The Walking Librarian

Well, on a lighter note this week, I want to mention the walking librarian. It's an interesting article from the November issue of Library Journal. Stuart Hamilton is a librarian from Denmark. He has been on a journey through the United States, walking across the United States, library to library. I'll admit I do try to visit libraries in every city or town I travel through, but I have never considered walking from one to another across the US and I loved that book Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins. Anyway Stuart and his walking partner noticed across their 5000 miles, big cities and little towns alike all have public libraries. And most notably they all (1 exception) have high speed Internet access. This is definitely something we can be proud of here in the US of A, however, they did mention some concerns with filtering and misconceptions, even ignorance about the patriot act. They were surprised to find that some librarians didn't even know of its existence not to mention its implications. This for me is hard to believe. Even the small town librarians went to library school, they have access to the Internet, hopefully receive some sort of library publication and are possibly even members of the ALA or their state library association. Can it be possible they have missed the Patriot Act and all its intrusion? Well, maybe larger metropolitan libraries and staff (I hope they are up to date) should start an adoption program or something like a sister program where they "adopt" a rural library. These larger libraries could help with resources, information or a sort of support system that I am sure on the whole would benefit all the libraries involved.
Well, I'll let you guys think on that one and in the meantime, yeah to libraries everywhere. Stuart and his friend were able to read, maintain their website, blog, check email, news and anything else they wanted all across the country and I think that is AWESOME! And Stuart, next time come to Oklahoma City!

Relevant Terminology

I have been thinking over things I have learned recently. Maybe I knew certain words or concepts but didn't fully grasp their full meaning or how they affected the library profession; and how they might impact the profession in the future. So, I thought I would list some of these important terms and their definitions for everyone to look at, to either refresh your memory or learn something new. I think everyone of these terms should be very familiar to all librarians and information professionals.
Folksonomy-(also known as collaborative tagging , social classification, social indexing, social tagging)is generally a term used to describe the process of categorizing content. Metadata is used for the classification or categorization as opposed to traditional subject headings. One intended purpose is to make information easier to search and navigate.It is often criticized because of its lack of controlled vocabulary which is seen as unreliable. Here's an article from the New York Times and of course Wikipedia has a great overview with lots of links.
Social Networking- Basically a network that connects people to other people, jobs, information, etc. Just watch this video.
Tagging-It's really a label or keyword to describe the content of any type of information. It's seen as a type of metadata that associates descriptors with an object.Tags allow keyword-based classification and a more "extensive" search of information.
RSS(real simple syndication)-XML-based format for content distribution; a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or latest books on a subject of interest to you, for example. A user has only to subscribe to an RSS feed to receive the new updates of information. Check out this article.
Wiki-A wiki is a type of computer software that allows users to easily create, edit and link web pages. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites, books and community websites. The most known of all wiki's is Wikipedia, but wiki are springing up all over the place. Why not use your expertise to contribute to one today.
Technorati-is an Internet search engine for searching blogs, competing with Google, Yahoo and IceRocket. Technorati indexes over 94 million weblogs. The name Technorati points to the technological version of literati or intellectuals. Technorati uses and contributes to open source software.
text-mining-also referred to as data-mining, is the process of extracting information from text. Here's an article for a full explanation.
Ontology-As a data model, it seeks to describe basic categories and relationships between entities (of information). Ontologies are used in artificial intelligence, the Semantic Web, software engineering, biomedical informatics and information architecture as a form of knowledge representation about the world or some part of it. One example of an ontology known to librarians would be Dublin Core.
Taxonomies-is the practice and science of classification. Taxonomies use controlled vocabulary ie subject headings and is not itself metadata. Need more help, try this article.
Metadata- most simply it is described as data about data. More specifically it is information about objects(document, image, film, book)with the ultimate purpose of classification for findability.The vocabulary from Dublin Core is the most prevalent. It's properties contain information such as title, creator, subject, description, publisher, and so on.
KM(knowledge management)-comprises a range of practices used by organisations to identify, create, represent, and distribute knowledge. Here is an interesting take on KM from a KMer himself.
Semantic Web-is an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which web content can be expressed not only in natural language, but also in a format that can be read and used by software agents, thus permitting them to find, share and integrate information more easily. For more clarification check out this site.
Semantic Search Engine-Well, I'll let you read about it.
OSS(open source software)-Free software, available on the web for everyone to use, even you.
Invisible Web-is what you cannot retrieve ("see") in the search results and other links contained on the web. It is estimated that the invisible web contains approximately 7,500 terabytes of data and 550 billion individual documents. Federated searching is one way to access the invisible web.

