CIL Presentations are being posted all over the place. Be sure to check the official ITI page for a full listing.

Technorati Tags: cil2006, cil06

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.

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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?

Technorati Tags: training, learning, cil2006

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

Technorati Tags: cil2006, cil06

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.

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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]

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I know I’m not done with my summaries yet - so why am I reading others?? Well I was just on Dave Hook’s site looking at the picture from our dinner - and saw that he did a summary of the Cool Tools session. I didn’t attend this session because I attended one at Internet Librarian and I didn’t learn anything, but it looks like there was some new stuff in the presentation. Check out Dave’s summary for more info.

[update] Darlene has put her slides up [/update]

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My first session Friday was the Search Engine update from Gary Price. You can tell that Gary loves his job just by watching him present. He was out of time and he just kept going and going hehe

Gary put up his presentation so that everyone can benefit from it - so I’ll just summarize the things he said that may not be on there.

He mentioned the coolest plugin available for Firefox, it’s called Search Engine Ordering. It makes it so that you can add almost any search engine to your Firefox search window without an individual script. The plugin says it will work for any search with a GET method, but Gary says he’s gotten it to work with POST methods as well. How can we use this? Well we can add our catalogs & site searches to Firefox on our public PCs and make them the defaults - this way our patrons search us first instead of Google - we can post a tip on our websites or in our newsletters about this nifty tool so that our patrons are also using it at home or at work.

NewspaperARCHIVE.com is a pay service, but Gary pointed out that they also offer a ton of great free resources (links on his presentation).

Since Google bought Writely, people can’t sign up for accounts anymore - so why not use ZohoWriter another web-based word processor that is freely available. It keeps track of revisions, let’s people collaborate and can create output in PDF or Word format.

Exalead is a not so popular search engine that is hosted in Europe. Gary made a point to mention that he liked that they were trying to compete in the search engine market which is mostly American. Exalead is actually a powerful little search engine, it offers features like fuzzy searching, stemming, and proximity searching.

Apparently (and this isn’t on the presentation page) Trader Joe’s has a blog! It’s called Tracking Trader Joe’s. Why does this matter? Because they’re setting themselves apart (even more) from their competitors, they’re meeting their customers where they are - which is what we have to do.

Gary also said something that stuck with me (and this isn’t an exact quote) - “We might not use it, but we should know what’s out there” - so go through his presentation and learn what’s out there so that when a patron asks you a question you can say - “Oh, I’ve heard of that - let me see what I can find for you” instead of “Huh??”

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As you notice, I’m home and posting my conference summaries - I thought I should explain what happened. When we got to the conference we (bloggers) were given a key to access a limited wireless network - it was only available in one of the conference rooms, the press room and the registration area. This would have been fine, except that on day one someone who was connected hit the router with a virus messing things up for the rest of us.

The staff was extremely helpful though. At one point I was taken up to the press room (which I didn’t know about until then) and given a network cable so that I could access the Internet wired.

The wireless provided by ITI was fine after that, but I was already behind a day and I didn’t want to pay the hotel to get access in my room - and so here I am at home, falling asleep over my computer trying to make sure you all get an accurate account of what happened at the sessions I attended before I go back to work and get bombarded with everything I missed last week!

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For our last keynote of the week we had Lee Raine, Director of PEW Internet & American Life Project. Lee started out by asking us who was going to be blogging this and there were actually fewer hands than I had expected - he said it was a couple dozen, but it didn’t look like that from where I was sitting. He was asking as a segway into showing us what other bloggers had written - the funniest had to be a presentation where people were chatting live while he was talking - not too bad, except that the chat was up on the screen behind him, so when someone wrote “He’s older than I thought” the entire audience broke out laughing. After this Lee asked us to be kind — I guess it’s good that he gave a very interesting presentation

Apparently his speech was altered by the most recent Time magazine cover (which I saw at the grocery store today). The cover reads “Are kids too waired for their own good?” It’s an article about the Mellenials or Generation M (M for media). Apparently this generation spans 1982-2000, but I can’t see that it really spans that wide a time range - my sisters were born in 82 and I don’t think of them on the same level (technology and wired wise) as the people that Lee talked about - maybe we were in the minority growing up. Lee said that millenials “are not tech-savvy, they are tech-embracing” which is an interesting way to put it. Just because your 5 year old uses the computer more than you doesn’t necessarily mean he knows more about how it’s working.

There were other characteristics of Generation M that Lee mentioned that I thought - well that’s true for me too - like the fact that things like TV programs and radio programs no longer control their schedules. If they want to watch Survivor they don’t have to stay home - they can watch it on their mobile device (maybe) or Tivo it and watch it another time.

Millenials are observed to have “continuous partial attention” - they are always scanning for the best thing to do, see, buy - which is not to be confused with multi-tasking - which they are also very good at.

