10.06.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:48 pm by Sean Fitzpatrick
One of the more lively discussions at LITA Forum was during a session whose topic had more to do with next year’s Forum topic than this year’s: Ken Fujiuchi from Buffalo State College in New York and Kathryn Frederick from Skidmore College in New York gave the audience a lot to consider in their talk “Designing Library Services for the Cloud.”
“We don’t want to trust the cloud, but we’re sucked in anyway,” said Fujiuchi. Budget issues in libraries and patron expectations for certain types of services make moving data and services to the cloud pretty enticing. The bottom line is that cloud computing is more efficient, flexible, and portable. Their examples ranged from storing bib records on cloud servers to speed ILL among institutions that share the records (wait, aren’t we already doing that?) to Google Sites for statistics to speculations that maybe one day library cards can be standardized to simplify borrowing outside one’s own library–just as OpenID does it on the web and ATMs do it with debit cards. I was particularly interested in libraries’ using Google Sites for statistics because of how well Google’s forms interact with Google Docs and then output basic analytics–a perfect fit for keeping track of stats on reference transactions, it seems.
Of course, privacy is a concern, but OCLC’s Matt Goldner reminded the audience that sales units have been trusting the cloud for years with customer relationship management tools like salesforce.com. “It’s been done,” Goldner said. “Librarians just need figure out what needs to be in the cloud for us.”
The discussion led to ideas about what could happen if libraries refused to turn to the cloud for their computing infrastructure. The speakers suggested that librarians will risk losing patrons, saying that the cloud is to IT what Google is to libraries–motivation to maintain relevance.
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07.14.09
Posted in 2009 ALA Annual Conference at 9:16 am by Sean Fitzpatrick
A packed meeting room awaited a panel of techie librarians to address the question of whether Library 2.0 has lived up to its promise at July 14 LITA and the Internet Resources Services Interest Group session “The Ultimate Debate: Has Library 2.0 fulfilled its promise?” The panel couldn’t exactly agree on what Library 2.0 was, let alone whether it’s fulfilled its promise, but traditional ways of thinking may not even be sufficient to judge Lib2.0 effectiveness.
Audience of conference attendees watches moderator Roy Tennent and panelists David Lee King, Meredith Farkas, Michael Porter, and Cindi Trainor discuss the Library 2.0 promise.
Moderator Roy Tennant said that describing Library 2.0 was much like the tale of the blind men touching different parts of an elephant to learn what it was: by touching different parts of the elephant, each had a radically different description from the others. “The Library 1.0 Committee is still out on what the Library 2.0 promise is,” joked one panelist, noting that using Lib1.0 criteria to discuss Lib2.0 values misses the point.
“The first report I gave on Twitter effectiveness was a printout of the happy tweets and the angry tweets,” said panalist Michael Porter. He went on to say–and the panel agreed–that traditional metrics, such as traffic counts, circulation counts, and so forth are insufficient when it comes to gauging Lib2.0 effectiveness. Lib2.0 needs metrics that can track patron engagement.
The panel agreed that these Lib2.0 tools–blogs, wikis, widgets, social networking, and so forth–are usually free or very cheap but still take a lot of staff time implement effectively. Meredith Farkas noted that 2.0 librarians are still doing the same things they’ve always done at their jobs, and more. David Lee King, who admits that he often stays up late at night to get extra work done, agrees but suggests that librarians who say they have no time for Lib2.0 initiatives have bad time management. “If there’s enough time to push a book cart around synchronized to music,” he snarked, “you prrroooobably have enough time to use these technologies.”
“You may not have signed up for this job, but it’s the job you have. And the job is changing,” said Porter.
King added that if libraries are spending so much time practicing for book cart drill teams, they should put videos of the drill teams on YouTube for marketing, and even archiving, purposes. “Use these tools to work it, work it, work it,” he urged. King addressed managers in the room directly, with a charge to let their staff “go with” the technology.
Although the panel advocates for the power of these tools in libraries, their points were tempered with a sense of focus on the library’s mission. Farkas remarked that libraries should use Lib2.0 technologies to fill a need. “Technology is not a magic wand,” she said.
