Jerry Segraves, of http://jerrysfoto.com

So I felt it appropriate, to stop in the middle of all the busyness which is my life at present and reflect. Its funny, my husband and I were commenting the other day, that things have been a bit off lately – things weren’t disastrously bad, but they weren’t going right either, in pretty much everything except our family (thank goodness). We have recently celebrated our 15th anniversary and I am grateful for this strong, supportive and funny man who is my rock, my anchor, often my small still voice reminding me of what’s important and who is so supportive of all the things I have been doing and wanting to do, moreso in the last year with all the opportunities that have arisen. The rest of the “off” stuff we will work through as best we can.

Work is also getting exciting. We had 2 meetings this week, with the first we have now expanded our main library blog team to 5 people, with contributions to come from 2 of our senior managers. I’m really excited about this for a few reasons, one is that I don’t have to try and come up with something myself all the time, two is that we will have a range of voices and viewpoints, with more content coming on a regular basis and finally it is good to get some concrete support for what I think is becoming more important to my library.

The other meeting was about a prototype teen blog, which has been taken up enthusiastically by 3 of our youth services team, with news, reviews, plugins and lots of widgets etc. A couple of our young library officers have provided some great feedback and we will work with them to finalise the blog before we go live, using the blog to replace our static and little used or updated teen webpage.

I was also inspired by an interview of Helene Blowers (as I usually am by Helene) about some of what she is doing at Columbus Metropolitan Libraries. The thing that really stood out for me was having a focus for their virtual services in the coming year – they were going to be particularly aiming at power users, young people and the general public. It made me realise that it may no longer be enough for virtual services to be a focus of our Information Services, but that it is now big enough in itself to have its own strategy.

So that’s my ramble and my recent reflections. Things can change quickly in a few days. For the last few weeks I’ve felt tired, discouraged and sooo busy to the point that I wasn’t even interested in blogging or much else in professional development. I’m not so tired anymore (sleep-in today helped), I am more encouraged than I have been for a while and although I’m still sooo busy, a time of reflection and those elements of encouragement have brought me back here, just a little more fired up. We’ll see how long it lasts and where it will lead!

Another year, another awesome conference. Enough to keep me going for quite some time.

Travis Harvey and Hans Zerr from NetReturn spoke on the “Australian Development Gateway” the Australian Government and AusAid initiative to provide a knowledge sharing website for aid workers in the Asia Pacific, across different sectors and geographic areas.

Built on open source software, it focuses on 10 key sectors: education, disaster management, water, agriculture, health, development, governance, ICT, infrastructure and enterprise development/microfinances. They are adding 2 new sectors each year. The aim is for sustainable poverty alleviation.

The site is a community of practice website, with content partners, user driven content, optimised for low bandwith, remote carrier locations, provides quality sectoral information and lessons learned, builds and expands professional networks and visibility and has a growing content partnership.

Core offerings of the site are quality information sources, tools for users to participate, 2 way feedback loops, info on tenders, jobs, people and organisations in the region. Achievements include having 24 partner organisations providing content, QA and over 2,000 free online resources. They have 35,000 visits monthly, 1300 people and organisations listed in their online directory and 2500+ newsletter subscriptions, all serviced by 2 FTE staff.

Challenges: need to keep current with ever changing content and working with content partners they have had to develop clear editorial guidelines so they get quality over quantity. Most importantly, they need to ensure the website continues to provide content that is relevant, current and practical.

So that was it for me at Information Online 2007, I went home!

Shauna Hicks from the Public Records Office of Victoria (PROV) spoke on “Archives in the 2st century”. In the new PROV reading room, each desk has power and computer outlets, enabling researchers to research online, take and upload photos of archival items and more. Their help desk uses a 1800 phone number, which users can call to preplan their trip or even to avoid their trip altogether. Records can be located through the website and copies ordered for mailout. Alternatively they can find out exactly what they need first and only have to make one trip instead of several.

Derek Whitehead from Swinburne, presented “Publish and perish – the meaning of publication in the online world” and what a can of worms that is?

Can something be “accessed, read and used” and not be published? Yes! Copyright, defamation, legal deposit and online content laws all have different definitions of published. Book publishing is different again and includes editing control, review, acceptance as a publication and commercial distribution.

