LibrarianInBlack

Support charities while you search with GoodSearch

In this season of giving (which is kind of a joke, everyone's actually at Borders buying themselves CDs and at Best Buy buying digital cameras), but whatever...I digress.  Ahem.  In this season of giving, consider using GoodSearch: a search engine, powered by Yahoo!, that donates $0.01 per search to your charity of choice.  That may not sound like a lot, but it could be if many people used it--and just think of the number of searches we run at reference desks every year!  I figure I run 100 searches per day.  Multiply that by, say, 300 days (gotta have some time off) and you get $300 just from me.  I'm going to give it a try.

found on Phil Bradley's blog

Saving iTunes files as MP3s

Want to get iTunes to save your files as MP3s instead of their Apple-specific AAC format?  No problem!  Ask Dave Taylor!  He has the surprisingly simple answer.

found on Lockergnome

Hole in Google Book Search?

Steve Rubel found a way to get access to most of the O'Reilly "Hacks" books (and, truly, any book that chunks its information into little 3-5 page bits) for free using a hole in Google Book Search.  You just find you book, go to the table of contents to find want to know more about, run a full-text search in the book for that chapter's title as a phrase, and access the content.

The comments on Mr. Rubel's post are interesting; two of us point out that libraries offer these books online through the Safari Tech Books Collection.  Others note that this hole is actually a demonstration of how Google Book Search is supposed to work.  I'm not so sure about that...I think this goes beyond the "snippet" rule, but it's a very smart use of search technology and what Google does allow.  But heck, if you actually do want to read the full book online, that's what libraries are here for.

More on Library ELF

Mary Minow has written more about Library ELF and privacy concerns.  See her post about Library ELF's updated privacy policy and attempt to "un-public" its feeds.  Also see her post about how the Ann Arbor District Library has attempted to strip out any identifying information from its RSS feeds.

Audible.com says "Don't Read"

In the highly offensive category, Audible.com has a new  "Don't Read" campaign to promote their audio books.  Spoofing the ALA Celebrity Read posters, Audible encourages people to buy their audio books instead of physically reading a book.  Their press release can be found here, and their posters are available on their website: www.dontread.org.  It's not clever.  It's not funny.  It displays reprehensible ethics and poor taste.

I for one am writing Audible a lengthy complaint letter.  It's not clear who to contact from their Contact Us page, but I'm choosing to e-mail Customer Service.  It was bad enough that Audible stopped doing business with libraries (to date our only potential self-service downloadable audio book option for iPods), but this campaign is in such poor taste that I hereby vow to never purchase Audible content again.

Thanks to Adam Wright for posting about this issue on the PubLib listserv.

roll your own animated text

The nifty little animation you see to the left is a Minifesto.  Go make your own and link to it in the comments section--I want to see what neat stuff my beloved readers come up with!

found on the always cool J-Walk Blog

Comment Feeds

Steven Cohen pleads with library bloggers to offer feeds for the comments made on their posts.  Sadly, LiB does not offer a comment feed.  I can't find a way to "turn it on" in Typepad, and haven't had any luck finding anything through Googling for hacks.  Apparently there's some way to parse the Atom feed and grab comments, but I'm not techie enough to figure that one out.  Does anyone know how to add a comment feed to a Typepad blog?

Library Firefox Plugins

Jenny Levine points us to some neat Firefox plug-ins that allow you to do library catalog searches right from the Firefox search toolbar.  Nice!

Creative Commons needs financial support

The Creative Commons needs financial support from donors in order to retain its U.S. tax-exempt status. The Creative Commons stands for easy to understand and open copyright licenses, one of which you'll see over in my sidebar.  Contributions are being accepted through December 31st...and SixApart is matching all donations (thanks SixApart).

Google Zeitgeist

Check out the Google Zeitgeist: the top Google searches from 2005.  The top gainer of the year?  MySpace.  And four of the top ten searches in Froogle were for iPods.  Is your library present in MySpace?  Do you have downloadable audio books that work on iPods?  If the answer is no to these (and I'll admit that it is for my library still), perhaps that's something to work on for 2006.

ALA dues increase for what exactly?

