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.

Will Donovan from Will Donovan and Mark Watson from Design Providence.

 Mobile and social media – what’s all the fuss?

 37 million iPhones sold in the last quarter in 2012. More than 15 billion apps downloaded – 11 billion for Android. 3 billion iPad apps downloaded. Android now has about 50-60% of market, Apple around 30%. End of last year, smart phone sales overtook PC sales – 488 million smart phones sold, compared to 415 PCs.

 Showed Socialnomics video – related to the book of the same name.

 Social media is not about technology, its about relationships, commerce, memories and much, much more. Over ½ of world population is under 30. Social media has overtaken porn as the number 1 Internet activity. If Facebook were a country, it would be the 3^rd largest in the world. 50% of mobile traffic in the UK is for Facebook. 69% of parents are friends with their children in social media. $6 billion spent on virtual goods. Wikipedia in print would be 2.25 million pages long and take over a century to read.

www.socialnomics.com

 Social media trends 2012:

• Convergent emergence – mobile and billboards – bringing your services together and across platforms

• Cult of influence – Klout – what influence do you have online?

• Gamification nation – incentivising your users

• Social sharing – getting your reviews and publications out through social media

• Social television – Q&A (ABCTv) – panel involvement via Twitter

• Micro economy – Kickstarter – people funding other people to create new ideas

 Trends for libraries for 2012

• Mobile friendly websites

• Using YouTube for marketing and education

• Using social media to educate

• Google+ usage will increase, but Facebook will still rule

• Create mobile apps for various uses – not the website

• More services via mobile – due to database vendors

• Goodreads and Library Thing will be used by more libraries as tools, reviews and locating

• Adapt more open source programs

• Online gaming for marketing and education

• More use of Google apps

 86% of people are using their mobile devices whilst watching TV.

 Facebook has become bigger than porn, for the first time ever.

 Three trends that change business – Mobile, Social and Cloud Computing. (Forbes) Its personal and its ubiquitous. Its the new world of services.

 If your site is doing bad, maybe its just not engaging the right way.

Paper.li – social newspaper, for a topic or cause, curated and free flowing. Yammer – private social network (started like Twitter, more like Facebook now). Meetup – social network for groups that have events.

Design process:

Design is messy – no hard and fast way – “This is service design thinking”.

From research (uncertainty) to concept (patterns) and prototype (insights), through to design (clarity/focus).

Designers use inductive thinking – they make observations, find patterns, make tentative hypotheses and create theory – as the process to solve a problem or to create a service.

Discover (design, research, methods) – Define (personas, journeys, maps) – Develop (scenarios, role play, story board) – Deliver (document, concept. (Double diamond design process)

Discover – observe, question (surveys and interviews), map

Define – interpret, establish scope, needs, delineate problems

Develop – work though concepts to establish the appropriate action (journey mapping, story boarding etc)

Deliver – document and build

WORKSHOP – My group decided to work on an actual problem. One of our team has a great store of atmospheric and oceanographic data which is underutilised as it isn’t well known outside the university.  We determined that potential users included scientists, corporations, government, educators, students and researchers. These people all required quick and easy access to such data. Our solution to ‘spread’ the word was to create a Wikipedia article on the repository, which would include snippets of data from the database and a YouTube channel which would show videos of how the data was collected and used.  This would help make it more findable through web searches. We also determined to improve SEO on the website and to offer RSS feeds to the data, to make it more findable and more useful to those who could benefit from it. 

How we did this?

Scoping – define your challenge

Ideation and Concepting

Prototyping

Deliver

 Phase 1 – explore the problem, the challenges and the conventions that you are currently in

• what is the problem opportunity

• who are the users (personas)

• what are they trying to achieve (scenarios)

• concept/storyboard/journey

Phase 2 – wireframe – prototype

• test

• amend

• test again

• deliver

Rules of engagement

• yes and…. (build on what the other person said)

• defer judgement (don’t get caught in arguments, move on)

• go for quantity (share what you do)

• one conversation at a time

• encourage wild ideas

• build on the idea of others

• stay focused on the topic

• be visual

Open share what you know:

• what do you know about social media and mobile

• what tools have use used and pros and cons

Brainstorm the services and challenges now:

• what services do you offer

• who are your users/visitors and their needs

• Visitor + Need = Insight

Create a “How might we”problem statement

Many ways to approach new projects. It is important to collaborate. You don’t need to be an expert designer to innovate. Have a content strategy – be a content expert.

The reference librarian in me likes being able to look things up at the spur of the moment.  The nerd in my just likes having the internet available to me, whatever the reason, everywhere I go (ISP/Phone provider allowing that is).

As these sorts of devices proliferate, my library has headed down the road that many have, of providing our content in a mobile accessible format. Its just basic at the moment, with links to mobile accessible versions of our branches and opening hours, our catalogue and account logins, our calendar of events etc.  Our library system vendor has an eyephone app, so it links to that as well.   Its a work in progress and its live, so it will be interesting to see how it is used.

