Connecting Librarian

Privacy concerns in social networks and online communities – Amirhossein Mohtaswebi – Extol Corp Malaysia and Parnian Borazjani – Univerity Technology Malaysia – presented by Bart Rutherford.

Degrees of trust: with social networks you lose control over 2nd degree onwards, when you have 130 friends in the first degree and those friends have 130 friends and so on.

Privacy settings on Facebook for example, are hard to configure and confusing lack familiarity an there is a loosely set default policy.

Research was carried out at Malaysia Universities, with a good range of ethnicities and gender. They were working in an environment of open access – no blocked sites or good firewalls.  Their objectives were to find threat awareness levels in social networks and to run a threat model – can they find contact details, photos, personal information etc.

Blind in the sense that they sought participants through publicity around campus. Gained some information initially through the process of selecting participants.

Results – 52% did not accept a friendship request from an unknown person. However, 42% would, most (21%) if there was a friend in common. No significant difference in gender.

Vulnerability vs education – more educated students are less vulnerable to social attacks – no correlation with gender or age.

Privacy statements – 48% never read them, 14% didn’t know what they were and only a small percentage opted out of joining because of a networks privacy statement.

38% never set who can see their personal information among the rest.

New friendship requests – 70% accept without investigation. High percentages shared personal pictures and email addresses. Much lower percentages for non-personal pictures, phone numbers etc.

Mined the data from their Facebook profile to search Google, where they were able to get more information about the person. Could have serious implications for under1 18s.

Interesting: received friendship requests from unknown people to their fake Facebook profile.

Fiona Salisbury and Sandi Monaghan – La Trobe University – Finding a new voice: keys to building successful online communities

Why encourage participation? More user centred focus by offering where the users are as well as encouraging participation between users themselves.

ANZ – 68% of university libraries use at least one Web 2.0 tool. Internationally its over 70%.

Lessons learned from putting these tools in place (particularly relates to their blogs): regular posting and updating required to retain audience interest, informal friendly language is more engaging, timely replies show the value of their comments and usability is essential.

They promoted interaction not just by putting the technology in place – it doesn’t work. To get comments, they posted content that prompts a response or comment, such as opinion posts, user services suggestions, posts with multimedia, students interacting.

Library discussion threads in LMS; open communication which promotes discussion and cooperation amongst students related to library research.
Lots of questions came through, ranging from notices and information seeking, to deep referenc questions. The discussion boards also involved the students talking with each other.

Choose the appropriate technology for your environment, convey enthusiasm in your communications, chosen platform must be easy to use, use open and relaxed language, exerient analyse and review often.

Ellen Forsyth – SLNSW – Wiki ecosystems: the development and growth of online communities of practice.

Wikis are always under development.

Ellen works with NSW public library staff to encourage collaboration. Can get a maximum of 300 or so people in face to face meetings in a workforce of 2300. They use multiple blogs, wikis and a twitter account to help communicate and collaborate with each other.

Readers advisory wiki – created by the NSW Readers Advisory Working Group, using Wetpaint. It is self-managed, no oversight. People have self-assigned roles on the wiki – tagging, grammar checking, content contribution. Most interest in the 2010 Reading Challenge on their wiki.

How is the community working – they check for reading lists and meetings – both details and minutes. Most visit are daily or weekly (¾).

Ref-ex Wiki – based on Ohio Excellence Project. Offers training modules on reference service. It uses Media Wiki.  Lower visits than readers advisory wiki, but fits the purpose of the site.

75% of users said that they felt part of the wiki community, 25% said they weren’t sure for the Ref-ex wiki. Lower figures for readers advisory, but most who didn’t feel engaged felt that it was their own fault.

No one communication tools suits everyone, so they offer multiple tools to meet diverse needs. No community is going to fulfill everyone the same way either.  For some it is too quiet, for some its too busy. Although they get emails about updates, staff have said that they would appreciate updates via Twitter or Facebook.

Readers Advisory Wiki is like a rainforest – wild and ever growing well in the wet season (which is now). Ref-ex like a semi formal garden – still growing, but more planned. Both wikis are still growing and developing.

http://readersadvisory.wetpaint.com

http://wiki.libraries.nsw.gov.au/index.php/Reference_excellence

The first presentation for this session was my paper, presented with my co-author Paul Mercieca. Our presentation Evaluating Web 2.0: user experiences with public library blogs is available at Slideshare.

The impact and benefits of Learning 2.0 programs in Australian Libraries: Michael Stephens – Dominican University, Richard Sayers – CAVAL and Warren Cheetham – City Libraries Townsville

Methodology – lit review, web survey of program administrators, national survey of Library 2.0 participants and case study at City Libraries Townsville.

