Connecting Librarian

Here’s the last part of my notes from the ProBlogger training day I attended Tuesday. I know its hard to get something out of someone else’s notes, so if you need to ask a question – please do!

Blog Workshop – Chris Garrett
Handed out a mind map to give some tips on how your blog could be improved. He then offered to critique some of the attendees blogs. The following is the feedback he gave.

goodlife zen.com – good start having a dot.com address. Fresh look, nice clean layout. Eyes are drawn to the photo – personalises it and connects with people. Layout is good to the content – content must be first. Subscribe options should be at the top and be as simple as possible – top right is usually best – above the fold. Make it work at 800 by 600 but make it look good at 1024 and above.
Subscribe could conjure payment ideals – try to work free/join into it. Tell them how and why to subscribe to your blog at the end of EVERY SINGLE POST. Chris added his email signup up box into his theme, so it appears automatically at the bottom of each post. Add related posts links to get people interested in more content.  RSS footer – type plugins available for Word Press (and others?), usually used for copyright but can put your email form in. Good also to put into the content, but gets tired if you do it all the time. Do it before the comments – regular readers will just scroll past it.

Have a call to action for your comments – edit your theme so it says, leave a comment now, no. of comments – add yours now. DISQUS – helps to organise comments into threads, can help make your comments viral – they then can be posted to social networking sites. Reply to  comments – not just the key ones – its a relationship builder. Have a public comment policy – gives you basis on which to edit or delete comments – my house, my rules.

blog.iqmatrix.com – having a blog separate to your main domain could be good if you are security conscious, but if you link to the main site, then www.domain.com/blog would be better as this is where both search engines and users would expect it to be. Need to be aware of floating footers – may link to ads or original coder – be wary. Floating bubbles can be annoying – but will work better if you use a short delay before it comes up. Can get popups when you scroll over heading, such as comments. Image was great but needed some context – never overestimate the intelligence of your readers. Be careful of how you use the term blog – Latest Blog Articles may be better as Latest Articles.

Open Panel with Darren, Chris, Yaro, Collis and Pip.
Darren has a subscribe page – RSS, email to RSS and newsletter(s) with a short explanation of each.

Introduced a forum when they had 1000 daily visitors. (Darren)
There are personality based niche blogs and then niche information blogs. (Yaro)

Multiple blogs – have an editor for each one – they keep track of direction and management etc, under broader guidelines. (Collis)

Personality, authenticity, sincerity can drive a non-profit blog – you can’t buy that. (Pip)

Persuasive selling techniques not incorporated deliberately into sales pages – more passive than subjective, more natural as it comes from him personally as he learns from other examples. You can utilise both, as long as you are not compromising your personal standards and still meets the demands of your brand. (Yaro)

So that’s the day’s labours but not the day’s results. I will be looking at incorporating many of the things I learnt here in any or all the blogs I am involved in, including this one, so stay tuned!

As so it continues. Here is Part Two of my notes from the ProBlogger training day I attended yesterday.  Just to save your eyes and my fingers, there will be a third post, for the last of my notes. In the meantime – enjoy!

Building Community on your blog – Darren Rowse

Building community is about good relationships, using skills which can be transferred from the real world.

Why build community on your blog? Blogs can be about providing information, but they can take on a life of their own and communities do form.  Community makes your site:

• more useful (comments add to the content and these can be used create their own content based on this, but located elsewhere);
• social proof makes it easier to promote your blog (comments, members, subscribers etc);
• increased page views (in community areas rather than blog areas); makes it more valuable to sell;
• more attractive to advertisers;
• your community becomes an advocate (for you);
• user generated content.

