Tame The Web

Mac Central, originally uploaded by Betchaboy.

Judy O’Connell & Will Richardson at a workshop in Australia.

Read this: http://heyjude.wordpress.com/2008/05/10/the-creative-edge/

Tells a story doesn’t it…bloggers, innovators, champions of change, creators of 21st century learning. Using a MAC of course!

This spring GSLIS students voted for one of our faculty for the Excellence in Teaching award. The winner was Mary Pat Fallon. As part of the award, she gave a brief speech at commencement that really fired up our grads and the gathered faculty in the auditorium. She agreed to let me publish part of the speech here:

When I think of messages I think of one of my favorite quotes by Neil Postman, the late education scholar: “Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.”…….

No, my use of Postman’s words is more an acknowledgement of the fact that we were all children once; that we are all the living messages of our own upbringings and educations —–sent out into the world to be shared with others. ……..And I think it is appropriate on an occasion like this – a day when we send so many more living messages out into the world – and at a school like this – a Dominican University whose guiding principles are captured in two words: caritas and veritas – to ask ourselves:

what sort of message am I, and what sort of message do I wish to be?

Those of us who study the information sciences know that information is the heart of the message. No message can truly be a message if it is devoid of information. But the idea of messages is a bit more complicated than the mere acknowledgement of that.

Someone once said, “Knowledge is constructed of facts, as a house is constructed of bricks. But knowledge is no more a pile of facts than a house is a pile of bricks.”  A process is needed to organize those facts and we call that process education.

Education is what human beings have invented to organize, classify, categorize, preserve, and pass on information from one generation to the next, so that we have knowledge, not merely piles of facts, and so that we can create – and become – messages that hold meaning for the world.

Education ought to make us aware that all information is not equal. There is good information and bad information, useful information and trivial information, productive information and destructive information. And, of course, there is truth, and there are lies. ……………..There is a value to information, and part of the process of education is evaluation – determining the value of a piece of information.

You graduates here today, about to go forth to become living messages to the world, have been fortunate to attend a University that does teach the value of information, because it proclaims that very value as the standard to which all information must be held: veritas.

We’re all sorely tempted to be who we’re supposed to be, to do what we’re supposed to do, to know what we’re supposed to know, and to leave the revolutions to the experts. But the technological changes of the last generation – including all of the information technologies that link us together, scholar to scholar, mind to mind, and heart to heart – have delivered a revolution to our own doorsteps despite our very best efforts to be busy elsewhere.

We cannot escape global change and so we’re faced with a choice: to hide from it or to engage it. And in engaging global change, we respond to the other great guiding principle that rationalizes Dominican University, —–caritas. We must be concerned with our world and with one another in the days and years ahead because, whether we like it or not, we are all connected.

A week before he was murdered forty years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr., preached a sermon in the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. He titled it, “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.” In it, he hit upon the very essence of the caritas upon which our University rests. He told us,

Through our scientific and technological genius, we have made of this world a neighborhood and yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools…….. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly…… For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be—– until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be—- until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.

King’s message lives on because it is true; and its truth resides in its appeal to our compassionate love and concern for others.

And this, finally, is what I wish for you, what we all wish, we the faculty, staff, and administration of Dominican University:  to be living messages of caritas and  VERITAS,  of compassionate love and truth —-to a future we will not see; a future that’s expecting much less.

So as you leave Dominican University today to continue your lives as messages to a world your ancestors never saw, but your children and grandchildren will inherit, I urge you to take with you on your journey those two guiding principles, those two fundamental values which support this University: caritas and veritas.

I urge you to be not only truthful, but true—– to yourselves, to your values, to your world……. And I ask you, above all, to care. My heartfelt message to you is very precise:….. be a message of truth and a message love. 

Thank you and again congratulations.

Michael introduces Karen, originally uploaded by Michael Casey.

I was nervous!

We now have many new methods for connecting to our users.

There is a huge amount of reader enthusiasm happening at Amazon and LibraryThing, but we are not doing it in our own software. DaVinci Code has 3519 reviews at Amazon.

WorldCat has five reviews for The Davinci Code, but three say “Test.”

Weblogs: Immediacy. Informality.

The architecture of participation: blogs are tools. You don’t need to blog, but be the type of library that could be blogging.

Twitter: Why would you not use this in your library?

Tagging at Flickr: People in the community often know things we don’t.