Quite a bit of discussion has been going on about ALA's proposed dues increase and the lack of funding for its conference presenters.   The most intelligent thing I've seen written about either issue so far is covered in one beautifully crafted post by Karen Schneider on Free Range Librarian.  Her most salient point is the question of what a dues increase in ALA would truly accomplish.  Where is that money slated to go?  When a tax increase is up for a vote in my own town, I am told where that money I'm voting about would go--how much, to whom, and for what.  I encourage ALA to show the same level of respect and responsibility to its members by telling us forthrightly where that dues increase will be funneled.

Oakland Trib collects copies of 1984 for Congress

From Oaktown across the Bay...

Have an old copy of Orwell's 1984 lying around?  Send it to the Oakland Tribune--they're gathering a copy of the beloved dystopian novel for Congress, Mr. Bush, & Mr. Cheney.  You can bring or mail used copies of the book to the Oakland Tribune, 401 13th St., Oakland CA 94612 (open 8-5).  From the editorial launching the project:

We think it's time for Congress to heed the warning of George Orwell. To that end, we're asking for your help: Mail us or drop off your tattered copies of "1984." When we get 537 of them, we'll send them to every member of the House of Representatives and Senate and to President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Feel free to inscribe the book with a note, reminding these fine people that we Americans take the threat to our liberties seriously. Remind Congress that it makes no sense to fight a war for democracy in a foreign land while allowing our democratic principles to erode at home.

story found on Boing Boing

nice article about today's library services

The San Francisco Examiner has a nicely written article, "Role Changing for 21st Century Library," about the new services and resources of the San Francisco Public Library, noting that libraries are about much more than books these days.

found on Dr. Web

library audio tours

A great post by Gail McGovern over on the clio institute blog highlights three academic libraries that are offering audio tours of their facilities as podcasts and/or MP3 files.  You know your users come into the library with their MP3 players, why not take advantage of that?  I especially like the idea of making the tour focus on information literacy, not just the building, by having students engage in research activities throughout the tour.  Are there any public libraries out there offering MP3 audio tours?

the evil side of Library Elf (and all private RSS feeds in public readers)

Late last month, Mary Minow noted some privacy concerns about the cool tool Library Elf. My reaction was similar to hers--why aren't the vendors giving us these neat capabilities, in a secure manner, in our ILS systems? 

Now Mary has discovered (and I can't figure out why none of the rest of us thought to look at this sooner) that Library Elf feeds display to anyone in public aggregators.  So, if you've created a Library Elf feed for yourself (or any other feed containing private information) and subscribe to that feed using a public aggregator like Bloglines, your feed is now findable by anyone searching that aggregator for feeds.  I agree with Jenny Levine, who comments on Mary's post, that the leak is in RSS itself, not in Library Elf specifically.

Lesson to be learned?  If you're creating an RSS feed for any information that you don't want the whole world knowing, it's best to use a private desktop aggregator to read that feed (at least my educated guess is that that would be safe).  This is information to pass on to library staff and patrons as well who may be creating Library Elf or other library-related RSS feeds without knowing they're putting their information out on display.

Animal Rights and Environmental Activists subject to surveillance

Documents obtained by the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act show that the FBI is actively watching environmental, animal rights, poverty relief, and other activist groups.  Even more frightening is the fact that counterterrorism resources and laws are being used to conduct these investigations.

[T]he FBI is using counterterrorism resources to monitor and infiltrate domestic political organizations that criticize business interests and government policies, despite a lack of evidence that the groups are engaging in or supporting violent action.

found on beSpacific

What are your patrons searching for?

I could have titled this post "Lycos Top 50 Searches of 2005," but I think that the approach that Maire Kruppa (skagirlie) is taking.  Read Lycos's year-end list of their most popular 50 searches of the last year.  This shows us what kind of information the public is searching for.  Now, while we might not understand the public's fascination with Paris Hilton (I certainly don't), we can use this information to evaluate our collections.  Do we have print materials or eResources about these people/topics?  Do we have music by the artists in the top 50?  Movies with the actors and actresses on the list?  DVDs of the television shows on the list?  Check your catalog.  Do it now, and order some new materials that your patrons will certainly use.

California State Library offers Spanish-language Newspapers to Visually Impaired Customers

The California State Library's Braille and Talking Book Library is now offering through a toll-free number spoken versions of La Opiníon (Spanish-language edition of the LA Times) and Miami's El Nuevo Herald (Spanish-language partner newspaper of The Miami Herald).  The NFB-NEWSLINE® speech engine is synthetic (read: robotic voice).  For more information you can contact the BTBL reference desk at 916-654-1357 or btbl@library.ca.gov. 

