Sad news, Rachel Singer Gordon’s Tech Static is calling it quits.  Tech Static is/was an outstanding resource for reviews of technology books.  Anybody who has collected Dewey 000s knows just how difficult it is to find credible, reliable, and well written reviews of computer books. This is especially true for those who collect that area but do not have a formal background in technology, like me.

I am also disappointed that we let the Tech Static die. Not enough people stepped up when Rachel asked for help. Perhaps you were like me and  had it on your to do list but never actually got around to it (kicking myself). Maybe you did not even know about the Tech Static. Whatever the reason, we failed and have cost librarianship a valuable resource.

I do know that come Monday I will be discussing the Tech Static with my superiors and asking them if we could pledge a small amount per a year.  I hope you will do the same.  Perhaps we can revive this experiment; librarian reviewing books for librarians managed by a librarian.

I’m reading through Robin Hastings’ new Library Technology Report called “Collaboration 2.0.” This is one LTR not to miss! And don’t miss Dan Freeman’s interview with Robin at TechSource:

http://www.alatechsource.org/blog/2009/06/robin-hastings-discusses-collaborative-work.html

Dan Freeman: So your topic for this issue is Collaboration 2.0. Can you define this concept for us?
 
Robin Hastings: Collaboration 2.0 is the use of free, easy-to-use web 2.0 tools (think Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Google Docs, etc.) to make teams who may not be in the same city, state or country work together seamlessly. Since the philosophy behind the 2.0 tools is one of user-created content, almost all of the 2.0 tools have ways to create and share content with other people – that makes collaboration on library projects, presentations, training programs or anything else that creative librarians can come up with really easy. Everything I profiled in the report, by the way, is freely available and easy enough to use that millions of people have already been using these tools without being forced to by their jobs!

Download the Virginia Beach Version of the Slides here.

The good folks at Virginia Beach Public Libraries asked me back this year to talk about building community with social tools.  This was perfect timing because I had just read Peter Block’s Community: The Structure of Belonging and I’ve been working on an article and interview about/with Seth Godin for Digital Bibliotek magazine. His book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us has figured prominently into my thinking and teaching so far this year.

I always appreciate this type of synchronicity. Jenny Levine introduced me to Peter Block’s book – a fascinating look at transforming communities. Based almost entirely on creating community in physical space, his definition speaks to what I see as an important building block of online community: “Communities are human systems given form by conversations that build relatedness.” 

Compare that with Howard Rheingold’s 1993 definition of virtual community: “Social aggregators that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace.” 

Many important keywords here: human… conversations… relatedness..relationships…

Godin simply states: “Human beings can’t help it: we need to belong.” 

Godin’s Tribes is full of insights and ahas for me – as is the crowd-sourced companion PDF at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/files/TribesQA2.pdf. Download this one and give it a look after you read Tribes. It offers roadmap style planning points and loads of questions/answers for convening your tribe.

Combine all the above with these points from A List Apart’s post “The Wisdom of Community” that posits the ideas contained in The Wisdom of Crowds are amplified by the social web: “where they can reach their full potential.”

To enable online crowds to be wise, Derek Pozowak notes you need these things:

• Simplicity
• Interface
• Aggregation
• Participation
• Selfishness
• Explicit vs. implicit feedback

So, from all of this inspiration and these authors’ brilliant thinking, allow me to submit for your approval:

Ten Ways to Encourage the Tribe*

Connect around a cause, a community or a concept

Create your online group around a current issue, a user population or what libraries have a lot of: ideas. Focus on materials: reading, viewing, discussion. Focus on community: what’s happening around town? Focus on the current climate: what programs, services and revamped services might you offer in light of the economic downturn? How can the library help?

Ravelry is a smoking hot example of a focused community that works. A librarian shared with the group I was with in California last week that her daughter was publishing video via Ravelry of spinning techniques for people all of over the world.

Consider also Puget Sound Off  at http://www.pugetsoundoff.org/. The Digital Natives blog had this to say:

“The focus is to connect teens in the Puget Sound area that care about the same social issues so that they can create positive change in their communities.”

Take a look at Genre X from Oak Park Public Library at http://www.genre-x.com/ and read what Aaron Schmidt had to say about how they are building community here: http://www.walkingpaper.org/944

What cause, community or concept do you want to connect?

Use Stories

“Marketing is about engaging with the tribe and delivering products and services with stories that spread.”  Godin writes in Tribes. 

Can we say enough about the power of stories in libraries? The stories people share about libraries and how they use them – in person and online – are priceless for understanding the role we can play in people’s lives. I’m knocked out by 14 Days to have Your Say  as a way to get students involved and talking about library service. Public libraries could do this too – internally, with the community, as a strategic planning step.

Presenting the library’s story is another option. Columbus Metropolitan Library’s Annual Report at http://ourstory.columbuslibrary.org/ is a perfect example of sharing the library’s story in a human, playful way (driven by technology, but it’s not ABOUT the technology).

Be Transparent

Transparency leads to trust and buy-in. Secrets, deception, guarded details shared only as “need to know” demands hurts organizations. Give me an honest, open mechanism for sharing information and I’ll listen and react. 

Michael Casey and I have been exploring these topics for over two years at Library Journal and I still see other folks like Godin urging business and organizations to embrace the concept. It’s foundational to building a healthy community.

Leverage the Social Tools

Use the tools to extend the library into realms where people are connecting and talking. 

Godin notes in Tribes that “Internet companies have taken the original idea behind blogs and amplified it into a set of tools that anyone can use to tighten a tribe.” Facebook, Twitter and others allow interaction and information sharing – with replies built in. 

“The biggest shift is going to be that organizations that could never have afforded a national campaign will suddenly have one,” Godin writes in a recent blog post. 

Libraries – all shapes, sizes and types – can do this. We can take promotion online – make it viral. Recent online initiatives such as the New Jersey State Library’s campaign to share users’ video stories about the transformational qualities of libraries are ways to create low-cost, human, authentic marketing campaigns. 

