CIL Presentations are being posted all over the place. Be sure to check the official ITI page for a full listing.
What I Learned Today…
Web 2.0 and programming tips from a library technology enthusiast, What I Learned Today… covers blogs, rss, wikis and more as they relate to libraries.
Category Archives: CIL2006
More on the Web 2.0 Challenge
Paul Miller has posted a follow up to his presentation at CIL last week. He commented on our (the biblioblogosphere’s) doubts that vendors will ever live up to the dream he presented to us.
Change is hard. Change can hurt. Given where we are now, and where the wider world is going, change is essential. We need to work with libraries in order to ensure that they can project themselves and their services (both from the individual library and in various aggregate forms that will inevitably cross multiple vendors) outside their walls and beyond their web sites and into the lives of our users, whether actual or potential.
…
Rather than assume that your vendor will never change, why not incentivise that change (by asking for APIs, web services, etc, again and again and again), assist that change (by showing them what’s possible, and by locating and supporting the free thinkers who do exist within your vendor), and even help to force that change (by writing appropriate clauses into your specifications for new system procurements, and meaning it)?
He calls for us to discuss possiblities in the TDN, he asks that we point our vendors there and have like minded librarians join in as well.
“Small voices loosely coupled can be incredibly powerful.” – what a nice quote.
Another Tech Savvy Staff Tip
I was reflecting on what I learned last week at the conference and I thought I should share with you all one way that we’re trying to create Tech Savvy Staff – and it’s free!
We (meaning I) look for free webinars offered through places like OPAL, SirsiDynix and KM World and invite the entire staff to attend in our multi-purpose room. This room is wired to allow the sound from the computer to come through speakers in the ceiling and it had a large screen and projector. This way we can feel like we’re at a conference or official training session and we don’t have to pay a penny.
What ways are you training your staff? Or are there other places I should be looking for Webinars?
Blogging a conference
This is the first year I was a blogger at CIL – it’s my first year as a blogger at all – what’s the point? Well I was reading everyone else’s summaries (now that mine are finished) and I saw this bullet point from Amanda Etches-Johnson and I just had to share it here because I agree 100%.
Blogging a conference makes the experience better. It just does. It certainly was a lot more work to summarize the sessions and add the linkage after the fact, but I'm glad I did it. It gave me a chance to check out the stuff the speakers pointed out as well as reflect upon what I'd heard. I feel like I really engaged with the content rather than having it simply wash over me. I hope you got something out of it too.
This really is true – every other year I come back to work and put my notes on our staff intranet – mostly bullet points and suggestions. This year I was able to write coherent summaries of each session and which got me thinking not only while I was listening, but while I was writing later on.
The conference in pictures
A lot of people have been adding their CIL pictures to Flickr – but only one has sketches from the sessions! Derik Badman sketched what he saw while in sessions and around the conference.
Very cool! And fun if you were in the same session because you know exactly what part he was sketching.
DigiTech Props
I mentioned that Darlene Fichter had great props for the DigiTech Forum – well Nancy Garmen from Info Today got a great picture. Make sure you check it out.
PS. I’m catching up on my reading so I’ll probably have more CIL summaries to share with you from the other bloggers.
Recovering – slowly
Meredith says in her CIL: Impressions post – “I feel like I've been run over by a train.” Great way to explain it Meredith! I was so wiped yesterday that I wrote up some of my summaries and then took a nap – and I wrote some more and went to bed early 
I had so much fun this time at CIL. This was my first year as a blogger and it was kind of cool to have people actually recognize my name.
I got to meet people I had only read like Meredith, Dave King, Dorothea, Greg, Chad, Dave Hook, Karen, Jenica, Darlene, and Jill. I also got to meet up with my CIL buddy Tom Ipri.
I stayed awake for the Dead Tech forum for the first time and I had lunch & dinner plans every day (although I cut out on the dine-around on Thurs because I was so exhausted).
I’ve always brought back great information from this conference, but this time I got a change to bring back and experience and I’m looking forward to doing it again next year.
The Web 2.0 Challenge
I know that you’ve been wondering since I posted about the Future of Catalogs what my favorite session was at CIL this year – well, here it is!
Paul Miller is the Technology Evangelist for Talis – how fun does that sound?? Paul said “One day I’ll have a normal job” but why would you want a normal job? Not only is Paul’s job title fun – he was fun – it was a great presentation and I loved every minute of it. My hand was hurting at the end because I was trying to take notes as fast as he talked.
To start, Paul wanted to bring us back to reality – We need to reach out of the library to reach people wherever they happen to be – he said “I have really bad news for you. The library isn’t necessarily the place they think they want to go everyday.” So we need to reach out to where they actually are and help them do what they want to do better. It’s not just about vendors – it’s about all of us too.
