Connecting Librarian

Last session for the day and what a day it has been!

Fast session, a minute per gadget. All prices are US $. The word for today’s gadgets is simplify – although not really.

Treos – 6 models introduced in the last year. Depends on service – different colours and OS , need 755p is slimmer, lighter and easier.

Shredder scissors – five pairs in one, retro gadget, low tech and electricity free, protect privacy, portable, inexpensive, easy to use for home or office, shred all sorts of documents including thick ones, price $15.

TI’s projector phone – DVD quality image on the wall. Not yet available.

iPod – 5th gen. Easy to use, search, shuffle. 20,000 songs and photos – 80GB. Or smaller version. 20 hours battery life for songs and 6.5 for movies. Price $349. iTunes will offer DRM free music, but will cost more.

iCharge for iPod. Inexpensive, small, efficient and simple way to keep it charged. use with most models, key ring convenience, run on 9 volt battery.

Nano batteries – flexible, see through, 1 minute to charge, lasts 1000 cycles, 200 nanometers thick. Not available yet.

iPhone 6th Gen. Widescreen, easy menu, touch controls, high tech, WiFi, multi tasking, internet access, $499 with 2 year contract. Release June 2007.

Cube World Digital Stick People – each cube world individual has its own personality. Sold in sets of two, three series, price $29.99 per pair. Play games, connect with each other.

Pilot – label each end of a cord, so you know which is which. $6 per pack.

Aliph Jawbone Bluetooth Headset – noise cancelling tech, matches face, hands free, $120.

Collapsible Chopsticks – practical, environmentally correct, stainless steel uppers, can hang them around your neck, price $19.89.

Jott.com – web-based voice to text service, phone to email or SMS – FREE! Need to speak clearly, but works well.

Golan i.Tech Virtual keyboard – bluetooth technology, infrared tech to project a keyboard on the desk, sensors, sound of typing, $170.

Illuminated Waterproof flexible keyboard – portable, hygenic, made of silicone, quick wash, $27

Rear view computer mirror – watch who is watching you. Price $13.

Sony’s DVP-FX810 DVD Walkman – multi-formats, swivel and flip screen, slim design, light and wide, 5.5 hour battery, easy to use can connect to other displays, $199.

Useful advice: Charging your cell phone in the car drains your battery.

Palmsize micro copter – infrared remote control, flashing led for night, full flight control, foam, battery charges from remote, 15 minute charge time, uses 6AA batteries, $39.99.

On the way out – CRT TVs. Sony only has 4 models left and they are being phased out. Will all disappear in the next 3-5 years.

Plantronics CS55 Wireless convertible headset – 300ft range, battery 0f 10 hours, works with conference phone, home version available – $279.

Targus Wireless Multimedia Presenter – controls mouse, trackball, pointer, all in one, use up to 50 ft, switch between applications, no software, $79.99.

IBM Optical Transceiver – 160GB per second, full HD movie in a second, internet routers and switches first. Soon for personal devices.

USB Missile Launcher – holds three foam missiles, use mouse to control the launcher, rotates tilts and fire, easy to use, USB activated, $39.99.

USB Vision and Posture reminder – low cost ergonomic device, warns you when you are too close to the monitor – $27.

QR Code – combine physical and digital worlds, codes interact with phones, nutrition info, real
estate details, etc. Hold phone to QR code and it will tell you give you more on the item.

Google’s Dodgeball – social tool for text messages, send a text message to service and they will let you know whether your friends are in the same area.

Next Generation Robotic Vacuum – vaporware, maps out the places to be cleaned, no picture yet exists.

Cordinator – manage cords from 10 devices, surge protector, put monitor on top, $59.99.

Trillian – IM client, free, connects to multiple IM clients, Astra 4 just released, free or $25 for Pro.

Belkin Compact Surge protector – no more tripping or tangling, flush to wall, sliding cover to keep outlets safe, integrated cable management, $39.99.

Smallest MP3 player – 2GB storage and radio, weighs less than headphones, $100.

Meebo – no software, multiple IM clients, use on all browsers except Opera, no charge.

Pelican 760 LED Flashlight – police issue flashlights, brighter, LED lamp is durable and never needs replacing, exceeds 10,000 hours of use, 90 minutes of continuous batter life. Available June 2007. Automatic charger available.’

Trivia: February 8th 2007 they were able to stop and restart light – implications for storage is immense.

Sony HDR-UX7 – consumer HD camera.

USB toaster – works on your computer’s USB port, $7.50.

International Adaptor.

Fireplace iPod Dock – $3650.