A perfect first step: set aside one meeting – not six months of meetings (or heaven forbid a year or more) – to craft your library’s social media policy and plan. Use this as a starting point:

http://www.hightechdad.com/2009/05/11/crafting-your-companys-social-media-policy/

The Social Media Do’s Explained [31]

1. Be Polite – Talk the way you would if you were doing a job interview. [72]
2. Be Courteous – Be sure to listen & ask questions. [52]
3. Be Helpful – Offering tips, tricks & how-to’s goes a long way. [65]
4. Be Conversational – Don’t just be a PR twit. Chat as you would with a stranger at a bar. Be funny yet interesting. [117]
5. Be Intelligent – Provide some value. Don’t talk down. Offer insight. [71]
6. Be Non-confrontational – Don’t start a flame war, it can & will come back to haunt you. [90]
7. Be Transparent – Disclose that you work for the company, be honest & truthful. [81]

Read more: http://www.hightechdad.com/2009/05/11/crafting-your-companys-social-media-policy/#ixzz0FKNYe1bg&B

Remember the Mission

Have you looked at your library’s mission lately through the lens of social tools and conversational communities online? Checkout Evanston PL’s mission: 

The mission of the Evanston Public Library is to promote the development of independent, self-confident, and literate citizens through the provision of open access to cultural, intellectual, and informational resources.

Creating an online community like any of the Ning’s I’ve written about or similar certainly taps into what this sample mission states, just as enhancing the library catalog does.

Redwood City PL’s mission states: 

The Redwood City Public Library’s mission is to be “the learning center of our community and the place people turn to for the discovery of ideas, the joy of reading and the power of information.”

Discovering ideas and sharing within catalogs such as the community-focused SOPAC is a perfect example of fulfilling a mission like this in the 21st Century.

The Little Things count…a lot

Last December when I bought the new Subaru and tweeted about passing on the $250 Subaru charity donation promotion money to the ASPCA yielding a reply from said organization with minutes is a perfect example of a little connection, a little interaction, meaning a lot.

DKPublishing’s gift to me of a tour guide to Vancouver because of my tweet about their books or recent discussions about Oak park Public Library’s collection are further examples of how a tiny little expression of kindness or bit of feedback can go a long way.

What little things can you do with your users online? What little kindness can you extend?

Listen & Talk (like a human)

The Cluetrain said it best:

“Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.”

If you are going to participate in the conversations going on around your library and within your community, do so in a human way – authentic, real, emotional. Every chance I get, I echo the Cluetrain in my talks, saying: “People can smell PR speak a mile away and they do not respond well to it.”

I spoke recently with librarian who discovered unpleasant reviews of his branch on Yelp. He realized the best move he could make would be to respond to the reviews with thanks and insights about the feedback. I like this thinking.

An interesting example comes from the discussion I lead in Phoenix and Virginia Beach about library databases. In this transparent world, what would happen if the library actively put out there what is spent on electronic resources and encouraged the public to weigh in on what’s purchased. Would there be an uproar? User involvement? I think it would be a very open, honest thing to do: “Hey, library patrons, we spent $125,000 of your tax dollars last year on ________. How should we spend it this year?”  Has anyone out there  done this?

How could you listen and talk with your tribe?

Create a Culture of Caring

Through reading Tribes, the Tribes Q&A and Block’s book, I was struck by the emphasis on making real connections with people via caring and support. This speaks to my personal emphasis on “encouraging the heart” in everything we do. A quote by Darien Library’s Kate Sheehan from Cindi Trainor’s recent TechSource post about  Computers in Libraries 2009  sticks in my brain too:

In the time since I’ve been home from CIL, the moment that has bounced around in my head most often was a quote from fellow TechSource blogger Kate Sheehan. During her part of “Innovation, Services and Practices,” she remarked “The chief export of our libraries is kindness.” It seems so obvious, so nostalgic—and distinctly low-tech—for a librarian to announce that we are, above all, kind to our patrons. Yet many people in our service industry, well, aren’t. I once heard a reference librarian refer to her stone-cold demeanor as “business-like.” An otherwise merry librarian, she probably would have been horrified to know that students thought her “mean.” In this age of snark and snipe, anonymous and named, a little kindness goes a long way, and I’m taking this one to heart.

Amen. In our recent Cheers & Jeers column at LJ, Michael and I mentioned this as well:

Cheers to the folks using emerging tools to enhance conferences and learning opportunities, such as Skyping speaker, UStreaming a trends session, or tagging tweets, posts, pictures, and more with a common moniker.

Jeers, however, to some who criticize in the conference back channel. We’ve been disappointed with snarky chatter and lack of respect for speakers and conference attendees at some events.

Constructive feedback and disagreement fostering debate are wonderful things. But mean-spirited criticism does not have a place at conferences or inside your online community.

How can you encourage your tribe’s collective heart today? What little bit of kindness can you extend?

Trust them

“Faith is critical to all innovation.” Godin notes in Tribes on p. 80.

Faith and trust are building blocks for online social engagement. Until you get past worrying about how you’ll control your tribe and trust them, the results of your online community building might not fare the best. Open comments, ask for feedback, and trust the responses – the genuine ones will rise to the top, good and bad.

Trust your staff to post and interact with the public. And trust the public to do the same. A quick meeting of all of the minds involved will get everyone on the same page – mission, vision, guidelines for participating in the conversation — instead of having a year or two of meetings to hash out how it should all work with social media. See the policy above for inspiration. Hey libraries – post your social media policies so other libraries can adapt and use them. 

What can you do right now to trust your community? What changes can you make?

Value EVERY Member

Every member of the tribe you want to create should be valued: for participating, for lurking, for shaking things up, for calming things down and for simply contributing. NO ONE should be denied access if they are a part of the group. This goes for public tribes and for your staff tribe. 

Public tribes might include your young adults, your 20-30-somethings, etc. It might also include those folks you haven’t extended any services or outreach to as of yet. It certainly should include the groups you’ve marginalized for whatever reason.

