Category: Library Issues

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Library Issues

Joe Janes Keynote, IL2007

Joe Janes
Reference 2.0

Very nice…at Internet Librarian, but not using slides.

He’s pimping: ischool.washington.edu

New session at ALA: take everyone who longs for the “good ole days” and wants the National Union Catalog, lock the doors, and send them away. Think of the jobs then available!

Ready reference might be over.

“An academic is the sort of person who would face the Apocalypse with a historical overview”

1876: people can’t find the information they need. 2007: people can’t find the information they need.

First libraries to offer reference: special libraries, then public, lastly reference. No reference desk in academic libraries before 1910.

Reference is designed for a world with lots of information that is unfindable. That isn’t today…today we have lots of information that is FINDABLE.

Going to be an ever more digital world, and it is worth assuming that everything will be digital.

Lots of ways to get at information, at every level you can imagine.

We are trained to find wholes…we are going to increasingly find parts.

“If you aren’t editing Wikipedia articles, keep your mouth shut.”

Provide services to the kind of people who want your service.

“Get out of the freaking library.”

Be somewhere and everywhere.

Libraries have to provide space: meeting space, study rooms, etc.

Somewhere and everywhere, in and out, wholes and parts, more and better.

A Modest Proposal: For the people who dive deep, for the people who care: That’s when we do “real” reference.

For now, print is our secret weapon.

Weed those reference collections, put them in the ciculating collection.

For quick reference, concentrate on moving them forward.

For the people who are not information users, leave them alone.

Categories
Library Issues

IL 2007 Keynote – Lee Ranie

Lee Ranie, Pew Internet Project

Talking about the experience of being blogged…pulled quotes from Writings of the Loud Librarian.

Hallmarks of the New Digital Ecosystem

  1. Complexity of the digital ecosystem in the typical home. Internet to tv to audio system to computer to storage to….
  2. The Internet, esp. broadband, is at the center of the revolution. The most important thing about broadband is that broadband users are creators.
  3. New gadgets allow people to enjoy media, gather information, and be always on, anywhere.
  4. Ordinary citizens have a chance to be publishers, movie makers, song creators, etc. Research is showing that young internet users don’t think of themselves as “blogging”…they are just using X tool.
  5. All of the content creators have an audience. (BN: Long tail)
  6. Americans are customizing their internet experience via 2.0 tools

9 user groups

  • Omnivores – 8% of population: More information gadgets, use voraciously
  • Connectors – 7% of popl. : More females than males
  • Lackluster Veterans – 8% of pop: frequent users, more males,
  • Productivity Enhancers – 8%: 40ish, like how tech helps them DO
  • Mobile Centrics: 10% – Love their cell phone. But not early adopters.
  • Connected but Hassled: 10% – High level of connectivity, cell phone, but they dont like it.
  • Inexperienced experimenters: 8% – Will occasionally take advantage of tech, but will sometimes try something
  • Light but satisfied: 15% – fine with what they have, don’t need any more. Mid 50s. Tech is not central to their lives.
  • Indifferents: 11% – I don’t like this stuff. Proudly disassociated from tech.
  • Off the network: 15% – don’t have cellphone, not on the net, nada.

Lots of interesting numbers, but this is more or less the talk Lee gave at Computers in Libraries. Not a terrible thing (most of the people here hadn’t heard it before), but not a lot of meat in the talk for those who attended CiL.

Categories
Library Issues

Internet Librarian 2007

I head out far-too-early in the morning for Internet Librarian 2007. I’m scheduled to be faculty on a preconference on Sunday, with an all-star cast (minus me): Michelle Boule, Amanda Etches-Johnson, Meredith Farkas, and Chad Boeninger. We’re doing a full day of Academic Library 2.0, and it should be a blast.

Hope to see everyone there! If you see me, and don’t know me…introduce yourself!

Categories
Digital Culture Library Issues Technology

Information R/evolution

Just another amazing video from the maker of The Machine is Us/ing us. Digital information, as much as we like to treat it like paper, is just different.

The sooner librarians get their heads around this, the better for our patrons. I’m trying desperately to wrap my head around how this influences our new library building…

Categories
Library Issues Technology

Academic Library 2.0

In my last conference attendance for some time, I’ll be at Internet Librarian 2007 at the end of this month. It’s been a long time since I’ve been so excited about a conference, and it’s not just that it’s in Monterey in October. It’s that I have a chance to lead a workshop with the most exciting bunch of librarians I know:

Workshop 11 — Academic Library 2.0
9:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. FULL DAY
MODERATOR:
Amanda Etches-Johnson, User Experience Librarian, McMaster University
FACULTY:
Chad Boeninger, Reference & Instruction Technology Coordinator, Ohio University
Michelle Boule, Social Science Librarian, University of Houston
Meredith Farkas, Distance Learning Librarian, Norwich University
Jason Griffey, Head of Library Information Technology, The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

What do the terms Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 mean for academic libraries and librarians? Join our panel of 2.0 practitioners and experts for a day of exploration and discovery as we navigate the 2.0 landscape, exploring what 2.0 tools and technologies can do for academic library users. Through a combination of presentations, discussion, and hands-on activities, our dynamic speakers introduce you to technologies such as blogs, wikis, RSS, mashups, social bookmarking and online social networks. This interactive session provides practical examples of academic libraries that are using these tools and technologies, arms you with the expertise and techniques to introduce these technologies in your own library, and share strategies for getting buy-in from staff, administration, and patrons. A worthwhile day for those interested in implementing changes to keep up within the Web 2.0 world.

