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« October 2005 | Main | December 2005 » Bridging a Different Kind of Divide
This column from Rachel Singer Gordon really resonates with me. In fact, I think there may even be pieces of this embedded in the current discussion of Library 2.0 with Librarian 1.0 (which Rochelle helped jumpstart and Michael Casey continues). I feel some of this myself because I’m a GenXer and it really can be difficult being stuck in the middle, and not just in the context of the potential for administrative positions. I’m not angry or upset with the generations on either side of me, but sometimes it’s tiring (and even frustrating) being the translator. Most of the time it’s motivating, stimulating, and even fun, but there are the days . Thanks for putting this issue out there, Rachel. Happy, Shifted PatronsSearching the AADL Catalog as Easy as Google, Delivery as Fast as Amazon
This is just one piece of “Library 2.0” – the ability to get your content (in this case, access to your content) out to where your users are instead of forcing them to come to your site to use your catalog with its oh-so-perfect-interface. And look what happens when you do it – easy as Google, faster than Amazon, leaps tall buildings in a single bound praise from patrons. You can also grab the code for the search plugin in order to create one for your own library. Now you really have no excuse for not having a FireFox search plugin! Matt, the kid behind the plugin, also makes a couple of other interesting observations on his blog:
DJ BrentBoyNow that we’ve added a microphone to the kids’ computer so they can voice chat with friends, we’re seeing them mash up the various tools. This morning, Brent was on IM [text] chatting, going on quests with friends in Runescape, voice chatting, and taking song requests to play on Rhapsody (so his friends could hear them through the microphone). I was tired just watching him. Just Reading and TalkingI had heard that one of the reasons our grant application to create a mobile gaming package for MLS libraries was turned down was because some reviewers didn’t understand how you then transition these kids to “traditional library services.” I could argue that issue a million different ways but thanks to Aaron, today I’m basking in vindication. :-P Blog on, CPL!Gaming? In a Library? Don’t We Kick You Out for that?
This is so awesome – Chicago Public Library blogger and colleagues will be attending the gaming in libraries symposium! By george, I think they’ve got it! Must go do a celebratory happy dance for CPL! CPL Rocks! BTW, if you’ve procrastinated registering for the symposium, you’d better hurry. We had to reduce the number of registrations in order to fit the gaming equipment in the back of the room, so there are only 21 registrations left! Hindsight Is 20/20 - What Have You Learned?
Pew Internet Report: Search Engines Gain Ground
How Badly Do I Want a Programmer at Work?<mini rant> Chris Deweese over at our sister Illinois system Lewis & Clark LS went and implemented yet another thing Kate and I have been talking about for months. Except he got beyond the talking stage because he’s a programmer. I hate that LCLS is doing a lot of the things I’ve wanted to do simply because they have someone on staff devoted to implementing this kind of stuff. And I really hate the fact that Chris has started a new blog called “the lcls weboratory: from our minds to the web” at the URL http://labs.lcls.org/. “Labs!”</mini rant> Okay, so replace the word “hate” with the word “love” in the above paragraph, but I still really want a programmer at work! Leveling the Playing Field
Lansing PL is one of my member libraries, so I can testify to the fact that they are not a large library, not are they a particularly rich library. And yet, they’re taking advantage of free, social tools like blogs, RSS, instant messaging, and now podcasting and beating out larger libraries that have more resources. They’ve even put together a podcast info page that helps explain the whole thing to patrons. Go LPL! I’ll also note that Kelli recorded the audio from the 2005 SirsiDynix CODI Conference, which is just too damn cool. Even better, SirsiDynix was smart enough to let her podcast the recordings, which you can start grabbing here (depending on when you click that link, you might need to scroll down to November 20 and earlier). That totally rocks, and as Kelli noted to me in an email, “how’s that for ILS transparency?!” More Abram-ismsA couple of weeks ago, Michael posted his list of Abram-isms from the CPL Scholars in Residence gig, in part because while listening to Stephen, we joked that we were going to start a random Abram-ism generator from a database of things the king has said. So here are my additions for the database:
So Build It
Emphasis above is mine. Click through and check out those statistics. Pretty impressive. Don't STIGTSCan’t believe I haven’t linked to this yet: IM Shorthand for Monty Python Fans from ricklibrarian. I added one – go add yours! Still in the First Coming of Library FeedsThe Second Coming of Content and RSS Feeds