Planning this talk, I checked in with John Blyberg from Darien Library. I’ve long used the “Front Desk” blog example in my talks as an example of involving and engaging all levels of staff. Via the new Darien Library site, all staff who want to can post to the fully-integrated Drupal-driven site, including folks from circulation:

“All staff are encouraged to post, no matter their position,” Blyberg told me. “We don’t moderate—posts just go up, but our User Experience team will work with staff on spelling and layout issues, etc if necessary.  We never criticize them on content, because that would discourage them, though we would intervene if something was inappropriate.  We have told our staff that their posts should not betray a political bias because the of the library’s non-profit status as well as our desire to be seen as an apolitical community resource.  I would say that 90% of our full time staff posts and maybe 50% of our part time staff.”

I urged the good folks at VBPL (and members of the city government who also attended my talks and workshops) to consider Godin’s Tribes carefully and to look for ways to blend his vision with what libraries do. It strikes me that gathering folks around ideas and letting them communicate is very much in line with what our mission should be.

I was glad to finish out the Cheers & Jeers column with this:

Cheers to marketing guru Seth Godin and his book Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us (Portfolio)—a touchstone for us this year. We agree with Godin that the market will reward organizations and individuals who choose to lead while those stuck within archaic rules and outdated practice—or guided by fear—will not flourish.

Which will you be?

* at Your Library

Christine Rooney-Browne,  a PhD student based at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, wrote back in March about her experience at  The Mitchell Library in Glasgow “soaking up the atmosphere from the latest Aye Write Book Festival:”

I had thought it might be a good idea to tweet about the events I attended but when I tried to access Twitter on The Mitchell Library’s public access computers I was informed that Twitter was considered to be an ‘unacceptable website’. Surely not, I thought, so I tried again, on a different computer.  Same message again.   Made me wonder about what else would be blocked.  Attempted to login toFacebook and although the ‘unacceptable website’ message did not pop  up, a strange login screen did and when I attempted to type in my user name and password I realised that nothing was appearing on the screen. Seemed to be locked out of that one as well.  Tried MySpace, same thing! Okay, they’re blocking social networking websites I thought….but then something happened that made no sense whatsoever.  I was able to login to Bebo no problem.   I also tried to access Flickrand YouTube but they were inaccessible too.  Stranger still was what I found out later.   Glasgow City Council had been using Twitter to help promote the Aye Write festival, and there were buttons on the Aye Write website encouraging users to visit their profile on both Facebook and MySpace…  

Read the comments – it gets very interesting – including an exchange with the head of Marketing and Public Relations at Glasgow City Council. Christine wonders why Twitter is blocked when the GCC is using it for promotion:

We’re having a look at that just now.

You’re throwing up another interesting question for Local Government: Do you get back to the customer with what information you have, thus ensuring that you give a quick, although not full, response? Or do you wait ’till you have all the facts before getting back, thus ensuring a full, but slower, response?

You’ll see I tend towards the former.

One other thing: we have a customer contact system which logs enquiries, complaints etc, and the responses and response times. I don’t know whether we’ve ever logged the message trail following a blog posting in this system, so this could be a, small but significant, first.

Best - C

This really speaks to the next barrier libraries are running up against with social networking: governing bodies above the library. These are the folks we need to be talking to – library folk are doing pretty darn well these days. I’m intrigued to hear what’s happened since this post. Are the sites unblocked?

Run don’t walk to check out this very important, very insightful report from Char Booth. I’ve been luck enough to share a few meals with Char and her take on the academic library student technology experience is well-grounded, innovative and, frankly, brilliant.

http://infomational.wordpress.com/2009/04/30/done-and-done/

I’m lousy with anticipation, so I am extremely relieved to write that a giant piece of my workload/ brain energy has been officially lifted as of today. ACRL just released Informing Innovation: Tracking Student Interest in Emerging Library Technologies at Ohio University, a book-length research report I’ve been working on for quite some time.

The report is a detailed case study of the student environmental scanning project I spearheaded at OU in 2008 with the help of many colleagues (see my Acknowledgements for the long list of names). In addition to reporting our findings, I discuss the importance of gaining research-based insight into local user cultures in order to inform service development and mitigate the temptation to make potentially off-the-mark generational assumptions about who students are and how they use technology and libraries, complete with a chapter on the practical trials and travails of homegrown research. You can think of it as a quantitative corollary to the University of Rochester Studying Students project – quite different methods of investigation, similar depth of insight. It’s one part presentation of survey results, one part analysis of the academic library emerging technology and assessment cultures that have developed over the last few years, and one part bon voyage/ homage (bon vomage?) to my former employer. The OU Libraries manage to do incredibly innovative and effective work not only on a shoestring, but with an ever-important a sense of humor. It shows in many, many ways, and for this they deserve to be recognized and emulated.

Informing Innovation is available in several forms. Free downloads: the full documentin PDF, another version packaged by separate chapters, and an updated and revised template library/technology survey instrument based on the one used in the original Ohio University study. For an introduction to and explanation of the scanning project itself, there is also a streaming dynamic webcast of my and Chris Guder’s 2009 ACRL presentation (no virtual conference login necessary) that summarizes survey findings and explores its practical applications at OU, voice and slides-style. You can also buy a hard copy of the report in book form from the ALA Store.

I am currently developing screencasts for an exciting new project mpowwill roll out in the near future.

While looking at a stupidly designed, but very useful database, I thought “Why would any patron watch a tutorial on how to navigate this mess?  They want an answer to a question, not a walk through of a resource.” This idea was quickly followed by “I am going to design screencasts that answer common, representative questions.”  For example, using LegalForms by Thomas Gale (not the database I referred to as stupidly designed) I can show how to find a customizable job application in one screencast and an easily adaptable home renovation construction contract in another.  These screencasts will demonstrate different means of finding valuable resources, but not be about using LegalForms… overtly.

