[Editors] MIT Editors' Club Minutes, Jan. 2010

[Elizabeth A Thomson]

MIT EDITORS' CLUB

*Meeting Notes from January 20, 2010*


*More On....Social Media*

This group can't seem to get enough of social media. Patsy Sampson of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science started us off by announcing that EECS is now on both Facebook and Twitter. Asked one still-skeptical Editor: "Why are social media useful---except for celebrities?" Patsy noted that, among other things, they're great vehicles for news headlines related to the department, instantly communicating them with alums and others.

*Researching MIT*

Recently a colleague and I were researching something about the UROP program, and got stuck. Way stuck. Anyway, we worked around this, but it occurred to me that I could really use a primer on doing research about MIT. And what better place for such a topic than the MIT Libraries?

Long story short: Heather Denny of the Libraries says they'd be quite interested in hosting a workshop on just this topic. My colleagues and I here in Resource Development Communications certainly have some opinions on what should/could be covered, but Heather and I also wanted to query the rest of this group.

Here are some of the suggestions from people at Wednesday's meeting:

--IMAGES! How do you find historical (and contemporary) images of MIT?

--How does the MIT Museum work? Can we get images or information from their curators or others?

--Tips for searching Lexus-Nexus (or similar services) for historical media stories on a given program or person.

--Tips for finding famous alums from a given department.

Please send me a note with other suggestions, and I'll bring them to a meeting next week on this workshop.


*Where Do You Get Your News?*

We had fun chatting about this one. Here are some of the media mentioned:

--Boston Globe 
--NPR 
--New York Times 
--Many of the London papers (online)
--The Drudge Report
--The Huffington Post
--Arts & Letters Daily (online through the Chronicle of Higher Education)


*THANK YOU*

A big Thank You to Carol Breen of physics for hosting this meeting in Physics Land. 


*Next Meetings*

The next meetings of MIT Editors' Club are as follows. Again, they're  
always from 12-1, and folks are encouraged to bring a lunch.

Thursday, Feb. 11, E38-254
THANKS to Monica Lee and Bara Blender of the Publishing Services Bureau.

Monday, March 8, 66-360
THANKS to Melanie Miller of the Department of Chemical Engineering

Cheers,

Elizabeth

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Elizabeth A. Thomson
Associate Director of Communications
MIT Resource Development
Office of Communications
600 Memorial Dr., W98-300
617-258-5563, 857-756-9457
<thomson at mit.edu>, giving.mit.edu
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