Connecting Librarian

Was very happy to be able Friday 23rd September’s seminar in Melbourne with David Lee King from Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library, fresh from his appearance at NLS #5 in Perth and Hamish Curry from the State Library of Victoria – presented by VALA: Libraries, Technology & the Future Inc. (thanks guys for organising this awesome afternoon’s presentation).

Freak out, geek out or seek out: trends, transformations & change in libraries – David Lee King

New book coming out next year – Face to Face – connecting with users online.

Was at NLS #5, lots of energy and enthusiasm. Saw lots of good ideas there.  Also had lots of staff telling him that they take their ideas back to their libraries and get told NO. Got told a few times that their IT guys are Evil!

Mentioned Grove Library and Community Centre – doing sustainability type things underground. Have movable, comfortable furniture. Don’t have a ref desk, but have staff workstations located around the library as the staff are circulating. They moved shelving and furniture to make room for the community.

Can be a bad place to be freaking out – not good for anybody. Should we be geeking out – as soon as it hits market? No, should be testing out for our users. We need to be seeking out.

Personal technology has changed dramatically in the last twenty years. In libraries, we have online resources, new technologies, new collections and new user expectations, online resources. Gone the way of the past: floppy disks, typewriters, film cameras and watches seem to be on the way out, at least for some.

One big change is we now have competition. Thirty years ago, the only place to get answers or borrow books was the library. Book stores have gotten big and offer many of the same services – they do storytimes, read books, enjoy coffee. Breaks down in the reference question department. If you want something fast – Amazon. They are a big competitor for us.

Not so much competition, but a change that has messed with libraries, is that newspapers are disappearing from print. In US, 120 newspapers have already changed from print to digital. On the Newspaper extinction timeline – it is expected that Australia will no longer have any print newspapers by 2022.

In US, they have rent DVDs from a vending machines on the street. But they don’t have the older titles. Competition for us. E-books, are the same. Overdrive now offers Kindle compatible ebooks now for libraries which maybe helps ease the pressure if we offer it.

Tablets, notebooks and laptops are taking over from desktops. Google has taken over from the ready reference collection. The positive is that it frees us up to answer the deeper questions, that’s if they know to come to us to ask. And then there’s the smart phone – which does everything!  Including making phone calls!

Tech changes in libraries – in the past included fiction, electricity, phone reference, copiers and then in the 1970′s we got our online catalogues and in the 1980′s the PC took off, the 1990′s the internet appears and in 2004 it was Web 2.0. The three biggest destination sights now are Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, which were created in 2004, 2005 and 2006.

Emerging web has changed dramatically and has nothing to do with technology – it is about connecting people. It is real time, decentralised (can visit library on the web, without going to the website), its multimedia (line between newspaper and TV websites are blurring). Every company is a media company – we write articles, create content, pushing out our wares. Emerging web is very mobile – the web is in my pocket – but it should also be that the library is in my pocket. Mobile websites for libraries are a valuable tool – want it to be useful for people who want to do a task quickly – renew, ask a question etc. Emerging web is social, its two way, public with global reach, so need to be careful about what you say – if you can’t say it in person, don’t say it online.

David is Digital Branch Manager, he has a department – IT and a concept – Digital branch. He is a community manager, he scans the horizon, he is executive editor, long range planner, manager, evangelist and he answers the tough questions.

His 3 realities:
1. all services will be physical and digital – not so easy to achieve eg. storytimes
2. we’ll use the web to build unique stuff
3. to some, the digital branch will be their only branch – can place holds and pay to have them mailed out

Content – digital branch has to have things for people to see, do, read etc when they visit. They have catalogue searches on their website as well as their Facebook page. You can subscribe to their blogs by RSS or email. Blogs have photos and info about their blog contributors, so you can focus on the content you enjoy most. Photos they have on Flickr and YouTube are also reposted on their website in their blogs etc.

Community – how do you do community in a digital branch? They have instant messaging reference (using Meebo) and get an answer (if the library is open) – on both their website and embedded in their catalogue. Need to have a front door – that’s dramatic, but every page on the website is a front door, as well as Google, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter are also front doors. We have many digital borders.

Conversation – lots of discussions going on, between staff and users and between users. Conversations on the digital branch include the instant messaging widget, email reference, comments on the blogs (good and bad – which provides opinions and can help you continue the conversation), Facebook comments, Flickr comments, Twitter. Will follow their customers that follow them on Twitter, because they want to focus on their local community. Will celebrate achievements – they sent out a T-shirt to their 1000th follower.

Can have vanity searches for your library, town, postcodes and things like reading etc. Find out what the community is talking about. It gives you an opportunity to step in if you see they’re talking about you, but not talking to you.

Tackle change – ideas to get started thinking about it. A lot of libraries are not seen as relevant in our communities. They go to everyone else, before they come to us and only if they remember. We need to be first. How?
Model the way – you better be doing it first if you expect your staff to be doing it, everyone needs to be on the bus (Jim Collins book – “Good to great” – if you don’t have the right people on the bus, get the wrong ones off and get the right ones on) .

