Case in point: The Library’s monthly newsletter.

Not even thinking about all the work that goes into the content creation, once that has happened, this is what our Publicity Officer does to get it to our users.

She creates the newsletter in In Design. She then creates a jpeg of it for our website. Then there is the Shockwave file for users to be able to read it like a magazine online. Then for those who don’t want to, or can’t read it like that, she creates single pages of the newsletter and saves it as a pdf.  Then lastly there is the HTML file for the subscribers, which is emailed out once everything has been tested to within an inch of its life. 

And that’s not including the work that goes into the print versions that are created for pick up at our libraries.

We do all this, so there is no barrier to users accessing our monthly newsletter.

I then thought about the process I go through for promoting library events. I create a slide for our website slideshow using PhotoShop Elements and then a page on our website, which incorporates this and all the rest of the information relating to the event. I then add the event to Eventbrite for our online bookings. Then it has to be in our Google Calendar, which we embed in our website as Calendar of Events, followed by another different (and much larger slide) for our digital photo frames. Then I update the SD card for the host branch and send it to them to changeover in their digital photo frame.

This is totally separate of course (but in conjunction with for consistencies sake), to the flyers, posters that our Publicity Officer produces, as well as the articles that are created for our own newsletter, as well as those of our two Councils (as appropriate). Then some are added to Facebook or included in our Library News blog as well. And again that is not taking into account, all the organisation of such events in the first place, as well as the running of and after event follow-up.

Why do we do all this? Because we want to use every means possible (and ethical) to promote events to users that may be of interest to them.

We have quite a busy schedule of one-off events, besides our regular events, so it ends up that we spend a lot of time doing this.

I’m not complaining though, I really enjoy the whole process, particularly creating the event slides – I think I may be a bit of a closet graphic artist (and a very late-starter).

And this is just one part of what libraries do to make things easier for our users. Its a lot of hard work, but it is worth it.

So it got me wondering what other lengths we go to, to make things easier for our users.  I would love to hear your stories.

 1st session – Jason Griffey – GADGETS

 165,000 attended the new consumer electronics show in Las Vegas in January. One of the large company booths at this is more than ½ the size of the exhibition space at ALA. Awesome that librarians are attending these conventions.

One laptop per child – equivalent XO tablet – runs Sugar Linux or Android – supposed to cost under $100. Sugar is designed to show you how to program as you use it. Designed to be used in disadvantaged areas, so has a hand crank, solar power connection and much more. Uses mesh networking.

Parrot AR Drone, which includes a video camera. Low battery power (about 15 mins), but battery power is improving. Expensive versions have GPS and are programmable, have sensors which do obstacle avoidance. The military ones can have recharge themselves by attaching to powerlines.

Lytro digital camera – $300. No controls. Lens looks like a flies eye – lots of facets. A picture takes multiple everything all at once. The computer does all the work afterwards. You can’t be a bad photographer with this camera. (plenoptic lens). People have used these to create video – but takes a hugh amount of computing power to do this. Makes imaging of pages easier.

 Nest smart thermostat. Created by an ex-Apple engineer. Whole front is touch screen and dial is controller. The aim is to never have to use them. Sensors pick up when there is people in the house. You adjust for the first few days and then it learns. Has wifi, so can control it from elsewhere.

Local studies

NZ has Keta. Want to get people to create their own data. Partnerships need to be developed to ensure the library is not alone in creating and curating it.

 How do we scrape the information that is already out there. Needs to have geocoding, hash tags and tags etc. Storify does it well, but you need to manually create. Pinterest is also being used for local studies – Smithsonian. Need to also accept that these tools may not be permanent, so we need to have it safe elsewhere. ABC Open is doing some great stuff and will do free staff training.

Libraries can do great leadership in using tagging, so content is at least findable. Part of digital literacy skills. But also about leaving things open so that other people can tag.

Create an exhibition, to demonstrate the potential to users. It gives them a framework and an inspiration. LibraryHack was good in that it had an ideas competition so that people who didn’t have the skills could participate.

Also important to highlight the different groups within the community. What are the different ways we can be collecting the stories.

We are all interested in simple permissions process – form. Just using ‘good enough’ technology. You don’t worry about lighting, sounds etc.

Cowbird – online tool for storytelling.

Today is tomorrow’s history. We need to keep that in mind.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EB9eRqEE6A_h5Vkmp29-iSwAdQbK_YCHY9BTtNk4Cxo/

Sydney public library creates a Flickr group for local festivals and collects photos from it – then sometimes gets permission to re-use.

New content should be released under Creative Commons licences. Also need to say when things are out of copyright and can be re-used.

NZ Public libraries – looked at what kids are doing at school and then engaging them with the library on local history connections. They then ran sessions on creating oral histories – aimed at connecting with the school work requirements – from a human point of view.

Australian National curriculum bringing about opportunities for libraries to engage with their local schools.

Library Camp 2012 Lightning Talks

 Ben – Embedded metadata in digital objects.