If you work for a California library, how can you promote this new service to your Spanish-speaking patrons, particularly those with visual difficulties?   Do you offer large-print flyers listing your services for those with visual difficulties?  How about a page on your websites listing all local and web services for people with disabilities?  Can you distribute information about this program at local ESL classes?  How about at Hispanic community groups?  Other ideas?

Google scoops up some AOL

Google has purchased 5% of AOL.  That might not sound like a lot, but at a cost of $1 billion + $300 million in free AdSense advertising, 5% apparently holds quite a bit of weight.  Why would Google do this, you might ask?  AOL was considering switching from Google to Yahoo or MSN for their search engine and advertising.  Google was not happy about that.  Therefore, they dipped into their very deep pockets and made a bit o' a purchase to ensure a long-term partnership with AOL.  Anders Bylund has a good article over on Ars Technica about the purchase and its implications to the advertising and more for users. 

What does this mean for libraries?  You know how people come into the library to use the computers and say "What's wrong with your Internet?  It's different than my Internet."?  And how those users are almost always AOL users, who are used to the simplified self-censored version of the web that AOL provides through its portal pages?  Yeah.  I think we're going to see more of that.  Anytime Google sticks its paws into something, more people use it.  Maybe it shouldn't be that way, but it seems to be.  Also, now that Google Talk and AIM will be interoperable, perhaps those of us using IM for reference might not have to worry about adding Google Talk to our MSN/Yahoo/AIM trinity.  But I don't know that for sure yet.  Stay tuned.

Free Weblogs & Libraries webinar

Michael Stephens is teaming up with Sirsi Dynix to offer a free one-hour webinar (February 15th, 8-9am PST): "Weblogs and Libraries" (registration's not open quite yet).  Michael's webinar will cover "the blogs and the bloggers and point to the future of the medium."  Sirsi Dynix is hosting a series of free webinars for library staff and posting the archived webinars on their site for all posterity (these go back to 2003).

found on the ALA TechSource Blog

Google's Newsletter for Librarians

The first issue of Google's Newsletter for Librarians has come out.   It features an informative article by Matt Cutts, one of Google's engineers, explaining how Google ranks results (an often-asked question).
  As Karen points out though, while the article is a good introduction for those just delving into searching strategies, Google keeps its secrets close to its chest.  They don't explain what one of their "trusted sites" is or what "other signals" can affect a page's rank.  Perhaps they're saving that for a future article, but something tells me that's not the case.  I expect future newsletters to provide basic background information and articles and not necessarily help us geeked-out librarians get a better grasp on how Google works.  Still, it's a useful article to read for some Google background.

Cites & Insights

The January issue of Walt Crawford's Cites & Insights is out for your reading pleasure.  Walt has a good article on fair use as well as a lengthy piece on the Open Content Alliance, Project Gutenberg, Google Book Search, and the Google Library Project.  And much, much more (as is always the case with the info-full C&I).

Disney further mutilating the beauty that is Pooh

From the outset, Disney has mutilated my beloved childhood friend Winnie the Pooh.  They made him orange.  They put a shirt on him (in the books he only wore a sweater when it was snowing, not all the time).  They made Tigger really obnoxious and Piglet quite pathetic.  I am a Pooh fanatic, but only classic AA Milne Pooh.  Anyone who knows me well knows not to buy me Disney-fied Pooh items-->they go right to the Salvation Army for some four year old who's never read the original books to enjoy. 

In a move to further corrupt the perfect stories of AA Milne, Disney plans on introducing a new character into their world of Pooh: a little girl who will be the main character in an upcoming television series.  While Disney insists that she is not a replacement for Christopher Robin, she will be the main character.  The series will also feature another new character, Lumpy, who was apparently introduced in the last movie (which I didn't see, naturally). 

Are there any other original Pooh fans out there who find Disney's take on the stories and characters as upsetting as I do?  Am I that big a purist?

List of practical guides to web services

Phil Bradley's site is one of those that I find myself using over and over and over again.  Today I find that he's posted an "I want to..." list with links to practical guides on how to do certain technological tasks, like sharing photos and such with others, set up an online calendar, and do clever things with RSS and wikis.  This might be a good place to check the next time you think "Gee, I'd like to do this thing for my library's website, but I don't know how."  It's also a good place to get a quick list of what's possible to do in the first place--inspiration awaits!

