Computers in Libraries

At the end of sessions, there’s usually time for a question and answer time. Some of the questions I heard made me wonder… but first, a disclaimer: questions and people who ask them rock. I’m glad people ask them. Things that seem basic to me are new to others (and vice-versa, depending on the topic). So questions are great - they’re part of the learning process.

But, I’m thinking that sometimes, a question can show the bias of a librarian, and the personality of a library… and show how well they’ll be able to ride the current and ongoing wave of information change.

So here are those questions that made me go “huh”:

1. “How do you filter out all the dot com websites so you can get just the pure information” (when doing a search on Google). What???!!!??? How is information that happens to be on a dot com site not “pure,” but information on a, say, dot edu or dot gov site, somehow more valid information? Just one person’s question - but from a librarian. And it means that more than one probably think this way… shows that more training is needed on how to evaluate information found on the web.

2. “Is SEO [Search Engine Optimization] contrary to a library’s role of properly categorizing text-based information?” No, it’s not. If libraries worked on optimizing their websites, more of our great but hidden information would show it’s face on websites. And that’s a way to reach out to people who don’t normally come to your library.

3. “Search engines are pushing lots of image-based search products lately. How do libraries deal with this information shift, since we mainly deal with text?” Two ways to comment here:

• Libraries have all types of images. Lots of them. And a lot of other media… think maps, pictures in books and magazines, CDs, video, etc. We just put descriptive text around each item.
• The web IS changing how we operate. Or actually, I should say that our users are finding that the web can be adapted to their various learning and entertainment styles. So people are creating their own tagging systems that work for them, and they’re discovering more visual and aural types of resources.

Librarians need to embrace this, since we tote ourselves as learning facilitators and our libraries as learning facilities.

4. A comment during a presentation - “a large number of students aren’t reading print books, except for class assignments.” I swear, I could almost feel a moment of silence for the print book when this was mentioned (the room got very quiet). What wasn’t mentioned was this: those students are most likely still reading - just not print books. They’re reading ebooks, email, IM messages, etc. Librarians have to get over this content vs. container thing. What’s more imprtant - a book’s physical pages and cover, or a book’s content?

5. Complaints about poor grammar in IM messages. This sorta relates to #4 above. Hang with me here a sec - when I talk to someone in person or on the phone, no one knows if I can spell the words I use, and don’t tend to complain if I stumble around a bit while trying to get something out. When talking, it’s the immediate communication that is important.

IM is also an immediate form of communication - it happens in real time. So the actual, immediate communication taking place is the important part of an IM message - not the grammar. We need to get over our grammar quirk, and adapt the communication that our customers use.

So - all things that made me go “huh.” And all very valid questions. My guess? As long as questions like the ones above are being asked, there will be a need for a conference like Computers in Libraries. Huh.

 

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This has been a great conference! My two presentations went extremely well, and I have learned stuff. Both good things!

Just off the top of my head, here are some buzzwords and phrases I heard practically everywhere, everyday:

• IM
• podcasting
• collaboration
• community
• RSS
• Wiki
• institutional repository
• content management

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I attended Chris Sherman’s morning session on search engines coolness… some neat things I heard:

He suggested that libraries purchase ad words on Google. Not for general words like, say, “libraries” - but on more specific words (see my stuff on topic driven content!). Very interesting idea.

He demonstrated Keyhole (keyhole.com, I think). It’s a visual map that starts up high (like, seeing the whole continent) and then narrows down to a street when you enter an address. Very hip.

Gary Price mentioned some general stuff he’d heard from Google people: 99% of searchers don’t use simple advanced techniques like putting phrases in quotes, and that most searchers only look at the first 3-4 hits in a search… Wow!

Another IM sesssion was next - it was great. The coolest thing they did was IM’d students on their “buddy list” - think virtual roving reference and good PR to boot.

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1:45pm – Collaboration & IM: Breaking Down Boundaries (Michael Stephens and Aaron Schmidt)

Aaron:

• 7 billion IM messages sent each day!
• 60% of big businesses will be IMing by the end of this year… wow.
• Conversation instead of sending letters
• Interesting comment – a patron who he met through IM seemed one way online (vivacious) but in reality was timid.
• Duke’s reference department is doing IM
• Cool – reference librarian on a buddy list – you’re already in their sphere of influence
• Trillian – stores chat transactions by default. Privacy concerns abound.

