When we had to decide the topic for the May Tech Summit, it was a close call. I originally went with podcasting, but then became so excited about gaming in libraries that I switched subjects right before we sent out the flyers.

So that means September's Tech Summit will be on podcasting. :)

MLS Tech Summit: Podcasting
Thursday, September 22, 2005
1:30 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
MLS Burr Ridge office
"What is podcasting, and does it involve aliens from outer space? No! Podcasting is a great new way to syndicate audio and video content via free subscriptions online. Podcasting is great for commuters, exercisers, and others who want to listen to interesting shows, interviews, reviews, and more. Technically, all you need is a computer connected to the Internet, but podcasts become even more valuable when you have an MP3 player. Can podcasting help you personally? Should your library be thinking about podcasting? Come to this tech summit to find out!

Plus, if you've never had the chance to play with an iPod, we'll have a couple on hand so you can see what all the fuss is about!"

We'll also do a repeat presentation at our Chicago office on Tuesday, October 18, at 1:30 p.m.

A Solution for RSS and Journals

"Here is a prototype system I call 'RSS Creator,' which allows us to create RSS feeds for any journal or newspaper indexed and abstracted in our current subscription databases.

http://public.csusm.edu/dwalker/rss.htm

The system leverages Ex Libris' SFX and Metalib systems (using Metalib's XML-based API) to create the feeds, but the idea behind it is not specific to SFX or Metalib, and could be done with other technology.

Here are some of the benefits:

(1) Gives a library instant access to 20,000 to 40,000 or more feeds.

The system can create an RSS feed for any journal or newspaper indexed by one of our databases, so long as that database is searchable via Metalib -- regardless of whether the publisher or database provider makes those feeds available now.

(2) Requires virtually no discovery, collection, or maintenance.

All of the information about the journals is already available (and updated) in the SFX knowledge base. A library simply downloads this information out of SFX, uploads it into RSS Creator, and RSS Creator takes care of the creation and maintenance of the feeds themselves. All of the feeds are in one place, conveniently available to our users.

(This takes maybe 30 minutes every three months or so.)

(3) All links point back to SFX

RSS Creator simply creates an OpenURL for each article title, which links the user to our SFX menu. If a faculty member sees a journal article they want to read, regardless of whether they are on-campus or not, SFX will provide them proxied access to the full-text, provide information about print availability in our library, or even provide a pre-populated ILL form if we don't have access to the article online or in print.

It is, in other words, a large, free RSS-based table of contents system. I just need to find some time in between more pressing matters to finish it up. But I'm hoping to roll it out to our faculty here this fall." [WEB4LIB mailing list]

David Walker, Web Development Librarian at Cal State San Marcos, put this handy little program together, and it totally rocks! Check out the Flash demo to see how it works. It's actually very elegant, user-friendly, and incredibly useful.

Dang, I wish I had time to play with this right now for our member libraries. I'm really going to have to start investigating ways to implement SFX (PDF) for them.

I had a most interesting time at the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library in Topeka, Kansas, yesterday! In addition to giving a well-received presentation on social technologies (pdf) for the Northeast Kansas Library System, I learned about some very interesting goings-on in my alma mater’s state!

• The Hays Public Library is doing gaming tournaments! And not just any gaming tournaments, but Halo ones! W00t!
   
• The Nortonville Public Library, serving a population of 500, is circulating video games and is the first library I’ve heard of that has two GameBoys for in-library use only. Apparently, the Library is such a hub of activity for adults who need to use the internet, do research, etc., that the GameBoys are much appreciated to keep the kids busy while they’re waiting.
   
• NEKLS is blogging now, too. They have a great Technology Blog and a new one for announcements called Currency! The System as a whole is truly a great resource for its member libraries.
   
•  I have to also note how impressed I was with Christie Brandau. She’s the new State Librarian and not only did she attend my presentation because she totally “gets” it about shifting libraries and social technologies, but she has her own freaking blog called Travels with the State Librarian! She’s traveling around the State visiting libraries, sharing her adventures, and even posting pictures from each stop. Let me again reiterate how damn cool that is! And you know what a blog means, right? Yep, a feed! Here’s a great excerpt about one branch of the Johnson County Library where I spent a lot of time when I was growing up:

“Oak Park branch manager Leslie Nord shows some of the ‘ready kits’ available at the library. These kits include book, videos, audio and other media assembled by topic. For example, a ready kit on cake decorating would have everything in one bag about the subject to get started on a big baking project! What a neat idea!”

Here's another interesting post:

“First stop was the town of Quinter and the Jay Johnson Public Library. Librarian Sharon DuBois showed us the progress being made in an expansion of the library. I admire the fact that the library staff and trustees are energy conscious, and the building will be powered exclusively by solar power. The beautiful circulation desk in the second picture is made of glass and wheat board.”