Ask yourself if your library is ready for this type of shift, because overwhelmingly, the answer is no. Librarians just aren’t thinking like this yet, and we need to change this. It’s at the very core of the whole “Library 2.0” discussion, and this is why it’s so critical. If we keep our content locked up on our own websites and don’t get it out there for people to use as they want to use it, then our content will fall by the wayside. Desktop Search My LibrarySearch Our Catalog from Windows
This is particularly awesome because my home Library’s catalog doesn’t have an easy URL to remember, so it can be a pain to get there. Great job, Brian! Do we need some sort of exchange program to get similar Mac widgets set up? While I had Brian on IM this morning to talk about this, I also found out that he has made a special icon for the Library’s IM service. He used to show a statue of Lincoln (after all, we are in Illinois), but the kids continually told him that was lame. So he made a new one that says, “we look stuff up 4 u.” Good thought – what icon are you using for your library’s IM reference service? Michael Covers Library 2.0 Whitepaper from TalisToday is turning into a very lucky day for me, because I was also going to write about the recent Talis whitepaper on Library 2.0, along with some context for what libraries should be starting to talk about in this area. However, Michael beat me to it on the ALA TechSource Blog. It's a great post, too, so click the link and go read it! Leave Your Library's WebsiteWe just got a look at the evaluations from last week's Scholars in Residence program at Chicago Public Library, and I'm thrilled to say that the staff seems to think it went as well as Stephen, Michael, and I did! So a very public "thank you" to CPL for letting me be part of such a wonderful event! After I came home and digested everything that had happened, I sent a couple of folks there an email with a few suggestions about some experiments they could try to start down the paths we'd discussed. I thought about posting a generic version of the list here, but David King has saved me the trouble. Thanks, David! :-) Casey Bisson Does It Again and Presents Exhibit BDisplaying Clustered Search Results
I can’t believe how quickly this guy throws together these proofs-of-concept. I’m officially nicknaming him the “hardest working man in the OPAC 2.0 business!” Plymouth State University better be treating him right. You can see a second sample search at http://www.plymouth.edu/library/prototype/clusteredopac.php?srchtype=X&k=harry+potter. Make sure you click through to that mockup, too – I love all of the different tags he used on it. He wrote more about his NEASIST presentation here, and Lichen liveblogged what sounds like yet another fascinating NEASIST event here. And finally, as if all of this wasn’t enough, Casey did a cool mockup of Social Bookmarking for Higher Education. A little like CiteULike and Connotea, but with the clean interface of del.icio.us and the intriguing addition of a section for “your courses.” On a personal note, I love how Flickr shows me a shared interest with Casey – he visited the Edward Gorey House! Gorey is one of my favorite authors and illustrators, so I’m jealous. Almost as jealous as I am of the Pepper Pad Casey got to play with! (P.S. Find Exhibit A here.) Prepare Yourself for Library 2.0Today is our lucky day. I've got two great things to show you, neither of which I can claim any credit for, but both of which have blown me away. Maybe it's because I'm not a programmer, but maybe it's also because a whole lot of really smart people are "getting" this damn fast. Much more quickly than the library world has moved on things in the past. The distributed "think tank" mentality that the coversations in the biblioblogosphere are driving right now is freaking amazing. Exhibit A, via Tim Hodson: Library 2.0 at Talis Insight 2005 "I Have spent the last two days at the Talis Insight 2005 conference. The main theme of the event was the idea of Library 2.0 being the next incarnation of libraries. (of course there were previews of future products too, with obligatory rebranding!!) library 2.0 follows the web 2.0 idea of using webservices to build web applications. Make sure you read the whole thing, and make sure you view the demo (and make sure you're using Firefox when you do it, because it doesn't work in IE-based browsers). Talis is really impressing me these days with the speed at which they are moving. They've obviously embraced the whole "labs" idea (Google Labs, etc.), and they're making the most of it. I can't wait to see what they keep coming up with - really interesting! Taggytastic Library Catalog!David Pattern just made my "Inspired by Jenny Levine's mock up of an OPAC with keyword tags, I've gone a step further and used our Horizon database (the 'subject' table in particular) to generate a real page based on subject keywords with more than 10 bibs: Now that's browsing the catalog! I can immediately tell which subjects the University of Huddersfield Library collects most in, and I'm one click away from viewing the subject headings. Suh-weet! Of course, you can tell that these aren't user-generated tags because of subjects like "Art, Modern", "Europe, Eastern", and "Learning, Psychology of", but what a fabulous marriage of structured classification and the browsability of tag clouds. Excellent job, David; I'm adding a screenshot to tomorrow's presentation! Patron ChoiceGlenn Peterson sends word of another patron displaying on his blog a feed of what he has checked out from his home library. How awesome is that? A possibility only because the staff of the Hennepin County Library provides RSS feeds for their patrons. Nice job, HCL! In case you're keeping score, that makes two known instances of patrons displaying feeds on their own sites (the other one being Edward Vielmetti), one patron who rolled his own feed because his library doesn't provide them, and one person who created a LiveJournal feed of AADL's Book Blog. I wish I had more examples to show in my presentations, but I don't think that will happen until we start seeing native RSS feeds out of our catalogs. I'm still waiting to see some real-world implementations of feeds that haven't been programmed by library staff in a live, working OPAC. Hopefully in 2006.... What a Difference a Decade MakesIn 1995, my brother and I lived in different cities, and we were just starting to get the hang of this internet thing. I remember installing some software (can't believe the name escapes me at the moment), plugging in a microphone, and trying to talk to him over our 14.4 kbps dial-up connections in order to cut down on the long distance bills. Of course, it didn't work very well, and we run into something I'd never heard of before, the "half duplex" problem. One of us had a sound card that wouldn't let you talk and listen simultaneously, so we had to take turns, like on a walkie-talkie. We would have been able to live with that issue if the quality had been good enough to warrant further efforts, but we're both old enough that we went back to just picking up the phone and paying the long distance charges. Not so Brent. As he grows up, he won't have to deal with long distance charges because of the cell phone he'll eventually get and Voice over IP (VoIP), but for now he is enthralled with the idea of talking to a girl who lives but a few miles away through a microphone plugged into the computer. It wasn't even his idea; theyv'e been IMing, but recently she just started talking via AIM because her family had set it up for other calls. So now they talk in the morning and at night, and the phrase we most often make out is, "What? I can't hear you." Ah, youth. I've had to explain what over-modulation is, and that if he wants to hear better, he should turn down the music he is playing for her from Rhapsody. And of course while they're talking, they're typing text back and forth in an AIM window. There's no point in explaining that they'd be able to hear much better on the phone because for whatever reasons, this new way of communicating just feels more natural to them. I think they just connect better in this medium, they multitask, they can still IM with their other friends while doing it, and even participate in group chats. It's a dynamic I don't think I'd ever want to replicate for myself (although I do end up IMing and talking on the phone at the same time every once in a while at work), but for them, it's just natural. Which is why I was chuckling to myself while reading Will Richardson's post about Skype Ideas for the classroom. "But I happened to be watching an online presentation by my friend Alan November yesterday and he suggested a use that just made me slap my forehead in a 'Doh!' moment: Skype to allow parents to listen to their child's presentations at school!" [Weblogg-ed] Will goes on to give eight great other ideas for using Skype in education, all of which Brent would totally groove on for learning. That's the kind of interactive environment in which he would learn best, because he's a very experiential type of learner. That's why he learns so well from video games, too. Sure there are some security issues with Skype right now, but it's the concept as applied by Will that is so intriguing. The security issues will work themselves out or better software will come along (there are already good competitors). While I see it in my job every day, I'm still constantly amazed how quickly the internet has pervaded our daily lives in just ten years. All of which is especially appropriate today as we celebrate the 15th anniversary of the creation of the first web page. Does this Happen to Anyone Else?About once a year, the electronics in my house get together and decide to stage a sit-in. Or a turn-off. Or whatever you want to call it. Lately, all of the following have gone on the fritz:
