LibrarianInBlack

Best Practices for Library Wireless, Public Use Computers, and Laptop Checkouts

Your favorite and mine, the MaintainIT Project, has posted a new resource: "Recipes for a 5-Star Library."  The guide discusses wireless best practices, public use computer printing and time out management, and laptop checkout programs.  These areas are extremely practical and things I often get asked about when traveling to small and/or rural libraries.  Practical = Good = More Change = More Good.

Create Library WebClip icons for iPhone users

Want to make your library's catalog and/or website more usable for your mobile users?  One step is to create an iPhone Webclip icon so that iPhone users can bookmark your site and create what Apple calls a "Webclip" on their opening screen.  And you know what?  You're in luck - Aaron Schmidt did it for his library (see below).  And a nice tutorial from Dan Dickinson (that Aaron linked to) tells you how to do it.

screenshot, and awesome WebClip, by Aaron Schmidt

ProQuest Search Widget

In the library world, we love our widgets.  And now we have a new one.  If you subscribe to ProQuest databases, consider plopping a ProQuest Search Widget on your website someplace--perhaps in pathfinders that recommend a specific database, or a research guide recommending a series of ProQuest databases.  Now what we need is excellent and effective meta-searching technology (not holding my breath) and a widget for that.  And in short order, right?

iChapters

On the same "green" theme, I recently got an email from someone about iChapters, which is a textbook retailer that focuses on eBooks and eChapters.  They have a presence on Facebook as well.  Their prices are pretty good, but the cool thing is that they plant trees:

Every time you buy one of our eBooks or eChapters, we will plant a tree in your honor through Paso Pacifico, our Non-Profit tree planting partner. We also hope that you will join this effort by planting as many trees as you wish.

The Green Guide

Librarians' Internet Index's "New This Week" featured a Green Guide a while ago that caught my attention.  Aptly entitled The Green Guide, it's from National Geographic and includes more information than most of these fad-inspired "green guide" sites that have cropped up in recent months.  You'll find product reviews, blogs, tips and tricks, quizzes, articles, and a free weekly eNewsletter.  Take a look - I think you'll find this one passes muster.

Rural and Small Libraries conference proposals needed

The Association of Rural and Small Libraries is looking for conference proposals for their conference in Sacramento this year.  If you have something to share, submit something!  You don't need to be a professional presenter to present at any conference - if you have something to say, a good experience, some great tips, then share that with everyone else.  I know many of my blog readers are rural and small library staff, so I do encourage you to participate.  Below is some information.

Please consider submitting a workshop proposal for the 2008 Annual conference of the Association for Rural and Small Libraries (ARSL) which will be held here in Sacramento on September 19-21, 2008!  They are seeking 15 one-hour workshop presentations.

It would be great to be able to showcase the wonderful work you all do with the national audience that will be here for the conference.  Deadline is February 7.  Don't miss this great opportunity!

More information about ARSL, the conference and program proposals can be found at www.webjunction.org/arsl.

Google Librarian Central has a 7 month summer break?

Phil Bradley posted on this right before I was going to.  I guess our minds think alike. 

Remember Google Librarian Central?  And that newsletter that was supposed to go out to librarians?  Right.  Well, they haven't updated the newsletter since May of 2007, and nothing at all has been posted on the updates blog since June of 2007 when they were taking a summer break to consider the future of the site.  Umm...it's been a long time, Google.  I'd love to have summer breaks that last into the winter.  Have you abandoned your librarians?  An update at the very least would be nice - if we're no longer on your radar, just let us know.  Just don't let it stagnate there, all sad and deprived...

Fame and not necessarily fortune

Karen Schneider wrote an eloquent (of course) and thought-provoking post on being famous (within libraryland, specifically) and Jessamyn West followed up with some helpful thoughts of her own.  Everything they both said rings true with me, a D-list pseudo-well-known face in the library world.  I could write volumes about how I've had to scale back my speaking and writing engagements because of my personal life and my health, or how I am sad at having to do so because if I could write and speak full time I would, or how I didn't intend to be well-known but my blog (which I started for myself, really) got my name out in places I never would have thought, or how easy it is to get offended when someone disagrees with you publicly, or how people take what I say way more seriously than they probably should, on and on and on.  Suffice it to say that reading Karen's and Jessamyn's posts will fill in all of those gaps
and offer up some amazing and practical advice to people looking to enter the public arena in libraryland, or those who are already in it and feel something needs to change.

Ten Questions to Ask New Employees

Peter Bromberg (Library Garden) offers us a list of ten questions to ask every new employee (plus two bonus questions--sweet!).  I admired the thoroughness of the questions he came up with, as well as the directness and bravery of some of the questions.  It's never good to ask a question when you have a good feeling the answer is going to insult you or your work, but that's just what he did.  For example: '

"Are there any policies that you don't understand the rationale for? Are there any policies that strike you as just plain nuts?"