Our website detects when a request for it is being made by a mobile device and it automatically delivers the mobile version. That’s great and I am pretty sure most mobile accessible websites work the same way.  From statistics we know that the library items we have on our mobile site are the most used, but they are not the only ones used. So we have a link to the desktop version of our website for those who are seeking other content.

You can imagine my frustration then, when I have gone to do something similar on other mobile sites – get to content that is not on the website’s mobile version, but is on their main site, only to find that I can’t. There have been at least two sites recently that I have ended up having to wait until I got to a desktop computer to access the content that I couldn’t from my phone.

A lesson learned for us.

The other lesson we are learning at the moment is considering how much of our website content needs to be there and if it stays, can it be into a mobile accessible format. But that’s ongoing, so stay tuned……

What sort of mobile accessible website delights or disasters have you come across?

Stephen Abram – The future: Frankenbooks, social collaboration and learning on steroids

We have right on our side, we know that  learning matters.

Sweet Mona Lisa smile with bubble saying Moron – over the heads of people who say that libraries are no longer needed. If you confuse having libraries with having know-how then you are mistaken. Know how counts, not know that. Its the know how that matters, the professional skills. As content becomes more accessible, we are drowning people in know that.

We all start with Google, because it does a great job at who, what, where, when. It sucks at how and why. Drug info online is provided by drug companies – if even its not their website.  Should we be happy with only that information being acceptable?

We are not a scalable solution for small questions. Google answers more questions in one day than all the librarians do in 25 years.

We only get so many once in a lifetime chances to do great things. Internet and we did. Mobile and social are our opportunities.  Biggest negotiations are in copyright – worldwide, telling us what we can do with information and taking away rights that we already have.

Is it the end of libraries as we know them? Hope so, at least the public perception of us as big warehouses. Google adjusts their results if it comes through a campus (geo-tagging), so the results reach that lucrative market. How much money do we make out of our searching?

We need to be defending the right to read, not the book. Defending toxic glue, human cells etc – its the memory that it evokes, not the smell itself. Can’t defend libraries over librarians, should be about the community spaces.

What will the roles be for libraries and librarians?

Has been a lot of change in the early part of the century, in the 20s and 30s. We had an infrastructure shift in the last 20 years, but it wasn’t a major change, that is coming.

As we move forward, we don’t know what the right answer is. We don’t know what learning is going to do, but we know that humans will be involved and the best way is to PLAY. Watching just doesn’t work. For those librarians who don’t connect on social networks, you are missing out on what is happening with your major market. Libraries are social institutions are should be on social networks. By not being there, we are not connecting with our clients, we are choosing to be transactional rather than transformational.

So what is changing – everything! We are connected to the world. We have to be smarter, nimble and more connected. The tools available now can make this happen.

Librarians are being the glue in communities of practice in very innovative areas including health and technology. Feeding in information as it is needed. We need to be in the spaces and being the glue – delivering the content at point of need.

School libraries are the best improver of school test scores, apart from parents reading to their child.  (25%) School/public library partnerships increase score by 5%+.  Libraries and information content and technology leadership are critical to Higher Ed.

Its not about what you find, librarians are about understanding what you find when you search.

Communities with libraries as an investment receive very high ROI – average 650%.

Most library content is organised like grocery stores – both in our physical and virtual spaces. How do libraries package our content in ways that our users want. Its getting harder to separate out content and making it easily findable for those who want it.

Librarians play a vital role in building the critical connections between information, knowledge and learning. There are 7 different learning styles – we need to be presenting our content in those different styles. We are text based, which isn’t even the most common learning style.

The elephant in the room is how do we deal with the depth of people and their styles. Do our collections support how they take in content.

Need to be collaborating across institutions, not competing against them.

Strategy is a choice. Emboldened librarians are the key – try things out with little projects.

The Internet and technology have now progressed to their infancy – they are toddlers.  We need to find our voice.

Should we be letting our technology dictate what we can or can’t access via our devices? We are about freedom to read – but that should mean freedom to read whatever we want!

We should be talking to the people we are uncomfortable with in our communities – its from them that we will learn the most. We are very comfortable talking to people who are similar to us. You may find that these are your best market.
If we want to serve all, its not just about reading, we need to support the culture, the people and their learning styles, not just their reading habits alone.

People are changing – IQ is up overall, increased educational attainment, playing video games improves brain development, device proliferation, sectors are very tech dominated, reading is up, library use up particularly due to e-books, ebook sales higher than print.

Need to be aware of eye movements- millennials are O frame, gen Xers are F frame. Need to ensure that our services are meeting the needs of our users, not our own needs.

Can libraries keep up with change? Formats have died before and we can deal with the death of books as we have survived the death of other formats.

Re-intermediation – how do we put librarians back into the space. Trust yourself to make a difference and have an impact. Don’t roll over and play dead – challenge false assumptions.