Book 2.0

Books aren't dead, they're just going digital. So says the cover of this weeks (NOV 26th) Newsweek magazine. The article, centered around Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com and creator of the new Amazon Kindle, examines the future of reading and the future of the book. Great article and I would encourage everyone out there to read it asap. The Kindle is the latest technological device for digital reading. It has it all: wireless Wispernet, E ink (breakthrough product that mimics the clarity and print of a printed book), it's the size of a paperback, weights 10.3 ounces, 30 hours of reading on a rechargeable battery, changeable font size, it's hold 200 books in memory with more on a memory card, and of course an unlimited amount in a virtual library maintained by Amazon. OK, I'm not done yet. The reader can search within the book for a phrase or name, you can in fact search for a book on Amazon, use the keyboard to order the book and have it downloaded to your Kindle in less than a minute and cheaper to, new releases starting at 9.99, with some books at only 1.99. In addition, you can subscribe to newspapers and the new publications are sent directly to your Kindle. The Kindle can also look things up on the web, search Google, and link to and from blogs; it even has an electronic highlighter. WOW, sounds amazing. Oh, what does it cost you ask? Well, that is a bit of a downer at $399 big ones. Hey, if you've got the cash and certainly if you travel a lot, it is definitely worth it.
The implications:
Of course no one wants to see an end of the book. But the question remains, aren't digital books still books? Could it possibly lead to a greater number of readers? In the article Bezos asks himself, "why do I love these physical objects.....the smell of glue and ink"? He says it's because the smell is associated with all the places a book takes him to, all the emotions, all the words and ideas. Critics have until recently believed electronic devices could not accomplish this for a reader, but it is now being disproved; the electronic reader has the same effect as the print version.
Further implications are:
Changes in the publishing industry and they are already resisting the model put forth by Amazon of charging less for books.
Corrections or updates could be made instantly without reprints.
There could be continuous books; books that are purchased knowing an author will add to it in the future or on a regular basis.
Cutting book prices in half could double book sales; who doesn't want to sell more books?
Book 2.0 could have implications like web 2.0; interaction of books and authorship and continuous books, wiki style books (just like Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything).
Reading becomes a community activity.
Could cause a decline or not in printed books.
Well, one last point-Libraries. Libraries were not mentioned in the article and as a librarian and friend of many librarians and one who loves books deeply, I must ask what does this mean for the library? For starters, we still have books in print, so yeah and on we go. For seconds, this technology is very cool, very interactive, transportable, flexible, and so on. Lets embrace it, lets offer these type of services at the library (how about a free downloadable book for your Kindle)and lets move into the future with Amazon and technology instead of lagging behind and trying to resist an inevitable change.

Thanksgiving

GIVE ME TURKEY !!

Well this is my I'm oh so thankful for blogs and technology blog. A digital camera, some adobe photo shop (2 images)+ image ready to combine the photos at whatever speed, then top it off with a little html to load it onto the blog. I hope everyone appreciates this very glamorous picture of me and if you haven't tried it, what better time than the holidays! And even though this blog is lacking in intelligent prose, the new technology should be classified as a learning by doing achievement.(OK Doc!)

Where is the Metadata?