He asked “How do people find stuff?” We all answered Google – he then asked “How else?” and there was a series of other answers that came from the audience and Paul told them they were wrong. The correct answer was Google, Google and Google – accessed in different ways – Google desktop, Google toolbar, etc. So how do we compete? And should we compete?
He pointed us to a few publications that may be of interest.
- Johnson, O’Doherty. Vines, Eds. Mori. Understanding The Audience, CIE, 2005. (CIE, pub 2005). http://www.common-info.org.uk/docs/mori-report.pdf (not linked because the link is broken – if you can find it let me know)
- Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources from OCLC
- another title that was cut off in his presentation about Library Stats in the UK
I could go into the stats that Paul shared with us, but you can see the graphs yourself on his presentation. In short people are still visiting the library and they trust us – so where did we go wrong online? Why are people still turning to Google first? According to the stats, a much lower number of people have visited the library website than those who have visited the building – and Paul thinks that most “were probably put off by what they saw”. He gave us an example from the Edinburgh University Library – look at this page – look at the length of this page – and the information on this page. It’s a list of databases – and we’re saying to the average user – “pick one”. The users do not need to know the names of all of the databases you have available – in fact they are probably overwhelmed and totally confused by this list.
So who – other than Google – are we up against? Paul put up the widely used image of Web 2.0 logos and let it scroll by. And he defined them as:
- Relevant
- Innovative
- Participative
- User-centric
- Nimble
- Responsive
Isn’t that what we want to be? How many of these things can we apply to ourselves at this point in time? The thing is – we can be all of these things, we can do it just as well if not better than these companies if we work together. Paul pointed us to the Talis whitepaper on Library 2.0 – it was in our conference packs, but you can read it online.
So how do we respond to this trend? Library 2.0 is about opening the library up and delivering content to our users where they are when they want it. We need to engage our users – which we are doing, but we need to do even more. Paul called for us to “disaggregate our monolithic library systems…”. He explained this to us like this: Imagine a great big black box which a vendor sells you and instead of taking everything the vendor offers you take only the bits you need. Plugging in bits of other applications – maybe from other vendors – or that you have written yourself. Which is what I have the hardest time with – we have this ILS that was written for primarily academic libraries and we’re forced to buy the whole package and use only 1/3 of this – then out comes an add on that makes more sense for us – but we have to pay extra to get it – why not let us pay for the core and then pick and choose the other pieces we’ll need – customizing our catalogs to our specific institution? Paul says library systems should be like Lego, you can build the picture on the box or you can build something new and different.
Sidenote: Keep an eye on Talking with Talis for a podcast from the Library 2.0 gang on the “Future of the OPAC”.
Some people don’t like the idea of Library 2.0 because it implies a need for technology that some libraries can’t afford – a need for a programmer – and not just any programmer – a programmer who understands libraries – but what if we all worked together instead of individually – what if libraries with programmers shared their skills and code so that libraries without could still have new innovations? Paul called this “shared innovation” – we need to work together to fill in the gaps and make all of our libraries better.
He then went on to show us what libraries are already doing like the wpOPAC and greasemonkey plugins for Amazon that show the status of a book in the library. It’s not about black or white – library or Amazon – it’s about bringing things together and letting the user choose. Maybe the library can’t get the book for 5 days, but Amazon can deliver tomorrow – or vice versa – it’s about empowering the user to make informed decisions. He also showed the new book covers from the Ann Arbor Superpatron Edward Vielmetti and John Blyberg’s card catalog images. Paul says “It’s about letting people to take ownership and feel a connection to the items in the library. It’s a little bit gimmicky – it’s not what we’re going to replace the OPAC with. But it’s about reaching out in different ways and leveraging the data you already have. Making the data work harder does not always have to be for some worthy cause.” (maybe not an exact quote – but close enough).
The problem with these examples is that everyone has a different vendor, a different library system so we’d have to start over and program it ourselves – we need to work together – “By working together we can do better” – and I agree 100%. We need a shared platform – something that crosses vendor divides.
Now the next part of Paul’s talk was very hopeful – but knowing what I know about our vendors – it’s probably never going to happen – unless we (librarians) refuse to work any other way – and that won’t happen either – maybe I’m being pessimistic – I sure hope I am, because I want what Paul is offering – I want to work on a shared platform, I want to be able to share information with other libraries and use what they have to share.
