The Librarian in Black points to the Ann Arbor District Library’s redesigned web site, which includes the addition of blogs (including a Director’s Blog!) and RSS feeds. It looks like posts from all of the blogs appear on the home page, with a link back to the rest of that subject’s blog. Looking at the site right now, there are six posts on the home page. Amazingly, five of those posts have patron comments attached to them, and not just a couple of comments either. The count is 17, 6, 18 58, and 19! How many paper comments have your patrons left so far this month? Compare.

The AADL blogs do it all right. The posts are written in the first person and in a conversational tone, with the author’s first name to help stress the people in the library. The staff isn’t afraid to note problems with the new catalog, the web site, or anything else. Full transparency – nice. You can feel the level of trust building online. They respond to every comment that needs it, whether it’s a criticism, question, or suggestion. And some of the comments are fantastic. Users are even helping debug the new catalog. Here’s a sampling:

• Patron: “I agree with the previous comment about getting email notices of system difficulties. I depend on email notices to remind me when my books are due. Since I have not heard anything from the library for a time I thought all my books were current. Yesterday when I put in a request for book I was unpleasantly surprised to find to one of my books was overdue. It was only for one day but the fines would have mounted if I hadn't put in that new request for a book.”

  Staff response: “Thanks for your comments. If you had items go overdue because you were expecting advance notices, please mention it the next time you visit a library branch, and we can waive those fines for you. We are still hoping to get this service restored this week.

  On a technical note, broadcasting messages like this to our patrons can cause as many problems as it solves; last time we did so, we were flagged as spammers by U of M (because so many patrons have U of M addresses) and we could not send any email to U of M addresses for over a week. I didn't want our warning of email notice unavailability to subsequently prevent a large percentage of our patrons from receiving the messages once they started up again.”

• Patron: “Although I live in the neighborhood and this new Northeast branch library will be within convenient walking distance for me, I am troubled by the environmental degradation its construction at Huron Parkway and Traverwood will cause. Large numbers of trees will have to be removed and hills flattened out at this site. Much impervious surface in terms of parking lots and buildings will be put in. All these changes will negatively effect the natural area and small ponds bordering this location. That is a real shame.

  I really don't know what is wrong with the present location of the branch library at the shopping plaza. I think you should have looked to expand there first before destroying land with new buildings and asphalt.”

  Staff response: “I am a member of the Library Board and live on Broadway, close to both the current branch and the proposed new one at Huron Parkway and Traverwood. I was also concerned about harm to the environment. However, it turns out that many, if not most, of the trees on this site are ashes, and are dead or dying because of the emerald ash borer. They will have to be removed anyway. We will be replacing the "landmark" trees with new ones. We hope to minimize the impervious surface, and are going to try for a design that actually results in the *enhancement* of this site.”

• Patron: “All the requests I made during the transition period were lost! I have put new requests on a few items since, but that put me very far down the wait list, so I am very disgruntled about this! Is there no longer a chance of retrieval of any of those records, or do I need to request each all over again (making me number 1,389,567th on the list!)”

  Staff response: “I will contact you via email about this; we show 9 requests on your account dating as far back as March. We'll get it worked out.”

• Patron: “Great job. I am really happy that you've added the blog feature -- very cutting edge! It's essential to build a community around the library to insulate it from the inevitable financial ups and downs. As far as I'm concerned, the library is the crown jewel of Ann Arbor's downtown.

  What's happening with the plans to improve the drop-off situation in front of the library? I thought there was going to be a carve-out from the parking lot.”

  Staff response: “…thank you for the feedback on our use of blogs. The plans to improve the drop off situation on Fifth Avenue Downtown are still in discussion stage with the DDA and City. We are encouraged by the interest in downtown zoning and development. Please plan to attend any of the number of sessions being held July-September titled A2Downtown Development Strategy. The first interactive Public Design workshop is to be held July 28 from 6-9 PM at Courthouse Square in the ballroom on the second floor.”

• Patron: “Wow! The website looks great! And finally, more detail about my requests and holds! Oooh, and RSS, too ... how sexy is that. Well, I see several blogs listed on the site now ... I hope everyone feels encouraged to participate.”

• Patron: “I added the library RSS feeds to the right-hand side of my Ann Arbor portal page at http://www.wfzimmerman.com/index.php?topic=AnnArbor.”

So let’s recap - what do we see happening here? Community. Transparency. Trust. The human beings in the library (something that’s usually missing from library web sites). Voice. A much more dynamic web site. Their information is appearing on other web sites automatically via the RSS feeds.

Me? I get a new case study and a bunch of new slides for my presentations.

For AADL, “it’s all good.”  

Follow-up with even more info.

