“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

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

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

• 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!

Many sites give access to legal information, like justia.com. The state of Oregon got upset with them for posting their law and sent the site a cease and desist letter on copyright grounds.

James is active in access-to-the-law efforts, so he knows about some of these efforts firsthand, though he is not involved in the Oregon/Justia situation. He hopes to give us context through this talk, not doctrine.

Why should we care about access to the law? Democracy depends on people having access to the law, being able to read it, and being able to understand it. Governments where people don’t have access to the law aren’t very democratic. “Ignorance of the law is no defense.” Access to law is vital for fairness and consistency. It’s silly to expect someone to bring her behavior into line with laws about which she knows nothing. Access contributes to equality, but people who have the means to have more access might have an advantage over those who don’t.

The Code of Hammurabi, one of the fundamental groups of laws, attempted to give people access to the law. By being carved in stone, James explains, it became something permanent and difficult to change, unlike copyright law. Stone, at least at that point in time, was a good technology choice. Hammurabi even supposedly took the time to instruct people in the law.

Henry Wheaton was one of the first reporters for the US Supreme Court. His reports were often published before the next term of the court began. Wheaton v. Peters (1834) set the precedent of the court’s opinions not being copyrighted by any reporter. Peters began publishing works similar to what Wheaton had been doing while covering the court. Wheaton sued under copyright grounds. Others eventually came along to report on the court.

Banks vs. Manchester extended the rule to state courts. Case law also decided and specified what bits of cases could not be copyrightable, like the names of the plaintiffs and defendents, the date, the name of the court, etc. Since page numbers have become a key to citing court cases, the arrangement of the cases in works has become something copyrightable. (My browser crashed while James was explaining the details of the page numbering, so I missed a bit of what he said while I tried to recover from the crash.) The public domain material becomes tangled in some of the copyrightable arrangements in such a way that they aren’t necessarily or easily separable. Oregon is trying to argue that their arrangement makes their law copyrightable.

Copyright theory and policy is often gray or in flux, which makes case law really important and sometimes difficult to follow.

Authorship plays an important role in copyright. The government isn’t a person and has no personality, so it has no copyrights. Different countries handle that differently. Similarly, some companies try to have no personality in their annual reports while others will develop a corporate personality that comes through in their documents.

Incentives also become important. If government bodies aren’t doing a good job with regards to copyright law, people can vote them out of office. Private/public partnerships play a role in these activities, too. Access is a good thing, especially since we want to encourage works created because of copyright’s incentives. But access can get tricky when several entities compete for the same things.

The Internet really contributes to access. It’s inexpensive. It allows people to circulate the law. People can use formats other people can’t edit. It makes certain citation systems, like page numbers, obsolete and less proprietary. Basic legal publishing is not a problem. As someone pointed out during the talk, the entire global body of law could be smaller than Wikipedia. Many organizations are working on putting laws online. (”Underwritten by the Feds! Overwritten by you!”)

What should we demand from the law when it comes to access to the law? We all want the right to access. We could expand certain bits of the law, like Fair Use. What about the right not to extract? If we get rid of that, we lose incentive to make better editions of complex material, like the law. The secondary annotations that help people decipher the law are very important. Getting rid of those would be bad. The right to cite is also very important. It would be nice if people were able to freely cite and develop citation systems for these materials.

My notes and handout info: (Need to take better notes or tape talk)

None of the current ILS products are less than a decade old and are approaching end of their life cycle:

ALEPH 500 1996
Voyager 1995
Unicorn 1982
Polaris 1997
Virtua 1995
Koha 1999
Library Solution 1997
Everygreen 2004
Talis 1992

No success in launching new systems
An increasingly consolidated industry
Fewer choices
Narrowing of product options

Industry health:

Overall industry showing some growth; individual companies more profitable than ever
Mixed company growth according to hiring statistics:

Ex Libris +6%
Innovative +5%
Library Corporation -10%
SirsiDynix -28%

One company has 60-70% of the market

20-30% of rural libraries have no automated systems.