Our websites, our buildings, our services need to be as easy as a light switch to use – so that they don’t have to think about what’s going on – libraries have to stay out of their users way, unless they want to deal with you
Know your patrons – know what they are doing in your buildings, on your PCs, on your website – it can help you with designs and redesigns. It also helps you to know who doesn’t use your library. Find out where your non-users are and then market to them.
Online services have to reflect physical – no “will answer your email within two business days” on your online reference.

If we don’t change, we will die and some libraries in the US are already closing.

As print books slowly disappear and ebooks come to the fore, we will still need libraries, we will still have jobs – our patrons will lead us to where they want us to go.

Finding time – “what do you want me to drop, so that I can do that”. Its not about that, its about changing focus – what is the priority of your library and concentrate on that first, then if there’s time left, you can do other staff. If you can’t, the other stuff will fall to wayside and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Its about the user ultimately and they are online – so we need to be there.

Question: Improvement in catalogue, that negates the need to have instant messaging in catalogue. They are getting a new OPAC, which will meet that. There are overlays, and plugins that can be used to improve catalogue response.

Tablets and roving reference experience. Staff are answering a lot of questions when they are roving around, working well.

New website – can we get immediate content on there. Yes, it is possible, consult with your website provider (small library – Council IT).

Sustainability – what are you doing? Measure use against work input. Have service – personalised reading lists – fill in a form and a librarian will compile a personalised reading list for you, to meet your needs. Wasn’t getting a lot of use, so they re-jigged the form and marketed it and already the response has been good. If it doesn’t improve, they will stop the service.

What is the one next big thing?  Fun – thinks he will be wrong. Google + – just gone public in the last few days. No organisational pages yet, but that will come. Very different to both Twitter and Facebook, so there is definite potential there. Very closely tied to Google Apps, which is potentially a huge change – brings together Facebook, Microsoft and wiki-like content.

His current book: Designing the digital experience.  Website: www.davidleeking.com

Putting IT back in reality – Hamish Curry, Application and Online Learning Manager – State Library of Victoria

Mash-up idea – take photos and put them on top of each, as you rub the them on your  iPhone, you rub down through the years and see the space/place as it was going backwards through time.

Contact: hcurry@slv.vic.gov.au @hamishcurry  slideshare.net/hcurry

Statements heard from people he has spoken to about the SLV: ebooks must be killing libraries, this digital stuff must be making your job hard, guess no-one wants to go the library any more, bet your numbers are down.

Reality – the worst game ever! IT can help augment the experience. Smart phones, tablets are helping to do this. Extend the experience – after this you will look further, online of course. Enhance the engagement – you may tweet your own thoughts and ideas which enhances things.

What breaks assumptions over expectations? How can we get people to come in physically or online, to see for themselves. Seeing is believing, but you have to not only market, but be able to back it up in reality, to participate. They have to also have a social connection, not with the building, but with the people in the building – with people in the library who they believe are more honest and authentic.

Instead, you can offer surprises – offer them something they don’t expect. You need to do things that make your users curious. Give them a chance to discover – so that they end up owning it – even if we miss out on getting the credit. Let them make connections, both to people and to the place.  Learn – check out Happy Planet Index: http://www.happyplanetindex.org/ – number five is learning. So very important to ensure people keep learning. All this will keep people coming back.

Do something unexpected and make it cool, both in the physical and online environments. (I geek the library).

Always offer silence, trustworthiness, answers, quality and Wi-Fi. Quality, means finding the balance between doing it right and do it quickly.

From the community section on SLV website – helps embed them back in with their users.

Digital is not so scary – we are still trying to make the worlds information accessible in our pockets – but has moved from a miniature library in a matchbox, to online – the only difference is that we use mobile devices to access it and the content has been outsourced.

Technology has really shaped learning and literacy. We can talk to anyone at any time. We can work together from anywhere at any time. We can connect with people anywhere, any time. The curriculum has had to change too, but teachers are struggling to keep up with these phenomenal changes, so that they can lead young minds. They are getting on board and librarians have to do so too.

Information has changed, but even though trusted sources are always the best, they are not the first two results on a Google search, where people think they are trusted sources. There is so much learning now available on the web, not just content, but ways of providing learning – eg. Video conferencing. Information scarcity has changed to information complexity. Clay Shirky – “Its not information overload. Its filter failure.” This is what librarians are great at and we need to be able teach everyone.

Khan Academy – www.khanacademy.org – 2500 videos to teach you just about everything. Some good, some bad.

We are answer rich, but question poor. (Susan Greenfield – “Quest for identity in the 21st century.”) Hamish has great admiration for reference librarians who deal with people who have done the search but cant navigate what they found, or find the answer they seek.

University of Sydney has created a great range of engaging resources to help people to search and filter. SLV has done the same with ERGO (http://ergo.slv.vic.gov.au/). Designed for students, but stats showing that teachers are finding it very valuable.

Hoddle Waddle (http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/explore/student-teacher-resources/hoddle-waddle-education-kit) – program to help students navigate 50 sites in the CBD in a day. Not taken up initially, but once they made most of the content Freemium, bookings have improved and all the resources are being much better used. Teachers are now presenting on the program at conferences. They are now considering offering it as a public program, for cultural visitors to use it. Improvements in progress including mobile contributions using Broadcastr. ARIS is another app which does something similar. As augmented reality becomes more mainstream, there will be even more opportunities to put IT back into reality.