How to build community:

• be the community you want to have – readers will take your lead;
• invite interaction – they respond to invitations and questions – run polls, surveys etc – if no comments, answer yourself or get someone you know to answer;
• start with your comments section, build an off-blog community elsewhere (eg. Flickr, Facebook etc);
• add a community area (forum);
• use social media to reinforce and build community, write in a personal and engaging tone;
• use personal mediums (photos/video), use ‘you’ and we – write to people – direct language – we = our site;
• reader centred posts – start with the reader;
• offer additional ways to join or become a member;
• social proof – highlight interaction/community/numbers to your community;
• identify natural leaders – give jobs, train them, pay them;
• give people space to play (off topic interactions);
• teach the wisdom of the crowd to your community;
• invite reader generated content;
• set homework/projects – send them away to do something on their own and then report back;
• give readers a chance to show off;
• involve readers in decisions and change – can work for you or against you (survey, features they want etc);
• be accessible.

Dealing with trolls: think about policies and standards before you need them; model good community; reward good behaviour; outline roles of moderators carefully and talk about policies, values and procedures; marginalise trolls; allow community to help you police; be firm, polite and calm with trouble makers.

How to get more comments: use your own comments section, followup commenters, ask questions, be open ended, invite questions, discussion posts, controversy/debate, highlight hot conversations make space for self promotion, ask for advice/opinions/examples/stories. (use a more button to take them to full post and comments, rather than hoping they will go to comments)

Interview with Pip from Meet me at Mike’s (craft/lifestyle blog)

Blogs are a healthy tool to help you document your interests or just your life. It’s OK to write about the human aspect, your good stuff as well as when you muck it up. Run projects through the blog, which are to benefit your community or the wider community. Retain your core values throughout. Interact on lots of different platforms – so that you can reach people and make it easier for people to reach you – don’t talk about just your own stuff, also talk about what they are interested in. Its about them as well as about you.

What she would have done differently? Label your posts properly, categorise them clearly so they readers can find them; use comment moderation or comments systems like DISQUS to protect yourself from nasty comments.

Blog monetization – Yaro Starak
It is not just about making money directly from your blog, but also because of it. 20% effort can achieve 80% results.  Yaro told us how he turned his blog  – Entrepreneurs Journey, into bucks.

Aim to get a lot of results from the least effort – 80/20 rule in general, but to begin with, blogs take a lot of effort to establish.

Ways to make money directly from blogs: advertising income, affiliate income and selling products.

Yaro sold his own advertising, as AdSense didn’t work for him. He charged a monthly rate, used a Paypal account and had different options for advertising. Uses OpenX to manage his banners and they are rotated through. Its all automated.

Affiliate income – wrote a review on a book about Google AdWords. Didn’t work initially, but then managed a sale and now earns a large part of his income through reviews. His most important move was to add an email newsletter to his blog – this made the biggest difference to his income stream. Combine email with blog posts to make the most money.

Blog Mastermind – his first online course product.  Wrote a paper on the topic, which he gave away as a free sample as a lead in to the product and has increased his readership dramatically.

All this helps you to create solid, multiple income streams and establishes you as an authority in blogging and money making. Get a product out as soon as you can.

Did some private coaching recently, only because it gave him an opportunity to investigate his market and to get some case studies. It breaks his 80/20 rule, but it gave him insight he couldn’t otherwise get. He enjoys it, but it is not the best way to leverage his time.

Panel: Yaro, Darren and Chris (Chrisg.com)
Yaro gave a rough estimate of $1 income per unique individual page view per day. Can also vary your prices according to demand. Darren said that he has negotiated with advertisers, based on what they were wanting to spend. Can also be involved in a banner networks and start with getting what the market will pay, then when you have proven performance, you can negotiate a higher price.

90% of geeks will use AdBlock, but they aren’t a big issue outside the geeks.

Email subscriptions going down? Need to have your subscribers waiting in anticipation of what’s in the email, so that they will be waiting for it. Use a commercial product for newsletter creation and subscription means. Options are AWeber, Mail Chimp, Constant Contact and others. Can get content from RSS feed or encode the content yourself.

Affiliate products – different for every industry. Yaro focuses on the ones he needs to use in this day and time.  He uses it and then does his review and recommendations – need to have some negatives otherwise people don’t quite believe it.  Use Clip Bank to get help on finding programs.  If there is not an affiliate program, you can approach the producers to establish one or something similar. Amazon runs an affiliate program and there are many more out there. Do a search on cost per action or lead generation. Be honest about making money – people will appreciate that. Legally required in US, but not in Oz yet – should disclose, because you want to honour the trust that has been place in you by your readers. Reciprocity works here too.

