Connecting Librarian

Libraries on the agenda – advocacy experiences from IFLA and Library Associations – Claudia Lux – IFLA President an Director General of the Berlin Library

IFLA i an independent, non-government not for profit organisation represent library staff, libraries and the communities we serve. IFLA supports membership in library associations, so ALIA members are therefore IFLA members. However, IFLA also has institutional members and personal and student associates.

Former ALIA Executive Director Jennefer Nicholson starts as IFLA Secretary General on September 5th. The previous president was Australian Alex Byrne.

IFLAs purpose is to promote libraries. Claudias agenda as president is Libraries on the Agenda. It aims to strenghten advocacy work internationally and to advocate for libraries sustainability.

IFLAs own advocacy activities include working with UNESCO (Library Manifestos), WIPO, MLAS (IFLA Management of Library Associations) and WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society).

WSIS Action Lines and Libraries is highlighting access to information and knowledge covering inclusion and cultural diversity; and ICT applications including local content, the ethical dimension of ICT and the Internet Governance Forum. These were issues that UNESCO had not considered.

IFLA has launched a Libraries Success Stories Database, in English, French, Spanish and more. Shows small stories from around the world. Claudia encouraged us to add our library success stories. Check it out at www.ifla.org

Politicians and libraries – they always consider us to be involved in culture and education. However, we also have a role to play in town planning, family policy, health, economy and administration. We are invisible in these areas, but we have to make ourselves visible and get money from these departments as we support the work they do.

Challenges:
Why does the world need libraries?
Why is the internet not able to replace libraries?
Why do libraries need the newest technology?
Why are books and other media in the library like bread and butter for the minds of people?

We need to have ready answers to these questions.

Goals of the advocacy initiative is to prepare clear and common arguments, show the libraries potential, market the impact of services use international success stories database, strengthen a new image and influence policy before it is set.

How to advocate – clarify your position – when do people speak up for us? Are Libraries our thing? – When do we speak up for ourselves? Coordinate your work, create a focal point include staff, colleagues, friends, civil initiatives and administration. keeping all partners informed and being consistent in the focal points. Have a clear message, focus on the main practical points, look for professional and emotional arguments, train how to advocate in practise, prepare background material including general information, statistics, best practise and a description of the future impact. Analyse who supports your goals and why, analyse the wider influence on a person or group, find which activities of support could they take on, make contacts and build a contact list etc.

Short menu of advocacy work – never talk badly about others, focus positively on your goals, present success stories, use statistics but believe in more, create pictures in the mind, be patient, be stubborn an always stay controlled.

Start now and promote knowlege on advocacy. When on stage, personality is the key talk clearly and concisely, ask questions, add humour, smile and thank.

Question: how do we advocate to present the work we do behind the scenes, the exciting/cutting edge we do? No one answer to this, we have to behave different, we have to go to our budgeters, be prepared with recognition and then bring the good things the library does. Find good things about the library that will speak to them.

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.

Indigenous Literacy – a national crisis – Anita Heiss -UQ and Flinders

Gap beween indigenous literacy and non-indigenous. By the age of 15, 1/3 of indigenous students dont have the skills to manage in the adult world. In remote areas, these figures are even higher. Indigenous students have much higher adsence rates, lower numeracy skills and with health related to school attendance and literacy skills, this too is poor.

Indigenous Literacy Project and Day were established to deal with these issues. Its a partnership between the APA, ABA and the Fred Hollowes Foundation, to provide books to indigenous communities. The books are chosen by the communities and foundation staff to enhance their pool of literacy resources. Started 4 years ago by Suzie Wilkins. Now operates across the nation, supported by the book industry, authors and authors.

The Project is making a difference, but there is still a lot of work to do. The Foundaition uses a 3 way approach to building literacy and promote cultural, media and English literacy. Projects include literacy resources, writing and publishing projects, a traditional song project, an after-hours music project, community learning centre (inter-agency project which includes a library), aural and visual health, nutrition programs and child/maternal health programs.

How can we help: make libraries and collections relevant and enticing to indigenous people, replenish stocks of indigenous titles and ahve indigenous authored titles, have authors and storytellers in your library, contact publishers of indigenous books and offer your space for launches, author visits etc.

Check indigenous publishers websites: Magabala Books, IAD Press, Aboriginal Studies Press, Keeaira Press and Black Ink Pre ss.

Get familiar with indigenous literature through Black Words (A&TSI writers and story tellers) – a subset of OzLit. The website now lists 1900 authors and storytellers.
You can find biographical information, relevant arts, cultural and literary groups, reviews, critical articles and exerpts from scholarly works. It also includes a calendar of events which traces historical events from 1788. Can be searched by genre, author, heritage and topics.