Michael:

• Internal IM
• IM is replacing VR at his library
• If you do log chats, let customers know you’re doing that
• Utilize the nuances of IM.
• Use the tool – create useful away messages

Michael’s Best Practices for IM (I didn’t catch all of them…)

• make IM part of your technology plan
• promote it! Put IM name on a card
• Administration should be IMing
• Train and encourage staff to do this
• Add your IM name to your business cards

Aaron’s Best Practices:

• Use multi-protocol IM software
• Use away messages
• speed over perfection in typing – communication is key, not the spell checker
• use abbrev.
• use online sources only if the best answer can be given from them
• don’t panic

I also learned more about converging mobile handheld devices, how they’re changing, and how librarians can use them to their advantage, and I learned about LISNews (very cool setup).

For Friday’s sessions, I probably won’t post as much - my laptop’s heavy, and my shoulder’s getting sore (because I’m carrying it all day). That’s one bad thing about not being at the conference hotel - you have to lug around everything you want to keep with you (ie., laptop) ALL DAY and ALL NIGHT (if you plan on eating dinner around the Hilton, anyway).

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10:30am - Beyond Virtual Libraries (Dr. Laverna Saunders)\

All about tech changes in academic libraries.

Good quote that really sums up the whole conference so far (she quoted someone else): “our world is about to change in a big, big way.”

She mentioned some useful trend trackers – OCLC (Environmental scan), Gartner, Pew Research Center, CIL, etc.

Millenials:Good stuff here – some points whe mentioned:

• Tools of millenials – IM, email, cell phones, mp3s, ipods, broadband, multitasking
• Students learn by trial and error – more like Nintendo than logic. They file share, keyboard, cut & paste. 73% more likely to use the internet than go to the library (me – not really a bad thing, if you put your stuff online and make it easily accessible – I need to post about this)
• Students expect: 24/7, everything digital, mobility, group spaces, promptness. So libraries need: portals, IM, chat ref, electronic resources, CMS + resource links, and group study areas.
• Question asked of students: “Do you read books outside of class?” Students pretty much said “no.” Me - So what? They still read. (another future post for me?)

The library is slowly becoming more of an extension of the classroom or lab. Librarians are teaching more. Active learning zones. More support of elearning and course management systems.

Supporting multimedia is becoming more of a trend (classroom lecture supported by sound, video, etc.).

11:30am - Academic Libraries & Technology: Future Directions (Marshall Breeding)

Current concerns:

• Rampant computing – concern to contain management costs
• Enterprise resource planning is essential
• Departmental computing is moving to consolidated enterprise systems
• Strong interest in integrating all business systems on campus
• Enterprise content management – courseware and Institutional Repositories

Organization Context:

• Academic libraries are part of a whole – not a separate, independent entity
• Library automation should not be an independent endeavor
• Integration with larger business and content systems essential for libraries to be relevant
• Example: Distributing course content through a library portal

Other Nice Tidbits:

• There’s a need to focus technical talent on activities that have more of an impact on the mission of the library
• Libraries need technologies to help them maximize the value of their collections
• Automation systems need to integrate well with other campus systems (institutional portals, etc.)
• Libraries must develop strategies for integration – deliver library-provides services to users even when they start with Google
• Lots of stuff yesterday and today complaining about current library catalogs.
• Look to XML based standards for integration with other systems. Library specific standards don’t do much to help integrate with non-library standards – need to use industry standards
• Service Oriented Architecture – (SOA). Emerging as the preferred framework for system-to-system communications for diverse systems.
• Wants to see a different federated search model – have everything dump into a centralized federated product on the back-end, and allow users to pull from that. Google has been able to do this – harvesting other organizations data, and representing it.