 What are libraries and museums doing? Not much. Librarians are committed to their end users and embedded metadata is an end user benefit. We are obsessed with our catalogue, but don’t add metadata to our digital objects. There is a whole stuff attached to the image when it is online, but need to make it downloadable with the object. Yes, its difficult and extremely challenging, but it is possible and it is invaluable.

http://regex.info/exif.cgi – tells you what metadata is in an image online.

Julia – Shameless self promotion.

 Don’t talk about ourselves enough in a positive light. Doing so brings you to amazing places. The thing to remember is to use your strengths – particularly make use of your PLN. Don’t hesitate, go for it, you never know what you will get out of it. Use your community and your interests. Find out more about what you want and then tweet, blog or write an article about it. You are worth the time and effort to do so. Above all, remember it is all up to you.

 Leonie – Money

 Public libraries often have great project ideas, bur not the money to do it. She won the Barrett Reid scholarship for studying young people spaces. Its worth putting in proposals to do a study tours, education courses or programs within your library. Great for PD. Also Churchill Scholarships, ALIA grants and awards, as well as grant applications. Your networks will help you to do the applications.

Amy – Amanda Palmer

 Knew Neil Gaiman was going to be in town, so emailed him and asked if he could come to the library. He said yes. Amanda Palmer emailed them to ask if she could perform at their library (they have a grand piano). Both artists blogged and posted etc about it and they were crammed to the rafters. The lesson – Ask. Its OK to try and fail. Social media was huge, particularly as they asked the artists only tweeted about the event just before it happened. It also helped to improve their social media followings, as those they promoted, promoted them back.

Sara – supporting education in combating social disadvantage.

Digital literacy is going to be big for libraries. To be digitally literate you have to have comprehension literacy and reading skills. Smith Family supports disadvantaged children in their education and a number of components in helping children to help each other improve their reading.

Jennifer – 3D printing

MakerBot 3D printing. You feed plastic through the top and layer by layer it makes up a shape, using glue guns. You can find plans on the web or make your own. You can make just about anything that can be made in plastic. Limit to 10x10x10 centimetres, although you can print in parts. You can also print in multiple colours. Built by engineers. Public libraries can have a role in this. Can get a demo at her library.

Carolyn – Innovation

Tom Peters has a series of videos on innovation on YouTube. Innovation is risky, but risk is not bad. Quite often it is good. It should not be avoided. You should identify it and then work out how to manage it. Innovation can be hard to recognise – its not always gadgets. The companies that we think of as innovative, don’t talk about being innovative. Their goals are focused and innovation is part of the toolset that helps them to achieve that. Innovation shouldn’t be a goal.

You can also check out summary notes on the Library Camp Oz blog (http://libcampoz12.blogspot.com.au/) and tweets on the Library Camp Oz Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/#!/LibCampOz).

The Internet did not kill print, TV killed it ……. in 1940. The Internet will save us from television. More time is spent on the Internet now, than the total amount of media consumption in 1940.

14 to 55 billion pages indexed by Google in 2 years. There is no keeping up with the growth. 

Web culture understands that its out there somewhere for free. It doesn’t care about legal and the only thing stopping people from getting it is the time taken to find it. What is being sold online is not access, its convenience.

1985 born,  its normal, ordinary and natural. 1965 its exciting, new, revolutionary. Before 1965 it against the natural order.

Older people are using it because its the only way of communicating with their grandchildren. Younger users are using the Internet in a completely different way – finding a document is an exercise in probability – they search for words that they will appear on the site they are looking for.

Memetics – memes can not be created on purpose, they have to grow organically. There is a lot out there and no one predicted them. egs Ryan Gosling and Cats 2011. Some memes are changing the world and they are global. A meme has a vector and a host, it is decoded into a host mind and then spread further.

Media is meant to be remixed – not a view held by intellectual property. Doesn’t stop it from being a problematic part of our society. SOPA was a bad attempt at trying to solve these problems.

When you download a copy of something from the web, you are taking a rubbing. You haven’t stolen it, remove it, its still there.

When you share a pattern, you don’t know what is going to happen to it. You can’t control it after you post. If you don’t want anything to happen to it, don’t post it.

Unauthorised duplication is not theft, it is just what it is. Sharing is not piracy. Its like saying eavesdropping is equivalent to armed robbery.

Once you purchased a container, you could do anything with it. Then late in 20thC, licences were brought in to bypass copyright. You can’t steal it if the person still has it after you take a copy.

Some information is valuable. There is a key economic fact – that the Internet does not break the law of supply & demand. If supply is high but demand is low, the price is low and vice versa.  The installation of a paywall, will drive your legitimate customers away. 

To make money, make things available at a decent price, with ease. Grow a big audience by giving things away then sell experiences, such as concerts, clothing etc. eg. Cory Doctorow has rights to ebooks without DRM – but even more money is being made on sales of hard copies. Jonathan Coulton – selling CDs, T-shirts and concert tickets, but his music is free.

Another business model is advertising. Its not new – its been with us on newspapers, television, radio etc. The cost of a newspaper does not pay for its production. Advertising created the free media. Is it such a bad thing to have ad-sponsored e-books?

Ebooks are artificially priced at the moment. Some publishers are testing out lower pricing to engage the impulse buyer and making a lot of money as a result. The bubble will burst soon and it things will change quickly.

