JFYI, the morning session for Gaming @ Your Library is now full, so we've opened up an afternoon one. Find more info and register here.

I'm especially excited to see school and academic librarians are registering for this, too!

I haven’t been on IM much for the past few weeks. I’ve been horrible at reading email, let alone answering it (apologies if you’re one of the nice people waiting for a response from me). I haven’t read my aggregator in at least a couple of weeks, maybe longer. I’m very out of the loop, but I’m still a happy camper because the new MLS web site is finally live!

We’ve launched phase one, with completion of phase two targeted for the end of June. Longtime readers may recall that we’ve been trying to launch a different kind of web site for more than two years. Phase one covers a large portion of my original vision, including blogs and a subject-based architecture.

Basically, we’ve gone from a web site patterned after how our organization is structured to a completely subject-based one that should better serve our member libraries. Each subject can have five types of content associated with it – “news” (which is really a blog), articles (traditional web pages), files (a document repository of PDFs, Powerpoints, Word documents, etc.), an FAQ, and a collection of links (here’s a good sample subject to help illustrate this). In phase two, we’ll add two more types, events and a discussion forum/bulletin board. The idea is to pull together in one place all of the content related to the subject, rather than making the user stumble around various parts of the site (separate bulletin boards, our calendar, our newsletter, etc.) trying to find it all. Within the next couple of weeks, we’ll also be adding RSS feeds for each subject, so it will be much easier to track the ones you’re most interested in. Plus, phase two will include an authentication/authorization component that will let us profile member librarians registered with the site so that we can display the most relevant content to them when the first log in.

There’s a lot more going on behind-the-scenes, including a streamlined process for adding content to the site. It all flows through a WYSIWYG editor so any staff member can now easily become a web author. Not that they all will, but we can finally take advantage of all the knowledge and expertise that’s been bottled up trying to get out. It’s the blogging revolution come to MLS, an extension of where we started with Movable Type on the old SLS site. The subject tree will flesh itself out automatically as we add content to those subjects that don’t have any yet (unfortunately you can’t see them all right now, but we can).

I’ll be interested to see if this format works better for our member librarians. I’m still amazed that Kansas City Public Library and Hennepin County Library came to essentially the same conclusions we did for organizing content at about the same time, even though we have very different audiences. We’re still migrating content from the old sites into the new one and will be doing so for a few more weeks, but we’re officially out of the holding pattern and can finally start adding new stuff, too. It’s a great feeling!

I’ve been catching up on podcasts all week during my commute, and I have to say that I’m really enjoying the whole thing. I’m listening to a variety of stuff, but of course I made sure to catch up with Open Stacks.

Hint for OCLC: hire Greg Schwartz to podcast for WebJunction.

This morning I came downstairs to find Brent on the computer playing rap songs on Rhapsody. Luckily, we’ve already had extensive discussions about what he can and can’t listen to, so he was playing the edited versions of some Eminem songs he knows. He and his friends are totally into rap right now.

Again, though, I was struck by the fact that he knows how to pull up Rhapsody and that he’s spending his time listening to music. There’s a budding realization in his brain that he has 900,000 songs at his fingertips. It’s interesting that he doesn’t yet realize he can play Runescape at the same time.

However, I’m ticked that now I have to compete with both kids to listen to Rhapsody when I’m at work. Why haven’t they figured out family accounts yet?! I know some people use this argument for purchasing songs via iTunes, rather than going with a subscription service, but to them I say do you really want to buy every Eminem song your nine–year old wants to hear right now? If I’d done that with Kailee, I’d have wasted money on all of the Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera songs she no longer likes. And really, who wants that?

I’m late to the whole gaming and how it affects libraries thing, but I’m a total convert now and it’s something I’m going to actively track from now on. At first I thought it was just interesting, and while I did like the idea of bringing tweens and teens into the library using gaming as a social carrot, I’m gaining a totally different perspective for the way we can use the characteristics, expectations, and interplay of gaming and gamers in a “tipping point” kind of way.

The latest catalyst for this round of “gaming on my brain” is Moira Gunn’s interview with John Beck for IT Conversations. I’ve listened to the podcast of it twice in the last three days, and a couple of his points really resonate with me. In case you’re not familiar with him, Beck wrote Got Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever, and this podcast is the first chance I’ve really had to hear him talk about all of this since Audible doesn’t carry the audiobook and I’ve never seen Beck speak in person. While listening to it, all I could think of was Brent and how much Beck totally nails him and his friends. I even made Sheree listen to the interview and she agrees with me, although we both disagree with Beck about gender differences because most of the girls we know don’t play video games much at all.