AIDA – attraction, interest, desire, action. Provide proof, answer objections. Think about where your traffic is coming from and then target an offer towards them (specificity). Not just about conversion rates, you need to see the action all the way through. What is the refund rate etc.

Collis Ta-eed – Case Study

Blogging industry been around 6 or 7 years, but there are still a lot of opportunities. How do you identify them? Wrote a post about freelancing, which gave him more hits than the rest of his blog posts combined. Started http://freelanceswitch.com/ – within 2 weeks he had 3000 readers – 10 times what he had on his previous blog. Had written a series of tutorials on PhotoShop which he published on a blog, which also took off and has now spun off into a new series of blogs which also provide tutorials on different topics. Another blog came out of a post which ended up on top of the Google search results for Mac Apps.

Not all opportunities are the same. Not everything they did worked. Freelance Switch worked but Work which aimed at office workers is just trudging alone. PSD/Net great success but Audio has been growing Ok and not the runaway success that its inspiration was. Mac Apps spawned Web Apps which hasn’t really moved, iyet Phone Apps which came later has worked much better in a shorter time.

Some blogs rush straight off the ground. Others are a hard slog, traffic, revenue, audience etc. No difference in the inputs, so need to figure out how to get it right.

Techniques to get it right:

• Variations on popular – imitate but with a twist, can be successful if you get in early-ish, are good and have a sufficiently different angle;
• Using empirical results – search rankings, popularity of posts (not just on your own blog), Adsense testing, any method where you gauge the popularity of a niche in an analytical way;
• problems & passion – doing what you love Or solving your own problem, assumes that there are others out there like you (and there probably are);
• using trends – pick where the market is going and bet on it, great example – Twitip! Great for technology but applicable for other areas too.

Is it really an opportunity? Not always. To find out, try some competitive analysis, empirical analysis, test the waters.

Capitalising on opportunities: Move quickly – web moves first and it takes time to gain momentum so you need to start sooner rather than later. Don’t be afraid to change – you have to give something a good solid go and back yourself but if its  not working then sometimes you have to pull the plug and concentrate on a different opportunity.

Opportunity is only the beginning: you still need to execute well, you need to create good content, you need to be consistent, you have to be better than your competitors.

So that’s it until about mid afternoon on Monday. I will post the last of my notes in a third blog post tomorrow.

I was so fortunate to be able to attend the ProBlogger training day held in Melbourne today. If you don’t know ProBlogger (Darren Rowse) – check him out. He is one of the foremost authorities on blogging and an Aussie as well and he gathered together a great group of blogging colleagues to present a well-rounded day of information and insights. People came from as far as Brisbane to attend this one day event!

Although parts of the day were focused on the money making side of blogging and I was surrounded by business focused bloggers, I still got a lot out of it, even from those monetizing sections. I ended up taking 7 pages of notes, so instead of inflicting them all on you in one go, I will break them up into parts.

Creating Killer Content – Chris Garrett

Worked on Problogger book with Darren Rowse. In from UK. What brings them together is content.

Its one of the pillars of blogging, but it is also the key pillar. If you don’t have content, you don’t have anything to blog with.

It’s not about making cash, it’s about long term value – to have this you have to have killer content.

First: common sense is seldom, common practice. Are you doing this? Are your peers? Could you do better at this? Keep your edge or catch up by doing this.

What is killer content?  Leads to attraction, retention, conversion and referral. Many stop at the attention grabbing. Attention is only the first step and its a cycle. Blog can plateau. Need to keep existing people happy, whilst also getting new people in.

You are only as good as your last article. Even if you have consistently done great content. If you have killer content it becomes viral. Word of mouth is the best advertisement you can get.

Why create it? It puts your blog on the map – a must-have resource. Must be something that they subscribe to. You establish yourself as the go to person in your niche.

