Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Make ALA Connect Work For You: An appeal for Notifications ON!

UPDATE 7/28/09, 3:00 PM: Check out Jenny Levine's post on changes coming to ALA Connect--esp. regarding improvements in notifications!
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I'm excited, hopeful, and joyously optimistic about ALA Connect, ALA's hybrid social network, bulletin board, listserv, calendar, project management tool.

Like all networks ALA Connect is only as useful and powerful as the number people that use it; and in fact it is getting exponentially more useful and powerful with each new user.

The more I use the ALA Connect, the more I realize that selectively turning on Email Notifications is key (for me) to integrating Connect into my professional life. This ensures that updates (the ones I want anyway) are pushed out to me, which is important as I only tend to pay attention to whatever wanders into my field of vision...

I'm appealing to you, dear reader; help ALA Connect thrive and grow by logging in and turning on your notifications too--and help spread the word by posting this attractively designed and competitively-priced banner ad (in both border and non-border stylings you'll notice) on your blog, homepage, or social network of choice. Extra points for tattooing directly upon your body. No pictures please, I'll take your word for it.

Another feature I've found useful for keeping up in Connect is the ability to view my unread messages through the "My Unread" page and feed. Links to your "My Unread" content can be found on the lower right of the ALA Connect page under "Community Notifications". (These links will work for you if you're logged in to ALA Connect--otherwise you're seeing "access denied" messages.)

To learn more about ALA Connect, check out the these great video tutorials created by Emerging Leaders Group I (aka Melissa Dessent, Ahniwa Ferrari, Jaime Hammond, Jennifer Jarson, Jason Kucsma). The videos are in the process of being uploaded to ALA Connect proper.

Thanks everyone, see you on ALA Connect!