posts, etc.

It is also interesting to check out what terms people are using to get to your site. For example, the following search engine terms are a small example of terms people used to find my blog.

I took a look at the below key phrases a couple weeks ago (I am way behind on finishing up and publishing drafts of some posts) and here is what came up.

While it is totally awesome that I rank as the number one Google result for ‘singing rice cooker‘ and number four for ‘circadian rhythm test‘, the biggie here (and thrust of this post) is that all of the traffic was driven to my site by the ‘-inurl’ search operator mixed in with some job candidate requirements.

These people landed on my site because they were looking to fill a position and were specifically targeting attributes of potential candidates.

What brought them there? What else, my resume. Not from Monster.com or another job site, but from the very humble kitlas.com.

So, what are these search operators? A basic description from Copernic Inc.:

A search operator is an instruction that joins keywords to form a new, more complex query. It enables you to look for several words at once by telling …. how to link keywords. The most common search operators are the three Boolean operators (AND/+, OR and NOT/-), which allow the inclusion or exclusion of documents from the search results.

So, what does the ‘inurl’ command do?

If you include inurl: in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the URL. For instance, [ inurl:print site:www.googleguide.com ] searches for pages on Google Guide in which the URL contains the word “print.” It finds pdf files that are in the directory or folder named “print” on the Google Guide website. The query [ inurl:healthy eating ] will return documents that mention the words “healthy” in their URL, and mention the word “eating” anywhere in the document.

There are tons of advanced search operators that are laid out beautifully by Google Guide. You can find them here.

These are tools in the proverbial toolbelt. There is a lot more to being found on the web than making a blog and posting resumes. I got lucky in that what I was doing was obviously right, but luck is not necessary. Using these operators to test your content can help greatly in your online presence.

You need content, you need it online, and it needs to be very purposeful. If you look at my resume, you will see very little ‘fat’. I also take a lot of time working on it. Sometimes every week I make changes. Whether it is a new skill I picked up, relevant coursework, or a new piece of software I have mastered, I post it.

The moral of the story is that, if you want to be found online, you need to:

• help people find you by making yourself visible
• find out where they are looking for and compare to what you have and see how well you match up
• tweak as necessary

As you may imagine, I have now moved from having a passive/casual relationship with my site statistics to a very active one.

Related articles

• How to Find Relevant Link Targets (searchenginepeople.com)
• Hands-On Tips For Link Building (seomoz.org)
• How Hackers Use Google Search For Hacking (myassgeek.wordpress.com)

Smithsonian Institution

This was originally posted on the Syracuse University iSchool blog, Information Space

I am here in Washington, DC doing my internship at the Smithsonian Institution Libraries Digital Services Division. Aside from fulfilling the internship requirements, I am here because I was appointed to a Professional Development Internship position. This was a lengthy procedure, but well worth it. I started the application process sometime around the end of December filling out the standard forms and writing the requisite ‘Why I want this internship’ essays. This was followed by a lot of conversations, a lot of emails and finally a provisional appointment. I still had to pass the background check. Fast forward another month and a half (and successfully passed background check) and I get the official appointment. Then a steady deluge of paperwork, the end of the semester, a brief heat wave, and I’m in DC.

Unlike other internships, this one is paid and very structured around achieving specific work goals and projects. The name of the assignment I am working on is ‘Scientific Publishing and Workflow’. The project entails data survey, aggregation, refinements, and analysis. It is a part of a departmental effort to track and assess the research output of the Institution via several methods (e.g. publication impact factor, h-index, etc.). This is a new initiative for the department and is part of a broader initiative to identify key, historical metrics that will enable senior leadership to understand the value of the Smithsonian’s researchers. The project primarily consists of four parts – data survey, aggregation, refinements, and analysis – and involves endless thousands of records. I will also be doing bibliometric research, which is a research method that utilizes quantitative analysis and statistics to determine the influence of a single writer, for example, or to describe the relationship between two or more writers or works.