What does all of this mean to us as librarians? Well these are the people that a public libraries have to draw in - and the people that we (law libraries) will be dealing with in a year or two - if we’re not already. The way these people will approve learning and research will be shaped by their techno-world and if we don’t understand and embrace it they’re going to find another - probably less reliable - way to do their research.

Overall a very interesting presentation - rich with statistics and presented by someone who was obviously at ease on stage.

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On Thursday afternoon we played hooky and went to the Library of Congress - I was so excited - I thought I was going to see walls and walls of books!! There were no books!! I kept saying - “Where are the books”? Apparently they hide the books behind closed doors and in other buildings - only the people to wait for the tour get to see the main reading room and we couldn’t wait - we had to get back for the afternoon sessions. So, I can now say I’ve been to the Library of Congress and it really wasn’t a big deal

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Janie Hassard Hermann covered the training patrons part of this presentation. The official title was “Training for Staff & Patrons in Public Libraries” - I figured that I could still use this information in a special library setting - and I guess you could in some, but probably not in ours.

Janie set up a bunch of classes in her library - all of which sound really cool! They had a series of classes that focus on gadgets - cameras, pdas, etc. They built up a collection of gadets for the library so that the staff could learn what they needed in order to teach the patrons. Apparently these classes are a huge hit! They also offer classes similar to what our Technology Workshops (which we don’t offer anymore) covered, topics like how to legally download files and introductions to online communities and web 2.0 resources (blogs, wikis, rss).

She has also been able to get people to come in and give talks (usually for free) on other technology topics. My favorite class series she mentioned was the Databytes series. They offer lunch and have people in to see how to use different databases they have in the library - I may have to steal this idea Janie

Travis Bussler covered the training staff portion of this presentation. He mentioned a few useful things I hadn’t thought of. #1 all staff have to take a tehcnology self assesment when they start at the library. This questionaire asks them how they feel about their knowledge of different hardware and software packages. This way the IT staff can determine what training is necessary. An example of a problem he gave us (which was just too funny) was that someone on his staff called him at 8pm one night to tell him that the network was down - after several questions he determined that the actual problem was that the Neopets website was unavailable. The idea is to train the staff to know the difference between these 2 problems so that IT staff can focus on more important issues. He also stressed the importance of documentation - which I must say is something out IT staff has trouble with - most staff members (at least in my library) could probably solve their own problems if they had the right instructions in front of them.

Overall the presentation was done very well - I just should have assumed that they put the words “public library” in the title for a reason

Technorati Tags: cil06, cil2006

I am home and catching up on all of my posting. First, I promised to post the URLS from the Planning for a Mobile Future keynote.

Sites that offer mobile verions (by detecting what you’re using):

• TV Guide
• NWS
• Hoovers
• PubMed

Tools to shrink a page to fit on a mobile device (disclaimer - you may lose important info by using these services)

• Iyhi
• Skweezer

Web 2.0 Mobile Sites:

• Mobilicious
  “Mobilicio.us is a ‘mashup’ that combines the del.icio.us online bookmarking service with Google’s Mobile Search tool.”
• Splash Blog
  Mobile picture blogging

Sites to download Mobile tools from:

• Tucows
• Handango
• Handmark

Mobile Answers Sites:

• 4info
• Medio
• Answers.com
  Who says on their site that they are in the pre-search business not the research business
• Google SMS
• Synfonic
• AskMeNow

Reference by SMS is a service specifically for libraries which gives the library a cell number than can be texted - allowing them to recieve reference questions via email. (LibrarianInBlack wrote about this service back in November). Other options include Teleflip (which Meredith recommends) and Vazu which let you send text messages from their sites.

Learn more:

• Textually.org
• engadget
• Gizmodo
• MobileRead
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Megan’s presentation can be found online on Monday.

Technorati Tags: cil2006, cil06

Megan Fox gave a very interesting (especially for me - who is sorely behind on mobile devices) keynote presentation yesterday morning.

At our library the Blackberry is the mobile device of choice - but according to Megan Smart phone are being used more than PDAs - which make sense because who wants to carry around a phone and a PDA when you can have 2 in one? My question always is - how are they as phones? Are they as good as my boring phone?

She also showed us a very sci-fi looking ad for an ebook reader. There was a person reading their newspaper on the using an ebook reader and across the isle is a woman reading the old-fashioned way - the future is here folks!

She mentioned a good number of sites that offer mobile versions of their sites - and hopefully when we redesign Jenkins later this year (probably next year) we will be one of those sites. I’ll post the long list later - when I’m home with my reliable wireless connection

What does this have to do with libraries? Well most people are using their mobile devices for quick answers - what time is this movie? how do I get to this restaurant? where can I find an electronic copy of this law book? (I added that one ) Who better to answer these questions than librarians? Why are we letting everyone turn to Google and the other search engines to find their answers?

