July 2011

Do Filters Work?

by David Lee King on July 28, 2011

I just read Andy Woodworth’s post about filters, and was reminded about something. A couple days ago, I visited my church’s website while in the library. We filter both public and staff computers … and guess what I found (see the image above)? My church’s website was blocked, because 8e6 (our filtering provider) thinks it’s a porn site. Wow – my church is apparently much wilder than I thought!

  • OK – first off, my church isn’t really all that wild. Probably much the opposite!
  • Second – it’s most likely filtered because of overblocking. Some web filters block whole webhosting services because of content. For example, if the webhoster hosts 20 “naughty” sites and 2 “nice” sites, all 22 sites will be labeled “naughty” (until someone tells the filtering company they’re wrong – then they usually correct the problem).

Do filters work?
Honestly, yes and no. Yeah, sure – most of the “usual sites” can be blocked (but not all – filters don’t catch everything). And no – the example above is a great example of a filter in action, unfortunately.

Another complaint
I’m also going to complain about the Safelibraryproject website, and the ALA page they quote (from the Office of Intellectual Freedom). Because both sites seem to be putting a bit of spin on their ideas, to prove their points. Plus, there are some glaring problems on each page. Here’s what I mean:

Let’s start with Safe Library Project:

  • Just being picky here – guys, please get a proofreader! Your About page is labeled “Abou” – which would be forgivable if it weren’t for some other errors on the “Abou” page that could have easily been caught by proofing your content. Errors like these:
    • “Most all pornography commercial websites is hardcore” I think you meant “are” …
    • “the overwhelming amount of Internet porn is be soft-core” I think you meant “is” …
    • “This in not accurate” You are correct – not accurate at all!
  • Enough grammar cop stuff. How about this? “Most all pornography commercial websites is hardcore and therefore can be charged by prosecutors as obscene.” - ok. Can you prove that, with citations?
  •  ”The seemingly endless number of free porn sites depicting actual or simulated sex and other lascivious depictions are also hardcore and can be charged as obscene.” Again, ok … “seemingly endless” … proof? With citations? “can be charged as obscene” … again – proof?
  • “Does ALA really think the American public is so uninformed…” The information you quote wasn’t really meant for the “American public.” It was meant for libraries creating public PC and Internet Access policies.
  • “The ALA site also strongly suggests that Internet filters are inadequate” – well, yeah – there’s a reason for that. See my example above.
I have no issue with their viewpoint (though I don’t agree). Viewpoints differ, and you have to have two sides for a debate. But if you make broad statements like they do, you should back them up with facts. Or you’re just blowing smoke.
And now for ALA. Go to the page Safe Library Project quotes (you have to copy/paste the link text, since for some odd reason they didn’t actually make it a link). I think some improvements are in order here, too. For example:
  • The paragraph Safe Library Project quotes is an odd one, to me anyway. For example … “In the millions of Web sites available on the Internet” – way more than “millions” now.
  • “there are some—often loosely called “pornography” – Loosely? What? Where did that statement come from?
  • “A very small fraction of those sexually explicit materials is actual obscenity or child pornography” - ok. That’s also pretty broad statement. Can you prove that, with citations?
  • This info hasn’t been updated for 10-11 years. A LOT has changed on the web in 11 years. Maybe time for a rewrite?
  • The “Related Files” link at the bottom of the page is a broken link. That makes ALA look a bit shabby IMHO.
So – phooey on the spin. Do you filter? Does it work? Do people complain? Is it as bad as the Safe Library Project people think? I don’t think so – what about you?

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Video Creation at the Library

by David Lee King on July 27, 2011

The video in this post is just me, playing around with a greenscreen for the first time (and playing around with the new Final Cut Pro X – nice app!). So in the video, first you’ll see me with a green background. Then I replace the green color with black, and then I replace it with a silly image.

Yay – I figured out how to use our greenscreen!

Towards the end of the video, I show off the beginnings of my library’s video studio (and I have to say – I really need to work on my video narration skills. I can do it pretty well when I do a little prep work, but not so much when it’s off-the-cuff. Yikes!).

So, our video studio. It’s really just some office space we weren’t using anymore. We cleaned it out (it had turned into storage), painted one wall with a bucket of chroma key greenscreen paint, and set up a couple of computers in the room:

  • Computer #1: A PC that we use for creating screencasts. We use Techsmith’s Camtasia.
  • Computer #2: an Apple iMac with Final Cut Pro, iMovie, GarageBand, etc on it. We use it for video editing, and for creating our HUSH podcast series.