Change involving technology, needs not only the tech, but also a cultural change.

Interaction with inanimate. SLV playing with QR codes – used it in a gallery to see how people
use it. There are also Google Goggles, i-nigma, Red Laser, Photosynth – a 360 degree mapping app.

Risk: Partners and programs – risk is not a dirty word, being risk adverse – makes you slow and inflexible – wont do anything because we could get it wrong, it requires trust of the organisation in their staff, motivation, relationship – always remembering that shift will happen.

If you don’t step in and do it, someone else will – and they not present what you think should be.

Some tools to do this: RSS, Twitter, Google +, Facebook, Yammer. Half of SLV is now on Yammer, after starting with 5 a year ago.

Networks are always changing – online mimics what nature does – new networks develop and old ones die and drop away.

“Use the force, Luke”. – Obi Wan Kenobi. We need to harness the world around us. We want to be able to pull people on site and push them online. Don’t create your own social space, go to where your users are already. Need to occupy multiple spaces to access different audiences.

Sometimes you need to prepackage content and bring it to the fore, to make it easier for people to access and to bring our collections alive.

“The more you learn, the more acutely aware you become of your ignorance.” (Peter Senge – “Fifth discipline”) SLV programs: TedX Melbourne and now happening around the world, but it pulls people in and engaging with you, Personal Learning Network with SLAV teaching teachers and teacher librarians about the online world.

Its not so much I Communication T, but change as the C in ICT. We need libraries to be FUN – not just the physical, but the online as well. Need to know what the drivers are, have to be prepared to play and technology has a role. (Night at the Mitchell Library video).

Video games are changing how things work. They have play, replay and experimentation, they involve risk and reward, they can be integrated experiences and augmented experiences. The only difference between chess and video games is a shift in format – the skills and experience are very similar.

International initiatives – Find the Library at NYPL, National Gaming Day in US Libraries, Freeplay at SLV.

Merge and mirror programs – a fusion between what they experience in one space and are further enhanced in another. Transmedia – can stand alone (eg. Facebook), but can also be linked to draw people to other spaces. Hacks and Library Apps can also be used to enhance experiences.

Data is becoming sexy as people are presenting it differently. eg. Infographics, Library Hack, Open Government Data.
“But problem solving , however necessary, does not produce results. It prevents damage. Exploiting opportunities produces results. ” (Peter Drucker – “The Effective Executive”)

“When people in motion, meet a library in motion, anything is possible” – Director Stockholm Public Library.

The first presentation for this session was my paper, presented with my co-author Paul Mercieca. Our presentation Evaluating Web 2.0: user experiences with public library blogs is available at Slideshare.

The impact and benefits of Learning 2.0 programs in Australian Libraries: Michael Stephens – Dominican University, Richard Sayers – CAVAL and Warren Cheetham – City Libraries Townsville

Methodology – lit review, web survey of program administrators, national survey of Library 2.0 participants and case study at City Libraries Townsville.

National survey was conducted in June 2009 and garnered 385 responses, across all sectors, but particularly from the public and academic sectors. Most did it at work (61%), nearly ¼ through a consortial ie. State Library of Victoria and the rest on their own by joining in on another program. 85% completed the program. For those who didn’t finish it, 3/4s reported no time or too busy, 25% too hard, didn’t like it, not comfortable.  Reasons included program too fast, other demands on time, sites blocked and personal privacy concerns.

Open question: After finishing Learning 2.0. I feel comfortable using new technologies – agreed and strongly agree – up around 80%. I like to explore technology on my own dropped a bit. Team/committee structures have improved because of this training – only 40% strongly agreed.  Personal impact seems to be much stronger than institutional impact.

Impact on your libraries after Learning 2.0 has been completed: better awareness of these tools 30%, more use 21%, no change 20%.

Success =  Support plus Time allowed – perceived usefulness.
Support = Admin plus coworkers plus programme leaders plus IT support

Its not bringing broad sweeping changes to libraries, but is changing how individual staff perceive technology and how they work with it.

Find out more at: http://research.tametheweb.com/.

From library automation to Library 2.0: exploring Web 2.0 tools,while reflecting on our traditional values as we move towards Library 2.0 and beyond – Paul Sutherland – Christchurch City Libraries.

Thinks he was born digital, using technology from a very young age. Threw in a convicts comment (cross Tasman rivalry). Lots of Facebook users, not many Friends of VALA – MUST FIX THIS.

Don’t be afraid of being afraid.

What are your top trends?

Libraries have never been about books – they have been about ideas and creating new things from those ideas.

Let go and see what happens, stop acting like librarians (twitter comment).

Connections, content and conversation. Books we can see, data we can’t see, it just whizzes about us. Learning 2.0 is more about learning to adapt and adopt.

What is a blog? Its really a conversation, but also directing users back to the library.

Libraries need a presence in library thing. We should own and manage our presence in these spaces.

Used Flickr to engage their users – asked for and scanned their photos in Flickr about the ordinary day things happening in their city. People want to share their content with the world and where better than the library as a channel for that. People want to tell us things. Stop using ‘user-generated content’ as a term, use local experts. Librarians don’t know everything, we should know however, where to find it.

Very bad at recording our own history.  Need to get better at that.  Every library should have a Wikipedia presence. Check how many incoming links come to your wikipedia entry (when you get it).