Examples:

ACS Library Del.icio.us Page

TwitterProse

LOC Flickr Project

Darien Library

Great exploration of getting started with blogs: software, posting, writing policies (don’t take a year to do it!), training, finding your niche, scheduling posting, and “found content.” Content from other sources, link dumps, interesting facts about circulation, marketing materials from your library are all examples of found content.

For your authors: You want style, voice and authenticity. Find ways to make the human connection: use “you” or ask questions. A question pulls you in.

Comment Strategy: Allow comments, moderate them and do it quickly. Moderate not for grammar or prose but for comments slamming the library. Let everything else through and thank them for commenting.

Who is keep track of what people are saying about your library on the Web?

And then on to comments and questions! Thanks KGS!

SOLINET Annual Membership Meeting, Atlanta, GA, originally uploaded by mstephens7.

I really enjoyed opening the 2008 SOLINET Annual Membership Meeting. The crowd was lively and fun.

Download the slides from my keynote here, it’s a customized hybrid of THL.

The reception last night rocked as well. I got to mix and mingle with library folk from all over the Southwest. Today, I’m looking forward to Karen Schneider’s closing keynote.

This one time I had a Professor tell me you have to start something new at least once a month. Her idea was that we are these “perpetual discovery engines” Apply, apply, apply was a core tenet. The greatest ideas she believed came from remixing. School was this ultimate test of your ability to create.

School, she felt, should be a complete playground where you push yourself to work within the confines of; to be creative in spite of everything, everyone may ever throw at you. I always liked that idea. Working from the inside out always seemed to be where the most effective change comes from anyway. Sure, a new pair of Nikes makes you feel fast -when you’re in Kindergarten. Later you learn where real speed comes from: years of training that make you look like an overnight success.

Anybody can be creative outside of their organization but can you be creative within those confines?

TTW: Lee

Thanks Reference Librarian Association, originally uploaded by mstephens7.

The Hyperlinked Library at North Suburban Library System today - great group.

Via one of the Dom Profs:

http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0811.pdf

Just downloaded to read. Looks great so far:

The most profound impact of the Internet is its ability to support and expand the various aspects of social learning. 

Don’t miss:

http://blog.zsr.wfu.edu/pd/2008/05/02/roz-at-loex-teaching-web-20-to-students-15/

Their own Web 2.0 Awareness Survey

74 students

Awarness of Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Blogs, Podcasts, Social tagging, Wikipedia, Other Wikis, RSS

• RSS had not heard of 92%, 0% had ever used
• Social Bookmarking 68% had not heard of
• Other Wikis 45% had not heard of
• Podcasts 51% had heard of but had not used
• 5% had blogs
• 8% had uploaded videos

Audience discussed how their students compare - similar experiences — students are not seeing new technologies as ‘exciting’ the way librarians do….for them it’s like a new feature on a car — or a refrigerator…..

Librarians respond to Web 2.0 — we see it as a way to connect, market, facilitate — but do students want us there?

Read the whole post. Libraries may be extending presence and service via the tools but are we also tapping into how our students are using them?

Friday I was tickled to spend the day with the staff at Warren Newport Public Library, in Gurnee, Illinois for their Staff In Service. The theme of the day was WNPL 2.0, so I think I was in the right place.

I was especially thrilled to customize THL for them, complete with slides that highlighted the cool things they are doing. One surprise was finding a Yelp review I was able to incorporate into the show:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/warren-newport-public-library-gurnee

I stayed for a nice lunch (complete with many vegetarian options), and watched a bit of the breakouts: gaming, DDR, video-making for YouTube and web 2.0 exploration. I appluad the planning team for the day, the library’s insightful director Stephen Bero, and the staff as a whole. They were engaged, curious and ready to explore.

Flickr Set here

The Hyperlinked Library: WNPL 2.0 are here.

Dominican Graduate Schools Commencement May 2008, originally uploaded by mstephens7.

Congratulations to all of the Dominican GSLIS graduates!

Leah kindly posed with me at the after party. I had a bit of a moment, realizing that she was in my very first LIS701 class the semester I started teaching full time in Fall 2006. Fresh from her undergrad, she jumped right into our program, was featured in the “If You’re not Gaming, You’re Losing” video and she just got a job!

Again: Congrats to Leah and all of our GSLIS students. Go forth!

jean the bowler, originally uploaded by royce kitts.