I personally would ask more about the library's digital presence - not just the website but the library's catalog, the eBooks, databases, extended web presence through sites like Flickr and Facebook...  But then again I recognize I am biased.  I, for one, am keeping this question list (and all of the helpful comments sent in by readers) for any new employees I come across.

Digital Television Converters - coupons!

A lot of people (my massage therapist, my mother, my chiropractor, my best non-librarian friend) ask me about the whole digital TV thing - what do they need, when will they need it, why is it happening...all of that.  ALA put out a nice printable flyer for libraries to put out for users, but as the nation finally converts once and for all to an all-digital television system, libraries can do something else for their users too - tell them about the coupons available to them.  The U.S. government is offering households up to two $40 coupons to help pay for converter boxes, if they are needed. ALA, in collaboration with the NTIA and the DTV Transition Coalition, sponsored an awareness week in December to help get the word out but there are still a lot of people who don't know.  Send then to the TV Converter Box Coupon Program's website for all the information they need.  And read this informative Library Journal article for more information!

ChatStat - live chat service with library potential

I tried a new online chat software tool today called ChatStat.  You can connect with their sales or support staff via the very product they are selling, which is kind of nice - it gives you a real live demonstration of what the product looks like from the end user's point of view.  I wasn't the first in line, and the system notified me of that with a quick "queue" message, which I appreciated. 

Some of the features they offer are VOIP and IM integration, Skype support, live traffic monitoring, usage statistics, multi-platform IM aggregation (think Meebo or Trillian), canned scripts for the operators (librarians), the ability to give users an option to leave a message if no one can respond immediately, the ability to push pages (!!!), the ability to email chat transcripts (!!!), and a lot more.  They also offer a feature comparison chart comparing their product to that of several competitors like Livehelper and LiveChatNow.  This service, unlike many of the others I've seen and tried over the years, sounds like offers many of the same features that library chat services do - the ones we're all so hung up on that we can't make the jump to other less-resource-intensive systems.

The service offers a free week-long trial.  Their pricing is very granular - based on a "per feature" chart, with monthly prices listed.  No matter what, though, the pricing is super cheap compared to some of the products libraries are using now for collaborative chat cooperatives.  The screenshots of their various features will help you get a sense of what you're using.  Take a look!  I know I am certainly interested!

Reference and Social Networking presentation

David Lankes speaks often about participatory reference, refocusing reference services to center around the user.  He spoke at the OCLC Symposium on Reference and Social Networking and has posted his slides, audio, and video of the presentation on his blog: Virtual Dave...Real Blog.  The ideas Lankes presents are very forward-thinking.  If his blog is not one you read, take a look at some of the recent posts; I think you'll be impressed.

Bookchase

Bookchase® is a new board game about books--you get your own library card, a book shop, and your own bookshelf on which to shelve your own teensy books.  All for 30 British pounds.  A bit pricey for a board game, but hey...it's got teensy books!!!!  You know, my birthday was a couple of weeks ago... :)

By the by, did anyone else notice that the large image in the center of the game board is that standard Microsoft clip art image of the stack of books?  Yes, that one...the one you're so tired of seeing on library posters and book lists.

 

Via kimbooktu via The Shifted Librarian

Ideal Black Material

Appropriate for this blog alone, the BBC reports that researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York have created the darkest material ever created.  This material was created from carbon nanotubes and described as "the closest thing yet to the ideal black material."  Be still my heart!  And lest you think such a thing has no practical use, the researchers propose uses in electronics and solar energy (really black stuff absorbs light ideally).  Next on the market: carbon nanotube velvet suits!

SmartMediaFinder.com

Here's another book/CD/DVD/game comparison site for your files: SmartMediaFinder.com.  I have yet to sit down and compare all of these comparison sites, but I figure different people like different types of comparison sites and as long as the data they're pulling in is current (which it is) and includes a wealth of sites (which it does), then I'm happy to say "hey, here's another one for your own list o' comparison sites!" 

I like this one because it includes games (I'm easily won).  I don't like this site because it only covers the big name vendors...not all the little guys (for books you can't beat AddAll.com).  And just like all of the others, because it neglects to tell people they can get these items for free at their local libraries...especially given the book rental category on this one.  And what's funny is that in most cases it seems like it's cheaper to buy the book than rent it, as if you needed more proof that we live in a disposable society.

Where does your ILS rank?

I'm a bit late in posting about this, but the results from Marshall Breeding's International Library Automation Survey have been posted and are well worth a look-through if you care about library catalogs at all (and you'd better care, mister, if you are reading this blog!).  Almost 2000 people from nearly 50 countries replied, giving the survey a very broad base.  You can see which companies fared best (and worst) in the areas of customer support, product quality, customer retention, and more.