At one point in the interview, Gunn asks Beck how gamers will change the workplace, and Beck provides an example observation that in video games, there are “level bosses” that you have to beat in order to advance further in the game. So one of the things you don’t want to be in real life if you’re a gamer or the supervisor of a gamer is a “boss.” I hadn’t thought about that before, although I always hear Brent talking about bosses in a negative way. In fact, when he started playing video games years ago and he first told me he was having trouble beating the “boss,” I thought that was the name of the character he was fighting. It took me awhile to realize it was his generic term for “the big bad guy at the end of the level.” Then came the realization that it wasn’t just him using the term, it was all of his friends. Imagine his surprise when he first heard me talking about my boss in a positive way!

Beck goes on to say that in the workplace, you don’t want to be a “boss,” but rather a “strategy guide,” because that’s what gamers rely on, especially to beat the boss. And as I was listening to this, it struck me that this is an excellent description of librarians! I’ve always liked that comic drawing of a librarian sitting behind a reference desk with a sign on it that says “search engine,” but now I’ve decided that I’d rather be a “strategy guide” instead. In fact, if I could, I’d change my job title to “strategy guide.” That’s exactly how we need to market ourselves to gamers, boomers, bosses, everyone. The big question, of course, is how to do that and more and more, I think gaming offers clues for how to do that.

If you don’t really understand why this gaming stuff is important, why it will be important in the future (the not-so-distant-future), why it will affect everyone (including you) or why gamers truly are different than you or me, then this interview is a great place to start. I highly recommend you listen to it. And don’t let anybody tell you that these kids aren’t any different than we were at their age, because they’re not like us at all. I was struck by how Beck’s descriptions of gamers mirror so closely the way I talk about NetGens (aka Millennials) in my own presentations. I’m going to have to rework my stuff a bit to highlight the gamer aspect of this generation.

Oh, and if you listen to the Beck interview and get as excited and intrigued about all of this as I did, be sure to register for our upcoming Tech Summit on Gaming @ Your Library! Thanks to our Executive Director, Alice Calabrese, I get to attend the ADL Games, Learning, & Society Conference in June, after which I’m debating trying to put together a day-long symposium/discussion/whatever specifically about gaming and libraries.

Steven has uncovered RSS feeds from Audible for their audio ebooks - major w00tage! There's even a feed for New Free Audio Programs, so anyone can partake of their RSS goodness. They've also broken out the feeds by genre and even created feeds for a couple of bestseller lists. Very nice!

I love this and will be adding some of the feeds to my aggregator (I always hated having to manually browse the site for new stuff), but it's also got me thinking about RSS feeds from ListenIllinois for recently added items. That would also let participants display new titles on their own web sites. Hey, Brad and Shawn...!

Some days, the serendipity is almost too perfect. I woke up this morning to find the following email from Mike Copley waiting for me:

“I'm a Library Assistant/Web Developer from a library in New Zealand and thought you might be interested in seeing a dynamic library map in action. Our OPAC (DRA Web2) integrates with a PHP script to provide floor plans with markers for an exact shelf location. Example:

http://draweb2.shorelibraries.govt.nz/web2/tramp2.exe/do_ccl_search/guest?setting_key=English&servers=1home&howsearch=keyword&query=ln%20ABS0576

(Just click on one of the View Map links)

Also on that full details page, the book cover is powered by Amazon (freedom from Syndetics) and the Read Review image integrates with the Reviews section on our website (external to the OPAC).”

So of course the main reason I’m highlighting Mike’s email is that this is such a cool service from within the catalog! Imagine when RFID and GPS become embedded in everything and you can lead the patron by the ear to the exact location of the item! Until then, though, great job, Mike and NSL!

So I’m smiling big as I’m reading his message, but then I get to the last paragraph of his message:

“I also noticed that you talked about III's XML backend, it's just a pity that III's web OPAC isn't as flexible -- we're moving from DRA to III's Millennium and in the process their OPAC cannot be customized to the level of DRA's years old system and in a few months time the maps won't be dynamic anymore (no red marker).”

So, echoing the problems that Casey has encountered, the North Shore Libraries took a big step forward on their own but when they migrate to III, they’ll take a step backwards. That’s pretty difficult to swallow in 2005, isn’t it? In part, because I’m sure that like Casey, Mike has lots of great ideas for how to build even further on those cool maps.

Which is what I was thinking when I read Lorcan Dempsey’s message to the WEB4LIB mailing list today that ended with the following:

“Check out http://www.paulrademacher.com/housing/ for an interesting 'blend' of services .... Clearly, this is suggestive of other services including library services ....”

That link he highlights does indeed fall into the “too-damn-cool” category and thanks to Mike’s work, you have a visual quickstart for how library catalogs might provide alternate views for browsing, visual locators, etc. (not through Google Maps itself, but using a similar interface). But in order to roll your own “Library Maps” service, you’ll need a more standard XML backend, which is why it’s so surprising to me that Innovative lacks such a beast. Hopefully this will change in 2005 (which I know is easy for someone on the outside of the company to say out loud, but I’m saying it anyway).