Clocky the alarm clock – runs away and hides, gives you one chance to get up, if you snooze it runs.

Retro phone handset – no batteries required, works with most cell phones – $4.99 to $29.99 clear sound.

Picknik Photo Editor – web based, no download, most of what you need, Flickr integration, free!

Chocolate Gadgets – box of 100 range from $3 to $12 each.

Resources/Ideas, check out the list at LLRX.com.

New blog coming soon, Gadgetarian.info.

http://theshiftedlibrarian.pbwiki.com.

Gamers – not just teenage boys in the basement. 90 million gamers up to age 35. Boomers = 77 million, 70% once in while, 65% regularly.

Average age = 33 years. Largest percentage is middle aged women.

Wii opening up video games to a new generation. Kids with disabilities, elderly are bowling and playing baseball.

Gamers see themselves as heroes on a quest, willing to experiment and keep trying, willing to ask for help. Have an inherent distrust of bosses, beat a boss to get to the next level. “Can’t say cos I said so and I’m the boss”.

Have strong organizational skills, creative problem solvers.

Different library services:
- collection development (Mario Bros memorial public library, Gaming Target, check
LibSuccessWiki)

- support materials for gaming culture (board games, graphic novels etc)

- post game reviews, myspace for gamers, blog etc

- Readers advisory – instead ask what movies, tv shows they like and what games they play – refer them to books about gaming – Booklist covering this

- Non-video games – board games not just virtual games www.goecaching.com

- Open play – buy equipment or get the kids to bring theirs in – or use Runescape sessions on internet PCs

- Gaming blogs get most of the comments – check out Ann Arbor. Free online games, runescape, sepmania, 4 librarians and good experience..

- Game pods – consoles in the library for use. Carver Bay Library lets kids accrue hours to play on 50 inch plasma screen – library card, book reviews, borrowing books, all help to accrue hours

- Tournament play – bragging rights. Kids will even self organize them.

- Bibliographic instruction – Uni North Carolina , Arizona State Uni – library board game now a flash game “Quarantined”

- Game creation – hold classes on how to make games – Gwynett Public – kids are content creators, great avenue for them.

- Participation gap – “confronting the challenges of participatory culture” report. Skills required for 21^st worker, play, performance, simulation, multi-tasking, judgement, networking and more, all used in gaming. Machina – write a story in a game – check Bloomington, who run a film festival out of the results.

- Lifelong learning

Potential gaming groups – families – DDR, Mario Kart; 20 and 30 somethings, middle-aged women – DDR and greatest generation men – WWII games, Seniors in general – Brain Age.

Nintendo DS – wireless networking between them so can play same game against each other. Has a lot of interesting learning games.

Storytime are communcal experiences. Need to think about how libraries can do the same with gaming. Check out the further reading on Jenny’s slides, to be posted at the wiki site listed at the top.

Social software to Meredith must meet 2 of the following definitions:

• communicate, collaborate and build community online
• syndicated, reused, remixed

Characteristics

• Easy content creation and sharing – democraticised creation, anyone can create and edit – eg. CIL 2007 Wiki
• Online collaboration – regardless of geographic location, collaborating in a single shared space eg. Google Docs
• Conversations: distributed – taking place in many different spaces – eg. blogosphere, using comments, trackbacks, you can trace conversations (BlogPulse site to trace conversations)
• Conversations: real time – instant messaging to access people in real time, friends are already there, is the library?
• Capitalizing on the wisdom of crowds – social tagging tools such as del.icio.us to find what others have found interesting, wikis to share local knowledge at conferences etc
• Transparency – ratings websites abound, so nothing escapes scrutiny, it allows us to make a more human connection with entities online and organisations are responding with human touches such as blogs
• Personalisation – choose and combine our own content with RSS feeds, bringing them together in one space – making them our own newspapers, podcasts become our own radio stations, using your computer, CD player or MP3 player
• Portability – ear buds seem be surgically attached to young adults – need to be providing content for the devices they are using

What can libraries do?