Web publishing is putting information or transactions online – accessible on a web server. Published to the web (not “on”). Can we be online and published? Much debate about this. Theses are available through online depositories, but they are still not published. These are now running into copyright issues, with regard to cleared content, but the only thing that has changed is the delivery mechanism.
Archives and scholarly communication also fall into these grey areas? Is YouTube a publisher?

There is confusion over the broad and specialised meanings of copyright. Is everything now published because of the web? Online is more than a publishing medium. Think conversation, dialogue……

Questions/Thoughts:
- Do we need a word for online but unpublished?
- How will we determine ownership? (mashups, sharing etc)
- Online is not a digital version of analog. What rules apply?
- Copyright applies fully to online as a default. There is no Copyright 2.0.
- Metaphors are dangerous.
- Web helps capture an fix activities for commercial purposes – need to watch this.

What to do?
- Paper days laws threatens the online world.
- 3 actions – law reform
– need a new word for online but unpublished
– sue the appropriate copyright licensing (ie. creative commons, all rights etc).

The final paper this session was Jim Alexander from CAL on “Copyright and the Online Library”. Accessing content is changing by: changes to the traditional supply chain, entry of new intermediaries (search engines), culture of free use and rise of free content repositories.

Digital Rights management comes in 2 forms: technological including passwords, encryption, hardware/software controls. Rights Management Information: copyright, watermarks, digital signatures, metadata and now Digital Object Indentifiers (DOI0, which are growing in the publishing industry. 3 key principles of DRM are:
- identification of works and copyright of owners
- monitoring of access to and use of works
- facilitating payment
DRM must be of minimal burder to rights owners and users.

CAL is working on DRM, offering new services such as Digital Course Material (DCM), an online custom publication system for course support. Provides licensed content from over 40 publishers and can also incorporate institutions own licensed content.
Also Document Delivery Service – aimed at health/medical industry, giving access to content with rights cleared, quickly and conveniently.

Future: interoperable DRM for international online content access
- common rights management infrastructure
- choice for creators and quality for consumers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Look at reorganising my library’s database list by subject
Update my resume
Chase up the Corporate Library proposal
Use del.icio.us to bookmark sites worth keeping for the future (already happening)
Check out the Online Conference blog
Claim my ALIA CPD points for the conference
Check out UthTV – a youth version of You Tube
Add some content to Wikipedia about my library
Investigate podcasting more closely – check out the RMIT how to guide
Discuss moving our Information Services Manual to a wiki format
Check out the EduBlog awards
Check out what else Damian Conway has out
Check out the progress of Citizendium
Drool over what else Curtin Uni is doing with open source/free software

Blogs and wikis are being used for reference database/manuals, public resource guides, managing teams/project knowledge, marketing and communication with clients, current awareness and professional development.

Results – 18% of libraries had a blog, 11% had a wiki. Blogs – 47% public library, 45% special library, 22% university library. Wikis, the figures were 33%, 45%, 11%. Most blogs were external, most wikis were not. Blogs were mainly used for client communications, wikis for internal workflows. Other purposes were marketing, organisation of events, professional development, reference services and other.

Most organisations don’t have a blog or wiki policy. The main reasons for not blogging or using wikis were time, finances and technical knowledge or support. Can check out more on the report at: http;//www.seedwiki.com/wiki/libraryblogswikis/

Leona Jennings from Gold Coast City Council took us through the implementation of RFID at Gold Coast’s 14 libraries and 2 mobiles.

Timeline – Expression of interest Dec 04. Business case approved May 05. RFT Nov 05. Contract Mar 06. Main tagging commenced May 06. Aug 06 – first library live. Oct 06 – main rollout. Jan 07 – last library went live.

Didn’t want the complications of running 2 systems at the same time, especially with floating collections, so wanted it to be instituted in as short a time as possible. Done over 12 months, but over 2 financial years to spread the cost.

Why RFID – for staff efficiencies, to allow staff to spend more time with the users and on public programs. Efficiencies gained through self serve checkouts. Aim to get 35% of loans through self-checkout.

Benefits: efficiency gains, OH&S benefits, greater accountability of assets, increased customer satisfaction (due to shorter queues, more services etc).

