Tame The Web

Don’t miss this new blog from American Libraries & Jason Griffey:

http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/perpetualbeta (Hey – is there a feed for this blog available? Am I missing it?)

Jason writes:

This space will be a place where you will be able to find the very edge of new technologies, as well as tips and tricks about how you can do interesting things with existing technologies. I’m going to try and introduce technologies that libraries and librarians should be paying attention to, and at the same time give you tips and tricks to make better use of the technologies that you may already be playing with.

A few examples of the sorts of things that I’ll be covering in this space: How to get any piece of text you want onto your eReader, How to automate delivery of information to your staff and patrons, setting up your own Media Server for your library, and much, much more.

In addition to these sorts of “Lifehacker for Libraries” posts, I’ll also be posting interesting things that I find around the Library and Technology infosphere, and I’ll be producing some video podcasts as well. Expect the first of these very soon, as I am even as I type this on my way to the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show. I’ll be reporting over the next several weeks about my discoveries there, and will include audio and video interviews, demos, and anything else I can think of that might be interesting.

Of course, this brief post sent me over the moon:

Spoke with an unnamed source last night that gave me the following: Tablet is based around a 9.67 inch LCD, not an OLED. Definitely launching early in year, possibly even immediately after January 27th announcement.

Exciting for libraries: deals coming with LOTS of content providers, print content mainly magazines, not newspapers. Start thinking about a “magazine” with embedded video, inline social features, and more.

This will be very interesting to see how a media-rich tablet-embedded magazine will find a place in library service. Remember this?: http://tametheweb.com/2009/12/08/view-it-any-way-youd-like/

The Librarian in Black writes:

I’m pleased to announce that my first book, Technology Training in Libraries, is set to be released in March of this year!

This book has been a labor of love for the last year.  In it, I walk you through setting up a technology training program in your library, including basic technology training (both online and face-to-face) and general tech training principles and tips.  I also address creating and training to a set of “technology skills” expectations for staff members.  The bulk of the book walks you through the steps for setting up specific types of technology training: lunchtime brown-bags, 23-things style programs, technology petting zoos, peer training, and train-the-trainer programs.  On the practical side, I cover how to come up with a dollar value for estimating the return on investment for training programs, how to market training, creating a culture of learning, dealing with difficult learning, and measuring success with individuals and the library as a whole.  Finally, I offer a huge list of recommended resources at the end of the book.  At 125 pages, it is a concise how-to manual for successfully setting up specific technology training initiatives in a library.

The book is the 6th in a 10-book series called The Tech Set, a joint LITA & Neal-Schuman project edited by Ellyssa Kroski.  The entire series is  meant to be a series of practical how-to guides on specific technology services in libraries.  Other topics include next-gen catalogs, microblogging, mobile technology, gaming, unconferences, and more.  The set boasts some great names: Cliff Landis, Connie Crosby, Jason Griffey, Robin Hastings, Steve Lawson, Sean Robinson, Lauren Pressley, Kelly Czarnecki, and Marshall Breeding.

For more information, you can see my book’s pre-pub website (which offers a peek inside the book) and for a complete list of the Tech Set titles, see the site for the entire Tech Set series.

Elyssa asked me to take a look at the set and consider an endorsement. I read multiple chapters from each work – and Sean Robinson’s excellent tome on video making for libraries in its entirety and was very pleased. Pleased enough to endorse the set. I was especially taken with Jason Griffey’s work on mobile library services and mobile technology and Sarah’s take on a subject near and dear to my heart tech training. Here’s what I submitted to Neal Schuman:

For those curious about next gen library catalogs or wondering if the library should be on Twitter, the Tech Set offers ten volumes of current thinking and best practice for a wide range of  library-related tech trends. Editor Elyssa Kroski has assembled a who’s who of notable experts on these timely topics – including outstanding entries such as Jason Griffey on mobile technologies, Cliff Landis on utilizing social networking and Sarah Houghton-Jan on effective technology training. The titles are well-researched, clearly explained by a cadre of library technologists, offering tips and tricks for diving into blogging, gaming, video production, and  more. This set will be a useful addition to any librarian’s toolkit for  planning for emerging technologies.

These up-to-date  volumes will surely find a welcome spot in my teaching and will probably serve as textbooks for many technology-related LIS courses. Congrats to all involved!