Yes, I am still recovering from the aquabrower presentation and the fact that even Amazon uses the metadata provided by OCLC which is the same metadata libraries use. At least that is what I inferred from some recent information, please feel free to correct me if I am wrong. The point is, it's available and why isn't my library using the metadata and technology to it's full potential? Even without AquaBrowser, the options are endless and awesome and user friendly and cool and technologically updated and aesthetically pleasing and descriptive and what is taking so long for public libraries (not all) to start using this great metadata?
My upset was re-ignited earlier today as I was looking up a public library in California for a patron/customer/guest. I accidentally stumbled upon a library in New York, The South Huntington Public Library, and it is awesome. They have 24 hour librarian reference; RosettaStone, which is online software to learn languages; SuffolkWave, free digital downloads of books, movies, how-to's and music; next reads (self explanatory); online homework help with tutor.com; covers of materials along with descriptions; online signup for programs; beyond Google, a very user friendly guide to using databases; and the catalog, what can I say, it's not a one box search like Google or AquaBrowser, but it has a clear and efficient search including loan rules, request for purchase, ipod options and more, all available for the patron/customer/guest. I just need to say that I think it is very COOL and my library does not have any of these things. Ok we do have ebooks, but it seems so small in comparison.
So what is taking many public libraries so long to use available technology and metadata to benefit the patron and make the library more user friendly? I am looking into it and will try to report back if I find a substantial answer.

Librarians Rock!

I say this with as much enthusiasm as I can possibly muster-librarians rock! Yes, it's true and going to a library conference of any kind is an excellent learning experience. My last post was solely about David Silver and his presentation, but there were other speakers at the ACRL conference. Lynn Connaway from OCLC discussed statistics based research and gave user "quotes" answering the question, Why not libraries? The answers were very mixed but the unifying theme appeared to be that the library is not user friendly, like Google.
Well, I believe librarians love Google as much as our users, but we also understand the necessity to catalog and organize information and yes, we do want it to be user friendly. Which is why the presenter, Anne Prestamo from OSU, showing off their new BOSS catalog was so cool. It is powered by the giant AquaBrowser and they have what I think is a "Google like" interface. It has one search box, spelling suggestions, alternative words and subject suggestions, book covers with summary and table of contents and it is very easy to use. AquaBrowser is one of the finest catalog systems I have seen and it is going to be very interesting to watch and see how widespread it is used.
The last speaker I will mention was Adri Edwards from Norman Public Library. She gave us a fast paced breakout session on blogging. Not how to set up a blog or make it look good, but on the rules, regulations, copyright and avoiding trouble. In addition, Adri showed us how to set up open source tracking software to view user visits. It was very cool and she did a great job with her presentation.
So, the conference was cool. If you haven't been to one lately, go for it!

Library 2.0 and David Silver

Can anyone imagine a combination that could be any more fun? Well neither can I, unless of course it had been a private dinner instead of a conference. Well, dreams aside, David's casual and "conscious" presence was very engaging. He proved to be insightful, a natural speaker and gave me a lot to think about.

Something David mentioned about web 2.0, is it's interactive culture. I very much agree with this and I think it is something we all love. And yet, it seems to be missing in several places: the job atmosphere (employee/employer collaborative relations) and the student/patron atmosphere, in conjunction with libraries and/or library staff. This interactive culture needs to be promoted (thank you David), explored and improved.

Another point worth mentioning is that users of technology don't equal users of other technology (ie facebook is not like using databases); that consumers of information can be shallow and information is rarely transferred to knowledge. David was referring mainly to students, but I see the same phenomena with patrons at my public library. People, without direction and instruction, are not utilizing technology and information resources to the full potential; they are not transferring the information to knowledge. As information professionals we need to be aware of this problem and look for solutions.

The last point David made was actually a series of ideas for the new interactive culture in which we live. He asked "what would a library look like when students are giving?" He suggested we look for ways to use student driven data (ie a book list by students for other students after a study abroad), student book displays and student blogging. David mentioned he always gives his students "in library" assignments: observe book display, interview librarian, blog about the experience, students comment and librarian comment. WOW-librarian comment- this really drew the students in and made them feel apart of the library.

These student assignments, I believe, are key. Although I am no great blogger yet, I don't know if I would have even tried without being forced into it by my fabulous professor Doc Martens!

And yes, I will post more on the other parts of the conference later in the week.

Are libraries really for EVERYONE?