Open Educational Resource movement is also going to change things. They are proud of the work they are doing at university, so they are pushing to release it publicly.

In this world, where content is released for free, how do artists and musicians make money? They don’t now. Sites like Kickstarter make the impossible possible. You may be paying for something virtual, but you are getting something physical in return.

Doing it right on the web means doing it DRM free.

 Bits have no value.

So, what’s left for libraries? Our secret weapon is sharing. Unless there is a bottomless pile of it. Sharing implies scarcity, which doesn’t apply to media. Lending collections such as telescopes etc. are a niche that libraries can tap into. Access to equipment and objects that they can’t get any other way.

How can we do things that have value for our community, when the things that we have done, no longer have value. It means being local. In the 21st century, we are taking our community to the world. We also need to produce content that others won’t and bring that to the world. This content will not exist unless we create it.

We need to give experiences that they can’t get anywhere else.  AADL has had a film-making workshop and an annual Lego creation event. They help attendees achieve and then get images on it on the web – not taking away the rights at any stage.

The library is where you spend your social capital usually. However, now when we run these types of events, it is somewhere you can earn social capital.

What would the library look alike when we spend half as much on our experiences, as we do on our collections. Things we can buy is going to decrease.

Had a tagging competition which ended up contributing 200,000 tags over the summer. they made it an open-ended game. Got asked, does the summer reading game end? So as it did, they launched two new continual games, which continue the game and the tagging process. In these games, there is no purpose to the earning of points, as they can’t spend them – but still they come and earn points. They use the catalogue and the web to solve these.

The cloud is not to be trusted. The library can be trusted and we can host, where the cloud disappears. We can be the place.

Libraries: we share stuff – stuff you want, you need, you made and you can stuff here.

Secret mission: fight for the user. Tell them what they can do with the media they download – they should be aware of their rights – fair use etc.

Catalogue is a register of all items found in the library. (showed Wikipedia definition – long). Told us Charles Cutter”s definition – incorporates what there is and where can I find it.

Who is the catalogue for? Our users, but not sure if it was always that way. Have lots of content to assist users to find what they want. Its also for inventory control – tells us loans, physical location and helps with acquisitions.

What do we catalogue? Physical items, databases, aggregations, web sites and items owned but held elsewhere? And it has changed over time. Since 2004, the ANZ expenditure on e-resources has climbed from 15 to 30% of budgets.

Special collections, serial collections are all digital and are being catalogued.

User behaviour – what is the easiest place to start research according to students? – Google.

So what is the catalogue becoming? Is it to provide access to library materials or just a place to collect metadata. Most catalogue data now comes from national agencies, libraries, publishers and commercial entities.

The standards of cataloguing are changing. RDA, based on FRBR principles, to replace AACR. It will bring different format of same title together. eg. dvd, books, notes etc. Recently announced that ALA will begin the massive transition away from MARC.

Catalogues inventory control purpose isloans – between 2004 and 2010, loans ffell from 24.5 million to 15 million.

What might we do? Keep the catalogue, continue to buy records, layer the catalogue with discovery layers, maintain loan systems, work with library vendors to improve systems. In other words, we can keep up with the times, moving along gently.

OR

We could stop copy cataloguing, stop focusing on details, point to records rather than buying or storing them, embrace new standards (and be cheerful about it), incorporate virtual and physical shelves in the virtual and physical worlds. Become super efficient and flexible.

We don’t do so well at getting knowledge of our virtual resources to our physical shelves.

OR

Ditch the catalogue as a tool for users, ditch it as an inventory control system, incorporate records for in-house physical material into discovery systems, get a simple inventory control systems for the decreasing physical purchases, make loans REALLY simple (or don’t lend the physical out of the building!)

The Internet of everything: linking the print and online collections – David Feighan and Sue Healey

Showed the “Internet of things” on YouTube. (IBM Social Media)

The internet of things is going to be big, to the point where there will be many more things on the internet than actual people on the internet. NIC sees it as a major disruptive trend by 2025. Raises a lot of privacy concerns etc. China has also identified it as a key strategic emerging industries for them.

First two areas that physical collections and spaces have gone virtual, have been via RFID and QR codes on their rooms. But will students use them? Surveyed them and found that at Year 7, 45% had smart phones, but Year 10 it was 83% and ubiquitous in Years 11 and 12. They showed a QR code and as long as they could say how they were used, they were defined as knowing what they were. It was over 70%.

The library space is being used so they are using QR codes to connect them to the online resources. On shelves, they have A4 size shelf talkers, which are themed and have a QR code which links to their online resources.

www.qrstuff.com Allows you to link to websites, Facebook, YouTube video, Google Maps location and many, many more. There are other sites for QR code generation and doing a site on YouTube will give you many videos of how QR codes are being used.

Near future? Using RFID and geospatial tagging will your phone show you where the items is?

And then let you touch on to check it out? Its not happening because we want them, but is actually being driven by the retail and entertainment sectors. But these developments can also lend themselves to libraries.

As we re-purpose our space as learning commons, how do we get those space on the internet?

Linking objects and people within spaces and games (Parallel Kingdom).