I see a lot of passion and a lot of dedication here. There are researchers who are into their nineties and still come in to work. I have seen a lot of what is behind closed doors. My office is located in the National Museum for Natural History (in no way affiliated to the one in New York City) on the second floor – right next to the Korea exhibit and the US Census exhibit (slated to open later this month). In the morning, before the public is allowed in (10 am), the partitions are down and I get a chance to take a look at what they’re doing to get it prepared.

What is funny is, now that I have my United States Credential Badge, visitors automatically think I know where everything is. I do not. By a long shot. As big as this place is to the public, it is dwarfed by what is behind closed doors. There is GYMNASIUM SIZED rooms with shelving and storage systems neatly stacked to the top of what must be a 30-foot ceiling. The type of storage systems in the ‘rooms’ vary depending on what specimen, artifact or collection is being stored there. What is totally nuts is that some of these ‘rooms’ will be filled with squirrels. That is it. This massive space housing nothing but the scores of squirrel species found. I am still having a hard time getting a handle on the scope of what is here. There is also a massive storage space just outside of DC that stores more stuff. I read somewhere that there are over 136 MILLION specimens here. More than double that of any other research institution.

It has been really challenging thus far as well as really rewarding. Moreover, the iSchool has superbly prepared me for this and I will talk more about that in my next post.

Longest Dewey Decimal Number

In case you were wondering what the longest Dewey Decimal number (and those of us in IST616 were), it appears to be 27 digits long according to the hard-working people at The Dewey Blog.

Great Hall. View from the second floor west corridor. Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, D.C.

Who is responsible for staffing the reference desk (professional or paraprofessional)?
The Library of Congress has 23 different readings rooms, all in different divisions. Each Division chief is in charge of hiring. In the
main reading room of the Humanities and Social Sciences division, two Section Heads are responsible for scheduling and supervision. The HSS Chief has overall responsibility for the Main reading room, Local History and Genealogy Reading Room and the Microforms Room. The first two are typically staffed by librarians while technicians staff the microform reading room.

What is the level of training required?
We’re on a GS schedule. Reference librarians go through GS 9 to GS 12.
GS 9 is entry level. The Federal Government says that to work as a
Reference Librarian you’re required to have an MLS or ‘equivalent’
without always specifying what that is. It’s not always that a
Reference Librarian with an MLS is hired; some are hired with subject
expertise.

What are the type and geographic reach of users seen at the reference
desk (e.g., students, parents, etc.) ?
It’s pretty much everyone in the DC area. We do get a lot of foreign
scholars as well. We’re heavily patronized by grad students,
professional writers, and policy professionals.
After Oklahoma City and 911 we have installed X-Ray Machines and metal
detectors at the entrances. In addition to being screened, people also
have to go through a registration process, which limits the ìwalk-inî
traffic.

What are the types of questions asked by users?
We get a large number of academics who are doing dissertation research
and looking for support on their research as well as many Masters
students coming to us for help with their academic papers and theses.
I want to underscore that the most important thing a user should do is
to ask the librarians for help. The people who just work on their own
miss most of what we have without realizing it. The reference
librarians will have a much better handle on what resources users
really needóonce we find out what their projects are– and can best aid
them in getting the right materials.
Last week, for instance, I had a professor who was looking for 3 years
for data on tax payers in Illinois in the 1820s. I was able find the
exact government reports containing the data he needed. He couldn’t
have found this on his ownóin fact, he hadn’t found it on his own,
despite years of looking for it.