Challenges: to tag with minimal disruptions, enthuse staff and stakeholders, review and revise circulation and collection policies, to install, over 7 months.

Recruited a team of 12 from their casual pool to work as tagging teams – minimal impact on branch operations. Worked in teams of 3, rotating tasks and monitoring each other – worked well.

Bought a tagging station for acquisitions, hired 4 others for retrospective tagging in the branches. Changed security case type on AV at the same time. Took 5 months to tag.

Problems: – overachievement, teams were competitive and completed the job too quickly which meant they had to go back and do all the returned, non-tagged items. Tagging alone came out of the first year’s budget. Rest came out of 2nd years.

Concerns about job losses were alleviated, some questions but no great concern about privacy. At this stage, no tags on membership cards and no self checkin. Involved staff in demos and once 3M contracted, all staff saw a demo were continually updated with visits and an intranet page, which had FAQs, updates, progress chart and user guides hightlighting the self-serve aspects. All reviewed circ and collection policies were in place before going live.

Each branch had one day of hardware installation. Next day was staff training and as soon as they were trained, went live. Exception was the self-serve units which remained for staff access and training until the 3rd day. Of 14 libraries, 8 have self serve units, more units to go in this year. Some libraries will have 2, smaller branches and mobiles none.

Too early for full impact, initial feedback is that checkin is happening more quickly, getting back on shelf quicker and queues are shorter. As of 31st Dec, 28% of loans went through self-serve. Staff are able to spend better quality time with patrons and they now have more time to stop and think and be proactive. Expect to be able to do more staff training, provide more customer services and now focus some time and effort on their website.

Colin Bates and Bernie Lingham from Deakin spoke about Electronic Information Literacy using multiple technologies. They began with a video of a session, showing us what they were talking about – always helpful.

Bernie spoke first on Ellimuniate Live – a trial synchronous web conferencing package, which enables librarians to run information literacy sessions for distance and other students who can’t make it into the library for the in-house sessions. The package uses software, which Deakin provides to students, microphones and headphones/speakers to enable moderators to communicate with up to 10 students at a time, whilst delivering a class. No formal evaluations were taken on the classes, however informal feedback from students has been very positive. They felt confident to do the tasks themselves afterwards and enjoyed having the training delivered in a form and at a time that was convenient for them. Only concern from the moderators side was the low participation rates, with sometimes only 1/2 the booked students, attending the session. The only technical problem was the need for JavaStart and firewall issues, which were the reasons for some non-attendance.

Colin then spoke on how the library was using Deakin’s portal to push library service to students and faculty. All need to sign into the portal to access their email and includes 30 tabs linking to different resources. The uni sought more library content available via RSS which could be presented on the portal. The Library channel has a quick catalogue search, but focuses mainly on online journal content through RSS feeds. It aims to supplement the library webpage and draw attention to the library’s online journals. Content was selected on the basis of likely interest, historical use, user requests and availability of RSS with topics including news, current affairs, general interest and news journals etc. Why RSS in the portal? Already authenticated, simple for the naive user and value adding. User response? 13-35% increase in subscriptions from Oct-Dec 2006.

Diana Oblinger from EDUCAUSE spoke on the trends that teens are showing us now, which will ultimately become societal changes (as they always do).

Today’s learners are connected, both individually and as groups, via both technology and personally. They are action- oriented, multi-tasking (over-committed?), always on the move. They don’t want to sit and listen, if forced to they will stop listening. They are still naive in many respects, often don’t think about their online behaviour and not necessarily IT savvy.

It is not the era of digital natives, research shows that as of 2003, the digital natives were the under 6′s (that means my kids!).

Culture becoming:
Do it yourself – eg. Wikipedia. Young learner’s are self reliant, go for online banking, learning, travel, health etc. Finding info – #1 choice is internet, only 2% libraries. 53% find search engines as trustworthy as librarians (scary!). Perfect playlist – MP3 players, make personalised song lists. Media creators – blogs, webpages and more – 57%, 33% share their content, 19% remix content, 17% posted video and 25% access video/TV online. Their personal life remote control (mobiles) are constantly with them, have become personal digital repositories (images, sound, etc) and are multifunctional.