Change or fade away: school libraries need to change – Bronwyn Foxall – Abbotsleigh

School libraries are not immune to the challenges facing all libraries. The only way forward is to discover what your own community wants.

Why are librarians important in schools? What do you do that is so important that the school would suffer if you weren’t there.

Library functions are changing – AV is going digital, reducing number of books, empty spaces due to PC removal and more.

Surveyed students and stakeholders to find out what they could do to revision what they are doing. Main reason why students came to the library, to study alone, to research, to find a book, to attend a class and then to study in a group. Use of computers will die due to laptops for every student.

Asked them what spaces they needed? Quiet study was the biggest demand, and then individual spaces. Open ended questions biggest response was a request for a cafe. More demand for specific spaces – quiet study rooms, group study rooms, individual study space. They were also asking for more books, even more than requests for e-books and magazines etc.

In response they removed shelves to create discussion spaces, created quiet study rooms and a multimedia space – all of which have delighted students.

Need to keep rethinking the library facilities, but also the services. Used a fun film and library vouchers to reach Year 12s, added a discovery layer and federated search to their catalogue, library blogs, run competitions around the library using QR codes and the students have responded well.

Some of the things they want to be able to do:

• new furniture styles for collaborative learning

• add a bit of whimsy

• put some bookcases on the balcony with tables and chairs (WD books)

• funky shelving spaces

• different lighting styles

In order to survive, school libraries must be engaged in a continual process of assessment and evaulation.

Lots of information challenges to e-science:

1. eScience is built on a lot of data – it is smart data, not just because you can play with it using computers, but because of forthcoming technologies like semantic publishing, and computable. It not only comes as numbers, but intelligent, computable, with metadata.

2. eScience is more than a lot of data – it covers the entire research and development chain, enables integrated resource development and analysis and envisions an integrative infrastructure. Its computable knowledge – can have visualised searches, intelligent tracking, tech trends analysis. Its knowledge driven scientific discovery, workflow and problem solving. The whole discovery process then becomes knowledge driven.

3. eScience is a different information world? Its strategic innovation, interdisciplinary and translational research, its cooperative research, its data intensive knowledge discovery. Now serving R & I decision-makers, lab & project leaders, front-line researchers and engineers. Now scientists go from data to information to intelligence to a solution is happening on the go. They need scholarly publications, research data, applied and market data, applied market and social information and more.

4. A new approach is required. Library solution is no longer the user solution. Library can only build its contribution on users solutions. Users solutions are not data or collections, but R& problem solving solutions. Library should aim for high impact services.

Libraries as smart power for e-Science:

1. Re-purpose the research library: trends tracking, potential testing and priority selection. Not just data, but visualisation and presentation. If we miss these opportunities, we miss this trust and miss the future. Focus on R&D’s new and hurting knowledge bottlenecks – help them to do research better, but with added value. Knowledge as a service – science as service, take steps to make the knowledge into a live tool – smart data.

2. Smart reading for R&D. First look at how people consumer information. No longer linear, static and lonely or reactive. Now weak vs strong information – weak is information you don’t know and don’t know its relevance. Power browsing – key messages rather than linear reading. Strategic reading – fast scanning to extract and accumulate for building context, frameworks and direction. Looked at who is reading what – the higher the position, the more strategic, innovation, interdisciplinary and translational research. Need to provide a lot of information analysis and tools to do this.

3. Integrative knowledge support for R&D> need discovery, customised, embedded, analysis and preservation provenance. Which matches the R&D workflow.

4. Knowledge based collaborative R&D; networked-based knowledge experiments,not just resources, but tools, experts and specialists. Need the facilities, the rights, ability to experiment.

5. Capitalising on complexity of meta-knowledge – we help by building knowledge as a service. Provide knowledge on knowledge, on collaborating, on processes, structures and interactions. Its now a verb as well as a noun. It is live. To do so, need to be strong, have special expertise and organisation. Libraries can do this, but are not ready to do so quite yet. Vendors are already offering this type of service.

Because most researchers and students live over 1000kms away from the National Science Library, they have built a system where the information is pushed out to the users (who are all connected online). They are shifting to a R&D support service, which incorporates an integrated discovery service. They are experimenting with clustering,GIS and visualisation technologies to gather and explore diverse data resources from many institutions and websites. Put much more emphasis on building user environments.RH

Planning a China IR alliance, with other research institutions and also with European partners. They are supporting OA publishing and are a member of arXiv.org. They plan to be a central force in OA resources and policies.

Have fourteen teams working on Research Intelligence Services. Do regular R&D tracking, R &D structure and evolution analysis – using purchased tools and others they have developed themselves, Mapping of sciences and R&D roadmapping, Tech trends analysis – now a big part of what they do. They are developing computer-assisted integrated analysis generation, including automatic profiles, customised analysis, etc.

Also have embedded research support – they liase with their institutes, but not library or documente based. They are user centred. They are doing integrated resource development, helping their institutes to determine what information they need and how it should be organised.

Developing Knowledge platforms as an Academy wide initiative. By end of 2012, it will be live in 15 institutes, by 2012 in all 100 CASS institutes. This will include improved knowledge literacy, so that they not only know how to find the data.

