Djoeke, the Community Manager for blinklist.com (a social bookmarking company), is doing a survey on social bookmarking, and thought it would be dandy if I linked to the survey. So here’s the link. They’re hoping for 1000 responses.
October 2005
Six Apart teams up with VideoEgg for one-stop videoblogging – the article
The FAQ
The important stuff:
“The VideoEgg publisher is a small website plug-in that makes it simple for end-users to capture, edit, encode, and post digital video online. A “universal adapter” that captures directly from hundreds of devices and reads dozens of formats, the VideoEgg Publisher allows users to painlessly publish videos that anyone can watch without worrying about player compatibilities, encoding settings, or extra software.”
And… it’s free
Now, only if Flickr would do something like this…
If I needed to sum up this year’s Internet Librarian conference in one word, it would be:
CHANGE
And the word would have a few different meanings attached:
- Change in our users: a majority of our users are online every day. Those users visit our libraries online. They interact with our libraries online. And they want to do more online with our libraries.
- Change in our tools: Some libraries are successfully using Flickr, IM, iPods, RSS, Blogs, Wikis, Virtual Reference tools, APIs to add value and interaction to our automation systems, etc. More libraries should be doing this.
- Change in our librarians: this one’s the tricky one. There was even a session on this point today.
In some libraries, and with some librarians, the change to the “Google era” (for lack of a better term) has either taken place, or has at least begun. Those librarians have embraced the “new world” of social networks, the read/write web, online interaction with customers, and tools that spring up every minute… and have used them to better their libraries for their customers. There were 1100 attendees to the Internet Librarian conference, for example – and many of those attendees came to learn something new.
But that’s only 1100 librarians out of hundreds of thousands (at the least). There are still many libraries/librarians who have not embraced the Google era:
Where are the children’s librarians, who could be learning about the social networks their patrons are using right now?
Where are the reference librarians, who could be learning how to integrate new content into the collection?
Where are the library directors, who need to understand this new Google era so they can translate that understanding into goals and next actions for the library?
[ok David, take a breath... in and out, in and out]
Obviously, not everyone can make one conference. But that’s not really my point. My point is that our profession – young and old – needs to embrace these changes… and we aren’t. In some cases (cough.cough.Gorman.cough.cough), we’re running the opposite way.
And that’s the wrong way to run.
Stephen’s presentations, articles, conversations, etc are always both highly entertaining and educationsl at the same time, and this one was no exception.
Here are his Top 10 strategies for libraries to remain relevant in the Google age:
1. know your market
- we suck at knowing our markets
- we have an imperative to aggregate our data
- Walmart does this… we do it with branch collections.
- Mentioned his normative data project
2. know your customers better than Google
- Personas project – attempt to understand patrons
- Kids – extremely different – think of them when planning 5 years out
- In 10 years out, those kids are your young parents
- Their brains are different – a side effect of gaming, possibly
- [aside - His cousin helped write EverQuest]
- Seniors – they’ve been on the web for 10 years
- Understand usability vs satisfaction
- transactions vs transformations
3. be where your customers are
- how much of your use is in person???
- simple collaboration – IM
- jybe, sms, skype – add in virtual reference
- IM is a place to start
4. target. searching for the target
- fed search should not look like google
- differentiate, target
- target your community
- build compelling content
- in context
- repositories – only with compelling experiences
- understand what compelling is.
5. support your culture
- going from texthead to nexthead – mp3′s , streaming media, etc.
- google video – search inside a movie
- podcasting
6. postition libraries where we excel
- Google does who what where when really well.
- Google sucks at why and how (libraries do this well)
- libraries core skill is not delivering information. libraries improve the quality of the question.
- it’s an information ocean, not a highway
- libraries are an exploration space – not a collection space
7. be wireless
- next massive wave of innovation will start in 2006/7 with wireless
- mentioned wireless through the electrical outlet
- said sirsidynix is working on wireless thing so that when you walk past a library, you’ll get a text message saying you have a hold and do you want to go pick it up now?
8. get visual
9. integrate
- build community context first
- Not about the library – it’s about 5 very specific user groups: learning, culture/entertainment, research, workplace, and neihborhood
10. take a risk
the last word – focus
John started off by showing two older versions of Ann Arbor’s website (via the Wayback Machine, I think) [Dave's aside - my but haven't we come far in 10 years!].
The previous version of their site used Userland/Frontier as a CMS. It was a proprietary, closed system.
Their current design started out with the library redesigning their whole network infrastructure. Cool. They decided to use open standards whenever possible.
Choosing a new CMS:
- made an informal list of requirements
- Wanted it to be LAMP based
- Extensive API
- Easily theme-able – in order to work with external web designers
- Blog-based technology
Drupal:
- LAMP-based
- 100% modular
- Excellent API – Drupal is an API-Centric Project
- Large user-base
- very active project
- taxonomy based organization
- bloggable – comments, rss, etc
They had over 2000 registered users (username/password) within the first couple of hours of releasing their new site.
