Connecting Librarian

It was wishful thinking I know. I so wanted my changeover of blog location to be painful only to me and not to my subscribers, but unfortunately it’s not to be.

If you want to continue subscribing to Connecting Librarian, can you please change your feed to http://www.feedburner.com/ConnectingLibrarian. The RSS button at top right of this blog has the right address too, as does the icon on the address bar.

Sorry for the inconvenience, but I sincerely hope you make the move with me and continue with me as I keep finding those connections!

Thanks,

Michelle

I was surprised, but not so surprised to realise that I hadn’t blogged for over a month. That was for two reasons I suppose – one was that I have just been so busy and secondly I didn’t have the heart to post. Then tonight, I was just sitting at my computer, having had a day of overbooked commitments for the first time in over a week and I was ready again. I actually have a lot in my mind that I will get around to blogging about, but this topic is pre-eminent at the moment, so here goes….

This cartoon is one of a series from Unshelved, using the PC/Mac ad premise. They are well worth checking out, as is the series in general. Good for a laugh and sometimes very close to home as well.

That’s one thing that got me thinking about library websites. We are about to redo our library website. Its been 3 years since the last restructure and we haven’t done much with it. Not saying its static or anything – we have added new content, deleted old stuff, kept things current etc and we have even added 2 blogs in that time – a general behind the scenes blog and recently a local history blog as well as adding Google Maps for our branch locations and bookmobile sites. We even have a Flickr account with a small collection of photos from one of our branches – due mainly to its recent renovation and relaunch. That puts us a bit ahead of the curve in our state, as there are only 4 public library services (out of 45) that are blogging at present.

I’m not happy though, because I want more.

I want our website to be more than an online brochure and I would love it if the treasure that is available there was used more. Our catalogue is getting great use since our change of library system earlier this year and more importantly the elimination of reserve charges. Our catalogue is shared with a consortia of 9 public library services, so not only can our patrons place holds on our items for free, but for almost anything from any of the 8 other library services in the consortia also.

Most of our patrons come to our website to get to our catalogue. Totally understandable, its our stock in trade. Even with the improvements in our catalogue through having a new system, with the blogs, the google maps and more, we still have a mainly brochure type website. If we are to engage our users and attract new users, who may only visit us virtually, we need to do more.

And they are there to engage. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has been releasing statistics from the 2006 census. In our last census in 2001, our 2 local council areas had home PC ownership at about 21%, which was significantly below the state average. This census the question changed to home internet access and both our council areas were pretty much on the state average of 62%! And that is just home access, not access through school, work, the library or other locations. I am pretty sure that the percentage of our population with any sort of internet access that they use regularly is a lot higher than 62%.

We do have plans however. We plan to have a website which integrates the catalogue into the front end, not as a link to a separate location. We want more blogs. We plan to offer more RSS feeds, not only from our blogs, but also to new titles added to the catalogue etc. We want to post polls to get more feedback from our users. We need more Flickr photos and I am playing with what potentially could be our first podcast.

I would love to get the Library Thing tags on our catalogue, do podcasts and vodcasts of in-house seminars and maybe go out and do things too. And there’s a lot of potential in SMS or IM services also. Then there’s profiles on Facebook and/or MySpace, videos on YouTube, etc, etc. I could also go on about patron tagging and reviews etc, but this post is already long enough as it is.

But I feel like these things are all add ons to what is still essentially at its core, an online brochure at present. Whether our new website form will change that, I don’t yet know. I know we need the static information about branches and services, but is there another way we could be doing it? Can we change what a library website is at its core? If we can, how do we that and what does it look like when we do?

And who does it? I am only one person, working part-time. At present its me and my manager who do the website and there is never enough time in the day to keep current, let alone get ahead. Even two of us can’t make all this happen.

