Library 101 has launched! There are a few things you should know about the project:

• It’s a collaborative project – Michael Porter and I created it (with over 500 others!)
• There’s a website for the Library 101 Project
• There’s a video (watch above, at the project site, or on YouTube)
• Download the mp3 for your iPods/favorite mp3 player!
• Become a Fan at our Library 101 Facebook Page
• Even better – read one of the many essays attached to the project, written by some top-notch librarians
• And … read our 101 Resources  and Things to Know essay, complete with 101 links of things Michael and I think you should know!

But even better than watching the video, listening to the song, or reading an essay is this – please participate by commenting! Let us know what YOU think is a “Library 101″ for your library – what do you think librarians need to know to succeed? Tell us in the comments attached to each essay!

Read all about it here! Or just read this … remember that song/video Michael Porter and I created last year? Well… we’re at it again – with Library 101!

Here’s what Michael says:

“Getting into this video is actually really easy. Simply take and share a picture of YOU posing with a 0 and a 1! (Tagging it with library101 on flickr will be really helpful). We even have the flickr group linked above [ok, I linked it here] where you can put your 101 pictures. So c’mon! Do it and get just a little bit famous! Your family and friends will love finding you pop up in the video (and maybe even your coworkers?)! Put your kids in it! How about the family dog!? And you know grandma loves the library too, riiight? The most interesting your submission the more it will be featured, so get creative!

Look for the song and video in October of 2009 (debuting at a special “Connecting Through “Lights, Cameras & Action” session at the Internet Librarian Conference in Monterrey, California).”

Now all Michael and I have to do is this:

• write words for the song
• Create and record the music
• Somehow fly Michael to Kansas to record the song and shoot some video
• Get Michael back to Seattle so he can video edit like a madman
• collaborate on a multimedia presentation for Internet Librarian like you’ve never seen before…

Whew! I’m already getting psyched!

Pic courtesy of Libraryman

Two posts caught my eye over the past couple of days, and they’re still rumbling around inside my head … let’s see if I can pull a couple thoughts out of the cacophony.

Both posts discuss how lots of industries are at the beginnings of huge restructuring/remaking themselves or are disappearing entirely, and how much of our lives will seem like upheaval until the “new normal” is reached. No one’s exactly sure what “normal” will look like (after the recession and remaking is over) – but everyone’s sure it will be completely different from now.

Here’s the first article, and the main one setting off thoughts for me: The Great Restructuring, by Jeff Jarvis. Jeff talks about our recession – first quoting Umair Haque calling it a great “compression … as an economy built on perceived value reconciles with actual value.”

Jeff also mentions this article from the New York Times and ends up calling our current recession a “great restructuring.” Then, he lists thoughts about quite a few industries and their future. Here’s a partial list of them:

• America may well not be in the auto industry soon.
• Financial services will have to be completely remade
• Newspapers will vanish
• Magazines are in worse shape than I would have guessed and many will go
• Books’ channels of manufacturing, distribution, and sales will go through upheaval
• Broadcast media will become meaningless, replaced by digital delivery
• Large-scale retail will shrink and consolidate and then be transformed by a search-and-buy economy
• The blockbuster economy in entertainment will become harder to support as more attention and money shifts to the tail.
• We should be so lucky that elementary and secondary education will also face such pressure.

And that’s just a few (go read the article for the whole list and some great thoughts).

Here’s the second article raising a ruckus in my head: Big Music Will Surrender, But Not Until At Least 2011 from TechCrunch. This article mainly gives a music executive’s perspective of coming changes for his industry, and how they currently plan to figure it out. So it’s one industry’s perspective on how change will ultimately play out for them. Interesting take.

My question to you – are you ready?

Look at that list from the first article: books, magazines, newspapers, media. All going through huge changes, all going to be remade. And all stuff that’s near and dear to our librarian hearts!

Some of these changes are already starting, you know:

• Newspapers and Magazines have already started going digital. It’s just a matter of time before more/most decide to stop printing that paper thing and go completely digital.
• Books… {David quickly ducks} DON’T freak out! Of course I think people will still read books. That’s a given. But have you looked around lately and seen the Amazon Kindle? Or the iPhone ebook reader that millions of people are now carrying around? I have a book on mine to read right now. Those 300-page paper things will eventually turn digital – because it’s simply a container for the content – not the content itself.
• Music and movies – think LPs/8-Tracks, Cassettes, CDs or super 8, 16 ml, vcr, DVD … and compare that to iTunes or Netflix emerging subscription models. Also going digital!

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg for libraries – most of our huge buildings exist to primarily hold physical stuff. What will we do when there’s no physical stuff to hold? Will you still be able to justify that large building? That staff? (My answer to that is yes, you can … if you are planning for change now).

How are you starting to re-think your services and libraries? My library is in the middle of strategic planning, and we’re going to tackle that whole “re-think everything” approach. Looks like Darien Library has been doing that, too. How about you?

Closing thought – I live in lucky times – I get to see … basically … my whole life change before my eyes. And I get to help it change.

Bonus reading:

• An interesting article on remaking education
• This post is where I found the title of for my article … good post, too – focuses on economic stuff

You HAVE to watch the amazing cool music video Michael Porter and I made!!! Here it is:

And go to Michael’s blip.tv account for a larger version of the video. Want the MP3? Find it here and at last.fm

Go read Michael’s post for the nitty-gritty details (and this post for the lyrics and credits). Here are some song details…

This was a really fun song to write and record. I honestly wasn’t sure Michael’s idea would work when he first suggested it to me, but then I’m game for just about anything, so thought “let’s try it and see what happens!” And Michael’s a great friend and writing partner (we write the Public Libraries Magazine column “Internet Spotlight” together), so if everything else went down the tubes, I knew we would at least have a fun time of it. But as we started writing the lyrics, rhythms and melody lines started bouncing around in my head… and I realized this would be easy to pull off.