Assuming our Board of Trustees votes our 2012 budget into existence next month, I’ll be able to buy some more video equipment next year! I plan to get a backdrop stand, some backdrops, and a lighting set. Most likely, I’ll also buy some microphones – especially some wireless mics. Take a good listen to the audio in my video – adequate, but not great. I used the internal mic on the video camera, which picked my voice up fine … it also picked up a bunch of room sound. That can be easily fixed with better mics!

That’s what we’re doing, anyway. How are you growing your organization’s video setup?

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Article about Facebook Pages up at the NEKLS blog

by David Lee King on July 19, 2011

I just wrote a blog post for the Northeast Kansas Library System (NEKLS) about Facebook Pages – titled Facebook Pages for Kansas Libraries.

Here’s how it starts:

“What if there was a way for your library to get the attention of 51% of your local community? For free? Would you do it? I’m guessing so.

Guess what? There IS a way to potentially do that – by using Facebook! Edison Research (they do market research studies, among other things) recently announced that 51% of Americans age 12+ are using Facebook. And this stat is rapidly growing. Some other interesting Facebook facts on the average Facebook user:

  • They have 130 friends
  • They make 8 friend requests per month
  • They spend 15 hours a month on using Facebook
  • They visit Facebook 40 times a month, and spend 23 minutes per visit
  • They are connected to 80 organizational Facebook Pages, Groups, and Events

Nice statistics, David – but what does this mean for Kansas Libraries and librarians?”

If you’re interested, go read the rest at the NEKLS blog!

And for more interesting reading on Facebook, check these books out (Amazon Affiliate links):

pic by afagen

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Google Plus – Should you and your Library be there?

by David Lee King on July 15, 2011

Google Plus is all the rage this week – invites have started spreading around (here’s a link to my Google Plus account – feel free to friend me!).

Some tech leaders have been making big claims about Google Plus, saying things like it will replace blogging, they’re moving from Facebook to Google Plus, it will take over Facebook or Twitter, etc.

Ok … Google Plus is only a week or so old. WAY too early to predict the demise of anything – especially of something like Facebook, with its 600 gazillion followers. Also remember that this is a third try for Google – Waves and Buzz both sorta fizzled out. let’s give it a good 6 months to a year to see if it survives.

On to the more important questions – should YOU be using Google Plus? Should your Library/organization?

You – this one’s easy. If you get an invite (or have an account already), by all means sign up and play around with it. Friend people, do some posting, try a video chat. Get familiar with the tool. Then either use it or not … that part really depends on you. But since it has some early potential in becoming another useful social media tool … why not at least play with it a bit?

Your library/organization – this one’s a bit more tricky. Or not – Google Plus isn’t supporting organizational accounts right now, according to this article from Search Engine Land. This article from ReelSEO goes one further, saying Google Plus will shut down an organizational account (though there are a couple out there [DLK - oops. Google found those, and they're now 404-nothing found pages. You might check this out for some news orgs, from Moonflowerdragon in my comments] anyway).

So for the time being anyway, Google Plus is an individual-only network. That’s great, because it gives you time to play with the new tool, and gives Google time to see if it’s a winner (translation = profitable) for them.

Once that happens, and Google OKs organizational accounts – should you be there? The answer is … it depends. Are your users there? If so, then yes. Recent national stats claim that 51% of people age 12 and up are on Facebook – that’s 51% of your community, so it definitely makes sense for most libraries and organizations to have a Facebook presence.

But for other social networks, it really depends on your organization’s goals, and on where your customers tend to gather. If they start gathering in Google Plus, then yes – you should figure it out and be there for them.

If not? Maybe not so much. Time will tell!

And a question – are you playing with Google Plus? If so – what do you like/dislike about the service? Let me know in the comments!

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Library Renewal: Zine and Song Debut

by David Lee King on July 12, 2011

From the Library Renewal blog – The debut of our first video here at Library Renewal features our first brochure/zine and also features the debut of the first song made for Library Renewal. PS-We fixed the typo! Thanks for catching it! :)

You can get a copy of the zine as a thank you gift for your donation to Library Renewal by going here: http://libraryrenewal.org/donate

You can also see some higher quality images of pages from the brochure here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/libraryrenewal/sets/72157626867255283/

The song is performed by Portland band, Lackethereof and we are grateful for their support here. Thanks, Danny!

