j’s scratchpad

Brady Carlson, who deals with new media for New Hampshire Public Radio, gave a really fascinating talk at WebNOB on Tuesday about how they’re integrating the Web into their operations. He also talked a bit about what news organizations can do to remain relevant in this age when people, especially Internet users, have access to so much more information and sources than years ago when newspapers and the radio were the primary media. Some folks have been discussing the talk in Babbledog. There’s a link to my notes on the Babbleblog in the comments there. Many of you will appreciate what he had to say.

The April 14, 2008 issue of the Christian Science Monitor had a very good article on small-town libraries called “The charms of a small-town library: Modern libraries may have up-to-the-minute technology, but they lack the friendly, nostalgic feel of their older counterparts.”

“There has been talk of building a new library in our town. Some think it is what this place needs; others are for sticking with what we have. I’m in the latter camp. It’s true our small-town library has no computers, no interlibrary loan system, no DVD collection. There is no self-service checkout where you scan the bar code on your book, just as at the supermarket.

What our town has is unique: The library is more a reading room than a repository with technological aids; more a literary salon – although a loosely structured one – than a hushed space with little interaction among patrons.

Our library is located on the second floor of a solid brick building. On the lower level are a fudge shop and drugstore.

As you ascend to the second level from the door on the street, the smell of fudge and caramel permeates the stairwell. And just across the street is a cookie bakery, so that reading and sweet food are forever linked in the minds of patrons.

During my lifetime, I’ve been a card-carrying member of several small-town libraries – some adjoined to police stations, some to firehouses. But the best library combo is with a fudge shop.”

http://tinyurl.com/6jhgew

Link via LisNews:

http://www.lisnews.org

Posted by Rich

The NMRLS Regional Systems Librarians group is hold their quarterly meeting at the Tyngsborough Public on Thursday, June 5, 2008 at 10 am:

“Come join us at Tyngsborough Public Library, as our host and Tyngsborough’s Director, Randy Robertshaw dishes and demos two innovative systems he is using at his library.

Randy will discuss his use of Joomla as a website/content management system and his Linux-based public PC management system and hardware.

Plus the usual round-table discussion of technology/systems issues and solutions from your colleagues”

For more info:

http://www.nmrls.org/ce/index.shtml

Info about joining NMRLS:

“The Northeast Massachusetts Regional Library System (NMRLS) is a not-for-profit corporation created in 1997, serving over 300 member libraries in 54 communities in northeast Massachusetts. Any public, academic, school and special library within the Region is eligible to participate as a NMRLS member. If your library is located in our service area and meets the eligibility requirements, please fill out these three forms to apply for membership.”

http://www.nmrls.org/membership/index.shtml

Here’s the link for the other Regions:

http://mblc.state.ma.us/mblc/regional/index.php

Posted by Rich

Registration for the 2008 ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium being held November 2-4, 2008 at Doubletree Oak Brook hotel in Oak Brook, Illinois is now open:

http://gaming.techsource.ala.org/index.php/Main_Page

Costs:

# $300 for ALA members, TechSource subscribers (Library Technology Reports or Smart Libraries Newsletter), and students
# $350 for nonmembers
# Registration will be limited to 350 people, so sign up early!

Also there’s a call for Presenters:

The deadline for submitting proposals to present is June 15, 2008.

Suggestions from readers, but feel free to submit beyond these topics

* Designing games
* Gaming industry perspectives and how to work together
* Gaming and accessibility
* Assessment and evaluation of gaming programs

http://gaming.techsource.ala.org/index.php/Call_for_Presenters

Posted by Rich

One of the operations guys at work today told me he heard part of Jonathan Zittrain’s interview about his new book The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It on WBUR’s On Point while commuting. The show is now available on the Web and will air again on WBUR tonight.

Despite it being similar to the book release talk and party I attended a few weeks ago, I’m enjoying listening to it via the Web. There’s something rather nice about listening to the Future of the Internet and How to Stop It via the Internet …

A ringing endorsement for the book comes from Adam Thierer, Director of the Progress and Freedom Foundation’s Center for Digital Media Freedom, who says, “Jonathan writes with a style and a wit that is just not seen in many books about nerdy technology policy issues out there.”

Also, thanks to the Internet, I downloaded a copy of the book.

If Jonathan did his interview in the studio where I used to work, this interview and having a current coworker tell me about it is like a meeting of my past and current jobs.

I interrupt this typically topical weblog for a public service announcement:

Be very careful about e-mails from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) considering taxes. I received an e-mail claiming to be from the IRS asking for my bank account information so they can deposit a refund check. The chances of it being from the IRS are incredibly slim. The IRS itself says “The IRS does not initiate taxpayer communications through e-mail.” I don’t remember ever giving them an email address; and, had I done so, it wouldn’t be the email address to which this email was sent. The URL the email asks me to use to give my personal information does not appear to go to irs.gov. I’m suspicious and am not going to follow the link or act on the email. If you receive one, I encourage you to be suspicious, too. Be smart about e-mails like this one. I shudder when I think about how people are probably falling for it.