Two kinds of librarians – those who just watch and those who get involved. If we are to survive, we need to be the latter. We need to talk about our value, communicate better, advocate for ourselves and our users, market better.

The power of libraries is not information, it’s clarification. It is the value we deliver.

Have great library projects, but then we take the personality out of it – Inside a dog is an exception.
(only librarians will argue over spine labels rather than the content of a book)

Questions:
We need social connections which are both deep and superficial, to make changes in our communities.  So we need things like both Twitter and Facebook.

Social media @ Deakin – Kat Clancy
The key to using Twitter is following the right people. @sabram is a good person to follow. There are plenty of librarians to follow and many more people depending on your interests.

Yammer – has been used by Deakin for the last 2 years, but only seeing good results in the last few months, with a big take-up by library staff. Yammer is for private communication within an organisation or between pre-designated groups. Its Enterprise social software which enables communities – allows external groups to connect as well, if  you choose.

Similar to a forum, but easier to use. Can tag topics, include attachments, social bookmarking, integrates with Twitter or reply using email or SMS and apps on various devices, can be customised and has security features.
Deakin using Yammer to share info within work groups – between different areas of university – between students and alumni, problem solving, having questions answered, networking, events, polls, staff focus.

Deakin has Facebook page rather than group, more functionality, better promotion and more public. Got more likes when advertised on their website. Have users posting to their page.

Dealing with social media – you will receive negative feedback – deal with them as you would normally, you may have to deal with inappropriate comments and engage. Don’t have to be formal, works better if you are casual.

Dos and Don’ts for social media:

• Do be informative – tell what you are about
• Don’t be a parrot – will lose followers doing this
• Do make a tradition – eg. follow Friday, Wednesday resource of the week
• Don’t neglect replies – engage with your users, don’t be there just to be there
• Do call for action – use ‘like this status” – it gets you great feedback
• Don’t rely on text alone – photos are a great tool
• Do have a crisis plan – be ready for negative and inappropriate comments
• Don’t be impolite – commonsense, same as dealing with user in person or on phone

www.facebook.com/deakinlibrary
@deakinlibrary

Questions:
How much time do you spend monitoring and answering questions?
Kat checking twitter when checking her own account. Facebook is getting checked first in the morning, then 2 – 3 times during the day. Working on getting people who can answer the questions, there on social networks, so that it becomes part of their workflow. Are working on a social media policy at present. Getting a question a day during peak times, around 3 a week other times.

Aggregation services?
They monitor mentions of Deakin Library as twitterers won’t always put the @ tag in their tweets. Tweet Deck is the aggregator she uses.  It enables her to check tweets, mentions, direct messages and searches in one screen. Hoot Suite is an aggregator which includes both Facebook and Twitter.

How often do you tweet?
Most often post things which link to a news item.  Have put up fun things, like Old Spice ad library adaptation and some things about the University too. Uni has presences now, but is very formal. Need to put personality into what you do in social media.

Deakin’s e-book device loan trial – Sarah Sherman
E-books were useful for their users because they were available immediately, 24/7 access, portable. For the library, immediate access, less space, cheaper etc. Big growth in e-book content in the last 8 years.  Now have 125,127 e-books.

Expect tipping point from print to e will be in the next year or so.

Acquiring e-books via patron driven purchasing model (EBL), subscription to packages, publisher packages, individual title purchases, gratis (mainly government publications).

e works for Deakin, as it allows equity of access and flexible learning, have great support and they can trial new resources.  But more could be done…..

2010 – what did they know about students mobile technology use?  No iPads, netbooks and smart phones increasingly popular.

Educause study of undergraduate students and information technology 2010. Laptop is already highest percentage, with Internet capable handheld device more popular than desktop computers.

Kept all this in mind when looking at which e-reader to buy. Pre-iPad, so considering their requirements, including price, existing market share, content available (free and paid), connectivity, battery life and general usability.

Originally tried Iliad, Eco reader and Kindle.  FIrst has gone out of business now, Eco not large market share, so Kindle was chosen.

Project brief – considered: content, how many, size, security, promotion and license issues.  Bought 15 devices of varying sizes, split between 4 campuses. Bought cases from store and placed 3 fiction and 3 non-fiction titles on each.  Included conditions of use, FAQ, removed charging cord. Amazon approved use, as long as individual content was bought for each device.

Benefits of pilot – gaterhing information on the scholarly application of it, raise awareness of e-reader technology, promote the library as a leader in new technology/change/ideas, provide information to the Uni community on these devices.

Mostly positive response to the trial. Some issues included: not including cable so users couldn’t download more content, no holds allowed on the devices, unfulfilled fear that users would register the devices to their own Amazon account – didn’t happen.

General feedback – more textbooks – just weren’t available, choice of content – wanted more – can now email their team once they have the Kindle and suggest for purchase, colour – e-Ink is easier on eyes for sustained reading, so not available, touch screen – all want to pinch, drag and drop.

