LibrarianInBlack

Getcher Sound Effects Right Here!

I've seen this in a couple of places lately, but The Centered Librarian gets the prize for (I think) posting about it first. 

Soundogs is a site that offers downloadable stock sound effects.  These could be used on websites (sparingly please!), in presentations, or in online training materials.  The effects do carry a pricetag--$3-$5 or so.  You can search and preview the effects for free though.  No more hunting through dozens of old sound effect tapes and CDs for exactly what you're looking for!  The sounds are delivered to the buyer as CD-quality AIFF or WAV files immediately after purchase.  Fun to play with, but practical as well.

Bird Lovers, meet eBird

For whatever reason, library staff and library patrons seem to have more than our fair share of birdwatchers and ornithology-philes.  For all of you out there, take a look at eBird, a site from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society.  You sign up and then record the birds you see in North America.  Your sightings are put into a database that anyone can access.  Pretty neat, and they're cruising right along with thousands of contributions; New York is leading for 2006 with 4,132 entries already.  They also offer a Google Group.

found on Sites and Soundbytes

Grey Literature Clearinghouse

Trying to understand what Grey Literature is?  In a nutshell, it's all that stuff that you can't find through library catalogs, article databases, or other standard sources of scholarly information.  Grey literature includes online journals, blog posts, self-publishing on the web, and much more.  For those of us in the technology world, 90% of what we need for projects and research comes from grey literature...not standard print sources.

Check out GreySource (a site I saw linked on Peter Scott's Library Blog).  GreySource "provides examples of grey literature to the average net-user and in so doing profiles organizations responsible for its production and/or processing." They lay out sources for grey literature by subject area--very helpful.  You may want to add this to your library's research how-to guide.

I admit a definite bias toward this site because they spell "grey" the right way (not "gray" -- silly American spelling).

Catalog kiosks, OPAC/DB hybrids, and more...oh my!

The Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County has implemented a very nifty catalog kiosk page (a big busy, but cooler-looking than the opening search screen for most catalogs).  Read all about it on Library TechBytes.  Also on Library TechBytes, a post highlighting the Orange County Library System's website and what they're doing with their catalog opening screens. (Note from the LiB: I liked the catalog opening screen, but the website took forever to load on my T3 connection at work...so I worry how slow it would be for other users).  If you want to look at a low tech solution, check out the very simple HTML kiosk screen I built for the Catalog/Database machines at the Marin County Free Library.  A little can go a long way.

IM Resources

Michael Stephens and Rachel Singer Gordon have an article in the April issue of Computers in Libraries about Instant Messaging.  Michael has shared the links from this article: a number of IM software options, aggregators, training materials, and more.  Good stuff!

IM in Libraries Survey Results

Remember that survey about Instant Messaging in Libraries that Michael Stephens did a while back?  Well--the results are in!  Michael's post with the results is extensive.  Only a third of respondents report that their libraries use IM for outreach/reference.  I would actually guess that even that depressing number is a little high, based on the audience of Michael's blog and people who would have seen the survey.  The rest of the results are interesting, and show that IM has not caught on in most libraries, either for staff communication or public service.  Still, a year ago, these numbers would have been even lower.  I'm glad to see things moving along.

Cool Tools for Webmasters

At the Internet Librarian Conference each year, Darlene Fichter and Frank Cervone present their Cool Tools for Webmasters session which I always get a lot out of.  Looks like they presented this at Computers in Libraries recently as well, and their PowerPoint presentation is available (rather large, be patient for the download).  If you're the library's webmaster (or have input as to the website's design or features), take a look.

found on Peter Scott's Library Blog

Newsweek tackles social software

The April 3rd issue of Newsweek has social software as its cover story.  The article does a good job of highlighting some of the most popular social software sites, as well as drawing attention to some not even launched yet.  Gary Price's response to the article on ResourceShelf does an excellent job of filling in the gaps in the article's research and correcting some glaring errors. 

One of his points is one that has had me thinking for a while now: why hasn't Google delved into the social software world yet?  This was not at all mentioned in the article, and it's a glaring omission.  The search engine giant would have much to gain by "going social," and yet no move has been made on their part to do so, despite their diversification in a thousand other directions (GoogleTalk for IMing, Blogger for blogging,  Froogle for shopping).

Blogs shaping media and politics

Found on beSpacific: Journalist Discusses How Blogs Shape the Media, Politics.  Journalist David Kline discusses the influence of blogs on the news media and politics in this webchat.  Interesting reading, and some very thoughtful questions and answers.

Public Libraries Briefcase: Finding & Using Public Records

Check out this report from RUSA about finding public records, which includes a huge list of web resources to help you along.  The best thing I learned by reading the article was that SearchSystems.net provides access to 35,000 different databases of public record information, all of which are labeled as either free or "for pay."  Nice!

found on ResourceShelf

Librarycasting SE

Have you seen Librarycasting SE yet?  The "SE" is for Science & Engineering. This is a collection of some absolutely amazing tutorials, podcasts, and other materials for the libraries at the Virginia Commonwealth University.  The quality and quantity of these tutorials has me drooling.

found on Laurie the Librarian's Blog

Academic Library Blog to watch

Kathy Kawasaki has created a blog for her library at the York Mills Collegiate Institute (Toronto).  There are a lot of things about this academic library blog that I like: it uses WordPress, it has a number of how-to pages linked at the top, the navigation and design are simple, and comments are open.  Now, if only the About Page wouldn't say it needs to be viewed with Internet Explorer, we'd be in happy land.  All in all though, if you're an academic library thinking of blogging, you may want to use this as one of your examples.

found on blogwithoutalibrary.net

Flickr goodies via RSS

Found on A Feed is Born, you can get your favorite Flickr users' Favorites delivered to you by RSS.   Nicolas Hoizey developed it: just use the code found at this link and replace “USERNAME” with the username of the user whose favorites you want to get via RSS.

Flickr already offers tag searches delivered as RSS (e.g. anything tagged with a certain tag/keyword).  Just look at the bottom of any search for a tag for the RSS link.  There are also some other useful Flickr scripts available out there.  If the company doesn't build it, somebody else will.  Gosh, I love open source.  It's so.......librarian-esque.