However, on this point I am happy to report that help is at hand. As a result of the State Library of Victoria coordinating the Victorian Public Libraries Learning 2.0 program for public library staff statewide, we have taken several steps in what I think is the right direction for our virtual services. Our local history librarian is now blogging local history and is doing a great job – after only a few weeks she has an armload of posts, with dozens more in reserve. A couple of our other staff are going to show a YouTube video as part of a teen Christmas wrap workshop they are running. Both great ideas and just the tip of the iceberg. We have more staff enthused and ready to go – waiting I guess for us to tell them how. (I must really get onto to that and soon…)

We had 44 staff enrolled in the program, which has just officially finished, with a third having completed it. If we are coming out with these ideas already, how many more might we expect, as others complete it in their own time, or as we get the other 42 staff to do it sometime in the next year.

So when I started this post, I was feeling a little frustrated, but now that I have had my rant and seen the positives that are happening, I am feeling a bit better. My biggest concern now is how to make our plans come to fruition. However, if we can get more of our staff as enthused as just a few of ones who have completed the program are, start tapping into their enthusiasm, ideas and skills more – we might just have enough people to be able to pull it off. This and more.

So thanks for sitting through my rant. If you or your staff haven’t done the Learning 2.0 program, I highly recommend it. Its hard work and can be time consuming, but its inspiring, challenging and fun! If you have any solutions for my brochure dilemma, I’d love to hear them. If you think I’m full of it, impatient etc – please let me know that too (but nicely). I won’t necessarily agree with you, after all, we have to have dreams and we have to aim high, but I would be interested in the feedback. Anyway, I’m back and have a lot to say it seems (just from the length of this post).

If you would like to read more on library web presences, besides the Unshelved cartoons, the following posts contributed to my thought processes – I recommend you check them out.
Technology Storm – Michael Casey and Michael Stephens (Library Journal)
Website or presence? – Kathryn Greenhill (Librarians Matter)
Ignoring our digital community – David Lee King

Stay tuned – I’m keen to waffle on more on other topics and won’t take a month to do so next time.

I am the honoured host of the Carnival of the InfoSciences #72, which will be posted on Monday 28th May. For those who don’t know the Carnival, it’s a travelling weblog post that endeavours to show the best of the information science blogosphere. Its hosted fortnightly by a different library blogger and well coordinated by Chadwick Seagraves of InfoSciPhi.

So your help is now needed. Please send me your links to include in the carnival, either to one of your own blog posts or any other post you found interesting and would like to share with other bloggers. That is the nature of the Carnival. Send your posts as per the submission guidelines or email me and I will be sure to include it.

There’s lots of fun things going on in the biblioblogosphere at present, so please get your contributions in. See you at the Carnival!

Infotoday now has the Presentations from Computers in Libraries 2007 on their website. So if you are interested you can check out the presentations from pretty much all the sessions at CIL, including the slides (with my speaker notes) and references from my paper “Libraries building community and Library 2.o initiatives in Australia”.

I am amazed and honoured to see that my paper was blogged about by Connie Crosby (great gal who I had a lot of fun spending time with) and my interactions, both at CIL and at other times have been blogged about all over the biblioblogosphere.

Which leaves me with my final dilemma for which I need your help. I actually wrote the full text of the paper on which the slides and final presentation were based. I would like to also make that available for anyone who is interested, along with anything of relevance I can dig up from my past or produce in future. Do I put them on a specially created page on my husband’s business’s website, do I create a wiki for my professional dealings and put them there? This is all very new to me and I’m not sure which way to go with it. Any thoughts, suggestions, etc on how I can resolve this issue would be greatly appreciated.

I am hoping my trip has helped me to see what my library will look like in the next year, but what will it look like further down the track?

With Australian Library and Information Week fast approaching, my friends and co-bloggers at Libraries Interact are asking for your vision of what the library will look like 2010. So head on over to Libraries Interact, read Get Creative for May and be inspired, before putting fingers to keyboard and telling us all about your vision. You could win an autographed copy of Meredith Farkas‘ new book “Social Software in Libraries” which is currently winging its way to our shores, fresh from her own supply.

Entries close on May 20th, so start dreaming and get those entries in! I can’t wait to see where you think libraries will be in 2010 (not too far away now!).

Wow, my last visit and I spent a lovely day at Thomas Ford Memorial Library (TFML) in the outer Chicago suburbs. Thomas Ford is a single branch service with 7 librarians plus support staff. However, besides the number of branches and staff, our respective library services have a lot in common – more on that soon.