Library will become an open innovation centre. From a library, to a knowledge co-laboratory? They are using the under-utilised library space for consultation, video conferencing, lectures, exhibitions, experiments, seminars and classes.

Challenges:

• technologies – types and integration

• staff – need a knowledge of R&D and tech, not just subject areas

• organisation – reversing pyramid structure – embedded knowledge specialists first

 Libraries are competing for the time of their local communities. They have to have a good knowledge of not only their current users, but also of whole community.

Commenced a period of substantial change, which moved it from a collection service to a dynamic community hub. The change process incorporated three key areas – new technologies, building design and staff work practices. All changes were in direct response to community needs and aspirations.

One such change was self-service system. Sydenham gave them the opportunity to trial RFID. They ended up moving their self-serve kiosks which initially were too far from staff assistance. With the new model of having the kiosks and staff assistance adjacent, they were able to increase self-serve loans from 40% to 95%.

Lessons learnt from this were used in the deconstruction of the desk at Deer Park Library. That space ended up being more flexible and has since 2008, been moved and rearranged several times.

In 2010, they developed a customer self-sort returns system – in conjunction with their RFID vendor. It took some time, but it works and it works in an area where 1/3 of the residents have low literacy. They also changed back end functions to help the flow – including more floating collections, express holds and increased loan limit (without telling the users). Around 65% of items go through customer self-sorted returns. They have consisently maintained 95% of loans and 65% of returns through self-service.

Greatest fear was job loss. That hasn’t happened – instead, they have increased hours and got additional staff hours to support those extra hours. Staff have moved from passive to active customer support service – they have to be encouraged and trained in this. They have also doubled the amount of programs they offer, many focused on lifelong learning. Many of these programs have been delivered with community partners and many have a focus on literacy, reading culture, social connectedness and employment.

Staff are heavily involved in developing programs, through a variety of teams and management groups, where discussions are open and staff are encouraged to contribute to future directions and decision making.

In 2005, they had 35 PCs library service wide. Now they have 75 and have the highest PC bookings for a public library service in Victoria. They have designed spaces to accommodate PC and games use. Youth were using them almost like an extended living room and doing so together.

For young people, the spectator space is just as important as the gaming space, so at Deer Park, they have made the space and the furniture to fit this need.

Learned that Flexible Design is required, because your users will be the ultimate designers, the IT department relationship is vital, continuous improvement through incremental budgets and small wins help build resilience.

The big bang: establishing the Victorian Government Library Service – Laurie Atkinson and Bernie Lewin

Government libraries in Victoria have expanded and contracted over the years, quite like our universe. At present, it has again contracted, from multiple government department libraries to a single library service working across 15 departments.

Why did it happen? To give greater access to resources, equitable service across government, reduce the cost of providing services, reduce the effort, delays and costs associated with departmental restructures, professional development for staff. Although government librarians were quite informally collaborative, it has now been formalised, with all library staff now working for the Department of Treasury and Finance, although based in the various government departments.

The Vision – shared service provider and clients linked to resource identification, resource procurement and collection management – which result in access to the right information at the best price, for library users.

It has been a huge journey, taking more than 10 independent library services, over 15 sites, managed by over 50 staff, serving a workforce of 50,000 and with a mission to build one high-powered streamlined information machine and do so within a couple of years. Time invested in developing a common lexicon made further integration much easier. Even the range of roles that librarians undertook in their departments was very broad.

They had to integrate 40 in-house catalogues and related databases across a huge range of software and platforms. Ranged from large to small services, running from InMagic and Lotus Notes to Symphony and many more.

The vision was one interface for 50,000 staff, which incorporated the catalogue, inter-library loans and enquiry management, which had to include both physical, electronic and subscriptions services and had comprehensive reporting. No single vendor could do it, so they ended up with Sirsi Dynix for the system with extra modules, including Serials Solutions and Ref Tracker. Achieved it in a ridiculous timeline, but only achieved with a funding extension.

Some of the difficulties included:

• departmental IT policies and setups made some changes more difficult and couldn’t always been foreseen

• funding cycles and resource access to a single government library service has had its challenges with licensing etc

• conflict with IE 6 needed for in-house software, but didn’t work well with SD discovery layer until one of the VGLS tweaked the style sheets

The implementation team was resourced internally, with backup staff were appointed temporarily to backfill them. Advantage that the team was totally involved in the change process. Libraries were clustered by subject area, then by process.

Staff communication was vital. Had regular management meetings and regular staff meetings which seemed to come too fast, but whose value was outstanding. Heavily used a wiki for staff communication and has a blog for news, calendar and wiki pages for whatever they needed. Incorporated a Q&A section – so that staff knew what they had to have done and by when.

Lessons learned: still learning, system integration is incomplete, a the bleeding edge of Whole of Government, the data is still a problem. Opportunities: scalable business model, stakeholder management. Integration is the way of the future.

Engaging student spaces: Library in the Deakin Online Learning Environment – Sharee Crocker

A Learning Management System is the most efficient way to get resources to students. Libraries need to be in that space, to help students get the resources they need.