 

Me again – make sure to find out more about Library Renewal by visiting our website (or by following us on Facebook or Twitter), signing up for the newsletter, etc. We are gearing up to do some pretty cool things, so stay tuned for that!

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Final Cut Pro X video tutorials

by David Lee King on July 8, 2011

For those of you that edit video on a Mac … Final Cut Pro X is VERY different from the old Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express. Interestingly enough, the new Final Cut operates a bit more like the simple iMovie, but has some very powerful features, too. Apple is attempting the best of both worlds – simplicity and powerful features. Have they pulled it off? Beats me – do a search for articles about the software, and you will find a mixture of love/hate articles on it!

But if you just want to know how to use the new Final Cut, Israel Hyman at Izzyvideo.com has helped us out. Izzy has created a set of 26 tutorial videos for Final Cut Pro X. I just finished watching them – they’re good. I’m now ready to go edit some video!

If you create videos, and want to know more about the new Final Cut (or if you’re like me and are still trying to figure it out), I’d recommend watching these video tutorials – good stuff.

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What’s Up with the Mean People?

by David Lee King on July 7, 2011

The day after I got back home from ALA11, a weird thing happened with a friend of mine, and I thought it would be a good thing to share, think about, etc.

Many of you know Joe Murphy – Yale librarian, frequent speaker at library-related events, and all-around nice guy.

Last Wednesday, he had someone create a fake Twitter account named @JoeMChangeAgent (already deleted – we’ll get to that in a sec), use his picture for the account, friended a lot of people (myself included), and pretty much pretended to be Joe on Twitter for about a day.

Weird, huh? I asked Joe a few questions about the incident via email. Here’s what Joe had to say about it.

DLK: How do you use Twitter?
JM: I use a public/professional account (@libraryfuture) for current awareness, to share resources, and engage with professional communities. I also have a private twitter account for which I control the privacy at the audience level. I use my private account to share and communicate with my trusted contacts.

DLK: So what happened?
JM: One of our fellow librarians created a fake Twitter and FriendFeed account impersonating me. They used this false account in an attempt to deceive us all by pretending to be me and by engaging our colleagues under false pretenses as a way to personally attack me and to disrupt our professional community.

DLK: How did it stop? Did you report it, and did you hear back from Twitter?
JM: Twitter quickly suspended the account because it was a breach of its policy rules. Twitter also permanently barred the account’s creators after completing their own investigation. I also received wide and strong support in the form of fellow Twitter users who promptly blocked and reported the account as spam and for abuse.

DLK: Has that type of thing happened to you before? How did it make you feel?
JM: I wish I could say this was an isolated incident. Unfortunately, I have received a lot of negative attention in my few years as a librarian. But I’ve learned the value of ignoring the negativity, not taking it personally, and not giving them any time or energy from my day. This is not to say I am impervious to personal attacks, but not letting it get to me is an important skill that I continue to develop. I don’t let their hate infect my life, and I definitely don’t let it slow me down professionally.

It is a poor reflection upon our profession that lashing out at colleagues is all too normal, and it is not just me that ends up as the target. Every once in a while you will see people (quite often the same people and groups) attack our colleagues online with bitterness, name calling, deception, and personal attacks.

DLK: What’s up with the haters, anyway? Why pick on you?
JM: This is the key question. Haters in general exist because they feel a lack in themselves, a deficiency that they try to replace by extending their negativity to others. They will strike out at anything in easy view beyond themselves. I often end up as the recipient for their hate because I am out there in the spotlight through giving talks, writing, and making contributions. I am also an obvious target for them because I have my happiness and my health, success at a young age, and I have a sense of positivity. Nothing in particular happened to kick off this most recent instance; it was an example of people lashing out just for the sake of lashing out. These people are deeply troubled and I hope they receive the support they need to heal themselves. I try to stay sensitive towards them because ultimately, they are the only ones who have to live with themselves.

Luckily, I have a lot of experience and support dealing with these attacks. I know how to not take them personally, and I leave their hatred behind by separating it from my own life. Unfortunately some haters go even further to attack our personal lives by harassing friends and family and spreading lies. It is unbelievable how some people behave. But working together with friends in staying wise and careful successfully blocks these attempts as well. If I let it get me down every time a hater lashed out I would become depressed, this of course is their goal. So I shrug it off, move on and keep having fun.

