What the world needs now is another library weblog like I need a hole in my head

August 17, 2005

At least that's what I thought after reading over Walt Crawford's investigation of the "biblioblogosphere" in the September Cites & Insights (pdf link). I knew there were a lot of library weblogs--I subscribe to close to thirty in my RSS reader--but Crawford analyzed over 230 library-related blogs, and ran down sixty of the blogs with the widest reach (according to his interpretation of his data; if you'd like to interpret it yourself, he's made it available as an Excel spreadsheet). The likelihood of my adding something entirely new to that mix seems low. And yet, here we are. This is the first real post to my new library weblog, See Also. While I am obviously feeling a little self-conscious about adding my blog to those 230+ that are already out there, I'm also very excited about the idea of thinking, writing, and conversing about libraries, librarianship, and more. I have had other blogs in the past, but most of those were just my outboard brain, a parking place for URLs I didn't want to lose (now I just use del.icio.us). I made no attempt to build a readership, to communicate, to connect. But over the last year as I read more and more library weblogs as they hashed out Gormangate and tried to understand the implications of tags and folksonomies, I wanted to become part of the conversation. I left the occasional comment, but it seemed like I needed a home base if I was really going to take part. See Also is intended to be that base. So the next few posts will probably also be navel-gazers like this one. Then I want to write up a few things I have been working on this summer (or longer). After that, though, I hope to take a wider perspective, and write about academic libraries and librarianship, libraries and technology, and similar topics. So the next time Crawford does his investigation, I hope that See Also will be right up there, and that I can thank my many (I'll settle for several) loyal readers for making See Also such a success. Posted 10:56 PM to Navel gazing

Getting dressed in public

August 18, 2005
If you are reading this entry close to the time that I'm publishing it, you will notice that the site design is a little...sparse. Or non-existent. I'm not a great web designer, but I do love to play around with (X)HTML and CSS. So much so, that I'm afraid if I waited to start posting here until the site design was "done," I'd never get started. So instead, I blew away the default CSS from Movable Type, and did some minimal styling on the fonts. I have made some changes to the index page template, including adding my own div's with id's. I was thinking if I got some content up here first, and made sure the markup was semantic and made sense, then I should be able to do the CSS as we go. Let's just hope you aren't reading this many months after I post it thinking "well, it still looks crummy." Posted 2:50 PM to Blogs and blogging, Navel gazing, Web design

Google Maps and directions for Tutt Library

August 22, 2005
A little project that I finished relatively recently was this map and directions page for Tutt Library, using Google Maps. To create the map, I used the Google Maps API. You sign up for a key to the API which then lets you place Google maps on pages your pages. Google Maps doesn't have a geocoding component, so to find out our location, I started with

lat-long.com. Lat-long has locations for colleges and universities, so that got me close, but then I asked around and a colleague had a GPS device so we got the coordinates from right in front of the building. Google has what looks like pretty complete documentation for the API, but I confess that my JavaScript isn't all it could be. After several go-rounds of doing the programming-language equivalent of just speaking English louder and slower when in a foreign country, I started to look around for some code to copy. I'm sure that any idiot could read Google's documentation, and convert their "place 10 random points" examples to "place one very special point right where I want it," but I'm not just any idiot. So I found a nice, simple, real-world example at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library, designed not-so-coincidentally by Aaron Schmidt of the library blog Walking Paper. I made one further refinement to the Tutt map page by putting the map in an <iframe>, something I'd never used before. The Google Map API key is granted only for a particular directory on your site. In itself that isn't a problem, but the URL is case-sensitive. That means that, according to Google Maps, http://www.coloradocollege.edu/library/about and http://www.coloradocollege.edu/library/About are two different directories, and the key will only work with the one you registered with Google. That is a big problem for me, as our directories typically have capital letters, but we don't always use them in links. Grrr. The way around that is to put the map itself in an <iframe> so you can control the exact URL used to reference the map, and the URL used for the surrounding page doesn't matter so much. I'm not sure where I learned that hack; I think I found reference to using iframes on several pages, then tried the idea on my own. Last, I added the driving directions section (which doesn't require an API key) using the technique described here which I found via librarian.net. I tried to cover all the browser problems (Google Maps wants new browsers, need to have JavaScript enabled, etc.) with a link to the less-sexy MapQuest. Posted 4:23 PM to Tutt Library, Web design

Integrating library services with the user in mind

September 01, 2005
Last week, Tutt Library had a day-long retreat with other "academic support" groups on campus, including members of the IT department, the Writing Center, and other components of the Teaching and Learning Center, which is physically located in the library. One of the sessions had us responding to this prompt: What is your vision, or possibilities that you see for the future, that reflect/support an integrated learning support services model? Where do you see us presently relative to your vision, and how do you feel about it? I was on a pre-selected panel for that one, so I had time to put together my thoughts beforehand. I seem to have lost my notes, but here is the gist of what I said. First (I said), as we discuss this in late summer, I think it is safe to say that there is not a single student or faculty member who is, at this moment, saying to him- or herself "Gee, I hope the library and IT department and Learning Center staff are preparing an integrated learning support services model." There very well may be, however, a student thinking "I'm dreading doing the research for my senior thesis this year because I can never figure out where I am supposed to search for articles," or "I bet I have to take my new laptop over to the help desk some time when they are open; I wish I didn't have to do that." But in order to find out what they are thinking, we need to talk to them. We need to ask them questions, and then ask them more questions until we know what they really need. We are already doing this, of course. The IT department did a student survey of what their top priorities should be, and near the top was "offer an electronic reserve of articles and other readings that is better than the Library's current E-Res system." That's a start, but what does "better" mean? Faster downloads? An interface that is easier to use? Or do they just hate having to print all those articles themselves each semester? Without more asking and listening, we could spend a lot of time solving the wrong problem. When I think of what I would like to see integrated, I think of the back end of our many web services. Like many libraries, when we want to provide a new database or web-based service, we don't build it ourselves; we go out and license an existing product. As a result, we have many scores of databases, electronic journals, and specialized services, such as ERes and RefWorks, and most of them don't play very well together. I think if the library had a programmer/database expert who was dedicated to the library--not full time, perhaps, but enough to understand our problems and concerns, and to understand MARC and Z39.50 and other library-specific formats and protocols--we could go a long way toward addressing those problems. As an example, Sian Meikle at the University of Toronto Libraries has presented a system

for adding a direct export link from your OPAC to RefWorks (PPT link). But the system involves writing a script in PHP or Perl or another scripting language. Perhaps some day I'll be able to do that myself, but right now I'd have as much luck coming up with a magic spell to get the records out of the catalog. Lastly (I said), I think of what OCLC's Lorcan Dempsey has been writing about on his blog when it comes to what he calls intrastructure. Intrastructure is a term Dempsey uses "to talk about the apparatus of peer to peer interaction"; I think you can also think of it as integration at the user's level. Dempsey says "The emerging integration challenge is integration with the systems environment of the user." (From Systems in the Networked World.) I take that to mean that each student or faculty member of the College already has their own way of collecting and organizing information. A student arriving on campus probably already has a blog on LiveJournal or Blogger, probably already has a Gmail account (with more storage and a better web interface than their college account), and generally has established patterns and preferences. They are used to web services and applications like Amazon, or eBay or Flickr that are much better at insinuating themselves into a person's life than our catalogs and databases and other services. I think we need to look at how we can better work within our users' existing behaviors and assumptions about how the web works in order to get our information chocolate into their intrastructure peanut butter. Posted 4:53 PM to Service

Current Awareness sidebar powered by del.icio.us

September 05, 2005
For a little while now, I have been posting "remaindered links" to the sidebar titled (for now) "Current Awareness". These are just links with a brief comment from me about why I find them interesting. I'm putting them in that link blog rather than in the main See Also blog because I feel like the link is about all I have to offer; many times, I haven't even read the entire page that I'm linking to yet. If I find that later I'm ready to comment at length, I'll do another post here in See Also. The Current Awareness sidebar is powered by del.icio.us the fantastic social bookmarking site. I have long felt that bookmarks in the browser aren't all that useful; the list scrolls on too long, they aren't easily searchable, etc. I had used my old blog to keep track of links, so when that server died last year and I was without my blog, I was casting about for a new place to put my links. Thanks to 43Folders, I found del.icio.us. With del.icio.us bookmarklets, it is easy to post to my del.icio.us account, and thanks to the tags I give everything, it's usually pretty easy to find what I want later. And the popular page, which shows the pages most posted by del.icio.us users, is now my web-zeitgeist-meter of choice; it skews heavily toward people interested in social software, web design, programming, and life hacks. A few more reasons to love del.icio.us: the inbox that subscribes to other people's posts based on the tags they give to the post, or based on who posted the link; meaningful URLS, i.e. if you want to see all links with the tag "library" the URL is http://del.icio.us/tag/library/; the abundance of tools written by del.icio.us users; the nifty linkroll javascript tool that powers my Current Awareness; and the RSS feed for every single page, so you can keep tabs on anything. If you want, you can subscribe to the feed for the See Also Current Awareness sidebar here. Reasons not to love del.icio.us: my fingers and I always argue over where to put the dots: deli.cio.us? del.ici.ous? delic.io.us? Posted 9:17 PM to Blogs and blogging, Navel gazing, Social software

The ubiquitous library

September 08, 2005
There is an interesting short piece in the latest issue of portal: Libraries and the Academy by Charles B. Lowry, the Dean of Libraries at the University of Maryland. In the article, titled "Let's Call it the 'Ubiquitous Library' Instead..." (subscribers-only link to Project Muse), he suggests that we use the term the "ubiquitous library" to describe the kind of academic library that we envision for the future. I think he may be right that more common terms like "virtual library" may be played out because (a) they have too many different established uses and (b) they ignore the library as a place, which is still such an important part of what a library is, even as we reach out beyond the walls of the building itself. "It is amply clear," Lowry writes, "that the academic library as a place will be sustained. At the same time, it will become ubiquitous because of the use of advanced networking and computing to support innovation in how libraries work with and for the students and faculty. The use of the term ubiquitous is meant to convey that the resources of libraries will be available to the campus community in a pervasive fashion, basically at their fingertips" (294). I'd also like to think that if library resources become ubiquitous,they will also cease to exist solely in their usual silos (catalog, database, digital collection), and will become easy to discover, manipulate, and use (rip, mix, burn?). Another thing I like about "ubiquitous library" is that it seems to point more directly at our real goal. Our goal isn't to make everything digital or virtual or electronic for the sake of making it digital; our goal is to make our stuff (your stuff!) available to you when, how, and where you want it. Full citation for the article: Lowry, Charles B. "Let's Call it the 'Ubiquitous Library' Instead..." portal: Libraries and the Academy 5 (2005)

293-296. Posted 11:22 AM to Collections, Professional reading, Service

XHTML and CSS as arts and crafts

September 20, 2005
I spent an hour or two working on the templates for this site today. I don't claim to be a professional designer, but I enjoy working on websites. Years ago, when I first started writing HTML pages, I would get irritated with having to wait to reload the page in the browser to see how it "really" looked, but now I think I almost like the save-rebuild-view site rhythm of working in Movable Type. Then when I edit the CSS "live" with Chris Pederick's fantastic web developer's toolbar extension for Firefox, I feel like a magician. Part of the appeal of building web pages is that it really feels like I'm building something. I'm not particularly good a building things out of atoms; either through impatience, incompetence, or inexperience, I tend to make a mess when working with tools. But on the internets, no one knows you are a klutz. Web pages are made out of symbols and logic, and I tend to be much more comfortable in that world. And if I mess up, I haven't ruined the wood or sliced off a finger. I can just edit-save-rebuild-view site again. Even so, I can't get the dang CSS image replacement technique to square with a clickable logo, and the list of categories doesn't show up on the actual category archive pages, and none of the columns are actually aligned vertically, and... Posted 10:20 PM to Navel gazing, Web design

Status of academic librarians

September 29, 2005
Over at Random Access Mazar, Rochelle has a long-ish think piece about librarians' status vis-a-vis faculty entitled Comrades-in-Arms: The Professor and the Librarian. The always stimulating Dorothea of Caveat Lector has responded with Joining the Club. If you are at all interested in this subject, you should read both of those posts right now. I can wait. For myself, I want to build productive, collegial working relationships with faculty. As the liaison librarian to our humanities departments, that is an important part of my job. But I'm not fooling myself into thinking that the faculty view me as "one of them," nor do I think they should. I feel my role at the college is something altogether different. I am a generalist; I serve eight departments. While I wish I knew as much about music and Romance languages as I do about English and art history, it simply isn't possible for me to be a subject expert in all the areas I serve. Perhaps if I were a single-subject bibliographer with a Ph.D. in my field I would want the faculty to see me as more of an equal, but this isn't that kind of job, and I'm not that kind of librarian. I don't expect all faculty to see me the same way. I think many faculty view their liaison librarian as a consultant in a very limited area; someone to call in for library instruction to their students, or to help build an electronic reserves page, or to coordinate buying materials for the library to support their classes. A few probably view us as something like customer service at the phone company: the people you call as a last resort when things are broken and you are already ticked off. My hope is that if I can help a professor in one of those areas, then he or she will think of me again in a different capacity. Eventually, our working relationship would "fill out" a bit, and I could help them see ways that the library touches their students, their assignments, and their own research. My hope is that they will see me as a liberally-educated, tech-savvy, humanist librarian who is dedicated to helping faculty and students reach their academic goals (and not as a bureaucratic, technocratic, narrow-minded librarian who just wants people to follow library policies and leave him alone). And those faculty who don't call? I try and make sure they know who I am, and know what I do, and know that I would love to help. But I can't force them to work with me. Instead, I try that much harder to reach out to new faculty, who tend to be very open to working with a librarian (especially when I ask them what books they'd like me to buy for the collection in their field). Lastly, Rochelle begins her post with some mentions of faculty status for librarians, though most of her piece seems to deal with "status" in a less-formal sense). I have never worked in a place where librarians have faculty status, so I can only speculate on the topic. I wonder if faculty status has less to do with trying to win respect from the faculty (which I think is misguided), and more to do with getting respect (in the form of salary, leave time, etc.) from the administration. Posted 11:10 AM to Librarians and the profession

The Successful Academic Librarian

October 03, 2005
Congratulations to friends and colleagues Gwen Gregory, McKinley Sielaff, and Anna Gold on the publication of

The Successful Academic Librarian: Winning Stratgeies from Library Leaders. Gwen and McKinley are current colleagues of mine. Gwen edited the collection and co-authored a chapter entitled "Faculty Status, Promotion and Tenure - What Are You Getting Into?" while McKinley wrote the chapter "What Have You Been Up To?" on documenting your career. Anna Gold, who was my boss and mentor when she was head of the Science & Engineering Library University of California, San Diego (she's now Head of the Engineering and Science Libraries at MIT) wrote the chapter on "Moving to the Academy in Mid-Career." I have just started reading the book, and it looks like a valuable and useful volume. Posted 3:13 PM to Librarians and the profession, Professional reading

Serenity now!
October 04, 2005
I wasn't planning on blogging this, but now that I have seen mention of Serenity on Unshelved, Librarian Avengers, and Caveat Lector, I guess I can establish some librarian geek cred by saying that I saw Serenity over the weekend as part of a wedding anniversary evening out with my wife (thanks mom & dad for watching the kids).

It was cool and fun. We have been catching up on Firefly via Netflix, and I enjoyed seeing the characters given the big-screen treatment. And there is something about the handheld camera effect in the way they shoot the spaceships in flight that I love. Minor quibbles: What happened to the Western-in-space costuming and mise en scne? I didn't really miss the horses and cattle, but Simon looks way cooler in his Firefly costume of white shirt and black vest than he did in his Logan's Run space-tunic. Mal's duster? Gone. Villians who look like they stepped out of Deadwood? Gone. Too bad. Not enough snarky Whedon dialogue. The funniest quips were all in the trailers. But those are quibbles. Way to go, Joss Whedon! Posted 10:22 AM to Arts & Humanities

Get psyched for Internet Librarian 2005

October 04, 2005
Later this month I will be headed to Monterey for the Internet Librarian conference. The folks at Information Today are asking blogging attendees to email them to be included in their "Blog Central" page for the conference. If you are going and blogging, you should let them know. I am very much looking forward to the conference. It will by my first time at Internet Librarian, and I have heard good things about it from colleagues. I have wasted far too much time at big, frustrating ALA conferences; now that I no longer have an RBMS committee assignment that demands my attendance at ALA, I'll be attending more of these smaller conferences. I will be in good company, as many established bloggers will be there, with many of them presenting. Steven Cohen (Library Stuff) will be presenting, as will Sarah Houghton (The Librarian in Black), Jenny Levine (The Shifted Librarian), K.G. Schneider(Free Range Librarian), Michael Stevens (Tame the Web), Sherri Vokey (::schwagbag::), and Jessamyn West (librarian.net). Whew! P.S. The phrase "get psyched for Internet Librarian" kept running through my mind as I thought about this post. The student paper at my alma mater would run ads from sorority girls to their pledges telling them to "get psyched for formal!" Somehow it seemed appropriate for a

library conference too. I know I'm psyched. Or is that psycho? Posted 10:51 PM to Blogs and blogging, Conferences Comment from: Steven M. Cohen October 5, 2005 11:44 AM Thanks for the mention. Please come and say hello in Monterey!!

Upgrade to Movable Type 3.2

October 05, 2005
Just a quick note to say that I (with the help of my colleague, Dave) upgraded Movable Type to version 3.2 a week ago. So far, so good! We also made some changes to the IIS server (boo!) to allow us to run CGI scripts, which means that I should be able to take advantage of more MT plug-ins, which could be a real boon in the future. Right now I'm not accepting trackbacks on any blog, but I have a feeling I'll experiment with that soon, as well. This version is supposed to deal much better with comment and trackback spam. I have set up comments on this blog now to post without needing approval, and will probably move that direction on the library's other blogs soon. Posted 3:45 PM to Navel gazing

Martin Amis, Space Invader

October 07, 2005
Their Back Pages by Paul Collins is a Village Voice article about authors' unlikely first books. It seems that before Martin Amis wrote Money, he wrote a little book called Invasion of the Space Invaders with tips on playing Space Invaders, Pac Man, and - apparently Amis's favorite Defender. Amis on Defender - "If you ever see a Defender which bears the initials MLA in the All-Time Greatest column of its Hall of Famewell, that's me, pal. I earned it" - sounds shockingly like the reminiscences of Dave Nelson (.wav audio file), the former "pale friendless virgin" played by Dave Foley on News Radio. It's apparently a fairly rare book. WorldCat shows 33 libraries managed to somehow avoid weeding this book, including the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, the special collections library at the University of Texas at Austin, where I worked as a library school student. [thanks, Jessy] Posted 11:47 AM to Arts & Humanities

PBWiki
October 13, 2005
At our most recent reference meeting, we were discussing setting up a private blog for the reference staff. That is still something that we are likely to do for news and announcements, but the more people talked about what they would like to do with the blog--post tips on using specific databases, good sources for common assignments--the more it sounded to me like we need a wiki. Now, I would love to try my hand at setting up a wiki on a local server, but (a) we don't have ready access to a server and (b) being inexperienced, I'm afraid I'd mess up the security. The idea for now is a wiki that only library staff could read and edit. So I went looking for a hosted wiki and found PBWiki. The idea is that you can set up a wiki there as quickly and easily as making a peanut butter sandwich. Wikis are private by default; if you want to add users, just hand out the password, and those people can now view and edit the wiki. You can also choose to make the wiki public, meaning that anyone can now view the wiki; you still need the password to make changes. So far, PBWiki looks like the ideal place to play around with a wiki and see if it suits our purposes. It seems like an obvious replacement for our current "intranet" of static web pages that are hard to search and a minor pain to edit. As for editing the wiki, I think that anyone halfway motivated could pick up all the essentials in 10 minutes (the time it takes to eat a peanut butter sandwich?). My main concern is that we would spend a lot of time converting old information and adding new information only to have PBWiki go

under, or to discover that it isn't flexible enough or fully-featured enough for our needs. You can export your entire wiki to back it up, but it isn't clear to me yet that the file could be imported into another wiki (in the same way you can export your Blogger blog and import it to Movable Type). But it is promising, and fun, and I recommend PBWiki for people who have been wanting to play around with a wiki, but don't have the time or skillz to set up their own. Posted 8:04 AM to Social software

The only thing constant is change

October 13, 2005
There is a post titled Library 2.0, Beta over at Library Crunch that has a few lines that I like very much: Constant change is replacing the older model of upgrade cycles. Let me repeat that, constant change is replacing the older model of upgrade cycles. Take a look at such sites as Flickr and Gmail and notice the beta label. These services have been out for over a year, and still they refer to themselves as beta products. Why? Because they are upgrading at a frenetic pace, pushing new developments out almost daily, and bypassing the older, structured, version upgrade cycle. This is an important observation, and Michael goes on to say "Bringing this thought process to library services is difficult but most certainly not impossible." True, and this is something I'm trying to do in my work. This mind-set should encourage us all to not wait for a full-fledged redeisgn to roll out new web services and pages. I personally don't trust a site that isn't constantly updating in ways large and small; it shows that someone is minding the store and trying to improve the user experience. I'd say the problem (not the excuse) is that a typical library webmaster is very part-time. I would love to implement some of these "Web 2.0" ideas, but with reference, instruction, and collection development responsibilities, I don't have the time to innovate constantly. I'd love to learn more programming and scripting, but that time would have to come out of other committments. In my own case, I'm hoping I can leverage free sites like Flickr and PBWiki and APIs like Google Maps to create a web 2.0-friendly environment for the library website. Posted 3:32 PM to Service, Web design