Because of the plethora of resources that we offer and that are available on the web. Its all very confusing for students. Despite all their efforts, some students don’t attend library classes and are sometimes not embedded into courses. Even if they do attend a course, they may walk away still confused. They may not know about library guides, never ask or never come to the physical building.

How do they reach these students? LMS is used as a central teaching space and provides online learning anywhere any time. Library resources alongside unit specific learning materials – give seamless access to customised unit specific information and necessary to encourage searching beyond the web. If the extra information is one click way, they will use it. Its our responsibility to customise the user experience, designed to connect students in a familiar environment.

In 2010 – Deakin transitioned to Desire to Learn (D2L) LMS from Blackboard. Transition was a staged process over 12 months. Library began by embedding a permanent link to the top menu bar on D2L. Needed more. They then embedded the core library resources for each course, including databases, library guides and journal titles, into the D2L page for that course.

They also created a Library Showcase, which displayed all library resources. Anyone can see the page and if requested by faculty, a resource on this page can be imported into a course page, for easy access to those students.

A widget was created to further enhance access. Faculties were very supportive, so one was developed for each faculty, in conjunction with faculty staff and the LMS vendor. The content in each widget could include e-readings, library eresource guide, specific databases, ebooks, ejournals and external websites. Every widget also included a library catalogue search box. They started with 4 widgets in Trimester 1.However, 60 units going live in Trimester 2 meant a huge increase in the creation of customised course specific widgets.

However, with the need for 1200 widgets eventually, the view changed. Instead of course specific widgets, they moved to 85 discipline specific widgets, with a limit of 5 links – chosen by faculty. However, every course widget also includes a catalogue search box. Every student will have access to these.

Used dynamic linking that enabled the widget to recognise the course and then link to the appropriate e-resources. All widgets also link to at least one library resource guide.

 Once upon a time………… there was a princess, the princess loved books, but the princess also loved computers – enamoured with the digital, loves media on all sorts of computers. Her media is everywhere and goes with her everywhere she goes. She doesn’t understand what “we don’t have it” means. She didn’t understand videotapes and the requirement to rewind before watching, it was broken technology to her.

 Our users expect our services to reflect the experiences they are getting from external services, such as Amazon and Netflix.

 No surprise that smart phones outnumber computers. It is a bit of a surprise that it is the same worldwide.

 Linux is less common, than even iOS, which is on the iPad. Australia has over 100% cell phone penetration and nearly ½ of the population have smart phones. The access this gives these people is transformative. In the US, penetration is over 100%, but smart phones is 35%. Mobile phones are the fastest spreading communication technology in the world.

 84% of Australian online adults who have mobile phones use them for more than voice. Not just SMS either.

He works at the University of Tennessee – Chattanooga – has 10,000 students. A good representation of a mid-sized school in the US. 82% of students access their resources online – the other 18% in person. Gate count – 428,032. Website – 1,973,612. Think about how many people are serving in your buildings and then how many are serving your website.

 They can measure on campus use. 18.25% using Macs, 39.32& using Windows devices and 39.31% using mobile devices. 2.89% using games consoles and the remaining mostly Linux. So what are the most common mobile operating systems. These includes 5 Nooks, 41 Kindles, 69 Kindle Fires, over 1000 Androids, 770 iPod Touches, 839 iPads and 2173 iPhones.

 Of the Australian smart phone users, over 50% are using iPhones.

 What are the campus users doing on their devices? 36.5% Netflix. 17.8% Flash video over Http. 11.2% Http – standard web traffic. 11.1% http – media stream. 65.4% – of all traffic is streaming video. How much is coming from the library? People aren’t coming to us for this stuff anymore.

They have this as Chattanooga has the fastest Internet in the US and its cheap. $300 per month for a Gig of bandwidth. This is coming everywhere though. Media streaming is just the beginning.

 What does a post PC world look like? Not just talking about mobile. Its about everything that connected to the Internet. The Internet of things that talk to each other is coming.

 In ten years, we went from iMac to iPhone, from 2000 to 2010. Moore’s Law gets us this – every 18 months get twice as fast and half as expensive. This is what 10 years of Moore’s Law looks like.

 We have single-purpose devices – the Kindle is a great example – it is great at reading books, but terrible at everything else. We have multi-purpose devices – such as the iPad or Kindle Fire. They become anything you want them to become. Harder to understand how we deliver content to these devices because they are infinitely flexible. 55.28 million iPads sold in the three years since its launch. In 2008, Apple sold more iPhones than in 2007. In 2009, 2010 and then again 2011, they sold more than in all previous years combined. In 2011, Apple has sold 315 million devices running iOS. This is the platform we need to pay attention to, because this is what they are buying.

 PC is an example of a mediated interface – you interact with it via a keyboard or a mouse. With a touch screen, there is a direct interaction. Touch is something that everyone understands as a means of interface. What have we done for our library that uses touch as the interface. Its the easy one.

Microsoft Surface Table 2 is out now and that’s another big change coming.

 Xbox Kinect is another change coming. It controls via gesture. People are building it into laptops and will be coming to tablets. It will be commonplace within the next three years. We should be paying attention to this.

 Voice control was envisioned by Apple in the late 1980s and is now happening with smart phones. Another area to be watching.