Royce Kitts writes:

The director of the Parsons Public Library wii bowling.
Parsons is a very cool library. Please check it out if you are in the neighborhood.

Evolution of a "Hotlist", originally uploaded by mstephens7.

I saw the word “hotlist” on a Web page today and it reminded me of the SJCPL Hotlist from the late 90s. I worked for HOURS inputting suggested links and annotations into the site, by hand coded HTML!

Now, it’s a wiki:

www.libraryforlife.org/subjectguides/index.php/Main_Page

Incorporating this into my presentations - good example of evolution.

Michigan Tags, originally uploaded by mstephens7.

There’s a lot to like here: user login, a toolbar button, and some fun tags to explore — check it out:

www.lib.umich.edu/mtagger/

What about the work your department does -any way to make it easier? Would you be willing to invest in: technology or training or people? Who could make it happen for you; or can anything be outsourced or automated? Below, a few friends from library land respond to various questions -real and virtual friends.
—

You know the deal. “stuff” that wastes time…that’s kind of tough to put my mind around at the moment. 3 things, one sentence. Riiiiight. This is a whole can of worms.

I think the largest overall problem for me is transparency of tools. Formatting Word documents for signage/documentation is a nightmare in most situations. Hand-feeding information into a local knowledge database that no one uses. Overlap of two separate event/calendar systems that must be managed manually since two unfriendly systems are used.

These are difficult problems to change because of institutional implementation. An institution becomes invested into a software system that may not be the best tool for the job, it results in staff doing all of the tweaking to make that tool create a product to fit in the desired box. Why can’t we have tools that simply make the product fit in the box? There should never be a moment of “how do I trick Word into doing xxxx and then save to PDF because it cannot natively print the document as laid out?”

Another example, our subject librarians have our reference students check book lists from publishers against our catalog and our union catalog to determine what to add to the collection. Why isn’t the publisher (who charges outrageous prices anyway) analyzing our collection and telling us from the beginning what we don’t have? Send us brochures and offers customized to our collection. It really wouldn’t be that difficult.

Damned inefficiency. That’s when I get frustrated and waste an hour or two on Facebook instead. :-)”
—

I do so much different work... its hard to say what would make it easier.Short list:
better mechanisms for finding books (catalog sucks)
less silos of information to explain to people
better communication methods within and between departments so that I wouldn’t have to wander around or call 5 people to get an answer about something
I don’ t think those are the answers you are looking for, but that’s what I could think of. There are things that I might like, that might help me work better in certain cases- better software, better equipment, etc. But the main difficulties I feel I face during the day have to to with people and the general sad state of library search and discovery tools.
Do I feel there are parts of my job that could be outsourced to someone? Not really, but that’s because I feel that I am indispensable and nobody does work as well as me
—

For me, work would be easier if I was paired with some inspiring, collaborative individuals who sought out new and exciting changes. The ability to work with such a team would be an excellent mentoring opportunity for a young professional like myself and a motivational push to do excellent at whatever I pursue. In this case, technology wouldn’t solve much and neither would training - I think it may just be happenstance that puts all these all-star individuals in one group. As for outsourcing, I believe that some of the doldrums that arise from basic computer maintenance could be delegated to some willing and able computer science student workers - whether this is truly outsourcing is your call to make.

—

1. Administrative staff who understand support roles and needs like making labels, filing mail, creating basic data entry spreadsheets, confirming meetings, etc. Do you really want to this to be what a librarian gets paid to do?
2. People to provide faculty development regarding teaching info lit, especially web-based instruction. Marketing person.
3. Appropriate furniture & equipment: need chairs & tables in many places for many uses.
4. Leadership. Mine, someone else’s - but someone please lead.
There are tons of technology things I would like, too…. but mostly some creative folks with great attitudes that can ‘make it so’.
—

I found myself having the official role of minute taker at meetings of the Collection Development Team. My role really had to do with the faculty having a person to record their thoughts—an activity which added value to their ideas by committing them to writing, giving their ideas coherence and distributing them to others. This task asserted their superiority to library assistants (people with ideas vs. people who just record the ideas of others). In general, tasks where staff service librarians ought to be discouraged. Tasks which get the work done at the direction of a librarian are, of course, good management.