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1:45pm - Stephen Abrams: Technologies and innovations related to the future of library services

Next massive wave of innovation and demand for it will start in 2005/2006, similar to what happened at the turn of the last century (cars, phones, tv, electricity, etc)

Things to watch for in the next few years:
- secure broadband wireless will be huge
- low-power batteries on many things
- real-time infrastructure… emerging
- service-oriented architecture - perfect compliment for how libraries actually run

Hardware innovations in the next decade:
- “Living in a video game” - life might seem like this
- A bridge for physical and electronic worlds
- Smart pills, nanotechnology, etc.
- RFID - interesting challenge
- Trusted computing

Mobile and wireless in the next decade:
- continued integration between phones and PDAs
- mesh network - your wireless thing will know where you are
- mobile commerce - being able to buy articles online

computer human interactionin the next decade:
- biometrics, speech, handwriting, eye position
- head-mounted displays
- natural language, taxonomies, etc - search logic
- GIS - so your device can tell you where something is

Data Analytics in the next decade:
- advanced functionality
- comment - librarians are text based learners. That’s why only 20% of the population uses libraries. It’s a design thing…
- libraries need to figure out streaming media (CDs and DVDs will go away soon)
- sending a picture of someone to Google to find information about them… wow!

System development in the next decade:
- XML will get big
- Integration with other systems will become more commonplace

Other things mentioned:

• People will spend more time interacting with people in the electronic world
• 93% of kids 19 or younger currently have at least two IM addresses…
• Connected society - wearable tech. smart phones - outsell laptops, phones, PDA, etc.
• Location-based services - like wireless grabs your screen and puts you on a hotel’s webpage - libraries should be able to do that, too.
• Handsets will get huge - focus on applications
• e-learning and distance education will get huge… some usiversities already have 60% of students as distance students
• every university will have federated search and open url technology within 2 years, public libs within 4 years - they’ll need to have them to survive.
• shared ideas (intranets) shared creation - workflow content management, web conferencing shared presence - IM, video conferencing

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3:15pm - Institutional Digital Repositories, Frank Cervone

It’s changing the nature of scholarly communication

5 aims of a repository:
1. research - self archiving research output
2. management
3. preservation
4. teaching - even online teaching materials… (syllabi)
5. electronic publishing

Local history collections are a type of repository

Commercial vs Open Source - there are both

Open Source:
- EPrints - focuses on traditional text-based scholarship - pre-and post-prints
- DSpace - created as a general - purpose repository to hold more than just text.
- Fedora - doesn’t come with a ready-to-use user interface out of the box!!! Allows for a wide range of material types.
- Greenstone - suite of software for building and distributing digital library collections.

Commercial:
- CONTENTdm
- DigitoolEncompass
- Hyperion (SIRSI)

And the Dead Technologies session in the evening was hilarious, as usual!

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Here’s a quick run-down on what I listened to this morning:

9am - Intro (I think it was Dick Kaser):

• Best turnout in over 5 years.
• Over 2100 registered.
• From all 50 states and DC. 10 countries.
• 139 speakers and moderators, 62 exhibitors

Clifford Lynch (keynote):
No Powerpoint. Cool - I need a cheatsheet.

 

Clifford spoke on the history of the Internet and then projected possible future stuff:

• History of internet and web…
• In 1985, what we have now (the web) would have seemed like science fiction.

Current Trends:

• we’ll see a huge amount of historical content placed online.
• Entire cumulative amount of literature on certain subjects will be available online.
• We’ve been raised to think there’s a scarcity of content (limited amount of space on bookshelves, record stores, etc.). We’re now finding out that someone loves practically everything - it’s a move to abundance.
• Move to digital representations that stand by themselves. move from bib records and description to a move to full text. This is a huge cultural shift. We need to rethink metadata because of this.
• Images are plentiful - we can represent physical objects digitally. Physical things are much more accessible and preservable now. Like museums. (or local history/archives collections)
• TV stations, radio stations, printing presses, etc - all belonged to big organizations. Now you can have a computer of your own with a fast internet connection, and the big organization trend is shrinking.
• We can take networking ans wireless for granted - he hasn’t had to use a modem for a long time.