Darien Library Spaces, originally uploaded by mstephens7.

On the 20th of November I got to spend the day with the good folks at Darien Library in Darien, CT. I spent time with Louise Berry, Allan Gray and John Blyberg touring the incredible new building, meeting with staff over lunch and afternoon tea, and taking in all the wonderful things they’ve done with their service model.

I just wanted to give a public shout out to everyone at Darien who welcomed me and shared their experiences. I can’t wait to visit again!

My flickr set is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelsphotos/sets/72157622752235111/

Congrats to TTW Contributor Kyle Jones!

http://thecorkboard.org/blog/time-for-change-im-off-to-darien-library

Kyle writes:

I’m very excited to announce that starting in January of 2010 I will be joining the award winning staff at Darien Library in Darien, CT as a Knowledge and Learning Services Librarian.  To say that it is honor to be afforded this opportunity at this time in my career is a bit of an understatement.  I look forward to getting to know the community of Darien.

I just spent a full day with the folks at Darien Library, touring the new building, chatting with staff and learning all I could about their model of service. I am very pleased  and proud that Kyle, who served as my grad assistant for 2 years at Dominican, is joining the team at Darien! I hope he will blog his experiences at this innovative library.

This semester I added the option for my students in LIS768 to make a video or other media presentation instead of writing a blog post for the context book assignment. A few folks tried it out. Here are the results:

Setting the Table: Danny Meyer

http://classes.tametheweb.com/mcphillips/2009/10/29/context-book-setting-the-table/

Born Digital: John Palfrey & Urs Gasser

http://classes.tametheweb.com/schu/2009/10/28/context-book-assignment-born-digital/

http://classes.tametheweb.com/meganmulherin/2009/10/30/context-book-report-born-digital-6/

Blink: Malcolm Gladwell

http://classes.tametheweb.com/kasia/2009/10/31/context-book-blink/

A Whole New Mind: Daniel Pink

http://classes.tametheweb.com/dansblog/2009/10/29/context-book-report/

Corporations have The No A**hole Rule, but the motivation and measurement in a for-profit is always the bottom line. The a**hole in the office makes a lot of money, but holds everyone else back with toxic behavior. Fire him, and everyone else steps up their game and increases earnings. Profit provides a reason to hire, fire and take action. Libraries, like most non-profits, deal more in intangibles and don’t look to the balance sheet for guidance.

Michael Stephens has used the phrase “kindness audit” most publicly, and several other people have proposed the idea to me recently as well. I love the oxymoronic feel of it – the mental image of IRS agents with felt hearts pinned to their lapels, clutching clipboards and red pens.

Kindness may seem soft and fuzzy and a silly thing to be talking about with respect to the workplace. But that’s the point of The No A**hole Rule. A jerk who does his job well still hurts the whole company. We’re in the kindness business – public service. It’s not a switch we can just flip. If our organizational culture is unkind, how well are we really serving our patrons?

So, yes, a kindness audit asks us to do a little self reflection, to think about how we interact with people. It’s more personal, but it could make for a better workplace and improved service to our users. But what’s in a kindness audit? How to quantify the unquantifiable? What’s on that clipboard?

Here’s where I’d start, but I’m looking for input:

Open door policies are great, but not only do they have to be meaningful, we have to meet each other where we are. Just like our patrons, our coworkers don’t always communicate in exactly the way we’d like them to. Hearing those who operate differently is hard, but worth it.

Double X recently posted a short article with a scenario that’s supposed to indicate how angry the reader is. If you have a meeting scheduled on a Wednesday and you are told that the meeting has been moved up two days, is the meeting now on Monday or Friday? I’m not sure I buy the anger aspect of this exercise (wait, does that make me sound angry?) but what struck me about the piece, the comments and the responses of everyone I’ve posed the question to is the initial inability to see how anyone could think the meeting is on the other day. Monday people can’t imagine anyone would think the meeting is now on Friday and Friday people are just as gobsmacked by the Monday people.

What’s the lesson? First of all, just say what day you’re moving meetings to when you do it. Secondly, everyone approaches life (and the workplace) in their own way and those differing perspectives have value and meaning. It’s awfully tempting to dismiss the people who would have missed your moved meeting, but teaming up with people whose minds work differently can be powerfully effective.

