Connecting Librarian

McKenzie Wark – Eugene Lang College and the New School for Social Research New York – The Networked Book

Developed his book Gamer Theory with interaction with kids, teens, parents, librarians and professionals in the gaming industry. Many books are being developed this way, using the power of Web 2.0, but it is not appropriate for every title.

Have lots of tools around for different types of knowledge, but he couldn’t really find one that was appropriate for encouraging critical thinking. So they built their own. They made the paragraph the unit of thought on which people could think and comment. The comments are then placed alongside the paragraph. Its now available as a Word Press plugin (Comment Press). Navigation was resolved by displaying them like index cards, in a group of five.

He put up a pre-polished version of the book, so the majority of the work was done. However, it was an implied contract that he would read all the comments and would take them under consideration. It resulted in the whole start of the book being changed.  After consideration and feedback the book was put up again for comment. Not many comments were made this time, because it was pretty much the final product and all feedback already received had been considered.  Third copy was the final version.

He suggested that they offered it free online, to encourage sales. Publishers said yes – tried everything else which hadn’t worked, so lets try this! Pre-sales were over 1600 copies which was considered an overwhelming success. Third copy incorporates the comments, was better edited and looks good.

Built some stuff that didn’t work. Built a reputation index, which slid comments up a scale etc – spent tons of money on it but wasn’t used, so is no longer on the site.

(check it out at: http://www.futureofthebook.org/mckenziewark/gamertheory3.0/textarc)

Wanted to explore visualisation to explore the three dimensional space of text – gives a three dimensional paper of words that have any value in the book – working around in an arc. The start of how we could visually organise the text, from the view of the creator.

People are losing the capability of reading long non-fiction texts. Visualisation and user interaction could be two tools which could help people to re-engage with this full length of this sort of content.

Showed a video using machinima (MMOPRG world), used to illustrate a talk-show voiceover where Ken was interviewed about the Networked book. Very cool!

Never did anything in Second Life – he hated it and is glad to see its time has past.  Suggested that Twitter may be the next Second Life. (ooo)

Had a real problem trying to get elements. Can deal with the text readily enough, but the use of images and music is much more complicated and expensive – overly strict copyright rules.

Media culture is broken when lawyers are trying to sue people from their own companies who are just doing things to market their products. eg. Giving products away to encourage purchases.

To get around all the restrictions imposed on images, he employed a graphic artist to create in mimic, similar images to those he was interested in using. These were licensed under Creative Commons and went along with the book.

Ironic – that people are writing books about the fact that books are disappearing and then those books disappear.

Are there boundaries between libraries and publishers and do they need to be there? The technological barriers have gone, why else are there barriers. Main barrier is the boundary between the gift economy and the commodity economy. Where the boundary lies is not really understood.
Where is the space where we can interact?  Authors and publishers are bemoaning the future, but librarians are a lot more optimistic, talking rewiring and keeping people reading.

The important thing is the continuing democracy of knowledge.

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!

Dr Damian Conway, a futurist from Monash Uni spoke on Disruptive Technologies and Digital Convergence. What? I’ll explain. We had quite a few people talking about libraries in the short term, Damian was looking further, 10 to 20 years.

Spoke about the insatiable need for information in our society, which places libraries and librarians in an ideal position – in a parallel to the drug scene, people in our society are information junkies and we are their dealers. We are Infovores, addicted to consuming vast amounts of information.

According to Damian, the most disruptive technology has been Info Tech – in general. IT changes what we do, not just how we do it and who does it. Writing was the area of the clergy, until others could write, printing was the aristocracy until the Gutenberg press, most recent disruption is the public library, giving power to all!

Damian’s title for this presentation was Four funerals and a wedding. The four funerals are for:
Ignorance – ubiquitous computing and ambient knowledge will mean that everyone will be able to access all information, anywhere, anytime. The disruptive technology here is ultra storage, for example, the entire Library of Congress on one small memory device.