"Getting Things Done" Lunch & Learn session

October 18, 2005
Last week I did a Lunch & Learn session on Getting Things Done, in which I gave a quick course on David Allen's system for, erm, getting things done. I was happy with the turnout. I think a lot of people came because no matter how successful we are, we all feel like we could be doing more, and are all too aware of those areas where we feel like we are falling behind. For that same reason, I think, it was a fun session, because (given the proper context) we can all laugh at ourselves for being miserable procrastinators. I tried to set that tone by leading off with the funny little Flash video Gotta Get My Stuff Done. I won't say too much about GTD, as you can see what I have to say on the GTD Lunch & Learn page. (If you are at all interested in this kind of thing, get to know Merlin Mann and his 43Folders site; one of my favorites.) Our Library Lunch & Learns are hour-long sessions in a library electronic classroom at noon on most Thursdays. The idea is to get people into the library with some pizza and teach them something about the library, or the college, or just "life skills" that people are interested in like buying a computer, or planting a garden, or getting stuff done. I think the original idea was to promote library services, and we still do that, but somehow people seem more insterested in learning about how to scan their family photos than they are in learning how to do an advanced boolean search in JSTOR. Go figure. Posted 4:09 PM to Presentations

Fall photos on Flickr

October 19, 2005
It was such a beautiful fall day yesterday that I took the library's camera out for a stroll and took some shots of the library and campus with the fall foliage. This one is probably my favorite; there are a few more at the library's Flickr account. I set up that Flickr account a few months ago. I'm not exactly sure what we should be using it for, but it seems handy to put library photos somewhere where it is easy to share them or re-use them on our blogs and library website. Otherwise, they end up buried in cryptically-named folders on our shared network drive, never to be seen

again. Posted 7:20 AM to Social software, Tutt Library

Ready to blog Internet Librarian 2005

October 19, 2005
I'll be there, trying to type and listen at the same time, along with about 15 others; I may not be unique, but I am certainly in good company, even if I am at the bottom of the list (hey!). According to Nancy Garman of Information Today, we will have a "press room" at our disposal and our badges will be festooned with "Blogger" ribbons so we can be spotted in a crowd. "IL05" is the official Technorati and Flickr tag, and I'm going to start using it right now on del.icio.us as well. If this sounds like as much geeky fun to you as it does to me, you can still get in touch with Nancy for your own link on their blog coverage page linked from the top of the InfoToday blog. Edited to remove the "Official Blog of Internet Librarian!" from the title. It was supposed to be a joke, but I'm not sure it read that way. My mom was excited, though. *waves to mom* Posted 2:50 PM to Blogs and blogging, Conferences, Navel gazing

About me
October 21, 2005
Since having an author bio is number one on Jakob Nielsen's weblog usability list, it seemed like a good time to post my scintillating biography. Just in case anyone is interested in knowing a little more about me, here it is in a nutshell. In true blogger fashion, I'll take it in reverse chronological order. Since January, 2003, I have been the Humanities Liaison Librarian for Tutt Library at Colorado College, Colorado Springs. I work with the faculty of the Humanities Division to do collection development in those subjects; I teach bibliographic instruction for humanities classes; and I work with humanities faculty when they have questions about using the library or library policy. General reference duty at the ref. desk is also part of my job. Beyond that, I am interested in using the web to bring better, more useful, and more usable services to our students and faculty. Along with many of my colleagues, I am working on improving the library web site and our TIGER library catalog as well as adding and integrating other services, like our blogs, electronic reserves, IM reference, RefWorks citation manager, etc. I also quite like books! Prior to coming to CC, I worked for a few years in my first professional job at the Science and Engineering Library at the University of California, San Diego. As a humanist, it wasn't the ideal place for me, but working with great colleagues at a large university library was an invaluable experience. I got my MLIS from the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Texas at Austin before they took the word "library" out of the name of the degree and the school (sigh). While in library school, I intended to become a special collections librarian, and learned a lot about rare books and manuscripts from working at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, a fantastic special collections library with librarians that were real mentors to me. Before that, I lived in Newark, Delaware, where I worked as a staff member in the University of Delaware library while my wife worked on a graduate degree. Going back even further, I worked in book stores (the lovely Tattered Cover in Denver, and the, shall we say, less lovely Barnes and Noble in Evanston, IL). I got a bachelor's degree in theatre from Northwestern University, and, before that, lived in Parker, Colorado and Middletown, Connecticut. I am married, with two young sons. I am two weeks away from my 35th birthday as I write this. Posted 2:07 PM to Navel gazing

Great "reference" transaction on Ask MetaFilter

October 21, 2005

On Ask Metafilter, "yankeefog" is looking for information from a 1938 Vienna phone book so he can see where his grandfather lived before fleeing the Nazis. Within half an hour, "arco," a librarian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Library replies, promising to check into it. Within 24 hours, the librarian has found not only the address from the Vienna phone book, but, with the help of a colleague, has found fifteen pages of documents related to the poster's grandparents, including items in his grandfather's handwriting, and sends copies to the family. Read this post. It is moving on a human level, and makes me proud of our profession. arco's response is very informative, not just for yankeefog, but for anyone researching Holocaust surviors or Jewish genealogy in general. One of the things I love about this story is the way it combines a relatively new, non-library-specific way of asking the question with some old-fashioned archival research and reference assistance. Thanks to arco hanging out on Ask MeFi, yankeefog didn't even have to worry about which library or archive to ask. Granted, luck played a big part here, but this is pretty cool. [Via Waxy] Posted 8:45 PM to Service Comment from: Emilie October 25, 2005 08:53 AM Steve, It's Robin's daughter, just dropping in to let you know I think you've hit the blogging "big time" with a mention from lisnews.com, which I check daily, and that as someone who reads roughly 40 library blogs a day, yours is up there. See you at CAL. Emilie Comment from: Steve October 25, 2005 12:29 PM Thanks for the comment and compliment, Emilie. I don't know about "big time," but it is very nice to have some incoming links from prominent sites.

Guess where I'm posting from?

October 23, 2005
The airport! Sorry; I was flashing back to when phones on airplanes were a novelty and every conversation from them began with "guess where I'm calling from?" Anyway, off to Internet Librarian 2005 in Monterey by way of San Francisco. Earlier today, I saw that Andrea Mercado of Library Techtonics has put up an Internet Librarian 2005 group page on Blogdigger which is a custom feed of all the blogs that signed up to cover IL05. This is nifty thing, and much more convenient than my earlier idea, which was to bookmark all the blogs in tabs in Firefox. I think I need to give Blogdigger a long look. Lastly, since the Info Today folks have designated il05 as the Technorati tag for the conference, I thought I'd try tagging posts for a while and see how it goes. Posted 2:51 PM to Conferences, Navel gazing Comment from: Jessy October 23, 2005 03:17 PM Wow! Posting from the airport! Amazing! Just wanted to let you know someone is paying attention to your exploits. I'm on the ref desk in Tutt on Sunday and it's wicked busy. Oh, and IM is broken. Come back and fix it. -- J Comment from: Tricia October 23, 2005 06:04 PM Hello there - I found you via the Technorati tag - so keep tagging. I'm also blogging the conference and set up a blogger blog for it : http://myinternetlibrarianblog.blogspot.com/ Comment from: Steve October 23, 2005 10:34 PM Thanks for letting me know, Tricia. You should contact Nancy Garman at Info Today about your blog; she'll get you linked on the blog coverage page, get you the "blogger" ribbon for your nametag, etc.

Internet Librarian Opening Keynote: "Shifting Worlds"

October 24, 2005

[OK, in retrospect, it is obvious to me that I won't be able to keep up this level of detail over the next two and a half days. Also, the wireless coverage here is spotty (at best), which makes it difficult to add links, check facts, etc. If it's in square brackets, like this paragraph, it's my commentary. Otherwise, it is my attempt to summarzie (not truly transcribe) Lee Rainie's talk. Click though to read about his talk.] Technorati tags: il05, presentation, pew, internet, statistics Internet Librarian Opening Keynote: "Shifting Worlds," Lee Rainie of the Pew Internet and American Life Project "Power Point, which I'm not going to use today" smattering of applause Happy that IL isn't featuring live IM/IRC commentary from the peanut gallery; at other talks, people commented not only on his talk, but his clothes, his purported resemblance to Yoda, etc. [How incredibly annoying.] Rule of thumb: the more commonplace and invisible the technology, the greater the impact. 68% of American adults use the internet 87% of American teenagers use the internet more than half of home connections are broadband more than 2/3 have broadband either at home or at work 1/3 of American adults don't use the internet now 1/5 have never used the internet Those who aren't connected or who aren't on broadband are less and less likely to connect/upgrade than in the past. Classes of users: * Cold (completely uninterested in/alienated by the internet) * Tepid (don't care much for the internet, happy with dial-up) * Hot (broadband, multiple devices, voracious internet users, hyper-connected) Chat room use is down (inhospitable, replaced by IM, blogs, etc.). Teenagers 12-17 y.o. more connected than ever, adore IM. Half of teens use it every day. [All teens or connected teens? I didn't catch that.] 45% have cell phones. Physical proximity, time of day, venue don't matter very much--rethinking the idea of what it means to be "with" somebody. Title of an article on this topic: "The conversation never ends." Playing with identity; IM away messages, The Facebook. Media-saturated group. 8 of 10 teenagers play online games. 43% of teenagers have bought something online. Teenagers are media creators themselves: sharing artwork, stories, multimedia online. 19% have blogs, and an even higher % have created their own websites. Fanatical multi-taskers. Kaiser Foundation: Generation M(edia). 8.5 hours of media access per day (internet, TV, print media, etc.) [Hmmm, that sounds about right to me]. Q. Indicators of "less depth" in the encounters with information, people due to multi-tasking? A. There is an attitude of "I'm OK, she's in trouble"; the person polled feels he/she can "handle it" but believes that peers are drowning. Politics 75 mil Americans used the Internet for some political purpose last year (giving money, mobilizing via email, etc.). Internet more important than radio, text, television for certain large groups of people. Internet use for politics is associated with voting; if you use the internet for political information, you are more likely to vote than someone who does not. Internet use contributed to a wider awareness of political views. The fear that the ability to customize news and feeds to suit your own views will lead to less awareness of others is not coming true at this point. It is possible that they are only encountering these ideas just to shoot them down. Q. any awareness of how search engine optimization dictates the information you discover online? A. By and large, no, even among the most savvy. Many still don't know "where they are"; when a link goes to a different site, when a search engine provides paid links, etc. The internet makes it much easier to find like-minded others, no matter how odious. It is neutral in regard to whether these communities are "good" or "bad." The "grammar of the internet" (per Marshall McLuhan) is that it is easy to find people like yourself. Major moments in people's lives 2002: notable growth in people who turn to the internet at major moments in their lives, and more of them saying that the internet played a crucial or important role in:

seeking education find a college help another person deal with serious illness cope with illness themselves getting married getting divorced Q. Is there a backlash against full time connectivitiy? A. Mentions "email free Fridays" at some organizations smattering of applause [not from me!] Trends More things and people connected to the Internet: An internet of things as much as people; French toilets with IP addresses, RFID in golf balls, GI's dog tags. "The RFID-ization of America." More people are connecting to the internet on the move. Content-creation continues to grow: blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc. [Say what you will about blogs--IMO, they reclaimed the two-way nature of the internet, when things were stagnating under the weight of large corporate sites.] The "long tail.": Chris Anderson of Wired's idea/article/blog. We are no longer in a hit-driven era; between 40 and 50% of the monthly sales, rentals at Amazon, Netflix, Rhapsody are from the non-blockbuster "long tail" of low-volume selling items. [One would presume that libraries have always had a long tail, we just didn't know it; a small number of items circulate a lot, but just about everything circulates once.] Smartmobs: Harold Rheingold's coinage in relation to WTO protests in Seattle. Personal anecdote of attending a Broadway show where George Bush (the elder) attended, and everyone under the age of 25 whipped out a cell phone to take a picture, or text or call their friends. When they left the threatre, a protest had spontaneously assembled. Modern life characterized by "continuous partial attention." Not the same thing as multi-tasking. Scanning incoming stimuli for most interesting incoming input. Technology's role in modern times: German philosopher's (Piper?) book: "Leisure: the Basis of Culture." The demands of work are in danger of taking over all of modern life. The very model of libraries embraces work and leisure and encourages balance. Librarians are among the few cultural actors who can help build an information "habitat." Background links About Lee Rainie Pew Internet & American Life Project Posted 2:38 PM to Conferences

Internet Librarian: Library Terms That Users Can Understand:

October 24, 2005
John Kupersmith presented on his clearinghouse of usability test data related to how users perceive terminology on library web pages. Click through to read my notes on his talk. Technorati tags: il05, presentation, library, usability Internet Librarian: Library Terms That Users Can Understand: John Kupersmith, UC Berkeley [I'm lurking in the shadows on the side of the room so I can plug in my laptop.] Begins with a bit of Jabberwocky. Many of the words mean nothing; good idea for a poem, bad idea for a website. Yet a lot of the words we put in front users mean nothing to them (catalog, database, ILL, periodical). They have rich associations to us, but have no meaning to the average college freshman; like a wall of noise, comparable to cave paintings or hieroglyphics. User success on library websites in finding journal articles or databases (average from 13 tests with different methodologies, etc.): about 50%. Why so little success? site organization graphic design excessive verbiage; it doesn't matter what the words are, if there are too many of them they get skipped terminology

The physical world is an information-rich environment providing many cues in a social context (imitating the behaviour of others). The web, on the other hand, is a sparse information environment dependant on text. Looked at 44 usability studies, documented at http://www.jkup.net/terms.html Tend to have small sample sizes: 5 is the magic number, thank you Jakob Neilsen. Qualitative research, but if we see the same patterns repeated over many studies, we may be able to generalize with success. List of problematic terms. Many of them will be familiar to you, because they are probably on your website. Includes "Acronyms and brand names" and "Database" as the main offenders. Some terms seem to be flat-out not understood: acronyms and brand names (e.g., Expanded Academic ASAP), "periodical," "reference," "resources." Misunderstood: "Library Catalog," "database," "e-journal." "E-journal" is misunderstood in a hopeful spirit, thinking that will be all fulltext. Understood: "Find books, find articles," etc. and annotated links. [Handout in the book is not the same as the ppt today. It will be on his site next week and on the IT site after.] Strong attractors: "Journal," "Services." search box. [Services?] Weak attractors: "Electronic resources." The "ideal term?": attractive for the right reasons, meaningful to users, technically accurate, unambiguous, short. Bad news, as nothing fits the bill. What do students say? where is the search engine for the books? where is the search thing? Frequent use of the word "thing." Analogy of going to the doctor or hardware store and needing to fall back on "thing" to describe your situation. Students tend not to understand broad departmental/divisional choices (Humanities, Social Sciences, Science & Engineering) Students tend to take things literally; if they are tasked to find "journal articles," they will look for "journal articles." Students aren't stupid--they got into your institution, didn't they? But they don't have our mental models and are always in a hurry, expecting instant results. We aren't arrogant, but...we have specialized language, and are "contaminated" as designers by what we know. We don't want to "dumb down" our site. Best practices: I hope you didn't expect a list of perfectly intuitive library terms today. 1. Test user's understanding and preferences: use and share the data. *[send him our OPAC testing data] *[we must have TIGER search logs...right?] Test methods Link choice (preference): give a user a brief task, and ask which of several possible alternative links they would choose. Can be done online with web survey tools to get many responses. Link naming: give them a link name and ask them what it should mean. Card sorting (give the user a pack of index cards, each of which has a description of an item. The user sorts the cards into piles, and names the piles): get information on open-ended information architecture information, but is difficult to get consensus. Category membership: give them a pre-existing top-level vocabulary and ask subjects to group terms under those headings. 2. Avoid using problematic terms Put natural language on top-level pages. Use "ILL" on a second-level page, but put "Borrwoing from Other Libraries on the home page. use "target words" in combination with verbs, in combination with library terms: "Find Books in [library catalog name]" 3. Provide intermediate pages: "find books" leads to a page of multiple options 4. Provide alternative paths: put a "find articles" link on the "Find Journals" page. Add a "find articles" option to the catalog. 5. Enhance or explain potentially confusing terms with additional words, tooltips, glossaries

6. Be consistent throughout the site, including the signage in the building. Q. From public library perspective; helping a wide range of users with terminology A. Not much data right now. Would love to see some! Q. Students vs. faculty in usability testing. A. Faculty are quick, hard to catch, fight like tigers, hard to test. Collectiong library assignment sheets to see what terminology the faculty use when giving out assignments. Q. Insight on labeling subject directories? A. Requiring the user to make a choice between Humanities/Social Sci., etc. doesn't work. A-Z is probably the best. Q. Re: intermediate pages; might too many make things overly complex? A. Like sweet choclate truffles; a few are great, too many make you sick. One layer might be the best [like voice mail phone trees, I'd say]. Q. Any examples to recommend? A. Go to URL in the handout and see "best practices" terms. Q. Dumbing down the students, instead of dumbing down the site? Don't we want to make them aware of these terms down the road? A. We do have a responsibility, esp. to those going on to grad school. I completely agree, but can't change the data. We have to effectively introduce those terms, but hanging them out on the front porch isn't the way to do it. Q. Cute names for library catalogs; do users automatically assume the thing wtih the cute name is the catalog? A. with vendors comign up with many other cute names, it is hard for the user to determine which is the cutest. There is a trend of sorts away from naming the catalog. Q. Challenge of "hybrid" databases; mix of articles, citations, full-text, etc. A. Yep, it's a problem! Posted 3:10 PM to Conferences, Web design

Internet Librarian: Users Driving Web Site Changes

October 24, 2005
As I noted earlier, there is no way for me to continue to try and almost transcribe each talk. So, in the time-honored tradition of a student who takes pages and pages of notes at the start of the term, and ends up with a few words by finals, expect the posts from now on to be more brief. Looking for wi-fi in this session, I found only the Portola Plaza Hotel service. Here is the rate sheet; Per Minute : $1.00 Per Hour: $50.00 One Day: $300.00 I can't think of anything legal that costs a dollar a minute, especially something so cheap to provide as wireless access. (Since that time, someone has set up the free "schmi-fi" network--good going!) Click through to read my notes on "Users Driving Web Site Changes" Technorati tags: il05, presentation, usability Following User Tracks: Karen A. Coombs, University of Houston Libraries (and Library Web Chic weblog)
Web server log files

Can tell you where they enter, where they exit, external referrers, search terms. Uses open source "AW Stats": http://awstats.sourceforge.net/ Exit pages are likely to be your database and ejournal listing pages; once they leave your site to go to one of those external sites, it is very hard to trace them. If there is a popular exit page without those external links, something may be wrong--they may be leaving out of frustration.
Proxy server log files

A way to continue to track users who leave your site (assuming all users get routed through the proxy server to the databases). Wrote a script to analyze EZProxy log files to count db use and where the use was coming form. The referrers will tell you what paths that users took to access databases. Proxy log will tell you that "X number of people came to Y database via Z library web page (or library catalog, or OpenURL resolver)" and the IP address will tell you physically where the users access databases.

OPAC search log files

See the terms that users are searching for, see inappropriate searches indicating that the user is likely looking for articles.
Session path tracing

Created a script to track users as they move through the site. Can show you the different ways that users get to a specific page on the site. Generates a lot of data, so only turns it on for short periods. Towards a Culture of Usability with User Personas: Steve McCaan, University of Montana
Why personas?

Create a precise descriptive model of the user. Separate out the naive user and the power user.
Building a model of the user

Used a user survey, interviews, and brief personality test to create four personas. Gave each user a face (using marketing photos from the University).
Persona sheets

Photo, status, research characteristics (from the surveys), preferences (based on the personality type), quotes [from the actual interviews? Or "typical?"] [Very much aside, it looks like a D&D character sheet. What is her armor class?] Librarians were excited by this tool, but still found it difficult to decide which users to design for. Recommends not to design for the persona that needs the face-to-face interaction, as that student needs to get to the reference desk anyway. Posted 4:38 PM to Conferences, Web design

Internet Librarian: Federated Search Engines and Subject Pages

October 24, 2005
I confess that I didn't pay as close attention to this session as I might have, as both authors wrote very good articles on these subjects in the October 2005 issue of Computers in Libraries, which is free in bins here at the conference. The talk, however was quite good, and reminded me of many of the things I think we need to try at my library. [Aside: Who is the genius who designed the Steinbeck Forum with no center aisles, so that you have to step in front of dozens of people to get to the middle of the seating? At least the wi-fi works in this room] Click through to read my notes on the talk. Technorati tags: il05, presentation, usability Usability and OpenURL/Federated Search Services: Frank Cervone, Northwestern University Federated searching may seem old hat, but for most it is still in the early stages of implementation or planning. Up front work: customize the OpenURL resolver screen to make it clear that the user has options when no full text is available (catalog, ILL, etc.). People understand Google and individual databases, but they have no clue what "metasearch" means. When asked, users had no idea of what to call the metasearch engine. They might describe it in terms of current services "on steroids." Preference test: people were OK with the project "code name" of "Einstein," saying "Google doesn't really make much sense either." What is the goal of a federated search engine? Make it like Google? Are subject categories helpful or a hinderance (to interdisciplinary studies, or if they don't conceive the subject the way you do?) Decided to design just for undergraduates, covering a core group of databases. In a federated search engine, usability studies show that people prefer a "simple" (i.e., Google-like) search. Advantages: users feel successful, more experienced researchers started to pull up citations from databases they wouldn't usually use.