Carrying the idea of what I call patron-point-of-view (PPOV) screencasts a step further, why not narrate from the patron’s viewpoint?  I rewrote the introduction from “Hi, I’m Mick Jacobsen an Adult Services blah, blah, blah,” to “Hi, I’m Mick, the owner of Mick’s Pizza and I want to get the word out about my great…”. 

Lets go even further, why not use the question as the title?  Which video do you think would be viewed more: Learn How to Search LegalForms or Find a Customizable Contract for Your Business? I think the latter. 

While multiple screencasts of each database will be necessary, I believe they will provide a better means of showing the real value of library resources.  An added benefit is PPOV screencasts will be short. The PPOV screencasts answer questions. They don’t plod through each and every nuance of a resource.  Seriously, what patron will sit down to watch a 10 minute demonstration of a database?  I try to keep mine at a max of 3 minutes and even that is pushing it.  

The shift from a sage on the stage librarian teaching databases to the PPOV has changed everything in regards to my idea of screencasting.  Try it, I think you will find it liberating.

Here is a recent screencast:

How to Find New Businesses from Skokie Public Library on Vimeo.

Click on these links for some good library orientated resources on getting started with screencasting. 

Creation, Management, and Assessment of Library Screencasts: The Regis Libraries Animated Tutorials Project by Paul Betty

Paul Pival speaking doing a podcast for the SirsiDynix Institute 

Ellyssa Kronski writing for the School Library Journal

Mick Jacobsen is Adult Services Librarian at the Skokie Public Library.

If you have some time, don’t miss this engaging chat between two of my favorite innovators in the technology/education world. Their discussion centers around social networks, learning and the future of education.

http://weblogg-ed.com/2009/a-talk-with-howard-rheingold/

Congrats to TTW Contributing writer Lee LeBlanc for his essay on the future of federated search. He is second runner up in the federated search blog’s writing contest. “The aim of the contest was to predict the future of federated search.”

Read his entire essay here.

The 2030’s versions of the iPhone and G1 project into space. Using a helioiPhone, the user enters the visual search world. Using light and air, users walk into their search worlds to see and haptically interact with the results. No longer will you be confined to a keyboard and screen. While the search may start in a simple box, virtually projected worlds from handheld devices are entered to explore the results. We walk about these “search terrascapes” our search agents created for us. When they bring the results back, much like Marco Polo from distant lands, they present us with our results. The network, the tools, and the user work together exploring deeper into the areas of search. Doing so helps a researcher find what may contain the ideas of future research. Virtual worlds are created to store and easily share from anywhere. All of these searches populate a virtual information universe.

 
Webcam chat at Ustream

I can’t be in Darien this weekend, but I can certainly tune into BlybergTV. Nice use of Ustream!

I’m prepping classes and presentations right now and my eyes fell on this OLD link from walkingpaper:

http://www.walkingpaper.org/106

Aaron lists some things libraries can do to improve techie stuff. How many have you done? How far have we come?

Here’s just a few of his ideas:

3. Have CD burning available for patrons at your workstations. Patrons with slow connectivity at home may want to download large files with fast library connections. Also, they may be working on large documents not easily fit on floppies. Cost = The hardware is not expensive and not too difficult to install. If you’re replacing computers soon the hardware will likely be standard.

4. Related to #3. No dumb computers. I’ve heard Steven Abram (does corporate policy prevent him from blogging? He’s the only vendor I enjoy hearing speak and I bet an Abram blog would be great) state this sentiment bluntly a few times. People have expectations about computers, and ours need to behave like theirs do, but better. Cost = Staff time to configure a protected but free situation. Ghosting software is cheap and a good start. Probably you’ll find a net gain in time.

5. Related to #4. Hassle free browsing. Make sure your users aren’t bombarded by pop-ups from spyware or update/renewal notices for your antivirus program. Allowing these intrusions confuse them. Cost = Perhaps an initial investment of time, but there will be a substantial gain when your users aren’t dependent upon you answering their questions about what to do when something pops up.

6. Answer patron emails quickly. Responding back in 48 or 24 hours isn’t cutting it. Cost = Staff time to answer more questions. If you’re responsive and market this service more people will start emailing you.

7. Use Instant Messaging. There are over 80 million Americans using IM. At least one of them is a patron of yours. Make the library available to them in a relavant way by signing up for a free screen name and marketing it. Make signing on to IM a RefDesk duty. Cost = A bit of staff training time.

Aaron and I advocated for IM like fiends in ‘04 and ‘05. Now, many libraries have a Meebo embedded librarian. Nice stuff!  I think I need to go back through the TTW posts from 2003 and 2004 and see what I was thinking about back then.

Superpatron reports on Duke University’s mobile home page for the library:

http://vielmetti.typepad.com/superpatron/2008/12/duke-university-libraries-mobile-edition.html

If you click through to “Available Computers” you get real time status of free/busy computers in their labs.

This is what they write about it on their library blog:

Key points about our pilot:

• Compact display: information optimized for the very small screen space available on handheld devices — every pixel counts.
• Compact file size: patrons often pay a fee for each byte transmitted to their device, and handheld devices often have very slow connection speeds — every byte counts.
• Tightly focused content: the content we provide is closely tied to the tasks people are most likely to undertake on a handheld device — context counts.
• Optimized Navigation: navigation is optimized for handheld devices (e.g., using access-keys for keypad navigation).

I’m very interested in this. Have any TTW readers developed a mobile homepage for their libraries?

From the comments on the Question post.

Amanda at blogwithoutalibrary.net writes:

This is from a design/marketing/communications company’s website. I love how they’re not afraid to showcase ideas that didn’t fly:

Think of this as the final resting place for ideas that – for one reason or another – lacked sufficient postage. The road to change is littered with them.

You can’t have innovation without failure, right? I’d love to see libraries celebrating their failures more. If you know of a library that does this, let us know in the comments!

Good stuff. And certainly part of a more open, transparent institution. One commenter ponders that it might not work in  public libraries:

While I think this is a lovely idea in theory, I just don’t see libraries doing it. As much as I would love them to! Public libraries are funded with public money so I’m sure they might see this idea of celebrating “failed ideas” as too close to celebrating “public money wasted”. You know what I mean? I’m not agreeing with that rationale, I’m just putting it out there as one possible reason why were not seeing more libraries do this.

