Cycling for Libraries Day 5 & 6: On to Estonia

Day 5  - 34 miles After waking up at the mountain day spa in Ligatne, Latvia, we were treated to a delicious breakfast buffet and we got the see for Cycling for Libraries videos of the trip on the big screen. Hopefully, you have been following along with the videos. It was truly amazing for have an entire film crew following our every move. This just wasn't any film crew. These guys are from the Finnish Library television station, Kirjastokaista. Their job is to film library events and promote libraries full-time. How cool is that?!

One of the many forest trails we rode (or maybe walked :) in Latvia

We set off for Cesis on a cool overcast morning. We had no idea what a treat we were in for. We cycled down the mountain and then did some real mountain biking over the river and through the woods. We biked to a castle in Cesis where we were greeted by the local librarians and the mayor. To top it all off our fearless leader Mace Ojala was knighted during the reenactment ceremony. Although it rained on us, that didn't stop the party atmosphere. While waiting  for lunch, we danced in the drizzle to disco and the Beach Boys.

The knighting ceremony

That afternoon we arrived in Valmeira and were treated to a feast of traditional Latvian food and local beer at a museum. After dinner there was a ceremony of folk traditions and peals of laughter rang out as we attempted to dance some traditional Latvian dances. One of the highlights of our trip was the focus on the singing culture of the Baltics. All three countries, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, have strong folk song traditions, and many of our Cycling for Libraries cultural events involved singing. We loved it!

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Our delicious meal in Valmeira

Day 6 - 50 miles

This was another long day of riding that took us to the half way point of the trip. We saw two very different types of libraries as finally made our way to Estonia. Our first stop was the Valmeira Library. It is a combined academic and public library with the Vidzeme University College in one half of the building and the public library in the other. The library just opened in 2007 and it was  a beautiful space. Questions raised during the presentation and tour were about shared spaces and resources and how it was possible. Valmeira is making it work and it brings to light a different approach to allocating limited resources.

Valmiera Library

Our next stop was what we called the prairie library. The Jaunklida Public Library is located in a rural community of 250 inhabitants. Because it is so remote, the library also serves as a community center. Once a month the library hosts the local doctor, social worker, and even the hairdresser, making the library the epicenter of the town. It is such a cool space that patrons also have their weddings there.

The Jaunklida Public Library

The sister cities of Valka, Latvia and Volga, Estonia share a border where you cross seamlessly between countries, but they don't share the same language or currency. We were greeted with music and fruit in Valka.

Valka Town Hall and Mayor (in the distance)

The delicious berries and water that were presented to us at nearly every Latvian library we visited

Then, we rode our bikes across the border to Estonia. We were hours late by the time we got to the town of Volga, but our greeting party was still there waiting. We toured the local library. Then, we met the mayor and saw an entire show put on by the dance/singing troupe in Volga. We were blown away by the talent and generosity of the people there.

Dinner that night was a traditional Estonian meal and it was worth staying up late and cycling in the dark to get there.

Stay turned for more Cycling for Libraries adventures!

By April Kessler and Karen Holt of Librarian Lifestyle. April & Karen are librarians at the University of Texas at Austin.

Retro Ads from Ad*Access by Duke University Libraries

Whether they prompt you to scratch your head and ask "They said what to sell that?!," or incite your inner-vintage-monster to go on yet another Mad Men bender, the high quality scans of advertisements in Ad*Access are worth a look back in time.  Chock full of thousands of printed ad spanning the early-mid 1900's, this database's five primary categories are Beauty & Hygiene, Radio, TV, Transporation, and WWII. Because I can't state it any better, here's what the About page says:  "Ad*Access is a pilot project to make a selection of historical advertisements available for study and research. The project draws on part of a large collection of magazine and newspaper ads within the Duke library's J. Walter Thompson Company Archives." (I especially recommend reading the Preservation paragraph if you want a bit of perspective on how Duke's archivists managed these materials.)

Simply put, this is a major tool for those doing advertising or marketing research through an historical lens.  And this database, an end-product with hundreds of hours of work behind it, is free for anyone to use.  Sold!

You'll find more free advertising resources here.