Per information on the IRS’ Web site, I forwarded the email to them so they can choose to investigate.

Library Revolution had the following interesting post about the 2008 Computers In Library talk on Newspapers and Politics:

“Libraries can learn so much by looking at what other industries have done, the challenges they have faced, and the concerns they are thinking about when building these online community interfaces.

Especially helpful here was the notion of examining your users in terms of basic “types” and examining ways the site could address the habits and needs of those kinds of customers. For example, “Loyal Readers” tend to go straight to the home page and browse… so they need content on the home page to cater to those habits in much different ways from “Accidental readers” who find the content based on a search and have a single article focus… and therefore need different features to engage them.

Libraries: How often do we really aggressively study the habits of our users when it comes to our online resources? Do we have good data to back up the assumptions we make about how patrons use our services? Are we providing use options aimed at different kinds of users with different goals and habits?

Also, the idea of pulling in third party apps to meet users needs is something libraries need to pay attention to. If somebody else does it better, why do we always seem to want to re-invent the wheel?

Third, I was glad the presenter talked about aggressively marketing the services once they were built. And he wasn’t just talking about ads, but an entire marketing strategy for attracting users and encouraging use. This includes complimentary services and features to further engage potential users, and seems integrated with the whole community atmosphere now created by the site.”

Library Revolution:

http://libraryrevolution.com/2008/04/08/cil-2008-learning-from-newspaperspolitics/

Posted by Rich

David Lee King, digital branch & services manager, Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library gave a talk called Managers listen up!:
why social networking and Web 2.0 is important for your library:

Some people think change means: fresh breeze at beach or screaming at the laptop
why pay attention to change
There are best practices to handle change
Why pay attention to Web 2.0 trends
Social networking–Facebook–RSS
Toyota Prius Gas game–tips and tricks to save gas
iPhones
Wireless earphones
You Tube Created in 2005 Has taken off
Right now all industries are involved in Web 2.0

1. The rest of the world is already there
Grandmothers experiencing Web 2.0 Ebay
Guitars–connect with people with similar interests
Participatory models
Amazon–People read customer reviews first Authors now can have blogs on Amazon

USA Today Online

Allows comments No more letters to the editor

Shows his mom’s blog, has pictures Has Twitter account Can customize it. 82 years old!

2. You can be the example:

Lester Public Library

Has blog, gaming night, Flickr account, Wikipedia account, Myspace blog

2 blogs one blog has 3,000 hits Has library blog on town newspaper website

3. Connect with your community
Allow patrons to socialize, start up a conversation with friends, not just take out books

Staff did a wonderful review on CD library owns on library blog 3 comments 1 comment said go buy it Another comment said you can check it out at the library for free

4. Community pulse
Go to rotary meetings Be on a community board
Started digital library Large groups–need to market to them–mail out stuff to them–service all of them
Access town businesses–Chamber of Commerce
Have Gaming Night on the road

5. You set the pace

Instant messaging

Meebo instant messaging Go around their IT depart no,no,no
Who controls the library? IT dept? Director? Board of Trustees? Very important

6. Be relevant
Physically and digitally Each community is different
How to trend watch
RSS Read library blogs Library articles 1.5 years behind
Stuff can be apply much faster That was stupid idea comment quickly

RSS read feeder Too many feeds There’s a delete button

watch listen

time (get over it)
I don’t have enough time to do stuff
Set priorities
If you can deal with patrons, geeks, children, you have the time
Read the non-library blogs
Barnes and Noble blog Maybe they have some good ideas
Change–be ready for it
Who’s in charge?

Best practices on implementing Web 2.0 changes:

Communication
Digital records Digital branch what to do at the branch
Form committees–meet with management
Make people comfortable on where we are going
Staff–20 or more blogs–staff blog guidelines
Tech Services Librarian freaked out about blogging
While working as dj overthought about doing the job
grant writing–instead of emailing–blog
It’s helps to see what going on
Gauge your staff
Start slow Tomorrow we’re starting a new digital branch
Have staff member slowly start up a library blog, then speed thing up
Instant messenging
Meebo Could be started up tomorrow
while the IT dept has to take days to setup Trillan on each public pc
Find staff interests
Match with goals you already have
Give it to the best fit, might be the IT dept, might be Circ staff
Help translate from 1.0 to 2.0
Find champions
Hire or create
who gets stuff done
Good for starting things
Customize to fit
Every champion gets burned out…shared the joy
Not everybody has a staff like Ann Arbor
Training & trust
You can train staff to do a blog
Play time Time to learn a new tool
Chain saw You can read the manual Better to turn it on and handle it
you could read Dummies guide to blogging Better you actually do it
Trust
Spokesman for the library all staff
Management should trust the staff to do a good job
Trust and responsibility
Give 101%
Mobile changing quickly
Starbucks–wifi–People can get to your library from anywhere
Hiring tech people
Hire people with customer training first–better team player–later you can train them in the Microsoft stuff
Had hire person with Microsoft training–bad at customer service