That’s the biblical Job, not job. Really long time readers will remember my digital travails from 2002, and now it seems my fate is to face a similar situation with DRM (Digital Rights Management). I’ve written about how I can’t watch MovieLink movies on my newish laptop and how Rhapsody is throwing error messages about not being able to “authorize the track to play.” As a quick update, I still can’t watch movies, and the last I heard from the Microsoft technician, my laptop has some kind of memory issue that won’t allow his diagnostic programs to run to give him the information he needs to continue troubleshooting the problem. He pointed me to a few Microsoft Knowledgebase articles that might help me solve the memory problems I’ve never experienced personally and didn’t know I had.

For the moment, the whole thing has become more work than I’m willing to devote to trying to watch a friggin’ movie. I’ll just keep renting DVDs and recording cable movies onto my ReplayTV and then downloading them to my laptop. Chalk another one up for DRM. They’ve managed the rights so well that I can’t duplicate the movie, even if that means I can’t watch it either.

Then last week, I realized it was summer. Know how I realized it was summer? The kids were home and we ended up fighting daily over Rhapsody. Typical conversation:

[Jenny, at work, gets disconnected from Rhapsody when another user logs on; Jenny calls home]
Jenny: Kailee, are you on Rhapsody?
Kailee: No, this time it’s Brent.
Jenny: Okay, please put Brent on the phone.
[Waits]
Jenny: Brent, I’m the one at work, so I get to listen to Rhapsody.
Brent: I just wanted to listen to some Green Day.
Jenny: I understand that, but I’m listening right now. You can listen when I get home.
Brent: Come on, I just want to listen for a little while.
Jenny: I paid for it, so I’m listening to it.
Brent: You’re such a meanie.
Jenny: Yes, but I’m the meanie that’s paying for the service.
Brent: You’re still a meanie.
[Curtain]

After we kept disconnecting each other over and over, I finally just changed the password, which locked them out. I feel bad for them, though, so I decided to give Yahoo Music a try, especially since I’m sure the kids will be getting real MP3 players soon and this would let them take music with them. So Friday morning, I signed up for an account, downloaded the Yahoo Music Engine, and tried to install it on their computer.

Now, I’ve installed a lot of Windows software in my day, so I feel pretty confident in my ability to double-click on an installation file. However, when I try to install YME, I get three screens into the installer (oh the joy of accepting the license agreement over and over) before I get an error message that says, “The file c:\downloads\ could not be opened.” That happens to be the folder where the file is located, so I find it odd that the installer can’t find the folder it’s located in, let alone the file. I’ve tried rebooting the computer. I’ve tried redownloading the file. I’ve tried lighting a candle and chanting. Nothing seems to get the installer to, you know, install. The computer meets all of the system requirements and then some. So either I’m just not destined to live the happy, DRMed life the entertainment industry waxes on about, or our house is built on an ancient technology burial ground. While I readily admit there is a lot of dead technology in the basement, I’m leaning towards the former.

I tried re-downloading the file for a sixth time and putting it in a different location. Now when I run the file, I get a new error message saying, “The file c:\documents and settings\HP Authorized Custom\Desktop\ could not be opened.” This sounds suspiciously like the error messages I was getting on my laptop, about how the DRM files couldn’t find themselves in order to manage the digital rights. So I did what any poor, confused soul would do in my place – I looked for tech support help on the Yahoo Music site. None to be found for my particular problem, because this is yet another one of those things that only happens to me. So I ended up sending them a message detailing my issue.

Two days later, I received a reply that explained how to log in and download the installation file. No acknowledgment what-so-ever that the installation file was the problem. So I sent a reply, asking for help with the issue I had actually asked about. It’s already been 24 hours with no reply (yes, I know I’m getting impatient) so I don’t think I’ll have another chance to ask a question and get a response before my 7–day trial expires. You know which 7–day trial that is, right? The one where I don’t get to access the content for the 7 days!

So the kids and I have gone back to our old deal that I get Rhapsody during the day, and they get it at night until I get this issue resolved or give up on it (which I expect will be sometime tonight). We’ll see how long it lasts this time. I’m not optimistic. In the meantime, I await my day in front of Congress to tell my tale of DRM woe when the entertainment industry next tries to ram through broadcast flag-like legislation.

Oh, and I checked with Rhapsody. Unfortunately (and short-sightedly), they don’t offer family plans or even a discount for a second account. For shame.

Check this out - on the MLS home page right now, items are displaying that were posted by six different authors, three of whom never added new content to the old SLS site because we used to hand-code HTML and FTP the pages. If you look at the first page of "older" posts, you pick up two more such authors. All because we've moved to a blogish content management system that anyone on staff can use to update the site. Our home page is more dynamic than ever, and we're able to toss a wider net of information across our site.

Our Executive Director, Alice Calabrese, is even getting into the swing of things and posting new items! (Go Alice!)

I heart blogging! :-)