Thomas Ford’s ILS is part of the 81 (correction, it should be 96) library SWAN consortia which shares the same ILS and has reciprocal borrowing rights. They are looking to try a new module on their ILS which has more of an Amazon-like interface, which will incorporate reviews etc.

They offer downloadable audio for iPods, with content from iTunes. They also used to get MP3 content from a statewide consortia, but wasn’t getting the use. Their iPod content started well, tailed off but use is picking up again, with classics and scifi moving better than bestsellers. Process is manually intensive, so is usually done at the reference. Only limits are 3 week loan periods and 1 simultaneous user – most they have ever downloaded for a user is 4 titles (they offer 67 titles).

Their website was created 3 years ago (correction, it was 2002 – current iteration is from 2005) , by Aaron Schmidt (Walking Paper blogger – now Director at Northern Plains Public Library) using Moveable Type. Their site is hosted at LIS News. It runs the website, with some blog content and fixed template content, as well as a staff blog where they share notes, news and more. Comments are not enabled due to overwhelming spam. The blog entries can feed to different pages on the website. Very nice. Have a slight problem with uploading files, as Movable Type disallows the upload of large files, including images.

They are about to do a redesign of the website, keeping Movable Type for blogs and use another form for the rest of the website, using Dreamweaver as their editor. They want the website to do more to promote the services and collections of the library – at present this content is down too deep in the site and is rarely accessed.

They would like to have the public contributing book reviews via a public blog and will invite some early contributions so that they launch it with some content already available. They will use a Google Co-op facility to search their reviews (cool!). In the new website they want more staff collaboration, to make it easier for staff to contribute, have more community involvement, and be interactive. It will be interesting to watch it all develop over the coming months.

Their Staff exchange blog for staff news is supplemented by their new staff intranet, which uses Media Wiki and is well populated with great content. Its very comprehensive and more content is added nearly daily. They also have a Flickr page and MySpace and Facebook profiles.

They have some “listen to a story” podcasts and are looking to do some screencasting at some stage. They have created a blog, using Word Press for their Big Read 2007 program which involved 8 public libraries in the area. They would like to do more with their patron picks, staff picks and blurbs about new stock.

I felt really at home here, because like my work, we have no programmers on staff and our website is hosted offsite. Yet Thomas Ford have done some marvellous things with mainly the desire to learn and try new things. Very motivational for me, showing that its possible, even when you don’t have many technical resources available to you.

Their local history wiki came out of inspiration at the 2004 PLA Conference. It is blog based and came out of grant money which was used to pay Aaron to set up the website and Nancy, other TFML staffer, to do the digitisation and metadata. They already had a high quality scanner/copier for their central printing and for digitisation of the historic photos. At the time, a blog was the easiest option – the content has been duplicated at the Illinois Digital Archive, but took a year to get it uploaded.

The Western Springs History blog, using Word Press, has over 100 photos of local houses with accompanying info. It was supposed to be a starting point, but has not developed much beyond that at this stage. However, they are meeting with the Western Springs Historical Society in the next month to investigate further collaboration efforts.

Wow, such cool, achievable stuff. Thanks to Rick and Kristin for taking time out to share their achievements and future plans and to Thomas Ford Memorial Library for making me welcome, I really appreciate it.

Glenn Peterson, a fellow presenter at CIL took me through some of the behind the scenes. At the moment he is working on mashup between Google Maps and Flickr which will show their branches on a map with address and contact details. He is including geotagging, so that you get a Google image of the branch, which will also show nearby geotagged images.

They use Cold Fusion on their web server, which works well with Dream Weaver their HTML editor. Their database info is kept on Microsoft Access which has a nice interface, is easy to learn and to use. Glenn has also developed some Microsoft SQL databases, mostly for their most heavily used content. Their webs server is Apache – windows based, as are most of their servers, however some do use Linux. Four web servers are used – one for the public website and one each for the staff and public ILS access. The final one does their catalogue integrations and has access permissions which the web servers don’t. They also have a separate development server for the website which has the same structure as the production server.