Embed your catalogue – make it easy for your users – eg LibX toolbar.

How do you try out a new tool, with really committing to it or feeling foolish when you don’t go through with it. Running a competition solves this problem.

Check out Open Library.

History of Melbourne on Wikipedia only has 12 references.  We are in a position to fix this for our local communities’ entries.

Where is the memory space for things like Black Saturday.  We need to be collecting the things of now, because they will be important in future – including things as simple as shopping catalogues.

Christchurch is piloting Kete – trying to use it as a place to store their stories – not about accuracy.

Impressed with what libraries are doing with open access to data.

DigitalNZ – GLAM plus more – check the website. Want to find stuff for our users and be able to deliver it to our users with our brands.

Roy Tennant was joined by Bart Rutherford, Heather Crosby, Carol Tenopir, Teula Morgan, Jane Burke and Ingrid Mason to discuss the future of published content.

Implications of ebooks and other online content for libraries? Continuation of process at libraries,which are becoming more digitised, The main difference is that our books are not coming to us bound. Libraries need to jump in with ebooks – its not going backwards. Its a replacement of reading behaviour, digital rather than print. Its the next natural way to read a book.

What is the impact on AV when that is the format most used by the younger generations?

What is the impact of this content coming through non-traditional channels? How does this impact our collection development processes? Is our publication medium going to become more television like and what is the impact on storage and management?

A lot of multimedia content is being produced, but no-one is trying to catalogue and manage this, to move beyond the streaming and/or immediate use. Something that need libraries really need to be thinking about.

‘The book is dead, long live the book.’ Is abstracting and indexing dead? Still a need as not everything is available in full text, so there is still value. There is a definite decline however, but its still fulfilling a niche market. If you are just trying to make money with that alone, its no longer enough. Still need the indexing work, because it supports good search.

As discovery layers are coming pre-populated with content such as abstracting and indexing, libraries are asking if they can stop subscribing to it separately. If they do however, then there will be no A and I to access at all.

What is the future of ebooks? Single purpose ebook readers are not dead – as Roy has been noted for saying in the past, the popularity of Kindles and other devices illustrates that. Real challenges for libraries providing ebook content, with DRM issues. Technology is not necessarily a long term issue, as it is constantly changing. Commitments will have to be made on a much shorter basis. Don’t get too caught up in technology restraining you as it will be changing.

Are libraries going to be more about delivering online audio-visual content and what will that mean for current library practices?

There is a role for libraries to help to upskill our users to help them produce content. ALIA will be having discussions with ABC Open. There is  definite potential for libraries partnership with media organisations to produce such content.  Same debates are happening in the media market – metadata and curating content. No parallel in the US that we now of.

What is the core role of public libraries in the world of ebooks? Aggregator, publisher, curator, collector?  Where is this puppy going? Trove could be the way of the future for public libraries. Digitisation of local content is only a niche, small community need. Still have to serve all the broader needs of our local communities, whatever their needs are.

Collaboration is very difficult. Easier to do it within the library world, but still has it challenges even there. Always looking for more Australian content. Potential to collaborate with publishers to get our concern online, the downside is that it is not freely available to all, only subscribers.  Should libraries be Bit Torrent sites. The time to lobby about more content is now – lots of agreements in process between publishers and ebook resellers.

If we can’t get content for our users, they will go and get the content elsewhere. Is it time then to consider whether we are relevant anymore anyway – if they can get it elsewhere, why do they need us?  Should we close our doors and move into other industries.

Agreement is being developed between the National Library of Australia, the National Archive and the National Sound and Vision Archive.  Well worth watching. Discussions will also be happening in the whole Government 2.0 movement.

One wish – simplified DRM and Copyright. Remember that even if the changes that are happening seem overwhelming, we do have power – move with it, adapt and make the most of it.  That libraries are the central point for information needs, to deposit their content, that they couldn’t exist with the products and services – a lot about PR but also about the choices that libraries make. That libraries can change more quickly delivering services our users want – not irrevelant but will be if we continue doing the old stuff after our users have moved on. That we could find tools to automatically generate high quality metadata a lot faster with a lot less effort. That we have more speed, but not to the point of wobbling – more unique material online with great descriptions – we can lead in this endeavour.

Karen Calhoun – OCLC – The emergent library: new lands, new eyes

Proust – “The real act of discovery is not in finding new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.”

Talking about connections, content and conversations between institutions. Help each other so that in turn we can do the share the same with our end users.

Breakthroughs come about when conventional wisdom and established beliefs are set aside. eg. Copernicus. (earth is round – saw with new eyes)

World has moved on to cloud computing which has empowered connections and conversations in an entirely new way.

Newspapers and other mainstream media are being majorly disrupted by the availability of this content on the internet.

Disintermediation of libraries is running in parallel to media. 2005 OCLC study showed that students began their information searches at search engines as opposed to library websites/catalogues (89% vs 2%).

Brace for change, embrace change.  Darwin – “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

We need plan B, need to adapt to the new conditions facing us. Issues are too big to be solved by libraries working alone. Cooperation on a scale not previously realised, will be required – eg. OCLC, Libraries Australia, NASL.

If we were starting over, what would we be doing?