Maybe Academic libraries have more latitude with something like this? I work in a public library and don’t pretend to understand how academics work but perhaps there is less need to be wary of being seen to be wasting money in an academic environment (sorry that was an akward sentence!). Just a thought (but like I said, I don’t know much about academic libs so I could be totally off base).

I think public libraries could certainly do this. Think “Anytown Public Library Innovation Labs” or “Cool County Public Library New Ideas Space” that might spend a bit of time experimenting with new services, new formats and new ways of doing what we do. The program might be prefaced with a statement like this:

Anytown PL’s mission is to promote access to information of all kinds, to anticipate the future needs of our patrons for library services and to give access to ideas in various media. This means we must be looking for new ways to serve our patrons. One way we’ll be doing this is devoting a bit of staff time and library resources to experimenting and trying new things. If you’d like to help, let us know. And we’ll let you know what we’re trying, what hasn’t worked, and what new services we’ll be bringing to you from these explorations.

As a APL patron, I might be very interested to check out the space and see what the staff have cooking. This space might be part of the physical library or part of its virtual presence. 

So, celebrating failures in the public library? I think so. What do you think?

Made with snapper.net

Via Brett Kochendorfer

Google Friend Connect lets you grow traffic by easily adding social features to your website. This means means more people engaging more deeply with your website — and with each other. In this video, Google Product Marketing Manager Mendel Chuang gives a short introduction to Google Friend Connect.

Very interesting -especially the bit about ease of sign on via any number of services and adding the Friend Connect to your site takes no programming skills whatsoever. Looks like ratings, friends and comments can easily be integrated. Ways it might affect libraries:

• Folks will come to expect this type of functionality more and more. Sites that aren’t “friendly” might not be the most popular.
• Some libraries will experiment with this as an easy to configure “buy it now” (for free) social option for their sites.
• This could become a popular add on for many Biblioblogs.
• It certainly positions Google to have even more integration into what we do on the Web.

Take a look at the video. What other uses do you see? What misuses do you see?

Don’t miss this article from Sarah Houghton-Jan and Aaron Schmidt:

http://www.infotoday.com/mls/nov08/Schmidt_Houghton-Jan.shtml

While there are many quick, one-time things you can do to make your content findable, we’ll address those later. First, we have to make sure that there’s a reason to promote your library and its website. If you’re not offering relevant services or interesting content on your site, there’s really nothing to promote.

The most important and effective thing you can do to make your content findable and to draw people back is the most difficult: Make a good website. Creating a website is ridiculously easy, and it takes about 5 minutes to start a blog. Filling such sites with interesting content, however, takes skill, effort, and inspiration. Anyone can hit the “publish” button, but to learn about the interests of your community and to systematically present relevant content takes time. This is what you must do.

One way to approach the issue of content is to use the strengths of your library’s staff. Perhaps you have employees who are passionate about romance novels or get wired about fixing computers. This excitement will show through if you have them talk about their interests online. One great thing about public libraries is that almost anything in the world is within their scope of interest. Highlighting the expertise of individuals in your library not only can produce interesting content, but it can also illuminate the humans in your facility. This helps build relationships, one of the most important things librarians can do to promote themselves. Good content makes your website more findable because the better your content is, the more people will talk about it and link to it. These links are the lifeblood of Google’s PageRank. And you want links. Badly.

I’ll be adding this to course readings!

Kathryn Greenhill reports on Liz Wilkinson, University of Auckland, presenting at the LIANZA 2008 conference:

 I was very impressed with an information literacy package she had helped to design. Te Punga uses online graphic novels and simulations to introduce students to the library catalogue.

I was even more impressed with her philosophy behind the design – and I have tried to capture this in this movie, Information Literacy: Seven ways to think outside the box. She was very gracious about being filmed with no rehearsal time, and I’m very grateful to her and the University Of Auckland for allowing me to use her words and screenshots from Te Punga in the movie.

Here are her main points:

1. Literacy beyond text
2. Student centred, not library centred
3. Outside experts
4. Involve students
5. Use students’ environments
6. Learning by doing
7. Make students feel at home

How are we addressing these important points in our university libraries? I can identify good examples for all 7 above from some of my travels and visits to various university libraries this year. Which ones have you tapped into?

The kind folks at SLA IT Bulletin Digital Focus have given me permission to reprint the interview they did with me last summer here at TTW as part of my digital portfolio. I really appreciate it.

Interview with Michael Stephens – Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Dominican University

For those who may be unfamiliar with you or your work, could you provide a professional description of yourself?

I’ve worked in libraries and LIS education for 18 years. My public library career spanned 15 years, and included positions in Audio Visual, Reference,  and Networked Resources. Throughout that time I was using technology and teaching staff and our public to do the same. I saw the advent of our public library’s first Internet connection and jam-packed lecture-style “What is the Internet?” sessions all the way through launching the SJCPL blog in 2003. The opportunity to teach as an adjunct in the Indiana University SLIS program also put me on the path toward the PhD: in 2004, I was awarded an IMLS-funded fellowship to the doctoral program at the University of North Texas’ Interdisciplinary Information Science program. I joined the Dominican GSLIS faculty in the Fall of 2006a and just completed my second year of full time teaching. I love it! 

Running parallel to the professional timeline above is the fact I started my blog Tame the Web on    April 1, 2003. Since then, my blogging life has grown as well. TTW just turned 5 and I’ve been blogging for ALA TechSource since 2005. I also found my way to Flickr, my favorite social site of all, and to LastFM, Facebook, and YouTube. I still use Flickr the most and enjoy the engagement with others in the professions as well as others who share my interests outside of libraries.

I also do a lot of speaking around the US and internationally. It does my heart good to get to present some of my thinking to others and hopefully inspire them. I usually end my talks with something like: “Go forth! Make libraries better!”