And just for the record, in last night’s IM conversation, Casey and I both agreed that everyone we’ve met at Innovative is great. I pick on III because they’re the vendor for my consortium, but I still respect what they do. I just want them to do a few other things a little faster.  ;-)

I have a library that currently uses a large LCD screen on the wall next to the circ desk to display events, notices, etc. on Powerpoint slides that run continuously. They'd also like to display headlines at the bottom of the screen using RSS, but we're not sure how to accomplish this. Any ideas? TIA!

Ryanair Bans Work Phone Charging

"Budget airline Ryanair has banned its staff from charging their phones at work, saying it is an inappropriate use of office time....

But a Ryanair spokeswoman said no-one had 'batted an eyelid' since the rule was introduced about two months ago.

She said the decision to ban the charging of phones was more related to work ethic than cost-cutting - though 'obviously there is a small saving'." [BBC News, via textually.org]

Regardless of whether anyone has "batted an eyelid" or not, this is a stupid policy that makes Ryanair sound like a stupid company headed by a clueless PHB.

And guess what? Your library sounds the same way if you tell patrons (of any age) that they can't IM from your library because that's not a valid use of your public computers. You're basically telling people that their choice of communication channel isn't allowed and that they should go elsewhere because you won't be serving them today.

When I wish for things like native RSS feeds from our Innovative catalog, I’m sometimes told that III has an XML backend so I should just be able to build what I want on my own. Of course, my first response (of many) is that I’m not a programmer so I can’t just build what I want, but Casey Bisson at Plymouth State University is, and he’s trying to build weird and wonderful things with his own Innovative catalog.

For example, check out his proof-of-concept of LOLA Suggest! Just type something in the search box and wait a second to see what appears underneath. Too freaking awesome! I did a mock-up of what this could look like for my information shifting presentation, but Casey’s given me a live example to show instead. Thanks, Casey!

He’s got lots of other great ideas for using Innovative’s XML server, too (including for lots of RSS goodness), but he’s running into problems because he says their XML schema is non-standard, is even more difficult to work with than MARC, and is prone to parsing errors. So here we have an ILS vendor that claims to have an XML backend you can do whatever you want with, except that it’s incredibly difficult to do whatever you want with it, especially if you want to do something nutty like integrate your catalog’s content into your university’s way cool portal using RSS. As Casey noted in an IM:

“Our portal has a ‘my courses’ tab which lists the student’s course schedule, and has links to WebCT, our course management system. I'm working to get a link to the library right there with it. RSS and XML allow us to target library content to what we know of the patron and deliver it wherever they are. As an academic library, we have an opportunity to link with a number of other services. But we also have to compete in the information economy. Most course content systems and portals have only limited ‘hooks’ to include library content, but if we're not quick, libraries will be out of the loop, as faculty post all their reserves online in the course system and link directly to full text sources.”

And all of that work gets harder when you’re trying to do something relatively simple like LOLA Suggest but the XML is so complex that you’re forced to cache the bib records instead of sending the query directly to the catalog’s XML server and presenting live results.

Not being a programmer myself, I’m sure I’m misrepresenting some of this, so I hope Casey will write up his own thoughts about all of this on his blog and correct my inaccuracies. Or even more optimistically, maybe Innovative will fix the problems with their XML server (even if that just means adopting MARC XML) so that Casey can do what they claim he should be able to do, because I want me some of his ideas in my catalog.

I've been remiss in not blogging this until now, but the folks at NEASIST have put together a fascinating program for May 3 at Providence College in Rhode Island. And I'm not just saying that because I'm on the panel. I'm more interesting in hearing Megan Fox and Michael Stephens talk!

Syndicate, Aggregate, Communicate: New Web Tools in Real Applications for Libraries, Companies and Regular Folk

The Tools We Hear About: Blogs, Wikis, RSS, Instant Messenging (IM), Chat, Browser add-ons, Bookmarklets, Folksonomies

The Questions We Ask Ourselves: How and when do these tools work together? How can I use them in my environment? How do I convince my boss that they are worth implementing?

2005 opens with an avalanche of new and maturing technologies. Free tools currently available can be configured and integrated to radically improve communication and simplify information retrieval, storage and sharing. These technologies, however, are currently being developed and presented incrementally and individually, and it is up to the user to keep track, download, install, configure, integrate, learn and determine which combinations will best serve a given individual, project, or organization.