Posted by Rich

David Weinberger, author of Everything is miscellaneous and member of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society gave the Wednesday keynote talk called the Miscellaneous Knowledge, which he changed to The Smell of Knowledge at the 2008 Massachusetts Library Association conference in Falmouth, Mass.:

Bought up the fact that letters used to have the smell of vinegar on them during an outbreak of cholera
Talked about the New Yorker article called Digitization and its discontents

http:tinyurl.com/35kmnw

He said it’s going take a long time to do digitization
abundance–way too much stuff–spam, porn, filters–abundance of crap
Hard to find good stuff
There’s one knowledge according to the West
Ancient Greece–One knowledge–same for everybody
Simple–Philosophy–confusing and complex–changing all the time
There’s stuff to know
Doesn’t matter who says it, it’s true
Knowledge is scarce
Worth listening to
Lots of opinions–find the truth
Real set of categories–how they are populated
Real order of nature
Carving the joints Are bloggers journalists?
We cluster things Look at spices (Shows curry/other spice, then curry/cat)
Things alike share attributes, look alike, smells alike depends on our needs
Clean laundry–how to put away-decision process–how to put away–summer/winter–socks–can’t put in two piles
The real evil purpose is to keep things apart—show two cars together in same toll booth
Paper limited–editors determine what’s important–have negotiation power with author–There are physical limitation of newspapers
First order–archive–220 feet down in the ground single way of order
Second order–card catalog–separate the metadata from the card
Digitizing everything–Lots and lots of stuff will be digitized.
First resort
1. leaf on many branches–what category—Amazon–multiple categories–tags
2. Messiness as a virtue–online is success–explore the different links on a blog or website. You never see the messiness. Search gets richer and richer
Metadata
Herman melville Do Search: Call me Ishmael Shown everything about Melville and Ishmael Metadata and data–no difference
Metadata is a lever to find more stuff
Content is connection
Website you have control–reorganize the stuff on your website
Always reflects values
Online–layer over multiple categories
Too much information, too much to know
What the pieces are, how they fit together
Library of Congress catalogs 7,000 books a week
Better to include than delete
LC photos on Flickr metadata of photos 75 tags: Trash, French, etc. Why not? Some pretty interesting
Flickr annotated–Fake photo?–Insanely conversation–variety of comments–ran out of tags–limit of 75 tags
Wikipedia Someone can trash it. Has reliable info with some reservations
Discussion pages–sociological artifact
Pop up buttons–”This article appears to contradict another article” or “The neutrality of this article is in dispute”
Why don’t we see this on online newspaper articles Editors embarrassed about errors Can’t see the need for discussion about the article
Wikipedia not perfect, but on our side
Conversation makes us smarter
Sharing knowledge between us
Blogs Lots and lots of links Blog rolls on the right side First cause you to go away, but come back to check on other links
Links taken for granted Links sharing info for the world Links point back to you No links, no web Links are acts of generosity
Encyclopedia Britannica philosophy multiple volumes
Wikipedia Philosophy multiple links
Books suck–covenient for reading, not for commenting, sharing, accessing
Libraries–sense of knowledge Web no sense of knowledge
Books are not dead according to Newsweek
Digital library–will contain all metadata
We do not know about the new knowledge–it will take a generation to figure out

(Now I know what j goes through when attempting to post interesting stuff! Need more practice in taking notes at conferences. Also need tape talks. Getting too old(sigh)

Posted by Rich

Instead of doing lots of little posts about upcoming conferences, I’m going to be slack and do a list in one post. I can’t remember for certain if I’ve written about these before in this space, so forgive me if I’m repeating myself.

• MacCamp Boston, Saturday, May 10: A free forum dealing with Mac issues at the Y in Central Square, Cambridge. (Why not call it MacCamp Cambridge?)

• WebNOB, Tuesday, May 13: Babbledog is sponsoring this opportunity to meet Bardy Carlson of New Hampshire Public Radio at Jillian’s in Manchester. Free food and pool! What could be better? RSVPs appreciated.
• Berkman@10, Thursday, May 15, and Friday, May 16: Word on the street that this conference to celebrate the Berkman Center for Internet & Society’s tenth anniversary is full, but tickets are still available to Thursday’s gala dinner and some sessions will be webcast.
• BarCamp Boston, Saturday, May 17, and Sunday, May 18: Free gathering for techies in Cambridge (Why, then, is it called BarCamp Boston?). Register in advance to make sure you get a t-shirt and any other available schwag.
• um … was noch?
• SLA in June in Seattle!