Holy shelving games, Batman!

A Facebook status update from Amy Buckland lead me to this flash-based cataloging classification/shelving game.  Developed by someone at the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries, you have to shelve the LC-labeled books in the right spot - and then it gets harder...the call numbers go away and you have to go only by titles on the books.  There are some helpful cheats for those of us who aren't geniuses: a basic LC classification poster and a "hint" option, but it is still HARD.  I did really well when there were call numbers, and then failed miserably.  It was still fun though, in all its geekfoolery.

Parking Wars goes all black for Sarah

  Parking Wars goes all black for Sarah 
  Originally uploaded by Librarian In Black

Michael Porter recruited me for the Parking Wars Facebook game, which is genius in its set-up to let you ticket your friends (in the same way I like Vampire too—I get to bite and fight my friends, all in good fun mind you). Anyway, Parking Wars gives you cars, and you have to park them on your friends’ streets, but only in spots that allow that color—otherwise you run the risk of being ticketed by said friend. The colors on the spaces change from time to time, and today I awoke to my spaces being “Black Cars Only.” The beauty of such a thing was too great not to share :)

Fair use podcast

There is an informative 15 minute podcast about updates to fair use issues available through Nolo's podcasting service.  As libraries live and breathe fair use, this is a good resource, and a mandatory topic in general for anyone with any level of public service or responsibility in a library.  By that I mean reference, technology, circulation, and management staff.  Everybody.  We all come across fair use issues on a routine basis, and the better informed we all are, the better our public is served.

found through the Library Law Blog

LoC + Flickr = happy land

The Library of Congress is on Flickr.  For any libraries or repositories considering using Flickr as a way to make photos available and findable to the public, this is a huge endorsement.

Virtual Reference online course

ACRL is offering an online course running from late January through February entitled Virtual Reference Competencies II: Practice and Expand Communications Skills and Knowledge.  Diane Kovacs, virtual reference guru extraordinaire, is teaching the course and from the outline it seems that the lessons will have much information that will be useful for all virtual reference providers, not just academic libraries. The course's cost ranges between $60-$195, which is pretty darn good for an extensive online course like this.

found via the Digital Reference blog

Qwidget: a new path for QuestionPoint

QuestionPoint, the browser-based chat service offered by OCLC, now has a widget.  The widget will be made available as a preview in the next software install (est. 03/08).  The widget will funnel users to the regular QuestionPoint service that they would get through traditional means.  Possibly in response to a number of libraries unsubscribing from QuestionPoint, and some of them instead offering in-site, in-house access to reference chat through the MeeboMe widget (which funnels users to your IM service), OCLC decided to expand the inroads to its web-based chat service in this important way. 

In other words, instead of requiring your users to go to your library's website, find the link for "Ask Us," find the link for the QuestionPoint chatting option, and the get punted off to another page...now they can simply see a type-in window through this widget, which you can place on any webpage you like.  I commend OCLC on this decision, and hope that it will both bring them the users they desire and serve those users well.

This creates one less "negative checkmark" for web-based chat in the IM vs. web-based chat category, at least for QuestionPoint customers.  If you're interested in more of the comparison between IM services and web-based chat, I recommend an article Aaron Schmidt and I wrote in 2005: "Web-Based Chat VS. Instant Messaging" in ONLINE.  Some of the info needs appending, but in general the categories of consideration are still the same.

Wikia's baby steps

If you have not yet checked out the new, and controversial, Wikia search, then I suggest that you take a look.  If you're unaware of the project in general, Wikia is self-described as "a freely licensed (open source) search engine ... [based on] trusted user feedback from a community of users."

As many other, and smarter, people have said before I have, it will take a long time for this engine to build up a data base significant enough to make it work effectively.  Think of the time it took Wikipedia to grow.  It was fast...but not immediate.  On the site's "about" page it even admits that the results are now bad.  I would ask people not to write this off immediately, but to watch it, play with it from time to time, and definitely to be aware of it as all good library staff should be aware of new technology initiatives. 

Online adult television = no more library porn incidents?

A new TV-set-top service called FryeTV FyreTV debuted at the Adult Entertainment Expo offers 20,000 "adult" movies for a $10 monthly subscription.  They're fully keyword searchable and you can create playlists so you shall never have a dull moment.  My oh my how 2.0 has grown. 

The interesting idea for libraries, which the @ the Library blog so clearly articulated, was whether or not this would move some of those internet-adult-content-surfers into their own homes for access.  I still say no, because at the library, access and the content is usually free.  As I found recently during our library's testing and foray into the world of adult content online, there is pretty much enough free content on the various sites to keep anybody entertained for quite a long time.  And as long as there is free, I think many people will continue to use free...and to access it in an "anonymous" environment where they won't have a spouse checking the history file or looking over their shoulder.  Yes, I am aware that in a public library potentially the entire library is effectively looking over your shoulder, but people just don't seem to get that.

found via Wired Blog

EZproxy acquired

EZproxy was purchased by OCLC.  EZproxy is the leading software for remote patron authentication (for things like home access to eBooks or databases).  The founder, a librarian at the Maricopa Community Colleges in Arizona, will join OCLC as a full time consultant. 

