TrekEarth is a website that celebrates our world through photography.  You can search the photographs by keyword, browse by themes or categories, or take a look at the featured photos.  This is a community, so you can share your own photographs and offer critique for others. 

For traveling, this site is wonderful.  Often you wonder what an area looks like, and this site offers dramatic photographs of areas around the world.  In fact, it can be hard to turn away and easy to be drawn into a part of the world you have never investigated before.

Here are some of the articles online that I’ve been lingering at lately:

Offline Book “Lending” Costs US Publishers Nearly $1 Trillion exposes the true reality of librarians as contraband dealers.  We have lived in the darkness too long! 

I consider Another Black Eye for the Seattle Public Library’s Administration to be a must-read for library administrators.  The power of social networking cannot be controlled in the same way internal dialogue and complaints can be.  That should force every library administrator to be more careful when dismissing staff concerns.

10 Ways Leaders Can Use a Flip Video Camera will have you thinking about uses for videos in your library.

Testing out The Twit Cleaner, a service that analyses the people you follow to see if any are spammers, no longer active, or perhaps even too active and drowning out others.  As long as you are following less than 2000 people, you can have them unfollow people for you!  If you follow more than that, the report itself is still free but unfollowing costs a small fee.

Thanks to Twitip for the recommendation.

WeLead is now accepting applications for the 2010 class of protégés and mentors.  As a board member, I can assure you that this is a great way to get to know your Wisconsin Library Association, create networking opportunities with colleagues from across the state, and really feel a part of the Wisconsin library community.

Here are some details:

During the three year initiative: selected participants will be given a one-year WLA membership

• stipends to attend the WLA annual conference for three years
• a stipend to attend one section conference during the three-year initiative
• an appointment to a WLA committee
• special leadership programming opportunities
• and the ability to network with their mentor

What is an “emerging” librarian?

For the purposes of this initiative, emerging librarians will be defined as students, paraprofessionals, and professionals either currently studying library science or currently employed in the library field.

Eligibility

• Applicants must be students, paraprofessionals and professionals currently in the field of library science
• Applicants should have demonstrated potential to be future library leaders
• Applicants must be willing to attend the WLA annual conference for the three years during the three-year WeLead Initiative
• Applicants must be willing to attend one additional conference (WAPL, WAAL or WEMA) during the three-year WeLead Initiative
• Applicants may either:
  1) have never been a member of the Wisconsin Library Association or
  2) have been a member for three years or less (not including student memberships).

The application and other information are available here.

Your application needs to be in by January 31st, 2010.