Embed collections in the web – collections are becoming more universally available and less institutionally focused. Do we know any more what the collection is? (Ross Atkinson – Janus) Karen Calhoun 2006 report to Library of Congress, recommended leadership, expansion, extension. Putting collections out where their users are.  Long term vision: local catalogue linked to a chain of services, infrastructure to support multi level global access, aggregation of content, many starting points and integrate collections and learning spaces. Check out the Discoverability report from University of Minnesota Libraries in 2009. National Library NZ has synchronised and syndicated their images through Flickr Commons, their catalogue, World Cat and other partners. Pushing metadata out, pulling users in.

Cooperating to enable discovery and delivery – of more than just traditional content provided by libraries. Now includes digitised rare content, primary source materials, images, communications, research data, learning objects and more. Problem – these can’t be collected in the traditional sense. Digital collections have been shown to attract a new, interested group of users. Studies show that digital collections are attracting more traffic.  Library of Congress has nearly 3 times more visits to their American Memory site in contrast to their catalogue and legislative information. Open repositories are also gaining in visibility and impact.

Cooperating to understand and engage with local communities – we do not have to choose between local, group and global communities. We are still place, but not restricted to our geographic location. Books continue as the mainstay in US public libraries (study 2004 to 2008), but they are spending a lot more on media and about the same on magazines and electronic resources.  Check out the re-imagining libraries project from NASL. Is there a ways for libraries to collaborate – make their spaces more useful for their users? eg. Information commons, collaboration spaces. ARL Statistics showing that both circulation stats and number of reference enquiries are on a downward slide. There is a marked drop in use of printed materials in libraries.

Cooperating to realise a culture of continuous improvement – can’t do your best, have to know what to do and then do your best. You may be doing great work, but is it the right work. (W. Edward Dennings quote).

Cooperative systems at the crossroads – need to find new levels of library cooperation.

What if?
Libraries could more readily share the effort and costs of collection management – collection analysis, new collection development off-site storage, preservation, e-resources, networked knowledge bases?
What if we could manage collections in the cloud?
What if we could cooperate to move from isolated digital collections to interoperable digital libraries? Eg, OCLC Digital Collections Gateway- a web based self-service tool.
What if we could collectively take better advantage of meta-data already produced and meta-data we could get from other places? Check out World Cat Identities and VIAF.

David Wells – Curtin University – E-Book usage at Curtin University Library: patterns, projects and strategy

Need to find the correct materials for immediate use and for building a long-term research collection.

Started ebook collection in 2002 (1) in 2004 added records for free Gutenberg titles. Not until 2008 and 2009, where they bought over 6,000 titles.

Acquisition models – publisher packages, subscription services, individual titles, others – including individually sourced pdfs and scanned books. DRM and subscription models also vary dramatically.

Collection Development – try to purchase high-use, reserve and reference titles for course content – initial high use followed by decline. Have also tried user initiated purchases. With the rise of AUD, purchasing collection sets for research and teaching, with demand increasing over time.

For study, selected three ebook targets, Knovel (subscription service), CRCnetBase (publisher package), EBL (individual titles). Numbers were taken in 6 monthly blocks. Usage figures came from vendors of Ezproxy.

CRCnetBase showed consistently highest use in semester immediately after purchase. Knovel collection – use declined from 2007 – unexpected result. Reasons? No competition early on, only selected titles retain long term interest to users?  EBL both mediated and un-mediated auto purchase . Mediated was used to check that requests met collection development policy – only mediated one year, reverted to unmediated. EBL used regularly for high-demand material, but records for non-owned material not put in catalogue. Usage increased dramatically over time. Would expect that use would drop off over time as they were purchased for high demand, at time needs.

Auto purchased ebooks use dropped off dramatically from 2008. Expected this would happen. Same with mediated purchases. Staff purchased titles for high demand were not used highly in semester they were bought, then growth and drop off, before a large growth in 2009. Could be attributable to increasing ebook reader devices and faculty referring students to the resources.

Comparison of ebook acquisition methods – increasing usage in 2009 of all types – particularly staff chosen titles. Could be increasing demand or better marketing.

Pattern of usage is unpredictable? Ebooks are being used – are we reaching the tipping point. Analysis could support collection development. More detailed analysis is required.

Role of Bibliometrics in scholarly communication – Lynne Horwood and Sabina Robertson – University of Melbourne

Context: government policies are setting the research scene, rankings of universities on an international level and more.

SCOPUS was used to submit citation data for research outputs, for the 2009 Trial Submissions. Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) in 2010, submissions being mid year with SCOPUS continuing to be the citation supplier.

ERA is giving librarians the initiative to engage with academic staff and undertake professional development. Librarians need to keep uptodate with the importance and changes to bibliometrics.

Librarians can not only help with research support, but with assistance with finding training opportunities, the best journal to publish in and more.

ERA provided impetus for University of Melbourne to train their Liaison Librarians on bibliometrics, products which collect the data, differences between the disciplines and more. Position descriptions there now include support for grant applications by researchers. They also have provided workshops for supervisors and graduate students.

Value and future of e-resources – Carol Tenopir – University of Tennessee

Value of libraries can be measured in many ways: implicit – downloads, explicit value – interviews, derived values – ROI.