DLK: Anything I’m missing? Anything you want to add?
JM: The thing to remember is that haters are acting out of insecurity. They strike out at any obvious lightning rod because they are unhappy about themselves. So do not take them seriously, don’t let them steal your energy, and definitely don’t take it personally. The negativity is about them, not you. Keep being yourself, and don’t let the haters cause you stress. They may fling venom but only you can control how you feel about yourself.

Haters also feel a sense of entitlement to their hate, and blocking, ignoring, and deflecting their attempts can often send them into a total fluster. So not feeding them and their negativity is often the best response. They say the best revenge is living well. I would also add that a good approach is not giving them what they want; denying them a moment in the spotlight that they think their negativity will win them.

I have seen such personal attacks deeply affect individuals, and it is our responsibility as a professional community to not support hateful attacks, to hold people responsible for their behavior, and to make sure we are all treated with respect.

Me again – so why bring this up?

It was one incident that happened, and was taken care of quickly by Twitter. Right? Well … it’s not really all that isolated in the library speaker world. Here’s an article Stephen Abram wrote awhile back on the same issue.

Something to remember: disagreements are great. Heated discussions and full-out arguments? Also fine. Not personally being everyone’s best bud? Also fine – you can’t like everyone, right? Calling people out for a bad idea – great, please do so (but then back it up, too).

But personal attacks (I’ve had some of those)? Not cool. Impersonating someone else? Way not cool (and possibly illegal, depending on what you did). Sending anonymous death threats to someone because you don’t like their ideas (yes, I know at least two library speaker types that have received those)? Really way not cool.

Play safe out there!

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Ebook Vendors at #ALA11

by David Lee King on July 5, 2011

I took some time to visit the vendor booths at ALA11 (the annual conference of the American Library Association – over 20,000 librarians descended on New Orleans this year!), and made sure to visit most of the ebook vendors out there – and let me tell you, they are a growing bunch! Here are my observations on the companies and the products I saw.

3M:

3M Cloud3M? Why is a company that makes sticky notes and self-check machines getting into the ebook business? Weird, right? It might be weird, but they also have an interesting-looking product. What are they doing?

  • First off, they are making their own 3M-branded ebook reader. It’s pretty basic, but it works – e-ink and all.
  • They also have a variety of apps for mobile devices and computers.
  • 3M is calling their new service the Cloud Library System because ebooks are stored in two places – on the device and on cloud storage systems. This is handy – you can start reading at your PC, then get on the bus and continue reading via your iPhone, for example – you just have to log into your account, which remembers what page you’re on across hardware devices.
  • What’s it not work on? The Kindle (though they’re in talks with Amazon to change this). It does work on Nooks and iPads, though.
  • 3M also has some pretty cool touch interface kiosks for ebook discovery.
  • Interestingly enough, they’re using one of my blog posts in their presentations! Cool.
  • Find out more…

Blio:

Baker & Taylor is a pretty familiar company to librarians – they’re a book distributor, and many libraries work with them. They have partnered with Blio, a new ebook service. Here’s what I know:

  • Blio is a creation of Ray Kurzweil (yes, THAT Ray Kurzweil) and the National Federation of the Blind, of all things. Baker & Taylor partnered with them to provide content.
  • Blio will read out loud to you (I assume by a computer-generated voice) and lets you take notes, highlight text, etc.
  • Blio’s big selling point is that they are full-color and provide the same graphically-rich experience you’d have reading a print book with pictures. But when I played with their iPad app at their booth,  guess what? The two children’s books I looked at were text-only. Picture Curious George as a text-only book. Not nearly as much fun. I tried to ask their booth people about it, but they were all  busy with other people at the time, so I moved on.
  • I also tried to attend their quick sit-down presentation at the booth – but the exhibit hall was noisy, and the Baker & Taylor people didn’t turn up the speaker’s microphone. I had trouble hearing them, and eventually left the presentation to poke around on my own. Other attendees had the same problem, so I know it wasn’t just me. Guys – it’s a volume knob. Turn it up next time please!
  • Here’s an article on Blio and here’s their website.

Freading:

Freading is the weirdly-named ebook product from Library Ideas, LLC (Freegal is another product of theirs).