Issues with lending technology included: laptops or net books are possible, check your applications (some licences restrict it so cant lend device with software loaded on it), they can be useful even if you can”t lend them – testing, tech zone for play. What are the devices offering – tools, content, portability, productivity, iPads for mobile/roving reference, iPad touch for shelvers who work night shifts – for quick ref help, provide flexibility and choice for our users.
Other things to think about? Who will look after the devices – charging batteries, setting up  wireless etc. Who will – pay for apps and connectivity, administer authentication and subscription logins, manage content. Who provides training, instructions in best use, repair and replace and the list goes on.

Amazon sold more ebooks than print in 2010. Publishers ebook policies will affect use – loans between devices, loans from libraries etc are all in flux.

Have tried some more devices – Cybook (loaned from vendor) wouldn’t sync with their laptops and wouldn’t bookmark or highlight. Also looking at Kobo, which is slow and doesn’t have a dictionary.Now looking at tablet devices including the Handii tablet – heated up too much and short battery life, hard to read, Samsung Galaxy Tab (runs on Android) – limited apps and no e-Ink, iPad – no eInk and have to buy the quality eBook apps and just a bit too big. (want something between iPad and Galaxy Tab). More new devices coming out – Cisco Cius, BeBook Neo, Microsoft may be working on something, Kno. Didn’t try out Nook.

Ideal e-device:

• not locked to a single source
• able to handle multiple formats
• multi-functional
• web-enabled
• wireless
• run multiple programs
• colour and touch screen
• long battery life
• lightweight

Til that happens its about the Apps. There are apps for Kobo, Kindle, Sony, Nook, Martview, Borders and Stanza.
They may still go down the Netbook/Laptop path in the meantime.

Showed the PushPopPress ebook demo that has been getting a lot of attention lately: check it out at http://www.pushpoppress.com/

Future long term: ebooks in the cloud.
Showed Google e-books promo -http://youtu.be/ZKEaypYJbb4. Business model not out yet, but will be using HTML 5 enalbing them to use video. They have already signed up top 400,000 publishers worldwide.

Questions:
iDevices used by staff ARE heavily secured so that they have the same standard operating environment – no customising by library staff allowed.

Each device has its own Kindle account. Content is purchased using a university credit card for the Kindle and purchase orders for the iPad.

Came across a few geographic restrictions on the Kindle.

e-Paper, print disappears in temperatures under 30 degrees. (Steve Abram)

Exploring ways to spread OSS through public libraries – Open Source Workshop – Camilo Jorquera
Camilo was wanting to make open source more accessible to the public . Ideas included: software kiosk, preloaded USB sticks (which could be plugged into and run on any computer), online links to resources – eg forums, support networks etc, using it!, having Linux computers and having OSS installed.

Ask yourself – seems strange that libarires access to and don’t provide these free tools to the public. By not doing so, it contributes to the digital divide, so access, distribution and educating the public on quality and freely available software.

OSS is less about programming and more a philosophical approach to community driven and supported software.

Obstacles to use are restrictions put in place by IT departments, in trying to establish a Standard Operating Environment (SOE). Great for IT, not for a public requirements point of view. What should our focus be?
Support of software is an issue – IT depts know infrastructure well, but not software specialists. It really isn’t an IT issue, so expertise is not generally easily available.

A new approach – a better way. Camilo created a USB of open source portable content containing a wide range of excellent tools. They don’t affect the SOE as they are running off the USB.

He then handed out a USB drive with that software for us to try out and then keep! Device does an auto open and uses Portable Apps (portableapps.com) to access the menu. Some of the apps were added by Camilo, but many are available as is from Portable Apps. These are designed for PC, not portable devices – its the software thats portable.

Simon Goodrich – Portable – Future trends in technology
Much of Simon’s talk was the same as was given at the Yarra Plenty unconference – check out my report from that event.

Games applications can influence companies. Australian government is looking to get game developers to work with businesses on interactivity – ISIS project (http://cci.edu.au/post/the-interactive-skills-integration-scheme-isis)

Half of Australians now access the mobile internet.

SMS was initially only used to get a message to someone when they weren’t answering their phone.

Color – new service – take pictures together – has apps for iPhone and Android etc. Demo at http://www.color.com/

60% of Australians have smart phones – the other 40% might be our clients wanting to learn about these technologies.

Fast growing apps:
Instagram – growing faster than Facebook – share photos
Foodspotting – food guide, not a restaurant guide
Sound tracking – what are you listening to
They all use geo-location.

5 Pillars of social media

1. Innovation is key
2. Brand web literacy
3. Increased engagement
4. Next generation audience of fans, followers and subscribers in social media
5. Mobile is here

Practical ideas right now:
Install recording booths in library for users to come and record their recollections of the local area and/or times and events.

Scanning parties at the library – come in and scan your photos – build a local history of the area – geotag it.

Book reviews – encourage users to contribute to your reviews – using the “do you want fries with that” concept.