I recently attended a workshop titled A Place For Everyone. The intent was to bring together librarians to discuss ways we can help and promote an environment in libraries for those members of society who are considered either homeless or poor. It was not the intent to leave out other groups who might also need services, but homelessness and libraries is one specific issue that needs to be addressed and that was the focus of this workshop.

The president of the Homeless Alliance, Dan Straughan, gave an extended presentation and role play exercise to help us experience what homelessness might be like. Highlights from his presentation include:
1. He has personally created a database which is now shared by all service agencies. It is an excellent resource for the providers as it allows them to help the recipient keep track of where and when they have appointments and help them to get there. For example, their case worker can schedule a doctors appointment, is and if they went or not. If not, they can reschedule it for them, give them a bus pass, etc.
2. His knowledge of the homeless was extensive and he wanted to make sure we knew that the fastest growing segment of homeless are families with children.
3. He is starting a day shelter in Oklahoma City called WestTown. It will house agencies such as a pharmacy, library extension, employment training, medical clinic, government benefits, mental health treatment and more. Please feel free to check out the website for further information at http://homelessalliance.org/projects.htm.

Due to some recent cases having gone to trial concerning library services to the homeless, two of the presenters were lawyers from the ACLU. However, review of the first amendment is always advantageous for librarians. The hot topics were:
1. The library is a limited public forum
2. What is fairness vs library tolerance
3. Importance of written policy with specific and non-ambiguous language, ie nuisance as opposed to objectionable
4. Not to impede the corollary right to receive information

The third presenters were from Positive Tomorrows, an educational service for homeless children. The most important points were:
1. Literacy is the biggest barrier
2. They are encouraging libraries to bring their services to the shelters
3. This agency is a service provider specifically to homeless children and their parents, they provide an excellent service, want to work with libraries and will take any referrals.

I hope I haven't been too long winded or too brief. My finals points are:
1. Services are available, but if they are inaccessible they cannot be helpful.
2. Libraries are, like it or not, service providers to the homeless and we need to help.
3. There are so many areas for librarians to be involved, it doesn't have to be with the homeless. Pick an area that is interesting to you and get involved. It will improve the library, the community and yourself.

And the answer to the question is......YES, libraries are for everyone!

wiki, wiki, wiki

A wiki is an expression of democracy, if anyone wants my personal description. It is also described as a medium through which, hopefully true information, can be added or edited by anyone with access to it. It is therefore collaborative and easy to use. An area of some information disconnect that directly affects librarians or certainly library services is instruction. I will very soon be contributing to the Wiki, Library Success: A best practices Wiki. My contribution will entail the importance of instruction for online catalogs and databases for 1st year students. Weekly, no exaggeration here, I teach students (college students)how to use their school library on-line resources to look up book holdings and mostly journal articles----I work at a public library. There is a real need for 1st year students to have some real hands on training in order to use the resources provided for them at the library. And I don't mean they should come in on their own time and get a few minutes of instruction. Students need a required tutorial. Yes, many students are savvy on-line users, they can blog, e-mail, game and so on, but they are not versed in library usage. Searching the databases is probably not considered "fun" and most students have not taken the initiative to learn on their own and are not being required to learn it as part of their education. It is a resource they need for classes and should have official instruction.
No, they don't need to go to library school, librarians are available to assist. But they should have at least some basic instruction. So, on my Wiki, I will provide some background on the importance of instruction and suggestions for how that instruction could be implemented for 1st year students.

Freedom

I have stood at the Shwedagon pagoda in Yangon, walked in the streets and ducked in the face of the military. The poorest people I have seen, in person. I never once saw another white person or any foreigner during my two weeks in Myanmar(Burma). The people are so oppressed and as the world looks on are not even allowed peaceful demonstrations, it almost seems unreal. "We cannot get books", they said to me, "can you please help us make a library, one that is hidden from the government, so that we can read and learn". Unfortunately, I could not help with such a project. Neither could I get them english books or those written in Burmese, plus I must admit, I was afraid.
I think of the freedom I have to write, to read and what is available to me digitally. I think of the power and freedom of libraries. As librarians, we are seekers and finders of information, creators of information spaces, designers of information architecture, and recipients of democracy.
I am glad that people are outraged at the attacks on the peaceful monks, I am glad at the talk of sanctions and I am saddened by the recent events. I don't know if I will ever be able to go to Myanmar and help them start a library, but thanks to the web, google books and digital access to information, they may be able to find a library without having to create it themselves. Of course they will need access but somehow that seems like an attainable goal and maybe that is where we can start to help.