Students have clear expectations that results should be displayed in relevance order (even when relevance is difficult to determine). When they get them in a different order, they put it in rank order when possible. NU decided to display in relevance order, despite the problem in determining relevance, in order to not irritate the user and conform to his/her expectation. When presented with a long list of databases, users found it confusing. When they get confused, they just quit and fall back on whatever database they already know. If it can't be federated, the users don't click on it, with the possible exception of very well known databases (e.g., Lexis-Nexis). Functionality for custom combinations of databases is too confusing for the vast majority of users. Some universities create "quick search" sets for research areas. It can be frustrating when doing this research, because most of the problems aren't easy to address in the federated search settings, leaving us to talk to vendors about making changes in the software itself. Supporting Self Discovery: Designing Effective Subject Pages. Darlene Fichter, university of Saskatchewan Library Screen shot of old library home page with "databases" and "journal" links; "journal" sucks them in every time. If they got to the database page (A-Z by subject) they did fine. When they got to the individual subject page, they had trouble. Often they couldn't tell which database was the best, and just clicked the first one. Some subject librarians tried to help out the user by dividing the page into sections: "Databases," "Database Collections," "Catalogues," etc. The mental model: "If I only knew a journal title that had article on muscle strain." Key assumptions in the redesign: Need to decide whom you are designing for. They decided to go with novice users looking for "just in time" information "Less is more" to reduce the information pollution. Underlying assumption: when you are unfamiliar with a new domain, browsing may be more effective than searching. New design puts the word "articles" right on the page, with the default category tab being "Journal Articles." They pulled the "Best Bets" to the top with a large heading. Subject librarians identified at the top of the page, sometimes with a photo. Database descriptions are very brief, as people don't read long descriptions; they just go to the database and try it out. Questions and comments about costs for federated search engines: personnel costs can be the greatest. It is a lengthy, complicated process to set up a product once it is installed. Q. What can drive usability testing in the library? A. A champion in the organization; our ethic of doing a good job for the users; a web design team tired of bringing up designs just to have them shot down. Posted 5:13 PM to Conferences, Web design

Internet Librarian: Social Software and Libraries

October 24, 2005
I was very happy to see Jenny Levine and Jessamyn West in person, as I have read their blogs, The Shifted Librarian and librarian.net for a long time. Their presentation was quite fun to watch, though I was already familiar with most of what they discussed. I turned on iChat and Michael Stevens of Tame the Web was on Rendezvous. He was also moderating the panel, but I guess he's a multi-tasking kind of guy. He said "hi," and I pointed out Tutt Library's Flickr page to him. He blogged it on TTW, along with See Also, so that was nifty. Click through to read my notes on Ms Levine and Ms West's talk. Technorati tags: il05, presentation, social_software, flickr, folksonomy Social Software and Libraries, Jenny Levine and Jessamyn West
Jessamyn West on Flickr, Tagging and the F-word

Slides eventually at http://librarian.net/talks/ "Social" software does not equal "dating." Allowing users to interact with each other. At it simplest, allowing users to write reviews for

Amazon. At its most complex, allowing us to share tons of information and data in new and interesting ways. Flickr features: easy upload, find, share. Shows her Flickr site to demo. How is this different than all the other photo sharing sites? Tagging for photo metadata. The person who took the photo can tag it, and can allow others to tag photos, too. She demonstrates adding a tag. And that's it; it's repurposed. Demonstrates how you can go from your photos with a particular tag, to everyone's photos with the same tag. Can we let users do some of the classification with tags to let them tell us what they think our content is about. It's not a fight; we aren't throwing LCSH out the window. The F-word? Folksonomy! Classification by "folks." User-created metadata. Where does the burden fall in findability: il05, il2005 or internetlibrarian2005, etc.? Who decides? How redundant do we want to be?
Jenny Levine on del.icio.us

Her bookmarks are at http://del.icio.us/jayhawk Shows the bookmarklets and the del.icio.us posting interface. Finding interesting links by guessing tags. Interested in voice over i.p.? Try http://del.icio.us/tag/voip What makes it cool? Track a person or a tag, return of browse, find other people with similar interests, finding people's "toread" lists. Send links to other users with feed for:[username] Shows La Grange Park Library http://del.icio.us/lagrangeparklibrary and Thomas Ford Memorial Library [I missed the username] which use del.icio.us for public lists of pages tagged by reference librarians. Shows CiteULike, Michael's music selections on LastFM, 43Things, all social software that uses tags. Could this be the return of browsability to the library catalog? Q. how long has del.icio.us been around? Could we put all our links there and lose them? A. Since 2003. You can export links and not lose them. Mentions Furl, but points out the lack of social aspects. Comment (from Liz Lawley) Everyone is getting acquired these days. Count on it continuing to exist or being bought up by someone else. Q. Impact of restrictive firewall at work? A. Unless they are blocking lots of outside traffic, it should be fine--regular HTTP traffic. Q. What if someone tags your photos with a derogatory term? A. You can set up your Flickr account to allow or deny comments from everyone, or just certain groups. Q. Is any of this getting into library schools? A. Yes, to the degree that younger students who live and breathe this stuff bring it along. Posted 6:17 PM to Conferences, Social software Comment from: jessamyn October 24, 2005 10:07 PM here's the URL, thanks for the reportage! It's so gratifying when people pick up what I put out there. Glad you enjoyed it. http://www.librarian.net/talks/flickr/

Internet Librarian: Web Wizards' Cool Tools

October 25, 2005
Last presentation of the day (whew!). A nice overview of cool tools. Click through for my notes. As before, my comments in [square brackets]. Technorati tags: il05, presentation, tools, web Darlene Fichter, University of Saskatchewan Yahoo! site explorer: View how many pages they have indexed, the most popular pages on the site, see who links to those pages, a site map, export as tab-delimited data, etc. Collaborative writing tools. All these allow multiple people to collaborate on a text document in real time. Jotspot live: Hosted, five free pages Writely

MoonEdit: Download a client for Win or Linux SubEthaEdit: application for the Mac, [which is also a nice, full-featured text editor, even if you don't user the collaborative tools. [I was going to say that she missed Writeboard from 37Signals, but I don't know if you can collaborate there in real time, or if it is more about version control. I haven't used it myself, but it looks cool, and is quite new, so I can see how she missed it.] Fontleech: finding the best free fonts on the web. Frank Cervone, Northwestern University Express Survey Solutions: free, powerful online surveys, with free phone-based customer support. What is their buisness model? [Did I mention it is free?] Marshall Breeding, Vanderbilt University He says "I'm not necessarily good at 'cool,' so here are some of the things I have used in the last month or so and the things that I have built with them." Active Perl: Perl for Windows. W3C HTML Validator Womble multimedia editor Audio Grabber CD-ripper. Used for the Vanderbilt Global Music Archive (which looks very cool, indeed). EXIFtool used for creating administrative metadata for digital library project of page images of documents in Cuba (32,000 of them!). [I think Ecclesiastical Sources in Slave Societies describes the project.] Jeff Winsniewski, University of Pittsburgh Firefox Extensions Web Developer Extension [I think I'd pick this as my top tool, too.] Smart Folders for Mac OS 10.4 Tiger. Allows you to keep items in different locations together "virtually" by setting up search critera for that smart folders. Folders are then dynamically updated. Posted 1:52 AM to Conferences, Social software, Web design Comment from: Darlene Fichter October 25, 2005 02:33 AM Steve Thanks for getting the list of tools up so quickly with the links. Someone recommended a toolsfor picking colors. I think they were referring to this one: Color Scheme Generator 2.0 http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html Comment from: Steve October 25, 2005 07:53 AM Darlene, Thanks. That Color Scheme Generator looks very useful. I have used the color scheme section at Return of Design: http://www.returnofdesign.com/colors/ It shows palettes from selected web sites. Click on a single color to see complimentary color, nearby hues, etc.

Flickr photos for IL05

October 25, 2005
Usabilty of reception sandwiches == poor Originally uploaded by Andrea Mercado.

There are a fair number of photos on Flickr tagged IL05 or IL2005. My favorite so far is this usability study of the sandwiches at the vendor reception by Andrea Mercado, who kindly posts this photo with a Creative Commons "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike" license so I feel A-OK about sharing it without asking. Posted 2:17 AM to Conferences, Social software Comment from: Andrea October 25, 2005 12:35 PM Yay CC! Thanx for the link. We should have lunch or coffee or something while we're both here. :) Andrea

Internet Librarian Keynote: Social Computing & the Info Pro

October 25, 2005
A very good talk by Liz Lawley on social computing opened the second day of Internet Librarian today. I'm going to try and be more selective with my notes today, and hit more highlights than a full play-by-play. Click though to read my notes on this keynote. Technorati tags: il05, presentation, social_software Social Computing & the Info Pro: Elizabeth Lane Lawley, Rochester Institute of Technology Technorati has just indexed its 20-millionth blog (from an elementary school in France). Librarians have always been good at the long tail, being aware of the specific and the less-known. Social computing augments, not replaces human interactions. Most tools these days, from the standpoint of usability, suck. I'm coming from a place that is responsible for a lot of that. From the outside it is impossible to believe that smart, passionate people can work there. But they do--the individuals "get it," but the company can't make it happen. Kathy of Creating Passionate Users blog. Cool concept => "something bad happens" => same old thing. Let's make it so the tools foster better use (rather than blame the user or dumb down the tools). Which is very hard to do. Recent changes in search have less to do with algorithms and a lot to do with social networks. Shows Google search and Yahoo! My Web 2.0 search on "clay"; Google returns a wide variety: polymer clay, Clay Aiken, Clay Shirkey. Yahoo! My Web 2.0 returns all Clay Shirky hits at the top, since Liz has told Yahoo! My Web 2.0 that her trusted information sources all have to do with social software. A "two-degree-out" social search; her friends and their friends. From "resource discovery" to "information network discovery" Using del.icio.us bookmarks to not only keep track of information for herself, but to share those links with interested others. Shows del.icio.us/LaGrangeParkLibrary; the reference librarians can get to it, the patrons can get to it, we can get to it. Why shouldn't a library be part of your trusted information network? The risk is that it is easy to close yourself off from interesting new discoveries; you can filter out stuff you didn't know you wanted. Tagging is not going away, no matter what librarians might think of it. Most people understand the concept of keywords and don't understand the concept of faceted classification. Wondering what you should call a site, a service? Find similar sites, then see how they are tagged on del.icio.us to know what words real people come up with to describe it. At the same time do we really want a "majority-rules" approach to metadata? [I'm thinking of Family Feud: "We showed 100 people a website, top ten tags are on the board, here's the website"]. Is it the case that what we all agree on is the best thing? Example of racial slurs used to describe images on The ESP Game. Shows 43Folders and Lifehacker re: continuous partial attention. People have such a strong emotional reaction to the ideas of continuous partial attention, continuous computing. Do we think it is bad for us, or do we think it is bad for us? Might it not work for some people?

Some people say that they don't like giving talks any more because everyone is looking at their computers. Is that the computers' fault? Attention is a form of capital; I can't demand it without giving you something in return. If I try to demand your attention, you will resist it. People listen when there is something they need to hear, and don't when there is not. Posted 11:30 AM to Conferences, Social software Comment from: Liz Lawley October 25, 2005 12:04 PM I *love* the "family feud" metaphor...I may have to steal that for my next talk. :) Thanks for the great write-up.

Internet Librarian: What's Hot and New in RSS, Blogs, and Wikis
October 25, 2005
Well there is not much point in me taking bullet-point notes on this, since Steven M. Cohen has posted his notes at http://stevenmcohen.pbwiki.com/BlogsWikis. I'll stick to stuff that is new and exciting to me. He put up the URLs for the open IL wiki and open IL blog The "news" in "Google News" or "Yahoo! News" may not be what you normally think of news, as it included blogs and the like. Is Wikipedia great, awful, or meh? Steven says meh. [I say great here, awful there.] Why did Yahoo! buy Flickr? For the content; Yahoo will one day have the best image search ever. Netvibes: Ajax-powered homepage builder. Drag palettes around with feeds from blogs, weather, etc. Typically nifty Ajax interface. Steven says "Library Thing is the coolest thing I have ever seen in my life....This is what I want the next-generation library catalog to look like." LiveMarks: watch del.icio.us home page and del.icio.us popular update in real time, without reloading. [Mesmerising!] Technorati tags: il05, presentation, social_software Posted 12:22 PM to Blogs and blogging, Conferences, Social software

Internet Librarian: Library Blogs--Ethics and Guidelines

October 25, 2005
Karen Schneider of Librarian's Internet Index and Free Range Librarian Again, K.G. Schneider has already posted to her blog about this talk, and links to her PPT slides there. So I'll just hit a few points from her very good talk here. Her talk focused on five major areas: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Be transparent Cite source Get it right Be fair Admit mistakes

Why do ethics matter? When librarians blog, we represent librarianship. What we write is "the last stop between the reader and the truth." Don't expect your readers to do background research on what you write. There is nothing more pathetic than a librarian who gets the facts wrong. When in doubt, do what you know to be right. Posted 2:35 PM to Blogs and blogging, Conferences

Internet Librarian: Some random after-lunch notes

October 25, 2005

Had a good, inexpensive, enormous sandwich from Troia's Market, up the hill on Del Monte Ave. from the convention center. Monterey must be penny-crushing machine capital of the frikkin' Western Hemisphere. Just sayin'. Why would the Tarot/wicca (I almost wrote "wiki") shop across the street from the Marriott have a sign saying "call ahead for an appointment?" Shouldn't the proprietor have read it in the cards that I would be there at that time? Maybe she knew that I wouldn't have bought anything. Technorati tag: il05 Posted 2:49 PM to Conferences, Navel gazing Comment from: Senix October 25, 2005 05:29 PM of course she would not!

Internet Librarian; Marketing the Weblog

October 25, 2005
Jill Stover of Library Marketing-Thinking Outside the Book presented on how to adopt a marketing mindset, from the moment you start conceiving of a blog until after it goes live. She had a lot of good information and links; I'm sorry that I didn't get her link at the end for her slides. I'll post it if I can get it. ETA: I found that link to her PPT slides (1Mb file download) in the program Click through for my notes on Jill's talk. Technorati tags: il05, presentation, marketing, library, blogging Marketing the Weblog: Jill S. Stover, Virginia Commonwealth University
Target audience

Think about your target audience first. Then product, price, place, and promotion. Seth Godin book, "All Marketers are Liars". Godin says that marketing is about spreading ideas, not about sales. He has a blog Know This: marketing clearinghouse.
Product

What can you bring that is unique? What are the needs of your target market? American Marketing Association site. Segmentation: what subset of your target market is likely to find, read, enjoy your blog? RSS Feeds at UIUC Library shows great attention to segmentation. Converting the idea of "profitable" for library blogs: if it turns out that your target segment is very small, it might not be worth your time and effort to try to reach out them in that way. The blog reflects on your institution. Make the quality of the content and the editing reflect that. Blogs need to be updated regularly, or people will quit coming back to check in on them. Consider the tone; a wide range of tones can be appropriate, but don't let it happen accidentally. Example of a blog for a children's library that strives to be welcoming with information about the friendly librarian. Design should reinforce what you are saying, attract attention, reinforce an existing brand.
Price

You are asking your customers to invest their time, not money, but that is still a real investment. Nothing is free.
Place

Use your RSS feed, and figure out "where is the need for your feed?" Can you find a "place partner" that works with the same target audience? In academe, in course management software.

Explain the rules for people who want to re-syndicate your feed. McMaster. Examples: North Carolina State University Libraries Lansing Public Library Public toolbar Ann Arbor District Library Catalog
Promotion

Do it last. Ideally it will take care of itself (if you followed the steps above). Involve your readers. Let them comment, let them post (with some guidelines). Involve your staff (early! Generate some internal excitement). VCU Black History Month Blog: specially-designed buttons, customizing the design of the site around your blog. [This kind of special-purpose blog seems like a great idea for collaboration: get a few interested librarians, faculty, students, staff lined up to do a group blog.] Q. Some libraries' legal counsel may advise against letting people comment due to liability: if someone posts something offensive are you liable? If you remove a comment are you open to First Amendment challenges? A. (from Steven Cohen) Don't ignore those lawyers! On the other hand, if you have a written policy of what kinds of comments are allowed, you should be able to do what you want with comments. Posted 3:52 PM to Blogs and blogging, Conferences

Internet Librarian: Blogging @ the Academic Library

October 25, 2005
Susan Herzog has already created a fantastically detailed group of blogs her her talk, Blogging @ the University, so I think I'll just sit back and watch. Posted 4:12 PM to Conferences

Internet Librarian: Google-brary and Tomorrow's Megalibrary

October 26, 2005
Stephen Abram called this "the Internet Librarian Tuesday night rave," and we did seem to teeter on the edge a bit, boys and girls (though Steven Cohen had the light show earlier today). This session had a bit of everything: visions of smaller libraries withering in the white heat of Google Print; librarians hissing at the introduction of the Google representative (?!?); the death of MARC (or was it Mark?); disembodied panel members via cell phone; a dramatic announcement from the floor; and a general gamut-run of future scenarios from info-nirvana to the Googlepocalypse (which, I should add, is still in beta). Some people said afterwards that they thought Adam Smith of Google looked a bit scared; I think he was perhaps just taken aback at the tone of some of the questioning. My impression (and I have never met him, or heard him speak before) was that he feels that Google and libraries are working hand-in-hand towards similar goals, and that Google's China policy really doesn't have that much to do with anything. But that's just one observer's opinion. I thought that Stephen Abram did an excellent job moderating this session. He was funny and loose and kept things moving, while allowing people enough time to develop their thoughts, and never letting us get too far off track. I was blogging this one old skool--like back in the day when it was called "taking notes"--on my hipster PDA (a.k.a. a stack of 3x5 index cards). I got 11 cards here, back and front. Perhaps this is a good time to reiterate that this is not a transcription of direct quotes, but as accurate a summary of what was said as I can manage (I welcome corrections in comments or via email). Let's get down to it, as I am already looking at getting less sleep than the hapless Houston Astros. Warning: 1,200+ words after the jump. Technorati tags: il05, google, library, googlepocalypse impending_digitization_of_damn_near_everything The cast of characters: Stephen Abram, SirsiDynix (moderator, emcee, time traveler) Rich Wiggins, Michigan State University Steve Arnold, Arnold Information Technology

Roy Tennant, California Digital Library Mark Sandler, University of Michigan Libraries Barbara Quint, Searcher (fading in and out on the cell phone) Adam Smith, Product Manager for Google Print a very full house of often rowdy internet librarians Stephen Abram promises us time travel to the year 2020, returning us to the present at the end, "even though the present SUCKS!" First up is Adam from Google, trying to dispel some "misconceptions" (for "misconceptions" read "lawsuits" and "possibility of congressional hearings") surrounding Google Print. 1. Google Print is the effort to make all books ever published (sic.) searchable/findable digitally. Google doesn't intend to digitize it all themselves. 2. Two aspects: publisher program (opt-in, text fully available online) and library program (pubic domain stuff fully available, in-copyright stuff (a.k.a. the "demon child," says Adam) equivalent to a full-text index with keyword-in-context snippets returned to the user. Not giving away entire books for the stuff.) Stephen transports us to 2020, which is after the digital megalibrary has been successfully built. Panelists, what happened between 2005 and 2020, and what is the "current" state of affairs? Wiggins: Doesn't know if 2020 gives us enough time, but believes that eventually we will get to the vision Google has proposed. Google can surmount the technical hurdles and has the deep pockets that government does not. Tennant: In 2020 we know a lot more about mass digitization. MARC is dead [no, not Mark Sandler, fellow panelist! MARC!]. Libraries have come to grips with the fact that long-standing policies and procedures are holding us back, and are ready to embrace this kind of digital content on its own terms. Sandler: In 2020 "Internet Librarian" conference is now just "Librarian" and "ALA" conference is "Print Librarian." University of Michigan Libraries and smart publishers still exist. Does Google? What is the life span of a seven-year-old, $100 billion company? Rural librarians now have 100 million volumes available to them digitally (whether provided by Google or someone else). Quint: A vision of "Google Press" and "Google Full Court Press" in which Google disintermediates the publishers. Arnold: Not interested in Google Print or Scholar as much as Google Base (which Abram summarizes (with tongue in cheek) as Google's plan to get us all to just upload all of our intellectual property to Google's servers). Arnold says that Google is our new Bell Labs. Software that delights us--Google Earth vs. the somewhat less delightful Microsoft. Smith: By 2020, we don't talk about digitization anymore, as everything is digital (because we all "did the right thing" back in 2006). We can now attend to using all that information. Everyone his own author/publisher/archivist. Abram: What is the librarian/info professional's role in 2020? Sandler: Some libraries disappear due to redundancy, when users want to drink from the info fire-hose (Tennant shakes head "no" vigorously). Libraries as a place to come for professional help, like a cosmetics counter, "whatever happens there." Quint: Librarians discriminate on the long continuum of great to awful material. Librarians become "pro-people censors." Tennant: Ready to break up the digital love-fest; digital won't make print go away (e-books spur print sales/circulation now), and libraries have never been just about stuff (call from an audience member: "I love you, man!"). Wiggins: Our crystal balls are cloudy when it comes to how we will access the digital files. Better LCDs? "Digital paper?" That could change how people use these files dramatically. Arnold: Managing this change, and promoting the library as an institution, not just a book warehouse, is a job for the ALA, not the rural librarian. Smith: Digital Good. The editorial function is as important as ever. When things are digital, more people can act as editors. Quint: ALA needs a stamp of approval on accurate, quality content. Question from the audience: Objects to lack of representation on the panel from authors who feel that Google Print will harm them; objects to Google being major player in archiving taxpayer-funded research [I may not be summarizing her objections very well. Apologies.] Quint says she rather objects to the current state of affairs where libraries pay heavily for that same taxpayer-funded research from for-profit journal companies. Wiggins would dearly love Google to index his early books that sold in the low two-digits, as findability would drive new sales. Question: with this scale of a project, don't we need to think harder about evaluating information? Quint says once we have digital access, there is a great opportunity in evaluating the material. Sandler says that at research libraries, they are already buying "all but the very worst books" on spec, in case a researcher 50 years down the road might need it. Question: How will Google solve the digital preservation problem? Smith allows that it will take lots of help from partners like libraries. Question: What does DRM look like in 2020? *silence from panel*