More on ALA not paying registration for speakers

Some follow-up posts are being written about ALA and other professional library organizations not comping their speakers' registration fees, much less paying them.  A good deal of conversation has been taking place on the ALA Council list as well.

• Jenny emphasizes that she's not looking for travel expenses or an honorarium, but merely a waived registration fee.
• Meredith emphasizes that librarians shouldn't feel that it's our duty to pay ALA for the privilege of hearing ourselves speak [actually, Meredith's post is extensive and covers many arguments on both sides of this issue].
• Steven not only expects comped registration, he expects to get paid too.
• Walt is staying out of it.

I'd like to state once more that I think ALA's policy (and that of other organizations who also don't comp speakers in any way) is disrespectful to the speakers and devalues the professional contribution we make to the conference.

Unlike a lot of the people writing about this topic, the following things are true of me:

• I am not "on the speaker circuit."  I speak at 2-4 conferences a year, mostly conferences that are close to home (to save on travel expenses).
• I don't get 100% of my travel/registration/lodging expenses covered.  I think that's the situation for many of us in public libraries.  It's somewhere between 50% and 75%, depending on the conference.
• I have to take some amount of vacation time to attend conferences or speak at other events.  For conferences, one day usually counts as a vacation day and any outside speaking engagement (say, a presentation to the state's association of library trustees and commissioners) is completely on my own time.

For those of us in "poorly-supporting-of-professional-activities" libraries (which I'm sad to say seems to be the norm, not the exception), sometimes the choice becomes: do I spend $1,000 to go to PLA or do I spend $1,000 to take a nice long vacation?  That's a sad choice, and while in the past I've been opting for #1, I can tell you that #2 is going to get priority treatment from now on.  I'm tired of martyring myself for the "library cause."  I bust my rear end writing, speaking, and blogging--because I care about this profession and want to share my ideas and get ideas from others.  But I can't financially support that model any more on my own.

What's most sad for me is that ALA tries to encourage school and public library membership and participation, but we are so poorly paid and our libraries are so under-funded (the two are entirely connected) that it's hard or sometimes impossible for us to participate by joining organizations, taking on leadership roles, or speaking at conferences.  ALA is doing itself and its members a disservice by not taking these things into account.

Comic text search engine

Thanks to Tara at ResearchBuzz for finding OhNoRobot, a search engine for the text in online comic strips.  They're indexing 232 different comics right now (that page is also a great place to get comic RSS feeds in one place).  The search engine seems to work well, but a lot of the more mainstream online comics that I know of aren't included.  In fact, as Tara points out, a lot of the comics included are extremely alternative--and perhaps not always safe for work.  Reader beware.

Ten Stories that Shaped 2005

The world of top ten lists of 2005 is here.  Start off with LISNews's Ten Stories that Shaped 2005.  A good way to see what happened this year in library-land while you were off napping in the stacks (like any of us have time to do that).

the Brit vs. the Wiki (and the lack of neutrality)

Nature is reporting that the science entries in Wikipedia are comparable to those in Britannica.  Said another way, both include a lot of errors:   

The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.

In other Wikipedia discussions, Karen Schneider talks about how the lack of a neutral point of view taints many articles in any kind of encyclopedia.  Without neutrality in the entries, the bias is assumed by the uncritical viewer (you know they're out there) to be the truth.

Library 2.0 Discussion: Michael Squared

Michael Stephens and Michael Casey discuss the first steps toward Library 2.0 over on the ALA TechSource Blog. 

I still get asked again and again what Library 2.0 is in the first place.  A lot of people believe it to be a meaningless buzz phrase.  The way I'm explaining it so far follows:

Library 2.0 simply means making your library's space (virtual and physical) more interactive, collaborative, and driven by community needs.  Examples of where to start include blogs, gaming nights for teens, and collaborative photo sites.  The basic drive is to get people back into the library by making the library relevant to what they want and need in their daily lives...to make the library a destination and not an afterthought.

LiB Outage on 12/16/05

Hi all.  I've been away on a 3-day computer-free vacation, and found that during that time Typepad (my hosting company) had some major server issues and lost about a week's worth of content all day on 12/16.  All the posts have returned, but if you saw content in your RSS reader and couldn't find it on my site that day, this is why.  Sorry about that.  More motivation to move to someone else's server....

Google launches widget-enhanced personalized homepage

Instead of jumping on the Widget/Konfabulator board like everyone else, Google has made available a developer's API to allow people to create widget-esque features for personalized homepage inclusion.  The Google team already added five of their own: weather map, date and time, Google logo customization, a game, and these really annoying eyes that follow your cursor.

