Internet Librarian

She has a friend that works at Technorati - cool…

She also mentioned the idea of the “long tail” - something about a curve, links, and blogs… I’ll have to look into that some more.

Yahoo’s My Yahoo helps her find what she wants. Her trusted contacts in My Yahoo help color her search results so she finds the stuff she really wants. This model works much better than simply typing a search into Google.

del.icio.us works a similar way - people can follow their interests through finding feeds of interest.

She showed La Grange Public Library’s del.icio.us feed.

• staff can get to the bookmarks
• patrons can get to the bookmarks (and follow the bookmarks through the RSS feed)

Searching is better when you can filter your search results through people you trust - human filtering rather than automated filtering.

Idea for web dudes: With your Subject Guides and category names for links: when you want to see what customers call things, go to del.icio.us and see what real people are calling them. Then use that term for the guide.

Look at the ESP Game - it’s a good excersize in tagging.

“Just brecause it doesn’t work for you, doesn’t mean it’s bad for everybody.” - her thoughts to librarians that are wary of constant partial attention.

Read “meet the lifehackers” found in the New York Times

an aside - she called this the Continuous Computing Generation

Pay attention to social bookmarking and tagging.

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IL2005
Internet Librarian 2005

I’m looking back over my notes from Day 1 at Internet Librarian 2005 - if I had to pick one thought that hit on everything I heard today, it’d go something like this:

“Change is coming… no change is already here, and it’s going to speed up even more. Instead of holding onto your hats, strap on your goggles and shift into high gear!”

I spent all day in the Public Libraries Technology Trends track (awesome track, by the way). Here’s a summary of what was discussed:

1. Public library websites are changing - they’re incorporating social interaction types of applications
2. Public Libraries are changing - they’re incorporating new services (ex: iPods)
3. You need staff buy-in for any of this to work
4. You need to train staff if any of this is going to be successful
5. Things our customers want are free (flickr and del.icio.us as examples)
6. We can make our Public PCs work for the customer in this new age

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Internet Librarian 2005

Sarah Houghton, Joe Latini, Ken Weil, Jenny Levine, and Aaron Schmidt

Sarah:
Opening up public computers
- drives are locked
- limited software
- very locked down

Use DeepFreeze

OPACs should work just like Google - just as fast, just as relevant, etc.

Citywide wireless - very cool

Aaron:
Serving the information poor

E-ink and E-paper are right around the corner for libraries

Joe
Risk taking is good
Wants to get young people involved - Rock concerts
New technology needs to be experimented with (like iPods)

Ken
Take the initiative and do something!
Charge a fee if needed - it will still be cheaper for customers
Become a distributor - we’ll even come to you
Staffing - use staff correctly
PR and Marketing - we’re weak in those areas
Targeted emails to customers
Get out from behind the reference desk!
We have to be willing to fail - so try new initiatives
They tried mailing DVDs to homes - it didn’t work for them

Jenny
The two way web
the read/write web
the participatory web
web 2.0

In a library - connecting, collaborating, communicating, etc - just like what we already do

within our four walls

Community involvement with local history - www.westernspringshistory.org:
- picture of old house
- comments from the community

AADL
- comments
- don’t premoderate comments
- Director has a blog so she can communicate directly with the community
- 73 comments on the debugging the catalog post
- they have nothing to hide - it’s very transparent
- over 400 comments on one post

ProQuest RSS feeds - content changes on the library website - cool

Put entire library IT support in a wiki!!!!!!!

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Internet Librarian 2005

Interesting stuff:

Be prepared for:
- saving files to the desktop
- USB storage devices
- IM
- CD burning
- Multimedia content
- Playing games
- Trying to look at TIFFs
- Installing Programs!

If we’re not helping our users, what are we doing?