Tell me the ways in which services are provided at your library (e.g.,
in-person, email, telephone, etc.).
Our services are largely provided in person. We don’t have telephone
reference unless it’s something that can be answered immediately. For
instance if we receive questions about how much a book is worth we can
direct them to Bookfinder.com, etc.
We do a lot of classes. Many universities bring in classes and we talk
to them, giving them instruction on research and reference. Research
orientation classes last about 1.5 -2 hours.
When I’m working, I spend half of my time on the reference desk,
answering email questions, or doing collection development.
All librarians are recommending officers for collection development,
which is an ongoing process for us. Most U.S. publications come in
automatically through copyright deposits, but there’s a lot that
doesn’t. A lot of what we have to do is to keep a watch on our
literature to look for gaps. If we haven’t received a book we should,
we submit requests to acquire it.
With some publishers, it’s like pulling teeth to get their publications
and some of the smaller publication houses don’t seem to realize
they’re supposed to send in copies of their works.
The law that says two copies have to be sent in to us, though, does not
say that we have to keep it. We do make a selectionówe don’t save
everything that comes in.

Please talk about the levels of service provided (e.g., complete
answers, pointers to resources only, time restrictions, etc.)
We generally have the time we need. We’re not like NYPL where we’re
serving 8 million people. The population of the Washington DC area is
much smaller than that. Our physical location is on capital hill.
People come here because they have to. We don’t have a huge volume of
walk-ins like other metropolitan libraries.
We can’t always provide all the information people want through our
email service. Many of the resources we have just are not available on
the internet and others have site license restrictions. The only way to
have full access to everything in the Library is to be working onsite,
inside the walls.
Due to site license restrictions on some of our materials, we are only
able to send sample citations, or sometimes texts, to users. We
periodically direct them to a university library to alert them to
what’s out there.
There are differences between reference and research questions.
For instance:

A reference question will be, ‘How tall
is the Washington Monument?’ It’s a finite answer we can provide them
with.

Research, on the other hand, is open
ended ñ it’s not so much providing a ‘right’ answer as much as it
trying to give an overview of all of the relevant literature.

I speak about this in greater detail in my article ‘The Peloponnesian
War and the Future of Reference‘. It’s an overview of the whole
‘shape of the elephant’ of library services, within which cataloging is
only one component. The Six Blind Men of India, in the fable, each
latched onto a different part of the elephant and nobody perceived the
whole animal, all it parts, or how the parts fit together.
Give people the perspective of the ‘shape of the elephant’ of their
research and they’ll much better be able to execute their research.
We have thousands of specialized encyclopedias, finding the right
subject heading is crucial. Library search mechanism and databases are
usually capable of giving better overviews than Internet keyword
searching can provide.
Every Monday morning we have a class for those who want to hone their
research skills. These days, every class is filled.

What are the ways in which the reference service is assessed (e.g.,
observation, user feedback, surveys, LibQual?

We don’t to my knowledge. We have stats for number of sources we use or
readers we help, beyond that its monthly reports and our division chief
extracts data from those.
Reference at the Library of Congress is trying to move more and more to
measurable stats. However it’s hard to measure how we help. Counting
responses doesn’t give much of a picture.
Usually, you don’t see the results of the help you provide. We don’t
see their finished papers, or the presentations they make or the
reports they turn in. There’s no good way to follow up to see how their
project or research turned out.
There’s not a good ‘countable unit’ in reference, but the people above
me are aware of that.

How is the reference service promoted?

Apart from the ‘Ask the Librarian’ link on the home page, we’ve got a
reader registrations system (user gets ID), and librarians will ask
what users are doing and then they’re be directed to any of the 23
reading rooms.
Everybody has to get a registration card and will be told it’s ok to be
talk to a reference librarian.
I like to ask people what they’re working on, whether they volunteer
that information or not; and once I know what they’re doing, I can
direct them appropriately. I’ll write down a list of databases and
resources they’ve never heard of.
Going back to the experience I referenced earlier about the professor
looking for taxable people in the 1820s–he was looking for someone’s
papers, but he didn’t ask about the reports he was trying to find. I
found that out only by getting into a conversation with him about his
overall project.

What would you like to see changed in reference?