Examples: surveys by Tenopir and King 77-06, ROI in grants Phase 1 University of Illinois 2008, LibValue on value and ROI for grants/research, teaching, student engagement – 2010

Principal purpose of reading: faculty 2004-06. Reflect  on last thing read:51% for research, 20% for teaching, 9% current awareness, 11% proposals, 9% other. No one just reads for one purpose, lots of  reasons for reading. Older articles are judged more valuable and morelikely for research and to come from libraries.  1st year, 47%, 2-5 years 67% and over 5 years 71% came from libraries.

Print or Electronic for scholarly articles. Australian researchers are less likely to have personal subscriptions for print periodicals – slow boat issue – more electronic reading, more reliance on libraries. Younger academics however are less likely to print out electronic – will read on screen.

Outcomes of reading: inspired new thinking, improved results, changed focus, resolved technical problems, saved time, collaboration, faster completion, wasted my time (< 2%) – higher on first few outcomes when content comes from the library.

ROI – quantitative measurement expressed as a ratio of the value returned to the institution for each monetary unit invested in the library. For every $ spent on the library, the university received X in return.

ROI Phases 1 and 2 – Faculty Grant Research Cycle – libraries assist with conducting resarch writing articles, writing report and seminars, but how do libraries get credit for part of the grant monies, the ROI. Found $1 on library was equal to $4 of research grant funds. Phase 2 nearly completed, taking same methodology in 8 institutions in 8 countries. Published soon, Cluster of research focused institutions in science, technology and medicine – ratio between 13 and 15 to 1. 2nd cluster – research and teaching, lots of science, technology and medicine, also have humanities and social science, ration between 1.3 and 3 to 1. 3rd cluster – research and teaching are equally important, all topics, ratio is under 1 to 1 – less grant importance, more on government funding.

Administration values: measuring up – attract and retain outstanding faculty, foster innovative research, build research reputation of institution, promote seamless integration of the library with institutional research activities.

Phase 3 is called LibValue – look for calculations coming out in future.

Final thoughts on measuring value: tied to mission, measure outcomes not just inputs, quantitative data can show ROI and trends, also need qualitative to tell the whole story, no one method stands alone.

Today, 25th January, was Round 4 of the Library Day in the Life Project. The aim of the project is for librarian’s to document what they do in a day, for others to discover.  So here’s mine.

To give context, I am an Information Librarian working for the Casey-Cardinia Library Corporation – a public library service serving 300,000+ people in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia.  We have 7 branch libraries and a mobile library.  My main area of responsibility is our online services, but I also work at our biggest branch.  I work half-time – Mondays, Thursdays and alternate Tuesdays.  Monday I work at HQ on online services – all day.

So here’s today.

8.30am – Arrived at work at our Regional HQ, which I do every Monday. Spent the next 30 minutes checking email, printing off articles for later reading, catching up on memos, bookmarking sites of interest, returning and renewing my loans and a brief moment catching up with the Finance Manager on the progress of our intranet development.

9.00am – Checked for updates to Drupal modules for our website and downloaded, then uploaded the only one required.  Also took the opportunity to delete old versions of modules that were no longer required, both locally and on our IPS’s server.

Discussed adding information about our mobile library’s forthcoming renovation to the website.

Posted a review received from one of our local teens via our website, to our teen review blog.  Added an image and a catalogue linking before publishing it and then refreshed the feed on our website so it would appear there too.

Updated a post on our Staff training blog, with information emailed me by the reviewing staff member. Made some minor additional changes to that post of my own as well.

9.30am – Posted information on our website in several places, about the Mobile Library renovations.

Being the day before a public holiday, we were very quiet at HQ as many staff took the opportunity to enjoy a long weekend. So I spent some time filling in urgent requests for stationery etc that were phoned in from the branches.

Worked on the agenda for our forthcoming Information Services team meeting that is on the week I return from leave.

10.00am – Lots more bits and pieces (did I mention that there were lots of people taking a long weekend).

Chatted briefly with my boss, who was seconded to help out at one  of our branches, which resulted in me taking on the answering of email questions for the day. Quickly cleared up a few procedural queries, started the process on a claims returned and sought further information on an inter-library loan request from a staff member at one of our local Councils.  Was quite pleased that I found the article he requested, even with minimal information and so was he when I emailed him both the full citation and a link to the full article not long afterwards.

11.00am – Morning tea done after successfully completing that information request, it was now onto a new blog post for our library news blog. Spent some time looking for inspiration and accidently came across links on our catalogue that I hadn’t noticed before. Ended up blogging about the public holiday tomorrow instead, as one of our libraries will be open to support the Book Sale that their Friends’ group is running.

11.30am – Did a backup of our email newsletter subscribers lists. Not very exciting, but very necessary. Then investigated further the new catalogue features and with the assistance of a colleague, figured out exactly how they worked and started thinking about how they could be taken advantage of by our users.  That’s another blog post in the making – but not today.

12.00noon – Received an information request from the mobile library on behalf of one of their users (via email). Rang the mobile to clarify the request and the context and within the half hour I had a emailed a list of websites and book titles to be passed onto to the user.

12.30pm – Lunchtime and I escaped the building for a short time. Normally I would go out to lunch with my HQ partners in crime, but they were either on leave or elsewhere.

