I love books. I always have. In fact, one of my ultimate dreams is to either build a library, or have one named after me at some point. I love libraries, too.

I was an English major in college, so I’ve read a lot of literature, and now I read a lot of non-fiction and business books. I always try to have a good book around to read. That is one of the reasons that I love the Kindle app for the iPhone. It means that I always have a little library in my pocket. I’ve read a lot of good books lately, most of them on the Kindle app.

There is one major drawback to the Kindle app, though. I discovered it when I mentioned to my Facebook friends that I was reading “Trust Agents,” by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. Someone asked me, “can I borrow the book when you are finished with it?” Well, of course I wanted to share the book with my friends. Problem is, I can’t share books on the Kindle. Well, I guess I could, but it would mean loaning my iPhone to someone until they were done with it, and that won’t work.

So, I went out a bought a physical copy of the book, so that I could share it with friends. Then I thought, “how could I share the book with even more people, people who might want to read it, but who wouldn’t know to ask me for it?” That’s when it hit me– donate the book to the library. Duh.

By donating the book to the library, anyone can find it and read it, return it, and then anyone else can do the same thing; and the local library gets a current book without having to dip into their very limited acquisition budget– everybody wins.

So, that’s exactly what I did. I took “Trust Agents” to the Fluvanna County Library, and made a donation. Oh, and I made a video about my experience, too:

I can guarantee that I’ll be doing this with more books. My wife, Kari, will tell you all about the giant tubs of books taking up space in our shed because there is limited shelf space in our house. I would encourage anyone reading this to consider taking a trip to your local library and donating the great books that you have already read. The library will appreciate it, and so will the community of folks who visit the library.

ps-  ”Trust Agents” is a fabulous book.  In the future, I’ll be discussing some of the lessons I have learned from the book.  In the meantime, you can buy it on Amazon, if you want.  Or, you could always see if they have it at your local library; if not, I know a library that does.

My presentation last Wednesday went very well.  Better than I anticipated, in fact.  The audience was filled with about 20 local residents, and everyone was very interested in learning more about using social media.

I can’t say enough about how great everyone in the audience was during the presentations.  We had so many great questions, we actually stayed until 8:30 answering questions and showing folks different websites and applications.  I look forward to being able to do a lot more of this type of thing in the future.

For those of you who couldn’t make it, or for those of you who could, but just want to revisit some of the information, below is the video from the presentation.  The recording was made live, using Ustream.tv.  Enjoy!

I’ve started sending out invites to folks for my seminar on social media for community organizations later this month.  Almost immediately, I received a response from someone who asked the question,

“Would you please define social media so that we’re on the same page?”

DUH!

I totally overlooked the fact that for many of the people I am trying to reach, this might be their first formal introduction to social media.  I should do something about that.

Rather than try and wax philosophic about social media, I thought that I would let social media do the work.  So, here are two wonderful examples of social media at work, defining social media:

First, you can read the Wikipedia definition of social media.  Wikipedia is an information resource where you can find information on just about any topic you can imagine.  All of the information found there as been submitted by users of Wikipedia.  Sure, there are a few folks who do some of the moderation, but anyone can share information and have it end up on a Wikipedia page.  This is vastly different from the old Encyclopedia Britannica that I remember from my grade school library.  That came out every year, and there was only a select group of editors and researchers who were allowed to contribute and decide what information was included, or not.

For another explanation of social media, check out the following video by the folks and CommonCraft entitled, “Social Media in Plain English.”

Aside from being incredibly insightful, the video is also social and interactive. Anyone can post this video on their site, anywhere. And if you clicked on the link above the video, you might have noticed that the CommonCraft website is in blog format, meaning that not only can people view and share their videos, but they can leave their own comments, as well.

So there you have it, two definitions of social media, from two sources that are, in fact, social media. How cool is that?

So, now that you have a better understanding of what social media is, you might like to learn a little bit more; and if you want to learn more about how social media can benefit you and your organization, don’t forget to check out my presentation later this month. It is sure to be informative, and a lot of fun.