NEASIST is pleased to present another timely event designed to make sense of this frenzy of technology and turn the chaos into practical tools for harnessing information and connecting people. Three recognized, early-adopter, information specialists have been exploring and experimenting with these tools in different environments. They will be sharing examples of how you can use these tools for:

• Personal Information Management


• Internal Staff or Project Communication


• Web site Content Development


• Making your Content Findable on the Internet at large

Individual presentations and a panel session will include case studies and techniques for enlightening others about the diverse value and application of social software and information management tools.

And in fine, syndicate-aggregate-communicate style, they've already started a Flickr account with other channels of communication to come soon!

Never mind our new web site that goes live on April 28... I've got a new countdown until the following program takes place at MLS!

Tech Summit #15: Gaming @ Your Library
Event ID#: 650
Thursday, May 26, 2005
9:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
At the Burr Ridge office of MLS
Cost: $0
CPDUs: 2.5

"Video games are an $11 billion business and a fundamental component of teenage life. Hosting video game tournaments at your library builds community, demonstrates your library's relevance to a different audience (young adults, teens, and especially males), and allows libraries to bring content directly into users' hands. Come to this exciting MLS Tech Summit to see firsthand how Ann Arbor District Library Information Access Systems geeks worked with the teen services librarians to bring video gaming tournaments to the community. You'll learn all of the technical details as well as how to replicate the program at your library-- whole hog or on the cheap!--and take notes on arguments and justifications for your director. Be sure to wear comfortable clothes and shoes because you will get to experience this phenomenon firsthand!

Presenters: From the Ann Arbor (MI) District Library - Erin Helmrich, Teen Librarian, and Eli Neiburger, Information Access & Systems Manager

Background: See their article at http://axis.aadl.org/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/2005/02/02/ for more about their tournaments and OCLC's webcast for more about gaming in the library in general!

This session is limited to 40 participants. Should this session fill, please sign up for the wait list. If the demand is great enough, we will open a repeat afternoon session."

I am soooooo psyched about this session that I'm considering bringing Brent in for the day so that the participants can watch his eyes bug out when he sees the setup and plays the games. ;-)

Note that this program is not limited to MLS libraries. Registration link.

Wow, that was fast! Sirsi has already created a feed for the list of Stephen Abram's Articles and Presentations! It's available at http://www.sirsi.com/Resources/abram_articles.xml, and Stephen promises to get his blog on soon.

Tip from Renee: Free Days is this weekend in Bloomington! Ask her for details. Lots of lakes here, too.

Feature Creep

“Those of you who read this site via RSS/Atom/LiveJournal syndication may have missed our latest site feature, ‘IM to a friend’.

As of this last Friday, there's a tiny AIM icon next to the title of each entry. When it's clicked on, most AIM clients should give you a new message window containing the URL of the entry you'd like to share with a friend. After you enter their screen name and send the message, feel free to chat about what you've sent their way. It works transparently and is loads easier than a standard copy and paste.

Yeah, we're trying to harbor conversation about our site and drive our traffic up. We're also trying to make sending URLs to friends a bit easier. We stole the idea from our friends at blogging.la….

Note: Trillian doesn't seem to install handlers for ‘aim:‘ links. If you run Trillian and click on the link, there's a good chance that nothing will happen. iChat and the official AIM client seem to be all good tho. Sorry Trillian users.” [Preshrunk]

Interesting idea for those libraries exploring IM. Might be a nice reverse idea on the idea of creating IM interfaces into the catalog, too., and it shows how easily you could integrate IM reference into your web site.

Sweet! PalmGear now offers RSS feeds for Updated Software Titles and New Software Titles!

Best DDR playa evah. Amazing! (Some ad images NSFW.) [via MetaFilter]

Brent was playing outside with his friends after dinner tonight. When he came inside, he plopped down on the couch next to me and watched me respond to some email. After a few minutes, he said, “Can I talk to one of your friends?” I said, “You mean you want to chat with one of them online? Sure.”

So we opened up Trillian and found Karen was online. Even though I know she’s terribly busy, she was kind enough to chat with Brent for a few minutes. I told him she had been in the military, so he asked a couple of questions about that. She most graciously responded. As I watched their conversation, I noticed Brent using IM language that I didn’t even know he knew. In fact, when he threw “nvm” out there, both Karen and I were stumped. (Turns out it stands for “never mind.”) Then he threw in ppl, kewl, and cya at various points. Astounded (remember, he’s only nine-years old and he hasn’t gotten into IM yet), I asked him where he was learning all of this. Guess where?

Yep – Runescape.

One of the big motivations for Brent learning to read has always been video games. He played Playstation before he could read, and when I used to tell him it was time to shut down, he’d pull up the options screen and ask how to save his game. My response was always, “You tell me. Find the one that says ‘save.’” Runescape has helped him learn to read faster, because the text others type can scroll by pretty quickly.