Top 1000 Books

OCLC has published its Top 1000 Books (as in, # of items reported held by libraries in WorldCat).  The Census is second only to the Bible.  It's still depressing to me that Garfield outranks Macbeth. 

Congrats to Movers and Shakers

I extend a belated (but heartfelt) congratulations to Library Journal's 2006 Movers and Shakers, including John Blyberg (blyberg.net), Sophie Brookover (Pop Goes the Library), Meredith Farkas (Information Wants to Be Free), Beth Gallaway (Game On: Gaming in Libraries), Matt Gullett (writes for LJ Tech Blog), John Hubbard (Library Link of the Day), Sarah Johnson (Beyond the Job), Trina Magi (Patriot Act activist), Alycia Sellie Madison (ZineFest), and Jill Stover (Library Marketing Blog).  Congratulations to all--you deserve it!

Britannica bites back + the LiB's own take on Britannica Online

Remember that Britannica vs. Wikipedia study done by Nature?  Well, Britannica has finally replied.  Their response, a lengthy PDF, includes the following:

Almost everything about the journal’s investigation, from the criteria for identifying inaccuracies to the discrepancy between the article text and its headline, was wrong and misleading.

I read the original report, and I've read the response (boy, that 20 pages could have been condensed into 5).  Britannica makes some thoughtful points, but overall, I still think the Nature study has a great deal of validity.  There are errors in Britannica.  They can't pretend there aren't.  There are errors in Wikipedia.  No one has ever pretended there aren't.  Each resource has its strengths and weaknesses. 

I end up using Wikipedia quite often, but never rely on it as my sole source of information.  I used to rely on Britannica as my sole source, but don't do that any more either.  In fact, if there's a lesson to be learned here it is this: don't rely on one source ever for your data.

Our library just finished a trial of Britannica online and found many problems with it.  I note this because I don't want anyone thinking I'm anti-print.  We trialed their new interface extensively, and here were the major issues our librarians had (and why we didn't buy it).

1. Without phrase searching, we felt that too many (irrelevant) hits were returned.  And since our users don’t naturally phrase search, this is a problem.  Usually this kind of result indicates that the indexing and/or search engine being used needs improvement.
2. In many librarians’ searches we were taken to blank pages when we clicked on hyperlinks (e.g. in the Macbeth entry, clicking on “For a discussion of this play within the context of Shakespeare’s entire corpus….” takes one to a blank page.
3. Many unrelated items came back from our searches—for example, a search for “dogs” brings back videos on Bastille Day, Pompeii, and the Mormons.
4. There are some navigation blind-alleys—a search for “lasers” shows Merriam Webster links to the dictionary/thesaurus/quotations, but it doesn’t say how many entries are there.  So, when you click on Quotations there are no results—wasting the user’s time.
5. The search terms are not highlighted in the results.
6. The Gateway to the Classics (full-text PDFs of classic literature) was useless—presenting these in PDF makes them inaccessible to many users and they do not include any bibliographic data for students who may wish to cite these.
7. Multiple librarians reported getting “Document Contains No Data” page errors while using the database.
8. The font is extremely small, and cannot be re-sized in Internet Explorer.  This is an ADA issue, and one which was a breaking point for us.  Our parent organization is very ADA-conscious, and we live in the County with the oldest population in California.  Small font that can’t be made bigger is a problem.

While we did not encounter any factual errors in our test searches, we did encounter a significant number of issues which made us not want to buy the product.  #s 1 and 8 were the breaking points for us.

I think it would be great if more librarians would share their feedback on various online resources.  I always compile our librarians' comments and send those back to the vendor, whether we purchase the product or not.  I feel it's the responsible thing to do.  Perhaps we should create a forum for this type of information--a wiki for online resoruce trial feedback.  I know that reading other librarians' thoughts on something would help me do my job just a little bit better.

Yahoo! simplified

Yahoo! is apparently working on a simplified new default homepage for all to use.  To me?  Yeah, not so simplified.  I'll stick with the real simplified one: http://search.yahoo.com/. which Gary Price has been promoting for a couple of years now.

found on ResourceShelf

Cites & Insights

Walt Crawford's latest Cites & Insights is ready for your reading pleasure.  He discusses a whole lot of different things--a good one-stop read to catch up on some of the issues facing the worlds of technology and libraries.

LII Survey Results (preliminary)

Karen Schneider shares some of the preliminary results from the LII User Survey.  Looks like the bulk of respondents don't favor charging for LII:

Overwhelmingly, respondents rejected the idea of charging for the website (88% somewhat or strongly disagree with that idea) or charging for the newsletter (80% disagree).

I must admit I'm glad to see that.  Charging for LII would be its death knell.

France and Apple happy-fun-fun-time

The lower house of parliament in France passed a bill recently mandating that companies selling digital music open up the DRM formats for licensing by other companies.  Read: so everything would work no matter what MP3 player you had, iPod or otherwise.  Apple is not happy.  No, I take it back.  They're downright mad.  Read more at ars technica.

Evidence Based Library and Information Practice

I'm way behind in my blog-land goings-on, but this new journal, Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, is well worth your attention.  This peer-reviewed journal "is the first journal to focus specifically on evidence based practice in the information professions."  Their first issue has a couple dozen articles focused on studying if thing work or not in information fields--e.g. eBooks, library jargon, children's websites, etc. 

I remember back in library school, having just come from a MA in the humanities, thinking that much of library-world literature was very loose--not based on fact or on evidence.  Glad to see an effort is being made to re-emphasize the facts and serious study of what we do.

PLA 2006: Community Building Through Your Web Site: Library Blogs and RSS Feeds

Jenny Levine and Michael Stephens presented this beautiful session during the last slot of the conference. The turnout was tremendous considering how late in the conference it’s being presented.

Michael Stephens started the session by asking how many people were blogging the session and a good half dozen people raised their hands. Whoo hah! He then shared some statistics about the popularity of blogging and then discussed blogging. 