Uncertain of the actual productive uses of Lib2.0 technology, one audience member asked, “Isn’t it all just marketing?” Panelist Cindi Trainor agreed that marketing for the library is one good use of Lib2.0 technology, but there are other parts, she said: collaboration, connecting, sharing, and putting out half-baked ideas and seeing what people say. Trainor highlighted the power of using these tools for feedback and two-way communication. “It’s not just a wooden box in the corner that says ’suggestions.’”
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07.12.09
Posted in 2009 ALA Annual Conference at 7:32 am by Gordon Flagg
To anyone attending an ALA conference, viewing the many attendees toting laptops or sporting smartphones and the exhibit hall dominated by high-tech vendors, it’s inescapable how pervasive technology has become in our society; in developing countries, it’s obviously another story. “Technology and the Developing World,” a Saturday-morning program presented by the Library and Information Technology Association, illustrated various approaches to rectifying that situation
Randy Ramusack, U.N. technology coordinator for Microsoft, described the firm’s Partners in Learning initiative, launched in 2003 to help teachers learn how to use technology. Since then the program has reached over 100 million teachers and students in 110 countries, and Ramusack said they hope to boost that to 250 million by 2010.
Microsoft also supports Research4Life, a public-private partnership that gives scientists in developing countries free or low-cost access to information in more than 7,000 journals.
Ramusack also touted other programs in which Microsoft is involved, including the World Database on Protected Areas, an important tool for conservation activities, and a project with the U.N. High Commission on Refugees to use technology to promote education in refugee settlements.
The One Laptop Per Child project is a nonprofit organization that has put over 1 million laptops into the hands of children in developing countries. OLPC developed the XO computer, a low-cost ($188), low-power (3 watts) unit that has been deployed in 20 countries, half of them in Latin America. SJ Klein, OLPC manager of content, said the design goals were to develop a computer that was cheap, robust, easily repairable, and designed for kids, and that would run on free or open source software.
The $188 XO
Klein said the XO, which has built-in wireless but no hard drive, provides a means for children to chat, play, read, and publish their ideas. He noted that such empowerment is “both awesome and sometimes scary for teachers.” The children—who are often the only literate members of their families—take the XOs home from school, where they become part of their lives.
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12.08.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:02 am by Greg Landgraf
Laramie County (Wyo.) Library System is now publicizing a year-and-a-half old service that’s just plain cool: An animation station where kids can make their own stop-motion movies.
Nicole Smith helps her son Ian make a movie.
“We started this as a ‘discoverable’—in other words, one of the many hidden surprises throughout the library,” said County Librarian Lucie Osborn. “Word-of-mouth was our greatest ally.” Even without formal promotion, Osborn said that the station is “pretty much in constant use while we are open.” That even includes school hours, when it’s used by home-schooled children or 4- and 5-year-olds who aren’t yet in school.
“The animation station provides our community’s youth an interactive opportunity to utilize their imaginations, work cooperatively with others, and create their own stories and films using materials provided by the library or their own pieces from home,” said Osborn. She considers it a perfect fit for the library, whose mission statement includes commitments to “Be a community center for access to information, self-improvement, social interaction, cultural exposure, and leisure,” and to “Use and provide state-of-the-art technology.”
Osborn says the animation station helps to attract non-traditional library users, particularly boys, and encourages collaborations among children or between kids and their parents. Students also use it for homework, because the videos can be downloaded and used in presentations. “A huge benefit of the animation station is that it is just fun,” Osborn added. “Even though they are learning, they are mostly having fun and enjoying something they don’t have access to anywhere else in Cheyenne.”
The station was installed for the opening of the library in summer of 2007, but the library only recently resolved a technical glitch that had prevented users from saving their movies to the web. The library web site hosts the videos, but there they are private to the filmmaker and people they e-mail it to. Users can, however, save the video on their own flash drives and post it online publicly at YouTube or similar sites if they choose. The library also selects one movie as “Video of the Month” and posts it on the animation station’s web page.
The animation station was made possible by a major donation that helped to fund the entire “My Library Place” project, an interactive literacy center for children created by The Burgeon Group that also includes a baby bookmobile and a book factory. Equipment includes a networked PC, monitor, and still camera in a self-contained unit.
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