National survey was conducted in June 2009 and garnered 385 responses, across all sectors, but particularly from the public and academic sectors. Most did it at work (61%), nearly ¼ through a consortial ie. State Library of Victoria and the rest on their own by joining in on another program. 85% completed the program. For those who didn’t finish it, 3/4s reported no time or too busy, 25% too hard, didn’t like it, not comfortable.  Reasons included program too fast, other demands on time, sites blocked and personal privacy concerns.

Open question: After finishing Learning 2.0. I feel comfortable using new technologies – agreed and strongly agree – up around 80%. I like to explore technology on my own dropped a bit. Team/committee structures have improved because of this training – only 40% strongly agreed.  Personal impact seems to be much stronger than institutional impact.

Impact on your libraries after Learning 2.0 has been completed: better awareness of these tools 30%, more use 21%, no change 20%.

Success =  Support plus Time allowed – perceived usefulness.
Support = Admin plus coworkers plus programme leaders plus IT support

Its not bringing broad sweeping changes to libraries, but is changing how individual staff perceive technology and how they work with it.

Find out more at: http://research.tametheweb.com/.

From library automation to Library 2.0: exploring Web 2.0 tools,while reflecting on our traditional values as we move towards Library 2.0 and beyond – Paul Sutherland – Christchurch City Libraries.

Thinks he was born digital, using technology from a very young age. Threw in a convicts comment (cross Tasman rivalry). Lots of Facebook users, not many Friends of VALA – MUST FIX THIS.

Don’t be afraid of being afraid.

What are your top trends?

Libraries have never been about books – they have been about ideas and creating new things from those ideas.

Let go and see what happens, stop acting like librarians (twitter comment).

Connections, content and conversation. Books we can see, data we can’t see, it just whizzes about us. Learning 2.0 is more about learning to adapt and adopt.

What is a blog? Its really a conversation, but also directing users back to the library.

Libraries need a presence in library thing. We should own and manage our presence in these spaces.

Used Flickr to engage their users – asked for and scanned their photos in Flickr about the ordinary day things happening in their city. People want to share their content with the world and where better than the library as a channel for that. People want to tell us things. Stop using ‘user-generated content’ as a term, use local experts. Librarians don’t know everything, we should know however, where to find it.

Very bad at recording our own history.  Need to get better at that.  Every library should have a Wikipedia presence. Check how many incoming links come to your wikipedia entry (when you get it).

Embed your catalogue – make it easy for your users – eg LibX toolbar.

How do you try out a new tool, with really committing to it or feeling foolish when you don’t go through with it. Running a competition solves this problem.

Check out Open Library.

History of Melbourne on Wikipedia only has 12 references.  We are in a position to fix this for our local communities’ entries.

Where is the memory space for things like Black Saturday.  We need to be collecting the things of now, because they will be important in future – including things as simple as shopping catalogues.

Christchurch is piloting Kete – trying to use it as a place to store their stories – not about accuracy.

Impressed with what libraries are doing with open access to data.

DigitalNZ – GLAM plus more – check the website. Want to find stuff for our users and be able to deliver it to our users with our brands.

I’ve been pondering again. So I’m going to inflict it on you.

We have recently added Chili Fresh reviews to our catalogue.  I like it, its easy to use, easy to add reviews, we have the weight of Chili Fresh reviews from around the world to populate our catalogue and they have some really cool social networking features coming soon.

Tagging from the Darien Catalogue

But Chili Fresh doesn’t have user tagging (at least not yet).  Which of course got me thinking about tagging.

A common problem experienced in public libraries and I’m sure in other libraries too, is when you have a user come up and say something like:

“Can you help me, I’m looking for a book that I have had before. Its about gardening, its green and its about this big (demonstration using hands).”

They can’t remember anything about the author, but sometimes they can remember more about the content.  In the above type of example, it would be something about vegetables.

Barring miraculous circumstances, (like you have read that same book), or the luck of finding said book on shelf or trolley in roughly the place you would expect it to be, the likelihood of finding it with that information alone is nigh impossible.

So my reasoning was that if users could tag our catalogue records with that sort of information, it we be of great use to both them and us in finding that same title in future.

A few problems with my reasoning as I pondered further.

First would be getting the users to tag the details in the first place. Although we have a few people (more than we expected) putting reviews on our catalogue, it is nowhere near critical mass.

Second, do you know how many green books about gardening, let alone vegetables, we have?

And finally, the piece de resistance.  You finally find that book that the user was so desperate for and the only thing they got right was that it was about gardening. As for the rest of it, the subject was hydroponics, the book was orange and it was a very different shape and size.