What is a weblog? It’s a software tool, a content management system. It’s organized chronologically by date with the newest information at the top. It self-archives by date. It’s updated regularly with relatively short entries sand includes many hyperlinks. Each post has a permalink: a unique URL to take you directly to that post. Most blogs provide RSS feeds that syndicate the content and let you read posts in a separate reader (an aggregator). Posts contain titles and text, sometimes graphics as well. Side menus contain links (to the library website, older posts, archives). Blogs may include other features like categories, about pages, contact information, and more.

What do we need in order to blog? Blog software, some server space, maybe a tiny bit of programming, some time, and something to say—fresh content (taken from Blake Carver). Create a what’s new blog: programming and materials, events, news and current events, what’s hot in your local community.

The community of library and librarian blogs is known as the biblioblogosphere. Library sponsored blogs include:

• Marketing blogs (news, new materials lists)
• Topical blogs (local book club, genealogy)
• Photo blogs (attaches a human face to the library, using Flickr to manage the photos) 

Michael advises that to figure out what to blog, you look at what other libraries are blogging about.

Jenny Levine began her session of the talk encouraging libraries to open up comments on the library’s blog. She showed us Ann Arbor Library’s Director’s blog, as well as some specific posts. One post about a problem the library had because of overdue notices not going out to patrons which was diffused by a staff member saying fines would be waived for patrons who had that problem. One post was a patron expressing a concern about the environmental impact of a new branch, to which a library board member replied.

Why don’t libraries solicit comments online? Because we’re scared of what patrons will say. Things to think about… Will you allow any comments to go up automatically or moderate them? Will you have staff members paying attention to comments made on the blog and responding? These are conversations between the library and the community that can happen if only we’ll let them. Jenny also showed us the library’s teen blog—one post had 451 comments. Another of their blogs includes book recommendations, with patron comments discussion the books.

Jenny also showed us the blog of the Flossmoor Public Library, a small public library where a librarian posts and solicits patron input. She also showed the Thomas Ford Memorial Library blog from Western Springs showcasing local history, which resulted in numerous comments from local residents.  Jenny also showed some examples of allowing comments on library catalog entries—for users to discuss the books and other materials. The Riverdale Illinois Library created an e–newsletter as their blog.

She emphasized that blogging is so easy—you can do it for free, with little or no staff training.

Then we moved on to RSS. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It lets you create content in one place but display it in other places like aggregators or other websites. It gets you found in places you wouldn’t normally be found. The feed itself displays as code, which you are not meant to read. The aggregator (like Bloglines) interprets the code and shows you the new stuff from the sites you’ve subscribed to. She emphasized that with the library website, you’re requiring users to come to you. With the RSS feed, you go to the users directly on their turf.  

What if the catalog has RSS? You can get a feed of everything that’s added to the catalog in a specific subject or author or keyword. Send people the news of the library. Your e-newsletter. Your book club discussion selections. Try to get the headlines from your blog onto other people’s websites: schools, government sites, community groups.

Jenny showed us an account called Suprglu. You can patch the feeds from different sites together onto one page. Get community feeds match them up onto one page…weather, local news, library news, new books at the library. (Sarah’s note: What a fabulous tool! I have to play with this now…so very, very neat).

Jenny highlighted Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor who has his own blog and displays his library check-outs and holds on his blog. She also showed a livejournal site that grabbed the library’s book recommendations feed and displays it on their own site. Another library patron displays all the music he has checked out from the library on his blog.

Michael suggested The Cluetrain Manifesto as a tool to use to think about what our libraries can do in the online world. The book’s authors urge companies to speak with a human voice to their customers. It’s about having conversations and being transparent.

Michael ended with Six Things We Can Do Now:

1. Read weblogs and checkout what other libraries are doing. Keep tabs on new developments. Go to http://www.blogwithoutalibrary.net.
2. Start your own “What’s New” blog at your library. Update it often and create an      environment of dynamic content. Turn comments on.
3. Appoint a “trend reporter” at the library who watches what’s going on and reports back to staff. Form an Emerging Technology Committee.
4. Train your staff to use an aggregator to read RSS feeds. Use Bloglines  or BlogBridge.  There are many other choices as well.
5. Advocate for RSS to be built into the products we pay for. It will allow us to place more content out in our communities and makes the library discoverable.
6. Learn about Library 2.0. It replicates user-driven and user-centered services online. Google the term to find out more.

Jenny recommended using feed2js as a way to create RSS feeds for existing webpages.

The presentation can be found at http://www.tametheweb.com/pla

PLA 2006: You are But IM: Connecting Young Adults and Libraries

Patrick Jones, Tricia Suellentrop, and Michele Gorman—authors of Connecting Young Adults and Libraries: A How-To-Do-It Manual .

This was, by far, the most dynamic session I attended at the whole conference. I left inspired to work much harder from my position as a technology librarian to advocate for teen programming, resources, and services in the library. As a result, this session write-up is crazy long. 

They started off the session with “The Ten Values We Share.”

1. Youth      Development—brain research tells us that teenagers are works in progress      and their brains are not fully developed yet. We can’t change the way teenagers are      going to act or think. We need to      change the way we react to the things they do and think.
2. Developmental      Needs—Teens will be teens—embrace it. Patrick then discussed the bias librarians show when they kick      teenagers off the computer when they’re gaming so that adult users can do      something “important.” He drew a      parallel to how we do not assign importance levels to the materials people      are checking out, so we should not assign importance levels to the things      people choose to do with our other resources (computers).
3. Development      Assets—What is it that kids have and how do we build on them? What can we do for them to help them      succeed later in life.
4. Youth      Advocacy—Teens are not at the table, so we need to advocate on their      behalf. Patrick criticized the teen      advocacy in libraries that claims we should treat them well because they turn      into taxpayers and voters and we will need for them to vote for our bonds      in the future. The message that      sends is that they don’t matter to us as teens, just as adults. This is the wrong message to send. Period.
5. Youth      Participation—Meaningful participation is key—not token participation      opportunities. Give them      responsibility, the ability to make significant decisions.
6. Collaboration—The      collaboration can be amongst teens or between teens and adults, inside or      outside the library. Communicate      with the teens—ask them for something (information, participation). Collaborate with the teens—create new      goals together to make a new service or resource. 
7. Information      Literacy—Think about why we do this. Why do we want teens to be information literate? Patrick encourages us to always turn the      screen around and phrase the search process as “here’s how we’re going to      find this information.”
8. Adolescent      Literacy—Get the kids to read what they want to read. Reading serials (repetitive text) is not      a bad thing. It is not lesser      reading. 