The Arab World Unbound

This week I had the honor of hearing Dr. Vijay Mahajan speak at the Texas Enterprise Speakers Series about his latest book The Arab World Unbound: Tapping into the Power of 350 Million Consumers. Mahajan spent 3 years of traveling the region and interviewed over 600 local and multinational companies like Coca-cola and Unilever already doing business in the large and growing market. He breaks down stereotypes about the people and culture and demonstrates  how globally connected and vibrant the Arab markets are.

The Financial Times says "Prof Mahajan's excitement about the Arab world is almost palpable...he is a fine writer and he presents factual details, statistics and concepts in a breezy, easy to read manner."

This is Mahajan's third book about consumers markets in developing countries. Also check out The 86 Percent Solution: How to Succeed in the Biggest Market Opportunity of the Next 50 Years and Africa Rising: How 900 Million African Consumers Offer More Than You Think.

Free Email Address Verification

Quick Email Address Verification: The other day, I found myself in an interesting situation.  I wanted to get in touch with the VP of marketing of a local company and all I knew was that their company email addresses ended with @companyX.com.   I had a hunch that this person’s email address adhered to one or four common email-address conventions, but couldn’t be sure.  My experience has been that most company email addresses are built accordingly:

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

[email protected]

To verify that I was correct, and to ensure that I wasn’t targeting the wrong person or sending my message blindly into the ether, I set out to find a good, free email verification tool.  There are actually several sites out there that allow users to validate emails for free.  Here is a breakdown of the free tools that have risen to the top of the search heap:

http://www.verifyemailaddress.org/

http://verify-email.org

http://my-addr.com

http://www.email-unlimited.com/tools/verify-email.aspx

The tests I ran on all of these programs yielded the same results.  However, there were some features that distinguished the good from the bad—namely the number of addresses you can validate in one sitting.

Of these programs, I liked www.verifyemailaddress.org the best.  These folks pay at least some attention to usability, allow you to verify lots of addresses (some sites only allow 5/hour), and don’t bombard users with ads.  All and all, not bad.  If you’re working in a company and want to scrub the email addresses in your database, this site also offers a bulk verification tool (not free).  Here is a screen shot to demonstrate the look and feel of the site:

 

Tools like these are incredibly useful for librarians, CI analysts, sales people, or anyone else who wants to reach out to an expert, potential client, or anyone with whom they are not immediately connected.  I suggest keeping verifyemailaddress.org in your back pocket, should the need to figure out someone’s email address ever arise. 

In the Emerald Multimedia Zone

For those who are not familiar with Emerald, it refers to both a prized variety of beryl as well as the name of a major publishing group in the realm of academia.  And with any "major" company, we really like when they dole out free swag, because, well, it's usually good swag.  While Emerald tragically is not giving away their mineral namesakes, we can't complain about their Multimedia Zone. It deserves a (green perhaps?) thumbs-up for being seeded with some kernels of business insight in the form of short videos and podcasts for anyone's viewing and listening pleasure.  First dig into the Talking Management video channel, which per Emerald, "features insightful interviews with leading business figures and management writers." Then if you still haven't gotten enough, try burrowing into the Podcasts page, where you can listen in or view the transcripts- they read not unlike news articles- to uncover new insights across a range of business topics.

Cycling for Libraries - Day 4 - The Longest Day

Day 4 - 63 miles This was the longest ride of the trip. We were in the saddle for 6 hours (do you like the new biking lingo?) breaking our own personal records for most miles cycled! We rode through the Latvian forest, toured two community libraries, visited a castle, and stayed the night at a rehabilitation spa in the mountains.

We were welcomed at every single library we visited, but the Alluzi Public Library greeting had to be the best! The neighborhood kids made us signs, the librarians fed us delicious soup for lunch, and then the kids led us on the library tour.

Inside, the Alluzi Library is bright and cheery - we loved the open doors and fresh air.

Following a beautiful concert in one of Latvia's most architecturally significant churches, we rode to Sigulda where we went through a beautiful botanical garden and stopped for a few minutes at a castle. Check out this amazing view, it even includes yet another castle. The entire day was like cycling in a fairy tale. We even had cake and coffee in the beautiful forest. It was truly magical, even if we did have to stay out of the wet grass to avoid ticks and Tick-borne encephalitis. Every fairly tale has it's dark side, right?