 Jawbone bracelet monitors your daily movement and links to your phone to provide a daily report. It is becoming more widespread because the cost of sensors is dropping, making it much easier. Twine is a small ambient sensor which started as a Kickstart project – it can be left somewhere to sense changes and then contact you. eg. Lets you know when washing machine stops, if your aquarium leaks, if someone raids the pantry – its a generic device. It could text you, tweet you, when your programmed event happens. We could have them on our shelves, to record when someone moves a book! They can be bought right now, but are probably 3-5 years away from being robust.

 “Predictions are hard – particularly when they are about the future” – Yogi Bera.

 Showed Arthur C Clarke video about the difficulties of predicting the future. If what he says sounds ridiculous, its more likely to be true.

 Showed video on flip scanning from University of Tokyo – just flip through the pages and it is digitised. Can scan a 200 page book in about one minute, uses lasers to de-skew and uses a usual camera and a infra-red camera. The professor in charge sees this eventually in mobile phones. What happens when a user can just walk in with their phone and walk out with everything we own. Samsung Transparent Smart Window – light transmissive, unless you want it to be. Coming out later this year – already in mass production. 3D printing – Maker Bot already has a depository online of things to print – can buy one for $1750 in the US. This is an awesome opportunity for libraries to get into, before they become affordable to the average consumer.

 “Rainbows end” by Vernor Vinge is a MUST read – he describes an academic library after the human race is rendered super-human.

 There are heads up displays in goggles and glasses already available. LEDs on contact lenses are already in development.

 We are experiencing temporary INCOHERENT RAGE – Please stand by!

 We need to be thinking long term – Moore’s Law makes everything cheap eventually. They get so cheap that they end up being disposable. We need to be ready for when that happens.

 We need to be looking outside ourselves. Our issues are not unique and there are solutions out there that can work for us as well. Others are doing better than we are.

 We need to be thinking about mobile first and not fourth or fifth. “Adaptive web design” by Aaron Gustafson. Need better metrics and prepare for the data flood – its not about circulation or gate count. There are other things that are much more important.

 Roger’s adoption curve for adoption of new technology. Not all libraries need to be on the cutting edge. We need to be where our users are. If our patrons are late majority, we need to be early majority. Knowing where our users are, should drive where we our library is.

 Douglas Adams – anything invented after you’re 35 is against the natural order of things – unfortunately this is the group that most librarians are in – we need to change this.

 Clay Shirkey – tools dont get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.

 Henry Ford – if I’d asked them what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.

 Steve Jobs – It isn’t the consumer’s job to know what they want.

 The best way for us to predict the future is to create it. Libraries need to be involved in this. The future needs us.

 griffey@gmail.com

jasongriffey.net

 Questions:

 We are needed? Please elaborate.

Patrons bypass us for resources. But they don’t use the web well – they need us to help them to discover and assess appropriate online resources. We also have a local role – not just community centre, but cultural memory – about the objects for which the community cares.

 Experiences cause expectations. How do you manage your undergrads who are early adopters and academics who are laggards?

We serve populations as best we can by segmenting them. Different services for different users. “but those people are going to die” – plan for the future, which means not planning for those who won’t be around for it.

 Are staff ready and willing for the post PC world?

Fortunate to work in a change oriented library – even if have had times where people have been dragged kicking and screaming. However, if they won’t change, then maybe they need to be elsewhere. Cant let the contrarians keep us from the future.

 Breakdown of remote to on campus students?

About 1200 remote – but large growth in off campus users, which will continue.

 NBN impact besides video?

Communication, learning etc. Skype is a trivial example but most relevant. Streaming media ranges widely between learning through classes to watching cat videos on YouTube.

 Concern about social control issue and privacy?

Should get over it because its almost about to go ahead away. Privacy is something we need to frame differently – users should have control over it themselves. Dont yet have a culturally good way to express the changes brought about by ‘things like CCTV, biometrics, social networking and more – much of which will have to be controlled legally. Going to have a hard time with personal privacy over the next ten years.

 When our free broadband is no longer required – where does our careful training go?

Our careful training will be used elsewhere – collection development – human filtered is still better than machine filtered.

I just finished reading a post by Andy Burkhardt at Information Tyrannosaur which got me pondering. I’m only new to Andy’s blog, but I highly recommend you check it out, if you haven’t already.  Entitled Creating Meaning for Library Users, it took some great ideas from a TED talk by Experience Designer Nathan Shedroff.

What caught my attention however, was his closing paragraph.

“We are not simply delivering access to e-books or databases. We are not only conducting reference interviews or doing information literacy. We are doing something much more important than that.”

He’s referring to all the things that libraries do for their users, that is meaningful to their users. The things that keep them coming back for more, that leave them satisfied each time they leave our buildings.

It’s not new. We all know the future of libraries is not just tied up in our collections or our roles as information intermediaries.

But what are those things we do, that address the ‘meaning’ that our users are seeking. And what are the things we want to do that we aren’t doing yet and why aren’t we?