So now he’s learned to read (certainly faster), learned to type (certainly faster), and now he’s learning IM slang, all thanks to Runescape. Interesting literacy lessons there.

Of course, I wonder what else he’s learning….

Whenever I post anything about Apple, I’m guaranteed to get comments from Apple fans, and last week was no exception. However, Ben Karel posted some very thoughtful commentary that suggests a most interesting possibility. In my original post, I pointed to an effort to get Apple to try and help libraries circulate audio ebooks to patrons with iPods and to play nicely with others in the industry. In the comments to that post, Ben and I differed on who is to blame for the current situation, but his last comment really has my mind going.

“There are relatively cheap technological solutions to this particular (technological) problem. By ‘relatively’ cheap I mean less than two thousand dollars for the hardware and software infrastructure. Considering that it would probably double the number of patrons able to listen to library ebooks on their player of choice for a one-time fee amounting to a fifth of the price of a single year's subscription, said technological solutions would be a no-brainer were it not for the DMCA's prohibitions upon any and all forms of DRM circumvention.

Hmm. But wait! According to http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/usc_sec_17_00001201----000-.html , Provision (a)(1)(B) states that the ban on circumvention of copyright-protecting technological measures does not apply to users who are ‘adversely affected by virtue of such prohibition in their ability to make noninfringing uses of that particular class of works under this title [...]’. I'm not entirely sure, but I think the next two subparagraphs essentially say that only the Librarian of Congress has the authority to [pre!?-]determine when the exemption in rule (B) applies.

So perhaps the route of least resistance is to forget about Apple entirely and instead convince the Librarian of Congress that the DMCA should count 'audiobooks in public libraries' as a class of copyrighted works deserving of an exemption to aid in noninfringing use by the majority of library patrons.

Also something to consider: the DMCA seems to focus on technologies that short-circuit the process of gaining access to a protected work. Little seems to be said about one may do with that work after having gained access.

Oh. Stupid me. The DMCA already has a built-in exemption for libraries and other such nonprofit entities, which means it looks like you're free to convert those problematic encrypted WMA files into MP3 so that the majority of your patrons will be able to access and play said files in a noninfringing manner.

No doubt a real lawyer ought to examine this, but... Problem solved?”

In the immortal words of Neo, whoa!

It's an interesting idea. So now, I’m wondering if we could really do this. After all, there’s a difference between “letter-of-the-law-right-with-a-true-loophole” and “letter-of-the-law-right, go-for-it but get-your-butt-sued-out-of-existence-and-the-loophole-closed-forever.” Which, of course, is exactly what legislation like the DMCA is designed to do – stop you from even thinking about trying anything for which you could even remotely, possibly be sued for actually doing.

So now I’m in a pinch. Illinois LSTA grants are due in June, and this year there’s finally a "dream big" one that my organization could apply for. I’ve already pitched a half dozen ideas, two of which we’re probably going to submit and one of which a member library is going to submit. But what if we submitted a grant to actually do what Ben proposes? What would the implications be? Is it realistic? Would we still exist in a year or would the legal bills kill us? Would it ultimately open up circulation of digital files in libraries or end it forever? I'm not a fan of DRM, but I also don't want to see libraries used for illegal copying (a whole other debate). Is there an open source type of DRM for these files? I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t play one on TV, so I'd be interested to hear reactions from others on this.

I’m thrilled to be included as a presenter in this year’s International Ticer School at Tilburg University in the Netherlands this coming August, even more so after I saw the list of other speakers! Here’s the press release:

“The International Ticer School (known for its former International Summer School on the Digital Library) offers a brand new, modular course for librarians and publishers: ‘Digital Libraries à la Carte: Choices for the Future,’ to be held at Tilburg University, the Netherlands, 22-26 August
2005.

From its 'menu' of five one-day modules, you can pick your choice:

• trends and strategic issues
• technological developments, relevant to libraries
• consortia and licensing
• open Access and institutional repositories
• the role of libraries in teaching and learning

Top speakers will present their views. Below is a selection.

• Marissa Mayer is Director, Consumer Web Products at Google
• Derk Haank is CEO of Springer and former CEO of Elsevier
• Peter Suber and Richard Poynder are among the most cited authors on Open Access
• Jenny Levine's blog (theshiftedlibrarian.com) is read by thousands of librarians
• Carol Tenopir has published over 200 journal articles and is cited frequently
• Deb deBruijn closed the worldwide biggest consortium deal (over 50 million dollar)
• Gerry McKiernan is the compiler of several known Web registries
• Steven Gilbert is president of The TLT Group and an expert on learning landscapes
• Pat Maughan transforms the undergraduate curriculum at the prestigious UC Berkeley to include information literacy training

To guarantee a highly interactive programme, the number of participants is limited to 45 per module, lectures contain an interactive component, and two
modules are concluded with a practical workshop. The course is recommended by JISC, the DARE project and SURF Diensten.