Question (from Liz Lawley, I believe): Concern about a single source of all this information. Arnold says that there won't be a single source, but that a "law of three" will prevail, and that we can expect three entities (companies, institutions, whatever) to provide greatly overlapping archives, analogous to the database situation today. Question: Agitation about Google's China policy. Smith says that, as Project Manager for Google Print, he has nothing to do with that and can't comment. Some audience members remain unsatisfied. Question: Who in 2020 will look out for the information have-nots?. Wiggins says that Google is adding to society, and should not be expected to solve all problems. Tennant says public libraries will continue to provide service to that population. An announcement from the floor! (Now I fear I have buried the lead). The Open Content Alliance, had its meeting in San Francisco at the same time as our event. There, Microsoft announced that it will be joining the Alliance to the tune of funding the digitization of 150,000 works in the next year, branded "MSN Book Search." See more blog coverage of that event at LibraryTechtonics and librarian.net Question: What happens to the books when they are all scanned? Arnold says they go back on the shelf. Smith says that most books will only be show in fragments anyway, so the books must be retained to be useful. Abram calls for final comments (and all the bloggers shed a grateful tear of relief). Wiggins: Interesting times, and great prospects for democratic access to information. Arnold: Expect large libraries to keep frequently circulated books on-site, with the rest in remote storage, one day away. Forget about disposing of books in the next 20 years. Tennant: Lately has been "banging on" librarians about Google and Google-ites about libraries because we have a long way to go before we understand one another. Sandler: Got an iPod from Elsevier, the company that keeps on giving! [A non-sequitur, but a good one!] Backs away from saying that libraries will disappear, but will say that libraries that don't pay attention or keep up with the change in role will disappear. Quint: [cell phone was cutting in and out and I didn't catch it. Sorry.] Smith: Google and librarians have a shared vision of access to information as a universal right [and access to context-sensitive text ads as the frosting on the cake! No, no, he didn't say that...] Has a vision of full-text search driving greater use of print though better discovery. [Holy cow, that's it. I hope I captured some of how stimulating (and sometimes downright odd) this session was. If you read this far, leave me some love in the comments, and I'll get Elsevier to send you an iPod (I joke, I joke!). Zzzzzzzzz....] Posted 2:58 AM to Conferences, Digital libraries Comment from: Jenny Levine October 26, 2005 09:14 AM Hi, Steve -- I think your description of the China policy issue is a bit misleading, but then I'm biased because I said it. It wasn't a peanut in the gallery yelling out a social agenda, and it certainly wasn't on my mind when the session started. However, Adam kept pitching this rosy, cheery, kumbaya vision (to paraphrase Roy), and his answer to the single source and digital divide issues was "we'll do the right thing." My response was, "Hey, you're censoring in China, so how can you be so glib and guarantee that you'll do the right thing? Could that happen here?" And I definitely was unsatisfied with his answer, which was basically, "Not my job, next question." If you're going to make grandiose claims about "doing the right thing" in the future, then I think you have to be willing to field questions about your current behaviors. And this is coming from someone who likes Google and most definitely did not boo when Adam was announced. I just think it's a fair question to ask as a response to Adam's statements. Comment from: Steve October 26, 2005 09:35 AM Jenny, thanks very much for adding some context. I confess that I don't know much about Google's China policy issue, so it struck me as a bit out of left field (the other folks yelling in the audience didn't help). I certainly agree that we need to hold Google responsible for their actions and demand transparency; I am more skeptical of the "kumbaya scenario" than I might have sounded up above. At the same time, it doesn't surprise me that Adam couldn't/didn't want to answer the question. Maybe a Google policy session would be a good one for a conference like this one, where Google could send someone more prepared to describe and defend their policies on issues like this.

Internet Librarian: Preparing for Electronic Resources Management

October 26, 2005
Jeff Wisniewski, University of Pittsburgh

More and more E-content, more and more E-only with no paper to fall back on. The ERM marketplace (in broad terms) is a very young marketplace. Many commercial products are less than a year old. What do you want? Define your problem and your universe (just databases? databases and E-journals? stuff on CD-ROM?)

Mostly based on the DLF ERM spec. It is very detailed, so determine which elements have meaning for your environment. Troubleshooting and vendor contact information was an issue for Pitt. Might as well compile that information in vendor-neutral (tab delimited) spreadsheets, even if DRM is years away, it will still be useful. Don't wait for the moving truck to pull up to the house to start packing your boxes. Identify your resources: electronic records, licenses (where are they now?), vendor data, contact information, etc. Clean up all your existing information. Electronic item records: remember GIGO
Andrew White, Joseph Balsamo, Khaled Saeed from Health Science Center Library, Stony Brook University.

Built their own ELM. Large library IT staff with expertise and committment to these kinds of solutions. How does collection management integrate with electronic resource management. Dealing with cancellations, changes in vendor, changes in bundled subs., duplication of titles in different contracts, multiple formats for the same title, changes to URLs. ERM provides information for making educated decisions (contract info, usage, etc.). Various response options: Excel worksheets, Kardex, emails of URL updates, static list. Shows diagram of many librarians making changes in many areas (OPAC, web site, proxy server) when things change. Looking for single point of entry for the staff for making changes--change once, propagate everywhere in real time. For public, provide search and browse interfaces with holdings information, again in real time. Shows staff interface to ROAMS: enter a bib number or do a KW title search. Edit, suppress, delete, undelete each title. Deletion does not remove the title permanently, keeping data for historical purposes. Easy editing of information on each title. Shows patron interface. Divided by E-journal, database, other formats. Option to browse or search to find titles. All built on an open source platform. Can create RSS feeds out of the database. Q. Why roll your own, when there are extant products? Andrew: this is a replacement for TDNet or Serials Solutions on steroids. We can do more with our product that we could with those [it is unclear to me what that is]. Jeff: no solution is free of expense, the question is just where you choose to spend your money. Technorati tags: il05 Posted 12:17 PM to Conferences, Digital libraries

Internet Librarian Keynote: Google: Catalyst for Digitization?

October 26, 2005
This was an entertaining session, set up as a confrontation, but really Roy Tennant and Richard Wiggins were, I believe, presenting different facets and perspectives on similar goals and desires. Wiggins was looking more at the possibilities and promise, with Tennant reminding us of the problems and pitfalls still surrounding Google's digitization efforts. Both are great speakers, and Adam Smith from Google was again showing goodwill and a good sense of humor. Click through for the play-by-play. Technorati tags: il05, google, digitization Rich Wiggins 4 yrs. ago thought we needed a federally-funded project to digitize the content of LC. Typically digitization projects are "cream of the crop" or "cherry picking." Why not have a truly ambitious project: all the content of a large research library (or all the books, or all the text in all the books). How much space? Depends on what you are measuring (just text?). What about format/compression? Text-only of all unique print items in LC: estimates 20 terabytes. Getting so inexpensive (disk space, digital imaging, broadband delivery, even labor). Technology improving--get away from the flatbed. Cost per page for JSTOR: less than $.40/page with OCR and correction. Reasonable to assume we can get to $.05/page. Can we digitize everything, but no OCR it until someone looks at it(!)?. Using commodity disks and cheap RAID arrays (Brewster Khale & Google doing the same thing there). Axiom: if it is worth keeping the item in the collection, it is worth the one-time cost of digitization.

Barriers: Once it is digitized, can we legally deliver it? (Some) authors and publishers say no. Attitude: let's just digitize the good stuff (wouldn't it be fun to have library committee meetings decide what the "good stuff" is?) Benefits: Preservation Access Improving digitizing technology New standards (open XML) Force the issue of large-scale rights management Conclusion: Think big! Let's build a digital library that is an entire library. Draws parallel with JFK's moon challenge: do it not because it is easy, but because it is hard. Why trust Google? They are smart, agile, innovative, show no fear, have enough money to take on Disney and Pat Schroeder, and they won't do it alone (as Google's competitors wake up and say "why aren't we doing this?") Roy Tennant Google: Catalyst for Digitization? Or Library Destruction/ Trying for a light tone, but really believes that more/easier access is better, and there is room for many players in this space. In honor of Halloween: "Google? The Devil or Merely Evil?"
"Scary Monsters"

Google trying to shield their activities under fair use may destroy it for us all. Closed access to open material: Google print doesn't show that there are many available versions of public domain titles, instead just showing publisher's current versions, and don't link to the library, just to "buy this book." Blind, wholesale digitization: large research collections are not weeded by policy (to try and improve ARL ranking) "Blind wholesale digitization [of unweeded research collections] is no more a good thing than buying books based on color." Easily, freely available, dated, inaccurate information will trump newer info just by circumstance. Ads: How long before we see ads for antidepressant meds next to Hamlet? Secrecy: agreements with libraries have been kept (largely) secret. Michigan did reveal after FOI challenge. Rumors indicate that Michigan has the best agreement from the library perspective, while others are eager to agree to less-favorable terms (but we don't know) Longevity: What to Google, Enron, and WorldCom all have in common? They are/were all publicly-traded companies motivated by profit. Harvard Library is 400 years old, Google is 7 years old. Whom should we trust with our intellectual heritage? Libraries (like, duh). Adam Smith, Project Manager for Google Print Welcome comments and criticism to make their product better. They release things quickly, which can take people by surprise at times. Trying to make information more discoverable by more people. As ambitious as Google's plans sound, it's only a small piece, and they welcome the activity from other companies and institutions. Q. Tell us about the scanning robots? Smith: Rumors. Publisher scanning is destructive process. Library scanning is nifty new automated technology that he is not at liberty to discuss. Q. Privacy issues? Smith: all Google products are governed by Google's privacy policy. Q. Is it true that a library is asking for only manual page-turning in the digitization? Smith: no comment. Stephen Abram: at Internet Librarian International, Oxford volunteered that they had asked for that. Q. Could or should Google have done something different when doing the print for libraries? Suggests that earlier disclosure of details could have staved off some controversy. Smith goes over the snippet policy and display for in-copyright materials. Tennant: publishers are looking at copyright in a very literal way in terms of "making copies," while Google holds that the making the copies is not the important part, it's the sharing and distribution. Wiggins: Hopes that the IP lawsuits for Google go well, and break through to a more modern copyright system. Q. Is Google working on a better display for better browsing of search results? Smith: right now, the short-term goal is getting more books in the system. Once they get the large amount of content, we can experiment with better ways to find and use that information down the road. Wiggins: what you are really asking is "does PageRank work well as BookRank," and I'd say no. Maybe the solution comes with the social networks.

Q. Discovery and retrieval need to go hand-in-hand. Will Google Print become a great way to discover books that you can't get to? Smith: we already work with OCLC Open WorldCat and many other partners. There is no solution to that yet. Wiggins: Google could be building a catalog to the world's largest Carnegie library, and people are complaining that they aren't building a bus system to get us to the library. Q. Who decides what snippets get displayed when a book is discovered? Smith: Things are too early to discuss. Q. (from Liz Lawley) Microsoft research does this kind of thing all the time and publishes the research on a public Microsoft Research site. Google is much more secretive--how do you reconcile that with your stated desire to share everything. Smith: I may not be the person to discuss that. I have responsibility for this project, not these policies. Lawley: don't you get frustrated that you always have to say "no comment?" Smith: This is the first time I have been publicly asked. Posted 1:18 PM to Conferences, Digital libraries

Goodbye Internet Librarian 2005

October 27, 2005
Home safe and sound to my lovely family. Here are some random thoughts to clear out of my head before going to bed, though I expect I'll have a little more to say about the conference in days to come. This was the best conference I have been to in a long time. The well-defined focus and relatively small attendance (I'm comparing to ALA) made most every session feel relevant. The keynotes provided a common frame of reference, and were of uniformly high quality. Reminded me of a library conference with a very different focus, the annual RBMS preconference. I think I fulfilled my major expectations for the conference. I met almost all the bloggers that I was hoping to meet, and made friends with some cool people with cool noms de blog (Sarah Houghton, aka the Librarian in Black and Michael Porter, aka Libraryman); I learned about new software and trends; I had many of my current assumptions about the value of social software to libraries confirmed, while seeing some great twists on familiar ideas; I dang near blogged my brains out; and I'm ready to go back and do more cool stuff at my library. Asked of me at the end of a session by Erica Reynolds after we'd introduced ourselves: Her: "Are you Libraryman?" Me: "Er, no. But I met Libraryman!" Free wireless internet is fantastic, and, even though the coverage was spotty, it seemed like Internet Today was doing its best to provide it. Now, if we could only find a way to provide free, wireless power, we'd be all set. Looks like the photo at right is the only picture of me at the conference that made it up to Flickr. A stunning likeness, don't you think? Blogging the conference in the way that I did--writing up just about every session I attended in great detail--is insane. It was a great thing for me to do once; next time I'll probably aim to post two or three times a day, hitting the high points and the things that stayed with me. Now, I will certainly go back to posting a few times a week rather than a few times a day. That said, it has been very cool to go from having a blog with zero traffic to getting many page loads per day, with presenters from the conference commenting on the posts (sometimes objecting to my characterization of the session!). It's nice to know that if you take the time to put commentary out there, people respond. Hearing the tales of public librarians whose administrations or IT departments won't let them install software, un-install filters, use IM, etc., etc., ad nauseum, made me very glad to work for a private college. I suggested a program for next year should be "What to do when you boss/IT department balks at your way cool idea." The other panel we need next year is "Google: J'accuse!" where Google could send a high-level executive with the green light to answer the tough questions that librarians want to ask about policy, technology, etc. A pipe dream, I know. My Monterey cabbie used the word "gnarly" in a sentence. Technorati tags: il05 Posted 12:01 AM to Conferences, Navel gazing

Readers are forbidden to MUTILATE

October 27, 2005

Coming off my Internet Librarian high, I thought my next post should be about some of the actual physical stuff we have in my library: books, journals, archives, microfilm (ok, maybe not microfilm). At Tutt Library, we have a room of periodicals published before 1915 (the date is arbitrary; that's how many volumes would fit in the room, giving more space for growth in the main periodicals floor (now full to burstin' again)). The collection is remarkable, not just for what is in those volumes (serialized works of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins; beautiful photographs of long-dead actresses; early issues of the Colorado College newspaper), but for how those volumes look, feel, and smell. I'm generally down with the whole "digitize 'em all and let god sort 'em out" mentality of Google Print and similar projects, but I think it is interesting to consider what we might lose in such a project. Here are three little ephemeral bits: old library labels on old periodicals. Do they have much research value? Probably not, though typographers and designers would likely appreciate the period work. But, to me, they are fascinating and evocative. How did these volumes make their way from the "Cheshire Theological Institute" or "Union for Christian Work Free Lending Library" to Colorado Springs? Why don't we say things like "privilege of a renewal" anymore? And did the person who ripped out the "Readers are forbidden to MUTILATE" stickers find it as funny as I do now? Posted 10:04 PM to From the stacks Comment from: bentley October 29, 2005 03:06 PM I noticed at a large university library that they still kept the old card catalog in a remote corner of the stacks. At least one librarian still consulted it when doing research, even though it wasn't maintained or updated. See, when the catalog had been digitized a while back, what they did was buy the records from another library. However, those records (obviously) didn't include all the many-decades' worth of pencilled notes that the local catalog cards had. I guess somebody saw value in this extra information and didn't throw out the cards. Comment from: Steve October 29, 2005 08:17 PM Yes, I remember my first library job in interlibrary loan at the University of Delaware. The head staff person swore that they didn't get all the information on all the collections into the OPAC. And, of course, Nicholson Baker has been saying we need to keep them since at least 1994, when the New Yorker published his "Discards" essay in the April 4 issue. Actually, CC's card catalog (or some portion of it; can't say I've ever really looked at it too hard!) is still in a relatively "remote corner" of our stacks on the third floor.

Some new (to me) blogs and the death of the blogroll
October 30, 2005
New to me If I had a blogroll (a list of links to blogs that I read), I'd be adding the blogs listed below. None of them are new, just new to me. All were blogging Internet Librarian, and I met all the authors, at least briefly. Links to the feeds are in there too (a mixed bag of RSS 1, 2, and Atom) as well as links to interesting recent posts. Libraryman by Michael Porter. Feed Cool recent post: GeoMapped Libs on geotagging photos of libraries in the Libraries and Librarians pool on Flickr. Library Techtonics by Andrea Mercado. Feed Cool recent post: Flickr as digital collection hosting example Library Web Chic by Karen A. Coombs. Feed Cool recent post: Tweaking Movable Type Queequeg's Content Saloon by Erica Reynolds. Feed Cool recent post: The best session I have ever heard at Internet Librarian. Ever. Pay attention to Ann Arbor District Library...it's even cooler than you think Death of the blogroll? It seems like fewer and fewer blogs have blogrolls. A few years ago, blogrolls seemed like a vital part of the blogging experience, helping readers find other interesting sites. I'm guessing that the widespread use of RSS has made blogrolls unmanageable (since RSS makes it easier to read so many blogs) and less necessary (the first time I hit a blog I like, I add it to my aggregator, so I don't need someone's list to point me there). Maybe once I get it cleaned up, I'll link to my Bloglines subscriptions from the sidebar here. Posted 3:20 PM to Blogs and blogging

Tags, not tracks

October 31, 2005
In a post titled IL 2005 Redux, Erica Reynolds puts forth a cool idea: Heres what I think would be oh so cool for next year: instead of tracks, just post each one of the presentations on the IL06 site, and let us all tag them. Then, well self-organize, and the coordinators will know which sessions have the most buzz, and likely the most attendees so they can plan the room size. But, its not really about buzz as much as it is letting the attendees self-select, and show (not just tell) the coordinators and presenters what it is about the presentations that theyre interested in. So all I want for IL06: tags, baby, tags. What a great way to let your attendees tell you what the conference is going to be about. Then we'd want to have some tools to let us visualize relationships between tags ("hmm, it looks like most of the people who are tagging 'blogs' are also tagging 'social_software'; maybe I should look into that, too") , see which sessions the taggers are in agreement about, and which sessions are seeing a proliferation of tags (which might indicate that the session will be wide-ranging or might indicate that it is time to re-write the session description to make it clearer to the intended audience). There is other good stuff in this post, including some thoughts about picking a (constructive) fight with vendors, and a glimpse at Erica's to-do lists. And you need not have attended Internet Librarian to "get" this. Posted 11:33 PM to Conferences Comment from: Meredith November 1, 2005 01:27 PM Very cool idea! You should check out this article from Educause Social Software and the Future of Conferences Right Now. It has a lot of neat ideas about how we can leverage social software to make conferences a collaborative experience that lasts longer than just a few days. Comment from: Steve November 2, 2005 12:03 PM Thanks for the Educause citation. That is an interesting article, not least because so much of it is already happening. Next year at Internet Librarian, I'd like to see some kind of open channel for conference-wide IM, on IRC or something. I had iChat open to Rendezvous for much of the conference but that's Mac-only, and was sparsely "attended."

Blog people, stand up and be counted!

November 02, 2005
As you probably know by now, Michael Stephens of Tame the Web is doing a survey called Who are "the Blog People?" A Survey of Librarians and their Motivations for Blogging. It's part of his Ph.D. research, and should make an interesting compliment to the work already done by Meredith Farkas at Information Wants to Be Free and Walt Crawford in Cites and Insights (both of which Michael acknowledges). I just took the survey; not only was it painless, but the "essay" questions were thought-provoking. Halfway through answering the essays, I thought "this will be a cheap way to get another blog post in today," er, I mean, "this might be worth saving and sharing on See Also." So keep on reading if you want to see how I answered Michael's questions. Why do you blog? To engage in discussions and debates about LIS issues in the "biblioblogosphere" To keep in practice of constant semi-formal writing to develop longer, more formal writing projects. It's fun. I'm an egomaniac. What have you learned from blogging? It can take a long time (for me) to craft even a fairly simple, short blog post, including spell- and fact-checking, adding hyperlinks, etc. It's a reminder of how much care is necessary even in what I think of as semi-formal writing. People will read what you write, and will comment on it. (Duh.) What are the benefits of blogging within the LIS community? Having started my own blog gave me an excuse to introduce myself to many of the blogging librarians at the recent Internet Librarian conference. I'm sure I could have done so without the blog, but it helped me overcome a personal reluctance to introduce myself.

Has blogging had an effect on your job? I suppose it has in some ways. I started at this job three years ago, and have been bending everyone's ear about blogging ever since. Now we have a book review blog where several of my colleagues contribute (more than I do), a blog for the director's planning committee, a blog for the library news, a new blog for the Social Sciences librarian to communicate with Econ thesis students, all in addition to my own. My blog is hosted by my library, so that entails some trust (as well as a somewhat formal agreement). What role does blogging play in your professional life? It's a little too early to say. I hope it will continue to lead to more contacts, collaborations, and friendships. I am relatively new to the profession, and my first conference presentation (next week) is on building a better blog, so my interest in blogs is providing some professional opportunities. How has blogging affected your relationships with other professionals? Too early to tell. My colleagues at MPOW have expressed interest in my blog, but I don't think any of them are reading it religiously. As I said above, I do feel that it gives me a little courage or "cover" to introduce myself to other bloggers. Describe your view of the impact of blogging on the professional library community? In some ways it is hard for me to gauge, as I got my MLS in 2000, about the same time that blogs were gaining momentum. So I don't know a library world without blogs, in a way. I appreciate the way that many blogs cut across the usual library divisions; I am an academic librarian, but many of the blogs I read are from public librarians. One possible downside is that I read a lot more blogs than I read traditional professional literature. And while blogs do point me back to more traditional published articles as well, I do wonder if I should devote a little more of my reading to journals and even (gasp!) books. Posted 10:27 PM to Blogs and blogging

Public domain library books now on Google Print

November 03, 2005
Today, Google Print begins returning results for full scans of public domain books from the Library Project portion of Google Print. There may be an easier way to find these books, but I found them by going to the advanced print search and entering appropriate dates in the "publication dates" fields (say 1500 to 1930). One thing I didn't anticipate is that the scanned library books look like library books; they have been marked up by generations of readers. The example I have here from Tolstoy on Shakespeare is pretty mild, though I love the the underlining of "gluttony, drunkenness, and debauchery," and wonder if the reader had the same thing in mind as Tolstoy did when underlining "gay humor." Remember what H.J. Jackson, author of the book Marginalia, said in an article in the October 21, 2005 Chronicle of Higher Education: "The educational system used to explain different ways of making notes in books for different kinds of occasions. The only notes people see nowadays tend to be the vicious or foolish notes in library books." I'd love to see other, better examples of marginalia in Google Print. If you find one, leave a comment with a URL. Posted 7:17 AM to Digital libraries

Is Michael Gorman's term up yet?