I did seven presentations in five Australian cities this spring, sponsored by the library consortium there. It was truly life-changing to travel that far and get to interact with library folk. I learned a lot and also realized we all face many of the same challenges, no matter where we are.

As someone who is involved in library education, how are you helping to develop the next generation of librarians?  What do you believe the future of library education will look like?

One thing that brought me to Dominican was the emphasis on truth and service in the university’s mission and philosophy. I think it fits well with my personal philosophy of teaching. Preparing new graduates to deal with constant change, use emerging technologies to further the mission of their institutions, and meet the needs of library users while never losing sight of our foundational values and principles is very important to me as an LIS educator.

I wrote about this at TTW as part of a meme that asked educators to share what they want for their students. I want my students at Dominican and any of librarians I talk to to realize what great opportunities there are for libraries and librarians in this ever-changing world if we pay attention to these skills:

If we learn to learn, it doesn’t matter that this week’s hot technology is Twitter and next week’s even shinier tool is something else. We can still figure it out, use our foundational knowledge to make sense of it and decide if it works in our situation. I teach blogging in many of my classes but the real skill I want my students to get is that they can master any technology/system I put in front of them or their new employers may put in front of them and make it work. Blogging is just the vehicle, like using any of the tools we cover in tech-based classes. If we look at current job descriptions right now, some employers are asking for experience with  social tools, open source software, and “emerging trends.” If I can give students a learning laboratory or sand box to try some technologies in the context of meeting a library’s mission or designing a new service (complete with planning, implementation and evaluation), then I’m preparing them for what they will encounter in practice.

If we adapt to change, we aren’t thrown every time the world shifts. That’s one of the most important things I think we could do for students in LIS education – show them that everything will change. What we’re doing in now in libraries is similar but still very different than what folks did 50 years ago. Think about the next 50 years. What’s going to happen when models like the Maricopa County “Deweyless” library or user-based tagging in the catalog really go mainstream. Should we still be teaching curriculum from the 80s? The 90s? I think not. So this  one goes double for LIS educators. I need to stay on the curve (hopefully ahead of it) to keep changing course specifics to adapt to each shift we go through.

If we scan the horizon, we’re trendspotting for the future. I am so inspired by the librarians who try new things, who look outside the field and bring things back.  If we become trendspotters, we have a good chance of creating the next big thing.  We might simply ponder, for example, what the popularity of a certain technology might do to library service.  Or what bigger trends will mean to libraries in the next 10-20 years. I watch Apple, Starbucks and Borders right now amongst many others. Couldn’t we have a genius bar in our libraries (I know the library in Delft does!)? Couldn’t we tap into marketing the “third place” the way Starbucks does so well. And isn’t there a place for the new concepts Borders will be offering: digital downloads, media creation, etc.

If we make sure to be curious about the world, it makes all of the above super easy. Ask questions. What are things going the way they are?

If my students leave my classes as curious librarians ready to figure out the next big thing and make it work in their libraries, then I am doing my job.

The future of LIS education? Great question that I often wonder about myself. We go in cycles: an ALA president or two will make it a focus for their year in office and then the next president is on to something else. A library school will make great inroads into a new area of tech (like San Jose State University’s SLIS Island in Second Life) or improved distance education. And along the way we’ll have lots of conversations about the impact of technology on education in general. What does this mean for LIS education in 10 years? Library school needs a shake-up. Let’s do a complete review of curriculum. If we’re starting to rely more on outsourcing, do we need a full semester of AACR2? We should integrate ever-evolving technology into our courses and teach the students how to manage that change

Much of your work is dedicated to the use of technology in libraries.  What influenced your decision to focus on this subject?   Why did you decide to become active in the field?

I’ve always been drawn to technology — all the way back to my first Apple IIc. It excites me to see how technology can help us extend ourselves creatively and socially. I used my first computer to write up my papers at IU and to participate in the not yet online fan communities I belonged to. I mailed things to people then!

The online services and the Internet made this oh so much easier. I vividly remember those early days of discovering what people put up on their first web page. My learning was framed by popular culture: X-Files fan sites, lyrics servers, movie pages, and the more personal pages of those early Web citizens. 

Look at how far we’ve come in a little over 15 years. The opportunity to participate and extend yourself online into a community based on your interests is there for the taking.

What does Library 2.0 mean to you?  In your opinion, will there be a Library 3.0 to follow?

Library 2.0 is a philosophy of library service discussed, dissected and diluted throughout the profession for almost three years. It’s a way of describing a conversation – a very important one that addresses how the physical and virtual space of the library is presented, how policies are created, and how services will be be evaluated and changed according to user participation. The name spoke to me – it worked. I’ve written about it. But it was also just a way to describe the conversation. We’ve come a long way in the discussions. I think the term will describe a moment in time when we realized how quickly the world was changing and libraries needed to repsond. It’s happened before. It will happen again.

I taught a seminar on Library 2.0 this last semester with three components: an exploration of emerging technologies in libraries, a focus on the physical space and library policy, and readings from LIS theorists and Web 2.0 experts. I was pleased to see my students discover Michael Buckland’s manifesto on redesigning library services, the way I did when I was writing my dissertation. What I wanted them to take away was a that “bigger picture” view: it’s not just a blog on the library Web site but capability for collaboration and participation behind it.

I’m sure we’ll see someone somewhere attempt to use Library 3.0 as a means to sell something, get people to a conference or some such. I don’t think it will stick like L2 has. I do agree, however, with Dr. Wendy Schultz, who also wrote a piece for OCLC NextSpace magazine where I wrote about Librarian 2.0 — it will be a progression to a more evolved space fully grounded in the library tradition – “the knowledge spa.”

Some libraries are slow to adopt technological solutions like Web 2.0 software because they question the value its use can contribute to an organization.  What are your thoughts on this? 