Everybody should read my book ‘The Oxford Guide to
Library Research’!
I would like to see it change in the way it’s taught. My impression is
that the way it’s taught is how to think critically about websites.
There’ a lost more to it than that. For one thing, we need to do a lot
better job in telling people about the amazing range of sources that
aren’t on the open Internet to begin with.
It usually involves looking in so many more places than one. Library of
Congress Subject Headings are critical ñ what are the terms that are
best suited for searching the source you’re ñ controlled headings and
descriptors, or uncontrolled keywords? There’s an enormous difference
between subject and keyword search–and citation searches or browsing
the stacks or using bibliographies or talking to people.
Each will show you something different. Changing the search technique
changes what you see in the results.

Note: I did advise Mr. Mann that SU teaches critical thinking and that
search is far beyond Google and the internet. He was relieved.

What trends do you see in regard to your reference services (Is the
service changing? Why?)

The profession is radically getting dumbed down
There is so much more to search than Google or OCLC.
You need to see relationships between subjects and their headings. Tags
by users are simply no substitute. They’re okay as supplements to
controlled vocabulariesóbut not substitutes.
There’s a need to go beyond the internet and look at the systems
librarians and publishers have developed that are not accessible by
Google or the other engines.

Any tips for recent MLIS grads?

I wish more people would read my book. Seriously. There’s a ton of
stuff there I didn’t learn in library school. Something that might have
been mentioned only in passing in a class may be immensely important in
day to day operations.
I’m trying to fight this idea that all reference is internet based. It
isn’t. We need a toolkit that gives us more than just the Internet to
work with. We need that too, of course-but we need a lot more if we’re
trying to promote scholarship.

Got some absolutely tragic news today – Xmarks is shutting down. Why? They weren’t making money and couldn’t figure out how to do so. They really tried but it just couldn’t be done (more here).

For those who don’t know about Xmarks, it is was a terrific browser extension that securely syncs ALL of your bookmarks, passwords, data between ALL browsers (I’ve been using it between Safari and Firefox) and even stores them online should you need them and you’re without your computer. I’ve been using it for several years and it’s been terrific.

For an indepth report as to why they’re shutting down, read this – End of the Road for Xmarks post on the Xmarks blog.

For details on how to transition to recommended alternatives, consult  this page.

In unrelated news, I spilled coffee all over myself. It’s going to be a great day!

I am ESTATIC that I’ll soon be a member of School of Information Studies at Syracuse University (iSchool). However, it’s been a rather very hard past couple months. I’ve been on a yo-yo between Syracuse University’s Office of Financial Aid and Scholarship Programs and Direct Loans, studentloans.gov, the U.S. Department of Education, Common Origination and Disbursement (COD) School Relations Center, etc. trying to finalize a loan so I could go pursue my MLIS at the The School of Information Studies at Syracuse University (iSchool).

It has been quite an arduous and, at times, upsetting experience. Long story short, there were many emails, letters, phone calls and faxes and an ongoing finger pointing exercise between Financial Aid and the various government organizations listed above.

Drove me BONKERS and was hanging over my head for MONTHS.

I kept pretty detailed notes on emails, phone calls, faxes and letters as well as promised timelines and the names of involved parties. During this frustrating period my vengeful side kept saying, ‘When everything gets worked out, unleash this beast of negative exposure and get people in trouble.’ I opted against that and literally got rid of all non-essential documents and records related to the loan. It felt good to purge those feelings and memories.

I’ve had to keep a lot of this under wraps at work for obvious reasons but FINALLY this Monday I got that giving notice thing at work taken care of. Next? Update Facebook. Done. Update LinkedIn. Done…Work…….YES…finally done. I was originally hoping to give work notice at least 2 weeks earlier but due to the delays with the aforementioned Financial Aid, I couldn’t do it until this week. I was really hoping to be in Syracuse at the beginning of August, then go out to LA for Emily and Nick’s wedding, then return to Syracuse, but I just couldn’t leave my employer high and dry. I’ve worked there too long and have to much respect for the organization to do otherwise. Gotta finish strong and transition appropriately.

So essentially it’s all over now. On to the next chapter in life. Gave my notice at work on Monday. In other news, I just watched The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Man som hatar kvinnor). Great movie. Haven’t read the book.