Publishing – new model is now e-books, Gutenberg, Google’s Book search etc. There is the potential for an unlimited catalogue and theory of unlimited print distribution and duration with print on demand etc. The disruptive technology here is the rpint on demand machines (Espresso at NYPL), Sony Book Reader which is very paperlike.

Dewey – proven, extensible and out of date. Disruptive technology? Been replaced by IPv6, the newest version of numerical URLS (IPv4). Instead of having 3 ranges of 3 number, IPv6 will have 8 ranges of 8 numbers, with a maximum of 340 billion, trillion, quadrillion unique addresses. Which means every word, in every copy of every edition of every title published, could have its own address. Every word could be cross-referenced. Add to this that in 10 years, RFID tags will be the size of a full stop and you will be able to make ink with them, which can then be read by a reader. Whoa!

Media Barons was the last funeral – print is declining and online is not making up the difference. Disruptive technology here is hyperlinks that link the knowledge. What happens when meta knowledge is created by everyone all the time?

The wedding is a world that is suffused with ambient information. But it needs navigators, teachers, guides, architects, conservators, reviews, critics, police – a skill set which librarians have been developing for centuries.

So what will librarians do in the coming information economy – everything that matters!

Peter Blake from Australian Catholic University then spoke on using wikis in Information Services. They converted their Reference Desk Manual into wiki format. His advice included: working out the wikis purpose, decide on features, database, community and scope and decide on how much structure it will have. Wiki features include images, attached documents and RSS feeds. If it is included as part of an intranet, it means one login gives you access to everything. Their structure is a loose hierarchy of topics, cross linked to the maximum depth with a welcome screen and help text. From their evaluation they found that they were missing features they really needed and that there was confusion as to whether or not to link to their intranet. The intranet is only at one campus at present as they have been unable to do training and rollout to others because of other IT rollouts.

Sue Grey Smith and Luke Padgett from Curtin University spoke of some of the initiatives that have been introduced there using Open Source software. They are using Miranda IM to provide their Ask Online chat reference service. Its free, customisable under open source and has a number of install options. No IT support, but has a great support Forum. Can receive messages from different IM clients. Students can login directly via Curtin’s IM system or via any IM client. It has been marketed as a general point of contact, so queries can be technical, reference or lending based. Answers are immediate and although statistics are not availabe in the software, it has been very successful and saved money.

Using Open source PHP – Pirate Source from East Carolina Uni, they are able to provide subject guides on the fly. 46 guides are provided, the old format was static and linked to via divisional directories. Programmers at Curtin had to make some changes to the software, but as a result, they now have 2 click, customised subject guides.

Podcasts have been created using Audacity, a laptop, microphone, quiet place and script. Mixed using Audacity and Creative Commons music from CCMixtr. They generated RSS feeds for them using online tools and created a web page to host the podcasts and feeds. They now have 30+ podcasts covering info literacy and book reviews, with 9379 downloads made from Feb to Nov 06.

They use b2evolution as their blog software – its free open source, which allows mutiple blogs, categorisation and has anti-spam features. It is resilient, needs little support and is easy to maintain. The use MediaWiki, a server based package for their internal documentation. They are considering using it for their public FAQ page. Open Source has made all these things possible. Some IT support is needed.

Gerard Egan from the ATO spoke on podcasting from a non-techie view. He highly recommended Michael Abulencia’s (RMIT) guide on podcasting. What to podcast? News, tours, information literacy, storytimes, workplace training, 5 minutes on important topics. Podcasts give personality and a voice to your organisation. You can find them using Podcast Directory or Loomia search engine. Podzinger lets you search within podcasts. Reverse podcasts are being used in education – the students listen first then come and discuss it in class. To convert text to MP# you can use Natural Reader, 2nd Speech Centre etc.

That was it for Day 2 – Session 4 was dedicated to exploring the Exhibitors Hall. I spent some time with old friends at Thomson Gale, OCLC Pica and Sirsi-Dynix and picked up the odd bit of information elsewhere. Didn’t win any of the prize drawers unfortunately.