Do you know your prospect? Do you know your niche? Do you know your positioning?  Have to stand out and for a good reason. What are you giving to people that nobody else does. You have to be different, but with value.

Success factors: be remarkable (people talk about it), more useful, in more depth, better researched, attractively presented, magnetic headlines, easy to grasp, friendly URL, WIIFM (whats in it for me – for your reader), minimum hype, prominent placement – being where people are going to be and no barriers – don’t make them jump through hoops, just give them the content and explain how they can share it (ie. Creative Commons badges etc). Never say you’re an expert, let others say that for you – if you say it, all the barriers go up.

Compelling content types: your biggest tips, big vision, guides/how to/tutorials, FAQs, Story with a message, research and results, jargon buster, product database, case studies, resource round-up.

Generating Ideas: Yahoo Answers etc – find out what questions people are asking and answer them. Once you get some followers, people will ask questions. Get their permission to answer the question on your blog.

Blog this! Write about what you know or your journey about learning what you want to know. But it also has to intersect with what people want to know (rather than what they need). If it doesn’t, you won’t find an audience. Add proof that you know people want to know it. Back up that you know what you are talking about with your proof – statistics and social verification.

Emotional motivators – towards or away from people – towards is goal oriented, away is worry etc – need to know your audience and blog accordingly. Past, present, future; they live on these clocks – understand where they are coming from.  What if, how to…..; information…. action – people need results from your information.

Headlines – need to get people to read your information. Need to look at the reason they are looking – risk or reward. Need to have keywords that people are seeking.
10 proven formulas for blog posts:

• DO you make these mistakes?
• The secrets of ………..?
• What …….. can teach us about ……….?
• Everything you know about is ………. wrong.
• How ………… made ……….. and you can too.
• If you …………. you can …………..
• Finally, no more ………….
• At last! …………….
• Learn how millions of…..
• How to get more/better/cheaper………….

Borrow Authority – if you don’t know the information yourself, ask an authority and get permission to re-use the content. It gives you more authority because you know people who are recognised authorities.

Jedi Mind tricks (marketing) – audience, relationships, authority, proof, story, conversation, reciprocity, polarity, commitment, consistency.

Multimedia is very persuasive and easy to get out – can make it easy to go viral. It makes you stand out (most bloggers go with text) and is easy to share.

Re-purpose your content – bundle it into a container, make videos around it, take the audio and make it into a podcast, create an e-book from the multimedia you create. Leverage it to get more traction from it. You can even outsource the re-purposing.

Case Study – Chrisg.com – 41 blog success tips —– includes benefit and proof. Has an image that catches the eye. Problogger – becoming a problogger – rags to riches story – underlying message is that you can too.  Copyblogger – on dying, mothers and fighting for your ideas – story with a message.

Mistakes in creating content: – writing purely for search – filler content (just to fill a space) – recycling ideas (update, not copy and paste or link) – Echo chamber (we all agree) – Poking the Hornets nest.

Finding Readers – Darren Rowse
What was your biggest day of traffic and how did it happen? (go and check it out for your blog – can learn so much from this alone)

Which Readers? What type of people do you want to read your blog? Knowing who, informs your content strategy, your promotional strategy, community strategy and monetisation strategy.

Develop reader profiles: create a typical scenario of who would read your site – demographics, dreams, why they would read your blog, needs, challenges, how they use the web, financial situation – all completely made up – but it gives you a starting point. Profiles will evolve and need to be updated. They inform your content and how you promote your site. If you don’t know who reads your blog then how can you find them? If you have a profile in mind, it helps you to personalise the content to that particular profile.