So here we go – what is the “platform”? It’s a set of core pieces that every library system will have – built as a collaborative effort to make our lives easier. Everybody doesn’t need to start from scratch every time – instead we can build on shared pools of data. An example that he used was recommendation services. An individual library probably doesn’t have enough data to do this effectively. A lawyer may have taken out a NJ law journal and a book of business forms – they’re not necessarily related, but because we only have 9000 members and so many books, we can’t give effective recommendations – but what if we could access the data from all of the other law libraries in the world?? In aggregate we have more data than Amazon does.
The platform breaks down barriers – it has to cross the divide between vendors – it doesn’t make any sense for us to not be able to work together because we have different ILS packages provided by different vendors. It is much easier now for us to do something about this. The vendors need to work together and define the areas where they’re going to work together – and where they’re going to compete. Why should they all invest their time and money in building the core infrastructure? Why not all build it together? If we all have the same core in our ILS packages we’ll be able to communicate. Our role in this is to push our vendors to cooperate.
The platform will also allow us to expose the data to others – Amazon, a CMS – thought a similar API. The API will be the same across vendors so that changing won’t require as much changing – consistent access to data and exposure of content will allow us to build off of the core to make what’s best for our library.
Talis has built such an application called Whisper – and you can demo it online. Paul went through how it works and it was pretty darn impressive. It includes plugins to Amazon, Map mashups and desktop widgets.
So where do we start? Well first off we need to tell our vendors what we want – and we need to tell them in the right way. We need to include IT staff in the decision making and discussion with vendors so that our requests are put in a way they understand – like Roy Tennant said – it is partly our faults that things are the way they are. We need to visit Talis’ Shared Innovation site:
This resource exists to support innovators across the global library domain. It is open to all and it is free.
Content includes advice, documentation, scripts, APIs, Web Services, SDKs and other relevant resources. It is applicable to users of any library automation solution.
We encourage all contributors to join us in sharing their contributions under a Creative Commons licence and providing any source code under the GNU General Public License.
So, this is your space. Please get involved and help to shape a community that meets your needs.
And participate. We need to join together and work together and share together to get the people into the library and if not – then at least get them to use our resources online.
What a wonderful presentation – I hope that someone in your library attended and bought the recording so you can listen to it – it was well worth it!
Open Source Software for Libraries
I think my pup (Coda) is tired of me sitting on the couch with this laptop – when I sat down this morning she jumped up and sat on my notes
But that’s not the point of this post – I want to share with you the OSS options that Glen Horton shared with us at the conference.
Glen made a really good point at the beginning of his presentation – Libraries are Open Source. OSS coders and librarians both believe that information should be freely accessible to others. In my library there is no problem using OSS to solve our problems – but I have heard from and read about other librarians who hit a brick wall when the words open source come out of their mouths. We should be supporting and participating in the open source community not assuming that because it’s (mostly) free it’s not as good as the software we pay for.
In addition to asking us to use OSS, Glen calls for us to share OSS links with our patrons – which we do in our research links section where ever we can. If you want to go one step further you can burn the install files for packages like Firefox and Thunderbird onto a CD to make it easier for patrons who do not have high speed internet to install the OSS packages. You can then add this CD to your collection and let people borrow it because with the GPL you’re allowed to redistribute the software.
So what software did Glen show us?
He mentioned Greenstone Digital Library Software
Greenstone is a suite of software for building and distributing digital library collections. It provides a new way of organizing information and publishing it on the Internet or on CD-ROM.
He also added that there are plugins for PDF, Word, PPT and HTML that can be added to the package. To see an example of this software in use visit the Greater Cincinnati Memory Project.
Then he mentioned the ILS that I have been very curious about – Koha. Unfortunately (for me) Koha is meant for small-medium sized libraries. It includes serials, reviews, acquisitions and much more. The Athens County Library in Ohio decided to use their ILS budget to pay a programmer to customize Koha specifically to their needs – instead of shelling out the money on a yearly basis to a vendor. This way the improvements they paid for are now available to the rest of us for free. So if you’re in a small or medium library (I think we’re large – I’ll have to look at the numbers) why not take that money you’re wasting every year on a product that was built to please as many people as possible and have something built just for you??
Other open source library packages include Avanti and the GA Pines project (which I mentioned in my last post) – more info can be found at Open-ILS.org.
For public and academic libraries (we don’t filter anything – yet) there are open source ways to filter what your users are using your public PCs for. DansGuardian and Squidguard are both available and can be run with each other to offer double the protection.
If that wasn’t enough there is also the Open Source Software Bibliography:
This bibliography has been compiled by Brenda Chawner, School of Information Management, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, as part of her Ph.D. studies. It includes announcements, journal articles, and web documents that are about open source software development in libraries. It also includes articles that describe specific open source applications used in libraries, in particular dSpace, Koha, Greenstone, and MyLibrary.