• Disseminate information – blog to push information out easily to our users, especially using RSS feeds so they can get it in the form they choose. Harris County Public Library uses a blog as a reference service – recommend books on topics that are of interest due to recent event. RSS feeds from the catalogue based on subject, author, title and more. Ohio Uni Biz Wiki – a subject guide, allowing subject access to resources, easily editable and searchable. Use del.icio.us to subject collect relevant bookmarks – Washington State Library has a genealogy collection which is annotated and available through RSS. Use podcasts to deliver library instruction, interviews, local history – eg. Omnibus
• Get feedback! Start a Conversation! eg. Ann Arbor District Library has built great conversations through their blogs and more by leaving their comments open. Better than a feedback form. Use social networking sites such as FaceBook and MySpace. Oceana Wilson uses the bulletin function to solicite suggestions for book purchases etc from students.
• Give the library a human face! Use Flickr to show what your library is all about. A picture is worth a 1000 words, show your fun activities and more. SJCPL blog really talks to their readers like they are talking to an old friend. Use visual elements and fun language.
• Provide services to remote users. More and more that our visitors are virtual only and we need to be reaching them also. Use IM, as they are already using it instead of trying to make them use something unfamiliar – such as virtual reference software. Calgary Public Library tutorials using webcasts, instead of screen shots or step-by-step instructions.
• Provide services where our users are. MySpace profiles, or like Brooklyn College Library which has built a portal where their users are: portal to online resources, blog and more. Thomas Ford uses MeeboMe widget to open IM messaging right from their website, without having to sign up for IM. Use RSS feeds to syndicate your content to many different locations.
• Provide services using tools patrons use. SMS reference using mobile phones which are ever present on particularly young people.
• Capitalise on collective intelligence of colleagues and users. Ann Arbor has integrated tagging into their catalogue – getting contextual information on these resources, from their users, making it easier to find. Have also got, users who borrowed this, also borrowed….. Hennepin has integrated commenting into their catalogue, patrons can write reviews and it can be found in their catalogue.

Strategies for introducing social software in libraries

• Avoid technolust – think about the needs first, then choose the best tool for it
• Will it improve library services? Will patrons use it? – Who are our patrons, what are there needs, it all has to be context appropriate to the users of your library
• Involve staff at all levels in planning – not just the tech savvy staff, but all those who have to use and market the tools, they can provide some great insights.
• Involve IT in planning – include them from the start, create a consortial rather than an adversarial relationship
• Play with Technology! Kick the tires! Start using the social tools, check them out and you will get a lot more insight on how they work, how they could work and their problems.
• Trust your patrons, learn from them – don’t fear what your users may post – its about radical trust and it we don’t have it, we miss out on valuable contributions
• Consider maintenance and sustainability – think long term once you start with it, not just the next few months, but years and years
• Do you need a policy? Don’t always need one, but there is a benefit in having things such as a comments policy.
• In Marketing, focus on the functionality – patrons don’t really care about the tool, but are interested in what it provides.

Meredith announced the winners of the competition to find cover art for her new book – “Social software in libraries”.

Links from the paper are at http://meredithfarkas.wetpaint.com

Hamilton Library has many community partners. Won a Sirsi-Dynix award for their community development. A portal was created to represent all the organisations and agencies in the city of Hamilton. The same tabs on the library web page are the same on the Council webpage and other community institutions in the portal, as a result their website visit increased as has the visits to all other agencies.

They are “Google for Hamilton”. Search results are focused on Hamilton. The portal is complete integration with municipal services. Other features include a robust CMS, a unified events database, web casting, collaboration spaces, online transactions, rss feeds, single sign on, metadata everywhere and W3C compliant. Hamilton Library trains 200 authors to upload and manage content on the portal.

They didn’t do any risk management on the events calendar and thereby underestimated its use, so it crashed within a week of going live. The single sign on means that you are logged all at once to all the various organisations on the portal that need user verification.

Although the software is W3C compliant, not all docs loaded were, so much training was done to educate all contributors on this.

Online registration of their users needs verification, so they get their card within an hour of applying – subject to those verification processes. 70-80 users per week register who never come into the library and Hamilton does not want to force them to. The online registration allows them to use their virtual resources without having to ever visit a library.

Collaboration space in the software is being used for 70 online book clubs that Hamilton Library runs. It was originally intended for community groups but is being well utilised by the library.

Working with community partners on this portal has created last partnerships which benefits the library in so many different ways.

A partnership at its best when

• your reputation as a partner will precede you
• there are different organisational cultures involved, managing their own decision making processes within their groups, then at the partnership level
• there is a commitment to common vision and goals
• the sustainability model will evolve over the course of the project – it will not be the same as when it started, with underestimates in inputs and outflows and changes in who makeups the partnership
• the project is properly resourced or can be scaled back so no one organisation has too much demand placed on it

Ongoing challenges

• organisational structure and power partners – who has the power, why and how that power structure is managed
• inclusiveness and balance of perspectives
• changing environment and priorities for each partner
• sustaining what we have
• implementing new stuff

What you need to succeed

• build trust and respect as a partner (build reputation)
• have shared values – sometimes need to be a compromise and can you support it
• engage the right people
• start small, think big – some aspects of the software have still not being started as they still are getting their partners established on the portal
• integration with your core business – becomes part of core tasks of library staff
• test, test and test some more (usability and technology) – make sure the right testing is also being done
• celebrate success and excuse mistakes

Discovered that people were using the library more, as well as finding what they want more quickly and spending more time there.