Harper Collins digitizing books

Harper Collins is digitizing 20,000 of its own books to "rein in potential copyright violations on the Internet."  READ: "plop their own DRM systems on it and sell copies for $."

vintage novel iPod cases

Looking for a good holiday for that special book-loving someone?  Consider getting an iPod case made out of a vintage novel from Virgin Threads.

found on Boing Boing

Google Book Search not revealing libraries' holdings

Whenever I see something in Library Journal that confirms my already set notions about a product/topic/service, I feel validated.  Not because I think LJ is the end-all and be-all of the library world, but because I know a lot of people read the darn thing, and therefore the idea they're espousing is making its way into thousands of little librarian hands.

That being said (and I don't know why I felt the particular urge to say it today), there's an LJ piece about how books in libraries are actually hard to find using Google Book Search.  Links to commercial vendors are plentiful, but library books still remain largely hidden.

PubMed training videos online

Check out this set of eighteen short training video clips from the University of Washington about using PubMed to find health information.  Topics include basic search, e-mailing, clinical queries, and more. 

I saw this on CogSci Librarian, who saw it in Greg Notess’ “On the Net” column in the Nov/Dec. 2005 issue of Online magazine (which I've been published in, but can't afford to subscribe to--funny, that).

Yahoo bought del.icio.us

Yahoo now owns both Flickr and del.icio.us.  Smart, smart, smart. 

Free flash-based game

If you're looking for some eye candy during lunch sometime, check out Samorost 2, a Flash-based game (just play in your web browser) with puzzles that resemble the early days of Myst.  Samorost2 Chapter 1 is free, but Chapter 2 is $9.90.  You might find yourself shelling out the dough to enjoy the visuals and for that sick-sick-sick gamer's sense of completion (which I know well).

found on Boing Boing

ALA not covering registration for its speakers

ALA does not pay the registration costs for its conferences' speakers if they are members of the organization, and more than a few folks, all of whom I've heard give excellent presentations, are angry, some refusing to speak at ALA conferences from now on (including PLA & LITA).  You can add me to the list of peeved speakers.  I was peeved before, I just thought I was perhaps being unreasonable.  Apparently not.

If you're not a member of ALA, you get a free day pass if you're a speaker.  If you do belong to ALA (in other words, already giving them a load of money) you don't get a free day pass.  You have to pay the full registration fee, which for PLA this year is $170.

I think Jenny puts it best when she says: " You either value your own professionals or you don’t, and the current policy tells me you don’t."

Is ALA so powerful and wonderful that it becomes a privilege one is willing to pay for to speak at one of their conferences?  Is that why it's the independent conferences (Internet Librarian, Virtual Reference Desk Conference) who comp their speakers' registration fees?  Bah.  The few ALA conferences I've been to (pardon me for saying so) have not supported this claim of greatness.  I got more out of one day of Internet Librarian than I did out of the entire LITA conference, and more from one day at VRD than I got out of the last ALA Conference I attended.

Dave also mentions that this is also the practice in at least one state library organization.  Unless he's thinking of California, which I'm guessing he's not, let's make that two.

Both our national and state organizations need to wake up and appropriately compensate the providers of the only content they have for their conferences: us.  It's bad enough that most of us have to pay our own transportation and lodging (I'm probably going to end up paying half of my PLA bill, which includes registration, airfare, and four nights in a hotel).  Do we have to pay our registrations too, even if we are providing a valuable contribution to the conference itself? 

I call on ALA to address this issue formally through their council or other appropriate means (hey, Karen, ALA councilwoman, pay attention).  I think there are enough of us who ALA counts on for content who are upset with the current policy.  If the organization doesn't act soon, you're going to lose some of your best speakers and members.  And may I also note that many of us complaining (so far) are young, and could potentially have another 20-40 years in the organization?

Digitization wiki

Wikis are sprouting up all over the place.  If you're involved at digitization at your library, check out the new DigiWik, a wiki devoted to digitization issues.  There is a decent amount of content there already, and it's grown in the last week.

found via ResearchBuzz

Gary's "ask-a-question" articles

Gary Price has two articles up that I think you should read.  Like now.  I mean it buster, off the e-mail and go read these!  *furrow*

"The Birth of Yahoo Answers": Answers.Yahoo.com offers a community gathering place where registered Yahoo users can ask questions and get answers from other registered Yahoo answers for free.  Gary notes some serious concerns about the service.