And the full moon is just now starting.... Maybe they're all just tired of the workouts they get, but I think it's karmic revenge for when I tried to convince Kailee that laptops without wireless internet weren't useless. She was right - it's a brick now. Sony Locks Its CDs Out of the Ann Arbor District LibrarySony Rootkit Music off the Ann Arbor District Library's Purchase List “I reported the uproar over Sony's ill-considered decision to put rootkit software as copy-protection on some of its music CDs to the Ann Arbor District Library, my main source for borrowing music these days. I got this reply in return from Eli Neiburger. (Did I mention that I love my library?) ‘I've passed word on to our selectors not to buy any Sony/BMG copy-protected CDs for the forseeable future. Not only is this reprehensible, but we could get into some support nightmares if people try to remove the rootkit since it's gotten so much press’ .” [Vacuum – Edward Vielmetti] Edward then goes on to urge folks to talk to their librarians about this, so be prepared just in case. If you’re not familiar with this completely outrageous story (one that highlights just some of the problems with the ways in which the media companies are implementing Digital Rights Management – DRM), read up at The Rootkit of All Evil. Yet another example of libraries getting caught in the middle. Something to Think about if You Teach Podcasting, TooNice catch by the ‘Brary Web Diva: Podcasts and Presence
More Taggy GoodnessDuring the “Jessamyn and Jenny” show at the Internet Librarian conference, I was very glad Jessamyn emphasized that our interest in tagging and folksonomies does not mean we advocate doing away with structured classification or searching. Instead, we see them as complementary, especially if tagging helps users in ways Dewey and LCSH can’t. So it’s fun to watch new tagging sites and tools springing up. Now there’s one that combines several of my interests at the moment: social software, tagging, and gaming! Where Tagging Works: Searching for a Good Game
Here’s another fun one to play with:
In a quick bit of fun, I set up clouds for TSL, my subscriptions in my aggregator, and MLS (MPOW). Just for fun, I threw one together for bloggers I heard speak at the 2005 Internet Librarian Conference. Program and Presentation Descriptions for MLS Gaming in Libraries SymposiumWe’ve finalized the program for the MLS Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium and added the descriptions of the presentations we have so far. We should have the last of the info posted in the next day or two. It’s amazing how fast the time goes when planning the day’s events! Registration is still open, so sign up today! IM on the DesktopJust a reminder that if you want to offer instant messaging on your public workstations but you don’t want to install software or your IT department is worried about the security of IM apps, you can always put desktop shortcuts and quick links in the browser to the web-based versions of these IM clients and/or Meebo. Your patrons will lose some of the great functionality of the full clients, but it’s a start, and it might be a stepping stone to offering more down the road if you’re meeting resistance. In addition, it looks to me like you circumvent some privacy issues, too, because no transcripts of conversations are saved on the hard drive. Granted, information may still be in the browser’s cache, but hopefully you’re already addressing this issue with software that clears it out after each user. Digital UtesUS Youth Use Internet to Create
What excellent timing for this report to come out! Very interesting statistics, however I know that every librarian out there is reading this report and thinking, “But what about the kids that don’t have access to the knowledge or tools to do this?” That’s the participation gap, and I think libraries need to start thinking about somehow filling it. I’ll be the first to admit that it won’t be easy, but we’re probably these kids’ only hope. Of course, this report should also have you asking yourself if these kids can mash your library’s content into that mix, and I don’t just mean what’s in your catalog or databases. No, I mean your online guides, local history projects, podcasts, events (both online and offline), blog posts, RSS feeds, and more. What kind of an online presence does your library even have available to them for this kind of thing? It’s an interesting idea, isn’t it? I just can’t resist a few more excerpts from the article because it’s so illustrative of what I’ve been trying to say on this site.
Is your library offering IM reference yet? If not, you should be. And we should be using blogs, RSS, and aggregators to teach better searching (and information literacy in general).
This generation is completely shifted, and it’s what they expect. You have to start shifting your services so that they can take advantage of them when they need them and where they need them. Don’t just sit there waiting for them to walk up to the reference desk in your physical building.
Don’t you long for the day you could hear kids talk about online library services as being “so easy that it was unrealistic to expect people not to do it!”
This gets back to the whole 4Cs thing I’ve been talking about lately regarding social software and library websites: conversation, community, commons, and collaboration. These kids want interactivity, and they want to be able to contribute. And that includes contributing to their libraries, if we let them. Presence of MindWow, check out Mr. Man, Chris DeWeese, who has just made my life a lot easier, and maybe yours, too! Add AIM Presence to Your Website with a Simple IMG Tag!