AddArt

A new Firefox add-on that I haven't tried yet, but which intrigues me: AddArt.  It automatically replaces advertising images with images from one of two databases: Stars and Stripes and Mario Clouds (yes, Mario as in Mario Brothers).  If ads make you buggy, this is probably worth a try.  Me?  I have found that I have developed blind spots on the right, lower left, and top middle of all pages.  This may prove to be a disability in the future, but for now it means I don't see a bunch of cell phone and diet ads...bully for me.

found a long time ago via blogdriverswaltz.com

How to Study

How to Study offers study skills in a practical and easy to access format: everything from note-taking strategies, different learning styles, and overcoming procrastination (!).  You can even submit your own tips to the site.  This would be a useful resource to point out to your homework help staff, students, and parents.

found via Sites and Soundbytes

Sarah's Online Reference Warehouse: Real Estate

Sarah's Online Reference Warehouse is a new series on LibrarianInBlack.net.  For a decade now I have been keeping bookmark files (yes, old school, I know) of all of the websites I find helpful in a number of different reference categories.  I weed them regularly, add to them any time I find a new site, and keep them insanely and meticulously organized (which is why their transfer to del.icio.us or a similar site hasn't worked well in the past).  I have taught many classes for California's Infopeople library staff training program, probably teaching online reference to several hundred people.  But hey, why not share that information even further?  I thought I would start the Sarah's Online Reference Warehouse series as a way for me to share the best of the best of the web (according only to me, of course).  I hope some of you find it helpful, and that you find a few new sites to get your online reference happy-monkeys dancing again.  And that if you know of sites in this category that you, as library staff, find useful - share that with us (no solicitations please-they will only be deleted).

Let us begin.

 

Real Estate

There are a lot of great real estate sites out there to help people trying to sell their homes, buy homes, or rent.  Here are a few of the Real Estate sites that jump out to me:

• ApartmentFinder.com: The ultimate place to find a place to rent (I've used it twice successfully).  Search based on numerous criteria, including locations in proximity to colleges or military bases.
• DataQuick: A site listing sale numbers, prices, and more for various areas.  Custom reports available.
• For Sale By Owner: Just what it sounds like - listings of homes being sold independently.
• JustListed.com: A relatively new entry to the real estate fray, but one more place to look for listings.
• MLS Listings: Comprehensive listings by brokers and real estate agents.  This will not cover for-sale-by-owner properties (see above), but it does cover a lot.
• Real Estate.com: Search for homes for sale in your area, get information on lending, home valuation tools and calculators.
• Realtor.com: The mother of real estate listing sites: get listings on properties to buy or rent, get how-to guides on remodeling or designing, find advice and resources about moving (including quotes from vendors).
• Rentometer: Rental rate comparisons by area.
• Trulia: An easy to use site that lets you search for homes, see price trends by state or county, participate in discussions, and read city-based real estate guides.
• Yahoo! Real Estate: A multi-function site with home and apartment listings, information on local schools,  home loan data, and information on your area's home values.
• Zillow: Find homes for sale, post homes, track your home's value based on local trends, view maps of your home's area to view recent sales and postings, participate in discussions, and a lot more.
• ZIP Realty: Home listings, plain and simple, with some added calculators and resources.
  

Sky-Map

Sky-Map is a great site with information on all things space-related - astronomy, astrophysics, and so on.  It's a graphical site that lets you click on different sections of the sky and learn more about the different formations, bodies, and history of that area.  The site also offers a lot of information on different space-related phenomenon, largely articles supplemented with a huge quantity of quality images.  The site only covers items outside of our solar system, so be aware that it's not going to help with your kid's project on Pluto.  Hopefully that will be an omission that the site soon corrects.

Swivel on your chair, baby

I was recently introduced to Swivel: a site that is in preview mode only, and whose goal is to "liberate the world's data and make it useful so new insights can be discovered and shared."  It allows people to upload data to their site using Excel, and then post graphs and interpretations of that data (like this graph of FDA drug approvals).  The ultimate goal is to have so much data that people can utilize that mass amount of raw data to inform opinion and decisions.  I find it to be an interesting concept, but it's hard for me to imagine a significant number of people and organizations dumping their data in one place, one "Wikipedia-esque" repository.  Data is ultimately intimately related to other information, and tends not to be separated out as a separate entity in most people's minds.  But, Swivel is definitely worth bookmarking, and keeping an eye on.