Principles of finding readers:

• choose popular topics for your blog and posts (google trends, market samurai);
• build something worth being found;
• get off your blog – build a home base – then interact on outposts on the web – outposts depend on who your readers are – eg Twitter, Flickr
• build anticipation – give readers a reason to subscribe – a reason to stick around;
• start with the readers you have – you can potentially reach more through the ones you have;
• build a sticky blog – engross them so much that they don’t want to leave (sneeze pages – gets people deeper into your blog, into the things that interest them);
• content event (results of surveys or polls and more, seasonal stuff etc) – look at what your peers are doing, social bookmarking and networking are talking about in your niche and make the most of it;
• use familiar technologies for subscribing – email;
• persist – momentum does grow and it does get easier;
• promote…… but not too much. Survey your readers – find out what they want to know about and what other sites they use.

Lifehacker – suggest a link/topic. Get them to write about something you think their readers should know about.

Blog posts on themes or greatest hits……

Techniques for finding readers:

• guest posting, social media sites, you tube, seo, forums,
• pitch other bloggers,
• leverage other online and offline presences
• participate in other memes and projects of others,
• blogging/web communities, competitions and awards,
• speaking at events and workshops online/offline.
• Blogging alliances,
• present workshops,
• develop reports/whitepapers,
• incentivise subscriptions,
• interview someone/be interviewed,
• comment on others blogs (make an impression),
• comment on readers blogs,
• promote posts or landing pages – not just your blog,
• advertise,
• submit stories to media/press releases,
• anticipate big events,
• press releases.

Forums still have value, particularly in finding readers – you can help those there with your expertise, build your reputation and gain exposure for your blog.

Find a community that helps you to promote and improve your own blog.

Check your public library for training opportunities on things like public speaking, choosing cameras etc.

Getting readers to subscribers – depends on your readers – add a subscribe link to end of each post and if not used too much, in content links.  Sidebar links don’t work that well.

That took us to morning tea – will post the next stage in Part Two – coming soon!

Its Day 11 of the 30 blog posts in 30 days challenge and as promised, here’s my notes from yesterday’s seminar.

Insight into Victorian Public Library Experience with Downloadables – Thursday 10th June 2010 101m-4pm

Kenneth Harris – Port Phillip Library

They have recently implemented Wave Sound eaudio downloads.

Not many choices in terms of vendors.

They use IP addresses for inhouse downloading. External was organised through referring URL, with authentication provided by the library itself.  Clunky but it works.

Raised awareness through high level links in the catalogue, which link back to the referrer page. Unfortunately you have to login to the catalogue first to get authenticated, so it then has a quick link to the ebooks from the account page.

Once you have logged in, you have to create a Clipper account. Once that is done, you don’t need to authenticate a second time.

Marc records are part of the sub. Links are displayed to everyone – so they needed to be changed to the link to ebooks info.

Took a while to upload the records (588) – took some fiddling and lots of discussion to get it right.

Stats can be retrieved on use, including popular titles, users, checkouts and renewals, activity by subject and more.

Have a 10 item limit for users.

In 6 weeks, they have had 245 accesses 197 checkouts ad 48 renewals.  95 User accounts have been created.

What they’ve learnt so far:
- not much they didn’t already know
- problems with DRM – macs cant play wma files (1/3 of files are wma)
- public PCs can’t  download the wma files due to an issue with DRM and PC deployment
- WMA files wont play on your car stereo
- users find it difficult to locate files they can download
- if it takes more than couple of minutes, people give up
- needs to be improvement in catalogue and subscription integration
- authentication should be done by the vendor, done off the library catalogue login (not by the library)

Marketing – didn’t tell people it was coming. When it came, they used a screensaver on their catalogue PCs, Wavesound provided brochures and posters and want to come and talk to users and staff about the product. Have to promote more – difficult at this time due to RFID project in process.

Authentication: after initial authentication with library card, and setup Clipper account, they can go to straight in to the Clipper page. When they setup, it refers to Port Phillip, so that’s where the account is based and Port Phillip’s limits etc apply.

EZ Proxy authentication is available, but only if it is done by the library. Don’t offer SIP2. However, they may be able to connect using WebFeat, which is what Port Phillip has – but will still be adding extra steps.

Stats don’t show where people come from to get there – whether its from the catalogue or direct from the website (once the account has been created).