The course website can be found at www.ticer.nl/05carte/. If you register before 1 June 2005, we can offer you a discount. Do you want a quick update in just one to five days? Then Tilburg is the place to be this summer!”

Sounds pretty awesome, doesn’t it? There’s more information on the web site (including full descriptions of each module), so if you can attend, I highly encourage it!

Zorn Whups Chicagoist’s Ass

“In the wee final moments of Thursday night, Chicagoist received an e-mail from Chicagoist's favorite professional blogger and columnist Mr. Eric Zorn.

The subject line: ‘whup ass report -- Nexis’

Seems Chicagoist may have inadvertently overstated things yesterday when we said getting the phrase ‘can of whup-ass’ into the pages of the ‘stuffy and stodgy Tribune’ signaled a ‘hope for tomorrow,’ as Zorn uncovered at least four previous occasions when said phrase has appeared in the Trib. Using his trusty Lexis-Nexis, Zorn found the mentions and they go clear back into 2001.

While one Chicagoist staff member was heard to say that if Zorn wants to lend us the cash to get a subscription to Lexis-Nexis we'd be happy to check for such things, and while two of the references are found in the pages of Red Eye, Chicagoist knows when we've had our asses handed to us and we can admit it….” [Chicagoist]

I was going to leave a comment on the Chicagoist site to the effect that while they may not have access to Lexis-Nexis, they most certainly have access to a far wider range of materials that most definitely includes an archive of the Chicago Tribune, all for free, thanks to their local public library. Except that in this case, that local public library is the Chicago Public Library. In order to prove my point, I searched for a list of the databases to which they offer access. Guess what? No list. Just a link to “Chicago WebFeat Remote Authentication.” What on earth do you suppose is a WebFeat Remote Authentication, much less a Chicago one?

That’s when I realized that Chicagoist doesn’t know the answer to that question, either, and really, why should they? So to Chicagoist, trust me that your search would have gotten you what you needed if the page had been labeled something that made sense and provided any type of explanation or list at all. Bookmark that page, because there’s a wealth of information available to you from it (assuming that you have a library card, and I feel pretty confident that you do). And to CPL, rename that page ASAP and add a list of all of the databases available in order to highlight your assets, not hide them!

Please provide an RSS feed for this page. Thank you.

Sincerely,
A fan.

I've had a Flickr account since the service first started, but I've never really used it. I've been trying, unsuccessfully, to set up a new moblog on my own site since TextAmerica no longer offers RSS feeds for free accounts, so now I’m joining all of the cool kids and hanging out on Flickr instead. It will mostly be my moblog, although I may post other pictures down the road. For family and friends, the RSS feed is here and my tags are here. In a way, it’s my own little experiment to see how well I do at adding metadata to my photos online since I’ve been horrible at doing this in the past.

Another one of my member libraries has been shifting like crazy lately, but I just recently realized how far. The Lansing Public Library started with blogs, four of them to be exact, which of course gives them RSS feeds. (Well, when Blogger is working these days, it does, but that’s not LPL’s fault.)

Then Kelli Staley emailed me that they’ve been doing the instant messaging thing, too. Since October. Aaron, they’re drinking your Kool-Aid! I especially like that they’re using icons on their pages to indicate presence (online versus offline), which is IM’s big strength. Kelli wrote, “Our library is on 2 levels, so we have separate screen names for different age groups. AskLPLAdult, AskLPLTeen, AskLPLYouth (we're on Yahoo & AOL).” She went on to note that a few weeks ago, they received IMs from students in Florida and Ohio. Those two requests are from students who couldn’t IM their local library. Can your students IM yours?

But LPL didn’t stop there, as the next message from Kelli illustrated:

“Lansing Public Library has partnered with the office of Illinois State Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka to offer a new service called E-Pay. The E-Pay program was launched by Topinka’s office in 2000 under a state master services agreement that is available for all counties and local governments in Illinois to participate in. ‘We are pleased to help move the library into the 21^st century.’ Assistant Library Director Patricia Higgins said, ‘Our E-Pay electronic payment service will provide greater convenience to the community and increase the services offered by the library.’

The Library’s E-Pay service has started with fee payment and donations to Friends of Lansing Public Library. E-Pay will allow you to make your payments over the Internet with cardholders of MasterCard, American Express and Discover card brands. A transaction, or user fee, is added to the payment amount for the convenience of the Internet service. The state and local participants who use this program do not receive any revenue from the convenience fee.”