Social networking for libraries a bust?

A University of Michigan survey asked its students a number of tech-related questions, but one in particular is riling librarians far and wide.  One question found that by and large the respondents use social networking sites, but the majority (76%) would not respond to a library presence on Facebook or MySpace, either because existing methods of contact were sufficient or because these tools are social networks and not places for library invaders.  Read more interpretation on the UsersLib blog.  I would be very interested to see more surveys of this type, across organizations and locations, to see if this trend holds up.  Maybe we have been chasing a white whale with social networking and libraries...it's possible that we were wrong to believe that a social networking tool would attract all of its users to our services.  I'll admit to it for myself, at least. :)

Postscript: Read the comment below too, but to clarify my brief post above: I am not in any way saying that this means we shouldn't be in social networks, have a presence there.  The investment is low, and any payoff, therefore, is worthwhile.  But I do feel that social networks have been blown out of proportion in their ability to garner users.

Blaze a trail with Trailfire

For an interesting merge between knowledge management and social networking, check out Trailfire.  Users comment on sites, connect them to other sites, making a trail as you go.  It's kind of like a pathfinder, but actually driven and movable from place to place quite easily.  It's an interesting concept, and one for libraries to pay attention to.  Perhaps this is the type of system or set-up your users would find useful for their next web tutorial or "best business reference sites" list.  You can see a simple screenshot of how it works here. 

Where are your users clicking?

We're all impressed by pretty pictures, right?  And it's even better when the pictures tell us a story like with ClickHeat, a click-frequency tracking system that you can download and install for your library's website.  You can view click-frequency by various time frames and even limit to a particular browser.  You can even log in to their demo account to see what it looks like.  Read their FAQs to get more info.  I was impressed, and hey...with something that's free and well-reviewed, you can't go wrong!

pixer.us--edit photos in your browser

Another photo editing tool to add to your toolkit, and one that uses only your browser (no downloads): pixer.us. 

With pixer.us, you can resize, crop, rotate, flip, adjust brightness and contrast, color, futz around with blurring, and much more.  For those of us who don't have photo editing software on our staff computers and who hate MS Paint, these online tools can be REAL lifesavers.  What's sad to me is that there are so many free online tools that outdo a MS software program.  Sad, that.

World Digital Library

In October, the Library of Congress and UNESCO pledged to help create the World Digital Library, which is self-described as:

"The World Digital Library will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials. The objectives of the World Digital Library are to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, provide resources to educators, expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet, and to contribute to scholarly research."

A worthy endeavor indeed, and one that I am excited to follow.

New feeds for Tame the Web

Michael Stephens has upgraded his blog, Tame the Web, and there are now new RSS feeds.  So if you are a subscriber like I am, you will want to update your feed.  See more info in Michael's post on the new feeds.

Sarah Houghton-Jan’s Top Tech Trends for 2008, ALA Midwinter

Below are my Top Technology Trends for January of 2008.  I hope to attend virtually, but given some potential pitfalls, I felt it would be safer to post my trends in case my virtual self does not appear as hoped. 

If you would like to attend the real live Top Tech Trends session at ALA Midwinter, it is being held tomorrow, Sunday, January 13th, from 8-10 am, in the lOEWS Congress B.  And yes, that means that virtual participation from me would be coming in at 5am my time.  So, don't complain about the 8am face to face time, 'kay? :)

Tough Budget, Tech Stays

With a recession, or at least a persistent economic downturn, pending, libraries are counting their pennies and staying up late writing up proposals for why their budgets should not be some of the ones that are cut. Here in California we have a huge deficit, and where do we think the money is going to come from? Not from the prisons…not from the fire houses. Schools and libraries are among the most edgy, certainly. I do believe, though, that even in these times of tightening belts and even less funds for library services that most libraries will at least hold their technology budgets steady, realizing that a lack of outlay now means that next year the library will be even further behind and its users further disenfranchised. Technology budget lines seem to have become holy ground to many libraries, and I hope to see them stay that way (but then again I’m biased).

 

Widening of the Digital Divide and our Inattention to It

Every time I write about this I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. But the digital divide is a reality in our communities, and one that we aren’t paying enough attention to. It doesn’t matter what type of library you work for, it’s the same everywhere. All libraries have the technological haves and the have nots (and the people in the middle).  There are the people with the Bluetooth headsets, the Tivos, the Netflix, and the broadband access at home. The people who use the library’s electronic resources. The people who prefer RSS to email. And last but not least, the people who know the coolest sites out there for cat photos. But these people are not all of our people, especially in many rural and smaller communities. In the past (think: early days of the internet) we had tunnel visions toward the have nots, and catered out technology services to that group, for better or for worse. It’s imperative for us to realize, now, that we cannot make the opposite mistake this time and focus our services and priorities only/mostly on the haves, ignoring the segments of our communities who still lack the basic technology skills and equipment. That group may be smaller than it has been in the past, but the divide between that group and the tech-savvy population is ever-widening, putting an end to the divide further out of reach with each passing month. I worry that our attention on the haves, stimulated in large part by the influx of Web 2.0 (and now, possibly 3.0) technologies, will result in our continued inattention to the digital divide, much to the detriment of our entire service population.