November 07, 2005
Just as I was beginning to forget about ALA President Michael Gorman, he shows up in my aggravator, er, aggregator again. First with the quotes in the Wall Street Journal article (see also the commentary on ACRLog and CopyCense [via librarian.net]), and now with his address to the CLA as covered by Librarian in Black (don't forget to check the comments on that LiB post, either). I find it interesting, if not surprising, that LiB quotes Gorman as saying that Google is "probably too stupid to have a library," thus

continuing the kind of ad-hominem attacks that he simultaneously deplored and exemplified in his LJ-published rant Revenge of the Blog People!. And then Pope Gorman strode off the stage without taking questions. A class act. I'm not saying that I'm drinking the Google Kool-Aid; I'd be very happy to see Roy Tennant--who is asking lots of tough questions about Google while trying to lead by example from within the Open Content Alliance--get more quotes in the Wall Street Journal. But Gorman, who prides himself on the critical thinking and sustained arguments that he believes Googlization will destroy, exhibits neither of these skills in his public statements. It's so much more fun and inspiring to read the quotes from Darlene Fichter, Jenny Levine, Jessamyn West, and Aaron Schmidt in the article on "Library 2.0" from Publish. Here are some librarians trying to harness the power of technology to make it work for actual patrons. Tags: michael_gorman, google, library2.0 Posted 10:56 PM to Digital libraries, Librarians and the profession

Colorado Association of Libraries Meeting

November 09, 2005
This Friday and Saturday, I'll be at the Colorado Association of Libraries (CAL) 2005 conference in Denver. If you are there too, keep an eye out for me, and please say "hi." I won't be blogging this conference to death like I did for Internet Librarian, but I will be lugging the laptop along, and will likely have one or two things to say about the conference on this blog. I present on blogging on Saturday; more about that in a later post. Tags: library, colorado, cal2005 Posted 12:08 PM to Conferences, Navel gazing

Teach an Old Blog New Tricks: presentation for CAL2005

November 09, 2005
As I mentioned earlier, I will be presenting at the Colorado Association of Libraries conference on Saturday, along with my colleagues Gwen Gregory and Robin Satterwhite. Our talk is called Teach an Old Blog New Tricks and is designed to encourage librarians to go beyond thinking of blogs as links-plus-commentary or online journals, and think of blogs instead as content management systems. I also highlight cool and useful add-ons for blogs from third parties like Flickr, FeedBurner, and Technorati. I try to be agnostic as to the blog platform or kind of library. To demonstrate that blogs can be used in many different ways, I used Movable Type to create a hybrid blog/slideshow for the presentation. The idea is that it can function like a blog with individual entries, comments, trackbacks, etc., but when we are presenting, we can use a javascript style-switcher (nicked from A List Apart) to go into "presentation" mode which blows the font-size up good and big, hides the sidebar, comments form, and even some text that I have marked as "notes," thus giving us a nice clean presentation that should be legible from the back row. I invite you all to take a look at this presentation, and let me know what you think, either via a comment here, or on the presentation blog. I also set up the files and template tags on the blog to make it relatively easy for me to download the presentation, do two or three find-and-replaces in TextWrangler to create relative links, and end up with a presentation I can use offline if the promised internet connection at CAL goes bad. The content of the blog is released under a Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike license, and I had intended to do the same for the MT templates. But, although I think the templates and stylesheets will work fine on Saturday, I don't think I'm ready to .zip them up and unleash them on the world. I also don't know if I can include the javascript from A List Apart in a CC-licensed MT template. But if this kind of thing interests you, just contact me and I'll be happy to share what I have done. Tags: library, blogging, presentations, cal2005, movable_type Posted 10:10 PM to Blogs and blogging, Conferences, Presentations

CAL2005: Information Literacy and Program Assessment

November 11, 2005
OK, I said I wasn't going to blog CAL2005 to death, but I did take some notes during today's first session on online information literacy instruction. See my notes after the jump. In other news, my camera battery is inexplicably dead, so photos will have to wait until tomorrow.

Tags: library, cal2005, information_literacy, tutorial, academic "Partnering for Success: Information Literacy and Program Assessment" by Judith Rice-Jones and Suzanne Byerley, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Library Instruction ONline for Information Literacy (LiONiL); password protected. Contact Judith or Suzanne if you want a peek (they gave out the password at the presentation, but I wouldn't feel right posting it here). Faculty assumptions about what students know are frequently exaggerated; indeed, faculty often overestimate their own library skills, as they get so much of their information from their professional/social networks. Students take what the faculty say very literally. Every year we talk about the importance of core skills, and the importance that students take the courses that give them these skills early in their degree program; in reality, students continue to put off these requirements, often taking these classes near the end of their career. Presenters were surprised to find that this very basic tutorial was very useful for graduate instruction. Recommends article "Information Literacy as a Liberal Art" (Jeremy J. Shapiro and Shelley K. Hughes, Educom Review Volume 31, Number 2, March/April 1996) Tutorial: a never-ending project under constant construction. Modular structure to the tutorial with post-tutorial quizzes for instant feedback to the student. Tutorials include animated visualizations (Boolean Venn diagrams in motion!). Split-screen effect with EBSCOhost on the bottom of the screen and the instructional section at the top (neat!). Online pre- and post-tests used for assessment. SPSS analysis of the pilot project indicated areas where students were having trouble, and even those areas where students were doing worse on the post-test than on the pre-test. A small majority of students preferred the online format to in-class instruction: self-paced, 24-hour access. Those who preferred a live librarian appreciated the demonstrations and librarian's ability to answer questions. Recommends Friedman, "The World is Flat" if you doubt the importance of information literacy today. Posted 1:01 PM to Conferences, Service

CAL2005: Googleization: A Discussion

November 11, 2005
George Jaramillo and David Domenico, of Colorado State University, showed a short, speculative film about a future Amazon/Google Goliath called "Googlezon" as a catalyst for audience discussion afterward. The discussion was pretty wide-ranging and interesting, with many in the audience quite concerned about authority and accuracy in the world of networked information. I met two other bloggers very briefly at this session: Michael Sauers of Travelin' Librarian and (Ms) Shaun Boyd who blogs on LiveJournal (and to whom I'm not linking, since LiveJournal always seems more like a real journal than a blog, and I don't feel right linking without permission). I also had an nice talk after the presentation with a woman who works for a small publisher in Boulder (whose name I didn't get, and whose employer I have forgotten. Sorry!). We talked about intellectual property and rights and the ethics of a company like Google making money off authors and publishers without sharing. I said that while I want to see authors and publishers continue to make money, that I wasn't so sure that every time someone makes a nickel off a book that they should get a penny. We talked about whether increased full-text exposure would result in lost or increased sales. I said that I would hate to see publishers end up like the RIAA, suing customers, employing bizarre DRM schemes, etc. Interesting stuff. Click through for my full write up of this interesting "Googleization" session. Tags: library, cal2005, google, googlezon, googlepocalypse George and David show EPIC 2014, a short film: by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson (there is a partial transcript here). The film presents a very speculative vision of the future where Google and Amazon merge. It's not about libraries per se, but an idea of what the future information environment may look like. They ask us to keep track of our first, visceral reaction. A brief synopsis: In the future (2014): everyone contributes to a networked world of information, but media as we know it is gone. Some milestones: 2006, "Google Grid": store all your stuff on the Google grid with granular control of privacy; 2008: Google and Amazon form Googlezon: Amazon's social structure with Google's grid; 2010: Newswars: Googlezon constructs news stories dynamically from all content sources, all content customized by user; 2014: Googlezon Epic "Evolving Personalized Information Construct". Everyone contributes, everyone gets paid from AdSense; freelance editors spring up; people subscribe to editors. Mainstream media withers and dies.

For its savviest users, EPIC is broader, deeper, etc. than anything available before. For others, EPIC is a mass of the trivial and untrue. The presenters ask for audience reactions. Many people are concerned about Google or "Googlezon" making it harder for people to sort out the trivial or incorrect from the authoritative; that a search on Google (today) will get you a page of misinformation about, say, a health issue, before finding a study that debunks common wisdom. I comment that I can't see how that is any different than it has ever been--haven't we always received misinformation and half-truths from family and friends? How many people have ever gone to the library to research a casual information need? And people have always believed all kinds of garbage (here I inserted a gratuitous dig against "Intelligent Design"). George Jaramillo reports frustration with students finding some citations on Google Scholar and avoiding the expensive search engines the library provides. George asks what we think about people saying that Google is the biggest threat to libraries. The audience is generallly sanguine, beliving that our role as research assistants, interpreters of search results, and trainers in information literacy will keep us in business. Someone says that librarians spend too much time questioning our own relevance, and need to work more with Google and their ilk (right on!). Someone else says that librarians need to create portals that are as easy to use for authoritative information as Google is for the wild wild web (right on!) People bring up many other logical concerns about privacy, intellectual property, Googlebombing and other results manipulation/quirks of Google algorithms. Somewhere in here I mention trusted social networks and the possibility that people will be able to fine-tune their searches to include more trusted sources (as those on the bleeding edge are already doing today with tools like My Web 2.0). One of the comments that I found most helpful when thinking about this was from the librarian who said that when helping patrons, she would start "where they live" with Google or Google Scholar and Wikipedia, and then show them how and why they should move beyond that. Posted 8:34 PM to Conferences, Librarians and the profession Comment from: Dave Domenico November 14, 2005 10:22 AM Steve, Thanks for playing along in our "Googlezon" discussion. Truth to tell, I think your idea of deliberately cultivating the library as a trusted node in a person's social network may have hit the nail on the head. I'd be really curious to see how that could play out on a practical level. Dave Comment from: Steve November 14, 2005 11:16 AM Thanks, Dave, though I won't be so bold as to claim that as my idea. Liz Lawley spoke about it in her keynote at IL05, and I think Michael also articulated this idea at your session. I keep coming back to Lorcan Dempsey's The user interface that isn't as a great articulation of where libraries currently stand vis-a-vis the information ecology of the web (i.e., standing to one side, wondering why no one wants to dance with us).

CAL2005: Blog on: What is a Blog and How do I Create One?

November 11, 2005
Shelley Walchak of CLiC gave a great intro to blogs and blogging to an SRO crowd, and she kept right on going with the offline version of her presentation when the internet connection conked out--blog on, indeed! (You can bet that I immediately started double-checking the offline version of my presentation.) She concentrated on Blogger, as the easiest free blog to set up. She had a good bit of advice: play around with Blogger to see how you like it, how enthusiastic you remain about continually posting new material, etc. Then if you outgrow Blogger, you will know what features to loook for in pay blogging software. She shows the blog, Click on CLiC, that she set up for the Colorado Library Consortium. The first one to comment on it wins a book on blogging (cool idea). Lots of questions on how to set up a multi-user Blogger site for classroom use. Lots of questions about how to enable, disable, control comments. Questions about how to set up file downloads, interest in hosting photos, other files on your blog to download. Questions about searchability of blogs, blogs vs. wikis, etc. Seeing how many questions Shelley got about the relative basics of blogging, I started to worry about my presentation tomorrow, where I was planning to assume a certain amount of knowledge. Driving home with my colleague, Rebecca, though, she pointed out that one of the appeals of a conference is getting in a bit over your head--learning just enough in a session to get excited, go home and learn more. We'll see how that goes tomorrow.

Posted 10:56 PM to Blogs and blogging, Conferences Comment from: Shelley Walchak November 13, 2005 01:32 PM Thanks for the nice comments. I so wanted to make it to your presentation, Steve, so I could go to the next step myself, but the CLiC Booth got in the way and I had to stay and man that. Thank you for your help during my presentation - gave me a chance to get a drink of water! Let me know what kind of a turnout you had and the kind of questions you had. Keep in touch.

The Audience at "Teach an Old Blog New Tricks"

November 12, 2005
Here is the excited audience of Colorado Librarians listening to me! Edited to add: I feel like the session went quite well; we had somewhere around 50 or 60 people there. None of my fears about internet or projector problems came true. I think I was reasonably coherent, got some great questions from the group, and I spoke to a few people afterwards who seemed enthusiastic and motivated to build blogs, learn about RSS and social software and how they might use them at their libraries, which is fantastic. There weren't many RSS or Bloglines users in the group, which makes me think CAL could use a "keeping current" session next year. Lastly, I think I did a good job of conveying why this stuff is cool and fun and fairly easy, I think I did less well in articulating why this is important for libraries. Which is not to say that the public and school librarians who spoke to me after the session about reaching their young readers can't connect the dots themselves. But I think I need a better elevator pitch.

The Audience at "Teach an Old Blog New Tricks"

Posted 11:28 AM to Blogs and blogging, Conferences, Presentations, Tutt Library Comment from: phil g November 13, 2005 06:53 PM Steve, sure enjoyed your session and it got me thinking. While letting my curiosity wander about blogging and wiki software...I was wondering. Would there be a way to set up a wiki or blogging piece where library patrons could post updated lists of "IF YOU LIKED"? For example, "if you liked Kite Runner- you might like..." That way readers could submit books and synopsis, update them and contribute. It would save me some research and work...plus it would be extremely current and rich with information. hmmm pg Comment from: Steve November 13, 2005 10:07 PM Thanks for commenting, Phil. That's a cool idea, and I'm sure a wiki could handle that--wikis are designed to be easily updated by anyone. The problem would be getting people to use it. Ideally, such a thing would be part of the catalog in the same way that Amazon's recommendations and reviews are right there on the same page where you can click to place your order. OpenWorldCat is trying something like this with their reviews. See the record for On Beauty and click the tab for "reviews." I don't think it is getting much use yet. Wouldn't it be cool if the catalog could recommend books in the same way that Amazon does? "People who checked out this book also checked out X, Y, and Z." Or let users tag catalog entries like photos on Flickr? For more thoughts about opening up library systems to input from readers, see the great post The user interface that isn't on Lorcan Dempsey's great blog. Comment from: Emilie November 14, 2005 03:51 PM Steve, I'm sure I told you good job on Saturday, but if not, good job! I think attendance at your session could have been increased with a better description (from reading the description in the CAL booklet, to me it sounded as though this would have best benefitted academic libraries). Finally, I agree that a keeping current session, or what's hot, type thing may be helpful to others.

Keep up, Libraryman style

November 15, 2005

Keep Up! Workshop Packet Well, I had just been blabbing about how I'd like to do a "keeping up" session for librarians at next year's Originally uploaded by libraryman. Colorado Association of Libraries conference, and now Libraryman has pre-emptively kicked my ass. You can't get all the schwag in the photo unless you attend the course, but over the web you can: check out the OCLC Western course Keep Up! Practical Emerging Technologies for Libraries; its associated resource page with links to documentation; the Keep Up! del.icio.us feed; the Keep Up! blog; and the Keep Up! wiki. And he wouldn't be Libraryman if he wasn't putting photos on Flickr tagged keepup.

So I thought, wouldn't it be cool if I zipped up the feeds for the blog, the links, the wiki, and the photos using KickRSS into one big honking feed?. And it is pretty cool, but the photos aren't showing up in the feed itself (though the links do).

Posted 4:05 PM to Blogs and blogging, Librarians and the profession, Social software Comment from: Michael Porter November 15, 2005 04:36 PM Naturally I am biased, but this has got to be the best library blog post added to the web today. ha! :)

Talk on feeds and adopting new web apps

November 17, 2005
I gave a new presentation on RSS/Atom feeds today as part of our Library Lunch & Learn series. I had about ten people there, mostly College staff, with a few library folks and students thrown in. None of them were using feeds coming in--some had first heard about them from my announcement on the campus listservs--but by the end, almost all of them said that they planned to continue to use their Bloglines account that we'd set up. I find that, for myself, a lot of web applications take a while to click. I didn't really get into using feeds until I started wanting to read dozens of library weblogs. Before that, I'd just open BoingBoing and Slashdot and the few other blogs that I read regularly in tabs, and that was good enough for me. And with Flickr, I must have had an account set up for a year before I uploaded any photos at all. Now I find new reasons to love Flickr every day: the photo of some librarians on Halloween that popped up at the top of my tag="colorado" search during the Lunch & Learn, or the slideshow of the most interesting photos of whales that kept my son busy this evening while I cleaned up our dinner dishes. My point being that many of the folks in the little class today might not have 100 subscriptions in their Bloglines account by tomorrow. But a year from now, I bet that several have made it a daily habit. Edited to add: This has got me thinking about the feeds for this site. I intend for everyone to use the FeedBurner feed for See Also, but I realize now that I never stripped out the "native" Atom and RSS feeds. I'd like to make some changes to the feed so it includes categories, comments, etc. So if you are a feed subscriber, you might want to check and make sure the URL for the feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/seealso. I won't make any changes without another announcement (and the fifteen of you who subscribe to this blog on Bloglines? You rock!) Tags: library, rss, atom, syndication Posted 11:20 PM to Presentations, Tutt Library

The geekiest thing I have done lately...

November 20, 2005
...is put together my own librarian trading card at flagrantdisregard's Flickr Toys and post it to the Librarian Trading Cards pool on Flickr. I first spotted this meme de jour at Library Stuff, and the next thing I knew, a mephistophelean Michael Stephens was staring at me on my Flickr contacts' photos. Tags: library, flickr, tradingcards, geek, meme-de-jour

My trading card

Posted 7:08 PM to Librarians and the profession, Social software

Fewer words = better search?

November 22, 2005
The post, eBays fewer words search from Jason on Signal vs. Noise struck a chord with me. He points out that when searching multiple words on eBay, if your search isn't successful, eBay will show you how many hits you might get if you removed one or more words from your search (see my whimsical example).

I have been thinking lately about some of the bad search strategies I see (mostly from students). Instead of choosing one or two keywords, they type a complete sentence or they ignore the fact that the catalog or database treats multiple words as a phrase. And when they get zero hits, they aren't sure why. Now, I'm not trying to blame the searcher here, especially when it comes to trying to figure out whether multiple terms are ANDed together or searched as a phrase (can't we all just bow to Google and agree that multiple words get the AND treatment, and if you want a phrase search, put it in quotes? No? I didn't think so.). I just think they could use some help, and showing them variations on their search seems like a great idea. So wouldn't it be great to help them out this way? I'm sure it's just a pipe dream for the catalog, as I don't think I have ever used an online catalog that even suggests spelling changes (though EBSCO Academic Search Premier seems to do that). But this is how I would love to see the catalog evolve, by adding these kinds of help right at the point of need, during the search. [btw, the one hit on eBay for "college librarian" is pretty cool] Tags: library, ebay, search Posted 9:36 PM to Digital libraries, Web design Comment from: Steve Oberg November 23, 2005 11:25 AM Steve, there are in fact some catalogs that do use Google's "did you mean" API. Not quite the same thing as the eBay example, but similar. This is (unfortunately) not something provided by the ILS vendor(s) that I know of, but rather something that is tacked on on the front end by enterprising technogeek librarians. See, e.g. http://www.jaunter.com/ which bills itself as the first service to utilize this. There is nothing technologically keeping someone from doing this on his or her own rather than paying a commercial entity. See an example live site at http://catalog.dbrl.org/ Steve Comment from: Steve Lawson November 23, 2005 04:49 PM Thanks, Steve--I figured someone had to be doing it, and I just hadn't seen it. Nice to see it in action. Jaunter looks like an interesting and fairly elegant service. Seeing that it uses the Google API to do the spellchecking, my first thought was "hey, maybe I could do this!" Then I remembered that (1) I know just enough JavaScript to break stuff and (2) Jaunter must have some commercial-level agreement with Google, as we'd run through the 1,000 queries per day limit in a hurry on our catalog (some days I feel like I do 1,000 searches myself). (Also, Steve, I added your blog to my aggregator. Looking forward to reading some of the archives.)

Unintended consequences

November 24, 2005

Michael Stephens of Tame the Web has an interesting post entitled The Unintended Consequences of Social Software (or Putting Yourself Out There) It is interesting not just because he links to my family photos under "happy times," (which is sweet) or because he has nice things to say about the Tutt Library Flickr page that my colleagues and I have set up (which is awesome). It is especially interesting because this post is an example of what the post is about (how's that for recursion?): the unintended consequences of living online. I had been fretting a bit about the degree to which I want to keep my private and professional personae separate. But when I see links to my personal photos and my work photos in the same post on someone else's blog, I realize the cat is already out the bag and anyone who is paying attention can figure out that Flickr's Hatchibombotar is the same dude working on the other Flickr page for his library. I suppose the point, for those of us who seem to tend toward a "high degree of self-disclosure" (to borrow a phrase from Michael's post) is that we need to think about those disclosures before making them, as there is little you can do afterward to "un-disclose." For me, so far, so good; I'd love for the world to check out the Halloween pics of my boys. But I do worry that I'll end up disclosing things that could embarrass them when they are older (and yes, I realize that they will find every single photograph of them embarrassing when they hit about 12 years of age. Note to my boys in 2015 when they find this on some post-Google search: tough luck, guys!). Tags: social_software, unintendedconsequences. flickr Posted 10:31 PM to Navel gazing, Social software Comment from: Michael Stephens November 25, 2005 06:16 AM What a cool post...thx!