Knowing what they know now, they still believe that they made the right choice. A major reason for going with them was that there were no extra software requirements. Works on a yearly contract – they start with a base library and get an extra supply of titles each month. You can opt to choose titles or let them be chosen for you. You have the option to change titles.

Loan period is 3 weeks and can be renewed. Up to 10 titles at a time. Files disappear at the end of the loan period. Can’t return early.

Its a totally separate loan system to the LMS. All statistics are kept separately. Could happen in the future if we get SIP2 connections with our ebook providers.

All the products run using an online store model like Amazon.

No limit on simultaneous users. Fees based on population.

Wavesound has both ebook and eaudio, but Port Phillip only has eaudio.

As login is based on username and password, can’t tell age, where joined etc, etc.

Jennifer Khan, Greg Evans and Tony Brooks from Melbourne Library Service
Melbourne has had Overdrive eaudio books for 12 months.

Have introduced downloadable audio first not ebooks – due to degree of uncertainty in ebook market. Used a staged approach. As there are a limited field of vendors, decided to go with Overdrive because of their proven track record and a good market share. Overdrive provide professional and free marketing support and a very slick product.

Once they signed up, they sorted out policy definitions such as circulation, connection and IP issues, membership exceptions and different card types, which was all pretty straightforward with good technical vendor support. Got access to a development site for testing.

Support from local rep was not good, so dealt mainly with the US via email and teleconferences (6pm there to 9am here).

Greg had already introduced it at ACT, so had great experience to begin with.

Collection management:  never handed it over to Overdrive but eaudio content has been limited. Shifting market makes things very difficult as titles can change with changing publishers agreements.  However, users have taken to them with great enthusiasm.

Overdrive have a number of specialists – Collections, IT and marketing and the support is fantastic. Did a user survey to gauge interest and find out what they would be interested in. Got a lot of people provide email addresses and become their testers and feedbackers.

Marketing – lots of support from Overdrive. Library branding throughout. Got media engagement. Day after it was written up in the Green guide, everything went out. Had to buy more titles. Have about 400 titles now.

Have concluded that they will need to use more eaudio vendors. Next challenge is how to create a seamless interface to all the content being provided by these different vendors.

Vendor training to staff user group was very complex – consisting of a teleconference from the US which was very thorough but over the top. Too much information delivered. Had a overarching marketing emphasis however, rather than technical/user experience. Once completed, they played with the product some more.

Cascading information to general staff was simplified to customer needs and
was compulsory for all staff. They quickly learned what issues may be encountered in a real environment, the key features and bugs and then
redesigned the training again for the public.

Training public was easier as they were all keyed up and ready to go by the time they launched, the integration with LMS was seamless. Public sessions were very well attended – running 2-3 sessions a day for 2 weeks – many people brought own laptops. They also did some individual follow up with special need users and they are getting constant feedback and making minor changes as they go.

Needed a lot of patience throughout the launch process, to help get people on board. Overdrive provides a help service, where individual issues can be addressed – has a 4 hour turn around.

Interface is seamless with the Melbourne website. Although the Overdrive site is external, it looks like the Melbourne website. Overdrive has 2 to 1 WMA to MP3 format. WMA files can be downloaded to a PC however and then transferred to an iPod, during which it gets reformatted to a iPod readable.

However, you do need to download an Overdrive media console to access the content.

Future:
ebooks next – would be easy to go with Overdrive as DRM is less problematic and they have a great range of titles, a nice interface and great support. Checked out different options and have gone with Overdrive.

Issues for ebooks included limited reader functionality and availability, in a market where there is a huge range of devices. Sony ebook readers and Nooks will play the content, but not available here yet.

However, users are fascinated with mobile devices and readers. May yet lend some of the older generation ebook readers that they own, with pre-loaded content. They area also considering the options of bookstores vs vendors and online sellers. iPhone app is also now available for Overdrive. Have been advised to go with ePub format with ebooks.

Issues: format issues – ie WMA vs MP3, licensing vs ownership – different models and some vendors let you own the book, DRM and access to content and limited Oz content. Overdrive is licensing, Bolinda is ownership.