Scripts have been written for many different functions (green with envy, green with envy), including one that saves the users login card number and pin on their computer so they are automatically logged in when they visit the library website. A script is also used to gather their patron comments and attach them to the catalogue records. It also brings together comments from all the different formats and editions of the same title, ie. Audio, large print etc. They use an OCLC list which returns all ISBNs which are related to any given ISBN, which they cache so on their server, to speed up processing time. Each comments page also brings in related information from Syndetics. Glenn has also been talking to the team at Library Thing about how they could use their tagging feature and their recommended list on the HCPL catalogue.

Glenn scripts in Cold Fusion Markup Language (CFML) to bring all this together. The script seeks out staff reviews if available before getting the Syndetics content, if not there then it seeks content from Amazon. It also links to booklists that include that title in it. They also have audio reviws to listen to (not podcasts at this stage, although they are looking to make them so), using a Flash audio player. It can also call in customer views from Amazon, recent comments and gives you the option of adding a comment. There are RSS feeds on the titles and comments. A script gathers the last 4 hours of comments and sends them in an email to a team of librarian on a rotating list, just to scan for the content and remove any inappropriate ones – this is rare.

Comments have a name link which if clicked will take you to other comments left by that person – a form of reader recommends. Would like to make those commenters links into a a list of profiles with more information about the commenter, including their booklists etc, bringing a social networking/building community capacity to the space.

They have bought Wii gaming consoles for the branches, testing the water with this.

Jody Wurl is the newest member of the Web Services Team and is a Teen Librarian. They have an online Teen advisory group who contributes blog entries, highlighted websites and polls to the HCPL Teen Links webpages and they have automatic RSS feeds for their teen events and new books. You can also change the colours on the teen website, I will leave it to you to find the Easter egg that uses this feature in a cute way on the site.

Teen Links has two sets of subject guides – Teen Topics (teen issues) and Do your Homework. At the moment, Jody does all the links but she is looking to get the same model as is used on Book Space, with multiple contributors working. There is strong interest in readers advising at Hennepin, so they have good teen reading lists.

The At Your Library part of their site needs work, so Jody hopes to get the soon to be developed teen advisory groups in the branches to possibly contribute a webpage and blog posts for each branch. Each library has its own webpage with community links, friends news, library events fed in from the calendar, library news – which can be submitted. Some information is hard coded – ie. hours, the photo, special services etc.

Ann Melrose, former children’s librarian and Web Services team member took me upstairs where we both were taken on a tour of Ridgedale Library, one of Hennepin’s regional libraries. Check out the Flickr photos. They are in a building, which also houses a county service center, as do their other 2 regional libraries. They have renewable floor signage, lots of study rooms and wifi throughout the building. Self-serve holds are huge. 116 public PCs, 14 catalogue only, only ever all booked out on a Monday night or weekend.

The amazing thing was their automated materials handling system. Anything returned to a chute, whether outside or at the desk, is conveyor belted up to the second floor, where this amazing locally made (Minnesota that is), shift, sorts, returns and delivers the stock to trolleys, either ready for shelving or to go to one of the other branches or holds, as appropriate. At least one staff member monitors the system, at peak time there are too. Check out the Flickr photos. In another HCPL branch, the conveyor runs under the floor at one stage, so you can watch the stock move along – the kids love it!

After the tour, Ann did an awesome job covering the children’s side of the web at HCPL. KidLinks is the latest iteration of their website and is coming about after extensive consultation with local Grade 5 kids. The graphic designer has created the layout, the programmers are working on creating it in the development server. They will be using Flash mouseovers and sounds. Launch date is June 4th.

Children’s book reviews area added with the same web tools as others at HCPL. In the summer they make it a competition – all reviews are added to their Access database and a randomiser draws the winners who get book prizes. Looking at having 5 x a week long summer book clubs this year, using Moodle. They must register to contribute and Ann will try to organise it so that all participants in each group gets online together at the end of the week to chat.

KidsLinks news is a monthly kids email newsletter, which has 2 book reviews, promotes events and has links to cute sites. It is created in HTML each month, but they use a script to send it out to all the subscribers in their database. Also doing a birth to six newsletter with relevant content for parents and caregivers in the same way. Looking to do RSS feeds on them.