User-Centered Content Production

We’re getting better about the whole user-centered vs. staff-centered debate in general. In the case of web content, libraries are starting to move in the direction of not only allowing users to create content on their sites (imagine!), but also to drive the individual appearance of that content through “MyLibrary” sites and the overall organization of that content as well. In two recent website redesigns I’ve helped with, the libraries decided to base the priority and organization of the navigation solely on what the users said they wanted. Out with the “staff think this is better” model, and in with the “it’s for the users, let them decide” model. And the content itself is changing—with most U.S. households owning a digital camera, and with digital video not far behind, it’s no longer just text and the occasional photo that we are soliciting from our users – it’s intelligent, interactive, multimedia that expands our site. The price? Letting go of a little bit of that control we’ve held so dear over the years. It’s very exciting to see libraries paying more attention to user needs and priorities in the web environment, just as we do in our physical locations.

 

Virtual Reference Software a la Rest-O'-The-World?

The phenomenon of instant messaging as a new way to provide reference services was quickly followed by libraries exploring non-library-world software to provide this essential service. We've seen libraries like the Ohio University Libraries using Skype to provide video reference, AskOntario will soon be using LivePerson for their service (which is already being used by the University of Windsor and the York/Ryerson collaborative virtual reference service), and several libraries' choosing to use various commercial text-messaging programs to provide live cell phone text-messaging (SMS) reference to their users. The live-people-connection-online world is bigger than our little pond, and I'm glad to see other libraries turning their viewing outward. (Note: after writing this, I see that Karen Schneider picked up on this topic as well—great minds think alike!)

 

We Stop Being So Bossy

We are experts in the realm of the online, as we are in the realm of print, but our behavior is a little different in the two worlds. We would never tell people that we know better than they do how they should read properly, or listen to a music CD. We know how to find the stuff—that’s what we do best—but when it comes to accessing and using it, that is up to the individual. We can make recommendations, and point our strategies, but we would never place ourselves in a superior category of user (at least not in front of the user *grin*). But we have taken on that holier-than-thou role when it comes to online services, where we are telling people repeatedly that we know the right way to behave online. We know what is safe. We know what is appropriate. We know what is cool. No…we…don’t. The mere fact that we put ourselves in to that patronizing role informs our users that we do not know what we’re talking about. Our users, especially/even our teen users (see the recent Pew study) know how to behave online, to protect private information, and to contribute in a productive way. Fortunately, I think libraries are starting to realize that instead of acting in a paternalistic and patronizing way toward our users in the realm of technology, we should act toward them exactly as we do in any other situation that bears on customer service: we collaborate, we share, and we work together.

 

Another Day of Open Source

We TTTers have been talking about open source for years now. And the talk continues as the library path to open source continues and matures. Libraries are starting to look more and more to open source, and the initial fumblings have morphed into some well-thought-out and confident experiments with open source. We’ve moved beyond the basics, like using open source blog and wiki software. Libraries are blazing full ahead using open source ILSs, open source productivity software on public and staff computers (office software, browsers), and a lot more. The flexibility that our users are looking for in our end products drives what we need to purchase at the back end in order to provide that. In many cases, the locked-down un-customizable nature of commercial products does not work for libraries (think the craziness of the locked down nature of Microsoft Word or any fill-in-the-blank-name ILS. Libraries are more willing now than before to fund a computer programmer position instead of sinking zillions of dollars into a system that they have to tweak the heck out of to get it to even work. In many cases, the man hours are less to use an open source solution and build it from scratch than it would be to simply tweak some behemoth of a product that requires thousands of changes. In the end, in order to provide our users with the best experience, more and more libraries, especially more public libraries are turning to the open source world to fulfill their users’ needs…and it makes me smile.

Evergreen ILS Facebook Group

Just in case I was not the last person on earth to hear about this, there is a Facebook group dedicated to the Evergreen Open ILS and is described as "an informal virtual social gathering of Evergreen fans, devotees, and users."  This group should provide an instant community and lively discussion for anyone working with, experimenting with, or interested in Evergreen.

found via the open-ils blog

Tips for Conference Bloggers

OK, library conference bloggers.  Listen up!  You now have a tome to which to refer when you face those conference blogging dilemmas.  Do I paraphrase or quote directly?  Can I take that guy's photo and not irritate/blind him in the process?