Now only if we could tag each item by its actual details as well as its perceived details, we might have something.  But by then, the tags will take up more than a screen of detail and would probably send the catalogue search feature into meltdown.

When we do get tagging (and we will somehow, someday), we won’t stop our users from adding this sort of information, but I guess only experience will be able to tell us if it will be of any help.

What sort of ideas have you had about new technologies, which might not work so well in a library situation?  Maybe we can help you resolve your problems around it. Would also love to hear your thoughts on this one.

I began the afternoon session with a presentation on Web 2.0 and Marketing in Libraries.

Unfortunately for the organising commitment, they had a second last minute cancellation, but were fortunate enough to have a couple of people step up and show what they were doing at their library.  Danny was first.

Darebin Libraries Website – Danny

Their website redevelopment began about 18 months ago. Advice for anyone who has a website – take your website content, print it out as pages, put them on the floor and see if you can navigate between them easily.

Its all about content, content, content. It needs to be coherent, accessible, and minimal.

Everything on Darebin website has been developed in HTML or XML.  No plugins required.  You need to be sure that anyone can access your site, without needing the latest software versions etc.  See W3C guidelines.

Firefox has a HTML validator plug-in which will validate your code, against the W3C guidelines. If there are HTML or CSS errors in your website, then Google will drop you down in search results.

Need HTML fonts that anyone can read and contrasting background colours.

Social networking will only work for you if you have a great, well working website.  The social networking aims to bring users back to the library website, so you have to get that right first.

They use a content management system for their website,  Convoy CMS produced by Roadhouse, customised for Darebin.  Roadhouse also developed the new PLEASED website for public libraries on disability topics.

Vision Australia has a free toolbar to validate your website.

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Fiona was the second step-in speaker.

Yarra Plenty Libraries Website Redevelopment – Fiona.

Their redevelopment is going live in March 2010. They are going with the  Biblio Commons Discovery layer to bring the catalogue into the website.  Keep the branding and the menus consistent with the website, even when it moves into the catalogue on doing a search.

You can create collections, mark for later and create lists, which can be public or private.  You are able to share and bookmark using a wide variety of Web 2.0 tools.

You can send messages to other users through Bibliocommons, follow them etc.  Can also block them.

It all looks very interesting.  The Bibliocommons website takes you to customer websites to check out.

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Pam Saunders and Elwyn Murray -  Talking about my generation – giving perspective on what their generation is interested in.

Pam Saunders  is gen X  and she has 10 library cards – a library junkie.  No one library gives her what she needs.  She lives in the city and the country.  She carries these cards in a wallet which also contains reviews, notes, recommended books, etc that she wants to get from her library.  She looks to which library can get it and which will get it to her the quickest.

Her first point of contact will be the library website.  Her impressions of library services, their reputations, will come from this. The best websites will be presented the same way that a house for sale is.  Pruned down, uncluttered.  Some libraries have other features that she is not aware of, because they havent sent them to her or she hasnt seen them on the library website.

Facebook – you can overload people with information that is not always relevant, so be careful about how much you dish out.  Don’t make her have too many user names and passwords.  Can find out interesting statistics about your Facebook users from Facebook itself.

Doesn’t like a big sign saying that you can pay your overdue fines online – not as a first thing. Put the positive things online, the not so delightful things should be tucked away – not unfindable, but not in your face.

Gen Y – Elwyn – uses the power of the Net to drive personal interest. Used Facebook to promote an event and got an unexpectedly good response.

Elwyn agreed with Leith’s earlier assertions, when you engage with people, you also engage with their networks. People attend events because they have an interest, because they know someone who is in it or because they know someone who is going.

You need to be personal in your approach, even if its in a broadcast medium like Facebook. Viral marketing plays a big role in promotion.

Things he is addicted to include: FFFFound – image bookmarking and Future Shipwreck – he also links to post things to Tumblr (microblogging tool).

Tends to shy away from institutions on the internet – wants to hear individuals’ opinions, not the company line.

Does a lot of buying online, reads a lot of blogs, doesn’t listen to the radio anymore.

Is he a library member?
Yes.

Why did they publish a hard copy of their book, rather than just online?
Easy to digitally curate things, but there is a different status level to a printed copy.  If you can buy it, it is a way of showing appreciation and a way to own the content, which is different to the online. Had a grant to do it.

So that was the day.  It finished with the LibMark Marketing awards – one of which was one by my library, for our teen blog  Quicksand. Woohoo!

Thanks to the LibMark Committee for an insightful and interesting day.  I will chasing up more than a few things for my library.