I have seen system administrators bypass system upgrades that would be helpful to the staff. Some libraries only do whole number system upgrades by policy even if the content of some of the other upgrades would be helpful to staff. If there are more rapid upgrades, then the staff has to roll with the punches more and learn on the fly. On the issues of other technologies (chat, intranet, etc.), these technologies ought to be offered to staff/librarians as a means to connect to patrons, but should be an option of the staff/librarian. Technology should be available to serve patrons which is congruent with the communication style of the patrons and the staff/librarians.

Public services done by private companies takes public money and puts it in the pockets of private companies. If the private firm is able to do the work and make a profit, then the public library ought to hire people and save the taxpayer the cost of the private firm’s profit. It is also a good that a town or county hire its own citizens: have the community serve the community.
—

3 things:
1. Having a mentor makes my work easier, definitely!
2. If any technology helps me in doing my work faster and more efficient, I will buy it!
3. Some sort of training to minimize learning time.
Parts of my work that can be outsourced are work that are kind of mechanical and repetitive, like inserting grades and downloading assignments.
Overall, anything to optimally use my TIME, I will definitely consider it.
—

I think the relationship between publishers and libraries is far too complex to be described in simple and dismissive terms. You might ask why we have to subscribe to Elsevier journals–the answer is that the tenure mill and the promotion track demand publication in established, peer-reviewed, high impact journals. We have to buy the journals our faculty have to publish in, like it or not. It would be great if we, the librarians, could get the academic establishment on board with our open access initiatives and it’s good to see that there is some progress in that direction. Oh, there goes that pushing for change in an incremental system again….

If you knew how much time my colleagues in the state university system spend on negotiations with Elsevier, holding their feet to the fire for the good of the entire SUS, you would thank them, and not think of them as partners in crime.
—

What about you? Have you made any lists for stuff you want to change, lately?

TTW Contributor: Lee LeBlanc

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Brunswick-Glynn County Public Library, originally uploaded by CliffLandis.

Cliff Landis writes:

It’s hand-crafted! Gotta give them that!

But Web 2.0 is about much more than the technology—it’s about a change in focus to participation, user control, sharing, openness, and networking.

Mike Eisenberg, Dean Emeritus and Professor, University of Washington, Seattle offers a balanced, thoughtful look at emerging technologies and libraries:

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6551184.html

Consider this passage on social networking:

Opportunities Social networks provide an important vehicle to reach important users—upper youths, teens, and twenty- and thirtysomethings. Libraries currently support various real-world groups by providing space, resources and information services, education, and organizing assistance, and many are already experimenting in these social networks. (See www.libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Social_Networking_Software for some examples and best practices.) But most libraries could easily do much more for these digital communities. Librarians must learn more about these users and their needs and can do so by participating in social networks, perhaps by offering digital reference services. Libraries need to set up their own social network to serve users. Lastly, libraries might adopt some form of digital social networking as a service itself, for example, by providing instruction in how to become involved and use social network systems.

Threats The primary threat related to social networks involves safety and trustworthiness. This became clear during Kids Speak Out, a forum on technology in the lives of middle school students held in Seattle in April last year. Numerous parents and caregivers asked questions or offered comments about safety. The young people themselves seemed less concerned, noting that they were careful in revealing personal statistics and that they didn’t trust the information posted by those they didn’t know. All students who participated in social networks only did so within a selected subset of friends. In terms of libraries, involvement in social networks poses the same time, effort, and money cost-benefit threat as do the other technologies.

I just caught it and wanted to post here, so I haven’t read it closely - but wowza. Good food for thought. This will surely be a required reading for many of my courses. 

Luria Library Twitters, originally uploaded by mstephens7.

Another nice example of one of the best uses for Twitter in the library setting - alerts.

http://twitter.com/lurialibrary

http://library.sbcc.edu/

Dr. Branin said he’d be posting the powerpoint soon on his own site; if he allows for a copy to be posted here I’ll do that too. –From FLA 2008 Conference.

TTW Contributor: Lee LeBlanc

Dramatic Library Signage, originally uploaded by Litandmore.

Avoiding exposure….

Great Crowd, originally uploaded by mstephens7.

A big Thank You to the folks in McHenry County, Illinois. Thursday night I spoke to the directors and trustees and Friday morning we had a great group at the Woodstock Opera House for “The Hyperlinked Library.” I met librarians from Woodstock, Cary, Crystal Lake and other nearby communities.