The Sigulda Public Library is a shining example of a new community library and it had all the latest equipment and the cutest children's room. They welcomed us with a beautiful selection of fresh berries. Just the pick me up we needed in the late afternoon.

When we got to Sigulda we thought we had made it to our stop for the night. Not so fast! Turns out this was just a short stop.

Karen had to make a much bigger stop after this library due to her second flat tire of the day. Because we didn't have the necessary equipment with us to make the repair, our excellent bicycle repair team of Patrick Otton and Michel Guegan (to whom we are eternally grateful) wasn't able to change the tire. So, Karen's bike was transported on top of a Yugo that was traveling with our group, and Karen got to ride the last few km in style in the Yugo.

We were behind schedule and a couple hours late so we didn't get to tour of the paper mill, but we were not too late to catch the band playing for us on top of the mountain. Not a great picture, but if you look up you can see the railings and the band is on that stage. We were exhausted by this point, but there were a few diehards that even did a little polka.

Then, we were back on the road, or shall I say mountain, to get to out hotel outside of Ligatne for the evening. I don't think the last few hills were that steep, but you should know that the previous 20 miles were on a washboard dirt road and did I mention just moments before we thought were done riding for the day? That will mess with your head.  After a great dinner and a warm shower, we were were ready for bed. We had done it. We completed the longest day of the tour, but we had 7 more days to go.

Stay tuned for more of our cycling adventures!

Day 4 - Video

By April Kessler and Karen Holt of Librarian Lifestyle. April and Karen are librarians at the University of Texas at Austin and they are missing their cycling buddies and the deep library discussions they had on the road.

bizologie Favorite Apps: Super PAC App

It's everyone's favorite time of year. Political campaign ads 24/7.  Oh, it's not your favorite time of year? Wondering how much of what you hear on these ads is true? (Hint: Probably not much.) Time to download the Super PAC app. When an ad starts  "a user can hold up her phone to identify the commercial and receive objective, third-party information. The Super PAC App allows the user to rate the ad, while understanding who and how much money is behind the ad, what claims the ad is making, and whether those claims are based on facts." Ah, facts. Refreshing. The app is free and currently available for iPhone. Check out the video to learn more about the Super PAC app.

Introducing... Super PAC App from superpacapp on Vimeo.

Cycling for Libraries - Day 2 & 3

Day 2 - 23 miles cycled After the fist day and and a whirlwind of library tours, day 2 was double the cycling and only one library visit. The 23 miles seemed more difficult, because it was unseasonably warm in Lithuania. That day we got our first glimpse of the types of cycling we were in for - mountain bike trails and hills. Along the route we were surprised and thrilled to be supported by members of the Lithuanian Library Association. The group wore bright green t-shirts and followed us in cars along the route and honked and waved and met us at our destination in Trakai. Their support made a huge difference  long, hot ride.

After lunch we had one of our first cultural visits when we visited the beautiful castle on the lake in the picturesque vacation town of Trakai.

When the castle tour was over we loaded our bikes on a truck and filled up two buses with librarians for a 4-hour ride into Latvia.

During the bus ride we got to meet more of colleagues when we had discussions about our library careers and future plans. We arrived in Riga a few hours late so we skipped the showers and jumped on a train into the city for a traditional Latvian dinner.

Day 3 - 13.5 miles

On day 3 we had another police escort through the city of Riga. This was the first time we saw what kind of press was following the tour. It reminded us first hand that one of the goals of Cycling for Libraries is to bring awareness to libraries and library services. That morning we were interviewed by the Latvian news as were waiting for the Latvian Minister of Culture to meet our group.

The backdrop for the interviews was the construction site National Library of Latvia which opens next year.

Even though Day 3 was spent in the city of Riga, we had a packed day. After meeting with the mayor, we cycled through the city to a charming public library. There is nothing quite like cycling through a city with a police escort. All of the streets were open to us and it felt like being in a parade. We greeted many curious passerbys with rings of our bells and shouts of hello.