Its my fourth anniversary of blogging, my blogiversary.  On the 29th July 2005, I posted my first entry to Connecting Librarian, at that time at blogger.com.  Four years later and wow, what a ride!

I’ve been thinking about blogging for a while now.  Even considered stopping altogether, but couldn’t bring myself to do it.  Although I’m not blogging as regularly, I still feel I have something to say and that this is one of the places I can say it.

Some of the reasons I have been blogging less, are that I am twittering more (most days and for most of the day usually) and I have been more writing away from the online, in the form of conference papers and articles, as well as continuing to do book reviews for ALJ.  I have 1 article and 2 conference papers on the go at present too.

I’m feeling less pressure to blog too, probably because of my increased presence on Twitter and Facebook – now I try to blog at least once a month, if not once a fortnight, but only when I have something to say, not just for the sake of it. Maybe I’m finally maturing as a blogger.

And just when I think about blogging less, I find the content to do 3 blog posts in 4 days.  Figures!

I’m far from being the only one thinking about how blogging is changing.  Iris Jastram (Pegasus Librarian) in her post The ebb and flow of my online communities talks about how, between chat rooms, Twitter and her blog, she is having trouble finding her centre.  I can relate to that.

Connecting Librarian was intended to be the centre of my online presence, but its now one of three main locations you will find me.  Its now becoming where I do my deeper thinking, whilst Twitter is where I have more of my interactions and conversations and Facebook is mostly just about connections.  Are others experiencing the same?

Meredith Farkas (Information Wants to be Free) in her post Whither blogging and the library blogosphere? laments what has happened to blogging in the face of micro-blogging.  I too miss the depth of content that comes with blogging and I have noticed a marked decrease in the frequency of blog posts arriving in my RSS reader.  On the other hand however, I love the immediacy and the contact that micro-blogging brings.

I twitter and then feed my twitters through to my Facebook status.  When I write a blog post, I twitter that.  So a blog post can be seen by people who read my blog, who follow me on Twitter or who have friended me on Facebook.  It becomes even more interesting when you start getting comments back on a blog post at each of these places as well.  So where is my centre?

I think that for now, my centre is Twitter – that’s where I spend most of my time in terms of an online presence, but I am not giving up my blog.  I still have many things to share and this is the ideal forum for that. Facebook is just another means of spreading the news from the first two and connecting with people that I can’t connect to otherwise.

So Happy Blogiversary to me and thanks to all my blog subscribers and readers. I am still amazed that you are following me and am grateful that you do.  Be reassured that there will still be blog posts, in the next year, although maybe not as often as I have in the past. I still want to blog though because I am still learning and discovering and find I still want to share all that I do, whilst “connecting new ideas and technologies with library service”.

In the first post, I revisited how we came to be building a new website and how we ended up with Drupal. And now to be continued ………

Initially learning Drupal was harder than I thought it would be. We couldn’t get our heads around how it worked, as it was so different to anything we had ever used before. We knew it would be challenging, particularly in choosing Drupal over Joomla, as it was known to be so. However, there were some frustrating moments early on, whilst we struggled with unfamiliar concepts.

Our plans to learn all about Drupal first and then build the website once we had, soon changed as we continued to struggle with the unfamiliar. In the end, we started transfering content over and learnt how to do things as we did so. When we came across something we didn’t understand, we looked for answers, in the books we had, on the Drupal forums, on other websites and on the odd occasion, from our ISP and more often than not, from my husband who has done work with Drupal.

As the new site continued to build, we became more comfortable with everything, the way Drupal was structured, how it all fit together and how to get everything working the way we wanted it to.

Of course, the things we wanted the most, the bling to make it all look lovely and appealing, were the hardest things to get working. It took weeks and trying out different methods and modules before we succeeded with the first of our trilogy of stumbling blocks – the Upcoming Events. Our new books images and events slideshow were the next and once we had the first, the second followed quickly. Our biggest struggle there was working out how Drupal works with images – the answer there: it doesn’t do it very well.

So anyway, it took 22 weeks from installation of Drupal on our web server to the point where we had a website ready for testing. We posted to the existing website, asking for users to check it the new website and provide us with feedback.

Our users were wonderful, happily giving us feedback, all which was constructive, encouraging and reaffirming of what we had built for them. Staff were also supportive and gave us some great suggestions and input. After a few weeks of leaving ourselves open to these responses, we closed down the test site and got ready for the official launch.

In Library Week 2009, we quietly launched our new website, with little fanfare (allowing for Murphy’s law of course) but with great results. We have continued to receive positive feedback from our users and as expected, have continued to refine and tweak the new site. There are still some bugs to be ironed out and there is a continual update process required with Drupal, but its not onerous.