1.30pm – Played with ideas and images for a new slide for our website’s events slideshow. Gave up on it afer a time – software kept crashing and I couldn’t find the inspiration to make the slide more than bland.  Will get back to it on Thursday.

2.00pm – Had a quick revisit of Event Brite. We are trialling it for online booking of library events, for a seminar we are holding in February. Chatted again with my boss to catch up on the day’s happenings and the week ahead.

Spent most of the rest of the time trying to work out how to get an imported Javascript working in Drupal. Lots of cutting, pasting, saving, trialling and repeating the process all over again. Got it working, but with lots of extraneous information, which when I remove it, kills the operation of the form. Its working for now, so will look at it again on Thursday.

4.00pm – Checked my Google alerts and Twitter searches for mentions of our libraries and service in those areas. Twitter mentions are growing slowly and we always get plenty of mentions on Google.

Began reviewing our brochures on online resources. Started considering how I could get the content of two to three brochures down into one.

Created three new book cover images and associated information to use in our books slide show on our library homepage.  Uploaded these and then deleted the three oldest ones – we have a 4 weekly cycle on these.

Filled it out with other bits and pieces (did I mention there were many people away) and then called it a day just after 5pm.

So that was my day – never realised how busy it was and how much territory I covered until I documented it.  Hope you find it interesting.

See you next Library Day in the Life Day!

Re-imagining library services: a new collaborative vision by Alan Smith – NSLA

NSLA comprises the Australian state, territory, national libraries and the national library of New Zealand. They are working to build the next stage of libraries for our users. The 4 key points and 10 projects are making way and getting librarians out of the way.

One library, transforming our culture and accessible content are the core of what they are trying to achieve. 5 year plan with a central office to help push it forward.

Do it now – SLV – opening up services
Access now – NLA and NLNZ – one library card
Virtual reference – SLV – next generation of online reference – not looking at the next version of Ask Now
Delivery – SLWA – being able to deliver content into peoples hands, wherever they are
Community created content – SLQ and NLNZ – communities of geographic and interest, being able to create their own digital libraries
Creating culture – SLSA – organising and storing
Collaborative collections – SLNSW and SLQ – trying to limit duplication and improve resource sharing – consortial arrangements
Flexible cataloguing – improving access to content – reengineering cataloguing
Scaling up digitisation – industrialise it, working on business case for significant national investment
Connecting and discovering content – NLA – improve coverage and quality of data, partnerships to improve discovery – a common catalogue interface and a national metadata store.

Big Stuff – Library Challenges – Stephen Abram – Sirsi-Dynix Institute

We need to tell good stories – tell each other about the good things that happen, not the bad, which is what we usually do.

Stephen said that our stuff is awesome, we are in good standing amongst the libraries of the world. We need to let go of the nostalgia. Change has been really slow relatively speaking, especially compared to the baby busters. Big changes coming, which will be fun if you like riding a roller coaster.

What are we going to do to get good results for our users – how can we negate the skewed results of search engine optimisation – where anyone can make sure their content, true or not, lists high in results.

Some people have 40 year careers. Ensure it is 40 years of incrementally better years, not just the same thing year after year. Choose to make the difference. You need to put your meat in the game = professionals commit.

Libraries matter – the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grants is just one example. Stephen gave a long list of examples where librarians are making a real difference, doing things that get people connected to the net and to the information they need, saving money, saving lives, saving our culture and our history and so much more. We need to tell our government about the competitive edge that libraries give Australia. Who do you think built Yahoo – librarians were pulled in to make it work.

What is the competitive advantage we have in our environment? The difference between us the internet is us – sensitive, intelligent, helpful – we are not a list. Put ourselves out there, with photo and social networking profile. Show who we are as well as what we can do.

DREAM BIG – start small, but dream big.

We dont know every little moment of truth that happens in the library. We can be the human touch for people. We may never know the difference we make to each individual.

Democracies persist because of libraries. Its not coincidence that libraries are often the first casualty of war. Librarians protect freedom of information, giving access to all, regardless of what our opinion of it is – we are truly bipartisan.

We have to learn the things that are making a difference, improving service to our users. If you dont want to learn, then get out of the profession.

We are a global profession, a bottomless network. Every librarian has hundreds of moments of truth, where we fight for our freedom, save lives, cure disease, challenge poverty and ignorance. Not dreaming 08, but dreaming big. Say yes every chance you get, encourage others and dont get discouraged. Those who say it cant be done, get out of the way of those who are already doing the impossible.

We are about books, we dont have to advertise that, what we do need to advertise is that we have people who can help you with just about anything. Show who we are and what we can do.

Web 2.0 is about things you can do and people you know. When you go online do you see people you know. You need to be where your users are, otherwise you are on a march to irrelevance.

Stuff will change faster now – by 2020, all content ever created will fit on an iPod. Video games outsell most content combined, ringtones are huge! Pocket size devices will dominate, the devices coming out are about having ubiquitous access on your person.

New? Semantic web, the cloud, no choice search engines, GIS oriented search, virtually unlimited fulltext books, streaming media and spoken word search, personalisation 3.0, microblogging, registries and so much more.

