I just found this article via OPL Plus (one of my favorite blogs) which gives tips on managing technology change the right way.

My favorite tips are #2 & 3:

2. Don't get emotionally attached to a particular technology.

Once we've been using something for a while, we tend to get comfortable with it. It's easy to look at a particular product that has a certain limited set of features (as all products do), and try to bend that product around the problem we are trying to solve.

When approaching a particular problem that needs to be solved, be technologically agnostic. Instead of trying to wrap that technology around your problem, approach the problem with several different possible technologies that might work.

3. Continuously research competing technologies to the ones you are using now.

While Product X may have been the best product for the technology challenge you had two years ago, the market for that particular technology may have changed quite dramatically since you last had the problem in question.

Product Y may now do in half the time what Product X does for you now.

Can you guess why? Because it touches on my favorite ranting topic - the ILS. Yes, the system you have might have been the best for you in 1994 - but things have changed a lot since then. Change in painful no matter when you start the process - but it’s a necessary part of life and business.

So - get out there and start researching - you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what you find!

I just found this via The Liminal Librarian - watch this video - it’s way cool!!

I can see the benefit of a keyboard you can scale to your hand - but I love the clicking of the physical keyboard. I guess that comes from the electric typewriter my mother gave me when I was very young. It’s where I learned to type - in fact my handwriting is atrocious because I learned to type at the same time I was learning to write - and typing was just more fun

There is a great column by M. Kathleen Kern over at RUSQ"”Reference & User Services Quarterly. Kern fills us in on how she keeps up with library related technologies.

While explaining DOIs to my graduate assistant, I determined that I am probably a lot like many readers of Reference and User Services Quarterly (RUSQ): we use technology daily in reference, collection development, and almost everything else that we do. At the same time, most of us are not the systems librarian or the go-to person for all things techie, and we occasionally wonder where we learned what we know and if it is enough.

So how do we keep up? Her tips are:

• Look beyond Your Immediate Area
• Read. Just a Little. Every Day
• Be Discerning
• Get to Know Your Gadget Guy "¦ or Gadget Gal
• Pool Your Resources, or Many Heads Are Better than One
• Care
• Attend Something Outside Your Comfort Zone
• Expand Your Social and Professional Circles

It’s a great article. Well worth the read. Check it out.

Well it’s not my question - I’m not upgrading - but one of my IT staff members sent me this handy (you can’t hear the sarcasm in my voice - but it’s there) guide. Check it out - I hope it helps you decide.

Someone just pointed me to the newest issue of D-Lib which has an article titled Resource Description & Access:

Libraries have lost their place as primary information providers, surpassed by more agile (and in many cases wealthier) purveyors of digital information delivery services. Although libraries still manage materials that are not available elsewhere, the library’s approach to user service and the user interface is not competing successfully against services like Amazon or Google. If libraries are to avoid further marginalization, they need to make a fundamental change in their approach to user services. The library’s signature service, its catalog, uses rules for cataloging that are remnants of a long departed technology: the card catalog. Modifications to the rules, such as those proposed by the Resource Description and Access (RDA) development effort, can only keep us rooted firmly in the 20th, if not the 19th century. A more radical change is required that will contribute to the library of the future, re-imagined and integrated with the chosen workflow of its users.

Isn’t that kind of what I was saying?

In one of my classes we were asked to read The Chain of Demand by Barbara Quint. Then we were asked:

What did you think of the Colin Powell article? Do you think that most people soon will, as Colin Powell already has, end their reliance on paper-based reference tools? Why or why not?

My response:

First impression - Gotta ring that guy’s neck!!!!

Second impression - hmmmm - okay - I guess.

The author makes a good point - it is better to have one product to meet all needs - but how do we make it clear that while Google provides easy and cheap answers there is still a chance that the information you’re getting is very very wrong. I like this quote: “People need the best and truest information. But it’s not the job of the masses to find it themselves. It’s the job of the information professional to put it into the people’s hands and, if necessary, to push it into their faces.” - but how do we do that?