Check out BLIO? – downloads the software with the content and can be played on any device. May be major DRM issues so getting content from publishers may be difficult.

Success factors: critical mass strategy, group of early adopters, DRM minimal vendor, concurrent users, Marc records, ease of circulation, availability of stats, review and user group.

Lot of success due to holistic approach – collections, IT and marketing working together with staff. Staff are enthusiastic and the service has had great use and feedback from users.

Overdrive – one copy one user model. If you want more users, then have to purchase more copies.

Authentication – user is presented with a login screen – uses SIP2 to library system. Overdrive manages the user account, SIP2 is only used to verify that it is a valid user. If you login to catalogue, you still have to login to Overdrive.

Offer optional load periods – one or two weeks. Items cant be checked in, you have to wait for it to expire. Some titles are available in a single file – many titles are in multiple files to download (like CD based audio books). Can download progressively over your loan period.

User stats – have not done much as yet.  Will now look at it now that they are 12 months down the track.

User Experience panel

I was then on a panel of three committee members, who used the Overdrive and Wavesound services as brand new users, using a PC, a Mac and an iPhone (that was me). We are still compiling experiences and hope to add more. If you are interested in the report thus far, let me know and I’ll get a copy out.

Vendor presentations

The early part of the afternoon was taken up with presentations from Wave Sound, NetLibrary – newly purchased by Ebsco, and Bolinda. The first and last only offer eaudio at this time, NetLibrary does both. Overdrive does not have an Australian based rep at this time. Each vendor gave a short marketing spiel and then demonstrated the user interface and answered questions relating to the IT structure of their product.

Vendor panel

We finished the day with a panel involving the vendors answering questions from the attendees. They were:

Will you be offering streaming content now or in the future?  Not yet, but its on the radar for all of them.

Can you see a future where all content is device neutral?  Yes, but no timeline though, everything is changing so fast and at different rates. Eaudio market is much more mature than the ebook market, which is why its much more device adaptable.

What do you mean by fully accessible?  Bolinda downloads can be used by all – including screen readers. Files can be played on most devices – they are all MP3. All titles are remastered into chapters with logical breaks.

What do you mean by exclusive rights?  Why exclusivity?  Lots of money is involved in purchasing rights and publishers aim to get the best possible deals for their content. There are licences for print, audio and downloadable. Not all arrangements are exclusive.  Rights are for a certain length of time, somewhere between 5 and 10 years.  Also depends on the model – purchase model means you have it forever, subscription model means you only have it whilst you have the sub and the vendor has the rights.

Will we end up getting this content from multiple vendors? Yes, the issue then becomes how to make the whole process seamless so that the users experience one process. Library processes are changing. Moving from print to digital including how we join and access collections. Is getting to the point where the whole interaction that users have with the library will be totally digital. Collections offered are different, but so are our users. So we will have to pick and choose from vendors.

Is reciprocal borrowing available? It is through Overdrive in the US, where you can borrow between different libraries. Publishers much prefer consortium purchase, rather than reciprocal borrowing.  Ebsco does consortial arrangements, as does Wavesound. Bolinda does not do consortia, because they believe they are affordable and give each library service flexibility.

Do you have plans to intergrate with LMS’s? Definitely on Ebsco’s radar. Libraries would like to have all their account information in one location, so they can check all their holds, all their loans etc, in the one setup. Bolinda says it can be done because the technology is available.  Importing this data back into our circulation modules for statistical purposes is a lot more problematic. Bolinda has established Web Services with Aurora and SirsiDynix LMSs. In discussions with other vendors, but have confirmed that they will be establishing a SIP2 connection with Civica. This will also require an extra software install at both ends to help improve security.

Do you have any thoughts on offering other media for download?  eg. Film, games, media etc. Bolinda is already looking to do this. Not Wavesound, but Ebsco will look at this as well.