The question that ran through my mind when I saw this was: "What about libraries?"  Never fear, read on.

"Other Q&A Services, Most Available For Free!": Gary's follow-up article notes some of the other commercial "ask" services out there, as well as all the wonderful "ask a librarian" features provided by libraries, almost alwyas for free. 

In the second article, Gary points to a Virtual Reference Desk directory of "ask" services provided by libraries, which I found to be seriously lacking.  The California statewide service, AskNow, isn't included.  In fact, there are many libraries offering such services that aren't listed.  I prefer a combination of the VRD list, the LIS Wiki Chat Reference Libraries list and the LibSuccess Online Reference list of libraries providing alternative types of live online reference (like IM).  By the way--if your library isn't listed on either of these, you can simply add yourself--the beauty of a wiki.

Public Transit through Google

If you live in Portland (or plan on visiting) check out Google Labs' newest baby: Google Transit Trip Planner.  Type in where you are and where you want to go (and even when), and you get instant access to scheduled routes, fares, and more for local public transit options.  They tell you where to board, when the next departures are, how much it will cost, and how long it will take.  They have several sample searches at the top of the page as demonstrations (take a look)!  This looks splendid to me.  It has the potential to do for public transit what Mapquest did for car-people.  I hope they expand it to other areas soon.

found on the Google Blog

Blog tagging: worth the time or a dying effort?

Lockergnome has an interesting post about blog tagging: noting the two camps of "we must, we must!" and "uh, yeah, not worth my time."  I fall into the latter camp.  I tagged my entries for Internet Librarian through Technorati, then manually pinged each time I posted something new.  What a pain.  However, as a librarian, I realize the value of tagging--to collect like items in one place easily.  However, search engines tend to do that pretty well (not perfectly, mind you) without a tagging structure.  And unless everyone is using the tagging scheme, you miss out on a lot (like all of the LiB posts, for example).  I am not sold on tagging yet, but encourage comments below to lure me over to the other camp :) 

NYPL and Answers.com offer homework service

The New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library, and Queens Public Library have teamed up with Answers.com to offer HomeworkNYC.org.  The site offers links to homework-helpful websites, the library's Ask-a-Librarian service, links to get library cards, study notes, a search box for Answers.com, and much more.  Gary Price applauds the new service (while giving his usual and thoughful caveat about Wikipedia content), and also gives big California libraries a challenge:

Wouldn't it be wonderful if great directories of "quality" web resources like the LII, IPL, InfoMine, and the RDN also get involved and contributed materials? What about the same type of service let's say in LA or San Fran organized by InfoPeople and the LII? Just a thought.

Hmm, me thinks this would be a good plan.  I know LII people.  I know (and am an) Infopeople.  Hmmmmmmmmmmm.......

At the very least, I know our teen and children's librarians are looking to improve our homework help pages, and the resources on NY's site are a darn good place to start.

FirstGov Podcasts

Steven at Library Stuff lets us know that FirstGov is listing podcasts from the US Government.  As he notes, the offerings are a bit slim right now, but the Pentagon Channel, subtitled "Military News for the Military, by the Military" has the potential to be an interesting listening experience.

How much is co-browsing really helping our users?

I've been reading a few things lately about co-browsing and how much it actually does (or doesn't) improve a patron's experience using web-based chat reference services.  Back in November, at the Virtual Reference Desk Conference, I attended a session entitled "User Satisfaction and Best Practices: Correlation in Live Online Reference."  I blogged the session, and the one thing that stuck out to me was that 3 out of 4 times co-browsing was used in a session, the patron replied dissatisfaction with the service.  This was much higher than dissatisfaction ratings for other reference behaviors used (conducting follow-up, naming used sources). 

Then I read the Lethal Librarian's summary and discussion of a session she attended at VRD: "Does co-browsing enhance instruction in virtual reference?".  Different session.  Same results.  From Rikhei/Laura Harris's discussion:

61% of the times the librarians tried to use the co-browsing feature, they had problems with it. I’m frankly amazed at this. How many times do you keep trying something that doesn’t work right?

Personally, I stopped trying to use co-browsing a long time ago.  It's bad customer service to give something to someone that has a good chance of not working.  Period.  Everyone touts co-browsing as the cat's pajamas, and it is kind of cool A) when it actually works, which is rare and B) when the user's question actually warrants it. 

