Connecting Librarian

Welcome to the Carnival of the Infosciences #80. The Carnival is a weekly weblog post that endeavors to showcase the best posts in the blogosphere about topics related to the wide world of Library and Information Science. This week its my honour to be hosting the Carnival for the third time.

First, the submissions and thanks to everyone who contributed to this issue:

Filipino Librarian presents Pinoy Bibliobloggers’ Mafia. “This post asks why Filipino librarians who blog are less likely to be working in libraries, and that they are more likely to be male.” Unusual situation when compared to libraries in general – interesting thoughts.

Jimmy Atkinson presents
The Self-Directed Student Toolbox: 100 Web Resources for Lifelong Learners posted at OEDb: Online Education Database. There are some real gems in there, for any library interested in lifelong learning and aren’t we all!

Steven Silvers from Scatterbox presents Bury my rant on the Internet saying, “Consumer advocates take issue with SEO companies that get paid to push legitimate product reviews down into the clutter. But relevance is not the Internet’s obligation — and modern Internet users will eventually figure it all out anyway.” Search engine optimization isn’t all its cracked up to be!

Laura Solomon at Library Geek Woes presents Chasing the technology curve. She talks about where we should look when we are deciding which technologies to invest our time and money in for our libraries. As usual, she is thought provoking and so I will leave it to you to decide if you agree with her conclusion.

Jeremy Aldrich from Global Citizenship in a Virtual World presents Filter? I hardly knew ‘er!, saying, “Filters are a fact of life, but perhaps school decision makers are using the minimal legal requirements for filtering to excuse their often-rigid control of information flow.” Where does the line go between education and filtering, in protecting our children from inappropriate content. Jeremy asks for your thoughts in this post.

Now to conclude with some picks of my own, to round out this week’s Carnival.

Peta Hopkins from Innovate has blogged about the first Australian Blogging conference , starting with the post Blogoz: first up and with follow ups. Check it out.

There has been a lot of discussion about Wyoming Libraries use of the mud flap girl in their promotions. I just love Shelf Check #93 – Emily Lloyd’s contribution to the discussions that have revolved around this unusual marketing choice. Check out this and many other amusing library based cartoons at Shelf Check. If you like cartoons, I recommend you also check out Unshelved and Turn the Page. If you know of any other library based cartoons, let me know, I’m a fan!

Finally, Karen at Library Web Chic posted The future of Web services isn’t the library website. She discusses what key elements we should be including in our library websites. Interesting reading.

That concludes this edition – thanks for joining us. Help out the Carnival by submitting a blog article to the next edition of Carnival of the Infosciences using the carnival submission form. Feel free to submit one of your own posts, or another that you have read that you think is worth highlighting. Past posts and future hosts can be found on the blog carnival index page. Filipino Librarian is the next host, so see you at the Carnival on the 15th October!

As I am going on a week’s holiday with my family and as a week is a long time in the biblioblogosphere, I thought it best to post some interesting stuff that caught my eye, but which I won’t have a chance to consider more fully – at least not here in my blog.

Read/Write Web did a post nearly a month ago – “Finding the true value of web technologies“. Although not directly library related, considering all that has been going on with regards to the Library 2.0 discussion in recent months, it was very relevant. It proposes that we are in a ‘digestion phase’, which is a ‘time for us to reflect, to integrate and to understand recent technologies and how they fit together.’ This may sound familiar to anyone following the Library 2.0 discussions – well worth a look.

Ryan Deschamps is a new blogger I have caught onto, he has written some very thought provoking posts recently at his blog, “The Other Librarians.” However, the one I want to highlight is “Under the hood of Web 2.0: the top ten programming concepts for librarians to understand.” You don’t want to know how Web 2.0 tools are created, but its useful to understand a bit about how they work, to get the best out of them. Ryan’s post helps with that.

I would consider Kathryn Greenhill at Librarians Matter to be one of the most predominant library bloggers in Australia. I am also fortunate to blog with her at Libraries Interact and to have spent a great day with her in July. Great lady with another great post – “What new about Library 2.0? Shift in power.” She gives a whole new perspective to the discussions on Library 2.0.

I love reading Walt Crawford, his blog “Walt at random” and the “Cites and Insights” newsletter are staples of my library reading diet. About a month ago, “Walt at random” pointed to a great resource hosted at Web Junction – “The Storied Library“, a series of articles from Walt which talk about how to market your library by telling stories. Well worth the read.

Related to this was a simple example from Emily at Library Revolution of how to make your library blog posts more readable and storylike and thereby more appealing. “My story about telling stories” shows that it is very easy to do, just takes a little extra time and a simple switch of voice – even I could do it, lol.

Briefly in other news, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) TV show “The Librarians” will premier on the 31st October. Definitely will be one to watch.

Also registrations for the VALA biennial conference – “Libraries: changing spaces, virtual places“, in February 2008 are open. Library conference season is in full swing in Australia, as the call for papers for the ALIA biennial conference in September 2008 – “Dreaming 08” and Expression of Interest for Information Online 2009 are also open.

This should keep you busy. I will be back in just over a week and my next post will be as host to the Carnival of the Infosciences. Already some great posts coming in, so stay tuned.

I will have the honour of hosting the Carnival of the Infosciences again, this time on 1st October. If you have anything you would like to submit for the Carnival, you can do so through the submission form or to tag items as “carninfo” in del.icio.us.

The Carnival of the Infosciences #79 is at Libraryola – so check it out and then join me here for the carnival in a couple of weeks.

For those new to the Carnival, its a fortnightly ‘weblog post that endeavors to showcase the best posts in the blogosphere about topics related to the wide world of Library and Information Science.’ More info, including links to past Carnivals, is available at the Carnival of the Infosciences wiki.

There has been a lot of discussion lately around the biblioblogosphere on Library 2.0 and whether its over, whether it should ever have been, what it is, whether its new or not and much more. If you want to follow the discussions, I suggest you check out Annoyed Librarian, David Lee King, Information Wants to be Free and many more.

I started thinking about it more when Ryan Deschamps at The Other Librarian came out with “We asked for Library 2.0 and got 2.0 Librarians.” Although I agree with his premise, I wailed when I read the part that said that he sensed that the “prominence of the Library 2.0 moniker has plateaued”. Why did I wail? Because we had only just started! Our library blog is now a year old (had to stop to do a blogiversary post on that blog!), but it is just scratching the surface of what we hope to do.

Anyway, that got me thinking out what Ryan was saying and yes a lot of the changes at my library have been driven by me, a 2.0 librarian and initially I think my attitude was of the “cool tools, how can we use them” kind. Fortunately, that time passed quickly and I have been refocusing back on our users. Nicole at What I learned today took the words out of my mouth –
“I’m all for everyone learning everything they possibly can, but not all the tools are the right fit in all organisations….. I just want to bring every tool I can to your attention, because one might just be the one you were looking for to solve that one pesky problem you were having.”

At the same time, our users have been changing. Our library website use is just starting to skyrocket – we have seen an over 200% increase in virtual visitors to our website in the past year. Our website is a destination for our library users, more than ever before, I think partly because of our new library system, but also because of the development of our users as computer literate people. Apart from the catalogue, a few select webpages and the blog, our website is an online brochure, which is fine in itself. However, my aim now is to try and make the virtual experience of the library at least equal to the physical experience and an online brochure doesn’t do it. We don’t have programmers on our staff and there are only 2 staff here with html skills, so the only way to provide better service through our website is by using Web 2.0 tools. We have started with simple things like booklists linking directly to our catalogue (not web 2.0 I know), a Flickr account and a Google Maps mashup for our branches and mobile library stops.

I’m not alone in this either. A big group of our library staff have enthusiastically started the Learning 2.0 program, in a project driven by the State Library of Victoria, which I am very excited about. We will have staff knowledgeable about Web 2.0 tools which is great for them and our users, but hopefully some them will also be full of ideas for projects and the motivation to be the ones to drive it. I can’t do everything, much as I try, so it will be great to have others on board to contribute, especially in areas where I have neither the skill, interest or motivation.

There’s so much more I can say here, but it would go on forever if I let him. So for me and my library, Library 2.0 is just entering the building, so its far from over for us. We may not call it Library 2.0 and in a way its something we have been doing for forever, but its also a new frontier that we are going to explore and have fun doing it too!

For yet another perspective and well worth readings is Kathryn’s post at Librarians Matter – “What’s new about Library 2.0? Shift in power“. She makes some great points and it brings home to me that the definition of Library 2.0 is not only different to each library, but to each librarian, all depending where they are at, as institutions and individuals. You have to love something that is that flexible!

On a final note. There was a ton of feedback on Annoyed Librarian’s post – the “Cult of Twopointopia“. The post was fascinating, both in its biting wit and its ability to make me think. The numerous comments on the post were even more fascinating, for a couple of reasons. First – it was nice to see the passion of librarians on both sides of the argument. That’s one of the great things about our profession – we are generally very passionate about what we do. I guess it makes up only a bit for the less than professional level wages we generally earn. Second was that the arguments and flames were flying thick and fast and all I could think was that we are all supposed to be on the same side, so why are we turning on each other like this. We all have our interests and specialities, why aren’t we more grateful, accepting and understanding of the differing viewpoints that make us such a great profession?

That’s my 2 cents worth on the topic. Would love to hear what you think!