Read Books, Not Spam

To celebrate "National Library Week," TechSoup Stock and Mailshell are sponsoring the "Read Books, Not Spam!" campaign to help U.S. public libraries protect themselves against spam. In recognition of the value of our public libraries, on April 20, 2005 all U.S. public libraries will be eligible to order at http://ga0.org/ct/Up1JO4S1pXgp/ a free, full year donation of Mailshell anti-spam desktop software for each employee.

In addition, the TechSoup website will provide informative articles for libraries to learn more about spam - and how to have a safer, spam-free computing environment. TechSoup Stock is a nonprofit service of TechSoup that offers donated and discounted technology products for libraries and nonprofits from leading technology providers at low administrative fees.

Registration is required to receive the donation. To learn more and pre-register, visit http://ga0.org/ct/y11JO4S1pXgP/.

HOW TO ORDER YOUR FREE SOFTWARE

If you have pre-registered your library on TechSoup Stock, you can just visit the TechSoup Stock website on April 20th at
http://ga0.org/ct/y11JO4S1pXgP/ and place your order. This completely free offer is available for one day only - April 20, 2005 between 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time (PDT).

To expedite the processing of your order on April 20, please register your organization so that we can pre-qualify your organization as an eligible U.S. public library. Just follow these two steps:

* Download and complete the special Mailshell Anti-Spam Donation
Pre-Qualification Form (PDF) at http://ga0.org/ct/yd1JO4S1pXgQ/.
* Fax your completed form to (415) 633-9444. If your library is a 501(c)(3) organization, please also fax your library's 501(c)(3) letter of determination from the IRS.

If you have ordered from TechSoup Stock before, no additional registration is necessary to participate. Note: TechSoup Stock conducts a thorough qualification process to ensure that all organizations participating in our donation programs are qualified U.S. public libraries with a 501(c)(3) designation or FSCS ID.

LEARN HOW TO FIGHT SPAM

"Read Books, Not Spam" is more than free software. It is an educational campaign to help libraries manage the negative effects of spam on their organization. At TechSoup.org you can find helpful articles and resources on topics such as how to avoid being a spammer and how to prevent spam. Visit: http://ga0.org/ct/U71JO4S1pXg0/.

I've been totally grooving on Will Richardson's posts lately, in part because we often seem to be mulling over the same ideas and concepts at the same time. He's been blogging more about The Active Web (I'm more partial to his reference to Jonathan Schwartz's term "The Participation Age"), and I've been shaping a new presentation for libraries called "How to Join the Online Conversation."

All of this applies to trade journals, too, so I was happy to read the following from Will today:

"Amy Bowllan, who I met at Mohonk last fall, gets my vote for Rookie of the Year so far this year. She's really gone, shall we say, "blog wild" over at "Teaching in the 21st Century" to the point where just recently she even got her mother to start blogging. And the big news is that she just landed a gig as a blogger for the School Library Journal. How cool is that?"

Sweet! But you have the same question that I do, right? Hellllllooooooooooo, Library Journal? Paging Library Journal! Please come to the front desk and get your bloggers up and running!

Dave Winer reports that Enycyclopedia Britannica now offers an RSS feed for the daily content that appears on the home page. EB is one of my new member libraries (thanks to last year's merger), and one of their librarians came to my RSS class last year. By the end of it, her RSS light bulb was shining brightly, and she talked about going back to the office and pursuing RSS for the company. Hmmmmmmm...did a librarian lead the way???....

The Death of Libraries?

“…Now that Google has agreed to scan millions of books from five major libraries and to make their contents searchable on the Web—a project that experts say is likely to yield spinoff technologies that drastically lower the costs of digitization and catalyze similar efforts worldwide—can the disappearance of libraries themselves be far behind?

 Most librarians say no, as our story “The Infinite Library,” on page 54, reports. Whatever the form in which book content is stored, librarians believe, people will still come to libraries for expert help finding information, for public access to the Internet, or for the comfortable atmosphere libraries provide for reading and reflection. And there will always be a need, professionals point out, for places that preserve traditional paper books.

All of that may be true. But there is still room to wonder how libraries will trump the expediency of being able to download a whole book over the Web, at little or no cost, instead of schlepping to the library….

So in reality, the future of libraries may rest on just two factors: the rate at which digitization and display technologies ­advance, and the evolution of laws and practices regarding copyrights….

If publishers and authors maintain their tight control on these books after they are scanned, public libraries will still have an important place as a free source for them, even if they can loan out only a few electronic copies at a time. On the other hand, if Google and others can arrange with publishers and authors to allow low-cost downloads of whole books—a likely prospect, seeing that it gives publishers a new way to squeeze revenues from their backlists—then libraries will inevitably recede in importance. It’s a simple matter of convenience: free or low-cost access to digital books will make libraries more dispensable.” [Technology Review]

While it’s disheartening to have a magazine like Technology Freaking Review imply that the only thing libraries have to offer in the digital world is digital versions of print books, I also think it’s a wake up call. We sure haven’t shifted into these TR authors’ world.