Kids polls on the webpages changeover automatically every Sunday night. All questions are grabbed automatically from a database and Ann usually has a few in reserve. She is also able to reuse old questions after a few years. The kids love the polls.

It was an awesome day at Hennepin and I can’t thank the Web Services Team enough for their time and all they covered in such a short period. You guys are inspiring and I will be taking much from my time there, for quite a while to come. Thanks!

Had a great day at Hennepin County Public Library (HCPL) on the outskirts of Minneapolis, Minnesota. HCPL has a great team managing their web services. They have 4 librarians working on web development (all former adult, teens or childrens librarians), 2 programmers who are also librarians, an intranet staffer, a support staffer and an Office products trainer. All ILS and PC management are handled by their network services department, which is large to enable to manage all their PCs at their 26 branches.

Sharon McGlinn, manages their new Book Space, the adult reading area. It comprises booklists, forthcoming books (hugely popular), new materials, book club information, find a good book advisories. Sharon worked with 5 adult services librarians to develop the goals for Book Space, then worked with their graphic designer to produce the look and then with Glenn Peterson, one of their developers to get the required functionality.

Their webpages are mostly dynamic, database driven. They have one blog for the Book Space page, but their categorisation determines which genre page the feed will go to. Glenn has developed staff templates to simplify the adding the adding of blog content. Sharon keeps the site current by sending reminders out to staff, including suggestions for contributions – they need to keep the content dynamic. The challenge is to find people who will be passionate about the website and contribute to it.

Glenn Peterson developed a booklists admin function with their ILS, to simplify the generation of booklists. It uses the bibliographic numbers from the catalogue, cover images from Syndetics and a preview facility to see how it looks before going live. Book Space also includes topselling lists, book club info and user created booklists – only need a username and password to add one. Each staff generated booklist includes more the of the same type authors, related lists, awards lists, Syndetics content and live links to the catalogue. User generated lists pulls content from the catalogue, they can add comments and make it public or keep it private. Sharon then chooses appropriate user generated booklists to be rotated through the Book Space homepage as a highlighted list.

Where forms aren’t in use, they use Dreamweaver for webpage editing. Their website gets over 140,000 requests per week, with 12-15,000 individual visitors each month. They have submission guidelines for user created booklists, which now number more than 200 (in less than 2 months). They are now looking at their options as to how to manage these booklists, as it has turned out to be wildly popular.

Book Space also contains their audio book information, both linking to their audio CD collection and their downloadable audio – which they get through NetLibrary and Overdrive, so only for MP3 formats, not iPods. Their research books and authors sections links to relevant databases and websites. Book Clubs list needs to be further developed, Sharon is looking to get the book clubs themselves to contribute content. The book clubs can reserve the kits online, by title, by date of availability and more (another script from Glenn).

Christine Clifford took me through Reference services. They use Tutor.com’s “Ask a Librarian” software. It runs 24/7 – they contract Tutor.com to answer questions during the hours that HCPL staff are not available. Have offered this service since 2001 and has been 24/7 since 2002. They get between 350 and 600 questions a month, depending on time of year – email reference gets about 25 a day. They had 10 million visits to their website last year.

Librarians throughout the service are scheduled to monitor the service, with 55 currently on the list to provide the service, mostly one at a time, but two librarians at peak time, with backups as required. The schedule is posted on the Intranet.

They are trialing IM in house at present, using Microsoft Office Communicator between their Reference Work Group and Web Services Team, mainly chosen because it works with Outlook. They are testing Trillian for use with their future IM Reference service and are also looking at the Meebo widget – working through some issues with this at present.

Their Research and Reference page contains their subject guides. Each topic shows the most popular databases and websites for that topic first, then other content, which is automatically generated. To avoid the generalist databases coming on top with for all sub-topics, they skew the criteria so that only the most relevant content appears there. Topics are further broken down into sub-topics. A librarian is in charge of each topic and their image appears on the page with tips on information seeking on that topic or events etc, which are changed regularly. 42 librarians contribute to the 29 topics in this section.