Next step is to add some more features and to get some other staff editing and adding more content to the site. We will also do some more investigation into how the website is being used and by whom.

It’s been a challenge and an awesome learning process, which at times has been so incredibly frustrating, but ultimately very rewarding. Its not been easy, but with the resources we were able to find – print, personal and online, we have done it. A very satisfying result all round.

Day 1 was great, but Day 2 was just as good.

Social media & Library Marketing

The strength of our libraries is our unique brand – which is the specific communities we each serve.  Mass marketing is no longer the key, it is now niche marketing. Even our top Australian TV shows only reach about 5% of the population.

The public visiting public libraries is a choice, not a requirement – really think about what that means.

Marketing is a requirement for libraries, but can be done in new and amazingly engaging ways through Web 2.0.  Examples included a Day in the life of Allen County – Allen County Public Library, Paint the town Read – PLCMC, Love New Jersey Libraries, Storypalooza – Gail Borden Public Library and many more.  We shouldn’t be worried about the sustainability of such programs, after all the technology is changing so fast. We should be more concerned about community needs – use short bursts to get our communities aware of their library.

Create an engagement calendar. Use regular events and holidays to create activities, using free online tools, such as image generators.

8 Steps to Marketing 2.0:

1. Educate – learn about social media
2. Experience – participate and join in the conversation
3. Envision – develop a 2.0 marketing plan
4. Engage – create social celebrations
5. Enable – help your library brand & content travel
6. Expand – play with multimedia
7. Explore – learn as you go & track success
8. Experiment, experiment, experiment

And to top it all off: “The best way to get your customers to market your brand is to allow them to promote (the library) by marketing themselves!”

2.0 Innovations: Passions to Practices

We need to be looking for reasons to change, not excuses for not changing.

Efficiency evolution – improving on what already exists – libraries are good at this. Evolutionary evolution – creating something new and distinctly better. Revolutionary evolution – radically changes business and culture.  Libraries are great at the first and have a long way to go before they are anywhere near implementing the others.

Four elements of innovation: creativity, strategy, implementation and profitability.  Innovation in libraries usually fails at the strategy – lack of buy-in being one of the unbreachable barriers reached there.

Innovative ideas come from focussing on quantity – not quality, collecting everything, getting out of the comfort zone and adding constraints to your thinking.

However, it can be not so much the ideas you need to focus on, but how to move those ideas through the organisation.

• Sell it – tie it to your mission and vision statements
• Create alliances – build relationships that will give you support
• Don’t ask for permission – either ask for forgiveness where the risk is all yours, or ask for support and share the risk
• Sell your vision personally – if you have to produce a report, follow it up personally – you can’t sell a vision on a piece of paper
• Find a champion – if not a supervisor, find a mentor – even if they are outside your line of authority

Implementation requires time, resources and scope. If there is a problem here, you need to revisit the strategy. The profitability comes with how the idea is enacted within your organisation.

Change is about leadership – shouldering it yourself. Change begins with me, leadership is taking the responsibility for moving things forward.

Well that’s it, apart from all the personal little notes I wrote myself about things to chase up for myself or for my library – and there are many of those!   All Helene’s slides are available from Slideshare and I recommend you check them out – they are well worth it.

Wow, how thrilled was I to be offered a place at this Masterclass being held in Melbourne, with Helene Blowers flying in from the US to share her amazing experiences and expertise. Add to that the added bonus of Kathryn Greenhill coming over from Perth to attend as well and it was a perfect way to spend 2 days of library based learning.

So now that the gushing is out of the way, its down to what I got out of it.  And although I am well up to my neck in all this stuff and have been for a few years, I still got plenty of it, with sincere thanks to Helene, Kathryn and the other wonderful participants in this Masterclass (a few of whom I am now in touch with on Facebook and Twitter – hi!)

Exploring the shift

The shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 has been about the shift from Find – seeking information, to Connect – community.

As this connection becomes more widespread and internet access becomes ubiquitous, libraries will no longer be needed for access – what will we be about then?

The first digital divide was about access, the 2nd digital divide is about:

• the ability to do smart searches
• the ability to validate soft information (eg. Wikipedia)
• the ability to find information via hot channels (eg. Digg, Twitter etc)
• the ability to understand the current culture of informal languages (ie. text messaging)
• the ability to get information to travel to you
• the ability to create and re-mix content
• the knowledge that learning is a continual process rather than an achievement

Interestingly I realised that I could not say with total confidence that I could do all these things, but I also know that the vast majority of my professional colleagues definitely couldn’t, so there’s a big challenge for the future.