Participate – Blogs, 8% blog, 39% read them, 50/50 male female split. 55% blog under a pseudonyn. People who read and write blogs tend to be influencers in our society. Ratings – on teachers, venues and more. Opinions – use online polls to vote on issues. Other ways to participate, many of which adults are already using:
photos, sharing content, social networking, remixed content.

Socialize – communication is #1 use for IT for kids. 23% connect across the country, 17% across the world. 44% connect with 20+ kids. Many connect through online games. Social networks – alternative channel for communication. Penn State has created their own version, PennSter. 55% use social networking, 91% for contact with friends, 82% for contact with people they don’t see often. Connecting in virtual worlds, conveys a sense of presence, combines connection and social media and is useful for role playing.

Technology rate of change is expontential, but our young people have never known anything different. Any place is now a learning place, both physically and virtually.

Suggestions: 1. Broaden our definition of learning
2. Consider the options
3. Reassess and unlearn

The goal is an organisation that is constantly making the future, not defending its past.

I want a USB stick with an MP3 player and FM tuner in the same piece of hardware.
I need to look up the e-government strategy and find out any implications for my library.
I need to have another look at the www.australia.gov.au website and link to it on my library’s website.
I need to have another look at the AGIMO website, for what’s new/changed.
I will investigate what the mobile web will mean for our electronic services and will have that as a criteria for our new website design.
Say in touch with the development of the semantic web.
Look up more on the governments’ water plan and get more info up on our website on water and the water crisis in Australia.
Investigate our policy on choosing between hardcopy and electronic resources and if we don’t have one, get one!
Use James Robertsons advice to avoid as many pitfalls as possible as we begin work on our intranet proper.
Check out the StepTwo website for relevant articles.
Look more at staff skills audits, particularly at the type of IT skills our staff need.
Investigate ways in which our new ILMS can tap into Web 2.0 type initiatives – ie. comments, and/or find others way to provide this type of interaction.
Don’t be afraid to experiment and fail – try and learn, try and learn.
Seek potential for external partnerships.
Keep aware of search engine trends.
Help our staff development move from training to life long learning – use Learning 2.0 programs.
Get usability testing as part of our new website design.

That’s a big to do list and just from day one!

Inspired by the Science, Industry and Business Library at New York Public Library, it came after surveying existing and potential clients who wanted access, advice and training. Investment came from London Development Agency, most of which went into building renovations, to make the space more suitable for this purpose and more welcoming to users. It reinvented the old Business and Patents reading rooms and made an unrivalled business collection available to those who needed it most.

New services include workshops, entrepreneur speaker events, new online databases, guides and leaflets on a wide range of business related topics, 30 minutes 1 on 1 info advice sessions and Ask the Expert session (1hr) with industry experts.

Cultural changes at BL included readers becoming customers, changing staff attitudes, working with the wider BL culture – on opening hours, support, registration, sercurity, working with external partner organisations. Role model to the departments? Depends on who you ask! Includes the creating of an networking open area, plasma screens for announcements etc, laptops for searching, sofas, displaying success stories, bright colours and a range of training rooms. Promotion included the 1st paid advertising ever by BL, posters on the Underground, radio spots and internal publicity at BL.

New approach is to be a collaborator, trainer, facilitator, advisor, problem solver, using a business process and getting out there. Need to be identifying new skills and knowledge for staff and customers. Need to be partnering with external organisations.

Cathy Slaven from QUT spoke on usability testing of their website. Using 5-6 students each time, they had four redesigns of aspects of their website before reaching the optimal result.

They used a link on their website for 2 weeks to recruit students for this test of their new user-centric design. 250 students applied, 22 were used, each of which received a $25 voucher for their time and efforts. The testing involved a PC, webcam, speakers and Camtasia studio to monitor mouse and screen movements. A faciliator led the session, which was observed by one or two staff. 10 test scenarios were conducted on tasks that undergrads were expected would undertake on the library website. The process involved an introduction, signing of a consent form, presentation of the gift voucher, protocal briefing (instructed them to think aloud), the tasks, debriefing interview and signing of a video release form (optional).

Cathy finished by showing some video which clearly illustrated the issues with the website, which weren’t really apparent to us, until we saw the students use them.