The sidebar on each page contains pre-packaged catalogue searches, e-books links, news headlines, available classes, events, the facility to change topics or subjects via a drop down menu and more. They are looking to upgrade the 2 year old pages, with the recent purchase of a federated search tool. They are considering changing the librarians’ snippets to a blog, which will be easier to manage and enable archiving of the content.

HCPL has a number of web tools available to all staff, which have been developed in-house to make contributing content fast and easy, they don’t need to have any coding or HTML type skills.

Marilyn Turner, head of Web Services shared her experiences with getting their web services going and how they keep up the momentum. The Web Services department is located close to the ILS and Network staff. They have to work closely with them – systems need to be accessible, upgrades and backups need to be carefully scheduled (an issue when they first went 24/7 on Ask a Librarian). The Web Services Team also works as a bridge between IT and branch staff, whom they work closely with on content.

She recommends reporting on what can be done and to pick things that will make an impact with the staffing you have available. Take it on the road to decision makers to show the great things you are doing – eg. Online memberships, they now get 500 applications and amendments each month. Public libraries are there to serve all in their area, not just the people who come in the door. Need to have your web services staff at the table – have a representative on all teams, as web services covers all branch provided services. They have expanded ownership of the website by having librarians contribute content to booklists, subject guides etc and the simple web tools they use make it easy for them to do so. They have noticed a changed culture as a result of this, with librarians sharing ideas, content and inspiration. This is of huge benefit to library users, as shown in their increasing stats. Over 100 mostly librarians are contributing content to the website (150 librarians out of 500 staff at HCPL). Get started with new, enthusiastic people as contributors.

Internally, each department has its own blog – 5 divisions and the Directors office. Some sub divisions also have their own blogs, others just use the administration blog. They have found it to be a better communication tool than email, because it doesn’t have to be kept where it clogs up the email client, the posts are searchable and archived. They are also looking at using wikis for some of their manuals, rather than putting them up through their CMS.

Web Services is about providing the tools to make contributing easy. The focus is the content, not the technology. End of part one – that was all just until lunch. More in next post, so stay tuned.

Eli Neiburger, head of Information and Administration Services at Ann Arbor District Library (AADL) gave me most of his day to outline the great things that are happening at Ann Arbor. I so want a programmer on our staff. Eli leads the Information Access and Systems team of 9 fulltime staff who provide help desk support (2), programmers (2), ILS (1), systems administration (1), vendor/hardware specialist (1), AV media producer (1) and public training coordinator (1). The AV media producer also has 2 part-time assistants. Check out the flickr photos.

AADL has a reputation for doing great things with gaming, which arose when their Teen Librarian started in 2003 and suggested the idea. They didn’t just want to do a supporting collection and building limitations meant that installing gaming kiosks was difficult, so they chose a different means.

They want to build community with their teens, so their gaming is tournament based. Once a month, they will run a tournament weekend – Friday night is open to all ages, Saturday is teens only and Sunday is either for young kids or is open play again. It is usually held at the start or end of a school break. These tournaments are no different to storytimes, with the same sorts of relationships being developed and is the highlight of the kids relationship with the library, smashing their preconceived ideas of it.

Recreational reading teens are a minority audience. One of their teens has said that their gaming program is “a gateway drug for libraries.” It is not just bait to get teens in to the library and using other resources etc, it is an end in itself.

Out of gaming came the gaming blog, before the first tournaments began. School visits stirred up further interest. So their stats thus far are: 65 gaming events run with about 5000 attending across all events. Their database of gamers has 1000 players, with over 200 unique players last season. They get an average of 40-60 kids to each event, but their biggest tournaments have had 100-120.

As for their website, the previous incarnation had blogging, but was not blog based as it is now. They started planning in January 05 and went live with the website when they launches their new ILS in July 05. They used a graphics design company to design the look and the CSS templates. They also took paper copies of the proposed organisation of the site, to check terminology and structural transparency with their users. The study showed that had the right plan.