Normal now is RSS, blogs, YouTube, social networks tagging, wikis, SEO and GIS. If libraries arent involved in that, then they are behind. Resist the library culture of poverty, victimisation, risk aversion and passive resistance. We have to pass the chasm of early adopters and into the space of early majority. We have a technology lifecycle, we have to get on the curve early and stay there.

If we dont get into social networking, then we are going to miss it when they progress to the next stage – this is just the tip of the iceberg.

So what should libraries be paying attention to? The user-centred universe, be more open to users paths. A few things to do right away – the time is now! Need to play, pilot, trial, experiment. Mobile is important, confirm your presence, be where your users are, how your presence appear – personal,, professional; get good at the cloud (where users are going), play at e-books, get serious at literacy (dont use that term for users) and check out XML, get serious about e-learning, care about our cultures, just expand, know that most physical objects are dead, get real about influence, the next generation content.

Humans are our competitive edge. Be open to lifelong learning, our careers have seasons, need to have reciprocal mentoring – peers, be important, we can invent the future and make a difference. Just have some fun! Dream big!

Web archiving in a Web 2.0 world – Edgar Crook – NLA

NLA has 3 main methodologies for web archiving.

Pandora Archive has developed a world class archive of Australian websites, using PANDA, their digital archiving system. PANDA is a distributed system, so their partners can also use it. Other international library archiving systems are based on or similar to PANDA. They have developed persistent naming scheme and have arrangements with archiving and indexing agencies. As of 1st July 2008, it contained 19307 titles over 53 million files adding up to 2.2 TB of data (now over 2.4TB). Files can be a single PDF page, or an entire website. Over 50% of their files are government publications, but they also archived academic journals, blogs, podcasts and more. It is selective, because of the restrictions on staff resources etc. They have chosen their titles carefully and try to choose sustainable sources.

Domain name harvests – once a year, for between 3 and 6 weeks and in conjunction with the Internet Archive. In 2008, they are looking at crawling a billion files. Copyright is a major drawback. The websites are crawled by the Internet Archive and the files are then sent to the NLA. There are gaps where the website publisher bans bots, and the crawler also cant follow embedded links, so there are gaps in the domain harvests. There is also issues with Australian websites without the .au in their name. Data is not publicly available at this time, although it is being use by researchers.

Archive It – is an Internet Archive product, where you can pay money to have your website archived. Sites archived using this process include the PNG governmental and research institute websites the 2007 general election – including content from YouTube an MySpace, Cambodian election 2008, Burmese monk uprising 2007 and more. There are restrictions in that you cant recapture missed files and cant present it the way you want.
Still working on arrangements with other Web 2.0 content, ie. Bebo, Flickr, Facebook etc.

Librarians should think to tell Pandora about resources they should be archiving. Take responsibility for your web presence, make sure it remains or is archived elsewhere.

Will not be making PANDAs version 4, but in future will be working with international partners to develop a new backbone to the system.

John Van Oudenaren is Senior Advisor, World Digital Library Initiative at the Library of Congress.
Vision – to create a digital library of significant original materials representing all of the major cultures from across the globe and make it accessible to students, educators and the general public.

Objectives:

• promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness
• provide a resource for educators that matches the needs of a globalised, wireless world
• acquire rare and unique content of interest to scholars and the general public

Partners: UNESCO, National Libraries and other cultural institutions (not Oz) and the technology community, including Google, Yahoo, Apple and Stanford University.

Dates:

• June 2005 – World Digital Library proposed to UNESCO
• November 2005 – Google gives LC $3 for planning phase of the project
• 2006 – Conclusion of agreements with partner institutions internationally
• December 2006 – Site mockup and draft proposal presented to UNESCO
• 2007 – conclusion of agreements with UNESCO and additional partner institutions
• October 2007 – World Digital Library prototype will be unveiled at UNESCO General Conference in Paris
• September 2008 – Completion of World Digital Library plan and full-scale launch of the project

Creating not just a big website. Three pillars: content acquisition; construction of a sustainable network for production and distribution of content; the website – http://www.worlddigitallibrary.org/

Content acquisition – work with partners to digitise content in places where little or nothing is being done – bring to light ‘hidden treasures’. Maintain and build on existing scanning operations. Establish additional scanning operations. Pursue other methods of content acquisition – repurposing of already scanned material.

Construction of the network – both a technical and infrastructure and a community of institutions, scholars, curators, linguists and technologist. A lot of translations to be done. Network nodes for creation, including digitisation, cataloguing, translation, development, etc of the WDL and for distribution, including mirror sites.

Web Site – must appeal to all users, both in the US and internationally. Prototype under development, multilingual (7 languages), high quality user experience – fast and seamless, ability to search and browse a large volume of content. Prototype will show multilingualism and fast search and browse. Will be able to search in the 6 official UN languages (Eng, Ara, Chi, Fre, Rus, Spa + Portugese) as well as searching content that is digitised in other languages.

Multi-format – print, maps, 3-D presentations, sound and video clips. Special features with experts, scholars and curators, educational content for teachers and students. Will include social networking features, such as blogs, chat spaces, tagging etc – My Digital Library type initiative. Adjustments to developing country conditions: ie low bandwith and mobile device solutions.

Showed a great video at the end which showed the vision of the World Digital Library. Check it out on YouTube.