Level of innovation falls below expectations, despite deep resources and large development teams
Companies struggle to keep up with ILS enhancements and R&D for new innovations.
Pressure from investors/owners to reduce costs, increase revenue
Pressure from library customers for more innovative products

ILS Migration Trends:

Few voluntary lateral migrations
Forced migrations:

vendor abandonment
need to move from legacy systems
exit from bad marriages with vendors
exit from bad marriages with consortia

Role of the ILS in library automation strategies:

It’s never been harder for libraries to justify investments in ILS
Need for products focused on electronic content and user experience:

Next generation interfaces
Federated search
Linking
Electronic resource management
Help deliver content in a better way
Offer a better user experience

New direction in library automation:

A successful pitch for new automation software is one that enables significant transformation toward a new vision of the library
Can’t keep doing the same thing in the same way
Back-end systems make only a moderate impact on customer service delivery
Need to do short term vs. long term planning
Need to deliver electronic resources to the Interent

An age of less integrated systems:

Increasingly dis-integrated environment
Core ILS supplemented by:

OpenURL Link Resolvers
Metasearch/Federated search
Electronic resource management
Next generation library interfaces
RFID/AMH
The above items are not working so well together
Need user point of view

No longer an ILS-centric industry:

Portion of revenues derived from core ILS products diminishing relative to other library tech products
Many companies and organizations that don’t offer an ILS are involved in library automation:

-Cambridge Information Group
**ProQuest
–Serials Solutions
–WebFeat
**Bowker
–Syndetic Solutions
–AquaBrowser

OCLC in the automation industry:

Next generation interface arena: WorldCat Local
Technology acquisitions:
OCLC Pica purchased Sisis
OCLC Pica purchased FDI
OCLC purchased Informatics
OCLC purchased DiMeMa
EZproxy acquired

Open source alternatives:

Explosive interest in open source driven by disillusionment with current vendors
Beginning to emerge as a practical option
More solid choices
Total Cost of Ownership still roughly equal to proprietary commercial model
Commercial/Proprietary options also a risk:
–”The SirisDynix announcement changed the landscape of the ILS marketplace; the traditional ILS market is no longer a haven for the risk adverse.” (http://pines.bclibrary.ca/resources/talking-points)

Open Source Initiatives:

Multiple projects to develop Open Source ILS:

–Koha Zoom
–Evergreen
–OPALS-NA (K-12 Schools)
–Delft Libraries

Multiple projects to develop Open Source Next-generation Catalogs:

–VuFind (Villanova University)
–C4 prototype (University of Rochester River Campus Libraries)

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation:

Soliciting a proposal for the design of an Open Source ILS for higher education
Led by Duke University
First and Second stage funding for eXensible Catalog

Market share/perspective:

Open Source ILS implementations still a very small percentage of the total picture

Open Source Companies:

Index Data
LibLime
Equinox
Care Affiliates

Impact of Open Source:

Formidable competition to commercial closed-source products
Disrupts the status quo Shake out the competition a good thing

Open Source ILS benchmarks:

Hold open source ILS to the same standars as the commercial products
Well documented total cost of ownership statements that can be compared to other vendor price quotes

Next generation library interfaces:

Better interfaces
Better delivery tools
More powerful search capabilities
Web 2.0 flavorings: tagging, social bookmarking , user reviews, community interaction
Relevancy ranking good stuff should be listed first
Rich visual information: book jacket images, etc.
Faceted browsing
Increasing opportunities to search the full contents
Not a dumbed-down approach
Search portals/Feed aggregators
API’s essential
One stop shopping
Reliance on MARC widely questioned
Next-gen ILS must natively support many flavors of metadata: MARC, Dublin Core, Onix, MEYS, etc.
Incorporate content from mass digitization efforts
New models of software development should be in months, not years over years.

Marshall has a website called Library Technology Guides: Key resources in the field of Library Automation which covers the latest news in the library automation world:

http://librarytechnology.org/

More postings on the preconference and Wed conference on the way!

Posted by Rich

MASSLIB08

Congratulations, John!

“Thursday, 1 May 2008, is RSS Awareness Day. There’s a grassroots effort to increase the awareness and use of RSS (and syndication tools in general). On the RSS Awareness Day site, it is claimed that “Feedburner recently reported that they track around 60 million RSS subscribers.”

Of course, there are a lot more Internet users today than there were in 2005 (one estimate puts the total at 1.3 billion at the end of December 2007). I would go so far as to triple Feedburner’s estimate to 180 million RSS subscribers, to account for all the users that Feedburner does not know about. And there have to be millions of them: people who “use RSS” without being actively aware of it, such as through “live bookmarks” in Firefox, Safari, and IE, or from web sites that themselves are amalgamations of feeds from other publications. People do not need to know what RSS is to use it.”

http://rssday.org/

Link via RSS4Lib:

http://www.rss4lib.com/2008/04/rss_awareness_day.html

Noticed on LibrarianInBlack:

http://librarianinblack.typepad.com/librarianinblack/

Posted by Rich

Thanks for sharing, Ken!

7 p
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
2nd Floor Conference Room
23 Everett Street
Cambridge, MA