  • OK. Can I just say this – they REALLY need to get their web act together. Right now, Library Ideas, LLC has a one-page website that stretches horizontally – sorta odd, if you ask me. They only useful info? An email address. No links, nothing. They could at least install WordPress and put some information out about who they are and what they do – it’s not that hard. Just sayin. [update - Just spoke with Jim Peterson at Library Ideas, and he told me they plan to have a new, marketing-oriented website up in 2-3 weeks. Much needed, so good for them]
  • Freading is an interesting product that’s very different from other models, just like Freegal. They offer patron-driven purchasing of ebooks – a patron picks a book, then the library is charged (the library can set a fee cap).
  • Freading uses a “token” metaphor for patron checkout. The patron gets five tokens a week to “spend” on ebooks. Popular books might “cost” more than one token, and less popular books might be just one token each. That’s all the patron gets to use for that week. I’m not convinced patrons will pick up on the “token” model very fast – we don’t really use tokens for anything else, so not sure how that model will connect with patrons … [update - the library determines the number of tokens their patrons get for the week]
  • Books are checked out for two weeks, then can be renewed once. Who decided two weeks? Not sure.
  • They’re in talks with larger publishers, but right now have some smaller publishers on board.
  • Glad to see a newer company trying to be innovative in a market that’s growing fast!

Overdrive WIN:

Overdrive has overhauled their interface, and their service … and named it Overdrive WIN. Here are some of the changes they’ve made:

  • They have streamlined the Overdrive product – I didn’t’ really play with it, but it’s supposed to be MUCH easier to use
  • They’re offering support for Kindles starting later this year
  • You’ll have immediate access to the first 10% of many ebooks – even if someone else has it checked out. That’s cool.
  • They’ll have patron-driven acquisitions, and a Want it Now feature that goes to online booksellers like Amazon. Just add a library Amazon Affiliates account, and you’ll make a little money every time a patron buys a book for themselves using that link.
  • There are some ebooks with simultaneous access, so no waiting in a virtual line for these titles.
  • Overdrive is also working to get ebook titles and links into library catalogs, so there aren’t two different places patrons have to go for content, which is a much-needed feature.

I didn’t get to eBrary or Recorded Books. There were probably a few other ebook vendors I missed, too!

So – four very different models of library-friendly ebooks out there. Any one model better than another? I don’t really think so. It really depends on the most-needed features your patrons have been requesting, and which of the different pricing models work best for your institution. And remember – the ebook market is growing like gangbusters – next year, it will look very different from what we have now.

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Doing a Presentation with the iPad

by David Lee King on July 1, 2011

A couple of weeks ago, I gave a presentation using my iPad, and it worked out pretty well! I used the iPad version of Keynote (Apple’s Powerpoint-like presentation software). Keynote has a handy-dandy presenter notes feature that is really easy to use, so your notes are on your screen, and your slides still appear on the LCD projector – in a much easier and user-friendly way than Powerpoint.

Guess what? The iPad version of Keynote does the same thing. The screengrab above shows the presenter notes view on the iPad. If there’s more text than shows on the screen, just use your finger to scroll down to the rest of the text.

You also use your finger to advance slides – just swipe the screen, and slides advance. Swipe the other way to go back a slide. Pretty simple to use!

Now – how did it work?

  • It was really easy to set up and use – I just needed to get the iPad VGA adapter, and plug that into our LCD projector. Then the iPad magically did everything else, so I didn’t have to mess with screen resolution compatibility, etc.
  • I was able to stand up in front of the room (I was presenting for the library’s Board of Trustees, who sit at a long table) with no podium – I just held the iPad, and finger-swiped away.

There were a couple of oddities, too:

  • If you stand with the iPad, you need to hold onto the VGA cable. Otherwise, the weight of the cable will pull iPad VGA adapter out of your iPad. Not good.
  • Finger swiping the slides felt a bit odd to me – I’m used to clicking a hand-held thingie to advance slides.
  • Most important – the on-screen slide appeared first, followed by the presenter notes, so there was a bit of lag time. It looked weird for a bit, so I was swiping back and forth, looking for the correct notes, until I figured out the 1 second lag. Once I figured that out, I was ok.

So – looking to do a presentation without having to lug around a laptop? You might consider using an iPad/Keynote setup – easy stuff!

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