Management experts suggest this one frequently, but it applies to patron interactions, projects with coworkers and really, just about everything. We’re all bad at things, we all have our own foibles and faults. That’s not the whole of anyone’s being, though. Personally, I’m very fortunate to work with someone who is brilliant at extracting the silver lining from the cloudiest of situations. I turn to her when I’m struggling to see the bright side.

This probably sounds silly, but as anyone who has spent time working with the public can attest, one of the biggest differences between an office job and a public facing job is the different levels of professionalism. Librarians have a public face that they need a break from when they get into the back office. The occasional flip comment or frustrated exclamation are inevitable and forgivable.

This one goes for everyone. Front lines staff can get absorbed in the daily grind and forget about the view from the top. Big picture people can forget that the crisis they just caught wind of might not be such a big deal just because they know about it. Ultimately, we’re running libraries. It’s not rocket surgery and our mistakes and problems are aggravating, but generally speaking, no kittens will die.

When people come in looking for help learning to use the mouse, we don’t try to teach them to use Facebook. This goes hand in hand with focusing on the positive. We don’t need everyone to be good at everything and while it’s good for people to push their boundaries and learn new things, they should be able to do it on their own terms. We come to work as whole people and very few of us are able to divest our personalities when we walk through the door.

I don’t think this is a complete list, by any stretch of the imagination. I’m looking for input. What would you audit, if you were working for the kindness IRS? Comment here or at Loose Cannon Librarian or send me an email (kate at loosecannonlibrarian dot net). I want to create something useful for our libraries; a tool we can use to push our organizations and ourselves. This should be a group effort, so send me your ideas!

Kate Sheehan writes at Loose Cannon Librarian and ALA TechSource | Cross posted here: http://loosecannonlibrarian.net/?p=214

I am totally knocked out by the excellent work ALA Emerging Leaders Team I did on creating screencasts to highlight all the wonderful features of ALAConnect. As Web Advisory Committee chair, I became the group mentor but my schedule and duties didn’t allow much mentoring – but I knew they were in good hands with ALA ITTS staff who offered support and guidance throughout the project. So please allow me to send them a public “WOOOHOO” on a job well done!

Take a look at the screencasts. You’ll find a promo video, a video highlighting how to integrate Connect with the social tools you currently use, ways to monitor other groups, and much, much more.

This one is a fave:

To all involved – great work! TAKE A BOW.

To folks who haven’t checked out Connect yet, please use these screencasts as a way to get started. You won’t be sorry.

Multitouch Microsoft Surface: Cultural Heritage Browser from Jaap van de Geer on Vimeo.

I have a new post at ALATechSource about the Shanachie presentation at ALA. Check out the video above to see one of the projects they highlighted in action.

http://www.alatechsource.org/blog/2009/07/the-visitors.html

Late one February evening in 2007, I found myself sitting in my Oak Park, Illinois living room with two visitors, sharing wine and talking about libraries. It was late, I had to teach the next day, but I couldn’t say goodnight. I met the he two fellows with me –Jaap van de Geer and Erik Boekesteijn of the DOK Library Concept Center in Delft, Holland–in London the year before. And now they were visiting Chicago area libraries videotaping gaming initiatives and gaming librarians. The wine was good–it may have been Australian–and I’m a little cloudy about how the evening played out but the one thing stayed with me. Erik said the role of the 21st Century librarian is three-fold:

• Keep Stories
• Share Stories
• Make Stories

I held that close to my heart and watched these visitors make their dream of collecting stories a reality by way of the Shanachie Tour in October 2007 and beyond.

Fast forward to ALA Annual and the LITA President’s Program. Erik, Jaap and the third Shanachie Geert van den Boogaard were back in the states to talk about innovations at their library.

by: Gretchen Hams-Caserotti
Head of Children’s Services
Darien Library

———

When I joined Darien Library Head of Children’s Services we were building a new library. An opportunity to reorganize a library doesn’t come very often. The Adult collection was already being rearranged and Louise Berry, our Library Director, encouraged me to explore some ideas I had about how Children’s Libraries are arranged. I took a leap of faith and committed to the idea of reorganizing the collection with a user-centered approach by considering Function instead of Format. Our KidLit ReOrg was a huge project!

In Children’s Services, we define the population we serve as children from birth to about age 12. Actually, we serve two completely different groups, children who are Readers and children who are Pre-Readers (including those learning to read). When planning the move into our new library, I considered the behavior patterns of people who fall into these two categories when they use the library and discovered two entirely different sets of approaches and needs. We realized that with traditional collection arrangements, the Pre-Readers aren’t actually served well despite being half of our population!