Hope you get something out of it. I got plenty.

Open Source Software – Kathryn Greenhill
Imperfect analogy – spaghetti sauce – buy it in jar or make it yourself.
Flexibility and control.  Open Source requires particular skills, still has a price, but involves community effort and altruism.

Proprietary software: license, user restricted, no source code
Open Source: free redistribution, source code accessible, derived works, integrity of code, no discrimination, not specific to purpse, device, works with other software

There are checks and balances before any new code goes into the code base.

Key ideas of Open Source – release early – release often, many eyes make bugs shallow, peer review, developer-user relationship.

Koha – open source library management system.
Check http://www.ohloh.net for cot comparisons between proprietary and open source over time.

We already use open source software – linux, apache, mysql, php, firefox.
Who else uses os? Denmark using Open Office by 2011, Trove at NLA, White House uses Drupal, for their website, North  East Kansas Libraries for their LMS.

Examples of open source software: Open Office, Word Press, Drupal, Mediawiki, Gimp, Dimdim, Zimbra, Pidgin, Audacity, VLC media player.

Open source LMS – Evergreen, Koha, OLE project

Discovery layers – Scriblio, Sopac2 and more

Digital resources management – Kete, Omeka

Whats stopping us from using Open Source?  Skills. We need to know about relational databases, SML,  indexing and programming
Cost – of change
Perceived accountability
Centralised IT
Maturity of the products
Consortial impacts
Monopolies – marketing
What users have at home
Cloud computing and Software as a Service (Saas)
Closed hardware

What we can gain by using open source software?
Skills, flexibility, control, nimbleness, accountability, budgetary control.

However, software needs to fit the purpose and the organisation.

Library Mashups and APIs – Paul Hagon
RSS is a common API (application programming interface)
Can be used to interact with other services – application on iphone for eg.
API is used to put javascript showing marker on a Google map.
Don’t have to do the hard work, that is all done for you.

Can use APIs to adapt URLs to change what you are getting out of a site ie. Google calendar display on our website.
Can be used with our website – but they can be fragile, as they can break if you change your website.
Can use microformats – ie. Vcards for phones and internet.

Mashups using more than one data source to make something new – may be totally disparate. One of earliest was chicagocrime. org – Google maps and crime reports.
Libraries are using mashups involving Google maps and Flickr, Picture Australia has an open search interface – can add search to your browser options, Picture Australia with Google maps and geotagging, along with your location giving you photos of local area.

Code alert – a lot of  mashups involve XML. Jquery and YUI can help ease you into the process.

Where to start: Your library catalogue can help – check your RSS feeds – play with the XML and see what you can do.
data.australia.gov.au – data licensed for re-use under Creative Commons.

delicious.com/paulhagon/vala2010-lplate – links to all the resources and demos used.

Tools available to help – Yahoo Developer Network – YQL, use common language to extract XML. Yahoo Pipes, Firebug – plugin for Firefox.

Why? – Our community not just consumers, also producers once data is made available. Some of ours could be creating these sorts of things, if only the data is available – let our geeks loose on our data.

Semantic Web – Tom Tague

Check out stuff on semantic web on Wikipedia – good foundation.

Variety of interpretations: web 3.0, near religious standard, set of technical standards and capabilities we can use – very hard to define

Standards and Capabilities: RDF (resource description framework – form of XML – ugly but it is the standard), RDFS/OWL/Other ontology standards – great debate about these, Linked data, Automated semantic information generation.

OpenCalais – Thomas Reuters initiative to connect world’s business content, free service that brings new efficiencies and productivity to publishers and content creators, fastest easiest way to categorize your contentand tag the entities, facts and events therein; 30,000s of users, 4-8 million transactions daily.

Issues: attaching metadata to content is expensive – both in time and money.

Metadata generation – feed content into their extraction engine, categorizes the stories and returns the metadata to you, also returns links.

Linked data – standard for publishing data on the web – uses RDF -  add data as well as links to other relevant linked data (not webpages, actual data). Standard is exploding, but there is no governance – ‘geeks playing in highway’ – librarians can add a lot of value to this as well as using the data generated.

There are alternatives to Open Calais – Yahoo and more.

Use it to:  add metadata to cotent, content enhancement via linked data, build your own linked data could, but don’t just think source content (commentary, user submitted content)

Think about collections: repositories, trend analysis, harmonization across data sets, federated search.

Cloud Computing – Bart Rutherford
Geek and poke cartoons.

No standard definition of cloud computing – consistently about the internet however.

Charting –  input/processor/output, corporate computing – people with money had these systems (banking, transport).

Progress of clients – fat clients, thin clients, desktop computer as client, browser as client.