Future trends down the road:

• Images are going to become much more common discourse in electronic communication.
• Are we moving into an age of broader authorship? Tim Berners-Lee idea of the web was collaboration… we’ve seen the rise of blogs, photo blogs. It’s energized a large number of people.
• Age of popular authorship… some authorship will turn into a type of conversation.
• Large digital collections of historical content. For example - a photo of some confederate general usually has little to no descriptive content - Once you put it online, it becomes a conversation - hey, that’s my grandpa…. let me tell you about him. Content becomes conversation. That’s cool.
• Content designed for humans, and content designed for machines to read - we’ll see this division. There aren’t really maps now - they’re databases that output a map.
• Digital Preservation concerns are growing: larger interest in preservation for digital content.
• Starting to see “digital shoeboxes” of content (like family photos) that people want to preserve.
• Sensory integration. - Seeing this in the sciences. starting to see it in medicine. low end - surveillance cameras attached to the net

And his conclusion:
Embarrasing content is becoming an issue - 4th graders who put up a webpages - they’ll deal with that when they are adults, becuase their 4th grade info will still be out there.

Since then, I gave two presentations, so I haven’t really taken more notes… more to come fromt his afternoon’s sessions.

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11am:
I’m sitting in the Chicago O’Hare (thanks, Steve) Airport, waiting for my flight to Washington DC. I’m having an awesome trip so far!

Good stuff:

• Good drive through the country this morning while headed to the airport
• Seeing the Expedia.com Cafe at KCI - sorta funny!
• Having Soul Coughing’s Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago start playing while landing at the Chicago airport - how cool is that?

5pm:
OK, I can add some bad stuff now…

• Remember to print out a map of the hotel before you get off the Metro and start looking around, thinking “I wonder where my hotel is?” I did get a good workout, however - while walking around a huge mile or so with my luggage - the wrong way. And up hill.
• A Kansas City International Airport parking ticket WILL NOT get you on the Metro. No matter how many times you try.

8pm:
Checked out the conference hotel - it takes me 35 minutes to get from the Iwo Jima Quality Inn to the Hilton. Some walking and a Metro transfer involved. But not bad at all. And hey - the Quality Inn has FREE wireless internet in each room. Dude.

More to come - I’m really looking forward to the conference - hanging out with friends, speaking about topics I care about, and learning lots of cool stuff… I can’t wait!

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Update 2 - even better list of things to do!

I’ll be presenting at Computers in Libraries 2005 next week, and thought I should give first-timers to the conference a run down of what to do while at the conference:

1. Attend everything you can - there are so many good topics, presenters, and ideas being shared. You’re bound to find a time where you really want to attend two sessions at the same time.
2. Participate - do you have a question for the speaker? Ask it! Don’t be shy. If there isn’t time to ask at the end of a session, find the speaker later in the day - we’re there to share!
3. Network - Talk to the person sitting beside you before a session. Talk to someone milling about between sessions. Talk to speakers. Share your business card with people [reminder to David - pack some business cards].
4. Bug the vendors - besides just getting a year’s supply of free pens and squishy toys for the kids, there’s some amazing vendors with awesome products! You don’t even have to buy stuff - you can have a literature gathering party, and take back a lot of good info to digest later.
5. Get there early - More networking, and … well … what can I say: “Free breakfast.”
6. Don’t eat alone - Those people you networked with? Go to lunch with them. Ask them questions. Go to a Dine Around - you’ll probably learn more than you bargained for.
7. Lulls - Let’s be honest here. There comes a time at every conference where the afternoon session about Using Streaming Robo-Folksonomies for XML Tagging of College Freshmen really just doesn’t do it for you, and gee whiz - it’s a heck of a sunny day outside. Blow it off and go to the Mall - check out all the cool museums (or, if your boss read this, take an extra day before or after the conference to see the sights).
8. Enjoy the area - The conference is in a cool part of DC, with neat loft apartments, some odd little stores, etc - take a walk around the block between sessions.
9. Check your email - You can use the conference-provided PCs. Great setup, but long lines. Or take your laptop and visit one of the many Starbucks and other similar coffee shops and cafes in the area with wireless access. Update 1: I’m told that the Hilton’s lobby area had free wireless access last year. Here’s hoping for this year, too! Or, 9 1/2 - Don’t check your email. It might be nice to be away from your email for a few days.
10. Share when you get back to work - most important. Don’t let your time at CIL be wasted. Share your new knowledge with library staff. You might just start a new initiative out of your notes from a session.

And - see you there!

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