Text messaging is huge in the US and even huger in the rest of the world and companies are already jumping on trend and offering answers via text messages. Now I do not use text messaging because I can’t see paying for the service when I can use my email or IM to contact people - but one day it will a standard in all phone packages - and wouldn’t it be great if the law students could text message us and ask for a quick answer? I’ll post the services that are already doing this later (along with the list of mobile friendly sites).

We (our library) were planning on buying a blackberry to share among the staff so that we could all learn how to use the device - I was not as excited as my boss - but now I can’t wait to give it a whirl. Thanks Megan for turning me on to even more gadgets!

[update]I forgot to tag this post[/update]

Technorati Tags: cil2006, cil06, mobile, handhelds

Hey look what I found - a list of CIL Blogger. Make sure to read what others are saying about the conference - keep in mind we’ve been having trouble with the limited access we have to wireless - so posts are probably going up late or not at all.

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That was the theme of the DigiTech (Dead Tech) Forum last night.

This is the first year that I have actually stayed awake to attend this session and it was worth it!!

I didn’t bring paper or a pen with me so I didn’t get to take notes until Gwen decided to share (being her personal secretary and all )

Michael Stevens had a lot of great things to say, but I didn’t write them down and you can’t expect my brain to function at that hour (I know I’m a wimp) - the one thing that stuck with me is that “We’ve always done it this way” is a comment that librarians make that is sooooo 1.0 and that librarians should be saying we have to innovate and change to fit in the 2.0 mold - he didn’t say it that way - he had a quote on the screen that I just can’t remember

He told us to look at the WPopac which is a WordPress OPAC face for an III catalog - this way each title has it’s own HTML page. That’s soooo 2.0!

The IT of 1.0 used to say “The computer says No” The IT of 2.0 says “Tell us what you want and we’ll find and open source application for you - if we can’t find one we’ll write it”!! That’s totally what I do at work - I write it - I guess I’m soooo 2.0!

I need to stress now that I am not a night person - I know it was only 8pm - but my friends and family all know not to call me after that hour at night - that said - I didn’t write the rest of the presenters names down (I’m sorry speakers) - but the ideas were good so I’m going to put as many of them as I can here.

Comparisons:

1.0 - Tracking packages with RSS through bloglines
2.0 - Tracking pages on a Google map mashup

1.0 - MS Office
2.0 - Google buys Writely - Google Office

2.0 - There is now a watch with bluetooth that will get the time from the cell phone in your pocket - so that you can see it on your watch instead of reaching into your pocket - HOW LAZY ARE WE??

Darlene Fichter had told us earlier that this session was going to be fun - she said she’s not fun, but the others would be fun - then she stepped up the stage and took out her rain coat and umbrella to guard her from the tech storm - then she put on her aluminum foil cap and cape to protect her! How can she say she’s not fun? No one else had props and theme songs - yes theme songs - one for 2.0 and one for 1.0

Then she gave us survival tips:

1. We have to be Digital read/write participants
2. We have to learn with others
3. We have to be facilitators for relationships
4. We need to have our intercultural antennae up - not everyone is from your default point of view
5. We have to be tolerant of ambiguity - it’s okay to not be in control
6. We have to LEARN THE TOOLS!! (emphasis added by me!)
7. We have to be self aware

In short Library 2.0 (for her) = (books ‘n stuff + people + radical trust) * participation.

Marshall Breeding made one point that really resonated with me - OPACs are still too much like card catalogs and even though the vendors are slow - librarians are slower - How True!! He called for us to be more aggressive!

Stephen Abram’s theme? “Get real the world is changing!” I was sitting in the back (I got there at the last minute) so I didn’t hear all of his comments and jokes - which was a shame because people were laughing an awful lot! Stephen also called for librarians to get on MySpace and Facebook - apparently 2/3 of all blog posts are coming from My Space and My Space gets 3x the traffic of Google - this is great - for public and academic libraries - but I can safely say that the members of our law library are not on My Space - so what is there for us??

Overall this was a great session, I’m glad I stayed awake!

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[update]Comments disabled due to constant spamming[/update]

Yesterday I did something new for me - I ate with strangers Well they’re not strangers anymore. Usually I come to these conferences and eat my meals alone and go to bed early. I ate lunch with 9 other people, most of whose blogs I have read over the last year.

We had a nice Indian lunch and talked about the different libraries we’ve (well not me - they) worked in.

For dinner I went out with some of the same people and a few new bloggers. We ate at Zorba’s which is a cafeteria style Greek restaurant. It was good food, but too much for me to eat

I have uploaded pictures of lunch and dinner to Flickr and they can be found in my CIL set.