We began to explore how we could improve our service to this group of very enthusiastic library users.  Not just service to just the children who are in their First Five years, but service for the busy adults in their lives, too.

Pre-Readers – a First Five Years (F5) collection

This population is still dependent on the grown-ups in their lives to give meaning to those little squiggly black symbols on the printed page. Their caregivers have unique demands on their time and their approach to using the library is often different than that of parents with Readers. Small children are hard work to take care of. The Picture Book Area, where caregivers choose books for their children, is the area most difficult to use because it is a remarkably large collection arranged by author’s last name.  Since children ask for books primarily by subject, arranging them by author requires adults to spend extra time and effort finding materials, Most parents don’t bother foraging through. They take their chances with random selections or go straight to a Librarian for help.
The most common things parents tell us are their children’s age and interests (e.g. my son is 3 years old and he REALLY loves trains). The Librarians look through literally thousands of picture books to try to find the best match. I began using Free Mind open-source software to visualize the more commonly requested subjects and it was there that I discovered the broad categories that we have used to organize the collection. I laid out a new arrangement that makes our collection more useable for adults. Color-coding the sections enables the Pre-Reading children to be independent users as well.  We pulled out all materials from the Non-Fiction collection that are written for smaller children or adults and moved them to the F5 Collection.

Instead of a Picture Books section of the library, we now have the following micro-collections called “glades”:

• Celebrations – a year round sampling of holiday books including other celebrations like Birthdays, Mother’s & Father’s Day etc.
• Concepts – books about the alphabet, counting, time opposites, colors, shapes etc.
• Favorites – popular characters, series and award winners.
• Folk/Fairy Tales – mostly pulled out from Non-Fiction, the introduction to classics like The Little Red Hen, Three Little Pigs, Jack and the Beanstalk and Cinderella.
• Growing Up – books about the child’s experience; emotions (e.g. anger, sharing) getting a haircut, losing a tooth, going to school, getting a “Big Boy Bed”
• Nature – books about animals, seasons, weather
• Rhymes and Songs – here Mother Goose can be found along with picture books told in verse or of songs themselves (Hush Little Baby, The Wheels on the Bus, etc.)
• Stories – this section is for books that didn’t fit into any other category, but is promoted as a fun place to explore your imagination.
• Transportation – books with Things That Go in them; trucks, trains, boats, bikes, cars, busses, etc.

In order to reorganize the collection according to this structure we literally pulled off the shelf and reviewed each of our 15,000 picture books so we could determine a classification. Then each book got a new color label and new call number to identify easily the item’s location in the library (e.g. F5 Concepts Hoban).

Our new library opened to the public on January 10th, 2009, and the positive feedback from our members has been overwhelming. Michael has already kindly shared the blog post that was written by a local mom blogger about our new Children’s Library. We have more new users than we’ve ever had before & our circulation has been up 25-30% from last year each month we have been open. Some of our members share their enthusiasm about the reorganization with us and others don’t.  They just come in use their new library. I am thrilled because we don’t want everyone to talk about the reorganization, we just want them to use it. Intuitively. Freely. It’s theirs, after all.

Children’s Services is, I think, the most dynamic and interesting area in public libraries at the moment. We are facing not just the issue of integrating technology into our services and way of thinking, but we must be mindful that those early Digital Natives are now becoming parents! How can we stay important and relevant in their lives when the world they have known has always been plugged in and connected? The conversation has to get serious and what we do has to extend much further than just providing storytimes.  In partnership with Linda Braun (LINK), Darien Library will be hosting a KidLib Camp, an unconference for children’s librarians to discuss and explore Redefining Children’s services in the 21^st Century on August 13^th, 2009.

Don’t miss this post by Aaron Schmidt:

http://www.walkingpaper.org/2108

On Wednesday afternoons during the Summer outside of the MLK Jr. Memorial Library in Washington DC you will find a table full of friendly librarians talking to the passersby. The librarians also bring out an assortment of library materials to illustrate what’s available in the library. It is a great program and I’d like to see it go even further.

Take a look at the images Aaron shares, highlighting some recent tweet conversations that are perfect examples of the possibilities of engaging with users via Twitter.