How things have changed: mobile as client, internet, cheap storage, broadband, wifi, 3G and LTE, Open source and Linux, Ipv6

Lots of different types of clouds – public eg Facebook, private – Intranet, hybrid. Joined by VPNs and virtualization (servers with sub-servers within it)

Saas, Iaas, Paas
Software as a service – vendor provides hardware and infrastructure, user interacts through PC – eg. Webmail, facebook, twitter, Apples App, Google Docs, BitTorrent, DropBox and so  much more.
Infrastructure as a service – Amazon, Microsoft Azure.
Platform as a service – software and development tools hosted on the providers infrastructure, access and delivery (API) – Google Apps, Yahoo Pipes, Google Maps, Sugar CRM, Finance eg. Paypal.

Complexity runs from low to high – moves from consumer to developer.

Services are based on buy as you use – like utility bills. Scalable – to meet your needs, cost effective – PAYG and low tech input, secure and automated, mobility.

Warnings – no network connection – no cloud, no local storage – no local data,  slow connections no good, what to do if provider is destroyed?

Global outlook – EASE – Everything as a service, everywhere!  Won’t matter where your data is, just need the power and network connection to get to it.

Discovery Layer Interfaces – Marshall Breeding
Crowded landscape of information providers on the web – lots of non-library destinations, ie. Google Search and Scholar, Amazon, Wikipedia, Ask.com.

Digital natives are more experienced than us in web stuff, so when they come to our websites and catalogues, they are way underwhelmed. Don’t want to lose relevancy to this audience who have been raised on those listed above.

Evolution of library collection discovery tools: bound handwritten catalogues, card catalogues, OPACs – many libraries have stagnated here, discovery interfaces, web-scale discovery services.

Not just about books on shelves, but about all our subscription content, digital items and more.

Don’t want a computerised card catalogue, although that is generally what we still have.  Amazon is our competition in terms of user interfaces and information presented.  They make it as transparent to the user as they can.  It has a complex layered structure, but with a simple user interface.

Have a lot of great content and services, but have too many barriers to our users accessing them.

Disjointed approach to delivery: silos prevail – catalogue, databases, website and more and each one has to be accessed individually.

Simple vision – single point of entry to all the content and services offered by the library, but wth precision, nuanced sophistication and multiple dimensions. Doesn’t preclude advanced searching options and ability to hone in on particular services or collections as alternative options.

Modernized interface – single search box, query tools (did you mean, type ahead), relevance ranked results, faceted navigation, enhanced visual displays – covers and summaries/reviews, recommendation services. Must be visually pleasing, give more than a single record and helps users find more.

Can have any front end almost regardless of what back end you use.

Deep indexing – metadata is no longer enough, increasing opportunities to search full content, commercial providers already doing so.

Current phase of discovery tools now focused on pre-populated indexes that aim to deliver Web-scale delivery eg. Summon, WorldCat  Local, EBSCO Discovery, Primo Central, Encore with Article Intergration.

Products available will index the vast majority of content that libraries have in their collections.

Beyond local discovery – eg. NCSU – Summon, Phoenix Public – Endeca (very Amazon like interface), Queens Public Library – Aquabrowser.

Need to make our search compelling, but not overwhelm our users with the guff about what and where they are searching.

Being social: apps for libraries – Kim Tairi
@haikugirloz

Social media conversion scale – image from – darmano.typepad.com

Social apps about conversations, marketing and communications with our users.

She follows High Country Public Library on Twitter – they talk about the library and things that are happening in their broader community as well.

Amongst top 10 tools for libraries – niche networks – eg, NING, built by users, focus on particular interest, UX – User experience, want to create good ones – starts at design and works through testing, evaluating and decision making.

More visual infographics – designing messages so they are clear, short, sharp. eg. The story (so far) of Twitter (image). Move to make visual communication more widespread.

Twitter can enhance your experience – back channel is interesting and adds to the experience. Librarians are sharing. Kim’s presentation was based a lot on the feedback she got from people on Twitter. It gives you a sense of community and helps to build a community. It is self-selecting, creates conversation, can be used for public note-taking and it’s interactive. Great as a personal learning network, both with workmates and colleagues at other libraries. Can get followed by bots or social media gurus, but can control it by blocking them or making your tweets private.

Mobile interfaces for catalogues and websites. Deakin Uni has done this. NYPL has an iPhone app. Can get into mobile interfaces, apps, info literacy, tours and QR codes (see Powerhouse Museu who are doing great things with these).

Technology petting zoos – letting users play with the new technology, as well as staff.

Social apps and networks have taken off since VALA2008 – need to get into it. Australia has now 7.9 million active Facebook users, there over 400 million worldwide.

eBooks – Bart Rutherford

File formats for ebooks include text, html, pdf, mobipocket, DjVu – magazine specific, EPUB – Kindle uses azw which is a modified mobipocket. Some locked in DRM, some not.

Can read ebook content on desktops, mobile phones etc – software includes Microsoft Reader, Mobipocket, Adobe Reader (pdf) and Calibre (open source read and convert).