Question: does anyone from the Foundation visit the parents in remote communities. Anita believed that there is a process of consultation with people on the ground. Nothing is being done on the ground which is not the wishes of the local people.

Question: the concern of loss of language. Not the best person for Anita to comment on – she doesnt have any answer for that.

Question: work being done at the Bachelor Institute – works are being created in their native languages, then translating it into language, which are then being published and will be made available at the Alice Springs public library, as well as their own communities. Anita was happy to hear about this. Indigenous people want to read about things relevant to them, familiar to them.

Who are the virtual visitors to the library and what are they doing? Dr Vivienne Waller

Working on research project with SLV – called the Searchers. Looking at purpose of public libraries in 21 century and implications of technology. Interested in current searching practices – looking at who goes where for what.

Back in 1995, Mercer found that most people would use their library to find something out. Pew Project 2007 found that the public library accounted for just over 10%. Internet was the overwhelming leader.

Top Australian reference sites were Wikipedia and then the Bureau of Meteorology, followed by various answer websites such as Ask.

Stats show that the top 20 websites account for nearly 60% of hits, but the long tail – the other 40% was made up of over 3,000 websites.

SLV – 1 million visits to the building, 22 million to the website (2006/07) (all SLV domains).

Research on SLV main website – www.slv.vic.gov.au, included research on the long tail. They used Hitwise data – could use Google Analytics for smaller websites. Hitwise data includes demographic data, 40% of ISPs send their data to Hitwise as well as recording their traffic.

More than average visitors to the SLV website come from educated singles, families maintaining the rural economy, young affluent singles and sharers in the city, wealthiest families in the exclusive suburbs. Under-represented are the most other categories.

Victoria accounts for about 63% of virtual visitors, NSW for 17% and other most states between 1 and 3%. The top 10 referrers included Google, Yahoo, Picture Australia, National Library and Wikipedia.

Top 10 sites only account for 51%, what are some of the other 49% sites? The categories of site in the long tail include search engines (40%), library (about 15%), with more from computer and internet sites (eg. social networking sites).

Where do they go afterwards? Much more came from search engines, but a lesser proportion return to them. Hope that means they found what they are looking for.

Results on searches that led to the slv website – top 10 searches, 22% – variations on state library of victoria. The other 78% of searches came from over 15,000 terms and fell mainly into the categories of history, place, reference, buidling and books/authors.

Did searchers find what they were looking for? Rough estimate using upstream and downstream traffic and images, suggests that 50% of people found what they wanted an moved onto other sites.

Important to take advantage of web log data, but some questions can only be answered by detailed survey and analysis.

Question: how can we tell if users have used the guides on our websites. Can tag those pages with the Google Analytics code – if all pages are tagged, can track their progress through your website. Can track where people are geographically as well.

Question: was there any work done on people using the databases. Currently doing work on who is using the catalogue – tricky to measure the databases, because that is not content hosted by SLV.

Question: could Hitwise data be used to help measure programs aimed at people who are underrepresented. Yes it could be in principal, but data must be paid for. If data is very localised, would be better to survey individuals.

The Fridge: communication matters at the SLV – Greg Honeyman – Manager Marketing and Public Affairs (SLV)

How the SLV uses their intranet to deliver fresh news daily to their staff.

Why internal communication?
-employees are more satistfied, feel more involved and contribute more

Issues to deal with -
- if I know it, everyone must know it
- we hate bureacracy
- well, I told the manager
- so whats to talk about
- theres data and theres information
- if I need your opinion, Ill give it to you

Communication is not just top down. Communication grows exponentially more difficult the larger an organisation becomes. (Clay Shirky)

350 staff = over 120,000 connections at the SLV.

November 2006, SLV introduced the Fridge – a new communication tool – idea came from a friends actual fridge – which was the family communication channel.

Fridge Mach 1 – Fridge icon was available on the desktop of every staff PC. Click on it, brings up a fridge shape with news content within – updated daily at 3pm, in hard news style – with images and video. Fun but also a serious news tool utilised by the full range of library staff. Guests included politians, authors, artists, library staff, vendors and more.

Fridge was edited by the SLV marketing staff, with the supporting software built in Flash and designed and created in house. It replaced the staff newsletter very quickly. Won an award from Arts Victoria in 2007.

It has become an enduring record of SLV culture. They have had over 190 editions – a rare and impressive snapshot of a year in the life of the SLV. They are producing a book with the Fridge content which will be placed in the SLV collection.

The Fridge Mach 2 is the redeveloped intranet – Mach 1 was always a temporary measure. It was launched in June 08, bought off the shelf, but heavily modified in house. All library divisions provide information to it.

Includes an events panel which updates in real time, forms, directories and processes and the News is updated at 3pm daily. They actively seek and measure staff comment and participation.