Have a regular maintenance schedule

Use ghosting software… DeepFreeze and Norton Ghost - wipes the PC clean at each reboot

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IL2005
Internet Librarian 2005

Some interesting points she made:

Researching a solution
- vendor info at conferences
- library literature
- webjunction
- LITA listserv
- Site visits
- vendor websites
- online demos

Chose thin clients
- not vulnerable to tampering
- can be updated from a single server
- takes up less physical space
- use familiar software applications
- in line with our technology plan

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IL2005
Internet Librarian 2005

Jessamyn West: Flickr, Tagging, and the F-Word

Gave a great introduction to Flickr

Some highlights:
- other people can add tags to your pictures (if you allow them to do that)
- Tags - click the word, you get your tagged pictures
- Tags - click on the globe by the tag word, and you get everyone’s tagged pictures
- Explained the coolness of Hot Tags - last 24 hours, last week - shows what’s going on

Jenny Levine:

intro to del.icio.us

del.icio.us/Jayhawk - Jenny’s bookmarks

These bookmarks are things other people are finding interesting and important

Find others with similar interests

for:username - this will go to that user

LaGrangeParkLibrary
- using del.icio.us at the reference desk
- they can get to it anywhere, and their customers can get to it, too

Thomas Ford Memorial Library
- Aaron moved their bookmarks to del..icio.us, then links tot he RSS feed

Many other places are using folksonomies
- citeulike
- Michael’s lastfm page
- 43things
- technorati
- metafilter
- Yahoo’s Myweb
- Amazon’s search in this book feature
- books we like

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Internet Librarian 2005

Michael first asked “why are we doing this?- Need to answer that question- One answer - it’s for our users.

1. Listen
- listen to conversations in your organization
- you want buy-in

2. Involve staff in planning
- front line staff know what works in your library

3. Tell Stories
- music gets kids into library
- what can you do with … ? - ask staff to answer this question

4. Be Transparent
- tell staff why you’re planning stuff
- tell staff what you’re learning at the conference

5. Report & Debrief
- report what you learned at a conference
- make a next action list of stuff you learned at a conference

6. do your research FIRST
- be prepared before the first meeting
- do your research
- see if it’s good for your organization

7. Manage Projects Well
- create next steps!
- The Getting Things Done philosophy

8. Offer training for all technology
- let staff be trained first

9. Let them play
- get staff to try new things

10. Celebrate successes
- really, actually celebrate them…

Bonus: breathe and take care of yourself…

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Internet Librarian 2005

Ken Weil and Joe Latini, South Huntington Public Library

They use iTunes - books from Apple’s online music store. Why?

• Audible tends not to sell to libraries
• Apple Music Store was the best way to go for them in terms of price
• Digital book is usually available much sooner to them than the print version

They buy iPods for circulation

“Currently, there is no audio book vendor that provides both universal access and high demand digital content.”

Copyright Considerations:- they limit circulation to the number of copies owned by the library

They set up an Apple iTunes music store account!

iTunes software works for Windows and Apples

They search for the audio books using APple store

Download takes about 5 minutes

They now have 20 iPod Shuffles
-the iPods AND the individual titles are cataloged

They advertise it on their website

They include lots of stuff in a camera bag:
- iPod Shuffle
- power adapter/charger
- radio transmitter
- audiocassette adapter
- user’s guide
- aux input connector

They hook a title card onto the camera bag

They also circulate laptops!

If you use your own iPod, they make the patron bring their iPod to the library when the book is due - otherwise, there is an overdue fine

73% of surveyed users of their iPods are female

They are exploring podcasting library programs - as a way to keep patrons current, and to stay at the forefront

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IL2005
Internet Librarian 2005

I was able to speak as part of this session - it went well! Here’s what the others said:

Glenn Peterson, Hennepin County Library:

Their Website:

- 3.5 fte for web services - most part time - also reference librarians, etc. Huh
- 6 million visitors
- 70% of reserves are placed online

leveraging staff:
- web application software helps - so staff can drop info into databases
- Dreamweaver, homesite, etc - much easier to make webpages because of autocomplete
- using reference staff to provide content

Subject Guides are a great way to group different types of library and community information

Their subject guides are two pages of code

Sarah Houghton, Marin County Free Library

She gets 5 hours a week to spend on her website!

Small libraries can:

• blog
• create linked lists - you make these for your library already (bookmarks, paper-based lists) - why not make an online version, too?
• Quick Searches - make a link to searches - new books, DVDs, etc.
• Give patrons a way to talk to you - like comments online
• virtual reference - jybe and sms and IM - all free!
  - jybe does co browsing
  - most of these allow passing URLs

John Blyberg, Ann Arbor District Library
used Drupal (open source CMS)
Used Debian Sarge for LInux
Using LAMP
Apache - defacto standard for open source web servers
PHP is a “fun” language!

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IL2005
Internet Librarian 2005