Helene showed us the Library Meme map: which I will definitely be looking at more closely in the light of our library website redevelopment.

Library 2.0 Meme Map

Patron 2.0 was discussed as enabling our users to contribute content to the library website – a situation that requires radical trust.  We currently allow commenting on our blogs, after approval of course.  Could we relax that further and how else could we and should we be opening our content to our users.  Can we so easily let go of the reins, especially when we are only just now getting the hang of them?

Moving from 1.0 to 2.0

Personal movement is straightforward.  Moving your organisation is more difficult. How do you do it?

1. Learn to listen – show management what people are saying about the library and the technology eg. Google Alerts – find out what the conversation is and respond to it.Pay attention to user generated content and comments.
2. Learn to spy on yourself – get RSS feeds of content you present.
3. Join the conversation – respond to what’s out there.
4. Manage your online reputation – there is a move from organisational to personal brand, with organisations have a personal front. The shift has to be to building the reputation of the individuals, which then reflects on the organisation.
5. Create a home base – a place from which to build your online reputation. A website, blog, Facebook profile, etc. Build it on your own name, engage your passion, start commenting, link & trackback, join other communities, create connections with yourself (between your online presences), continually engage with others. Its not a one off process, so you need to have a strategy.

Does your library’s mission statement translate into the online environment? If not, what has to change?

On a different tangent, I had to agree with Helene that users see the library’s website, not so much as a distinct virtual branch, but as an extension of their local library.  We experience this in our everyday virtual contact with ours users.  Which places an interesting perspective on getting management support for the library website and how to present it to our users, when each of their perspectives can be very different.

And thus ended day one.  For those who are interested in more, Helene has made her presentations available on Slideshare.  In the meantime, I hope to get my notes on Day 2 up soon, so stay tuned.

I had the great pleasure of attending the latest stop in the Shanachie Tour down under, held today at the State Library. I introduced myself to them before we started, and as expected, to be absolutely delightful and a joy to chat with. I looking forward to seeing them also at NLS4 on Friday.

So heres my live blogging of the event.

They showed us part of a video of the LBI Shanachie tour of the USA, which told stories of innovation in libraries in the USA, as discovered on tour in 2007. Eric spoke about the need for libraries in the future, for the benefit of our grandchildren, against the expectation that libraries will not be around in future, because the internet will be all everyone needs.

DOK is looking for partners in innovation – have already established a partnership with Darien Library in the US. Looking for a library in Australia to have a concept centre – in partnership with DOK.

They spoke about how the tour started – by being thrown out of the Internet Librarian International conference. You will have to check it out. They highly recommended the conference (I would love to go sometime).

They then showed a short interview with Jenny Levine – the Shifted Librarian, on gaming for a gaming conference they were involved with in the Netherlands. (DOK has been lending games since 1996)

Their videos are at http://www.vimeo.com/shanachietour.

Libraries should be involved in gaming, as at least 30% of the population is involved in it.
Showed a video on Kankakee Library and their gaming program. They used gaming as part of a program which helps teens to develop their social, cooperative, negotiation and other skills – much needed skills for the future workforce. Kankakee has found ways to slide technological skills, reading, writing and more into the gaming they offer.

Their interview with Michael Stephens from Tame the Web talked about how Web 2.0, gaming etc, if used within the mission of the library, can be very powerful. They are tools to be used by libraries for a purpose, not to be used for coolness sake. Libraries can level the playing field, by giving people a place to try new technologies, use fast internet access and more.

Everything is subject to change!

This first trip with Jenny and Michael on gaming, led to the idea of the full Shanchie tour, which they started 7 months after the first one week visit to Chicago. This tour expanded the focus to Web 2.0 and took them across the country, doing video interviews as they went. They would edit their videos whilst still travelling and then find a park for their Winnebago where they could upload the edited content from the day.

They started in New York City. (I love how they do their videos, theyre awesome). Quote mentioned by Eric in the video – the Universe is made of stories, not atoms. Wow! You have to watch this video inteview with Paul Holdengraber – he has great ideas and is inspiring as to what libraries can and should reach for and achieve.

The first question asked of an audience member was about whether libraries should be taking over some of the education that schools undertake. Should libraries be encouraging imagination was asked next. How can it be achieved? – by relaxing rules, creating spaces and giving potential for creativity to happen. Is the librarian in Australia ready to do this – in general no, but there are leaders in the field who are paving the way for this to happen.

After New York, they went to PLCMC and the Imaginon Library, where they spoke with Matt Gullett about the future of libraries and technology in them. Spoke of containers holding information and culture and which form, whether its print, video, online or other and determining the best form for that content. Sees libraries as becoming more community, learning areas – where innovation can be learnt about and also created. Pointed out that the book is one of the best technologies ever created.