   Reading

        horror and tragedy novels is not a bad thing. Teens read about the feelings they’re      having, the things they’re experiencing. Give them what they need. Librarians need to know about these books and be familiar with their      content. 
9. Learning      and Achievement—Patrick then responded that libraries offer many formats      that are geared toward certain age groups based on their physical and      developmental needs: large print for seniors board books for      toddlers. So why do we not offer      comic books in all of our libraries, which are geared specifically toward      teens? Reading a lot recreationally      affects how well students do on reading tests. Get them to read—whatever they will      read… Whatever they read will      impact their education in a positive way.
10. Equity      of Access / Intellectual Freedom—Users have the right to access all types      of information from all points of view without restriction. Our job is to provide information, not      how we feel about it. Serving      people of every age, income level, ethnicity, etc. is our job. We do not have the right to determine      what is appropriate for a young person. As a private individual, you may not like the material. But as a professional librarian, it is      not your right nor your place to express that in the work place. In terms of equity of access, she cited      an example of a librarian going out of her way to find books on a topic      for an adult patron on a subject which that branch did not have covered. The same librarian simply said “sorry we      don’t have any books here on that” when a teen asked for the same type of      books. 

Patrick then talked about the difficulty in dealing with teens when we are adults. He advises that we remember what it is like to be 15. Accept that teens are the way they are.  Project and realize that the teen you’re dealing with is probably a whole lot like you were at that age—they’re not that different from you.

Michele encouraged us to stop reinventing the wheel. Find out what libraries have tried this project before you have. Call them. Ask them what worked and what didn’t work. We are a profession of sharers—take advantage of that.
 
The ten trends that drive us (best practices of offering services to teens):

1. Digital      Divide and Diversity—Old school digital divide is a low income issue. New digital divide issues relate to      digital natives and digital immigrants. Users who are digital immigrants were not born with technology. Digital natives were raised with      computers in the household, computers in the classroom, and technology      affecting all aspects of life. Most      librarians are digital immigrants—we need to learn the language of digital      natives. Go out and experience      technology hands-on. Learn how to      IM. Learn to text-message.  Try Wikipedia. Use Flickr. In

   Cheshire

         

   County

   a library is podcasting      library content. MyOwnCafe.org is a      dynamic website done by a library in

   Massachusetts

        that gives teens a place to interact, post, and communicate with each      other. Some libraries offer music      editing software on their public computers. Homer Township Public Library has been      offering IM reference for some time. Libraries are creating MySpace accounts. The Denver Public Library went live with      eFlicks: downloadable movies. 
2. Format      Explosion—Formats have really taken off lately: graphic novels, anime,      audio books on iPods, video games (Baker & Taylor is now carrying      video games). 
3. Information      Literacy—You want to empower teens to access the information      themselves. By putting a reference      desk between you and your user, you’re saying “I’m qualified to find      things and you’re qualified to stand there and watch me.” Michele’s reference desk is a pod in the      middle of the room where teens can walk up and stand right next to her      during the search process. Don’t      build barriers between you and your users. Hennepin County Library has partnered with local schools to create      an education program to teach teachers how to teach information literacy      to their students. Another library      offers a self-paced online tutorial about how to find valid information      online. The Internet Public      Library’s teen space has various modules teaching teens how to be skilled      information researchers.
4. New      Spaces—Physical space is a precious commodity in libraries. Teen spaces are usually in the corner,      small, and distant from the rest of the library. That tells teens right away that the      library does not value them or welcome them as customers. VOYA contains a regular column about good      teen spaces in libraries that you can watch for ideas. Phoenix Public Library is held up as a      gold standard of ideal teen spaces if you have the money to invest in      it. If you can’t have a service      desk in the teen area, it needs to be close by. The teens won’t walk clear across the      library to access the reference desk or the circulation desk. Make yourself accessible to them.
5. Outcome      Measurement—The highest circulation in most public libraries is teen if      you divide it by budget, square foot, or staff. On a cost-benefit basis, teen materials      are HUGE. Limit events to smaller groups      so that you can connect to teens on an individual basis and they can      connect with each other. Get rid of      the standard evaluation cards for events, and ask them how they found out      about the event, what they learned, and what else they want to know.  That’s it.
6. Outreach      In the Community—Outreach = Face time. Teens in the community who know your face are much more likely to      come in to your library. Take the      library out of the library with Teen Read Week talks in schools, Banned      Books Week talks in schools, book talks, programs that you take to the      high schools or juvenile correctional facilities. You can ‘t get teens into the library      during your regular work-day (9-5) because they’re in school. But you can visit them on their turf at      school during those hours.
7. Programming      Returns—Gaming nights, “on the edge” book clubs where teens. discuss books      about sensitive topics,