EPUB – open publication structure – open XHTML, open packaging format – SML, OEBPS Container format – bundled ZIP file. Many readers that originally came out with proprietary formats are now opening up to EPUB. Keep watch out for EPUB and the devices that will read it.

DRM – Digital Rights Management (Bart’s boss calls it Don’t Read Me). PID Personal identification number – can restrict to one user, unlike print copy,  Access levels include print, copy, paste and now lending, depending on device and content.

Content – Amazon: Fiction to Kindle, Dymocks – using eBook library growing fiction, Gutenberg Project, Read Cloud, EBL – nonfiction, academic learning model using Adobe reader.

Should not have to worry about how the content gets on the device, it should just happen.

Publisher rights are still a problem, so a lot of content that could be available, is not because of these issues.

E-Paper technologies: Elerophoretic technology used by eInk, iRex, Sony Reader, Kindle, Plastic Logic Que. Use glass back pane, but they don’t flex so can break.

Cholesteric technology – Modified LCD, being used by Fujitsu FLEPia. Need to have a colour display which doesn’t require a backlight and doesn’t use as much power.

Combination of eInk and LCD – eg. Nook. LCD gets turned off when reading the ebook.

Electrowetting – controlled water/oil interface, then Electrofluidic technology which uses the former.  Deals with the issue of slow display and these devices will be able to show video.

Interferometric – wavelengths of light etc, uses reflective natural light, low power usage, which can also show video eg. mirasol

Growing market – lots of options and many more on the way. Be sure the one you choose does EPUB.

News Limited is launching the Skiff interface – from publishing to reading, including payment process and their own software.

Publishers will hopefully start putting material out in a wider range of formats so that multiple readers can access them.

The Dream for DRM – Desktop reading, when called away, you pick up where you left off on your e-reader, then the same again with your phone.  As you can with a book.

Pew/Internet regularly produces reports related to online use. One of the latest was conducted with the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois on Information searches that solve problems: how people use the internet, libraries and government agencies when they need help.  Interesting results include high use of public libraries by Generation Y’ers for the scenarios surveyed, digital divide is still an issue and the expected result of the internet as a first stop.  Well worth a look at.

University College London has produced another in their series of Ciber briefing  papers, this one on the Information behaviour of the researcher of the future.   The study was commissioned by the British Library and JISC to “identify how the specialist researchers of the future, currently in their school or pre-school years, are likely to access and interact with digital resources in five to ten years’ time.”  Very eye opening with some interesting results.

The Horizon Report 2008 from the New Media Consortium is out.  It aims to “identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning or creative expression within learning-focused organizations’.  This is their 5th annual report.  Considering the link between libraries of any type and our learning organisations, this is a key document to be watching.  The key emerging technologies highlighted in this report include grassroots video, collaboration webs, mobile broadband, data mashups, collective intelligence and social operating systems.   You can get the gist of the report through the Executive Summary.  Definitely food for thought for our libraries.

Enjoy!

Our users are relying more on cell phones and hand-held tools, so expect that they will turn to them more for their information needs. Want a large range of music, books, movies etc to be able to access, rather than the limited number that they can carry. Devices such as Treos, Blackberry’s, mobile phones, laptops, tablets, iPods, GPS devices, portable gaming devices, even smart watches (M300 out of Australia), etc.

Mobile Market:

• 75% of adults and 90% of college students have mobile phones
• 1 in 8 homes no longer have a landline phone
• 62% of subscribers use text messaging regularly
• 80% of world is covered by mobile networks

Can use mobile devices to watch multiple TV shows, upload photos to Flickr, use operating systems and slide out keyboards, have great audio quality that means you don’t need a separate iPod or MP3 player. Apple iPhone is more like an iPod than the new smart phones coming out.

New means of using devices includes motion sensing – move the device towards you and it scrolls down, tip up and it scrolls back up. Ultra Mobile Personal Computers – UMPC, now in 2nd generation, much smaller and lighter than laptops, with improved battery life.

Much content has been created for access by mobile devices. New .mobi domain which specifies that the content is accessible from their mobile device. ie. CNN, New York Times, Time Magazine, Pub Med have it, so does the Fremont Library, which gives news, directions, hours and contact details.

ILS vendors are starting to make Mobile Optimized Catalogs – so that patrons can access library catalogues through their mobile device. Sirsi-Dynix, Innovative and even Library Thing have this option. Ready Reference in the form of various e-book publications is available for a wide range of mobile devices, also search with Mobile Ask. E-Books are being provided by Overdrive, NetLibrary and more, which can be used on mobile devices.

As not all content is optimized for the mobile network, so the Transcoded Web is developing to transcribe content to fit into a mobile device. Its not perfect and some content is lost, but its happening. There is mobil.licio.us, mobile blogger and a mobile My Space version.

Database development has slowed, most being done by transcoders, but watch the industry, it should restart. Can get your content to the mobile device using special RSS feeds – many ways of doing this.

Librarians will need to become proficient in using these devices to enable us to help our users to access content using them.