At my library, we have had an amazing increase in the number of people wanting to use the space for study this year. Not necessarily the collection, but definitely the wi-fi, the tables and in a lot of instances, some quiet. Unfortunately, we are not too well set up for the latter, with every inch of floorspace being used and being a public library, more often than not, its far from quiet. Plans are being made to fix this, but it all takes time and money. In the meantime, we do what we can. So one of the things we would like to do, is to be able to provide that ‘quiet’ study space, whilst not becoming the ‘shhh’ police that we all abhor (and don’t have the time for).

I want our users to know and remember the services we have that suit their needs, so that they can access them when they need or want them. Unfortunately, we can only tell them about those services when they join and when they ask, otherwise we can’t make them remember. Its very frustrating too, I can tell you.

I want more people from our community to come in and discover the treasures that we offer, in facilities, programs, collections and more. Our communities are great supporters of libraries, but nowhere near enough of them are members.  Our marketing programs are great, but somehow people still don’t actually make it into our buildings or onto our websites, to learn more and make use of the great things we have on offer. If only there was a way to make a library card the latest hip trend, one that never goes out of fashion……

What do you want for your users? What can you do to make it happen? I don’t know what I can do to make my wishes reality, but I am going to work on finding out.

Happy New Year!

So what did we decide were beyond the basics?  To start with, a comprehensive knowledge of your collection. Is the item being requested, something that your library would hold? I know that we don’t collect tertiary textbooks, so save both myself and the library user time when I can say that straight away. Having said that, there have been times when I was sure we wouldn’t have something, but the enquirer pushed and I searched and we did have it. So being aware that I am not omnipotent about everything our library has, I usually take a moment to do at least a quick search just to confirm. That search can also help me to determine if we have something else, which although not asked for, could be useful.

What’s the difference, if I’m going to search anyway? If I am reasonably sure we won’t have something, my search will be relatively quick and cursory (but thorough). If I think we may have something, I’ll spend more time trying to find it.

Leading on from that, is knowing where to refer people to when you can’t help them with their inquiry. On one day at our library, I referred different library users to a university library, local historical society, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the local community information centre and their local Council.  That day combined two sets of knowledge, that come with experience.

The first is particularly important in public libraries, that being local knowledge. Who are the information/service providers in your area, where are things located etc. If you don’t know, you should at least need to know where you can find out – eg. Council Community Directories are an invaluable source, or who on your staff  to ask, as they have that knowledge.

The second comes with experience. One of the questions asked that day related to data about a particular health condition and its prevalence in Australia. Having worked with Australian Bureau of Statistics data for many years, I was able to match the enquirer with this resource, for which he was extremely grateful.  Our experience, both within libraries and outside them, is invaluable in our roles as information seekers on our own behalf, or for others.

It also helps to have a bit of general knowledge about absolutely everything!  I know it seems like a bit much, but if you have a general idea that C is a computer programming language and not just a letter of the alphabet or that flashing is to do with building and not just a criminal offence, it can make finding the information your enquirer seeks, much quicker and more accurate. And if you don’t know or are vague about what they are talking about, do a quick background search for context (Wikipedia is often great for this), so that you are least looking in the right area when you do go searching.

Unfortunately, the enquirer does not always know what they are seeking, or know how to best articulate it.  So although the basic reference interview is requisite, a few more savvy questions that get down to the nitty gritty (with skills again picked up from experience – both life and library), can make all the difference in getting to a successful result.

And finally, refine, recheck and refine, recheck. Really ask the questions about whether the enquiry has been satisfied. Or at least, use your people skills to figure out if they have had enough of you and would you please go away, lol.

The quick answer is never.

Let me clarify. Any new service, equipment, initiative, procedure etc being started in a library has an implementation program. The implementation part has a finish date, but the new ‘whatever’ it is, shouldn’t.

For every new thing that comes into our libraries, there should be a monitoring and assessment program that is ongoing, either until the day it dies or is replaced, or otherwise forever. Not only does this help you to assess whether it’s being used and whether its an effective use of your staffing hours and resources, but only it gives you useful data for demonstrating your library’s worth.

On a side note, the same goes for professional development. It also does not end when you have finished your qualification. It goes on and on and on and on and on……

This question also has a second answer.  It is also no. But it should sometimes be yes.

If we had these ongoing monitoring programs (and in some instances, even when we do), we need to determine when the point is reached that running such a program/equipment/service is no longer justified, in whatever terms have been set. So when we start, we need to determine what will be considered a success and what will be required to write off the project as completed once and for all.

We are good at starting things in libraries, not always so good at finishing them. And there are many things we do that require no finishing, but do need to be demonstrated as having worth and ongoing assessment will give us that. In fact, we need to be shouting out about them from the rooftops, but that’s another issues altogether.

But there are things we do, that do need to end and we need to let them go.  That can be hard, so work out what it will need to look like for that to happen and we might just find it easier to do it when the time comes.

Thanks everyone for following patiently during the last 30 days of blogging. Looking back, I never thought I could have so much to say in this forum. Not all of it was good, I freely acknowledge.

Surprisingly, I find that there are a couple of things I had planned on, but didn’t blog about in this month, so there will be more to come, just not every day, (sigh of relief for everyone!) and probably not even this week.

But I thank you for joining me on this ride and for your comments, they are both truly appeciated.

Michelle