no sound from a one man band

The Librarian in Black has posted a great piece about the fact that the future of the library is in web services. She writes in response to a couple of articles (one by Richard Wallis and another by Richard Ackerman – see her post for links) and while she doesn’t say anything that those of us in web services haven’t heard before — the web is where it’s at (at least if not for us, definitely for our users), she really hits the nail on the head by asking the following questions. These points need to be heard by our libraryland leadership:

• How many libraries in the U.S. have a honest-to-goodness computer programmer on staff?
• How many have staff with Computer Science degrees?
• How many staff do they have devoted to the library’s hardware, software, and network?
• How many staff do they have devoted to web services?

And the conclusions -

• There is a dearth of technology staff combined with ever-increasing demands on those staff for new services and resources.
• Very few libraries have stopped to take a look at reallocating staff resources to match the ever-increasing load that they are putting on their technology staff.
• If any library is doing any kind of technology or organizational planning, this is something that must be addressed upfront.
• This probably meant a few less library assistants, or even one less reference librarian, and that’s sad. Ideally, our public would see the rising circulation, programming, and educational needs as well as technology needs and offer us up some more funding for additional staff. But on a cost-benefit analysis, you can’t do much better than investing in tech staff. How many library branches, that get more traffic than your largest branch, can be run 24/7 by a handful of FTEs with (far lower) infrastructure costs? And let’s not forget–our online branches serve all of our users, wherever they are, and it’s not dependent on physical proximity or open hours.

And not just in words. Every library director I have talked to has maintained enthusiastically kind sentiments toward the web – believing because they think they recognize its importance that they are supporting it. Perhaps that was true 10 years ago, when the mere idea of the internet was so new that to support the role of the library there was in fact a great step forward. Not anymore. It is time for action to back up sentiment. It was time 5 years ago.

LiB makes some great points about staff reallocation. In our current climate, we are not getting any more bodies. However we have a significant amount of human resources right now that could be redeployed to serve our current needs. My library is doing this — just not in technology. They are recognizing that the staffing levels at their physical branches are not meeting current demands and taking steps to move folks/positions to where they could have the most positive impact and economic benefit for our users. Of course, the web has not been recognized as a place that could benefit from these reallocations. The fact is that any library that is not allocating staff (a lot of them) and budget dollars to their web services is doing a serious disservice (LiB calls it a crime) to their public — what other area of service is growing so fast? Where are you pushing your public for information? What are you giving them when they get there?

America’s on Drugs

But America’s librarians are not. On last night’s broadcast, CBS News reported on a recent federal study which found that 1 in every 12 American workers is under the influence of (or addicted to) illicit drugs. Be sure to watch the clip until the end where they tell us that while American workers are on drugs, librarians are the least likely to be among them. See! Our image is in tact despite recent press to normalize us!

round up them bees

Harvesting the Hive, social networking and libraries — Sunday, June 25, 10:30am.

Speakers: Matthew Lejeune, Digital Reference Services Coordinator, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN; Farkas, Distance Learning Librarian, Norwich University, Northfield, VT; Tim Spalding, Founder and Developer, LibraryThing, Portland, ME

Matthew Lejeune – Recommended reading: Malene Charlotte Larsen, 25 perspectives on Social Networking (eg. social, learning, consumber, genre, bullying, surveillance, body and sex, predator, democratic, etc. )

Wikis in libraries – (info will publish in some journal that i didn’t hear clearly – in September, maybe?)

4 ways of wikis  – collaboration between libraries, collaboration betw. library staff, collaboration betw. staff and users, collaboration betw. users. [These categories can be applied to other areas of social networking and participatory software as well]

examples – subject guide wiki from SJCPL, USC Aiken Gregg-Graniteville library (CMS implementation), OCLC wiki worldcat, biz whiz from Ohio University, ref wiki at Butler University.

4 questions…why aren’t there more wikis in 3 and 4? why aren’t we collaborating with users? How might we enable users to build/modify information?

obstacles to this – we are a risk-averse profession who quite enjoy the idea of control. [although, when polled, almost everyone in the audience says their library is using a wiki for some purpose (generally internally)].