Blog posts:
- ability to cross-post blog entries inside multiple taxonomies
- configruable interwiki links to catalog items, wikipedia, wherever
Events:
- you can browse events by location, type (storytime, lectures), subject, and age
They have rss feeds of holds and checkouts in their my account page
Does this new apprpach work?
- teens love it!
- I asked later, and adults like it and leave comments, too – just not as muc as the kids.
III has a patron API – it returns patron info.
Catalog – taking it apart
- turned into a n applciation server
- all non-essential html was stripped from the screen files
- unnecessary options were removed
Used CURL
Client URL – allows software to communicate with many different types of servers using different protocols
- PHP has native libcurl support
Result – the Wrapper
- they can get and update patron information, run catalog queries,etc
- Then they integrated Drupal through API
His Beef: they shouldn’t have to do that! Automation vendors should supply APIs!
Gaming – they have an advertisement at the theater – it shows live scores at the theater from the gaming going on in the library. Amazing!
Very interesting session on a “year down the road look” at search engines. Here are some (pretty meager) notes from the session:
A9:
- Introduced Open Search
- Common format for search requests for their partners
- It lets you search things like white pages, flickr, nytimes, etc.
- They are adding over one search engine a day to Open Search
- Microsoft is building OpenSearch into the next version of Internet Explorer 7
- Seattle Public Library’s catalog is one of those, too (from Greg Notess)
Google:
Recent Search Innovations
- answers – type in question, and get an answer – I need to play around with this some…
- still working on automated translation tools
- cellphone versions of Google
- showed lots of stuff others have done with Google Maps and API
Yahoo:
- FUSE – enable people to find, use, share and expand … (something… I didn’t get the rest of that
- partnering with subscription services
- partner with creative commons – so users can search for stuff they can legally use
- My Web – lets users save, tag, and annotate web content
- books, spoken word archives, historical document – they want to expand into those areas
- they’re part of the Open Content Alliance
Successful Library wikis:
1. Library Success wiki works
2. Unofficial ala wiki also works (both created by Meredith Wolfwater)
- included calendar of events, personal schedules, blog links, etc.
- set up before conference – seemed to work well that way
Delicious and Technorati play well together
Interesting side note – someone actually asked for print handouts in the blog and wiki session. Hmm… struck me as ironic, that’s all.
005
Very fun, interesting session. Here are some sound-bytes from the panel:
Adam Smith from Google:
- Wants to dispell misinformation about Google Print
- What it is: Their effort to make all books digital (indexed by google) – doesn’t mean they have to digitize it
- Public domain – fully available
- Copyright – three short snippets from the book
The question was asked, “how will it look in the year 2020:
SteveArnold compared Google to the old pre-baby bell Bell Labs. Google has room to play and innovate.
Adam Smith… in 2020:
- everything is digitized
- everyone is an author, publisher, archivist – involved in the creative process
Mark Sandler on Libraries in 2020:
- some libraries will disappear (the ones that don’t “get it,” or that don’t change)
- they’ll need to change their mission – about access, leading people to content
- develop new strategies to connect users to content
Barbara Quint on libraries in 2020:
- authors are connecting directly with readers more
- librarians are discriminating between good/bad material
- you’re paying people to keep you from reading bad stuff
- we become censors… [me - how funny]
Roy Tennant’s take:
- we need print around
- (Barbara interjected) print becomes a format!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! an output
- libraries are about providing service
Stephen Abrams said: why do we ill books for $20 when we can buy them for $5 on amazon?
Barbara: ALA could issue a “librarian seal of approval” on good content
improve the user experience
- clean interfaces
- unique data
- unique functionality
- awareness of user’s work setting
Clean Interfaces:
- A great user experience is both boring and satisfying. It’s like turning on the tap and getting a clear, steady flow of clean water… [that must be the boring part?]
- clean design where tasks are easy to accomplish.
- white space
- weighting – most heavily used items get the most amount of space
- elimination of irrelevant or distracting content
- gave an example of lawyers.com
unique data – hard to find info
- metadata is critical
unique functionality
- content is more dependent on great software to amek it shine online
what to do:
- help the user do what they need to do
- minimal number of steps
- logical links (few of them)
- benignly redundant features
what not to do:
- gratuitous toys
- linkmania
“For most readers,you are the last stop between the reader and the truth.”
Five Rules to Blog By:
1. Transparency (include an about page – can be humorous – also full disclosure and honesty about who you are and why you’re writing). Transparency can be strategic.
2. Cite it
3. Be Accurate. “There is nothing more pathetic than a librarian who gets the facts wrong.”
4. Be fair
5. Admit Mistakes
[My thought] – Blogging ethics are very similar to normal writer’s ethics. And that makes sense, since a blogger is, whether they like it or not, a writer.