Lots of wifi goodness stories, too (very important for public libraries, that wifi)! The stories she tells are amazing, and we all agreed that this great stuff should get into Flickr! I expect even greater things from Kansas libraries in the future because Christie will be pushing them to meet them in their world, not ours. For example, she totally gets the whole IM thing because she uses it to stay in touch with her husband who is in Iraq. I couldn't have asked for a better personal story to illustrate why libraries shouldn’t ban IM from their public stations, so thanks, Christie!

And thanks to the NEKLS folks for such an enjoyable morning – I learned a lot!

I’ve gotten some interesting comments to my post about The Digital Audiobook Divide, most of them positive but also some questions about why audio ebooks are different. In particular, Sarah Houghton posted a couple of questions, to which I left some answers in her comments, but I thought I’d repost the major one here.

“Do you likewise check out CD players for your CD materials...or DVD and VHS players for your movies?  If so, great!  If not, there's a bit of a double standard at work.” [Librarian in Black]

This is the first time libraries have proactively purchased a format that not every device can play. You can put a DVD in any DVD player and it will work. Same thing with a CD. Heck, you can put them in any computer (with a DVD or CD drive) and they'll work. There's a reason you weren't buying Betamax *AND* VHS 20 years ago, right?

For the first time, we're buying digital content that doesn't work across every device, and we need to understand we're doing it consciously. We're deliberately cutting out patrons (taxpayers) who didn't buy what someone else deemed the "right" hardware, not just hardware. That's a very new philosophy for libraries and a dangerous precedent for us to set as we accelerate into the era of "the heavenly jukebox" and digital information.

Therefore, if you can help address that divide by buying a $50 player (and if you can afford the outrageous prices for these audio ebook subscriptions, you can afford at least $50), then I think you have an ethical obligation to do so. I don't think you can use the justification of "expensive" hardware anymore, because you could buy two players for the cost of one unabridged audiocassette title these days.

I hope that helps clarify my position.

I just finished reading an-honest-to-god print book (Joystick Nation), and now I’ve finally started Got Game. From the introduction:

“Video games have dramatically changed the way members of this generation see the business world, how they think about work and risk and success, and what they expect of themselves. These attitudes can be confusing to boomers-to anyone who doesn’t intuitively understand game culture. They can even be counterproductive, both for the organization and for gamers themselves. But the deep lessons this generation has learned in and around video games carry enormous value. If managed and reinforced correctly, they can deliver that value to individual managers, to work groups, and to entire companies.” (p.22)

Last week I talked at length with a guy who is facing this issue head on. He’s a techie who loves his job fixing computers, a boomer, and now during this last year, the manager of high school and college students who manage the network at a school. He plays EverQuest and PlayStation 2 games with his 11–year old son so he’s familiar with gaming and the culture, but it’s been a frustrating year for him, even though he’s a very easy-going type of guy.

As we talked, he told me how he just doesn’t understand these kids. To him, you work on projects, you complete them, and you do them well because otherwise people get fired. Since I was in the middle of reading the first book, I gave him “Got Game,” and he got through the first 100 pages before we went our separate ways and he had to return it to me. And you know what? Those 100 pages really helped him. During our final talk, he told me that at least now he understands why these kids think and act the way they do. It’s not that they don’t care or that they’re not doing their best; it’s that they’re gamers so they’re willing to experiment and try new things rather than speed forward on the “one, true” path. For them, failure is not to be avoided at all costs. Instead, it's a new starting point. Now that he understands all of this, he believes he can interact with and manage them more effectively.

I’ll be interested to talk to him again next year to see how all of this is going, but I tell you this story because not only do you have to interact with these kids as patrons, but they’re going to be working for you – if they aren’t already – and in some cases, you’re going to be working for them. I’m barely into Beck’s book, but already I highly recommend it.

Widgets

"Yesterday Yahoo announced that it has scooped up Konfabulator. The most immediate effect is that the ‘pro’ version of Konfabulator is now free!...

Konfabulator is a program that emulates for windows quite nicely the widget functionality found in Mac OS X Tiger. While the two systems are not compatible with each other, the end result is the same. You download small ‘widgets’ which display on your desktop.

I just have four simple ones - weather, a ‘to do’ list, a Flickr photo uploader, and a CPU usage monitor....

On a side note, how cool would a ’search the library’ widget be?" [Hidden Peanuts]

I love the idea of a "search the library" widget. Let's take it a step further, though, and add one that shows what I have checked out and when it's due. Oh, and how about a box for my library's virtual reference or IM service? A total library widget package like this would rock hard! Put yourself in as many patron spaces as possible (desktop, toolbar, aggregator, cell phone, etc.).