If you know anyone attending IL for a preconference, this one is going to knock their socks off.

Categories
Library Issues Technology

5 Minute Madness @ LITA Forum

Follow along, or go and take a look:

http://twitter.com/griffey

Too fast for blog, must twitter it!

Categories
Library Issues Personal

Heading out to LITA Forum

Tomorrow I’ll be hitting the road, heading off to LITA Forum in Denver, CO. I’ll be heading up the LITABlog blogging effforts, pushing posts through, editing like mad, and capturing audio for the ever-popular LITABlog Podcast series.

If you’re in Denver for the Forum, say “hey”. Myself, Michelle, Karen, and Jonathan of BIGWIG will be in attendance…if you’re interested in throwing your lot in with us in hopes of changing ALA and LITA for the better, definitely stop one of us. Our plans have slowed, but not stopped. We’ve still got some rebellion in us…and we never run out of good ideas.

Categories
Library Issues MPOW

Metasearch aka Federated Search aka The Mind Killer

This is the period during the year at MPOW that we are reviewing our goals, and really looking at what the next 6 months will bring. As a portion of that, it’s up to me to try and figure out how our IT department fits in with this, given that we are mentioned in no less than 99.999999943% of the Library Wide goals. Pretty much every overarching goal for the library as a whole has some part of it that IT is going to support, or design, or maintain, or drive.

This makes for job security. It also makes for many hats.

After looking at where we are headed (new building, re-thinking the library, focusing on the students) we decided that the area that could most impact the way that we do things is metasearch. No one is happy with their ILS, and patrons just aren’t using our catalog at all…circulation statistics for books is through the floor. But foot traffic, website visits, database use, reference questions…all are up from previous years. So we’re definitely being used, just not for books. Given that the library “brand” is books, that’s worrying.

As an attempt to bridge this gap to the books, the library IT council decided unanimously to pursue Metasearch over the course of this year. The idea is, of course, to have books presented to patrons side-by-side with all of our other resources.

The gap between theory and practice in this case seems like the Grand Canyon.

Is anyone happy with a metasearch product? I know that most of us agree that the technology isn’t mature yet, but at this point implementation of a metasearch solution seems less daunting than trying to roll to another ILS. Especially since I can give LibraryFind a try without signing away my soul to the Library Corporate Masters.

Categories
Library Issues

Help me build a new library

Ok, library gang: I need some help.

As I’ve mentioned before, we’re building a new library here at UTC. We are in the planning stages now, and are in the process of putting together a program plan.

Here’s the rub: the program plan that we’re coming up with is based on, of course, current processes.

My challenge to you, library bloggers (and feel free to answer on your own blogs, just linkback so I can follow): if you had a new building, 16-18 full time librarians, and roughly 20 staff members, how would you put together the best academic library possible? How many people doing what? How do we deconstruct “Systems” into something useful? Same for “Reference”? We’re not tied to existing paradigms, and are looking for radically out of the box thinking…give me your best shot at a library for the 21st century.

The point is to ignore existing skillsets of the people here, and instead build the ideal set of positions…we can fill them afterwards. But that’s hard to do from the inside. Give us your best shot!

Categories
Legal Issues Library Issues Technology

Technophobia or payola?

Welcome to the gang from Digg! I think the site is finally stable now (thanks Blake). Thanks for stopping by…

In an article today on CNet, the Register of Copyright of the US, Marybeth Peters (who, let me remind you, is an Associate Librarian for Copyright Services for the Library of Congress) admitted that she was a:

…self-proclaimed “Luddite,” who confessed she doesn’t even have a computer at home. “In hindsight, maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”

boggle

I’m sorry, but I thought that just said that the person responsible for administering Copyright law in the US doesn’t own a computer.

Oh wait, IT DOES SAY THAT THE PERSON RESPONSIBLE FOR COPYRIGHT IN THE US DOESN’T OWN A COMPUTER.

keyboard-smash-o

She goes on to say things like:

Peters indicated she was less thrilled, however, about a portion of the DMCA that generally lets hosting companies off the hook for legal liability, as long as they don’t turn a blind eye to copyright infringement and remove infringing material when notified. That’s one of the major arguments Google is attempting to wield in fighting high-profile copyright lawsuits, including one brought by Viacom, against its YouTube subsidiary.

“Shouldn’t you have to filter? Shouldn’t you have to take reasonable steps to make sure illegal stuff that went up comes down?” she said. She added, without elaborating further, “I think there are some issues.”

No, you shouldn’t, Marybeth. Filtering means that we are placing the responsibility of policing onto the providers of the service, and not on the people ultimately responsible for the infringement. It also means that we move farther from Net Neutrality, because there is a slippery slope from “monitor everything” to “oh, since you CAN monitor everything, prioritize something”.

Is there anyone at all in the actual copyright process that understand that the law is broken beyond repair right now, and that the digital world really does change the rules? Or is it just that all of our media laws are now being written and propped up by corporate interests instead of being written for the good of the people?