I would tell them to look at the library mission and vision statements. Is there a statement about promoting access or offering technologies to meet the changing needs of the user? If so, that’s a perfect reason to explore what 2.0 tool might work well for fulfilling that mission. Blogs work well – and you don’t even have to call them a blog. A blog can become an easy to configure content management system that hosts all of your content. To me, it’s a good fit for many libraries that want to save time with their Web presence. 

Another reason that libraries should be participating is because of the importance of content. In NextSpace, I urged library folk to understand content. “This librarian understands that the future of libraries will be guided by how users access, consume and create content. Content is a conversation as well and librarians should participate. Users will create their own mash ups, remixes and original expressions and should be able to do so at the library or via the library’s resources. This librarian will help users become their own programming director for all of the content available to them.”

Seattle Public Library has a list of  aims to fulfill the library’s mission on the web site. One of them states that the library will provide:

Appropriate technology to extend, expand and enhance services in every neighborhood and ensure that all users have equitable access to information.

That says to me that the library should be striving to offer access to social software as well as use the same tools to put services where the users are working and living online. Some folks may be curious and want to explore YouTube or Facebook, others may want guidance in the form of a library program about the benefits and dangers of the new online world, while some may want to create something new and send it out into the social networks. All of these things should be an option at the library. It pains me to see the other side of the coin: libraries blocking access to social sites for various reasons: perceived lack of bandwidth, inappropriate use of resources, or because it was making teenaged users rowdy/aggressive. See my discussion of such a ban on teenagers in my hometown of Mishawaka, IN at Tame the Web.

How do you keep yourself informed about changes in technology and in the information profession?  What resources do you rely on most?

I rely on the web and my RSS feeds for a lot of my keeping up. I monitor a lot of librarian’s blogs because the conversation is so rich and deep as well as many blogs outside our field. Since coming to Dominican I’ve added feeds from higher ed resources as well. I read but not as much as I’d like. Summer 2008 is mine to get caught up with the stack of books I’ve been collecting. 

I also listen to as many folks as I can when I’m travelling to speak or attend a conference. Those conversations – voices from the field – are very important to me because each year the goes by I am another step away from practice. I can’t effectively teach if I don’t understand what it’s like in the trenches. 

I was sad to see Business 2.0 go out as a monthly magazine, but I religiously subscribe to Wired, Fast Company, MIT Tech Review and Entertainment Weekly. Each one of these keeps me informed in different ways.

Will technology ever replace the librarian?  If not, what influence will technology have on the future role of the information professional?

Librarians will never be replaced. The job titles, duties and locales may evolve, but the foundational values and ethics of the profession will stay the same. 

The most wonderful think about emerging technologies is many of them bring the librarian to wherever the user is online. So our humanity can come through – it’s not just a box on the library Web site – it’s a person you are talking to. The library is human is one of my favorite points about the evolving, hyperlinked library. Human conversations and the human touch are valuable assets to libraries.

Just as other professions evolve, so will ours. I’m excited to see libraries in 10-20 years. 

In your opinion, how can today’s librarian contribute to the innovation of the field?  What suggestions would you have for those who are interested in making an impact on the profession?

Today’s librarian in any library setting can contribute in many ways: exploring emerging trends and applying them to libraries is just a beginning. I’d advocate for librarians interested in creating change to find a social network – the Biblioblogosphere, Facebook, etc — and participate. Comment on others work, create posts or content, etc. I’d urge new grads and LIS students to find a mentor who’ll help and encourage. I’d urge librarians and LIS educators to be a mentor in every possible way.

To make this work I’ll address library administrators for just a moment: PLEASE create a climate of innovation, trust and forward-thinking in your libraries so your staff can innovate and try new things. Support and radical trust must come from the top for these things to be successful. You don’t have to know every little thing about technology just let your staff report out as needed, let them prototype and just say “yes.”

Personally, I would suggest to anyone wanting to make an impact on the profession that they do good work, learn from mistakes, play well with others, and report on their successes and failures. Library bloggers are alive and well and there will always be room for another reasoned and pragmatic voice. As for this interview, if it inspires librarians to share their ideas and “pay it forward”, I will be deeply satisfied.

Links:

Michael Buckland: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Library/Redesigning/html.html

Wendy Schultz: http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/6.htm

Stephens on Librarian 2.0: http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/3.htm

Stephens on Mishawaka Library Ban: http://tametheweb.com/?s=Mishawaka

Seattle PL: http://www.spl.org/default.asp?pageID=about_mission

I am particularly enjoying this slide this morning.

Here are the slides as PDF from the original keynote file.

Links for the presentation today:

Technoplans Vs Technolust at Library Journal 2004

Taming Technolust article at RUSQ: http://www.rusq.org/2008/08/18/taming-technolust/

Links:

ACRL Changing Roles

“Let Go of Control” Cell Phone Sign: http://www.flickr.com/photos/travelinlibrarian/1924719853

Brian Herzog’s Signs: http://www.flickr.com/photos/herzogbr/2437165908

The Cluetrain Manifesto: http://www.cluetrain.com

Emerging Technology Committee @ TTW

Michelle Boule on Beta

Prototyping from Brian Mathews

Transparency: The Open Door Director

Trend Map: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ross/1082392674/

Open Source Software:

• Casey Bisson’s LTR
• Karen Schenider on OSS in SLJ “Free for All”

Learning 2.0 & Learn & Play @CML

Be Curious

http://library.sbcc.edu/2008/09/academic_search_premier.html

I caught note of this via Twitter. Thanks Kenley!

Take a look at this post at the Luria Library’s blog. They’ve turned on video comments as well as sharing an embedded slide show that details basic searching of Ebscohost. 

This so ties into my takeaways from spending a day at IDEA2008. So much of what we do in the library world and design world comes down to interaction, extension of human feeling, offering something useful and ease of use. This is a perfect example of those things coming together perfectly.

Privacy or Marketing Data, originally uploaded by JenWaller.