   Camp

   Chaos

        (rockets, catapults, tying in science). If the program is educational but on the outside looks like “just a      bunch of fun,” you’re on the right track.
8. Teen      Volunteers / Interns—Volunteer opportunities for teens have to be      meaningful. Cleaning and shelving      books is often not meaningful. Having a work experience, working with an adult outside of their family,      negotiating a workplace atmosphere helps teens become more competent as      functioning members of society. Having teen volunteers requires librarians letting go of some of      our control. We don’t like to let      them do anything independent (like creating bulletin boards for other      teens, collection development, participating with programming). Get beyond the fluff task. If you give them what you consider a      fluff task, they will consider their whole experience to be “fluff” as      well. Not all teens are created      equally. If the kids are chatty,      let them be the greeter at children’s programs. If the kids are shy and antisocial, let      them do quiet tasks in the back room. Match the kids to an appropriate task for them.
9. Youth      Development—Our work is not an end, it is a means, and our end is to      create more effective youth in our communities. It’s not about the stats, it’s about how      many lives we change.
10. Youth      Involvement Plus Programming—Don’t do programming for teens—but with      teens. Have teens create      programming for children or programming for other teens. Let go of a little control. Give teens a voice in the library and      actually follow through on what they suggest. Get them to participate in the Library      Board or the Friends of the Library. It tells teens that we care what they have to say…that we care      about what they can contribute to our community. Have teens intern with IT or marketing      departments in the library. Show      them what real librarians do: collection development, reference, project      planning. When you have focus      groups for future planning at the library, have a teen focus group as      well. Involve them in website      design. Give them a chance to use      their skills and become meaningfully involved.

PLA 2006: Empowering Library Staff to Meet the Technology Needs of Spanish Speakers

Laura Staley (WebJunction) started the talk off by describing the Spanish Language Outreach Program at WebJunction that has been quite successful.  WebJunction has a huge collection of resources online—computer learning materials for Spanish Speakers—at: http://www.webjunction.org/do/Navigation?category=7843

Yolanda Cuesta (Cuesta MultiCultural Consulting) spoke about the outreach curriculum included in the workshop that is a part of the program.  She discussed the importance of getting to know the Spanish-speaking community.  Users have varying experiences with public libraries in the country or origin.  Many Spanish-speaking countries do not have public libraries where materials are lent out, and if they are coming from somewhere where persecution is normal, surrendering your ID to a government agency is often not something the user is going to want to do.  Workshop materials included an extensive community leader outreach how-to kit. 

Yolanda also emphasized that if there is a basic misunderstanding of what a public library is, asking the community “what services should the library provide?” will yield nothing.  Go out and ask them questions about the community—community problems, their needs, barriers to using the library.  We as professional librarians are the ones who are supposed to figure out what services would best meet those needs.  Building a relationship of trust with the community is essential.  She noted how Spanish-speakers often work together on projects, so only allowing one person on a computer clashes with that.

She talked about how learning about cultural diversity is the first step in any Spanish language outreach program—before material selection, before creating programming, before anything else.  Without that, the program is likely to meet with only limited success.  (Sarah’s note: I think this is right on.  I think of the libraries I know about with Spanish language programs & materials & outreach, and not a single one of them had any staff training on cultural diversity or sensitivity.  I can see how many of our policies and procedures conflict with the very culture we are trying to reach out to). 

Then Hector Marino (Des Plaines Public Library) discussed his library’s computer training program for Spanish speakers.  They offer two classes about how to buy computers (computers, printers, etc.).  They offer classes on Windows software (Word, XP, PowerPoint).  They also offer classes on an introduction to technology, basic computer skills, the internet, e-mail, using search engines, and ESL tutorials.  The adults want to take classes so they can keep up with their children, apply for jobs, function in their current jobs better, access health and legal information, and communicate with family in their countries of origin.  Focus on the local community needs of your users and target the classes at what they actually need—not what you imagine they need or think they should need.

Beware Ego Centric Conference Sessions

Excuse the following rant, but I have to get this off my chest.  I have been to too many conference sessions guilty of ego centricity and I'm losing my mind.

<rant>
The thing that annoys me the most at conferences is not PowerPoint slides, or people reading directly from their notes, or people's cell phones going off...it's presenters who stand up and talk to you for an hour about the minutiae of what happened at their library during a certain project, talking in great excruciating detail about how their library "did it" including each administrative step, what specific challenges they faced from their administrators/boards/patrons/staff, and really giving you nothing to take away that is useful. 

No practical tips, no how-to steps, no thought provoking ideas, just an hour-long verbalized quarterly report.  Because that's what it sounds like.  I don't care if your director was pregnant during your ILS conversion and how that impacted your workload.  I don't care if your library employs 37 librarians and 88 paraprofessionals, then broken out by staff classification.  I don't care if your building's toilet leaks.  I don't care to hear the minute details of your specific situation. 

I come to conferences to learn about what I can do for my own library...to get real "take aways."  I want practical handouts, not your PowerPoint slides.  I want you to spark some ideas in me.  I want you to make me think.  Design a presentation with the thought: what things would someone need to know if he or she was going to do something similar?  What are all the things to think about?  What are some of the places to find more information about this?  What are some of the resources I found most useful?  I don't come to learn about the ins and outs of your library: I come to learn how to help mine.
</rant>

PLA 2006: You’ve Got What It Takes!: Peer Training in Your Library

Speakers: Janet  Hildebrand (Central Library Manager, Contra Costa County Library), Donna  Corbeil (Administrative Librarian, Solano County Library), Kathryn S.  Lawhun (Chief of Main, San Francisco Public Library) + there were two others speakers who weren’t in the program and I unfortunately did not catch their names

Why does peer training work so well?  It involves staff using their existing knowledge.  It builds teams between the trainers and trainees.  It also creates a culture of learning in which everyone is, at one time or another, both a learner and a trainer.  The number of trainers you need depends on how many classes you need to teach, to how many people, and how many times they need to be repeated.  The trainers need a certain set of skills: a positive attitude toward learning, an aptitude for learning how to train, a knowledge level beyond the learners (or the ability to get to that stage quickly). 

To recruit trainers, give the big picture and their role in the overall training goals.  Tell them why you want them to be a trainer—citing their customer service ethics, how they interact with users, etc.  Confront their self-doubts and encourage them to at least try it once. 

In designing the training, draft training materials that will help even the slower learners feel successful for at least the first half of the training.  Test the materials repeatedly making sure the arrangement builds logically, are there transitions that connect each section/topic together, and will it fit in the time allotted?  Follow up after trainings with a practice question each month to keep their skills fresh.

Forming a staff development committee is a good idea to try to involve professionals, paraprofessionals, at all levels in all areas of the library in the training program.  You may want to allow staff to self-select in terms of who will be trainers.  Peer training programs can also build staff relationships and bonds that will last over time. 