Are there any plans to integrate back into social media platforms? Ebscohost has a module EIT – which has an array of tools with widgets etc, that can be inserted into a range of tools. Bolinda is looking at it. Wavesound works on Ebsco’s platform so they have access to the same tools as Net Library, through Ebsco.

Summary

The day was well received and well attended with about 50 people coming from over half of Victoria’s public library services, most for the whole day and some from quite a distance away. As an organiser and attendee I was very pleased, not only with how the day ran, but from what I got out of it. I feel much better prepared for when we venture into the world of downloadable eaudio, which will be soon.

There have been a lot of stories going around the last few months, about the future of newspapers and how they are in jeopardy because of the Net. (great links and summary of key articles at Rosen’s Flying Seminar in the Future of News) I’ll refer to some of those, whilst giving a personal perspective and some insight from working with our users and those resources.

I guess my thoughts began even before I saw the Pew Research Center for the People & The Press report from December 2008. The Internet Overtakes Newspapers As News Outlet released survey findings that showed the Internet bypassed all other forms of media, excepting TV, as a source for both national and international news.

Since then, there have been many big stories from the US mainly, about newspapers closing down or downsizing, as their sales slide down.  That’s not to say that people aren’t interested in news, they are just finding it in different ways.

During the February 09 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, I was on the Herald-Sun newspaper website several times a day, looking for the latest information and images from the disaster.  That was also the place I went to when we experienced two earth tremors within a few weeks of each in March 09.  I found that besides Twitter (which by the way, the Herald-Sun was also monitoring), that this was the quickest source to pick up the news.

Great for the paper, that people are turning to them online to read that up-to-date content, now they just have to try and make money out of it, so that they can keep providing that content.  What model they will take up is unknown as yet, but it will have to be one that doesn’t scare people aware from using their content, ala New York Times with their paid subs.

Interestingly though, there is a definite interest in the physical act of reading a newspaper, but in an online environment.  A number of years ago, my library subscribed to an online database that enabled the reader to read the newspaper online looking like the actual paper itself. So when you get the newspaper on screen, it looks exactly like the paper copy.  You click on the bottom corner and can turn the page and can continue doing so, from front to back and to front again.  Alternatively, you can skip to particular pages or sections as you like.

We subscribed to that database initially to give our users access to international newspapers, so that local residents could read their home country newspaper, in the language of its origin.  No waiting for airmail deliveries etc, you could read it within a day of its publication (allowing for time differences of course). What has happened in the last year, is that our users are using it to access our major daily newspapers and reading them online as they would physically.  Use of that database has increased exponentially in that time and the vast majority of that use is around the major dailies.

On the otherhand, use of the databases that indexes the same newspapers, the one that students use a lot for assignments etc, has remained fairly static in comparison.

Which brings us to the local level. Our local newspapers have had online presences for a while, but no archive to speak of.  One of our local newspaper chains is now available through a newspaper database, but only beginning this year.  After nearly 10 years of archives of our major dailies, this is long overdue.  But with the disappearance of local papers in the US, I wonder how long our local papers will remain with us and whether this is too little too late.

And if it is, what will happen to local news.  Again the US gives some idea of direction with new Web start-ups looking to fill that gap. Hyperlocal web sites deliver news without newspapers ironically appears in the New York Times.  Go check it out and then think about where your local news will come from if the newspapers themselves disappear.  Is this a gap that the public library can step into and if so, how?

Interestingly, I do still sometimes read the physical newspaper, but only if it happens to be in front of me, I don’t go to seek it out.  With the major dailies, its usually to acquaint myself with the important (or on slow news days, not so important) topics of current interest, but more importantly, to catch up on the comics and the sports I am interested in.   I also read my local papers (we get 3), mainly for things of personal interest or that of my family, or that relate to my local area or promote the library.

Do you still read the physical newspaper, local, major daily or national,  or do you prefer to do all your news seeking online?  Is the format you use dependent on whether you browse or particularly seek, like me?  Would love to hear your habits and thoughts as we all might have to change them in coming years.

I was getting tired by now at the conference, like I am now with these writeups, so the notes are getting briefer – hang in there with me now!

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