Mobile search – check out Megan’s Monday presentation.

Content via SMS – you can send a message to Google to do a search and get a snippet back which answers your question. Merriam-Webster has partnered with Ask to provide definitions via SMS, can also do a yellow pages search. Publishers are sending extracts from books out via SMS. Websites are now giving the option of sending content to IM addresses and via SMS.

In Victoria, SMS has been added to the English curriculum at high school(thats my home state!).
Librarians are extending reference services – Altarama in Australia provides a SMS to email to SMS service for librarians/library users. Teleflip and Gizmo SMS are other new services.

Youngest users are still the heaviest users of mobile devices, but the gap is decreasing.
Wakeforest provides a Mobile U service – check hours, search the catalogue and selected databases, they also have voice activated interaction. Mobile devices can be sued to provide instant feedback within classes and can include live polling.

Mobile Audio and multimedia – South Huntington Public lends iPod shuffles with content pre-loaded. Audible Air lets you download audio books wirelessly without having to connect to a desktop. iTunes U is for university’s audio support materials.

Guide by cell for iPods or mobile phones for guided tours, is also being used by libraries not just museums. Could also be used for storytimes and instruction sessions.

Mobile TV can be accessed on phones – over 25 channels available – “place shifted television”. TiVo is also now available on mobile devices. YouTube and Second Life are working on mobile versions. Libraries have produced videos particuarly for the mobile screen.

Library Staff are using mobile devices for behind the scenes work – Sirsi-Dynix has mobile circ, III Wireless Workstation for inventory work at the shelves.

What’s next – many big companies are working on getting ads on mobiles, in each exchange for discounted bills and points systems. Visa and Mastercard are working with phones to make them the credit card to pay for items. Displays are developing, tablet PCs, sunglasses displays, screening onto a seat in front of you. Evovling input – ZenZui using content bookmarked on tiles or icons, zoom in to the see the options until you get down to the content you want. Microsoft Labs is working on a mobile browser – shows a full but small webpage, but can quickly zoom in to the sections you want.

There are still many input problems, some solutions include laser keyboards, photo search where you take a picture and it sends you relevant info ie. barcode brings back product info, book brings back reviews. GotVoice uses voice interaction, Tell Me has been bought out by Microsoft. A lot of work in voice to text. NASA is developing sub-vocal voice recognition.

Location based services – uses GPS to give you the information you require for the location you are at. Involves geotagging. Could we get the library catalogues opening on mobile devices as the user walked in the door?

web.simmons.edu/~fox/mobile

Special Minister of State Gary Nairn officially opened the proceedings, with some interesting information and a reasonable insight into what librarians are on about. Of most interest was the e-government strategy and the www.australia.gov.au portal, which is the gateway to all federal government websites. At present, 13% of people dealing with government do so only online, with Minister Nairn anticipating a figure of 30-40% will really redefine how government offers service. Blogs are also on their radar, as are other Web 2.0 applications and mashups.

The opening keynote was from Ross Ackland, Director of the Australian office of the W3C and the CSIRO ICT Centre. He gave a very interesting take on Where the web is heading, from both the W3C perspective and his own experiences.

W3C’s long term goals are the web for everyone, web on everything, knowledge base which is advanced data searching and sharing and trust and confidence – where there is collaboration, accountability, security, confidence and confidentiality. Next step for us as consumers is to use our portable devices as our purchasing power, moving on from credit cards. Although only 3 organisations in Australia are W3C members (CSIRO, Vision Australia and AGIMO), there has been significant technical input from Australia on W3C standars.

So from here its the Semantic Web – where the meaning of information is understood by machines, making searching more successful. Although it is not there yet, much work has been done on the foundations on which this will rest (ie. XML, ontologies etc). He believes that there is another 5 years before it is ready for market adoption.

In the meantime, he believes that Web 2.0 is providing great complimentary interfaces. They pave the way to the eventual rise of the semantic web, by getting users accustomed to collaboration, open interfaces and applications that can leverage multiple services.

The Mobile web has a W3C web initiative (2005) behind it, which has also been fully backed by all the major telecommunication companies. End user acceptance is the catalyst needed now. Libraries need to seriously think about delivering information to devices that are no longer sitting on a desktop. Think phones, PDAs and more.

Sensor web is the streaming data coming from wireless devices that sense environment, including environmental monitoring, home automation, security, personal health monitoring and entertainment. The monitoring devices are cheap, but how do we manage the streamed data that they will generate. Issues also arise in the searching, integration, translation and storage of such data.

He also spoke about how the Internet has a role to play in Australia’s Water Crisis, including bringing all water data together from very diverse sources, so that the best decisions can be made on how to proceed. (check out http://wron.net.au)

His predictions are that the Web will accelerate in development, with Web 2.0 being only the tip of the iceberg, that libraries have to stop building traditional websites, that mobile will become equal to the desktop and that anyone will be able to build web applications. Wow, sounds like its going to get even more interesting.