They looked at various content management system (CMS) options, limited to those that were php based as that is the development skill they had in-house. John Blyberg (who is now in Darien) brought in Drupal, mainly because of its open API. They now have 50,000 accounts on Drupal, not all are library members. Drupal works as a web interface for their ILS, logs their users in and returns search results. This enables them to use php scripts to do more. Their web server then becomes an application server, bypassing limits of their ILS. Next generation ILS for them may be an open source product, with all their written scripts as the front end.

Any one can blog on the website, with the approval of their manager and after they complete a 1/2 hour training session to ready them. They adapted the Drupal wiki to allow them to easily link to images, catalogue searches and individual items. Their blogs have had 10,000 comments, but over 9,000 of those have been on the gaming blog.

They started their gaming with $5000, buying 8 TVs, 8 Game Cubes, all the controllers, cabling etc, with 8 copies each of Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. They also have PS2 and DDR dance pads. They have also run “Retro octathlon” sessions using compilations of old games. Have also started doing huge Pokemon XD tournaments and have Guitar Hero too.

Sessions are run by Eli and some of the IAS staff, with teen staff handling food, answering questions etc. They are also doing some family events and have had a parent/child tourney using Eli’s own Wii console and games. Hoping to get 4 consoles for more such events in the next year.

System staff and some OPACs are Macs, otherwise all machines, including their thin clients which work well, are PCs. Use in house developed software for PC management, which allows unlimited use, unless someone is waiting. The longest anyone has to wait is 10 minutes, minimum booking time is 1/2 hour. They use Pharos for their print management. Their PC training lab uses Macs, but they can open a Windows screen and run the software. They run an IRC channel for their intradesk communications, including inter-branch. No virtual reference service at present, they are examining options with IM.

Their server farm is awesome. They have an OSX server for managing the Mac OPACS and development, 2 ILS servers, a training server running a copy of the ILS, a number of infrastructure boxes, storage boxes, spam firewall in front of the mail server, media server installed but not yet used, a production server, windows file share server, terminal servers, firewall, domain controllers and more file storage. New servers awaiting installation will be used to supplement capacity and migration, for a Pharos update, as a new imaging server for PC images (ie. maintenance not pictures).

They also are starting a public development box – open up their applications and see what people come up with.

They are also starting up with Library Lego League, using Lego Mindstorms Robots. Run over 4 days, the kids build a robot from the kit which has to do a particular task set at the beginning. The champions then play off for the title of Grand Champion.

Eli, it was a great day and I appreciate all the time and effort you gave to my visit. I learned a lot from you and hopefully I will be able to blog about some of what I have been able to get done as a result.

Marianne Kruppa is Web Development Librarian at St Joseph County Public Library (SJCPL) and I have just spent a wonderful day with her, discovering their main library and all the great things that they are doing there. SJCPL is made up of the main library, 8 branches (plus one under construction) and a read mobile and services St Joseph County in and around South Bend, Indiana. Check out my photos on Flickr.

Their equipment comprises a web server, an external server for public access and an internal 4 staff, a mail server, their ILS server, PC management server, with an IT department to support them. The difference is that at SJCPL, 85% of their machines – staff and public, are Macs. They also have a development server where they can develop and play with applications etc before they go live on (wow, I want one of those!)

As at other libraries I have visited, they have some impressive public art in the Main Library too.

Their Sights and Sounds area on the third floor has all of their AV collection – from audio to DVD and video, from children’s to adults. Here is where they also lend out iPods with audiobooks they have purchased from iTunes. They have 30 iPods to lend, which come in satchel with earphones, adaptor, charger etc. They can have a maximum of 5 books downloaded onto it. Their list of titles is kept in a folder, patrons choose what they want and staff download the content, and when returned after the three week loan period, the iPod is wiped, ready for the next user. Patrons can also bring in their own iPod and have content downloaded to it. All iPods were out when I visited. They chose the iTunes option as the uptake of iPods is about 70% as opposed to other MP3 players.

They use Word Press loaded onto their server for the blogs and Marianne also uses a nice web tool, Feed2J to generate feed summaries from these for their homepage (very nice!) They have a public SJCPL blog, which is a free for all and has contributors from all branches and departments. Their teen page is blog based, managed by Marianne and their teen librarian, where teens are also able to submit book reviews, through a form in the blog page.