I added the code to my blog, and it freaking works (see it in the righthand sidebar under “Virtual Jenny” if you’re on the site)! Get on over there and grab the code for your library’s site, too! Next up on my list, add presence icons in the MLS Staff Directory for those folks who have AIM accounts! Oh, and don’t forget that if you’re running Trillian or any other metachat software, this will still work so putting this code on your library’s website will show you’re online in general. We've gotten some great new people at Illinois Library Systems recently, and I'd love to see us work more and more closely together. Um, Chris, please consider this a request to use the code on my site. :-P Anybody Going to Blog these Library 2.0 Events?Two events I r-e-a-l-l-y wish I could go to: Web 2.0: Current Realities and a Look to the Future
Innovative Users Group meeting at ALA Midwinter (although this description isn’t posted there yet)
So are any bloggers going to either one of these? Help me, Obi-Wan Bloggers – you’re my only hope! On a side note, at the Internet Librarian Conference last month, Michael Stephens and I had some great conversations about Library 2.0 (the concept, not the blog, although we heart the blog, too!). As a result, I had decided to try to do some mockups of library services and catalogs that implement some of the ideas (mainly because unlike Casey, I can’t actually create these things myself!). So I’ve uploaded to Flickr a mockup of an OPAC with tags for browsing. It’s an image I’ve been using in my presentations this year, but I haven’t had a chance to go further with it. For example, I’d like to do a catalog record with “see also” tags that are well tags, except they’re user-generated. I don’t know how much time I’ll have to do these, but I’ll try to add to them as time allows. I also added a screenshot of Casey’s proof-of-concept LOLA Suggest. Feel free to add your own! I think we could even include screenshots of sites illustrating the types of 2.0 functionality we'd like to see in our online services, so it doesn't have to be a mockup. Addendum: Great article about Library 2.0 at Publish, a non-library site! Go read Library 2.0 Movement Sees Benefits in Collaboration with Patrons. "After Tax Caps, a Librarian Watches the Funds Dwindle"I don’t normally write about library funding because I don’t know much about it and I’ve never had to personally handle the entire budget for a library. But even I understand the issues with tax caps and library funding, and it’s difficult to watch the resulting losses erode basic library services. It’s been a very big issue for the public libraries in my System, as well as throughout Illinois. However, Kathy Berggren, Director of the Matteson Public Library (one of my member libraries), has been leading a charge this year to educate legislators about what’s happening in order to try and change the law and reverse the trend. She’s been working tirelessly on this, and now she’s written a guest editorial called “After Tax Caps, a Librarian Watches the Funds Dwindle” for a local newspaper. It’s so well done and it exposes the problem so clearly that I asked Kathy if I could reproduce the entire piece here since it will fall off the local paper’s site in seven days. Kathy said yes, so all credit and support for the following testimony goes to her. Read it and weep.
Television Taking a BeatingThere’s another interesting poll up at Yahooligans right now. It asks which you would rather have in your bedroom - a TV or a computer. Results? Computer by a margin of two-to-one, and that figure has been constant all day. Two-way, interactive media trumps one-way, monolithic box. BTW, another interesting little factoid. If you go to Synonym.com and do an antonym search for “interactive,” the synonym is “synergistic” and the antonym is “antagonistic.” Kind of puts the whole DRM, Broadcast Flag, and “VHS will be the death of the movie industry” debate in the proper perspective. Archive of My PresentationsToday I gave a presentation about blogging and RSS for Loyola University’s librarians. A very cool group of people who are already starting to experminent with both blogs and RSS. Because the Presentations & Articles page on my site is so woefully out-of-date, I’ve started a new category on the MLS web site where I’ll link to all of my presentations as I post them. And because of our spiffy newish site, there is, but of course, an RSS feed. Just for the RecordTonight Google is messing with showing images for your keyword at the top of their search results. I know I don’t have to remind all of you that if you type “jenny” into Google, those pictures are not of me! :-P I think Liz was right on target when she talked about search engine algorithms not replacing the wisdom of humans and our networks (and in our case, librarians)! |




