Connecting Librarian

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!

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!).

I know, its been weeks now since the conference, but sometimes that’s the way it goes.

Joanne Lustig from Outsell presented the keynote on the last day - “Library Futures: users, technology and you”. 2007 is the time of experiential content, situational format (not just text or media), contextual information (not just access), whatever, wherever, whenever, worlds within worlds (not the just the internet) and avatars (not just users or creators).

Compelling forces are accelerating technology with the periods between disruptive technologies shrinking. This in turn has repurcussions on user behaviour and expectations. Our libraries will experience consumer driven tech, rise of individualism, changs in society and societal behaviours, agile technology and processes. Everyone has ADD!

There is an information glut: purchased content, web content, data warehousing, user-created content, with many ways to use and search, all of which is very confusing to users.

Users seeking info at work: in 2001 it was 79% internet, 5% intranet and 3% libraries. In 2006 it was 57% internet, 19% intranet and 4% libraries - we need to make the best use of our intranets. Information gathering has productivity issues too: 2001 - average of 8hrs, 44 minutes for information gathering and analysis, in 2006 it had gone up to 12 hours. (based on corporate library data)

The biggest issue for knowledge workers is knowing what’s available! Search failure rate across the board is 31% - can’t find what they are looking for. Self help culture is not doing too well, we should be able to help.

Path to the future: Imperatives: know your users and funders, align with your organisation, know the competition, keep an eye on the horizon and lead change
New models: place transformed or gone, users have it their way, information embedded into workflow, librarians embedded into enterprise, dive in and have fun!
Options: can buy off the shelf solutions for enterprise tagging, wikis.

“The future ain’t what it used to be and neither is the library”. Its up to use what it will look like.

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.