I hear again and again in these two studies and others that oftentimes users get frustrated by librarians trying to teach them instaed of simply pointing them to the resource or answer.  If my user wants just an answer, that's what he or she is going to get.  I always try to explore the teaching angle, but if the person isn't interested or in a hurry, I respect that.

I am not a co-browsing fan.  At all.  If the big-name software companies can get to work on a Mac with a firewall and a dial-up connection running Firefox, then rock on.  I'll be a fan.

Fair Use: long life?

Will Fair Use Survive?, a project of the Free Expression Policy Project, discusses how digital copyright control impinges upon free expression and fair use.  The three points they make in the introduction sum up the report nicely:

• Artists, writers, historians, and filmmakers are burdened by a "clearance culture" that ignores fair use and forces them to seek permission (which may be denied) and pay high license fees in order to use even small amounts of copyrighted or trademarked material.
• The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the DMCA) is being used by copyright owners to pressure Internet service providers to take down material from their servers on the mere assertion that it is infringing, with no legal judgment and no consideration of fair use.
• An analysis of 320 letters on the Chilling Effects website, an online repository of threatening cease and desist and "take down" letters, showed that nearly 50% of the letters had the potential to stifle protected speech.

So, how do libraries fit into all of this?  How much do our library staff know about digital fair use (or fair use period)?  About what our patrons can and can't do with the digital information in our licensed databases, eBooks collections, and more?  Probably not enough.  Perhaps this is a topic to bring up at your next staff meeting.

found on ebyblog

e-librarian salaries: the hard reality

There's been an ongoing buzz of dissatisfaction with librarian salaries.  I've contributed to it myself.  I was glad to see another posting about technology librarians, e-librarians as I like to call us, being required to have massive technology skills, multiple degrees, and getting really poorly compensated for all that we bring to an organization.  K. Matthew Dames has written a scathing, and sometimes hard to stomach, evaluation of e-librarian job postings, one in particular.  From his post:

Unfortunately, this posting reflects another trend: organizations -- particularly libraries -- still are not compensating e-content managers and negotiators at a level that is commensurate with the importance of the position. Said more simply, the salary range for the instant job posting is a joke, and suggests that the institution is not taking the position seriously, is unaware of what the position entails, or both.

He explains, in detail, why the pay being offered is inadequate and discusses why many librarians emerge from library school unprepared to deal with e-content negotiation, delivery, and management.  I agree.  I didn't get training for any of this at library school.  I attended a full-day course soon after starting this job on e-content negotiation, and if I hadn't done that I think I wouldn't have been able to have negotiated, worked, and played hard ball to save my library an aggregate of $50,000 or so over 3 years.  As far as management and delivery, that took hours of reading professional literature and asking for help from others in the field.

The article isn't one long complaint, however.  He suggests solutions for this problem, including intellectual property classes for LIS students, higher salaries for information professionals that purchase or manage e-content, and even taking the word "librarian" out of the job title (as he says: "it is astonishing how often money disappears when a librarian is present"). 

As someone whose job description includes the same responsibilities listed for his sample job (taken from a real job posting), plus a half-dozen other major areas of responsibility, his words certainly ring true with me.  Our jobs as the techie librarians have grown so much in the last five years.  We're often doing the work of multiple positions because the library hasn't expanded its e-services or e-resources staff to keep up with the workload.  We're using highly-marketable skills in our positions which, if we took a non-librarian position, would raise or sometimes double our salaries. 

I make decent money compared to the world market: I have enough to eat, I can pay rent, and I can afford a personal computer and the occasional book & CD purchase.  I do not, however, make decent money when you look at the skills I bring to the library world and compare that with how much those same skills would be worth in the non-library world.  And it's not just me.  And, honestly, it's not even just techie librarians.  Change the titles (not the responsibilities, just the titles) of all librarians to "information architects" or "information managers" and la-de-da, look at the salaries rise.

This is an inequality that needs to be addressed and I sincerely wish to see it happen in my professional lifetime.

found on TVC Alert

Why should librarians care about Flickr?

When the big Flickr rage set in about a year ago, I sat back and watched (as I tend to do with most things new and wild).  I was asked again and again, "Do you have a Flickr account?"  I'd simply say no, point out that I posted private albums through the add-on feature on Typepad (which I use for LiB), and say I was happy with that. 