Kathy Lawhun from San Francisco described how SFPL implemented Innovative’s Millennium Catalog system.  No OPAC training was in the contract, so they didn’t get any.  They had many circulation staff who were not familiar with basic mouse and computer skills, so those trainings needed to be folded in as well.  They used helpers who roved about in the audience and helped those who were felling behind (this was for classes taught in a computer lab with twenty-something students).  She notes that it’s okay to modify training as you go along, to make it better and better.  Posting all the training materials, cheat sheets, and notes on the staff intranet is essential so that staff can refresh themselves any time. 

The last speaker noted that peer training has some real benefits: when training on a new system launch the trainers and class participants can help work out bugs in the new system before it’s launched, the trainers feel pride in contributing to the development of the organization, and the quality can be better than that which you would get from an outside vendor (mostly because of internal knowledge of policy, procedure, staff, and culture). 

Other tips:

• Start small by choosing one or two topics and then the following year add more classes.
• Full administrative support is essential for a peer training program (I’m hearing that a lot at PLA—administrative support, administrative support.  Makes me wonder if all of these libraries lacked support for these projects, and they learned that lesson the hard way).
• Develop templates for trainings
• Develop checklists for tasks for developing new trainings
• Choose trainers not solely based on their knowledge of the subject area—attitude and enthusiasm are essential.

PLA 2006: Making Traditional Library Services Teen Friendly

Dawn Bussey noted that libraries have competition among teens as a place to hang out, so we need to make sure that our buildings, programs, and services are enough to draw this user group to our libraries.

Mary K. Chelton discussed some research about how teens use libraries. Only 16% of teens surveyed preferred search engines to libraries. She talked about how teens generally have no concept of intellectual property rights, and plagiarism is rampant, partially because copying and pasting someone else’s content is so easy. She discussed “domain learning” with teens, which shows that teens often don’t know what they’re looking for, and therefore have a hard time formulating a search query in order to find it. Teens don’t only want facts when researching, they want contextual information about how things feel, affect people, etc. She also talked about librarians who see problems with the way teens interact with librarians—not prepared, don’t know what they’re looking for, don’t respect librarians’ authority or information-finding supremacy. Instead of trying to find positive ways to help these users, we often focus on their shortcomings, which doesn’t help them or us. She emphasized that libraries need to be ready to accommodate teens by functioning as a socializing space. Otherwise, we’re doomed to fail with this age group.

Angela Pfeil talked about spaces online for teens: like the library’s website. She encouraged librarians to look at virtual reference program statistics, and see how many of those users are teen. Many of the users of virtual reference programs in the U.S. are teens. Virtual reference extends our presence temporally—sometimes to 24/7 availability. She noted that teens are nocturnal and it’s not surprising that they turn to Google for homework help, which they are likely doing at 11:00 at night, when no library is available to them. She emphasized the importance of getting librarians online who not only know how to deal with teens, but know how to deal with users online as well. She talked about the prevalence of multi-tasking among teens and younger adults.

Aaron Schmidt gave us some PEW statistics: 75% of online teens and 42% of online adults use instant messaging. Teens consider e-mail as a way to talk to old people. He showed a sample IM transaction, noting that this user on IM was very friendly and outgoing, while in person she was rather shy and quiet. Offering service via IM lets users connect to us in the medium in which they are most comfortable. He suggested the IM programs to use (AIM, Yahoo!, and MSN) which are all free (free is good). Aaron noted that the buddy list is a great marketing tool, as teens add the library to their buddy lists which allows us to automatically be with them whenever they are online. Because we are coming to them in their space and on their terms they start to trust us. Aaron also discussed MySpace. MySpace is huge—it’s the most popular site on the web right now. There are 250,000 user accounts being created every day. It gets more traffic than Google. Libraries are beginning to create MySpace accounts: putting the library, again, out into the spaces our users are inhabiting online. Aaron talked about video games in libraries. Games are the content of choice for many and tell stories and present challenges to the users. Aaron’s slides are available at http://walkingpaper.org/pla

Dawn Bussey talked about her library’s “Latchkey Lab” where they had an after school program available with a police officer in the room with the students. When she became director, she replaced the police officer with a staff member who actually liked teens. But the attendance was still very poor. The library updated the teen space and collection, started some new services and programs, and worked to change staff attitudes toward teens. They’re working toward creating both a social area and a quiet area for people to study. The staff remind people that teens are users too, that the teens are not violating the code of conduct, and they have every right to be in this public building as anyone else. How does the library’s Board support teens? What is their attitude toward teen services? She emphasized that it’s important to get your Board on the same page as the staff, in terms of attitude toward service areas. Their new after school program will be called ASK@riverforestlibrary (After School Kids). They are looking toward having homework help tutors in the library every day after school, food one day a week, movies, games, book discussions, information literacy programs, etc. The Board felt that this was a “daycare” service, and not something that taxpayers should be paying for. She was able to go out into the community and raise the money for the program independently. She encourages librarians to be prepared, in teen programming, for noise, teen stuff (backpacks), group work, socializing, noise, and group computer play.

PLA 2006: Librarians’ Internet Index: Swiss Army Knife for Frontline Reference Staff

Karen Schneider and Buff Hirko presented about LII to a full room. This late in the afternoon, that was quite a feat. Karen gave us a brief tour of the LII and showed us the three nifty icons next to each entry’s title:

1. A magnifying glass icon that shows you how each entry is indexed: with the topic areas, author, publisher, LC Subject Headings, etc.
2. A talk-bubble icon that allows users to comment on a particular site.
3. An e-mail icon next to the title of each site which allows you to e-mail a site to someone with a note or annotation of your own.

You can also e-mail the entire page for a subject area (could e-mail to a patron looking for resources in a particular area—great idea!).

LII’s New This Week newsletter goes out every Thursday via e-mail and RSS. This is a great way to keep track of new sites, especially resources related to hot topics for which you’ll get a lot of reference questions (the Olympics, Hurricane Katrina, etc.). I find many of my new reference sites from LII’s New This Week. I highly recommend that if you do any reference work, you subscribe now!