Following the ride in the city and a tour of the Turiba University Business Library, we turned our thoughts to current library issues, namely librarians and entrepreneurship. We gave a very brief talk about the way libraries could foster entrepreneurship among staff. Åke Nygren followed us with a very interesting talk about his work and his powerful ideas on libraries and entrepreneurship.

We capped the evening by taking a Riga tour of our choice. On offer were tours of a bike shop, an adventure tour, the Art Nouveau tour, and a craft/maker evening. Being an architecture lover, Karen choose the Art Noveau tour, which featured a fascinating personalized tour of the Art Nouveau architecture in Riga and the beautiful Art Nouveau Museum. (Highly recommend for anyone traveling to Riga.)

Then, it was off to bed to prepare for our longest day of cycling.

Day 2 & 3 Videos

By Karen Holt of Librarian Lifestyle and April Kessler. April and Karen are librarians at the University of Texas at Austin and had an amazing time at Cycling for Libraries.

Cycling for Libraries (aka Living Without a Hair Dryer for 2 weeks) - Day 1

Photo by Panu Entresse

Day 1 - 12.5 Miles Cycled

We met at the National Library of Lithuania with our luggage, bikes, and our newfound crazy love for cycling with 100 people we didn't yet know.

The day began as quite a few of our Cycling for Libraries days would. We mingled, did some stretches led by the fantastic Patrick Otton, hopped on our bikes, and followed the police escort that took us to several beautiful libraries in Vilnius, including a new branch library of Vilnius University that opens in September, the Vilnius Gediminas Technical University Library, the Lithuanian Technical Library, and the Vilnius University Library.

Karen Holt at the cool new Scholarly Communication and Information Center of Vilnius University.

Founded in 1570, Vilnius University Library is the oldest academic library in Lithuania.

Cycling for Libraries participants at the Vilnius University main library in the oldest room in the library

One thing that we discovered on the tours this day is the trend for individual subject-based reading rooms in Baltic Libraries. We really love the concept of the reading rooms. Each one has its own look and feel and we found them all very charming.

Asian Studies Reading Room at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University Library

Philology Reading Room

Graduate Study Carrels with a view at Vilnius University

Another trend we discovered in the Baltics is that whether you are at a cafe or a library, blankets are always on hand to keep you warm. This could be a trend for us to bring back, especially since our library is always freezing in the summer.

Blankets on a book cart at Vilnius University Library

Stay turned for more information on the amazing places we saw over the 11 day tour. If you are just catching up, be sure to read all about the Cycling for Libraries Unconference and see the route.

Day 1 Video

By Karen Holt of Librarian Lifestyle and April Kessler. Karen and April are librarians at the University of Texas at Austin and are still coming off the high of cycling through the Baltics and seeing the coolest libraries and meeting amazing librarians.

The Beginning of Cycling for Libraries aka Hanging Out in Vilnius

We arrived in Vilnius, Lithuania, three days before the start of Cycling for Libraries, so we had a chance to explore this great city. (For those of you who haven’t heard of Cycling for Libraries, it is an unconference featuring two weeks of library workshops, debates, and tours with a diverse group of international librarians. This year the unique format combined library discussions with 387 miles of bicycling from Vilnius, Lithuania to Tallinn, Estonia. Yep, that’s right, we biked through the Baltics and solved global library issues! The 100+ participating librarians came from 26 countries and worked for national, public, academic, and special libraries. We’ll be writing more about the cycling and library tours in the next few posts.)

Vilnius’s new airport was quaint and easy to navigate. We were greeted with signs advertising “Recharge in Vilnius!”which turned out to be exactly what we did there. While walking around town for 7 hours (trying to beat jet lag), we saw some great gems. If you’re traveling to Vilnius, we highly recommend a visit to Vingio Park, a relaxing park dating back to the 16th century with a really cool Soviet-era stadium where both the annual Lithuanian song festival and Lady Gaga appear in concert. You can rent bicycles there, run through the beautiful forest paths, or just bring a book and chill in the park.

Vingio Park stadium

Gediminas Castle was completed in 1409 and a wonderfully restored tower remains today. You can take a funicular or the stairs up to the top, where you are rewarded with glorious views of the city that show the juxtaposition of the old and the new architectural styles.