Checking spelling in the catalog

November 26, 2005
From the ask-and-ye-shall-receive department: So just the other day I was griping in this space that our online catalog won't even do spelling suggestions, let alone the nifty "get more results with fewer keywords" suggestion from eBay. Today in my email is a message from our systems librarian saying that our III catalog, Tiger, has been upgraded to release 2006LE. Looking at Jenny Levine's post from June entitled Innovative Gets Busy!, I see that, among other features, spell checking on catalog searches is included in this release. Cool. I'll let you know how well it actually works. The main thing that had me already excited about this release was its support for RSS. Now we will be able to display existing RSS feeds on catalog pages without resorting to FeedBurner or other third-party RSS-to-HTML converters. And, much more importantly, it looks like this release will allow us to create RSS feeds for patron information ("books I have checked out" with due dates) and new title lists (see page 8 of the III June newsletter (PDF) for "details," if you can call them that). I think this all comes bundled with this release, but I believe that III also has some kind of paid add-on incorporating RSS, too, so I can't be sure. The main reason I can't be sure is that III's web site isn't very helpful. You'd think they'd have a big, prominent web page telling us how fab their new release is, but I can't find anything that isn't part of a PDF newsletter. Bleah. Tags: library, catalogs, spellcheck Posted 6:04 PM to Catalogs

Buy nothing @ your library!

November 28, 2005
Well, I am three days late and a dollar short on this one (and Jessamyn West has already posted on this topic), but here goes: I would think that public libraries and Buy Nothing Day should go hand in hand. The idea behind Buy Nothing Day is to opt out of the post-Thanksgiving capitalist orgy, and, instead of trampling your neighbors at the local Wal Mart on the day after Thanksgiving, spend your time doing anything except buying stuff. And where better to not buy stuff than your local public library? Maybe libraries wouldn't want to touch this for fear of ticking off local businesses, but I'd love to see a "Buy nothing @ your library" promotion. For myself, I tend to observe BND as a "no shopping" day, since I always seem to end up buying food or some other borderline necessity. This year, I was doing great until the evening when I inexplicably had the urge to go to McDonalds (that Adbusters bte noir) for french fries. Tags: library, buynothingday Posted 4:37 PM to Public relations

Comment from: Emilie November 28, 2005 05:42 PM Well if it makes you (and Jessamyn) happy, we were open over here in Mesa County. We didn't promote it as buy nothing day, but we did advertise that we would be open on Friday. I would say that we had an average amount of usage for a Friday...lots of reader's advisory and computer usage, and a few reference questions. Comment from: Steve Lawson November 28, 2005 07:56 PM Cool! Of course, I'm great at coming up with ideas for other libraries; with the College on Thanksgiving break, we were closed Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. And I'd say that "average" usage on a day when the TV tells us that we are all supposed to be out shopping is pretty darn good.

Library 2.0 / Library 360 / Library 3-D

December 02, 2005
Some time soon I plan to jump into the Library 2.0 / Web 2.0 fray (I have no idea what it means, but I'm for it! I want my Library 2.0!), but in the meantime, I'm digging TangognaT's snarky post on Library 360 (which I found via Information Wants to Be Free) The main post is funny enough (item five: "Spartan Armor replaces trusty cardigans"), but it was TagognaT's follow up comment that had me laughing out loud: "I would not be surprised to find out that Library 2.0 can also make french fries and tie my shoes." Ha! Reminds me of Tom Waits' Step Right Up That's right, it filets, it chops It dices, slices, never stops lasts a lifetime, mows your lawn And it mows your lawn and it picks up the kids from school It gets rid of unwanted facial hair it gets rid of embarrassing age spots It delivers a pizza and it lengthens, and it strengthens And it finds that slipper that's been at large under the chaise longe for several weeks ... and so on. Love it. How about "Library 2000!" Or "Library 3-D!" Or "We Are Sorry the OPAC Still Sucks After Twenty Years (And We Are Sorry We Are Still Using Stupid Acronyms Like OPAC)!" Tags: library, library2.0, web2.0, tom_waits Posted 10:34 AM to Digital libraries, Social software

Housekeeping: RSS changes

December 05, 2005
Those of you who subscribe to this blog via RSS probably noticed a change yesterday; the main feed for the site now also includes the "link blog" that appears in the right column on the site, and is consists of items in my del.icio.us bookmarks that I tag with see_also. I hope none of you object to that change--I think of that linkblog as an important part of See Also. The feed also has a link to the comments for each main blog post (including a counter for the number of comments actually there). In the next day or so, I plan to change the code on the page so that people who use RSS autodiscovery will discover the feed I want and not all the default MT feeds that are still linked on each page. If you are a subscriber, you might want to double-check that your are signed up for http://feeds.feedburner.com/seealso/, and not a feed that starts with http://library.coloradocollege.edu/steve/ Lastly, look for an email subscription box in the left-hand column soon. If you have any problems with or questions about the feed from this site, please leave me a comment below. Posted 2:49 PM to Navel gazing

News flash: library blogger not in habit of sustained reading of complex texts
December 12, 2005

I have been pretty busy this year (added a son to the family, started this blog, showed up for work most days), but one thing I haven't been doing much of - to my shame as a librarian - is reading. About a year ago, I gave 43 Things, the social software site for goals - a whirl. One of the "things" I put on my to-do list was "read 30 books in 2005." I have since deleted my 43 Things account (social software for what amounted to New Year's resolutions wasn't really my thing, so to speak), but that resolution has stuck in my mind. At the time I thought 30 was a little embarrassing as a goal, but today, with three weeks left in the year, I'm still nine books short. I have only written two reviews all year for Bookends, the book review blog I set up at work (thank goodness for my colleagues - especially Gwen - for keeping that site alive). Since late 1996, I have kept a little reading journal in a little black spiral-bound sketchbook (some of those books I read in 1996/97 are still all-time favorites: Robert Graves Good-Bye to All That; David Foster Wallace Infinite Jest; Sebastian Japrisot A Very Long Engagement). Now, mostly as an excuse to try it out, I have put this year's reading on Library Thing; you can see my catalog there, and the Library Thing "blog widget" is hanging out on the right side of this entry . If you haven't played with Library Thing yet, you should. I first read about it on Library Stuff, and, as I often do with social software sites, I immediately set up an account and did nothing with it. But adding my sad little list of books read this year gave me the chance to see what an elegant piece of work Library Thing is. You can search Amazon or a long list of libraries to create records for your personal library. You can tag your books (of course), and add comments, reviews, star ratings, etc. And then you can dive into all the social goodness on the zeitgeist page; my favorite is the "top 10 most contentious books: Highest standard deviation of star ratings." Wouldn't it be cool if a library catalog itself was fun to play with in this way? If library users could keep their own personal catalog of books, and compare lists, reviews, most popular books lists, etc. with other readers? If the first line of search help read "Be sloppy, Do what you want"(as it does on the "add books" screen of Library Thing)? Cool stuff. Almost cool enough to make me forget how few books I read this year. There's always next year. Posted 10:58 PM to Books and reading Random books from my library Slouching Towards Bethlehem : Essays by Joan Didion

U.S.! : A Novel by Chris Bachelder

Someone comes to town, someone leaves town by Cory Doctorow

powered by LibraryThing

Librarian code skillz

December 16, 2005
Do librarians need to be programmers? As the Simpsons' Reverend Lovejoy says, "short answer, no with an if; long answer, yes with a but." This memelet - librarians as coders - has been going around for the past few months. I first saw it when librarian.net linked to Dan Chudnov's post A new era of web (and library) development. The money quote from Chudnov is: This kind of message needs to be broadcast profession-wide - at the TLA meeting this past April several audience members challenged my assertion that "more of us need to be coders." My response was, and remains, that in the aggregate, our profession is borderline incompetent w/r/to software development, and the more people we can get who understand this stuff, the more likely our chances of basic survival as an industry. The meme was picked up, extended, and debated by (among others) Librarian In Black, Library Web Chic, Science Library Pad, and Information Wants to Be Free. Of course no one is saying that we all need to write code; most librarians are much better suited for doing reference interviews, or bibliographic instruction, or raising money, or dealing with the board of trustees, or cataloging a unique manuscript, or reading to a bunch of pre-schoolers. And that doesn't mean that those librarians aren't technology-savvy in terms of using and understanding their tools, be those databases, smart classrooms, or what have you. But when push comes to shove, it sure would help to have someone in the library who knew how to do a little coding. And I'm not talking about building an application from scratch. A little script to take some information from one place, alter it, format it, and put it somewhere else could save the day. Making one library application talk to another one could be a small miracle. Chudnov makes it clear in his response to Dorothea Salo's comment on his post that he's not saying we all need to be developers, but that the more we know about how code works, the more we can "shift the mean" toward a more knowledgeable and competent profession. I'm all for that. I'm even willing to throw markup in with coding; HTML and CSS are pretty easy to learn. And with so many of our services being web-based, we really need people whose knowledge of HTML goes beyond Dreamweaver. All you need to sharpen your skills is a site that you care about enough to work on a lot, but isn't the main site for your library. That way your boss won't notice when you make all the fonts 1px high by accident, or float the main content off the screen. (A blog would do nicely.) The same aforementioned Ms Salo is responsible for one of my favorite blog posts of the year (which you will find in my del.icio.us bookmarks affectionately tagged rant+geek), entitled Just hack it.You should read the whole post, but here is the part that I'm going to

have carved in stone someday: What it takes is recognizing that its a solvable problem and being willing to bash the system with a large rock, cursing the whole time, until it does what youre asking it to. This is what I personally do to systems. I am not a trained programmer; I just beat things with rocks until they work. Its not expertise, just bloodyminded determination to build something useful and time-saving. I believe I have mentioned before how disappointed I am in librarians general unwillingness to beat things with rocks until they work? Im not a programmer! doesnt cut it, sorry. As for me, I'm not a programmer. The last language I learned was Applesoft Basic on the good ol' Apple ][+. But I do like beating things with rocks until they work, and after a couple of years of making sites like this one, and making some frankly tentative changes on the library site, I'm getting pretty good with the (X)HTML and CSS. Not as good as a real web designer, but good enough for library work. So I'm going to take my first steps toward coding by learning JavaScript this year. As a real web designer, Cameron Moll, says in his predictions for 2006: Ive been able to get by the last few years with my measly JavaScript skills, you know where you just copy and paste existing scripts? Yeah, those skills. Thatll change in 2006. You and me both, Cameron. Now, I think real coders may turn their noses up at JavaScript, but with AJAX as one of the big buzzwords this year, JavaScript seems to be making a comeback, and demonstrating that it has more uses than just annoying people with rollovers and popups. So with my copy of Beginning JavaScript at hand, I plan to take some steps toward coding. I'll keep you all posted on how that is going. On second thought, I won't have to keep you posted; when you come back to See Also and find a lot of crazy mouseovers and forms and stuff, you'll know I have been hitting the JavaScript. Tags: library, librarians, programming, javascript, beating_things_with_rocks Posted 10:41 PM to Digital libraries, Librarians and the profession, Web design Comment from: Richard Akerman December 17, 2005 05:06 AM I think JavaScript is actually a great place to start - it's a relatively simple language, but it's on its way to becoming a fundamental component of infrastructure "glue". You gain a lot of power over the web experience by mastering JavaScript. Comment from: Steve Lawson December 17, 2005 09:00 AM Thanks for confirming my choice, Richard. I was joking, of course, about the rollovers and pop-ups. I'm hoping to subtly affect the "web experience" of our users, as you suggest. I first decided that I needed to really learn JS (rather than just cut and paste) when putting together our library's map and directions page with Google Maps, and it seemed like knowing a little JavaScript would have saved me a lot of time trying to change the code through trial-and-error (and error and error and error).

2005 Non-Required Reading

December 20, 2005
I love the year-end lists. (If you love year-end lists, you surely know of the exhaustive annual Fimoculous meta-list). I have put together a little year-end non-required reading list of the library-related stuff I have read this year that has really stuck with me; that I have read and re-read, or recommended to others, or has shaped my thinking about libraries, librarianship, and the web. I think all these first appeared in 2005 (though perhaps the OPAC Manifesto had earlier origins), and it's all available on the web (though for one article, you need access to a Project Muse subscription). I think the vast majority of the words I read this year were on a screen, rather than on paper. Of course this list is missing loads of great stuff. If you have your own list of "greatest hits" for 2005, leave a comment or a trackback with a citation; I'd love to read more. Tags: library, 2005, list, reading Click through to see the list... Non-required reading, 2005 In no particular order: What I Wish I Had Known by Roy Tennant in Library Journal. I want to be Roy Tennant when I grow up. I suppose if I try and learn these lessons now, I'll have a fighting chance. Let's Call It the "Ubiquitous Library" Instead . . . by Charles B. Lowry. In portal: Libraries and the Academy 5.3 (2005) 293-296. (Subscription to Project Muse needed for access). This is a clear vision of the "digital library" (one of the terms he is trying to replace with "ubiquitous library"), but it is already looking a little dated, as it doesn't take into account some of ideas inherent in library2.0. What is Web 2.0? by Tim O'Reilly on the O'Reilly Network. If you read only one article on Web 2.0, this is the one to read. Web 2.0

is a contested term, but O'Reilly makes a good case that something important is happening. Library 2.0: The Road Ahead by John Blyberg on blyberg.net. It is a little harder to find a singular post to sum up the idea of Library 2.0. You can start with my del.icio.us bookmarks tagged library2.0, then hit Michael Casey's Library Crunch and go from there. But this post by John Blyberg is a very good one (as is his ILS Customer Bill-of-Rights, the follow-up and all the associated responses and commentary that it generated.) The OPAC Manifesto by Jessamyn West and friends on librarian.net. I have been working on re-designing our catalog this year and find this manifesto inspiring, along with Blyberg's aforementioned Bill of Rights. Dumb down the catalog? Yes, lets! by Meredith Farkas on Information Wants to Be Free. While we are on catalogs, I'll throw in this one by Meredith (check out the links in her post, too). I love Information Wants to Be Free; it sort of snuck up on me as my favorite library blog this year. It has a very high signal-to-noise ratio, and Meredith's writing is a joy to read. The user interface that isn't by Lorcan Dempsey on Lorcan Dempsey's Weblog. We all know that the library comes up short in users' estimation when compared to Amazon and Google. This is the clearest analysis I have read of why this is true, and, though he doesn't mention "library 2.0," I think his concept of "intrastructure" plays right into L2-land. The eruption of posts in response to Gorman's "Blog People" rant that made late February / early March so much fun. Many of them are collected in An an Accumulation of Random Facts and Paragraphs From The Blog People on Michael Gorman by Blake Carver on LISNews.org. My favorite is probably from Neil Gaiman (scroll down past the first ellipsis). Just hack it by Dorothea Salo on Caveat Lector. There is nothing I like better than Dorothea on a tear. Go, Dorothea, go! Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags by Clay Shirky. I don't agree with everything he says--I have a bit more faith in traditional metadata and subject headings--but Shirky makes a compelling case for folksonomy. 32 Small Tips to Increase Innovation Capacity for You and Your Library (three PDFs: part 1, part 2, and part 3) by Stephen Abram, via Stephen's Lighthouse / Stephen Abram Articles and Presentations. "Small tips," but big ideas from the big brain of Stephen Abram. Posted 9:58 PM to Blogs and blogging, Professional reading Comment from: Roy Tennant December 21, 2005 01:11 PM Thanks a lot for the compliment, but growing up is over-rated. Comment from: Lorcan Dempsey December 22, 2005 06:20 PM But what does Roy want to be when he grows up ;-)

Pay to play at ALA?

December 21, 2005
If you read enough library blogs to be aware of See Also, then you have probably seen the recent flurry of activity around Jenny Levine's recent posts Why I'm Not Joining ALA Right Now After All and her follow-up Continuing Conference Conversations. The main thrust of her post is that it is absurd that she should have to pay $165 just to speak at a conference that she is not otherwise attending, even when she was invited by the conference organizers to present. There has been a lot of commentary on these posts and the issues that surround them. If you need to catch up, set a good example for the ALA Council email list members and read Jenny's original posts, linked above. Then, if you have the time, check out the archives of the ALA Council email list starting here with the thread titled "honked off presenters" (!), though the thread changes name several times. K.G. Schneider gets a gold star for not hauling off and telling her fellow Council members to RTFA. After that, you can see what I have tagged ala+conference on del.icio.us recently, or see what links Technorati has picked up to Jenny's original post. The whole thing has got me thinking about (1) what conference organizers should do for presenters, and (2) what good is the ALA anyway? Conference presenters I have had a bit of experience with conferences, but just a bit. I have been to at least one conference per year since library school (many of those the big ALA Annual Conference); I was on the Budget and Development Committee of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries (itself a division of ALA) for several years (where I learned just how absurdly expensive it is to put on a good conference); I have been on the Program Planning Committee for the Colorado Association of Libraries conference for the past two years; and I have presented at a conference exactly once, at CAL in November of this year. I think I can offer one single, golden rule about all this: if the conference invites a speaker (as opposed to just accepting a speaker's proposal) the speaker should not have to pay to register for the conference. Isn't that just common sense? By inviting the speaker, the conference organizers are saying that the speaker is important to the success of the conference. That rule should work regardless of how large or small the conference is, whether the speaker is nationally known or just the best speaker in town, and regardless of the membership status of the speaker. Invited speakers don't pay to register. I'm a little less certain about this one, but I'll throw it out there anyway: any speaker (invited or merely "accepted") should have the option of not registering for the conference if he or she is only presenting and is not attending the rest of the conference. This seems like a fair way to accommodate those who can't afford to "pay to speak," or who simply don't have time to attend the full conference. That was the policy at CAL this year. I'm less certain about that one because I think it is best if presenters don't just breeze in and out. At Internet Librarian this year, it was

possible to see a person present in the morning, sit next to him or her in the audience of an afternoon session, and see them again at the hotel bar in the evening. That promotes discussion and sharing, and even helps develop the next wave of presenters for future conferences. But I do believe that presenters should have the option to get in and get out for free. ALA: What is it good for? The conference in question (where Jenny Levine is scheduled to present) is the 2006 Public Library Association Conference. PLA, as you are probably aware, is a division of ALA. So, for those unhappy with the current situation, a lot of the complaints and criticism have been leveled at the ALA. The way ALA treats its presenters has been compared unfavorably to the way Information Today treats presenters at Internet Librarian. Defenders of ALA (mostly on the Council email list) have wondered why librarians could treat "their" organization in so cavalier a fashion as to expect any monetary consideration, even the waiving of the registration fee. It is, not surprisingly, K. G. Schneider who is able to identify and bring out this disconnect. I quote here from one of her email messages to the Council list where she is talking about Information Today and Internet Librarian: After the conference is over, it's not as if the company is there championing intellectual freedom, organizing Banned Books Week, lobbying in Washington, etc. It goes back to printing magazines. There's nothing wrong with that but to me it speaks volumes that the younger set can't distinguish between ALA and a commercial company. I don't think they are being obtuse: I think they're being honest. You may disagree, but they have to feel and believe that ALA is providing them a good that is worth the return on investment. It's true; when I think of ALA, I don't think of it as a lobbying organization or as a champion of intellectual freedom. I think of it as the organization who puts together that bloated conference every year. I think of it as the organization whose website is hard to navigate. I think of it as the organization currently headed by a technological reactionary. I think of it as practically irrelevant to my work, my interests, and my career. Is that an accurate view of ALA? I'm willing to entertain the possibility that I'm wrong! To be fair, I have had great experiences with some of the "grandchildren" of the ALA. As I mentioned above, I was active in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries for several years, which is a fantastic organization. The only thing I didn't like about RBMS was having to go to ALA each year to attend the section meetings (most of the real action is at the RMBS annual preconference). A common RBMS backchannel conversation is how great RBMS would be if it weren't for ALA. I have had more limited experience with the Literatures in English Section of ACRL, but I have a similarly high regard for it. But ALA-as-ALA just doesn't resonate with me. And, at 35, I don't know if I'm still part of that "younger set" Schneider is talking about or not. I will say that at both my academic library jobs, attending the ALA Annual and participating in ALA committees was the exception rather than the rule, regardless of the librarian's age or years in the profession. At least in academic libraries, the ALA doesn't seem so vital. What can the ALA do? Get rid of the Annual Conference, and put the focus back on the sections and divisions? Concentrate solely on the lobbying, literacy, intellectual freedom angle and become more like the ACLU? I don't know. But as things stand now, I can't see becoming an ALA member or attending an ALA Annual Conference any time soon. Posted 1:03 PM to Conferences, Librarians and the profession Comment from: Emilie December 21, 2005 02:28 PM Until reading the ALA Council listserv, I thought surely the whole thing with Jenny Levine must have merely been an oversight or something. After reading some of those messages, I was once again reminded about the large number of old fogeys in this profession that just insist on doing something a certain way because that is the way it has always been done. While I will continue to be an ALA member (especially since my library pays), I do think that this is an issue that should be addressed.

