Manage the Media:
(Don’t Let the Media Manage You)
By William Holstein
HD59.6 .U6 H653 2008
New Book Island, 2nd floor
A reputation, whether individual or group, is intangible and can pave the way to success or failure. Public perception of a company has become fragile with the proliferation of the media and technology. They’re not only competing with the reporters and newspapers in the traditional realm, they’re also defending their names against everyone from bloggers to Amazon product reviewers. One misstep could mean finding yourself in a very deep hole with no way out. So what is an organization to do? This week’s featured title details the challenges of today’s media and how to handle them.
Holstein, a veteran business writer for the New York Times, Fortune and Barron’s, among others, has written a short (just over one hundred pages), no-nonsense book about dealing with potential communications pitfalls. Directed at CEOs, the author explains the importance of communication and public relations, complete with examples of both good and bad PR management. The emergence of the Internet (as well as Web 2.0 and social networking tools) has enabled individual consumers to rally against the big, bad corporation. Holstein provides strategies for putting corporate communication first, shaping the message and ensuring that the company’s image stays intact.
In case you weren’t aware, June 14th is Flag Day in the United States. This date in June was probably chosen because on June 14th in 1777, the Continental Congress approved a resolution that established the U. S. flag’s design (“thirteen stripes of alternate red and white, with a union of thirteen stars of white in a blue field….”).
It was almost a century later when June 14th started being celebrated as flag day in some regions of the country. One of the people who promoted Flag Day was a school teacher from Waubeka, Wisconsin, by the name of Bernard J. Cigrand. He reportedly spent years trying to get Congress to declare Flag Day a national holiday. Waubeka, if you haven’t heard of it, is about 35 miles north of Milwaukee.
Want to learn more? Check out the book, Flag Day: Its History, Origin, and Celebration as Related in Song and Story in the library’s main collection on the 3rd floor, call #JK1761 .F6 1979.
The Library of Congress has some information and photos about this day at Today in History: June 14, and the Wisconsin State Legislative Reference Bureau Web page, Memorial Day and Flag Day, claims that Wisconsin is where the idea of celebrating Flag Day first originated. This is contradicted on the Origins of Flag Day page from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, but as a Wisconsinite myself, I think I’ll believe the Legislative Bureau’s claim.
The University Library is a federal depository with many federal, state, local, and international documents on a variety of current and relevant issues available to you in print, microfiche, CD-ROM, and electronically. Come check out your government at the University Library!
I turned on my TV this morning to find only one channel still working, Milwaukee Public Television-ch. 10, but it had a huge banner running across it saying that as of 9 AM today (June 12, 2009) the signal would be disconnected. I knew it was coming but it still took me by surprise.
I did a little searching to find the following article from USA Today. Interesting stats. Check it out.
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspxdirect=true&db=aph&AN=J0E171778254009&site=ehost-live.
Were you ready for the switch? Let me know how your experience was with the switch from analog to digital. I intend to still use my TV for video games and watching movies. Hope you are seeing more than snow on your TV. Well remember to rescan your TV or better yet come to the library and get a book, movie or game.
For more information, go to www.dtv.gov call the FCC at 888-CALL-FCC
I feel like the majority of what I blog about is the economy and trying to come up with synonyms for recession. I guess that as the business librarian, it is expected of me.
America is not alone in the current economic hardship – the rise of globalization and the ever-connected societies of the world have the entire world feeling the pinch. However, some countries are feeling it worse than others. So just how is Italy or Venezuela or [insert favorite country here] dealing with the slowdown?
In response to this question, Euromonitor has published a series of Global Risks and Vulnerabilities briefings as part of Passport Reference & Markets (formerly known as Global Market Information Database). These reports address external sector shocks, real estate, government finance, energy, socio-political shocks and environmental shocks as part of a measure of the country’s economic health.
To get to the documents, click on the Countries link in the main navigational bar and the Country Briefings are located in the upper-right corner.
Permissions, A Survival Guide:
Blunt Talk About Art As Intellectual Property
By Susan Bielstein
KF3050 .B54 2006
New Book Island, 2nd floor
I love pretty pictures when flipping through the pages of a magazine or a book. Have you ever wondered about how authors and/or publishers get those images? They may have gone to great lengths to receive one thing for those photos, illustrations, graphics, etc.: permission (and maybe some money too). The digital age has made things both easier and more complicated for this task, and this week’s feature title spells it all out.
Bielstein, executive editor for art, architecture, classical studies and film at the University of Chicago Press, channels her years of experience to decode the complex world of artistic intellectual property. In the publishing industry, one must learn the ins and outs of copyright, fair use, reproduction rights and more to successfully avoid legal dramas that could bankrupt you. The author guides you on what goes into providing visual interest for readers in print and electronic media. While the intricacies of copyright law may leave you scratching your head, Bielstein presents the topic in a readable and accessible fashion. The final chapter also breaks down just how much money was spent to reproduce the images in the book. If you’re looking for insight into the often-confusing process of image reproduction, this book’s for you.