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Well this session did not go as well as it coudld have - from no fault of the presenters mind you!

I got in a little bit late to this session only to find that there were some technology difficulties! When this happened in another session someone said the conference is called “computers in libraries” not “computers out of libraries” Wish I had written down who said that.

Anyway, Jason Clark started with a presentation on AJAX - and although he was having trouble getting stuff to work, it was actually a good learning experience because if JS is turned off on your browser (as it was on his) then AJAX ain’t that great - in fact it’s useless. once he figured that out we got to see some neat things. AJAX can load up queries in no time flat! It can also be used to create cool tools like Sproutliner an AJAX based task manager/task list creator.

He also gave us some great examples of library sites using AJAX - like: Curtin University of Technology - which is using AJAX in their federated search page - and Pheonix Live OPAC (which isn’t very pretty) which is using AJAX to run a search on the OCLC database for books in their collection (at least I think that’s what it was doing).

Next Karen Coombs talked about Open Source for libraries. She mentioned Content Management Systems (which we don’t really need - since I wrote our own pretty little CMS) and she pointed us to Open Web Design which provides Open Source examples and code. The thing she stressed - that I think bares repeating - is that open source is not always free - open source just means open source code - which means easy to customize (if you have the skills) and it means there’s a community of programmers online that can help you out of a jam - or just tell you how to make something a little better.

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I’ll admit this session was not what I was expecting! I went in thinking they’d point me to a bunch of tools for designing a usable website (something we don’t really have - well we do - but if you run it through Bobby we’d fail miserably - and our staff doesn’t even know every page we have - so how can our patrons?)

Okay, back on track - so this session was not actually about that - in fact I really only learned about one tool - affinity mapping - a very neat idea - but not something I’m going to be able to convince our patrons to participate in. Affinity mapping goes like this (if I undestand correctly)

• First you grab all of the links from your homepage (or that you think should be on your homepage)
• Second you put the titles of these links on individual pieces of paper (post-its, typed out and cut up - whatever)
• Next you sit down a group of people (patrons and/or staff) and you ask them to sort these labels into categories
  • You tell the group that they don’t have to use every label
  • You tell them that they are allowed to create new ones if they think they are necessary
  • You have them mark their X favorite/most useful pages
  • You let them loose and see what they come up with.

There are a few problems with this method - and I know this because we all had to get up and create our own affinity maps - yep, that’s right, and interactive session. Problem 1 - you tell the users that they don’t have to use all links - but they probably will. Problem 2 - you tell the users to add their own suggestions - they probably won’t.

For this reason you have to be careful what links you provide the user with - because that’s probably the link you’re going to end up with.

Overall it was a fun session and it can be a fun exercise - one I think I’ll do with my staff - but probably not my patrons.

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I snuck out of the Web-Based Experience Planning to attned a cybertour on writing for info pros. Rachel Singer Gordon an author and an editor for Information Today Inc.

Rachel told us that if you have a topic you can talk about for hours and hours - you can write a book - of course it’s not that simple, but it was promising and I undestood what she meant. She walked us through the requirements for the different ITI publications and I finally got to meet Marydee Ojala at the end of the session.

Marydee also gave me some good advice (well I have no proof that’s good yet - but it sounded good) - she told me to take classes at library school that I know nothing about - things that may not even apply to my current job - she used budget planning for public libraries as her example of a class to take - I’m going to go home and look at my course selections and see what fun out of the ordinary things I can sign up for.

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David King (who I got to have lunch with today - pictures to come later) presented this session.

He started with a graphic from Creating Passionate Users about the “I Rule” theory - and by “I” it means the user.

He started with the The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett, a book written for the corporate web world, with ideas that can be applied to our library world. The five elements are:

1. Strategy:
• This is the information gathering phase, find out what people want and expect and need etc.
2. Scope
• Write out what you want on each page - turn the data you gathered into a detailed description of what you want on your site - page by page
3. Structure
• Graph the interactions between tasks related to the page - So in order to buy a book you have to find the book - which you can either do by searching or browsing and once you find it you have to view the information and then you have to actually buy it - Dave’s graph was easier to follow than that - but you get the idea.
4. Skeleton
• Create the website - minus the design - so great your tables so that there is a menu on the side you want it on and create a box for the New & Noteworthy section - but just type N&N will go here in the box - create a skeleton of your site
• Start usability testing now - it’s not pretty, but it gives the user the idea of how things will function - which is what you want to make sure works before you go any further.
5. Surface
• Visual Design - last thing is the look & feel

On paper this all makes perfect sense - but how many of us are actually doing this? I know that when we redid our Intranet we started with Scope and jumped to Surface - it turned out well for us, but then again we have a limited audience - a captive audience

I think I’ll go look up this book and give it a read.

[update] Dave has posted his slides [/update]

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