A new twist on videogames in libraries

December 22, 2005
After those recent long posts, I thought we could all use something short and silly. Dig this video (.mov file) from the University of Michigan where Pacman is chased by a ghost (I think it is "Blinky") through the undergrad library and a computer lab. Funny, I don't remember Pacman screaming in terror when I played the game back in 1980... [Via Jessy and BoingBoing] Posted 11:23 AM to Library

My year in review, 2005

January 01, 2006

I didn't really intend to take the time off between Christmas and New Year's Day, but that's how it worked out. Here, one day late, is my personal wrap-up of 2005. Blogs I started this blog back in August, and so far the experience has lived up to my expectations. I haven't posted as often as I'd like in recent weeks, but I have high hopes for 2006. If my statistics are any indication (and they should be--that's their job!), I'm building a small but growing readership. I'm grateful to you all for reading this, and I welcome your comments and criticism. This was a big year for blogging at my library. At Tutt Library, we purchased Movable Type and got our book review blog, Bookends, back online. I also set up a blog for my director's Library Program Committee, and put our library news page in blog format. Social software
del.icio.us

I started using del.icio.us in earnest one year ago. Now I have over one thousand bookmarks, and find it hard to imagine life online without it. I bookmark and tag just about anything that catches my attention online, knowing I'll eventually want to find it again.
Flickr

I had a Flickr account for many months before I did anything with it. Once I go the hang of it, though, I started using my personal Flickr account for family photos, as it is easier and more fun than assembling the kind of "gallery" pages I had been using for the past few years. Then I got Tutt Library set up with an account that we are using to show off our new coffee cart, photos of the library, our holiday party, and, of course, librarian trading cards.
pbwiki

Our reference department set up a wiki this year that should eventually replace our reference manual; people were more enthusiastic about the wiki than I thought they would be, and now it looks like the wiki will take over our whole intranet. We are using pbwiki, which is very easy to use. It also sets up a private, password-protected wiki by default, which was what we wanted. (I blogged this before.)
Library Thing

My other favorite social software application of the year is Library Thing, which I have also blogged before. I expect to upgrade to a paid account there soon. (BTW, I finished two more books--On Beauty by Zadie Smith and Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion--before the end of the year, brining my total to 23. Pretty bad (the total, not the books).) Conferences
Internet Librarian

This was my first year at Internet Librarian, and it lived up to my high expectations. I blogged it like a dead horse, met all the bloggers I'd hoped to meet (and started some lasting friendships and conversations, too). A blast.
CAL

I helped plan the program for this year's Colorado Association of Libraries meeting in Denver, and made my first ever conference presentation, Teach an Old Blog New Tricks, there. Real life Offline, away from work, came the biggest and most important event of my year: the birth of my son, Nicholas in June. My older son, Luke, has done an admirable job of adjusting to no longer being the baby of the family. I'm still trying to adjust to being the father of two. Posted 8:20 PM to Blogs and blogging, Library, Navel gazing, Social software

Congratulations, Coach Paterno

January 03, 2006
I don't follow college football in any serious way, but I have a big soft spot for Penn State coach, Joe Paterno.

Joe and his wife, Sue, were the co-chairs of the expansion campaign for the PSU library in the 1990s, and, in addition to raising $14 million, they gave a quarter of a million dollars of their own money to the library building effort. Those figures from the Joe Paterno bio page at PSU, along with this: "I've said it a hundred times," Paterno stated at the time the drive began, "a great library is the heart of a great university, and if we want to remain a big league university, we've got to have a big league library." Hence, the Paterno Library. As if that weren't enough, Paterno and family gave more money to the University to endow faculty positions, including the "Paterno Family Professor in Literature," a position currently held by one of my favorite academic author/bloggers, Michael Brub. So that's why I spent the last five hours of my life watching Penn State finally beat Florida State, 26 - 23 in triple overtime in the Orange Bowl. Whew! Tags: library, joe_paterno, football, orange_bowl Posted 11:22 PM to Navel gazing

Library 2.0: groping toward a definition through comments

January 05, 2006
I have been continuing to think about Library 2.0, whatever it may be (aren't we up to library 2.0.1 or something?), but still don't have a nice juicy post put together for See Also yet. I have, however, been quite busy with the comments on other blogs. I hope this isn't too cheesy, but I thought I'd link those comments here, and (I hope) tie them all together with a new post soon. (Have I mentioned my lazyweb request for a "reverse trackback" that would help me see all my comments on other people's blogs in one place?) So, back in December, Michael Stephens posted his Ten Defining Moments: Library 2.0 Events of 2005 on his blog, Tame the Web. It includes items that I thought were indisputably "L2," such as Ann Arbor District Library's new site and the blogging and Flickring of Internet Librarian 2005 But Michael also included some non-tech stuff that I thought might be a stretch for L2, such as Rock the Shelves and the Gaming in Libraries symposium. So I left a comment, saying so. I had hoped to start a discussion, but this was three days before Christmas, and no one seemed to want to take me up on it. But Michael went ahead and took up my question, asking Michael Casey of Library Crunch, Stephen Abram of Stephen's Lighthouse, and John Blyberg of blyberg.net to address the questions I raised. You can read what they had to say on Tame the Web's Defining Library 2.0: Is it More than Technology?, and also see my response to their comments in that same post. So, at this point, I'm feeling a bit more charitable towards the idea that L2 isn't just a web design philosophy, and groping toward an idea of a "pattern language" that might help us distinguish a "Library 2.0" program from a simply "good" program. But when I wanted to comment on Walt Crawford's post Library 2.0: An open call, I felt more comfortable arguing for Library 2.0 as a web phenomenon. Lastly, Michael Casey wrote a very good post (with a very good title), Born in the Biblioblogsphere. He responds to Steven M. Cohen's criticism of Library 2.0 as nothing new, and amplifies some of what he wrote for Tame the Web. My comment is mostly me thanking Michael for writing what I had wanted to say in response to Steven: Library 2.0 doesn't have to be entirely new or revolutionary to be worthwhile. So that's where I stand now. I'll try and wrap that up into something more coherent soon. Tags: library, library2.0 Posted 9:29 PM to Blogs and blogging, Digital libraries, Service Comment from: James Jacobs January 5, 2006 11:42 PM Hey Steve. I noticed your comment on Walt's blog re web 2.0. You parenthetically asked for live examples of user-added tags. Check out PennTags (link to my blog). BTW, I've moved on from UCSD to the bay area. Still blogging though. James Comment from: Steven M. Cohen January 6, 2006 09:00 AM My comment on L2 was not a criticism, only a commentary. Criticism sounds negative. I'm done being negative... Comment from: Steve Lawson January 6, 2006 11:05 AM @James: thanks for the link to PennTags. I had looked at it briefly before, but hadn't realized it enabled easy tagging of the catalog. It doesn't look like you can see the tags in the actual catalog, though (i.e., "Top tags for this book are:"), so the new taggy metadata won't help

the catalog users who don't use PennTags. @Steven: I thought your post was "critical," but not in a negative way. It seems like you have a well-argued position on Library 2.0 that is contrary to the prevailing winds on most library blogs. I'm sympathetic to your view, if not quite in agreement with it. In any case, I did not mean to imply that you were being gratuitously negative. Thanks for the comment. Comment from: Steven M. Cohen January 6, 2006 07:28 PM NP, Steve! Just wanted to clear the air on any negativity. Yes, my view on L2 is different than others In fact, I still don't buy into why we need it if it's just a continuation of what we've been doing over the past century. Is it a new librarian blood thing? Out with the old, in with the new? I just don't know. There has been no usable explanation for L2. First it was all about tech and now the pro-L2's are changing what they have said in the past that now it's not. I'm more confused than ever... Comment from: Michael Winkler January 23, 2006 07:55 PM Just picking up on the PennTags comments. Give a guy a chance! We've just gotten started. I'm working on an AJAX script to put tags lists into the catalog...working with other people's software there, so I have to be careful. Our intent is that tagging becomes useful in as many contextes as possible...otherwise, we'd just use delicious. Anyway, we're now capturing citation data from the catalog, from our e-resources database, image database and from our link resolver. Soon, we'll add xbel, delicious and rtf export (in addition to the existing RSS). We organize things into projects, tags, owners and posts. And soon, will begin to collect 'impact' factors of posts and owners. Just an update on where we are going... Comment from: Steve Lawson January 23, 2006 08:39 PM Right on, Michael! That sounds very exciting. I hope you keep us all updated on this project. And, just to be clear, I didn't mean to imply in my comment above that PennTags was't any good since the tags didn't appear in the catalog, only that it didn't quite fit what I was talking about at Walt at Random, which was "exploring the use of user-added tags in the catalog (no live examples that I know of)." Which, I guess, is still true, though you are getting closer. Thanks for commenting. Comment from: Michael Winkler March 9, 2006 08:35 PM Update: now see PennTags show up in the Penn OPAC. Many folks have talked about this as an interesting enhancement. This is an 'early' development. As an example, see: http://tags.library.upenn.edu/makerecord/voyager/1039 Please send comments on how catalog tags should be expressed. We are in the early stage of development (although development is fast).

A Library 2.0 hangover

January 10, 2006
Alternate titles for this post: 1. There is no such thing as Library 2.0 and this is a blog post about it. (Apologies for bastardizing the first line of Steven Shapin's book The Scientific Revolution.) 2. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? And are pin-dancing angels really Library 2.0? I have spent the last week or so reading and thinking a lot about "Library 2.0"; what it means, how useful the term is, and so on. I capped off the binge Monday with a reading of Walt Crawford's 32-page special issue of Cites & Insights titled Library 2.0 and "Library 2.0" So now I have a Library 2.0 hangover like you wouldn't believe. Hangover as in "geez, that was fun...I think..." and hangover as in "let's never do that again." Listen: I care a lot about many of the things that people write about under the heading of "Library 2.0." I am caring less and less about the term itself, and am certainly not interested in (a) splitting hairs about what is and isn't Library 2.0 or (b) participating in a "with us or against us" campaign. I don't like it when politicians take that line, and I certainly don't like it when librarians do. So today, I'd like to give a few last thoughts on Library 2.0 for the time being, and get back to trying to be a better librarian, and to making my library better. All but the incurably masochistic will be happy to know that this is a whittled-down version of what I had originally intended to post. I took out some criticism of Walt Crawford's article (which is, on balance, very good and very useful), some responses to rhetorical questions (as Homer Simpson says, "do I know what rhetorical means?"), and other stuff. And, at the end, there is a little punchline for those who read that far. Here is why I was originally excited about Library 2.0 (please note that this is not yet another attempt to define the subject): when I read about Library 2.0, I found people who were exploring the same things I was interested in, like the relationship of Web 2.0 technologies and ideas to libraries; using lightweight publishing tools like blogs, and collaborative tools like wikis in the library; and, looking farther down the road, trying to figure out what something like a library catalog or article database might look like if it took full advantage of the web. It also spoke to my fear that libraries were stuck, not in "Library 1.0," but in "Library 95," where we have put a lot of our stuff on the web, but haven't yet adequately integrated ourselves to what people expect from a web experience.

I agree with Walt Crawford that the library can't be the be-all and end-all for everyone's information and cultural needs--it sure isn't for mine. But I also think that libraries need to try to make our tools compatible with users's expectations of how the web works, so when using the library is appropriate for that person, they can integrate their library research better with their existing behaviors on the web. For example, after a library instruction session I did last semester, a student told me he wanted to use del.icio.us to keep track of his research (he brought up del.icio.us, I didn't) and I had to tell him that I didn't think it would work very well, due to the fact that stable URLs in library catalogs and databases are sometimes hard to come by (not to mention problems of authentication, etc.). Now that's just one student, but I think that question of "how can I put all this useful library stuff you are showing me with all the rest of the stuff I am reading/researching/keeping track of?" will become more and more common. Old lesson, re-learned: Be careful what you wish for. One of my reasons for starting a blog was to get involved with conversations exactly like this one. But having to defend posts and comments that felt in their composition more like "thinking out loud" than "my last word on the subject" can be sobering. Frankly, reading Walt Crawford's piece was a bit of a slog--a necessary and important slog, but the very nature of his project made it a slog nonetheless. Here are the passages that were, for me, like a drink of cool water on long, hot march: Luke Rosenberger on the "read-write library": "Library 2.0 should be for us, in part, what StoryCorps has been for radio--we offer our communities the tools, the hosting, the infrastructure, and they bring the stories for us and others to learn from." Aaron Schmidt on social software: "Panacea? No, of course not. A step in the right direction? Yes." Roy Tennant (and, indirectly, Dan Chudnov): "Moving beyond silo-ized "destination" systems to expose our information and services in a wide variety of methods to a diverse set of consuming applications is a good thing.... If that's Library 2.0, then so be it. Call it whatever you want, just stop anguishing over it. As Dan Chudnov says, "Now stop boring us, and help build it. Thomas Dowling: "What really is new and exciting, in my experience, is that the Library 2.0 banner is being picked up by librarians who insist that it move forward with all due speed. If there isn't a commercial option that meets their needs, they will turn to a growing set of high-quality tools to build--and share--the solutions they want. It is a new sense of ownership over those services and a new set of relationships with both vendors and others in the library community." Oh, and the punchline? On Monday morning, I got a somewhat tentative go-ahead on my proposal to write an article on Library 2.0 for an issue of Colorado Libraries about "Managing Change in Libraries." I'm going to give myself a few days to sleep off this Library 2.0 hangover before starting in on that. Actually, revisiting Library 2.0 in a little while with the goal of writing something more detached and less immediate than a blog post, and aimed somewhere besides the world of library bloggers, should be good for me. Colorado Libraries doesn't ask the author to sign away copyright, so if that article comes to pass, I'll post it here. Tags: library, library2.0 Posted 1:58 PM to Blogs and blogging, Digital libraries, Librarians and the profession, Professional reading Comment from: walt January 10, 2006 02:39 PM Great post (including your choice of bullets). "Slog" is a kind word, I think... If I've caused people to start writing posts like this (which I doubt--that's way too much credit to take), then the issue was worthwhile no matter its (many) faults. (And if you think reading it is a slog, imagine writing it!--and editing it, over and over, during a two-week period, more intensively than I've ever edited anything short of a book) Comment from: Steve Lawson January 10, 2006 02:45 PM Thanks, Walt. I appreciate that. I almost speculated in my post as to what a slog it must have been for you to write. Comment from: K.G. Schneider January 10, 2006 02:59 PM Please think out loud as you work on that article, at least enough to sprinkle more good ideas on all of us. I have been working on an L2 piece from my experience as a library administrator and the "view from within." My feeling is many good ideas have been swirling around, but we all need to be more concrete about implementation plans and ideas. I know all too well how new movements, in a sense, are analogy tests. Comment from: Laura January 10, 2006 05:26 PM Steve, I think in your L2 hangover you've coined another catchphrase--the insert-hot-blog-topic-of-the-moment hangover. Truly, that's the most accurate term I've heard for the sensation one sometimes gets by the time one has finished catching up with one's feeds. Perhaps we all need to pause to drink more water. Thanks! Comment from: Davey P January 11, 2006 06:27 AM Excellent post Steve! Seeing as you quote Homer, I can't resist responding with a quote from Lisa: "My family never talks about library standards. And every time I try to steer the conversation that way, they make me feel like a nerd." (They Saved Lisa's Brain, http://www.snpp.com/episodes/AABF18) Comment from: Steve Lawson January 11, 2006 07:22 AM

Laura: I think I still have a Gorman hangover; there is still a bad taste in my mouth, anyway. Davey: my all-time favorite Simpsons quote! And I have a lot of favorites. Comment from: Angel January 16, 2006 06:49 PM I am not sure about hangover, but I am certainly about exhausted by the term. The only reason I found this post was because of the Infosciences Carnival. I have Walt's report to read saved on my clips, and I just can't bring myself to read it because to be honest I am tired of the "us against them," the "if you are not with us, you must be stuck in the last century," and a few other things. All I want is to make my library better and to better serve my students (I am an academic librarian). At this point, to be perfectly honest, the term is something I could care less about. Anyways, not much I can do about it other than scan the blog reader and stay away accordingly.

Web design tools: Web Developer Extension and XHTML validator to RSS
January 12, 2006
I thought I'd start a new category of "tools" on this blog, where I'd share some of the tools and applications that I use in my work. Today, I have two web troubleshooting tools I'd like to mention. Web Developer Extension The Web Developer Extension, a Firefox (and Mozilla and Flock) extension written by Chris Pederick, has been around for a while, and is very well-known among people who create web pages, but it is so useful, I thought I'd risk it being old news. Besides, it just reached the milestone of a 1.0 release. The extension installs a toolbar and a right-click (or ctrl-click) pop-up menu. The pull-down menus on the toolbar will give you an extraordinary amount of information on the page you are viewing: outline images without alt attributes; outline all table cells; show CSS ID and class names right on the page; disable all CSS (good to reveal a page's structure, or just to nuke a gawdawufl design "choice"); view style information (turns the cursor into a crosshairs; click on the element of your choice and see all the styles applied to it). But the coolest thing is it lets you edit the CSS (and now the HTML) in a sidebar and view the results in real time. Want to see what your site would look like if you changed the font for your headers? Don't change the actual stylesheet--just load the page, make the change in the "Edit CSS" sidebar, and see what happens immediately. Too cool. XHTML Validator to RSS Karen A. Coombs' post, Bad Code, on Library Web Chic is about trying to maintain valid XHTML and live up to the little W3C validator button she has on one of her sites. (If you don't know what "valid" means in this context, try Why Validate? from the W3C.) I started to think about that, and realized what I really wanted was an RSS feed for the validation results of the See Also home page. A little Googling found me Ben Hammersley's XHTML Validator to RSS, which does exactly that. It couldn't be much simpler: add the URL you want to track to http://www.benhammersley.com/tools/validate.cgi?url= and subscribe. Every time the feed is fetched, the validator runs; if there's an error, you get a message in your feed. I tried it today by putting an innocuous little bit of invald code on the home page (a <br> instead of a <br />) and the next time I reloaded the feed I had the error messages right there in NetNewsWire. Neat! Posted 4:53 PM to Tools, Web design

A non-library blogroll
January 16, 2006
I don't keep a blogroll here for various reasons--lack of space, not wishing to alienate bloggers who don't make my list (though I can't imagine anyone would care too much), not wanting to have to maintain the thing as I add and drop blogs. I don't make my Bloglines subs public because I only use Bloglines as a distant second choice to my usual feed reader, the excellent NetNewsWire Light, a desktop client for the Macintosh. My Bloglines subs don't get updated very often.

Besides, I figure you can tell which blogs I am really influenced by through my links--if I link to it, you know I find it particularly worthwhile and interesting, which is something you can't really tell just from a list. Walt Crawford posted recently on his Bloglines subscription list in Blogs I read, if you care. You can see them here That's reasonably interesting; I thought I read a lot of library blogs, but I ain't got nothing on Walt. But more interesting to me was his shorter list of non-library blogs. And, since I started this post over the weekend, Lorcan Dempsey has a post, Self-aggrandRSSment on some of the non-library blogs he's been reading lately. So I thought I'd post a brief list of my some favorite non-library blogs; I don't link to them much, so I doubt I'd get around to mentioning them otherwise. 43Folders: Merlin Mann's blog (and del.icio.us linkblog and podcasts and wiki and Google group and discussion board (!)) on Getting Things Done, lifehacks, Macintosh, and general good-natured geekiness. Probably my favorite blog of 2005. 456 Berea St.: Swedish web designer Roger Johansson's blog on web design and development. Lots of action in the comments, with good discussion about design, web standards, and the like. If you want to know what professional web designers are discussing, this is a good one. fade theory: a blog about books, reading, and culture from an anonymous female "theorist." I have just started reading this one, and particularly enjoyed her post interlibrary woes about marked-up books arriving on ILL. Inside Higher Ed. and Chronicle of Higher Ed. (subscription only): keeping tabs on academe in general Many-to-Many: "a group weblog on social software." This seemed more vital when Clay Shirky was posting more often (anyone know where he went?), but the rest of the group is still very good. Michael Brub Online: I have been a fan of Brub's writing on academe for a long time, and only relatively recently found his blog. He writes about academe, politics, hockey, culture, and his family. O'Reilly Radar: a good place to keep up on general web and technology stuff. News from Stephen's Web by Stephen Downes: a lot of this has to do with teaching and pedagogy--I skim much of it, but Stephen links to a large number of readings almost every day on technology and higher education. The Valve: another new one (to me, that is), The Valve is a literary site sponsored by the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics (so that should give you an idea of what kind of "literary" talk we're talkin' about here). I have been following their "book event" around Graphs, Maps, Trees, a book of literary history and theory by Franco Moretti. Interesting stuff, and a book I would have never read if it weren't for this blog and their event. Waxy links: my favorite place for web zeitgeisty/meme-de-jour stuff. Wired Campus Blog: no, not that Wired; this is a blog from the Chronicle of Higher Ed. on education-technology news. Unlike the main Chronicle page, this is freely available (though they do link back to the pay site frequently). You're It: a blog on tagging. Tags: blogs, blogroll Posted 4:33 PM to Blogs and blogging

HigherEd BlogCon needs you

January 18, 2006
Just a quick reminder to the blognoscenti that the HigherEd BlogCon call for presenters is still open, and will be through the end of the month. Check out the guidelines for submitting a proposal. According to the call for presenters, "Higher Ed BlogCon 2006 will focus on the use of blogs, wikis, RSS, podcasts, vblogs, and other digital tools in a range of areas in academe." AND there is a track for Libraries and Information Resources AND that track is being chaired by Meredith Farkas of Information Wants To Be Free. Which reminds me: almost all of the conference will be free as in beer (coincidentally, they are waiving all the presenters' registration fees--isn't that generous? ;) ) and relatively free as in freedom, as they tell us that"presentations will be offered under the Creative Commons License." (Though it isn't clear which license or if the presenter will be able to choose.) So where's my proposal, you ask? I'm hoping that it is buried somewhere deep in my subconscious, because I'm having trouble articulating anything interesting at the moment. But watch for me to sneak something in before the deadline--and you can watch as the submission process is mostly public. Tags: higheredblogcon, library, blogging, academic Posted 6:50 PM to Conferences

NextGen Librarian wanted

January 19, 2006
Dave's Blog links to an interesting job ad from Wayne State University: Next Generation Librarian This looks like a job with a lot of cool, fun responsibilities. One would hope that the institution is ready to implement what this person is likely to recommend. Given what Jeff Trzeciak, Associate Dean at Wayne State University, says in his comment on Dave's post, I'd guess

that they are. I don't know about that job title, though. I don't know that I would want "Next Generation Librarian" on my business card. If you didn't look like Cory Doctorow or Xeni Jardin, people would be disappointed. I don't know if I'd want to be a 60 year-old "NextGen Librarian" in the year 2030. Maybe "Technology Innovation Librarian?" And the person that gets this job? Needs to blog it. Posted 1:25 PM to Librarians and the profession Comment from: Ayanna January 27, 2006 04:55 PM True. It also brings to mind the fact that some tech-savvy may not actually be in the "nextgen" demographic, and may be insulted by the implication. Although the job does sound intriguing (personally, I'd love a tablet laptop). Comment from: Jeff Trzeciak February 4, 2006 06:29 PM Greetings, Steve! I just thought I'd respond to this post as well! The "NextGen" title shouldn't be confused with "NexGen". We made a decision to post as "NextGen" because we always want the individual to be thinking about the next generation of technologies. We originally thought "NexGen" but thought that it was too focused on a demographic. So, we are thinking long term. Besides....part of the title was to get people talking about these types of services/resources. We wanted to "create a buzz". Obviously, we accomplished that! Comment from: Steve Lawson February 5, 2006 07:51 AM Thanks for your comment, Jeff. I admit that the distinction between "NexGen" and "NextGen" was lost on me (I don't think I'd ever noticed that the mailing list didn't have the "t"). But, yes, I guess you do have a bit of a buzz, and I hope that it has brought you a lot of great applicants. It's not too late for you to add "shares daily experiences of the job on a blog" to the "essential duties" is it?