The fact of the matter is that people are ending their reliance on paper-reference products. I grew up with a set of encyclopedia’s on the shelf - I see nothing of the sort in any households with kids in them today (at least not among my friends and family). While I do have 2 dictionaries - they are only opened when playing scrabble - when I’m writing a paper I go to my trusty www.m-w.com and find what I’m looking for. Why? Because of the very reasons stated in the article - it’s easy!! America is a country of people addicted to “easy”.

So back to my question - how do we get out there and make the argument for librarians? How do we explain that while it may not be as easy to ask us - it’s going to save you a lot of heartache in the end? And how do we make our services easier to use - because if we don’t - we’re going to lose the battle!

My additions here for you all:

What would make things easier in libraries? For starters - my old pet-peeve - fix the catalog. Make it more user/search friendly - why would I use an OPAC over Amazon to find a book? For seconds - make reference services accessible online - IM/VR/Chat - whatever method you want - but make it available. I can tell you that I use the Drexel IM Reference all of the time, otherwise I wouldn’t be talking to the librarians at Drexel at all (basically because I never go to campus - but you get the point).

I was listening to the Talking w/ Talis podcast this week and one of the librarians (sorry can’t remember names) Thomas Brevik talked about an innovation he’s pushing for at his library. He wants touch screens added to the end of each isle with related searches already built in. So if you’re looking at the isle with books on Library Science you just have to touch the screen at the end of the isle and it will search related databases & digital libraries to provide additional resources.

Easy?? You betcha! Innovate - very. I was actually surprised that there wasn’t more excitement about the idea from the other librarians on the call - I was practically jumping out of my seat with ideas on how to use technology like that.

Just some thoughts from my classes this week.

[update] added librarian name [/update]

I just found this very interesting article in InformationWeek which predicts the fall of Wikipedia [via Law Librarian Blog].

Wikipedia will fail in four years, crushed under the weight of an automated assault by marketers and others seeking online traffic.

It’s a pretty interesting article - and could very well be true - as spammers and marketers learn to automate edits to the online encyclopedia for their own benefit it’s going to be pretty hard for those of us making edits by hand to keep up with the cleaning.

Bookpool is having an O’Reilly sale - get your computer books cheap while the sale lasts. I just placed an order for 3 - I had to cut back from the 7 I had in my cart

I was listening to the latest Libray Geeks podcast. They were talking about Zotero. So I went to the site and it says:

Stay Tuned… A new site and the public beta will appear here by the end of the day.

Guess I’ll have to go back tomorrow - this is very exciting

Since this podcast was so long I figured it warrants 2 blog posts (read part 1).

On Books

One of things that I find that programmers (specifically web programmers) are divided on is the use of books. Ed said that “No one (or nearly no one) reads a programming book front to back” - well Ed - meet nearly no one After I took a 4 day training course on PHP I went out and bought the Web Applications with MySQL & PHP book by O’Reilly and read it cover to cover! I found that reading the book gave me ideas and helped me have a better understanding of what I could do with PHP. Now that I’ve been writing PHP for years I come up with ideas on my own and look for help online - but I keep my books right next to my computer on my desk so that they’re always is easy reach.

On Expectations

Someone - can’t remember who - mentioned that programming is easy in libraries because expectations are low - people are just happy to have something that makes their jobs easier. I’m here to tell you that that changes! While expectations start out low - over time, your staff learns what you can do and they will ask for the world! It’s a great feeling - and a stressful feeling at the same time. It’s easy to program when no one knows what you’re capable of - but as time goes on - people catch on and start asking for bigger and bigger projects - like the insane one I’m working on now.

On Formal Education

I agree with whoever said that going into library school with work experience under your belt makes all the difference - in fact I think this is true for any higher education. I’m a big believer in working while in school to see what it’s like out there. I think that high school and college should both require work and take 5 years each so that students can experiment. College was a waste of money for me - I didn’t know what I wanted to do until my Junior year and by then it was too late to change majors so all I could do was add a computer programming minor onto my degree (or stay in school longer - which I wasn’t about to do).

A good example (once again I don’t remember who said it) that was given was that experience makes you see what classes will be useful. I wanted to take a class called Professional & Scholarly Communication but apparently, for the last few terms no one has signed up for this class and they have canceled it - this is because the students have no idea how important communication is going to be to their jobs - and it’s a shame.