Other details:

• The music is a mix of GarageBand instruments, my own guitar playing, and three samples of theremins and other whistle-like sounds.
• And Michael Porter and I sang/rapped the thing
• recorded and mixed in Garageband, in my basement

Samples used:

• Spooky whistle G#3
• Ghost Fx
• theremin low to very high
• all found on freesound.org

A little more explanation – I wrote the music (with a little help from GarageBand here and there). For each line of the lyrics, I pulled random Gorman quotes from these three articles.

This is probably some odd self-fulfilling prophecy, since I am a blogger, since Gorman said “entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs” … and that’s pretty much what I did to construct this song!

Now, on to the song! And here’s a game for you while listening: try to find each quote while you’re listening to the song!

I’m No Antidigitalist
Music by David Lee King, lyrics pulled from Gorman quotes

an associated flight from expertise
believers in Biblical inerrancy
authoritative printed sources
an extreme example of technophiliac rambling

human beings learn, essentially, in only two ways
verifiable credentials and demonstrable expertise
derision of the professorial authority figure
hyperventilating not blasphemy

I’m no Antidigitalist

there are obstacles to such a benign outcome
antihuman and intellectually debasing
the endemic confusion of means
the triumph of hope and boosterism over reality

I’m no Antidigitalist

read what they want to read … random facts
read what they want to read … paragraphs

an associated flight from expertise
believers in Biblical inerrancy
human beings learn, essentially, in only two ways
hyperventilating not blasphemy

I’m no Antidigitalist

The structures of scholarship and learning are based on respect for individuality and the authentic expression of individual personalities.

Enjoy!

Just saw this… a start-up named SpiralFrog is planning to launch a (drumroll please) new-fangled music service that will be based on advertising revenue rather than on .99 cent downloads. Yes, you read that right – as in FREE music. Universal Music is backing them (that’s big). Look for them in December.

Libraries, dust off your CD-burning and USB-downloading skills…

silly update: I actually beat TechCrunch (who has much more info than my post, of course)!

Update #2: Never mind – from TechCrunch (who had a Skype conversation with the PR dude from SpiralFrog):

“Spiral Frog will offer a desktop downloader for Windows Media Files (no iPods!) that can be listened to on one PC and two portable devices.”

And…

“you must log in to the Spiral Frog service at least once per month, and see their ads, or your files will stop playing!”

Two VERY stupid ideas, one digital music company that’s sure to fail.

spiralfrog

Interesting post on the Social Software blog: Yahoo music exec says maybe DRM should be ditched.

I’m all agreed that DRM doesn’t work in libraries – if it disappeared, then iPods would work with services like Overdrive and netLibrary. But look at some of the thoughts the author has about how to assign value (if the thing being purchased isn’t the music itself):

• Linking music downloads to concert promotion/tickets
• Liner notes
• other branded multi-media beyond the music file itself
• superior quality to files found in the wild

Some of these ideas are leaving traditional types (that’d be libraries and record stores) in the dust. Example – Linking music downloads to tickets – where does that leave the library’s music collection, or future music purchases? Also – other branded multi-media… hmm… at least with this added value item, patrons could still come to the library to access the value-added thing via the web.

Most likely there would still be a way to purchase music that would make sense for libraries (ie., subscription-based services). Still…

Also – the article mentions that there was recently a conference called “Music 2.0″ – wow. Again, it’s not just libraries and Library 2.0 – many different industries are dealing with the same notions.

Library 2.0, Web 2.0, Music 2.0

I just got off the phone with a rep at Real.com’s Rhapsody music service. What an interesting conversation! First off, here’s what I told the rep we (and probably other libraries) wanted in a digital music service:

• digital music for library patrons
• ability to listen in the library
• ability to listen at home, using the library’s authentication
• ability to download to a portable device
• We need all this to be an annual library system subscription, rather than a normal, individual subscription

The Rhapsody rep (very nice, knowledgeable person) had guessed we’d want something along those lines, and stated that they “probably haven’t considered” that type of model. He then shared all about record labels being extremely picky, who gets paid when, etc… all the usual record-labels-get-all-the-money types of statements. Which I’m certain is all very true indeed.

Right now, Rhapsody isn’t set up to do what my library wants. Rhapsody did offer a “bulk download license” type of model – similar to what they do with corporations (think McDonalds or Pepsi) for promotions. But what library wants to deal with multiple licenses for potentially EVERY library patron, handing out those licenses, etc? Probably not too many.

But – here’s the good thing. The rep DID say ours was an interesting concept, he’s open to further ideas, and he’d talk to the “product development” people. That’s something, anyway.

Rhapsody
Digital Music
DigitalMusic

Here’s an interesting short story on digital audiobooks and format wars, from the Digital Music weblog.

They bring up the issue of how some audiobook companies use DRM technology to make the book “automatically expire” after three weeks or so – just like how you return a book when it’s due. Of course, the DigitalMusic blogger finds that concept absurd – because you’re still stuck with a file that you then have to delete (and apparently didn’t think about copyright issues associated with borrowing the digital copy).

But it’s still something to think about – I can copy parts of a book, a magazine article, etc. Why does my file have to stop working? Do we have to mimic the traditional library in digital format, or is there another way?

ahem… I was gonna say “why can’t I copy my digital file,” but realized there are ways… one of them being with an audio out jack…