Tips for Conference Bloggers is a free 6-page PDF booklet written by two well-known conference bloggers: Ethan Zuckerman and Bruno Giussani.  Your conference blogging will improve and you will impress your fellow conference-goers (and probably get more traffic on your blog).  Enjoy!

found via Cool Tools

Where to list your library's blog online

Looking for places to submit your library blog to so your users will find it?  Look no further!  Check out this list of 20 Essential Blog Directories to Submit Your Blog To, written by Loren Baker for Search Engine Journal.  I have recommended other places to look in the past, like:

• Feed Submitter, which submits your blog’s feed to 15 sites at once
• Robin Good’s list of where to submit your blog and feed
• and the RSS Specifications list of where to submit your feed

Between all of these, you should be well-advertised!

January Cites & Insights

Walt Crawford's January Cites & Insights is available for reading.  The piece entitled "A Time of Limits?" was quite intriguing, examining the presumption that "everyone" has all of these wonderful technology services (cell phones, Netflix, etc.) and the actual reality of the digital divide and people who can't actually afford to buy these things end up buying them anyway to "keep up."

BookCrossing.com

Read a book.  Leave it in a public place.  Post its location and let people go after it like the scavenger hunters at heart that they are.  Leave a book, take a book.  Let others who don't even know what the program is find the books and happily share knowledge and entertainment.

That is the concept behind BookCrossing.com, a site that claims over 4 million registered books already. A New York Times article about the service, by someone who lives near me, was written a few weeks ago.  It's a fun concept, and if you're the type who's into geocaching, then this might be for you too.

Web and Graphics Workers Needed for LibrarianInBlack.net - applicants wanted!

Update: I have found someone to handle the work, so no more inquiries please! 

I am looking for someone to do some basic website work on this blog.  It is a few years old now, and aside from some kludged together functionality I've added, it hasn't changed much since its inception.  So, at long last, the site will improve.  I swear :)

I am looking for someone who is familiar with HTML and CSS (and preferably javascript too), familiar with blogging software and capabilities, with some semblance of graphic design skills, and who is willing to invest some hours in improving the site.   

I will pay on an hourly basis.  I just need an estimate up-front.  I will also credit the new design and work on the site itself, so if people are looking for resume-building projects, this would be an easy one.  Here's what I'm looking for in detail:

Scope of Work for changes to LibrarianInBlack.net

1. Set up new hosting with LIShost (yay Blake, I haven't told you this yet, but yay!), moving from Typepad, including changing domain name referral and alias preferences on GoDaddy
2. Migrate entire site from Typepad to Word Press
3. New navigation and sub-pages (navigation--Home, About, Contact, Presentations, Publications)
4. Simplifying RSS feeds and email subscriptions through Feedburner
5. New, simple banner design
6. New look and feel for entire site. Nothing fancy is required--just something simple
7. Create a favicon

Some of these tasks are simple while others will take quite a bit of time.  I am also willing to parse the work out - having someone do the web work (#1 - #4), and someone else do the graphics work (#5 - #7)If you would be interested, please drop me a line (contact info in upper right).  If you know someone who would be interested, please forward this on to them.  Thanks!

Whaddya do with LibraryThing?

I have heard a lot of library staff talk about the wonders of LibraryThing, but in the same breath wonder how it could be used in the library.  LibraryThing has a wonderful page devoted to things you can do with LibraryThing.  Some of the ideas are clearly transferable to libraries.

• Put LT on your blog: Create a cute little book-cover-badge showing books in your library.  Libraries could use this by creating a "library" of recent arrivals or bestsellers, or even a special featured subject or collection.
• Put LT in your catalog: Install LibraryThing for Libraries in your catalog, adding reviews and recommendations from the ga-jillion LT users out there.
• Button it, baby: Advertise your LT account on your website with a button

What else can you think of?

Incidentally on that same page, you can buy LibraryThing merchandise, including a cute little barcode scanner shaped like a cat.  You can also sign up to for LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program and get freebie pre-pub books from publishers, in exchange for reviews on LibraryThing of course.

Teens are savvy online users

We librarians like to baby teens.  "How young they are, how innocent!"  Which is often followed by "And we must teach them how to use the Internet the right way."  Which is often followed by Sarah screaming silently inside her mind.

But we're wrong.  Dead wrong.  We're wrong to assume that they don't know what they're doing and wrong to assume that they have somehow remained innocent of all of the various threats online.