The last sentence of this short blurb should stick in the back of your mind permanently:

“But if librarians want a steady supply of patrons, they’ll need to find ways to keep their institutions relevant in the digital age.”

Shifting to where your users are equals relevance in today’s world. Luckily, the blinders on the longer Infinity Library article are a little smaller, but the basic assumption remains the same. It’s interesting that the article concentrates on books and even fair use issues while completely ignoring multimedia, but even more surprising is the decision to focus solely on users “walking” into the library. I’m pretty sure they didn’t mean walking paper, either.

Apologies to the folks that attended my information shifting presentation for the Ohio Library Council a few weeks ago. I didn’t realize the PDF version was not online, but you should now be able to access it at http://www.sls.lib.il.us/infotech/presentations/2005/OLC.pdf.

Adobe Ideas Conference

“I'm at the Adobe Ideas conference today, so posting may be a little slow. Or non-existant because this is the first conference I've been to in, oh, 4 years that doesn't have wifi available to the attendees….” [kottke.org]

Sadly, I have yet to attend my first library conference that does have wifi available for the attendees. Sigh.

LucidLink Releases Free Client for Win XP, 2000

“LucidLink has released a free Wi-Fi client that solves some configuration, security hassles: In an interesting move, wireless security software vendor Interlink has released LucidLink Wireless Client at no cost for all Windows XP and 2000 users. The client software aids in supporting secure configurations by detecting a network's settings--Mac OS X does this built-in--and secures against evil twin and related attacks by not automatically switching to networks named the same but with different attributes. The client incorporates several security elements, meaning it can serve as a single entry point for Wi-Fi network connection, as opposed to Microsoft's broken-up approach.” [Wi-Fi Networking News]

This is the kind of information that comes to my mind when Aaron encourages librarians to lead their communities in some areas of technology and educate patrons. It’s also the kind of information I like to see on library blogs (librarian blogs, too).

It’s been pretty quiet around here because I’ve been very busy at work, traveling quite a bit to give presentations, dealing with some health crises at home, and now I’m just coming back from a not terribly relaxing week of what was supposed to be vacation. I’m going to try to get back to blogging, but I don’t have much time to read my aggregator these days, and I’ve been completely unplugged for almost a week. Luckily, some very nice readers have been sending me some things to blog (thank you to all of them!).

• My good friend Deanna is excited that NASA is podcasting - I am, too! (Feed is here.)
  
• Edward Vielmetti knew I’d like the news that the University of Michigan’s Library Catalog (Mirlyn) is going to RSSify its Newly Cataloged Items search. The feeds aren’t up and running yet, but hopefully they will be soon!
  
• Erin, The Kung-Fu Librarian (love that name!), helps confirm some of my previous posts about cell phones and library users by forwarding a link to an article about Cell Phones Now Libraries in Hand. It’s a nice complement to the Wired News article from a few weeks ago.
  
• Dianne Harmon forwarded a message from PUBLIB about the problems libraries face offering patron audio ebook downloads in WMA format only, thereby leaving out the millions of iPod users. The message rightly puts the blame on Apple for refusing to play nicely with the rest of the licensed world. The message’s author encourages librarians (and, I assume, interested patrons) to let Apple how much we’d like to move forward in this area by using the iTunes Feedback form.
  
• Terry Bucknell sends news that Elsevier’s ScienceDirect Connect newsletter for librarians now offers an RSS feed! He’s been prodding them to go RSS for some time, and we’re both hopeful that their tables of contents will be next. This is a good start, though!
  
• Michael Sheldrake pointed me to his new Meta Book Search site. “My site performs a more extensive search than any other book meta-search site for used, out-of-print, and hard-to-find books. I've also tried to make search results easier to navigate.”
  
• Jason Frasier notes that Barnes & Noble is finally experimenting with RSS feeds. About damn time. Let’s hope that the experiment goes beyond just three feeds.
  
• I’d say Philippe Lourier “one-upped” the New York Times, but it’s more like he 6,000–upped them. Philippe runs The Annotated New York Times site, where he’s “started publishing over 6,000 feeds that track NY Times articles by topic and by author. We also provide commentary feeds that track blog commentary about the New York Times, also broken down by topic and author.” Wow!
  
• And last, but certainly not least, this wasn’t sent in by a reader, but I specifically want to note Walt Crawford’s official entrance into the blogosphere. I appreciate all of the work he does with Cites & Insights, but the format doesn’t work well for me so I’m thrilled that I’ll be able to get more Walt, even just randomly, in my aggregator!