View of Vilnius from Gediminas Castle

We were very charmed by Vilnius. The Old Town was picturesque, the restaurants were excellent, and the shopping was some of the best we’ve experienced in Europe. Plus, there’s nothing like sitting in a cafe with a latte watching the rain to make you fall in love with a city.

Our Favorite Places in Vilnius:

Sue’s India Raja totally knocked our socks off. Mint chicken may not sound good, but after one bite, you’ll be hooked. Who knew that the best Indian food we’ve had outside of India would be in Lithuania?

The Coffee Inn chain is the Starbucks of Lithuania, but so much better. Great furniture, free wifi, and good coffee. Recommend are the Frappes and the Almond Latte.

Alchemikas Cocktail Lab – They handcraft the most delicious cocktails. Each drink is a 5-minute work-of-art and as tasty as it is pretty. At half the price of what you would pay in the US, it is also a bargain.

Rental Bike Pick-Up

Picking up our rental bikes from BaltiCCyle for Cycling for Libraries was quite the adventure. We went to the bike shop in the Old Town and were told that the Cycling for Libraries had a special pickup location at the “bike warehouse.” The description of the warehouse was “Go to the big white building with a hook.” Huh? Once we found the building (you’ll note in the picture that the hook was much more obvious than one would imagine), we followed the spray painted signs to the back, where we could pick up our bikes. After a 3 hour ordeal, where we met many of our cycling colleagues, we set out on the streets of Vilnius by bike with our Po Campo bags in tow.

The building with the bike warehouse in the back.

One of many spray painted green bicycle signs leading us to our destination.

After hours of waiting, we had our bikes!

That night we had our first informal meeting at Town Hall, where we got to meet many more members of our new cycling family. We had a great dinner of traditional Lithuanian food, including potato pancakes and beet soup, which comes with more potatoes, the theme of the entire trip. (Seriously, after two weeks of potatoes twice a day, we can never eat another boiled potato. Luckily, we had Chef Pasi on the bike ride and he fed us the most amazing meals ever out of a tent.)

Many of the Cycling for Libraries participants at the Vilnius Town Hall the night before it all started.

Beet soup with potatoes – yum!

Stay tuned for more posts about all of the exciting adventures we had on the road with Cycling for Libraries in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia!

By Karen Holt of Librarian Lifestyle and April Kessler. Karen and April are librarians at the University of Texas at Austin and are now super fit after biking nearly 400 miles with amazing librarians from around the world.

bizologie Favorite Tools: Bliss Control

So, so simple but so, so useful. Bliss Control helps you easily change settings on your social networks. Need to change 3rd Party Settings on your Facebook Account? Or recover your password for Pinterest? It's always a pain to remember where such things are located on all our different social networks. Bliss Control handles it for you. Simply click one box for the feature you'd like to change and the second box for the social network that needs changing. BlissControl then takes you straight to the page on that social network. So convenient. No signing up or logging in, just click go and you've got what you need. You can keep up with all of our favorite resources and tools here.

Warming to ReportLinker

I felt conflicted as I began writing this because it goes against the grain of a bizologist to recommend commercial products when there is so much cool business info available online. I recently had a reference question though that brought me through ReportLinker, so I decided to revisit it outside of my fancy schmancy work subscription to see what’s what. Here’s the good non-subscription stuff: News: In the Top Stories + Archive you’ll find four categories of news: Business, Economy, Finance, and World. Unfortunately the news pages are not searchable by keyword, which is supremely annoying because you have to browse in hopes of finding a story that’s relevant to your research. But, if you do find one, you will be delighted at the amount of analysis and forecasting (read: excerpts from MarketLine reports) that goes into it. Conclusion:  Hot if you find what you need, but otherwise tepid.

Industry Overviews: From the homepage there are links to major industries and sub-segments, e.g. Consumer Goods -> Footwear. Click the “more” button on the Footwear page, you get a solid, citations included, executive summary of the industry including Regional Markets, Industry Leaders, and Market Outlook. Conclusion:  Improving by degrees!