The Pew Teens and Social Media Survey (available as a PDF) released a couple of weeks ago showed that:

• 64% of online teenagers ages 12 to 17 engaging in at least one type of content creation
• 54% of wired girls post photos online compared with 40% of online boys
• 19% of online teen boys posted video content in a public place, compared with 10% of online girls
• 89% of those teens who post photos say that people comment on the images at least "some of the time"
• 66% of teens with an online profile use the site's privacy features to restrict access
• Just over half of teens with online profiles post false information
• Only 11% post both a first and last name
• Only 5% post their full name, photo, city, or state

On the same topic, a recent AP-AOL Instant Messaging Trends Survey showed that more teens use IM for homework (55%) than for dating (22%).  Surprised?  I hope not.  Teens are smart.  They have needs in their lives, like graduating for example, and will use the tools that will best help them meet that goal - like IM!  If this isn't enough convincing that your library should be seriously considering offering IM reference, then read Aaron Schmidt's post on this survey.

Both of these studies show me what I have long known from anecdotal interactions with teens and twenty-somethings - they're a lot smarter than we give them credit for and not only do they not need the hand-holding online that we've offered to them, they resent it.  After all, part of being a teen is finding your own way.  With some gentle guidance, let's offer them the opportunity to do just that instead.  They've proven that they can handle it.

And on the kids front, lest they be left out, a new poll from Cable in the Classroom finds that parents have gotten more proactive about talking with their children, very young children in some cases, about safe online behavior.  85% of parents and legal guardians of online children ages 6 to 18 have talked about online safety with their child/children in the past year.  Better yet, over 93% have taken some form of action (what exactly, it's not made clear) in order "to make sure the Web sites their kid visits meets with their approval."  Even though 71% report some sort of negative online incident with their kids in the last year, the negative incidents fell into categories you might not expect.  52% were advertising or commercialism related, 31% simply felt their kids spent too much time online, 26% felt their kids didn't exercise enough because of the Internet, and only 24% were exposed to "coarse language, or sexual or violent content online," which is the most-often-cited "bad boogeyman" when it comes to scaring parents about their kids being online.  From this study's numbers, that means that of all online teens, only 17% of the parents of people aged 6-18 were aware of any profanity, violence, or sexual content viewed online by their kids in the last year.  Given the breadth of the ages they're covering (I'm sure the teens swayed that number), this is a cause for hope - kids go online for what they've always relied on offline sources for over past generations.  By and large, they're interested in kid-stuff...not the big scary things we're afraid they're accidentally going to happen upon.  Kids are smart too...

Top Blogging and Social Software Sites

Back in October, a study was released showing the visits to top blogging and social software sites.  The results were surprising (at least to me), and I've been trying to process them ever since to get a handle on why they are as they are.  You can view the results in a good article on Search Engine Journal's website.

Part of what confused me was the growth rates - MySpace is growing at about 20% annually while Facebook is growing at about 150% annually.  Facebook is set to overtake MySpace eventually - but will it be before the next big site hits?  MySpace's 20% is still a huge number - will it continue to grow?  It was also interesting to see AOL's two attempts at social software failing miserably, both decreasing significantly in use over the last year.  Where do those users go?  Who picks them up?

On the blogging side, Xanga is going down the toilet with a 34% decrease in the last year, while lil' ol' WordPress is growing like gangbusters - up 290% in the last year.  But Blogger is still, by far, the most popular blogging software.  Why?  They're free and they were early in the game - two ingredients for Fiscal Bliss 2.0.

Carrot: open source clustering search engine

Looking for a free search engine to install on your library's website?  Check out Carrot, an open source clustering search engine.  Below is what I get for a search for San Francisco.

You can try out the demo searching site to see how it works, or download it yourself to install on any site you choose.  Not only does it cluster results by topic area, site, and sources, it also offers multiple tabs -- so you can be searching various sites/resources at once (in the demo, it's the web, Yahoo! News, Wikipedia, etc.).  This could be quite handy for a library that could get this to work with databases...faceted search across multiple databases.  A tab for the catalog, one for the library's eBooks, one for research databases, one for the library website, and one for the open web.  Ah, to dream!

found via eHub

WorldCat.org Facebook application

OCLC has a Facebook application for WorldCat.org.  What does this mean?  Install a little app from within your Facebook account, and you can search WorldCat.org's database of items without having to go out to the WorldCat website.  The official Facebook app page offers quite a bit of information on how it works.  Gerry McKiernan has also posted some informative screenshots and information on his blog, Friends: Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services.  There are 300 people who have added the application as of today.

(thanks to Gerry's post on LITA-L alerting me to this app!)

The Race to the Shelf

An interesting article appeared in January's Searcher magazine: "The Race to the Shelf Continues: The Open Content Alliance and Amazon.com" by Beth Ashmore and Jill E. Grogg.  Going beyond the Google Books project, the article discusses two big digitization initiatives, OCA and Amazon's, and how these collections can affect libraries.

survey on libraries and search engines/gigantic websites

A study being done by Primary Research Group is looking at libraries use of and relations to search engines and other large websites.  The researchers are looking for public, special, and academic libraries to participate.  The survey closes on January 7th, so get your tho