On becoming a library programmer

Dan asked what advice his visitors had to give to students who wanted to do what we’re doing. Ross said “Vision” and everyone agreed - even me. I think that if you can look outside of the box and see what things could be like then you can be a programmer in a library - but one thing that wasn’t mentioned was that you also need perseverance! If you’re not willing to fight for what you think is right then you might as well hang up your hat now - librarians are notorious (based on what I’ve read and see) for being afraid of change - and changing the way they work by adding new applications can be one of the most scary things you’ll ever suggest.

On being a library geek

Well it was fun pretending I was part of the discussion by writing my answers out here - maybe one day soon you’ll actually get to hear me talk to the library geeks!!

Apparently this site has been around for a while - but Mashable! has just reported that ITtoolbox is now a social network.

ITtoolbox, a community for IT professionals with roots dating back to 1998, relaunched this week with a host of social networking features. Users can create profile pages, add friends to their network and receive updates on their friends' activities when they log in. Your profile page displays your recent blog posts, your employment history, a bio and the most recent posts from your community - in many ways, it's like LinkedIn for the IT community.

Sounds pretty handy!

Today I was listening to (and still not finished with) Library Geeks episode 4. I was listening to the introductions and was thinking - I’m a library geek - I should be part of this discussion These guys are so much fun. Of course I don’t own a microphone - shame on me - but I could buy one if the right offer came around.

Anyway, Dan asked “What was your first computer?” and either I’m really really young or - and more likely - I just didn’t care about computers when I was younger. I know we had an Atari (not a computer per se) and that was all I cared about - I loved my Donkey Kong! I know we had something that I used to type letters on and print out on our dot matrix printer, but I have no idea what type of computer it was. I was perfectly happy sitting in my room with my electric typewriter - I would write letters, short stories, and my first short novel (by novel I mean I was 10 and it was 12 pages). It wasn’t until I got into college that I paid much attention to computers and even then they had limited abilities - IM, Email, games.

Then the library geeks started talking about their first programs - I was happy to hear one person say it wasn’t until five years into working in a library before they programmed anything - I’m pretty similar to that (with the exception of the stuff I did for my degree). My husband used to program things on his calculator when he was in school - but that would have never occurred to me - for 2 reasons really. First, and most important, I have a $10 scientific calculator - I couldn’t do anything with it. Second, I didn’t care about all of that programming jazz. I was all about reading and writing in my pre-college years.

The last major question I got to hear before my bus arrived here at home was “When did your computer go from a toy to something serious?” I’d have to say it wasn’t until Sophomore year of college - I took Intro to Comp Sci (because I needed a science class and I was no fan of Biology) and I fell in love. I wanted to do nothing but program. It was around that same time that I stopped writing fiction and started writing web content and programs.

Well - now I feel like I was there I’ll listen to the rest on the bus ride to work tomorrow and I’ll probably have more answers to important geeky questions.

I have seen this announced in a few places so far (so you might already know about it) and wanted to share it with you all.

Meredith Farkas, Amanda Etches-Johnson, Dorothea Salo, Ellyssa Kroski, Karen Coombs, and Michelle Boule have planned a free online learning event to take place in Febrary and March of next year (I think - even though it says 2006 on the Call For Presenters).

We are pleased to present Five Weeks to a Social Library , the first free, grassroots, completely online course devoted to teaching librarians about social software and how to use it in their libraries. The course was developed to provide a free, comprehensive, and social online learning opportunity for librarians who do not otherwise have access to conferences or continuing education and who would benefit greatly from learning about social software. The course will take place in Drupal and on a MediaWiki installation, and will also involve a variety of other popular social software tools. The course will make use of synchronous components, with one or two weekly Webcasts and many IM chat sessions being made available to students each week. The course will culminate in each student developing a proposal for implementing a specific social software tool in their library.

Sounds like a great idea! If you’d like to present make sure you read the guidelines and get your submissions in by September 22.

Meredith has a helpful post over at TechEssence.Info for libraries who can’t afford to hire someone with programming skills. She points to online resources that will help you find someone with the technology skills you’re looking for. Read her post at Getting help from tech experts when you don't have any on-staff.

Just a side note - I am one of the library techies listed in the Pay IT Forward db - so feel free to ask for help!