Barb Brattin, Reference Manager at the Warren Newport Public Library, came up with a great way to promote our statewide reference portal, Illinois Clicks!

"One of our top service responses at Warren Newport Public Library is information literacy, so offering a program on Illinois Clicks was a natural fit. As I was surfing through the site gathering examples of great links in every category, I thought of a little exercise to get some attention for Illinois Clicks via the program participants.

After a general overview of what Illinois Clicks is and how to navigate through the site, we visited two pre-selected links in each category. The last category we visited was Law and Government. By this time, the crowd was mesmerized by the amount and quality of information available through Illinois Clicks. So, opportunist that I am, I made good use of their enthusiasm by presenting each of them with an Illinois Clicks postcard (available through Fran, in case you haven't seen them). We then visited the Legislator Lookup link within the Law and Government site, and as they looked up their legislator's name and address, I asked them to use the postcard to tell their legislators what a fine project they have in Illinois Clicks and how they ought to continue funding the project. They were delighted to fill out the postcards and their messages were inspiring. I collected the postcards and sent them out this morning.

One of the participants then presented an idea which I think is particularly noteworthy. Why not place a link from every library's home page with messages of support for libraries already written out (like the Illinois Clicks postcard). Library supporters could simply send those messages on to their legislators electronically. People are very happy to express their support for the work we do to legislators. The link would make it easy.

Food for thought."

Food for thought for your own library, too!

Check out this great Blog Software Breakdown! I will definitely be looking at this closely as I examine our options at SLS.

In other news, the Public Library Association (PLA) has posted an ePublication about weblogs written by none other than our very own Steven M. Cohen! I just know Steven will have them blogging with RSS feeds soon! Go, PLA!

Coming: A Blind Librarian Hears Yahoo

"Later today or tomorrow we'll be updating you on the neat things that David Faucheux is up to with Blind Chance, his audio blog. Coming very soon in Blind Chance: Discussion of Yahoo's accessibilty to people relying on speech synthesizers.

Related: Blind Chance Blog launches, an item in DTBdaily, a blog devoted to digital talking books. DTBdaily praises David as "a fascinating and well-read librarian." [TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home]

Fascinating stuff that shows just how wide open publishing truly is now thanks to blogging. David even has an RSS feed.

"Peter Van Dijck predicts the future of cost of data storage: $10 a month for 15 petabytes (15,000,000 Gigs) of storage.

Storage space is getting cheaper. For investing US$10 a month, you'll have accumulated 15 petabytes of storage space by 2020.

Assuming you invest $10 a month in storage and start buying this year, buying additional space every year, you'll accumulate 120 Gigs of storage space this year (2004). Enough for about 10 hours of quality video uncompressed from my camera. Not much, really.

By 2010, you'll have accumulated 15 terabytes (15,000 Gigs) of storage space. Enough for 1250 hours (52 days) of video.

By 2020, you'll have reached 15 petabytes of storage space - 15,000,000 Gigs. Enough for 142 years of 24 hour video. (via JOHO The Blog)" [J-Walk Blog]

On the other hand, my boss would tell you that I could easily fill 15 terabytes on our LAN all on my own....

Yikes - note to self: check your own site more often to make sure it's publishing what you're writing! Sorry about that.

An Inside Look at the New Seattle Public Library

"Steffers writes 'Here is a look at the new Seattle Public Library. The 360 tour is pretty cool and the article attached is interesting. The library definitely looks futuristic but it looks incredible in the night photos.' " [LISNews.com]

Cool views, but I also wanted to note that this is my second repost of an LISNews item tonight. While Blake is getting lots of help to defray the cost of running the site, please consider helping Save LISNews if you haven't already done so!

Audible Hits the Black

"The latest issue of Publishers Weekly reports that digital spoken word e-tailer Audible Inc. has recorded its first profitable quarter. Their revenue increased by 68% for the first quarter of 2004. Librarians pay attention! We need to be thinking of ways to provide our users with downloadable spoken word audio. The market indicates that this will be more popular than the failed attempts to garner interest in e-books." [LISNews.com]

This is GREAT news because Audible is a library-friendly company. Proof: we just closed the second enrollment period for ListenIllinois, our collaborative Audible group purchase with the ListenOhio folks, and we added eight more libraries (which gives us a total of 20)! So a formal welcome to the following:

Edwardsville Public Library
Glen Ellyn Public Library
Harvard Diggins Library
Highland Community College Library
North Suburban Library District
Morton College Library
Roxana Public Library District
Wilmington Public Library District

In addition, several of the existing participants are adding players and licenses, so I'm officially declaring this project a success. :-)  Hopefully I can spend some time this summer gathering statistics to back up this claim.

We'll open enrollment again in September, so Illinois libraries should plan their budgets accordingly. Contact me for details if you're interested!

More CD Buyers Try Out Digital Song Stores

"Consumers who subscribed to a music service such as RealNetworks' Rhapsody purchased an average of 11 CDs last year. Those who used legal music downloading sites such as Apple Computer's iTunes bought approximately 10 CDs, according to the report. Those who used peer-to-peer file-sharing sites averaged eight CDs, whereas those who did none of these bought an average of six CDs.

"Our research shows that it's the people who are really into music that are beginning to adopt paid digital services as an additional way of acquiring and enjoying music, and so far, these services are living side by side with traditional CDs," Russ Crupnick, president of NPD MusicWatch, said in a statement. 'As the industry matures, and digital music becomes even more mainstream, it remains to be seen just how much paid digital music will affect the market for CDs.' " [CNET News.com]

It would be interesting to see if those numbers went up if library patrons could listen to digital music online at home for free using their library card for authentication. Would they then spend even more money on CDs or purchasing tracks because they were able to hear them legally in their entirety first?

Conversely, it would be interesting to do a study of library patrons who borrow CDs from libraries to see if they end up purchasing more music than those that don't. Perhaps the music industry should be working more closely with libraries as listening outlets.

Great day with Michael Stephens and Bob Lewandowski (Bob, you need a blog!) today! I'm going to try and bring them back for a duplicate session on tech training for staff and patrons this fall, so Chicagoland area librarians should watch for that. Bonus points: you get to see their video!

I always enjoy talking with them, and Aaron even joined us. Good food, great company! Pictures on the moblog.

BTW, don't forget to check out Michael's Ten Tips for Technology Trainers in the Trenches!

And on a final note, it became painfully obvious today that my member libraries could use a "tech training" group, so we're going to discuss starting one at SLS. I'll keep you posted.