Now you’re all going to run out and find the right OSS for your library – aren’t you?? Well, I am. If you have anythingto add to the list, feel free to comment here, I’d love to learn more.
Future of OPACs Catalogs
If I wasn’t finished with the conference and I was posting this live I’d say that this was the best presentation of the entire conference – now that I know what comes after I’d have to vote this as the second best.
Roy Tennant started this presentation by killing the word OPAC and replacing it with the word catalog (hence the strikethrough in the title – in case you didn’t get that).
So what can our catalogs do well?
- Inventory Control – they’re great at telling us what we have and where we have it
- Known Item Searching – great at title or author searching
- Searching for Items in a particular location – specifically our own libraries
What don’t they do well?
- Searching beyond known items
- Searching beyond book and journal titles – no searching for specific chapters or articles within journals
- They don’t display results in a logical groupings (FRBR needed)
- There is no faceted browsing
- There is no relevance ranking
- There are no recommendation services – like on Amazon
Roy went on to ask how we got into this mess? Apparently the idea of an online catalog started in the back room – which was an interesting way to put it because I guess that means all cataloging departments are put in the back room – back on the subject. The catalog was meant for inventory, acquisitions and circulation and was given to the public as an afterthought – so the catalog was optimized for our needs and not necessarily the customer’s. So what we’ve done is made our lives a lot easier and our patrons lives only a little bit easier.
Then there’s the software itself. We have asked for – and so created – systems where we can’t get information out – and then we blame the vendors when we too were and are to blame. Librarians as a whole are slow to exploit opportunities and reluctant to collaborate in building systems and so we’re left with a substandard solution.
So what do we do? We need to stop thinking of the catalog as the primary finding tool. We have more than what’s in our catalog and the solution to that is not to cram everything we can into the catalog – but to adopt new technologies that logically search the different resources. Our catalogs should be for books – and journals etc that are in our physical location – they should not house all of our electronic collections and special databases.
What’s the future? (What do we want for the future?) Our catalog should be just one system among many – it will function well by itself and play well with others. It will be refocused on what is in the building – not everything we can provide access to. It will not be the central finding tool.
Roy told us to look for the BSTF Final Report titled Rethinking How We Provide Bibliographic Services for the University of California and give it a read (which I’ll do once I finish all of this writing) and to keep an eye out for a document titled “The Changing Nature of the Catalog” which was written for the Library of Congress.
Lastly he pointed us to some promising looks at catalogs of the future. Xerxes from Cal State San Marcos Library is a logical search that asks the user to limit their search to books in the library, books available in 24 hours (usually via ILL with the member libraries) and books available within 5-10 days (all of WorldCat). The users don’t need to know where the books are coming from, they just need to know when they can get them – they don’t need to know what libraries they’re searching, they just need to know that the title can be on their desk within the next X hours. Why bog our users down with information that only we care about?
Next up – Andrew Pace who started with this quote (which may not be exact) “Library Automation: Yesterday’s Technology Tomorrow”. Andrew’s job was to show us the next generation of catalogs – catalogs which are living up to Roy’s (and my) dreams.
- Talis – who I’ll write much more about later
- Polaris – using AJAX
- III – offering OPAC Pro (wonder what the $$ look like on that one)
- Endeca – which he demoed
- Geogia Pines
Andrew showed us his amazing new catalog – something that a lot of bloggers were posting about a little while back. The NCSU Library Catalog is still powered by Unicorn, but it uses Endeca to prettify (yes that’s a real term) the search pages and results. Let me tell you, after this demo I was drooling!!
The top search box is for keyword searching – but not like any keyword searching you’re used to – it lets you choose where to find your keyword – title, author, anywhere, etc. The search results are then accompanied by browsable subjects that help you narrow your search as well as narrowing options like format (book, ebook, etc) and language. Right on the results page in green (checked in) and red (checked out) is the status of the book – no need to click in and see if your book is available. Location and links to online versions are also right there on the first list of results – in our catalog you have to click to see this information. When you click you get even more information – like “More Titles Like This” and “Table of Contents”.
Near the end of his talk Andrew informed us that Endeca may be a newbie in the library world, but their search technologies are used on sites such as WalMart and Barnes & Noble – so these people know what they’re doing.
I know I covered a lot here, but there was a lot in this presentation. I can’t wait for Monday so I can share this info with the librarians who couldn’t accompany me to the conference – I think there are so many areas in which we can improve.
[update]Looks like my strikethrough in the title doesn’t work in Bloglines – so if you are wondering what I’m talking about visit my site.[/update]
[update2]Added link to LC Report “The Changing Nature of the Catalog“[/update]