The PLCMC visit inspired them to look at portable gaming and they created a portable gaming unit. They showed a video on it. Cool! And its controlled with a remote – the flatscreen monitor rising out of the box is a beauty to behold! (should have been accompanied by the them from 2001: a Space Odyssey) There is definite interest in getting them in Australia, so the DOK guys will be looking at the possibilities of doing this.

The next round of questions was about gaming in Australia. Not much at moment, but its starting to happen. YPRL has started with 2 Wiis at Lalor Library, where they have just started running gaming nights, which they will hold monthly after the library closes next year. Teens were keen, but pizza and manga are great motivations. For some libraries, dealing with Council IT departments, finances, space and other restrictions, is a barrier to having gaming in our libraries. Convincing the public is also a problem, when they dont understand the benefits of gaming and dont see why libraries should be offering it.
Another problem is that a lot of our staff have trouble dealing with young people. Need to see how young people use technology, so we need to change our setups to suit the way they work, whilst still meeting the needs of other users. Gaming is not just about the electronic, its also about board games, lego and more.

They showed another video, this of Michael Stephens Dominican University students and what their hope for libraries of the future. Michael sees the library of the future as encouraging his heart, inspiring and encouraging him and he prompted his students to go and run with their ideas. We should do the same.

After Michael and his students in Illinois, they went to Salt Lake City. Andrew from Salt Lake City Library shared that the library of the future will be more interactive, where people can come together in a neutral playing field, where discourse will be elevated, opposing viewpoints will be respected and heard. The future librarian will be very different to that of the past – we should keep looking to the future, in our own communities and in the wider world and keep responding to our user needs, whist always staying tech savvy.

What skills should librarians of the future have? Willing to make partnerships, work with opportunities that arise – in next 5 years we will be able to work with young people – eg. early childhood literacy, gaming programs and more. Libraries will be important with civic engagement – we need more great people to do that. The library of the future will continue to need to be a welcoming place for all, where people can do what they wish to do. Need to also remember the baby boomers, not just the very young – we have the staff to do it, just need the ideas.

They finished their USA tour in Monterey.

After a short break, where I caught up with a few library friends I hadnt seen in years, we watched a short video interview with Stephen Abram – VicePresident for Innovation at SirsiDynix. Stephen summarised his presentation as our profession being in a renewal, a renaissance in preparation for a future where information is unlimited, but it is not only in print. We need to be open and flexible to different learning styles. He has discovered that people go into libraries for learning and community, which we need to be open to. He said a lot whole more, all of which is well worth watching. We need to be experiential and learn by playing.

The next tour was Jamaica (lifes tough) and we watched a short video of whats happening there.

We then watched a virtual tour of DOK. He showed us a great tool called PicLens from CoolIris, which does fun things with your Flickr images – cant wait to play with that!
Check out nearly 3500 photos of DOK Delft on Flickr.

DOK is in Delft, with a population of 96,000. The library is in an old supermarket and although it has been renovated, amny architectural features from the supermarket remain.

DOK has free wifi, with no login required. They have signage on the their wooden floors – very colourful and very obvious. (way cool) All collections are on wheels, giving the whole library great flexibility. The shelves are organised so that the bottom shelf can be used as a step up to reach the top shelves. Shelving is made from recycled wood and was cheaper than conventional library shelving and are slightly inclined so that books dont fall off. They have a staff member dedicated to applying for grants and seeking sponsorship. Some of this money was used to purchase sonic chairs, where you can listen to music with your whole body! Whole building is wireless and they have internet telephony – 155 megabit speed – as a result, they can live stream music and videos to the sonic pod.
Lighting is very important, as are the comfort of library users and this is reflected in the seating and the architecture.

They lend art, with the option to buy. They have built their own ILS. The consult to other libraries – wow!

They are fully RFID with their 240,000 items. Self serve checkin and checkout. Checkin is one item at a time, checkout can be multiple. They have a pay station on hand, for coffees as well as library charges. Get a recipe from their website, go to the supermarket on site, pick up the ingredients for it from a special display, scan their library card at the checkout and get a 25% discount on those ingredients – omg!

Using Wiis for narrowcasting on 12 big screens around the library, pushing out information. Can also be used for gaming. Have a coffee corner and no restrictions on food and drink in the library. Have a portal for downloading content to mobile phones, using bluetooth – including audio books, music, online magazines. Portals will be able to be installed in community locations. Next iteration of the portal will use touch screens.