Did you see the televised special Earth 2100 last week? I hadn’t planned to watch, but got sucked in. It was an interesting mix of fact, science, and speculation in a fiction wrapper to make it palatable to the general public, kind of like sugar-coating a pill–perfect for someone like me who likes sci fi and popular science books. If you missed it you can still see it on the ABC web site (linked above).
The gist of the predictions we’ve heard before: “Scientists predict that by 2020, global catastrophes may well begin to accelerate. The human population is expected to explode and animal species may be dying off at a rapid rate.” In addition, climate change will lead to water shortages in some places, while other locations such as New York City will be desperately trying to protect themselves from rising sea levels by building large walls. Populations will shift in response to water stresses and other changes.
The experts interviewed made several thought-provoking statements. I was struck by the notion that Earth has experienced five mass extinctions in which at least half the species on the planet disappeared, all caused by natural disasters such as massive volcanic eruptions and rapid climate changes. Now some scientists say we are in a sixth extinction, this time caused by us.
“Every society that collapsed thought it couldn’t happen to them,” says Joseph Tainter, an expert in anthropology and societal collapse. “The Roman Empire thought it couldn’t happen. The Maya civilization thought it couldn’t happen. Everyone thought it couldn’t happen to them. But it did.”
I hope to track down some of the experts’ publications, including Joseph Tainter’s book, The Collapse of Complex Societies (3rd-Floor Main Collection CB311 .T245 1988). Another interviewed expert was Alan Weisman, author of The World Without Us (2nd-floor Reserves/Circulation Desk GF75 .W455 2007), who was a speaker on campus in October 2008.
Two Billions Cars:
Driving Towards Sustainability
By Daniel Sperling & Deborah Gordon
HE5611 .S67 2009
New Book Island, 2nd floor
Yes, I understand that it’s actually Wednesday (and really almost Thursday). However, I found myself stuck in Illinois until last night due to the unexpected passing of my car (well, Lil Red technically isn’t dead yet – he’s still in the shop). With that in mind, I found the perfect book to honor him and his years of dedicated service to getting me from Point A to Point B without complaining or killing my wallet (that’s right, 38-42 MPG). Driving just won’t be the same without you, Lil Red.
Sperling and Gordon, experts in the area of transportation, address America and the world’s addiction to the automobile. With an estimated billion cars on the road worldwide, the energy and environmental crises will only continue to worsen as more and more cars take to the streets. The authors take on all parties involved, from the stagnant (and slightly bankrupt) American auto industry, to the skyrocketing overseas markets that threaten to deepen the impact on our natural resources. It’s not all doom and gloom though – they examine promising signs from California and China, two of the worst offenders, leading the way with their policies and measures to soften the blow of our gas-guzzling ways.
Special treat – the Governator wrote the foreward.
I admit that my computers have Google search boxes at the ready all the time. But recently I read something about jux2, which tries to combine the best results from Google, Yahoo, and MSN/Live Search. These search engines had the top U.S. search engine shares according to Nielsen Online’s December 2008 data. However, comparisons of search results suggest there is less overlap between search results using these search engines than most people might expect (“typically sharing fewer than 3.5 of their top 10 results”).
Well, so I tried jux2. I wasn’t that impressed, but you should try it for yourself.
My test was “swine flu” and I liked Google’s results, because the Centers for Disease Control’s page was the first result listed. Yahoo at least had it within the first 5 results. All three search engines returned Wikipedia as one of the first resources, of course. I was still very satisfied with what I got using Google.
UC Berkeley’s Library has a web page on “Recommended Search Engines” that lists Google, Yahoo, and Exalead. They note that searching Google alone is not always sufficient, and recommend getting a “second opinion” using another search engine. You should also note, as they do, that “The contents of most of the searchable databases mounted on the web, such as library catalogs and article databases, are excluded because search engine spiders cannot access them. All this material is referred to as the “Invisible Web” — what you don’t see in search engine results.
However, for those concerned about searching for academic resources, things may be changing. The article “How Scholarly Is Google Scholar? A Comparison to Library Databases” (College and Research Libraries, May 2009) “found that Google Scholar is, on average, 17.6% more scholarly than materials found only in library databases and that there is no statistically significant difference between the scholarliness of materials found in Google Scholar across disciplines.” Why isn’t this worrying me? Well, you still need access to the full text of the articles and other resources a discovery tool like Google Scholar lists–yup, usually subscription resources you access through your library.