Matthew’s presentation is at librarywikis.pbwiki.com
password: lwcontrib – He requests that attendees post their libraries’ wikis to the wiki to be used as examples of implementation.

Farkas – Knowledge Management – how to organize info. so that it can be used/shared most effectively. Applications of Knowledge Management using social software in libraries:

example of the aadl SOPAC: recommended books, tagging- discusses the conventional excuse of privacy issues. we can strip personal information from this data and make it useful to provide a useful service that our users expect. Tagging supplements the descriptors.

Hennepin County BookSpace.

Rochester transportation rocwiki

Wiki as intranet – good for sharing procedure and policies, share basic info, Share reference resource information (trials, passwords, evalutions and assessment, etc.), — remember that this implementation can take time to establish knowledge management behavior into the organizational workflow. patience and persistence.

slides from talk and other things: meredithfarkas.wetpaint.com

Tim Spalding, LibraryThing.com

librarything is sort of like myspace for books and book lovers… sort of. myspace is about friends, librarything is about shared book collections that create connections.

15 million books have been cataloged in LibraryThing so far – we call this social cataloging… a bit of a new take. Cataloging by conversation opens avenues of discovery that are not available from traditional cataloging.

LibraryThing provides good information, much the same way that wikipedia provides good information. They’re not supposed to work, yet they do.

examples of the value of social cataloging – cooking (vs. cookery), chick lit or cyber punk (vs. nonexistent).

Peter Morville & Ambient Findability

Monday, June 26, 10:30am (sorry for the delay in getting this posted…)

Usability is yesteryear. We need to strive for desirability. Attractive things work better, attractive makes happy, happy makes us think better. Image, identity and brand are things that we need to seriously acknowledge

Three Questions to Begin Web Development

1. can our users find our website
2. can they find there way around the web site
3. can they find our products, services, and info despite our website

Principles of Web Development

1. accessibility – Not just for ADA, but for mobile devices
2. valuable — Design with your business goals and vision in mind.
3. credibility – Image counts. a lot. users trust the hits that come at the top of a google search. findability and credibility are increasingly connected.

Emphasize on Findability — good things happen when you focus on findability.

ex. national cancer institute redesign of cancer.gov web site.
understand who you users are – not just doctors and researchers. 95% are cancer patients looking for their cancer type home pages. cancer type searches were not leading to the nci pages, only cancer searches get top billing in google.

ex. csa/proquest
which database is your answer hiding in?
simplify the interface and simplify the choices.

access my library – great idea from thomson-gale, but not available from google. you have to include ‘access my library’ and then you are found in the secondary index (a.k.a. google hell)

Libraries must move from fear to enthusiam

FUTURE – things to come
Every architect needs to have one foot in the past and one foot in the future. Look at trends not just features. We are designing the legacy systems of tomorrow. What can we build that will respond to trends that indicate the future of information.

findability is key – object level and system level. In the old days of information there was not that much of it. A wealth of information causes a poverty of attention. How does this affect the way we learn and the way we make our decisions?

dilbert cartoon: “information is gushing toward your brain like a firehose aimed at a teacup”

convergence – devices and location. wrist watches for kids. everyone will be using these soon, but not until we can control who can know what.

tracking our locations, google street view, etc. – privacy issues.
we want to be able to watch the watchers. we want a transparent information system.

not everything is miscellaneous…. not entirely fair to librarians and info architects. we cannot choose the old or the new. we need to bring them together… PACE LAYERING different layers evolve at different rates, they provide senses of progress as well as stability. we need both of these sensations.

We shouldn’t just throw tags everywhere — compare amazon and librarything.
Read Tim Spalding’s article – when tags work and when they don’t.

Search has become the common interface for commerce. Does this mean the end of browsing? Of course not. Because after google we are faced with Amazon – lots of navigation and browsing. One size will not fit all. Search is a system.