Then the Librarian Trading Cards came out.  So, I created a Flickr account for the sole purpose of participating in that.  Now I have about two dozen photos (paltry by some standards, I know) posted on my Flickr site.  And I keep thinking about all the cool things we could do with Flickr at the library, since you can do so many cool things: license the images, tag the images, have private collections, see how many people have viewed each image, allow comments, and more.

So, if, like me, you were/are a Flickr doubter, especially in a library-use context, check out Michael's post with links to examples of how libraries can use Flickr to promote services, create a sense of community, and connect with users.  I am a doubter no more.

TMBG podcast feed

Wow, They Might Be Giants are podcasting, and here's the feed!  Thanks Jenny! Ah memories of high school youth flood back to me--Doc Martens and cut-offs, bopping to "Istanbul" at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, getting to touch John's guitar during one performance.  Ah, youth!

QuestionPoint Flash Interface (2nd iteration): LiB's Review

A new test-release of the QuestionPoint Flash interface was launched recently.  I took a look at it to see if any of the things I'd had problems with in the last release had been fixed.  Some major improvements did take place, notably the delay between messages being sent and displayed.  The delays are still there, but they're not as bad.  Other things that were fixed include:

• lettering is no longer cut off in the interface
• the tab where active sessions are taking place is more prominent
• a broken image was fixed

So, what still needs fixin' in LiB's opinion?

Librarian-side

1. When first picking up a patron, there is still a 10 second delay between the time I pick the patron up and the time I see the patron’s question in the chat window.  This is an improvement over the 30 second delay that was there before, but still a delay.
2. There is still a noticeable delay between the time I type and when those letters appear on the screen.  Better than last time, but it’s still noticeable.
3. You still cannot use “Enter” to send a message.
4. I was sending messages and they took about 10-20 seconds before they showed up in the librarian-side "live" transcript.  They seemed to appear in the user’s live transcript faster.  This is an improvement over the 2 minute delay that was there in the previous release, but still a problem.
5. No IP address showed up for me as a patron, same as last time.  Is that a problem that is going to be fixed before launch?  This is a problem for university libraries particularly who are trying to see if the user is on or off campus.
6. URLs are not automatically hyperlinked in the librarian transcript—they are in the patron transcript though.

Patron side

1. You cannot use “Enter” to send a message.
2. I was sending messages and they took about 5-10 seconds before they showed up in the librarian-side "live" transcript.  From the user’s perspective, delays like this make it look like either our servers are overloaded and slow, or we’re using junky software.  When I’ve experienced delays like this as a user of other products, an alarm bell instantly goes off that says “these people have bad technology and it’s probably going to break half-way through my interaction.”
3. The distracting and confusing time codes next to each chat message are still there.
4. When I click on a URL that’s been sent to the patron by the librarian, sometimes it opens in the pane next to the chat (the same window) and sometimes it opens in a totally new pop-up window.  I couldn’t see any logic to when or why either happened.
5. When I click on a URL that’s been sent to the patron by the librarian, the chat transcript automatically bumps back up to the beginning—confusing and annoying to the user.
6. The transcript that I got as a user via e-mail had the following characters at the beginning: “” (minus the quotation marks).  Junk characters?

Other Issues

1. I still have some serious problems with the fact that QuestionPoint automatically creates a brand new user account for a first-time patron with a username and password.  There is still nothing on the patron intake form that would indicate this would happen.  I’ve been told that the new account creation is something that QP is looking at making optional library-by-library in the future, but not yet.  If this is indeed the case, can some sort of prominent message be mentioned at the beginning of the page warning users of this?  This will be a major customer service issue.
2. Transcripts are kept for 90 days.  I don't want to keep patron data for 90 days.
3. If patrons click on the back button in the browser, they get disconnected.
4. Co-browsing is still IE-only.  So, I'm thinking more about this, and it should be a new rule for all librarians staffing this service to ask the patron "Are you using Internet Explorer version blah blah blah?" before they're even allowed to attempt co-browsing with the patron.  I've been bitten too many times trying to co-browse with patrons, that I don't even try it any more.
5. I would still like to know how ADA compliant the service is: what standads, which are and aren't being met.

I'd also like to note that OCLC's Jeff Penka did contact me after I posted last time about the pilot, and spent quite a bit of time with me going over each point.  That was very nice of him.

The release date is set in February.  We'll see how much changes with the interfaces between now and then.