Question: amount of staff time required to provide the fresh news daily – SLV journalist about 60% of his working week, plus the time of Fridge champions.

Question: is there an editorial process – not a forum for whingeing – ask for positive feedback and do maintain editorial control – ie redraft into active voice for journalistic style – not editing out content often.

Question: opportunity for discussion? – not like a blog, but can post content for dialogue.

Towards guidelines and practices in Australian indigenous digital collections – Professor Martin Nakata

Wow, here I am live blogging the conference, using ScribeFire for Firefox and wi-fi at the Alices Springs Convention Centre. So sit back and enjoy the conference through mylimited eyes. Papers will be available on the conference website – http://www.alia2008.com/

So here goes.

Martin is the Director of Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning and Char if Australian Indigenous Education – UTS.

Challenges in digitising indigenous collections included IP and copyright regimes, indigenous needs and concerns, digitisation and public domain.

An issue that has been taken up by IFLA amongst others.

The Gap – need for consistent standards and protocols across the collecting sector. (maybe a 1/4 of attendees work in libraries which hold such materials – survey of hands) .
Resulted in a project for a preliminary investigation, in partnership with the NTL, SLNSW an SLQ.

The project is investigating digitisation processes, digitisation of indigenous materials working towards guidelines and protocols.

It first focussed on the technical issues, which have now been standardised. The focus is now on consistent formats, workflow and management of collections, legal and sensitivity issues

Working on the implications for the digitisation process, including selections, clearances, decisions, time and costs, prompts, checklists an exemplars and a clear management strategy.

There are also implications for prioritising indigenous materials – both within all materials to be digitised and within indigenous materials to be digitised. Rationale for these decisions should not be based on ethnic compositions or population proportions. Unfortunately, we still dont know the extent of indigenous materials held by Australian cultural institutions.

Prof Nakata believes that inidigeous digitisation should be included in core business and not treated with separate policies and procedures.

Legal and sensitivity issues are the reasons for departure from the standard digitisation process of libraries. The next project aims to produce guidelines to assist in this process. Digitisation should also give indigenous people timely access to and the use of these materials. There should also be a higher priority for the digitisation of the materials of our native population.

Question: federal government funding – it seems there may be funding available for projects if organisations work together.

Question: will protocols being developed cover all formats and all cultural institutions, not just libraries – aim to work with GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, museums) in next project. Picture Australia is doing some groundbreaking work here, as are other cultural institutions around the world. Thinking not only about the process, but the end users needs.

Question: moral rights, any legal developments – still on turntable.

Question: protocols are first step, when do we think we will able to do this as a major project, on a national/international basis. Time is right, funding is available and the government is asking for input. TIme is ripe for a major injection of funding, not just small grants and volunteer run.

Question: what research has been done about how people use and wish to use these digitised materials. Found out during NT project – assemble much material and asked lots of questions, not just about technology. Researchers are still struggling with the issue, but it is improving.

Comment: Australian Collections Council has been heavily lobbying the government, but no positive answers yet.

Question: is there any potential for funding in the Innovation Review and the Cutler review? Havent had a chance to investigate them, but we should.

I have been swamped lately, instead of getting quieter towards Christmas, I seem to be getting busier. So as I have done before, here’s links to some great reading that I just don’t have the time to blog about at present.

Internet Librarian has been and gone in Monterey, California. For those of us who missed it, there is great coverage on quite a few blogs, including ALA TechSource, Library Bytes, David Lee King and The Shifted Librarian, just to name a few. The presentations are also now available at the Internet Librarian 2006 website. Thanks to all the bloggers who attend and give us the rundown, I am amongst many who appreciate your time and effort so that we can share the conference.

Stephen Abrams has written a fascinating 3 part paper, “Waiting for your cat to bark – competing with Google and its ilk“. You may or may not agree with what he has to say, but either way it is an interesting exploration of libraries and where they fit in this knowledge economy, very well worth the read.

One potential future of book publishing is explored in “The Book as place: The “Networked book” becomes the new “in” destination.” It discusses the different forms of networked book, where people are able to post comments, corrections, thoughts, disagreements, to the contents of a book in draft form online. Fascinating idea.

The Librarian in Black gives a great overview of the papers presented at a mini-conference, “The Future of Libraries Pt 2: Models that work“, in San Francisco.

My friend and coblogger CW at Ruminations did a great paper on blogs at the ALIA Click 06 conference in Perth. “Creating Community: the blog as a networking device” gives a great overview of blogs and their use in libraries and professional development. Many other conference papers are available from the ALIA Click 06 website. The team at Libraries Interact.info, also did a great job at summarising at “Blog the conf“. Thanks guys!

Read, discover, learn and enjoy!