Karen also did a brief overview of RSS, noting that once LII put out a RSS feed, their usage statistics increased tremendously.

Karen went over LII’s selection criteria for the sites they include in they index. The five main criteria are availability, credibility, authorship, external links, and legality. Read all about them at http://lii.org/pub/htdocs/selectioncriteria.htm.

Buff Hirko then gave us a tour of the Washington State special collections, which are extensive and came about as a result of Washington’s cooperation with the LII. She emphasized the local information collections of websites useful for school reports on local history and culture.

PLA 2006: Creating a Digital Archive on a Shoestring

My colleague, Laurie Thompson, and I presented this session to a packed room. We discussed how we created an online collection of local history materials (including stunning photo albums of the building of the Golden Gate Bridge, early San Quentin, etc., oral histories with sound clips, and more). Did I mention that we began this project with no extra staff and no funding? Yes, that’s an important piece of the puzzle. Here are our slides in case you missed the presentation or would like a copy for yourself.  It's a monster-big file, so give it a couple of minutes to download.

PLA 2006: The New Branch? What is the Role of the Library Web Site?

Who is the target audience of your library’s website?  It’s based on demographics, but you need to consider if the website addresses the “haves” vs. the “have-nots.”  Historically, libraries have not looked at the “haves” when it comes to website functionality.  This needs to change.

Remote access is increasing faster than the walk-in count is increasing in library buildings.  Phoenix Public Library usage remotely increased over 2000% in the last six years, while walk-ins increased only 24%.

The library’s website should reach 100% of the users, be a full service site, need no instructions to use, and be intuitive, fast, easy, and convenient.

Is the website a tool for librarians?  No.  That approach leaves librarians as the gatekeeper, the holder of secrets.

Who are the public library’s website competitors?  Google, Yahoo, Amazon, B&N, Borders….not other libraries.  We should learn from each other.

What are the risks of not providing full web service functionality.  Libraries risk becoming irrelevant or at least of marginal value in their communities.  The public will find other ways of making some things work for themselves (e.g. LibraryElf).  We should be doing these things for them.

Some things to think about when planning for a full-service website
• Offer enhanced searching: guided navigation
• FRBR
• Online updating of patron accounts (address, phone number)
• Online fee payment
• Self-circulating library book lists (community-created)
• Online reporting of lost or stolen cards
• Enabling device-friendly account notifications
• Enable online library donations
• Real-time online library card registration with address verification and instant access to information resources and materials
• Good exploratory search interfaces (enhance user control, instantly orient searchers, what they see and what they know is good enough to navigate them around the site, expose a roadmap to the site) – organize by meaningful stable categories, provide categorized overviews, provide sample documents for eah category, arrange important text first for fast scanning, support multiple categories, support many kinds of visual displays)

We must meet users where they are—and most of them are online, not in our physical libraries.  Many of our users are coming from places other than our jurisdictions. How do we serve these users?  Online, people don’t think about jurisdictional issues and want to use our resources.

Things to Offer
• One thing you can do really well online is serve diverse audiences—directed pages at specific populations (language, age, interest area).
• One thing you absolutely need for an online branch is to offer circulating materials: downloadable books, audio books, movies, and music.  Provide access to the free full text and eBooks online as well (not just the for-pay items).
• Should have someone online (staff) to offer patrons a real person to contact, either through web-based chat or instant messaging.
• Offer specific newsletters that people can subscribe to—through both RSS and e-mail.  You’re providing information to your customers directly and not requiring them to come to you.
• Events for virtual libraries: promoting events in the branches but also providing events online through podcasts,
• Denver offers a Google MashUp Map showing where their branches are, allowing users to zoom in, get directions, etc.

Staffing
• What department is your website staff a part of? 
• What are the job titles? 
• How many staff members support the virtual branch as compared to the physical branches? 
• Is virtual reference handled by your reference staff? 
• Is e-resource collection development handled by staff who regularly deal with collection development, or just the “techies” because the resources happen to be online? 
• Are your website staff MLS holders? 
• Do they receive adequate training opportunities, including library technology conferences, coding language courses, and technology summits & conferences? 

Be conscious of usable language for our users: catalog vs. search, databases vs. find articles. 

Usability testing is essential—find out what the problem areas with the site are and do this while in the process of a redesign—not after you’ve finalized everything.

Define the purpose of your website: is it a method for distributing information or a way for people to connect with each other?  Both?  Does your website reflect that?

Reach out to the community online: get into MySpace and other community sites.

Look at your website visits vs. physical visits to your buildings.  Look at eBook circulation vs. physical circulation.  Do these compare with your smaller locations?  If so, are you devoting the staff, attention, and oversight that the website needs?

Marketing your website
• Does your website have a discrete name, brand, and logo? 
• Get a usable domain and create a logo and use them consistently. 
• Start with a brand. 
• Create printed materials as well—bookmarks, library cards. 
• Create e-mail newsletters. 
• Consider an “e-mail this page” option on all your pages. 
• Promote via articles, television, and radio. 
• Send out RSS feeds, including podcasts. 
• Post to other sites, linking back to yours. 
• Collaborate with other organizations to create joint pages—double the user base, double the publicity reach.

The second half of the presentation is available at http://denverlibrary.org/presentations

PLA 2006: Ready, Set, Go! Fast Meaningful Change in Your First 90 Days

This presentation was largely based on The First 90 Days Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels by Michael Watkins.

There is a Breakeven Point for all new employees: point at which new leaders have contributed as much value to their new organizations .as they have consume from it (Watkins suggests that is 2 months long on average).

Be aware that a change in leadership can cause a ripple effect in those that they supervise and their peers as well.   Quote from the book: “The overriding goal in a transition is to build momentum by crating virtuous cycles that build credibility and by avoiding getting caught in any vicious cycles that damage credibility.”