Recently, I’ve had a few folks ask why libraries than join the new ListenIllinois contract for audio ebooks from Audible, OverDrive, and Recorded Books need to purchase their own MP3 player to circulate to patrons when patrons could just download OD and RB titles at home. Since my answer is the standard recommendation I make for any library circulating any digital audiobooks, I’m posting it here.

Back in 2001, I told folks that libraries would only be in the hardware business for ebooks and audio ebooks for about five years. For the most part, the increase in user adoption of devices that read ebooks (laptops, PDAs, cell phones) and MP3 players for audio ebooks have been pretty much on target for where I thought they would be. However, I also thought that by now, the vendors would have seen the wisdom in settling on one DRM scheme that worked cross-platform. That side of the equation has been an utter and total failure and as a result, publishers and middlemen are losing millions of dollars a year (at best). Think how much more revenue Apple, Overdrive, Recorded Books, Audible, Microsoft, and others could be reaping if all of the ebook vendors could make their products available on every operating system. Yet there is no movement to rectify the situation and the market grows even more splintered.

I’m not going to get into another debate about whose fault it is, but for us, the most unfortunate side effect is that libraries are caught in the middle. So you have situations like what happened to the Fairfax County Public Libraries in Virginia earlier this year. In case you didn’t see it make the rounds of the blogosphere, the Libraries began circulating Recorded Books/netLibrary audio ebooks, which are not compatible with iPods, Macs, or Linux machines. Is this the Libraries’ fault? No, it’s not. Is there a single service out there that offers current, popular bestsellers that they could circulate to iPods, Macs, or Linux machines? No, there isn’t. Is that the Libraries’ fault? No, it isn’t. So the Libraries got stuck with a product that works for a high percentage of users, but certainly not all of them.

Hal Cauthen was upset about this, so he asked Phil Shapiro to compose a song about the problem and put it on the web. Phil was particularly outraged because he had helped set up a low cost Linux computer lab for tenants in affordable housing units in Fairfax County. Is he right to be upset? Certainly. Is he wrong to blame the Libraries? Yes. I’m sure the Libraries would love to circulate titles to Linux machines and to iPods as well, but Phil doesn’t need them to get public domain texts, and there just isn’t anything else out there that fills the current, bestseller void for libraries. So what would Hal and Phil have them do? Not serve the other half of the patron base that can use these audio ebooks? As Greg Schwartz noted in one of his podcasts, should they then get rid of large-print books, CDs, Braille books, etc. because they serve only one segment of the population? Of course not.

Unfortunately, Phil doesn’t really propose a resolution to the problem, probably because he’s just as caught in the middle of all of this as libraries are, and he’s just as powerless, even though he is an active supporter of the Digital Divide Network. I sympathize with him (after all, I can’t circulate these titles to my Archos player, either), but it’s not like the Library ignored a valid option that would have given him access to the titles.

Or did they?

Well, unfortunately, I think they did, and that’s why I’m posting this. If you are an OverDrive or Recorded Books subscriber, then you need to understand that you are not providing access to those titles to a segment of your population, even though it’s not your fault. Here’s how Phil puts it at the end of his essay:

“The train has left the station on building a more participatory and inclusive world. Would you care to be a passenger on this train?”

It’s a valid point. So what could the Fairfax County Libraries have done to help this situation? Like ListenIllinois, they can try to put pressure on the vendors, but we just don’t have that much clout. More immediately, though, they could circulate their own players in order to provide access to these titles to everyone. Not just those iPod users or the affordable housing tenants or even seniors, but everyone. It’s a proven fact that libraries help bridge the digital divide, and now we need to step up and help bridge what is a growing digital audiobook divide. It’s simply unethical to say you’re not going to circulate players because it would be too much of a hassle for your staff. This is the future format of audiobooks, and we need to make them available to everyone, especially because there are some titles that are available exclusively in this format. There are so many reasons to circulate your own players right now that it’s almost a crime not to. If you look at it from a PR standpoint, do you really want to be the one standing up in front of the microphone explaining why you couldn’t spend $70 on one measly player for those patrons that don’t have one of their own?

So that’s why ListenIllinois requires participants to purchase at least one MP3 player, and that’s why you should circulate players, too. Is it ideal? No. Is it as convenient as letting these folks download titles at home? No. Would it cause long waits (and maybe force you to buy more players because it’s a popular service)? Yes. But it’s access nonetheless and as the community and literacy center that you are, it’s the right thing to do. If you circulate audio ebooks, you have to circulate players, too. It’s that simple.