Virtual Library – has branch manager, includes all services where it doesn’t require someone walking through the door, includes telephone services.

In future – Second Life project with McMaster Uni and others (have an island they are developing), WiFi initiative, IM Reference, Learning 2.0 and more.
www.hpl.co – library website, www.myhamilton.ca – portal address

And here I am live blogging at CIL 2007. We’ll see how it goes. Lee Rainie is the Director of Pew Internet, which has done research on use of the Internet and its various demographics since 2000. Lee confessed that he hadn’t outlined librarians as key stakeholders for Pew data in the beginning and of course we are now his most enthusiastic users. (Disclaimer: all data shared is US based!)

Showed a You Tube video “Ask a Ninja” about podcasting. Very amusing. Summarising Web 2.0 (to lots of laughs).

Starting point was with Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle in September 2005. It was the web as platform (ie. Netscape vs Google, Akami vs Bit Torrent), it was harnessing collective intelligence, data was the important part, software was not device dependent (perpetual beta, like life) and it was all about a rich and free user experience.

Presented their map of utilities, showing the various utilities and their Web 1.0 and 2.0 examples. ie. personal websites to blogging, publishing to participation, content management to wikis, directories to tagging, Britannica to Wikipedia and more. Showed their Web 2.0 Meme Map (will link later).

6 hallmarks of Web 2.0 that matter to libraries:

• Internet has become the computer – number of people using computers is nearly indistinguishable from those using the internet (in US, 75% to 73%), bandwith adoption is increasing (142 mill access, with 96 mill on broadband), as a result people go online from more places – home, school, friends, 50% have gone online from libraries (doubled in 4 years). Broadband has turned web into a destination – 43% spend some time just hanging out on the net and it has intensified use (just under 50% use it daily). Now a hybrid experience, not just text based, with 90% having watched video online and broadband making internet use more social – online gaming, photo sharing, file sharing and more.
• Millions are creating and sharing content online – 55% of teens and 20% of adults have profiles on social networking sites. Young people are using these social networks as switchboards for their social life – private messages, bulletin or groups messages, blog comments etc. 51% of young adults and 37% of all users have posted photos and commented on online photos. Lee says that his daughters never leave home without their phones and cameras so that they can chronicle their entire evening. 39% have posted their creation online (double of adults), 33% to 13% are tech support for their families and friends. 28% have blogs (33% college students, 40% teen girls) compared to 12% of online adults. Majority of teen bloggers blog their personal situations, for their friends only – haven’t realised the implications of this public medium – ie parents, teachers and potential employers can see them too. Twice as many teens as adults have personal webpages. (27% – 14%). 26% remix content into their own creations, 9% of adults – sounds, images, photos and more. 19% of young adults have an avatar – 9% of adults. More than half of teens are involved in online games. Content creation correlates with internet use by age, the younger you are, the more likely you are to be doing both.
• More internet users are accessing the content created by others – 46% of young internet users read blogs, 44% seek info on Wikipedia (many users being young or well educated), will also ping their friends for advice on where to search.
• Many are sharing what they know and what they feel online – building conversations. About a third have rated a person, product or service online. 32% have tagged content online, 25% have commented on video.
• Thousands are contributing know-how to the online experience. 40% participate in per to peer exchanges, there is the global open source movement and grid computing where people offer their free PC processing time to process data on things like climate change, genome project, starcluster processing and more.
• Customising content with Web 2.0 tools. 40% of teens customise news and info pages, 1/2 are on speciality listservs. 25 to 33% get RSS feeds (although many don’t know that is what it is)

5 issues we must address: (from Pam Berger – infosearcher.com)

1. Navigation – from linear to non-linear – links are Net currency
2. Context – learning to see the connections – the Net is very disintegrated
3. Focus – practicing reflection and deep reflection where most of our creativity arises, instead of continuous partial attention
4. Skepticism – learning to evaluate information – librarians critical in getting this out
5. Ethical behaviour – understanding the rules of cyberspace – privacy and disclosure

Lee concluded with Michael Wesch’s excellent You Tube videon on Web 2.0 – The Machine is us!

Great start to the conference and now that I have a power source, I won’t freak out half way through when my battery dies! Next session starting soon!