Four steps to successful leadership to carry your organization forward:

1. accelerate your learning
2. match strategy to situation
3. building the team
4. securing early wins

Accelerate Your Learning: What do you need to learn? Schedule time to do so. Use sample interviews in the book to interview the staff you’re working with. Analyze the last year’s statistics and see what you can glean from that. Spend some time doing everyone’s jobs to understand what they do, how long it takes, and get ideas for streamlining.

Match Strategy to Situation: Diagnose the situation and determine your organization’s transition type. Four types of situation: start-up (new service), turnaround (demoralized staff and poor performance), sustaining success (keeping a successful program going & taking it to the next level), realignment (creation or reinforcement of a set of shared priorities to reinvigorate staff—unproductive but deeply ingrained staff norms, convincing staff of the need for change).

Build Your Team: You will inherit a team and will change it just by virtue of your presence. Challenge of managing the tension between short-term (day to day operations) and long-term goals (strategic plan). Put in place a new team process. Describe a new vision and let staff select how their skills and talents can move that vision forward.

Secure Early Wins: There is no early win too small. Listen to the priorities that your staff tells you about. Make sure your early wins match with your compelling vision. Communicate your expectations to staff very clearly. Establish personal credibility .

PLA 2006: Opening Session

After some preliminaries from the President of PLA, the President of ALA (including an encouragement to PLA members to vote for the ALA dues increase), and the Conference Coordinator, our main speaker, Linda Ellerbee took the floor. Purportedly the woman that Murphy Brown was based on, Ellerby’s go-get-em attitude was quite evident during her talk. She spoke of her life’s journey, the many problems and challenges she’s faced, and left us with five rules for managing change.

1. When all else fails, do it your way.
2. Face a new challenge with a new solution.
3. You must always set a place at the table of life for the unexpected guest.
4. Just because everything has changed doesn’t mean everything is different.
5. In this world, a good time to laugh is any time you can.

She also said two other quotable things about change, which weren’t in her list, but could have been.

1. If change is confusing me, it’s probably confusing everyone around me equally.
2. The easier a change is to make, the less it matters.

I really like that last one, and think it would be a good one to remember the next time some massive change in the way your library functions is taking place. Big changes are hard changes—and often the most important ones to make. Heck, rustle up a dozen quotes about dealing with change and toss them out during a period of serious change at your library (say, one per meeting) to encourage people. Either they’ll be encouraged, or they’ll think you’ve been reading quotations dictionaries before bedtime.

Reporting from PLA: E-mail Room Funnies

The LiB is at PLA in Boston.  I'm staying at a tiny bed and breakfast: The College Club Inn Bed & Breakfast.  It is the oldest women's college club in the nation apparently, and located in a rather wealthy neighborhood that reminds me of Union Street in San Francisco.

I'm blogging over at the PLA blog, so watch for me there too.

There was a large sign outside the e-mail station room at PLA, next to an even larger line, that read: “If there is a line, your time at 10 minutes.” Now, this was a pre-printed sign. Not hand-written—in which case the error may have been justifiable. *sigh* After reading it twice and cringing as the former English teacher in me reared her head, I noticed that someone had taped a small piece of paper in the lower corner that read “All your line are belong to us.”

Loud laughing ensued from the LiB. If you don’t get the reference, read Wikipedia’s article on the original: “All your base are belong to us.” You’d be amazed how many times you’ll see that referenced in the blogosphere and beyond. Apparently there are some cool folks here at PLA. If it was you, feel free to introduce yourself and I'll buy you a drink. I’m around.

Virtual Library Tours

In one of my last acts as the e-Services Librarian for the Marin County Free Library, today I posted some 360-degree virtual tours of our libraries. 

There's one central virtual tour page (linked from our "Hours and Locations" page) and each branch has a link to its virtual tour(s) on its homepage.

I'd like to do more on the main index page for the tours, little thumbnails of each tour for example, but being massively pressed for time, it's something.

Multimedia Library Tours

Darlene Fichter recommends that if you're planning on developing a multimedia tour for your library, that you check out the excellent example created by Duke University's Ford Library.  I agree with Darlene's assessment--this is high quality and engaging.  If you can match this, you're in good shape.

Gary Price presentation

Gary Price's presentations always rock.  If you ever have the chance, go to one.  And if you've seen him before, see him again--because each presentation is different.  The times change, resources change, and Gary changes his material just as quickly.  Fortunately for us, more and more bloggers are catching his presentations all over the country and posting their notes.  The CogSci Librarian has posted extensive notes from the presentation Gary did recently for Nelinet.  You can get Gary's original presentation as well.

Create your own RSS feeds for pages with none of their own

Thanks to A Feed Is Born for pointing to FeedsYes.com.  FeedsYes.com will create an RSS feed for the page of your choice that doesn't produce a feed of its own.  I tried it on a few pages, and the feeds work very well. This is an easy way for libraries to add RSS feeds to those pages on their websites that are updated frequently and would benefit from some RSSifying: newsletters, recommended resources guides, events pages...you name it!

Library website goals

John Blyberg gives some good pointers on what library websites should be aiming for to meet the expectations and needs of our users.  He talks quite a bit about the importance of a single sign-on (a worthy goal that is all but impossible from my oh-so-practical small library point of view).  Worth a read if your library is thinking about what to do next with the website.

Karen and the Sucky OPAC

Karen Schneider's latest post on the ALA TechSource Blog, "How OPACs Suck, Part 1: Relevance Rank (Or the Lack of It)," points out some very real problems with library OPACs in terms of a lack of adequate relevancy ranking.  From her post:

Relevance ranking is just one of many basic search-engine functionalities missing from online catalogs. NCSU worked around it by adding a search engine on top of its catalog database. But the interesting questions are: Why don't online catalog vendors offer true search in the first place? and Why we don't demand it?

Tomorrow I'm giving a presentation at our library's All Staff Day about the future of e-services, and one of the things I'm predicting is that we'll see some very specific massive changes in the way OPACs look and work in the next few years.  This relevancy ranking issue is one of those changes I'd like to see happen.  I agree with Karen that this is something that librarians should be demandi