Blog This

Andrew Keen portrays the Internet as a sort of congested hodgepodge of information in his new book The Cult of the Amateur. It is “the disappearance of truth” he claims and “the web 2.0 revolution is really delivering superficial observations of the world around us rather than deep analysis, shrill opinion rather than considered judgment. The information business is being transformed by the Internet into the sheer noise of a hundred million bloggers all simultaneously talking about themselves”.
Well maybe they are and what’s so wrong with that. There are also as many bloggers and Internet users who are speaking truth and blogging truth and art and poetry and music and intelligent banter. And guess what, it’s not that hard to separate one from the other. I have no problem using the Internet to find “reliable” news, editorials, blogs, wikis, encyclopedias, dictionaries, humor; communication in its various forms. Why is it that only those people, organizations, schools, professionals, academia, etc who have established reputations are worthy to speak their mind or report on current events or write a report. I agree that some of the lines are blurred and this is unfortunate, some will seek to manipulate public opinions and some will seek to bring the truth to light, how can we not have both? Unfortunately, as with most things in life, there is usually a down side accompanying the up side; deal with it.
And from a practical and professional angle, these are the mediums our patrons are choosing to use and they want our help to do it. They need help navigating, blogging, working myspace, setting up email and understanding some of the deliberate fuzzy lines used on the Internet. This is our job and the more we know the more we can help.
Mr. Keens statement that “the words of the wise man count for no more than the mutterings of a fool”, are a gross exaggeration and do not translate into the 2.0 world I see everyday. That would be the world of intelligent and thoughtful blogs (I mean really there are so many), websites with fulfilled democracy such as wikipedia and must I name the countless excellent information pages one can find on the web? Not to mention its function as a communication tool, an educational tool…………………………………..

A Rambling Woman

My last post referenced the idea that a librarian has been somewhat transformed due to technology. A recent article in the NY Times seems to support my ramblings. It said librarians of today are not snub nosed sushers (what about the bun?) but techno junkies who like to party. Well, I am glad some of the old stereotypes are changing, but do we need new and equally as narrow new stereotypes? Although I will have to admit to being a techno junkie and one who enjoys a good party now and then, that is not really how I would classify myself. How about a thirty-something bookworm, mom of three, PTA committee chairperson, runner, ride my bike to work, kill your television type (who needs one if you have a computer), a liberal NPR junkie (OK, I am very liberal which was another stereotype from the NY Times article) and how could I not be, is there any other option?
Hum, what was my argument...I love the New York Times, Librarians are the best, I don't like stereotypes but I must admit that some of them are true, sounds good. Oh and how about free access to books and information for all---yea libraries.

digital librarian

I recently had a conversation with a co-worker who is interested in library science and specifically in preservation. He asked what type of classes I was taking and as I listed off a few he noted that there were a lot of technology classes. I said of course, I am learning all I can so as to be able to press forward in library science. But I am not really interested in technology, he muttered. Well, I do believe that is impossible in this day and age and certainly impossible in library science, I muttered back.
All lives are surrounded by technology but it seems very prominent in our field in the last 5 to 10 years and I believe it will only continue. It seems that more and more everything I do is on a computer. I take my classes, communicate, research, find information, create blogs and web pages and so on. I think some people still envision a librarian as a books only type of person and wonder why we need degrees. Although I love books and read as much as possible, I also love technology and appreciate all the changes I see before my very eyes. I am glad the field is expanding and developing in new ways, I look forward to being a digital librarian as well as a book librarian.

Professional wanderings

Associate Librarian here, seeking the coveted MLIS so I can be a real librarian.