They also have 2 blogs relating to their building projects, one for the staff and one for the public, keeping everyone updated on progress. The Rewards and Recognition Committee also have an internal blog, which they use to recognize staff achievements and promote staff events.

For the staff, they use the content management system (CMS) Drupal, an open source products, which operates as their intranet – called Leaf-let and has a blog like front page, which several people post to. The Website itself is HTML based, no CMS is used, but it can be tweaked easily. Marianne uses Feed2J to put the feeds on the homepage.

The most popular blog is the Game Blog which is used to promote gaming events in the library and other gaming news. This is where they have built their gaming community, with approximately 60-70 kids now coming to their gaming events. They have done 138 posts and had 658 comments from the kids, it really is a case of creating a discussion on this blog. They also have a forum called GameBoard using PHPBB – open source software, for discussing gaming related items. Pedro and Marianne moderate it, but not too strictly. This is huge with the teens, who can start their own discussions.

They have the facilities to do podcasting, but wish to sort out copyright issues before going ahead. Would love to do movie reviews, with clips included, storytimes and more. They have a Flickr account with library photos and a MySpace page also.

They offer IM reference, as an extension to their in-house use of it as a communication channel between staff. It has not been widely publicized, but they still get 5-6 queries a day on average. They use Macs with the occasional PC, so IM on Macs uses Adium and on PCs uses Trillian. Non-staff queries are monitored at the Reference Desk, so a staff member is always there or close by.

Wikis came about at SJCPL after a Computers in Libraries. They used a server as a sandbox to play with the wiki, which then became a staff wiki, with the circulation team using it for their circulation procedures and more. It now includes manual type info and more from circulation, reference, branch information, handouts and more. It offers staff the option of feeding back training ideas and more.

Their links list was reviewed after they realized it was offering information that by-passed the great resources the library had. They used Media Wiki with a template created from input from all departments to cover content on a wide variety of topics, with the emphasis first on library held information and then external websites.

In the future, Marianne says SJCPL will be doing more videos – self-promotion, commercials etc, especially using the new Adobe suite, which incorporates video editing into Photoshop. They also want to start their podcasting and are moving to RFID.

Their gaming set up is something to behold and I did when they set some of it up for me to play with in the afternoon. (Pedro and Marianne kicked my butt in both game types). They have 8 Games Cubes with a TV and controllers each, 2 good quality Dance Dance Revolution platforms and accompanying signal boosters and projection equipment to show some of the action on the big screen. They mainly use 2 games – Super Smash Bros and Mario Kart. They set it up as a LAN, with fast match changes, automatic character selection (so no fighting over characters) and the equalization of tracks. It runs under professional tournament mode.

They have 1 open play session a month and 1 tournament play, both at the Main Library. They spotlight one game on the big screen. Kids also bring in their Nintendo DS’s and use the libraries WiFi to play against each other on their own devices. The tournaments always run on a Saturday from 9am-5pm in an open space in the basement of the library, away from the collections. Kids queue from 8.30am. They also have Dance Dance Revolution available and kids also come and play cards and more.

They discourage kids from bringing their own games or equipment (besides the DSs) – because it raises expectations and there are safety issues involved. Gaming gives the library relevancy to the teens, making it a Third Place for them. They don’t push library promotions on the teens, but make the information available if they want it. However they do get gaming kids at library events if they know one of the gaming library staff will be there.

Pedro runs every session and is assisted by Marianne on the tournament days and another staff member on open days. They have pizza for lunch on tournament days, with more staff on hand at this time to help out.

They recommend having a person in charge of gaming who is very enthusiastic about it. Gaming teaches social interaction, good sportsmanship and gamesmanship – they have seen the change in a quite a few of their kids. Not one piece of library equipment has been stolen at these events, although some personal belongings of gamers has gone. The kids will even stay to help clean up.
This is their only means of gaming as they don’t have consoles in their libraries, but hope to in the near future.

Thanks especially to Marianne who took me through all the great stuff happening at SJCPL throughout the day and particular thanks to Pedro who set up all the equipment so I could experience their gaming hands on. I had a lot of fun and learned a lot – THANKS!