WOW I am enjoying JenWaller’s set of photos from her tour of DOK. So good to see my Shanachie friends in their library showing things off. Jenn writes:

Erik and Jaap explain and demonstrate how the DOK library cards (and their system) operate. Again, similar to CDR, privacy is a little different here. DOK gathers lots of information about their users, and they use that data to make all kinds of decisions about services, programming, marketing, etc. They said they could tell how much cream a user puts in his/her coffee

I later asked about the Dutch laws as they regard police seizure of this kind of information. The laws are similar to U.S. laws — the police need to present a warrant before private data is handed over. DOK thinks about privacy a lot and tries to balance issues of user privacy with issues of how to best serve their users. In this vein, they periodically do “data dumps” of some of the user information. But some of the staff receive daily reports on what their users are doing.

This is a perfect “field trip” for use in classes. Thanks Jen!

http://flickr.com/photos/jenwaller/sets/72157607216582893/

I can tell a lot of work and thought went into this series of workshops:

http://becoming20.pbwiki.com/

Well done Bobbi & Robin!

by: Robin Hastings

Information Technology Manager at the Missouri River Regional Library in Jefferson City, Missouri

This all started because the employees at the library at which I work, the Missouri River Regional Library, were complaining about all the spam in their email. As the Information Technology Manager, part of my job is managing the email server we had – which used to be a server in our server room running Exchange 2003 with Outlook Web Access enabled, so people could use both Outlook and web-based email, whichever they chose. Trying to keep spam out of an Exchange server is difficult and/or expensive – this was something we were really struggling with! As an option, I began looking at Google Apps For Domains, a service I use for one of my personal domains. Google’s spam controls are impressive, to say the least, and the service level has always been pretty impressive. The more I poked around in Google Apps, the more I liked it!

I started looking at the details of Google Apps and began working up a case to sell it to my director. I pretty quickly discovered that the library, since it is not an actual 501(c)3 entity, wasn’t eligible for the educational version of the service. Google offers 3 different versions, the free version (250 accounts, 6GB of email space, no service level guarantees, ads with your emails), the educational version (free, some ads on emails, 25GB of space, 99% uptime guarantee for email) and the premier version ($50/account/year, no ads, 25GB of space, 99% uptime guarantee, conference room/resource scheduling, postini email policy management and recovery, etc). The education edition is basically the same as the premier, except that it’s free and doesn’t include the Postini email stuff.

Google provides a handy chart (http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/editions.html) detailing the differences between free and premier editions, one that I consulted frequently as I was working up my financial case to go to Google Apps. Once I realized we were going to have to pay for our version of Google Apps, I really hit that chart hard to make my business case for switching.

Since we were in a year that included a new email server and server software in the budget, I could show that Google would be just a few dollars ($80 or so) a year more expensive over a 3-year life span than Exchange 2007/Outlook with spam control software added on. After I made the budget/feature/begging case to my director, and he approved it, I started playing. I began by uploading all of our accounts to Google via a spreadsheet in CSV format. That was fun and got me started – until I realized that I couldn’t pay for all of our accounts at once because all they take are credit cards and all of our cards that are given to each manager have a $2000 limit. Our total bill was $3250. This meant that I had to delete about half of the accounts, pay for the ones I had still in the system and wait 5 days to pay for the rest of the accounts with another manager’s card and reupload them (after you delete an account name it can’t be recreated for at least 5 days). Big “oops” #1!

By July 24th all the accounts were paid for and all of the accounts were in place. I took a couple of days to get myself familiar with the system, create FAQs on our staff wiki and start working out the timeline for deployment. On July 25th, I invited staff to log into the system and start to “poke around” to get familiar as well. On July 28th I started face-to-face training sessions for staff to explain the system and answer questions – at least one every day. I scheduled 7 for the week of the 28th and one on Aug. 4th – the day we went live.

The staff were very receptive to the training – they showed up, they asked questions and they seemed to be very willing to change. I had one staff member who informed me that she didn’t like Outlook, but she didn’t like change, either. After the training session, however, she felt far more comfortable with the change and far more positive about it. Wiki-based FAQs and frequent emails updating staff on what is going on “behind the scenes” are critical – but nothing beats real-time, real-live training! In each session, I covered each of the Google services we’d be getting access to (Sites, Docs, Calendar, Email, Start Page and Chat) with a very quick tour of each of them. This took about a half-hour. After that, I opened the floor for questions about Google Apps, the process of the changeover or whatever else came up. Some of my sessions were 1/2 hour long – and that was it. One lasted for an hour and 15 minutes. Everyone had a chance to voice their objections and get answers to their concerns, though!

The actual changeover was fairly smooth – I used the feature that allowed me to use an administrator account that I sat up and then gave it read access to all the mailboxes. With that, I started the migration at 5:15pm on Saturday night, doing all of the full time folks first. When that finished (at 1am Sunday morning), I set the part time employee’s emails to go and went to bed. When I woke up in the morning, it was done. All of the email from all of the staff at MRRL was there… except for 3 staff members who were at the very end of the migration and hit up against the backup that I forgot to turn off for the night. This pretty much hosed the Exchange server and kept those 3 people from getting their emails immediately.

Monday morning, when I got to work, I sent my Computer Support guru, Nikki, over to the administration offices building to help folks who might need it and I started on a round of checking on staff in the main building. The changeover was pretty smooth. Most people chose to use the web-based email interface – very few required the Outlook program any more. Everyone logged on successfully and most people were very positive about the change. Since that first morning, I’ve spent some time sending out daily “tips & tricks” emails to the staff, uploading contacts and calendar data from Outlook to Google Apps and helping with contact management and other little issues that cropped up because of the differences between Gmail and Outlook. The responses from staff, however, have been very positive. I’ve had a couple of people tell me this was the smoothest technological change they’ve experienced (didn’t seem that smooth to me – 3 emails left off the migration and a few niggling issues with getting Outlook and Gmail to play nicely – but I suppose those were isolated incidents…) and almost everyone has mentioned how much easier Gmail is than Outlook to use and understand. The staff are enjoying the ability to chat with each other and are helping each other find new features and capabilities that are now available. And, of course, we are all enjoying the lack of spam in our inboxes!