A note on subscribing: Naturally RL wants you to give them money for their assemblage of “public” reports for download. Of course they keep titles vague and don’t tell where they sourced them lest you go find them yourself. On the other hand, when I drilled to the point-of-subscription, I was pleased to see the tag read $56 for a day of access. Conclusion:  Factors like time constraints and the number of reports RL has on a given topic might make the day pass a temperate investment.

bizologie is now on Pinterest

We've talked before about using Pinterest for business research, and today we're unveiling our new Pinterest page. Give us a follow and we'll do our best to keep you informed not only with all things business research, but some fun things as well.

Cycling for Libraries, Last Day! - Video

Here are the highlights of the last day of Cycling for Libraries featuring bizologie’s own April Kessler and Librarian Lifestyle’s Karen Holt:

The Gateway to Associations Is Through The ASAE

Happy Friday everyone!  Those who follow bizologie know that we are major advocates for association pages, and we occasionally have Professional Associations Spotlight segments like this one. So what happened when I came upon an association of…wait for it….associations?  Research magic, in the form of a database called the Gateway to Associations, a great free directory courtesy of the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE), was what happened.

Sure it’s easy to Google for associations; I do it all the time.  But I, like the rest of you, am lazy and rarely go past the second page of results unless I’m digging for info on an erudite topic.  Hence I was delighted when I tested the Gateway database, by doing a search for Association names containing: solar.  I received 18 links to titles including solar associations, corporations, and societies, and they all included the city where they are based.

In comparison if I google for: solar association, I receive 10 results on the front page, not including three advertisements plus a few more links categorized as news.   My results were by no means identical; each (first) page listed associations that the other didn’t, but culling information from multiple sources to acquire a more robust breadth of knowledge is a trademark of our work.

P.S.  Remember to be careful when searching with ultra generic keywords like “green” in a database.  Yes “green” can refer to tree-hugging innovation, but it can also refer to localities with lots of trees, or even just the color.

Cycling for Libraries Day 10 - Video

Here are the highlights of Day 10 of Cycling for Libraries featuring bizologie’s own April Kessler and Librarian Lifestyle’s Karen Holt:

Infographic on U.S. Tablet Users from ComScore

comScore TabLens: Today's U.S. Tablet Owner Revealed

Two Free Resources for Advertising Data

I'm frequently asked for advertising data and have limited access to any paid advertising databases or publications. Below we'll talk about a couple of free resources, but this is a good time to remind ourselves how beneficial creative Googling can be. Using the same tactics we talked about for finding free market research reports, we can also find free advertising data. Using searches like "mobile advertising" or "top ad agencies" and then limiting to PDFs can help you locate all kinds of free reports or white papers. Image searching can be helpful as well. As an example, try this image search: emarketer mobile advertising. Lots of very helpful charts! These types of searches can also lead you to organizations that provide other free resources. Here are a couple of our favorite ones for advertising: IAB's Industry Data & Landscape--"The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of more than 500 leading media and technology companies that are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States."  While some reports on the IAB's site are for members only, they have quite a few free reports.  On their Industry Data & Landscape page, you'll find revenue and trend reports, as well as more specific reports such as sports fans and mobile usage.  They've even got a brand new report out called "2012 Olympic Games Go Mobile: United Kingdom Vs. United States".

Duke University's Digital Advertising Collection--"The Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History in Duke's Special Collection Library acquires and preserves printed material and collections of textual and multimedia resources and makes them available to researchers around the world."  Aside from being a great, free resource, this site is lots of fun. Thousands of advertisements from magazines, billboards, bus benches and any other venue you can think of all the way back to the 1800s. They offer several ways to search their collection including company, product, date, publication, format, subject, medium, headline and audience. Once you've found an ad, you'll see a bit of information about it including dates, publications, medium, etc.

Cycling for Libraries Days 7-9 - Video

Here are the highlights of Days 7-9 of Cycling for Libraries featuring bizologie’s own April Kessler and Librarian Lifestyle’s Karen Holt:

Cycling for Libraries, Day 6 - Video

Here are the highlights of Day 6 of Cycling for Libraries featuring bizologie’s own April Kessler and Librarian Lifestyle’s Karen Holt: