Connecting Librarian

Next Space (OCLC) magazine includes a social networking article featuring Stuart Weibel.

Where is the Library as a brand?
Perceptions of libraries and information resources – OCLC report (available online)
3300 respondents to questions on library use, awareness and use of library electronic resources, internet search engine the library and the librarian, free vs for-fee information, the brand itself.
Libraries are trusted sources of information, search engines are trusted about the same, people care about quality and quantity of info they find, but speed is less important (not believable). However, convenience is very important.
Do not view paid infomration as more accurate than free info.
The overwhelming brand image of libraries is BOOKS!

Library Brand Equity – we need a strong visible brand on the web.  Libraries currently are a black and white presence in a colorful, flashy web world.
How do we build the brand?  Build on the trust of our patrons. Build on our business model – making info look free to our end-users.  Build on the scale that libraries represent – presence in every community, global scope and reach.  Improve awareness of library resources.  Make libraires a part of the new electronic environments that dominate social, educational and work environments.  We need to be there!

Social netowrking software!  Its not new, just the technical manifestation is. Deliver library services into the emerging social networks. Motivate people to participate: tagging, book reviews, emergent relationships that are evident from data about what people borrow, like and dislike, link to the people as well.  Need to build our own systems into the social structures that are so quickly developing.

Numbers of content creators and contributors are changing – increasing.  More people are wanting to get their content out on the web.  Their are great innovative approaches to attract that content to the library community.

Social Networking is not just for games: Facebook, MySpace, Second Life and Twitter.  All are flawed as service delivery models – business models are closed or obscure, features are rudimentary or overbearing. But they foretell a digital future in both their virtues and faults. Stuart Weibel has both Twitter and Facebook accounts and will be your friend.  They teach us about what people are doing out there – think of it as a professional investment.  They are all goofy because they are all new.  They will develop and some of that development will be interesting.

Libraries must compare favourably with experiences that our patrons expect: discovery and recommender services, web 2.0 social network capabilities, experiences of comparable commerical services, last-mile delivery capability, bookstore social experiences.  We are offering an experience as well as a service.  Save the user time.

Can Libraries compete in this space?  Should they?
Social software movement is fueled by (dollar denominated) entrepreneurial fervor.  Rate of innovation (and failure) is rapid. Distinguish between trends and the trendy and don’t get wrapped on the latter, especially when they fail.

Future of library catalogues?
Evolving towards network level. Collections linked to people, organisations, global location, concepts, context, metadata and social networking benefits.  Fit into the workflow and social lives of patrons. Help create a scaffolding for past knowledge and future productivity.

Web or Scaffolding?  We want more conherence and context, durable environments that help us preserve and fix resources in the context of culture, librarianship embedded in the emerging technologies of a social web.

Our catalogues need to be wholistic, treating not only works, but also people, concepts, works and objects (FRBR).  In addition we need book reviews, lists, services, commentary, other?  Book reviews are part of social bibliography, user created content.  All these things should be First Class Objects which have to ahve a persistent identity on the web, accessible by anyone or any applicaation, stand alone (attribution, clear IP rights), curated (not left alone). Allow the user to enter and tranverse the catalogue from any point.

WorldCat Identities – Beta product from OCLC – Another piece of the puzzle?
Tag cloud shows the top 100 identities.  Uses bibliographic data and mining it from other sources at OCLC.

Complicated puzzle – where ya gonna turn?
People, information, resources, places, terminologies, user generated content, FRBR (explain it to your patrons).  We need to better mine and utilise the data that we have.  Hook everything together with the right sort of identifiers.  A coherent identifier infrastructure is essential. Broad dissemination of identifiers serves the library collaborative and is the single most compelling means of making library assets persistent and visible on the web.

Persistence: not technological but rather a function of the commitment of organisations.  Libraries and other cultural memory organisations do this well.  Harder to do in the digital era, but the community is up to the task.
Universal access and global scoping: open to all, public identifiers in a public Web. Should work everywhere. WorldCat is the first globally-scoped identifier architecture for library assets in which the global surrogate is mapped to locality.  But we’re not quite done yet.
SEO and canonical identifiers – visibility of assets in the global library is diluted by the multiplicity of identifiers, agreement is needed on a canonical identifier.  Lack of it is a dilution of our brand and a lack of visibility on the web.
Branding is an important component of URIs – every URI is a micro-billboard branding library content in a crowded and largely commercial Web landscape. URIs need to be designed for people as well as machines, should be speakable, should be as short can be as managed, should have a predictable pattern that makes them hackable and truncatable.

FRBR is an important ocintrubtion to resource organisation on the web, but it is a challenge to explain to users.

World Cat – Mid 2006. Globally unique, freely available, citable and resolvable, independent of location, but not quite canonical.  Falls short because of duplicates, either mistaken or functional, not always resolvable to content and only sort of canonical.

NEWS!!!   Pilot project by OCLC – GLIMIR – Global Library Manifestation Identifier which is global in scope, canonical, business neutral, provides the URL equity necessary to support the library brand, fits comfortably with the FRBR model.  If its going to work, it can’t be an OCLC product, but it will be managed by them. It will require participation, buy in and support, all of which will be very tricky to achieve.  Can a global community agree and adopt this when there are already so many identifiers – eg. ISBN.  OCLC is launching this pilot to identify functional requirements and practicalities solicited review from technical specialists,moving forward will require a careful balance of use cases, business issue and more.

Identifiers are key to fulfilling the mission of libraries in a digital future, to compete ont he open web for recognition of our brand, to integrate our traditional bibliographic values with social networking content, to provides services and access to the digital tribe – our future constituency.

weibel-lines.typepad.com.
twitter – stuartweibel
flickr – weibel-lines

Kim Tairi – Swinburne University of Technology, Rob McCormack – Peodair Leihy and Peter Ring – Victoria University
“Fairy tales and Elggs: social networking with student rovers in learning commons”

Rovers were used in the Learning commons – student peer mentors who worked in pairs.  Created RoverSpace – an online community for Rovers to share knowledge and problems, initially used Elgg (open source social networking space), now use Google Groups and Mediawiki.

Student rovers need to be peers (complementary service to librarians), seed a culture of learning (exemplars of good learning practice, paid work as a positive (good addition to or complement of their coursework), where the community meets (some rovers see working for the library as an honour).
Having rovers who reflect the university’s student population, in terms of background, courses etc.

RoverSpace – contains shift reports, statistics, administrative communication, reflective tasks, organic information sharing space.

Duties: – basic advice, assistance, operational support to students in the Learning Commons regarding IT and Library queries
- assist students to clarify their learning issues and develop strategiese to tackle them
- refer students to online/library resources, formal student learning advice and other forms of assistance

Rovers handled 4500 queries in the first 2 semesters of 2007  83% dealt with in a few minutes. 7.2% referred to library staff. 70.5% of queries were for printing, photocopying, catalogue, borrowing and returning, finding items on shelf and the swipe card technology.

Happily Ever After?
better publicity and more visibility
more training and better knowledge management
different roles (lead rover and webmaster)
more efficient support (only one in off peak times)
capitalising on online support potential
other platforms – Cosmopolis
PDAs

Bruce Heterick – JSTOR
“Shift happens: how the network effect, two-sided markets and the wisdom of crowds are impacting libraries and scholarly communication”

Check out the YouTube video “Shift happens” – series of factoids on how the world is changing.

“Technology is everything that is invented after you were born.”  “Technology does not add or subtract something. It changes everything.”
eg. Printing press (Gutenberg -1440) led to the Protestant Reformation and the Renaissance
Linotype machine (Merganthaler – 1886) led to increased newspaper circulation (cheaper production costs)
Integrated circuit (Kilby/Noyce – 1961) led to digital computing
World Wide Web (BernersLee – 1989) led to search engines, e-commerce, information transition
iPod (Apple – 2001) – led to portable media

Library in use is using audio avatars – surfer dude on using Google, southern lady on archives from JSTOR – podcast how to use the resources.  Students downloading and listening to them when they want.

Four exponentials ….. working together
- Moore’s Law – power of computing is doubling every 18 months ( hold true for last 25 years and probably for next 10 to 15)
- Law of Fiber – capacity of the bandwith is doubling every 9 months – allowing us to deliver much more than we could have imagined a few years ago
- Law of Storage – digital storage doubles for the same cost every 12 months (its not a concern anymore because it is so cheap)
- Law of Community (Metcalf’s Law) – the power of the network goes up with the square of the networked people interacting with it
Each law is an exponential change agent, but with all of them working together, feeding off one another, it has caused such great change that it has become unsettling for people.

“If things are under control, you are moving too slow”.

They are facilitating the transition from the Information Age to the Age of Participation:
- actively engaging with what they are receiving – blogs and wikis are descendents of that need
- multilateral, not unilateral – not just working person to person – more apparent but also can be more confusing
- communities, not silos – around the information, how will they be facilitated through the platforms being used
- contribution as well as consumption

They are contributing to an environment with new dynamics:
- The Network effect – service becomes available as more people use it, growth can be extraordinarily fast (often virally) and can occur with little or no centralized control, glider – the power of the network must move down.
- Two-sided markets – WEb 2.0 where people contribute and consumer, economic network having two distinct user groups

Wisdom of crowds – groups are smarter than the smartest individual in the right circumstances
- decisions by crowds work when the crowd is diverse, decentralized & work independently ie. Wikipedia

Libraries will have to engage more at the place where their users are – proactive engagement.
Publishers have to be building self-sustaining communities or be consolidated.
Faculty – have to become more conversant with the technologies, adopt these advances, focus on networks, not institutions.

Law of change – libraries will have to change as the larger system of which we are a part changes, or risk being ejected from it.
Gorbachev Syndrome – leaders swept away by the tide they have created.

Do we move forward to what is inevitable or do we hold on to the continuity that we have, however profoundly it is flawed?

Kate Davis – Gold Coast City Council
“Be my buddy: IM and the future of virtual reference”

IM trial was run in tandem with the Ask Now chat service. Trial has now concluded.

2 types of IM – client based (ie. MSN Messenger, Google Talk) and website integrated (embedded – Meebo).  Embeds a flash based box in your webpage – used by many bloggers – eg. Topeka Shawnee County.

Impetus: technical issues with proprietary chat reference products – software issues, login requirements etc
desire to meet users in their own space – on their turf, reach audience with their communication model of choice

How did it work – listed IM names on the Asknow homepage – noting that the users should add the appropriate name to their buddy list.  (couldn’t use embedded, too much demand).  Once listed in their buddy list, users know when the service is available. When it is – click on to start a session.

Quick stats – to inform practice going into the future.  Surveyed staff before and after the trial, in a focus groups and a wiki was used for field notes.  Once staff realised how simple it was, they were overwhelmingly supportive of it.  Almost 1200 enquiries in 6 months, 45% of surveyed users aged 15 to 24, 73% of enquiries completed in session, 100% of users would use it again. (all users surveyed at the end of the session)

Lessons:
1. There is a demand for an IM service.  Hours offered did not affect the growth of enquiries and word of mouth was an important promotion tool.
2. Concept of IM reference is viable.  Librarian said they thought it better than chat ref or email – more immediate and synchronous
3. True synchronicity has some meaningful impacts. Librarian said that it met the expectations of users in terms of speed, efficiency and ease of use and enabled the reference interview to be more complete and quicker.
4. Inhabiting the users’ space brings some new challenges (and a pleasant surprise). Informal language – txt speak. Up to each individual librarian as to how they communicate.  Some users just wanted to come and chat (they were bored). However, there was no increase in inappropriate behaviour from the Asknow service. IM resulted in a significant increase in repeat users.
5. IM is not just for kids….. but the kids certainly do like it. Kids were a big audience, but so were 15-24, particularly in the morning and early afternoon.
6. A simple aggregator IM client is insufficient. (can only have one person logged in at a time to offer service) Having more than one operator is crucial – too many clients is scary, exhausting and demanding.

Embedded IM: an opportunity to innovate – three lines of code plugged in to your website gives you an onsite contact point. Place the widget in the places where they most need help (no results page, wrong address etc).

Towards an IM system architecture:
Necessary – multiple librarians to be logged in and monitoring simultaneously (Pidgin client based software now offers this functionality)
- queueing and/or automatic routing of users – preferably both
- automated statistics logging functionality
Desirable – automated workflow for referring enquiries infor follow-up and better transcript archiving functionality (in trial it was far too labour intensive)
- built in scripted message

They developed specifications for IM system architecture with a Jabber IM server (self hosted), Java based routing component (to be written, Web based dashboard for shift management (where they can identify themselves as primary or secondary operator and pick up clients, Browser based anonymous entry point for users which could be embedded in the web page and an admin module (for stats and scripts etc).

What now – Routing component being built by NLA developer – likely to be open source. Looking at opportunities for cooperative arrangements.

Through the crystal ball: the future of virtual reference: centred around website, synchronous chat, will embrace pluggable system models – that can scale and will embrace open source.  Using a triage model, incorporate multiple delivery models (FAQs, subject guides, email, VOIP and IM), will see the nature of enquiries change as we get into their space, be device agnostic – particularly important with the expansion of the mobile web.

Wilma Kurvink – Wesley College
“A new paradigm for reference librarians in the online world: developing relationships around research and learning with library users”

About learning, not about schooling. Their collections have conflicting ideas and perspectives to expose students to a range of ideas and use their morals, critical thinking to make sense of them.

When laptops introduced, they found that student work was not significantly improving in key research assignments, students appeared to want to work independently and were reluctant to seek help.

Research into search behaviour by Rita Bilal: students experienced high rates of failure (1 in 2 searches failed for younger students), students experienced breakdowns.  Better results by older students who use keywords better.  10 year study of UK tertiary students: search engines dominated their information seeking strategy, half began their search in Google, only 10% used the OPAC first and 9% went to Yahoo.

Students prefer search engines, use of academic resources is low, find locating information difficult, may trade quality of results for effort and time spent searching, students use of search engines now influences their perspective of online resources.

Jean McKay and Helen Bronleigh – Murdoch University, Annmaree Brown and Margaret Wright – Macquarie University
“Shibbolising Online Librarian: how two university libraries enhanced their collaborative chat reference service by using a MAMS Mini grant to add authentication and develop an interoperable chat client”

In 2006, the IM service that had been introduced 2 years earlier, was now causing too many headaches.  With only one librarian able to login at any one time, it made management problematic at best.  Service was offer for a limited time of 34 hours per week.  Had started with Net Meeting and VOIP, but users preferred chat, so moved to MSN Messenger and the service took off.

Started project with MAMs in 2006 – to develop and improve a text chat information service, building on the existing online librarian services.
MAMS – Meta Access Management System project – based at Macquarie Uni with DEST funding from the “Backing Australia’s Ability” program.

Allows multiple operator logins and where possible, students will be routed to a librarian from their home institution.  If all operators are busy, they will be redirected to the email service. Client has to go to the webpage, identify their home institution, authenticate and then the chat starts.  Have a link to a feedback form at the end of the session.

Not a lot of feedback, but all received is overwhelmingly positive, easy to use, will use again.  Only 5% reported access problems.  The stats module gives them client affiliation, operator institution, start/end time of call, no of transactions in each session, transfer history, notes regarding who ended or timeouts and gives turnaways by user campus and try time.  If a call is not answered in minute, it is routed to another operator – 1/3 of sessions did this.  50% ended by operator. If it is, the feedback form is offered as is the option to have the transcript emailed to them.

Resulted in the service being offered 87 hours per week, where the physical desks are offering 77 and 65 hours service per week. Librarians are not rostered, but are expected to respond to chat in the same way that they do with email and the telephone.

Both libraries will continue with the service – looking to appear in the portals being developed at both Unis and hope to be able to incorporate a widget.