Quote = Life is all about having more fun than you can think and it starts at the Library.

They are lending games, including Nintendo DS games and iPod touches. Will have a shop next year which will sell technology and LBI T-shirts as well as library souvenirs.

Finished with a 5 minute video on DOK – a library concept centre. Quote – the most important collection – people.

Question: do DOK staff do outreach to the community – do a summer camp in the country with about 150 kids where they do workshops on creating video, art etc. They have a partnership with health services. Library is used 5 nights a week for programs.

Question: is there a music compilation available? Not at this stage. Different music on the DVD (with the book) to that which we saw on the digital videos.

Question: whats the rest of their trip? Going home on the 7th. At SLV tomorrow and then NLS4 for rest of Friday and Saturday.

Question: what do you look for in staff? Their staff reflect their users, women in their 30s and 40s.

And that was it, a wonderful afternoon. Look for more over the next two days from NLS4.

Big Stuff – Library Challenges – Stephen Abram – Sirsi-Dynix Institute

We need to tell good stories – tell each other about the good things that happen, not the bad, which is what we usually do.

Stephen said that our stuff is awesome, we are in good standing amongst the libraries of the world. We need to let go of the nostalgia. Change has been really slow relatively speaking, especially compared to the baby busters. Big changes coming, which will be fun if you like riding a roller coaster.

What are we going to do to get good results for our users – how can we negate the skewed results of search engine optimisation – where anyone can make sure their content, true or not, lists high in results.

Some people have 40 year careers. Ensure it is 40 years of incrementally better years, not just the same thing year after year. Choose to make the difference. You need to put your meat in the game = professionals commit.

Libraries matter – the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grants is just one example. Stephen gave a long list of examples where librarians are making a real difference, doing things that get people connected to the net and to the information they need, saving money, saving lives, saving our culture and our history and so much more. We need to tell our government about the competitive edge that libraries give Australia. Who do you think built Yahoo – librarians were pulled in to make it work.

What is the competitive advantage we have in our environment? The difference between us the internet is us – sensitive, intelligent, helpful – we are not a list. Put ourselves out there, with photo and social networking profile. Show who we are as well as what we can do.

DREAM BIG – start small, but dream big.

We dont know every little moment of truth that happens in the library. We can be the human touch for people. We may never know the difference we make to each individual.

Democracies persist because of libraries. Its not coincidence that libraries are often the first casualty of war. Librarians protect freedom of information, giving access to all, regardless of what our opinion of it is – we are truly bipartisan.

We have to learn the things that are making a difference, improving service to our users. If you dont want to learn, then get out of the profession.

We are a global profession, a bottomless network. Every librarian has hundreds of moments of truth, where we fight for our freedom, save lives, cure disease, challenge poverty and ignorance. Not dreaming 08, but dreaming big. Say yes every chance you get, encourage others and dont get discouraged. Those who say it cant be done, get out of the way of those who are already doing the impossible.

We are about books, we dont have to advertise that, what we do need to advertise is that we have people who can help you with just about anything. Show who we are and what we can do.

Web 2.0 is about things you can do and people you know. When you go online do you see people you know. You need to be where your users are, otherwise you are on a march to irrelevance.

Stuff will change faster now – by 2020, all content ever created will fit on an iPod. Video games outsell most content combined, ringtones are huge! Pocket size devices will dominate, the devices coming out are about having ubiquitous access on your person.

New? Semantic web, the cloud, no choice search engines, GIS oriented search, virtually unlimited fulltext books, streaming media and spoken word search, personalisation 3.0, microblogging, registries and so much more.

Normal now is RSS, blogs, YouTube, social networks tagging, wikis, SEO and GIS. If libraries arent involved in that, then they are behind. Resist the library culture of poverty, victimisation, risk aversion and passive resistance. We have to pass the chasm of early adopters and into the space of early majority. We have a technology lifecycle, we have to get on the curve early and stay there.

If we dont get into social networking, then we are going to miss it when they progress to the next stage – this is just the tip of the iceberg.

So what should libraries be paying attention to? The user-centred universe, be more open to users paths. A few things to do right away – the time is now! Need to play, pilot, trial, experiment. Mobile is important, confirm your presence, be where your users are, how your presence appear – personal,, professional; get good at the cloud (where users are going), play at e-books, get serious at literacy (dont use that term for users) and check out XML, get serious about e-learning, care about our cultures, just expand, know that most physical objects are dead, get real about influence, the next generation content.

Humans are our competitive edge. Be open to lifelong learning, our careers have seasons, need to have reciprocal mentoring – peers, be important, we can invent the future and make a difference. Just have some fun! Dream big!