Keeping up with the Carnival of the Infosciences

January 20, 2006
TangognaT was kind enough to link to my Library 2.0 hangover post in the "Editor's Choice" section when she hosted Carnival of the Infosciences #20 on Monday. After some confusion months ago, I finally understood that the Carnival was a weekly wrap-up of interesting posts in the "biblioblogosphere" (a word which is glued to its scare quotes in the See Also Manual of Style). Like a carnival, this wrap-up pulls up stakes each week and moves to another host blog (unlike a carnival, the games are not rigged, and it is your own fault if you eat too many corn dogs and throw up). Ideally, if you follow the Carnival, you'll find out about new blogs each week from the links, and visit host blogs that you might not otherwise visit. Pretty neat. The problem was, due to its peripatetic nature, I frequently missed the carnival. I had seen the wiki, but there was no way I would remember to check it each Monday to see where the carnival had gone. "Someone," I thought, "needs to take the bull by the horns and make an RSS feed for the Carnival of the Infosciences! It might be hard work; it might entail thankless hours slaving over a hot text editor to get it right; but it must be done!"

ferriswhell at night by foverversouls on Flickr. Posted here thanks to the Creative Commons.

Of course, I now realize (as probably everyone else already does) that there already exists an RSS feed for the Carnival of the Infosciences, hosted by the Blog Carnival Index who apparently does that sort of thing. Grab the link above, put it in your RSS aggregator, and follow the carnival from blog to blog like a drunken sailor intent on winning a prize for his gal back home. Tags: library, carnival, carnival_of_the_infosciences, blogging Posted 11:17 PM to Blogs and blogging Comment from: Laura January 25, 2006 07:05 PM Actually, despite the fact that I've been following (or attempting to follow) the Carnival from its very beginnings, I am just dense enough that I had not realized until you pointed it out that there was a handy-dandy Carnival of the Infosciences RSS feed. . . so thanks! Without the collective wisdom of the biblioblogosphere (no scare quotes in the lis.dom manual of style on that one, but I can understand the desire to use them), we'd all be lost.

Comment from: Steve Lawson January 25, 2006 10:27 PM Laura, I'm glad to know (a) I'm not the only one who didn't know about the RSS feed and (b) that I could help spread the word!

Zeldman on "Web 3.0" -or- What are we doing right?

January 20, 2006
Thanks to TangognaT's (whom I have now just linked to twice this evening, and whose palindromic nom de blog I have only just now figured out) link, I read web designer and standards evangelist Jeffrey Zeldman's article Web 3.0. The article and ideas don't map seamlessly to Library 2.0; libraries never had a "bubble" that I was aware of (at least, I never managed to get any stock options), and I don't think Yahoo! is going to buy AADL any time soon. But Zeldman's thoughts on hype and spin which can obscure the good work people are doing strikes pretty close to home, as does his effort to actually articulate what those good things are. For Zeldman, the worthwhile part of "Web 2.0" has to do with "small teams of sharp people...designing smart web applications" that mostly "foster community and collaboration," and are usually built with open-source technology on the back end and web standards on the front end. Somewhat against my better judgement, I thought I'd lift my moratorium on "Library 2.0" and try once more to separate signal from noise. What is the "good work" that the hype/controversy/hostility surrounding Library 2.0 might obscure? Here's what I got so far: 1. recognizing that patrons have an online life outside the library, and trying to make our online presence more consonant with their experience and expectations; 2. opening up our data to allow others (other libraries, librarians, programmers, patrons) to use that data in novel ways; 3. building better, simpler, more usable, more accessible interfaces; 4. all kinds of librarians (not just "systems" librarians) seizing blogs, wikis, RSS, and other simple web tools to communicate with each other and with our patrons; 5. viewing our patrons as collaborators in creating community-based content; 6. challenging vendors to help us with all of the above, and working around them when they don't. The sharp-eyed reader will note that I stole most of this from the people I quoted admiringly in my Library 2.0 hangover post. I try to only steal from the best. Lastly, here is Zeldman's parting advice to those who haven't jumped on the 2.0 bandwagon: To you who feel like failures because you spent last year honing your web skills and serving clients, or running a business, or perhaps publishing content [or, says Steve, teaching BI sessions to students, building unique collections of books and manuscripts, helping people learn to read, or answering reference questions patiently, thoroughly, and accurately] you are special and lovely, so hold that pretty head high, and never let them see the tears. Tags: library, library_2.0, web_2.0, zeldman Posted 11:47 PM to Digital libraries, Service, Social software, Web design

Eleventh-hour HigherEd BlogCon submission

January 30, 2006
OK, I squeaked my proposal for HigherEd BlogCon in at about the eleventh hour. I had a lousy week last week (though not as lousy as my son Luke, who had pneumonia (he's fine)), so this got put way on the back burner. If you care to see it, I ended up submitting it to the Web Sites and Web Development track, as my topic wasn't very library-specific. The working title is "Know Enough to be Dangerous: Tools for taking control of HTML and CSS.". In short, the idea is a session on how to use tools like the Firefox Web Developer Toolbar and a little trial-and-error to take control of your blog. It will be aimed at those who are enthusiastic and tech-savvy enough to set up a blog (or similar site) but don't have enough confidence in their HTML or CSS skills to mess with the code. This will teach you how to break your site real good! And put it back together again, of course. This is all assuming they accept the proposal. If they don't, I will simply cry silently, delete this post, and pretend it never happened. Posted 10:46 PM to Blogs and blogging, Conferences, Web design Comment from: Dorothea January 31, 2006 07:12 AM I'll look forward to that one. I'm so old-school that I've never used the Firefox development plugins, though everyone I know who does web design RAVES about them. Comment from: Steve Lawson January 31, 2006 10:22 AM Thanks, Dorothea. I actually think that the developers plugin is old school: more like a Swiss Army Knife for web tinkering than a

paint-by-numbers kit (to mix metaphors terribly). It seems to have a lot of traction with the "text editor and the sweat of my brow" crowd because it doesn't impose a sketchy WYSIWYG interface, but instead provides a lot of information and control, including its own nifty "edit CSS" and "edit HTML" functions so you can make a change to the code and see it take effect immediately. Comment from: Meredith January 31, 2006 06:15 PM Oh no! Don't cry!!! I'm not in charge of the Web Development Track, but I would definitely include it if I was. It's a terrific topic and one I look forward to hearing about since I've done almost nothing with my blog. I hope your little guy's doing better. Everyone at my job's been sick over the past few weeks, and I'm finally getting my turn. :( Thanks again for your submission. You rock! Comment from: Laura February 4, 2006 10:49 AM Yes, yes--I too want to see this session go forward! (I don't know that my opinion on the topic will have any sway with those who decide, but I figured I'd at least weigh in).

Social software presentation

February 03, 2006
Last week I did a Library Lunch & Learn presentation on Social Software. "Lunch & Learn" is our weekly series of informal presentations on largely extra-curricular matters with library-provided pizza and soft drinks. I had a pretty good turnout, even including some students which is always nice. The page I made for the presentation is a bit sparse, consisting mostly of links without a whole lot of context. We talked a lot about MySpace and Facebook. I had to admit that I wasn't much of an expert in these social networking applications (my social software interests lie more in the sharing bookmarks in del.icio.us or photos in Flickr) and I felt a bit like an old fart: "Hey, I have been reading in Time magazine about this nifty MySpace that all the kids are into these days!" But we talked about the social dynamics of these kinds of sites and the way people choose to present themselves online. We also discussed some of the problems and concerns that have been raised about how much people reveal about themselves online. Let me tell you, it can be a little nerve-wracking to show MySpace and Facebook in a session like this, not only for fear of looking square, but for fear of bringing up risqu, crude or otherwise inappropriate material. I'm sure there is a lot more to these sites than this, but I kept remembering what Nathan Torkington wrote on O'Reilly Radar a few months ago: "MySpace and Facebook are all about getting laid and finding parties.". Looking around on Facebook feels a bit like wandering through a dorm and looking at what people put on their doors; not exactly an invasion of privacy, since they put it out there for all to see, but not exactly un-creepy.

The world's tamest and lamest Facebook page: mine.

Examples? When I search for groups that have the word "librarian" or "library" I get "Librarians are Hot" and "I Would Totally Have Sex In the Library." I don't think I really want to touch either of those... That doesn't mean that a library can't make a MySpace or Facebook presence work. Bill Drew and Jean Ferguson report some successes with Facebook on Web4Lib and Aaron Schmidt writes about his library's MySpace page over at walking paper. But for now I'm leaning towards what Meredith Farkas said on Web4Lib: I'm not sure students are that interested in finding us on Facebook. For me, though, it is worth using MySpace or Facebook or Flickr or whatever just to get experience with these kinds of tools. At the moment, I am unconvinced that any of these tools can really do a heck of a lot for a library. My library's Flickr page has been fun and useful (and I have some ideas to use it further), but I'm pretty sure it hasn't "helped our users kick ass" as Kathy Sierra would have it at Creating Passionate Users. What it does do, though, is give us a low- or no-cost way to play with these social software tools and get a better understanding of what people now expect from the web and web applications. You can set up an account on any of these sites in a matter of minutes and see for yourself what the fuss is about. Talking about tags is fine, but when you start actually tagging bookmarks yourself on del.icio.us or searching by tag in Flickr, you get a real understanding of why tags are springing up everywhere, despite their drawbacks from a "control" or "authority" perspective. When you notice that the URLs in del.icio.us are human-readable (what do you suppose you find at http://del.icio.us/tag/library?) you start to wonder why online databases don't have similar URLs. It is important for librarians to have a hands-on understanding of what's happening here. Soon, we won't be calling it "social software" or "web 2.0" or "the read/write web" anymore. We'll just call it "the web." I have more to say about that, but I think I'll have to leave it for a later post. Tags: library, social_software, facebook, myspace

Posted 12:37 PM to Presentations, Social software, Tutt Library

To be literate is to possess the cow of plenty

February 03, 2006
People have been throwing around Ranganathan's five laws of library science so I thought I would take a look at the original. I was pleasantly surprised to see this beautiful design on the cover of the 1931 edition I got from the library of the University of Colorado at Boulder. "To be literate is to possess the cow of plenty." Indeed. Updated to add: Does anyone else think it is funny to see Michael Gorman cited on that Wikipedia entry for the Five Laws? And does anyone else think that article is bunk when it says that "Gorman's revision is the most renowned one available in the library and information sciences community?" Not that we can blame Gorman for that one, however much I love the thought of him dropping references to himself in Wikipedia.

To be literate is to possess the cow of plenty Originally uploaded by Colorado College Tutt Library.

Posted 5:40 PM to From the stacks, Professional reading Comment from: K.G. Schneider February 3, 2006 10:05 PM I modified that Wikipedia entry. In any event, it was inaccurate (surprise, surprise, surprise). Comment from: Steve Lawson February 4, 2006 06:42 AM Karen, you rule, as usual. I almost updated the post a second time last night to link to your 1995 letter to the editor of American Libraries on Gorman's laws. Thanks for giving me an excuse to link it here. The "muscular strength and vivid language of Ranganathan's original prose" (as you put it on Wikipedia) is exactly right. "Books are for use." Comment from: K.G. Schneider February 4, 2006 10:01 AM You are too funny! I didn't even remember that letter! Call that my maiden Wikipedia voyage. I'm still a Wikipedia curmudgeon--but the idea that Gorman's "rules" are the prevailing model (I doubt most L2'ers have heard of them) was too absurd not to address.

TextWrangler, Markdown, and the BATF: writing and publishing tools

February 06, 2006
So Walt Crawford did a post the other day about how he composes his blog posts, titled The joys of real-time wordsmithing. I have been meaning to do something along those lines to talk about the tools I use, so here goes. Warning: serious geeking out ahead. TextWrangler I write just about everything in a file called notes.txt in TextWrangler, a free text editor from Bare Bones Software. I don't like writing in the little text entry box from Movable Type, or a blog comment form or the like. Anything longer than name and address gets written up in TextWrangler first, spell checked, and cut & pasted.

I think Cory Doctorow was the first person I read extolling the virtues of doing everything in a text editor rather than Word or another specialized application. Then I read text.editor.addicts.txt by Giles Turnbull on O'Reilly's mac devcenter site, and got hooked for good. I have tried other text editors for the Mac like Smultron and SubEthaEdit, and have settled on TextWrangler, mainly because TextWrangler made it easy to integrate Markdown (see below). For Windows, I have used Crimson Editor a bit, and it seems fine. Almost any text editor (short of Notepad or TextEdit) will do the trick. And what trick is that? Writing without dealing with Word trying to "help" me. Writing without getting distracted by fiddling with fonts, sizes, margins, etc. Keeping my words in the simplest possible format, making it easy to cut-and-paste to the web, to turn into HTML or CSS or email or whatever and not worry too much about file compatibility or obsolescence (after World War III, the cockroaches will be eating Twinkies and reading .txt files). Saving with small file sizes (my notes.txt is close to 4,000 words and weighs in at 24KB; a two word MS Word doc is 20KB). Displaying in an eye-saving green-on-black (which also makes me feel 1ee7 and kewl). Syntax coloring so my HTML and CSS is easy to read, too. TextWrangler uses the same spelling dictionary as the rest of the MacOS. The BATF I also tend to use just one file; every blog entry, comment, shopping list, meeting agenda and notes, etc. starts out in notes.txt. That file lives on my .Mac iDisk so I can get to it from work or home. It also gets backed up to the local hard drive every single time I save it on my PowerBook (another reason why small file sizes are good; looks like I saved the file 26 times today, as I have 26 backups from today on my drive). I got the idea for notes.txt from the 43Folders post Life inside one big text file, which is really just a write up of (and a heck of a lot of comments on) Living in text files, a post by that same Giles Turnbull over at mac devcenter. Why one BATF (Big-Ass Text File)? When writing, I don't have to think about "what do I call this file? Where should I save it?" Just add a divider with a few "-" characters and a few lines of blank space, and start typing (I usually put new stuff at the top of the file--a reverse-chronological blogger to the core). When searching for something I have written, I don't have to think "what did I call that file? Where did I save it?" It is all in notes.txt. To avoid going insane, once something is more-or-less finished, it gets kicked out of the nest into its own file. If it's just for my own reference, it stays in text. If it is something I have to make presentable, it gets dumped into Word and fitted for a suit and tie, complete with proportionally-spaced type and everything. Theoretically, I clean up the file at least once a week, deleting blog posts and comments that are now making their own way in the blogosphere. Markdown I write just about everything in Markdown, a syntax for writing plain text that can easily be converted to HTML. As its creator, John Gruber (of the blog Daring Fireball, writes, Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML). So, for example, the Markdown for this section so far looks like this:

####Markdown I write just about everything in [Markdown][], a syntax for writing plain text that can easily be converted to HTML. As its creator, John Gruber (of the blog [Daring Fireball][df], writes, > Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML). So, for example, the Markdown for this section so far looks like this: [df]: http://daringfireball.net/ [Markdown]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/

The "####" means "<h4>," a level-four heading in HTML; the brackets are a more human-readable way to do links than HTML's "<a href="; the ">" at the beginning of a line indicates a blockquote, and so on. When I'm ready, I select the text I want Markdown to convert, and select "Markdown" on the Perl script menu from the menu bar, and I (should) get valid HTML in place of my Markdown, ready to cut and paste into Movable Type (I set my MT composition preferences for "don't convert line breaks," because Markdown puts in all the paragraph tags for me). For more, see the Markdown Syntax Documentation. Movable Type Once it's in MT, I can ideally just preview, check the links, and publish. In reality, I usually do at least a little editing and changing at this point. I also seem to inevitably publish with an error or two remaining. If I notice and fix it right away, I don't worry about marking it as an update or edit. Um, like just now, when I forgot to put in the stupid tags for this entry (now below). Tags: blogging, textwrangler, markdown Posted 11:44 PM to Blogs and blogging, Navel gazing, Tools

A million mice typing (with headphones!)

February 08, 2006
Merlin Mann (my own personal guru of the funny-alpha-geek persuasion) of 43 Folders has a nice podcast up titled The Richard Scarry Book of the Future. He talks about vocational training in his public school as a kid, the idea of which seemed to be to give all students some work skills to fall back on. He contrasts that training with what he sees himself and his friends actually doing in the workforce: I think everybody that I know today, almost to a person, has a job that didn't even exist 25 years ago. And if they have a job that existed 25 years ago, the people who had that job 25 years ago wouldn't even recognize it today, 'cause of how much these jobs have changed, right? I mean, even the most ordinary desk job has been completely upended by technology and so many of the changes in how we work. I have thought about this often on the days that I have spent working on web pages, sending email, etc. My job has obviously been around for a lot longer than 25 years, but I wonder how I would have spent most of my working hours in, say, 1980. Typing catalog cards? Merlin goes on to talk about how he liked Richard Scarry's fantastically detailed pictures of Busytown, with all the little animals performing their jobs as nurse, fireman, policeman, etc. He wonders,

Best Word Book Ever - When you Grow Up #2

Originally uploaded by kokogiak. What will the Richard Scarry book of the future look like? Because based on my experience, and the experience of most of my friends, I think it is going to be about 80 lavishly-illustrated pages of a cartoon mouse sitting at a desk typing with headphones on [which is, of course, exactly what I was doing as I transcribed these quotes from the podcast -SL]. Because that, in a nutshell, is the occupation of almost everyone I know...

All those little mice sitting at all those little desks are exercising a huge skill set that they had to learn completely on their own. Using colorful language, he expands on the idea that we all need to get better at skills that are seldom taught, such as how to work on team,

how to communicate better, and how to be an autodidact (I guess that would be a tough one to teach...). I'm generally with him on this assessment; to be a librarian today is to be constantly expanding our skill set, dealing with new technologies, and new expectations. The more of us who feel comfortable tweaking and customizing our online environments, the better we will get as a profession at providing useful services in the online world. And, by and large, we need to learn those skill on the fly, teaching ourselves and sharing those skills in semi-formal venues like blogs and presentations. I don't mean to suggest that prior to the advent of the World Wide Web librarians never needed to change and grow. I would say that this uncertainty about what even the short-term future will demand of us is new. Lastly, forget about the Richard Scarry book of the future, and check out the Richard Scarry book of the recent past. See the differences between the occupations and gender roles in the 1963 and 1991 editions of The Best Word Book Ever as seen in this Flickr photoset by kokogiak. (I linked to this a while back in the See Also del.icio.us linkblog.) Tags: library, 43folders, richard_scarry, work Posted 10:29 PM to Librarians and the profession

Designing user experiences

February 08, 2006
Tuesday, I attended the Blended Librarian webcast "Designing Library Experiences for Users." The session was a look at how Maya Design approached a major overhaul of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. [Note: I haven't been able to get through to the Maya site yesterday or today.] I had seen Maya's work on this project when they posted their slides for their presentation at User Experience Week 2005; follow that link and get "all the slides," a 1.4MB PDF. The work that Maya did in walking a mile in a user's shoes is fascinating and sobering. They tried to behave as a typical user would, but they took photos along the way, and wrote their comments directly on the photos; things like "What is this? Where is this?" on the catalog's "location" information, or "Is this what a help desk looks like?" on a photo of the puny, crowded reference desk. The "I'm stupid...I can't find anything" label on a photo of the library catalog (hey, it's Innovative!) reminds me of Creating Passionate Users' exhortation to help people get from "I suck" to "I rule!" when using our tools. I think she referred to the catalog as "broken." Other points I jotted down from Ardhana Goel's presentation of Maya's work: People should not be changing their lives in order to use your product or service. [And yet, one of our goals as an academic library is to change our users lives by making them understand research better. Still, I'd like to change your life by inspiring you, not by wearing you down until you finally give in.] The catalog is "unforgiving" unlike Google (no spell check, no help when you get zero hits, etc.). We need to identify and address "break points"; when they can't find the book in the stacks, what happens? When the book isn't in the catalog, do they have any options? How do they know? What are the affordances of the different environments or interfaces (online vs. physical space, human vs. automated, etc.)? How do we exploit the strengths and mitigate the weaknesses of these environments? Shifting to action-oriented language in labels and signs ("ask a librarian" instead of "reference") You can see more notes on the talk at dave's blog. Ardhana's presentation was good, and stimulating, and the hosts from The Blended Librarian did a nice job of keeping things on track. All the same, though, I don't know how effective a medium the webcast is. The depth of information covered was less than what I'd expect in an article or other written treatment of the material. Even a more prepared, pre-recorded talk would have probably been more efficient. And the interactive tools aren't really effective with a large group like this one. My problem is not with this particular experience--as I say the material and the people involved were great--it's the medium that I have not yet found to be very effective. Posted 11:31 PM to Service
A slide from Ardhana Goel's presentation at the "Designing Library Experiences for Users" webcast.

Four is the magic number

February 10, 2006

I am such a loser. I was doing dishes thinking "No one has tagged me for the '4 Things' meme," and feeling ambivalent--I don't like chain letters, but I don't like feeling left out, either. So I hit NetNewsWire to find out that my man Michael Stephens has tagged me. Gosh, I haven't really thought about it ;) ... Jobs Ive had in my life: Telemarketer for the Northlight Theatre Company Drone at Barnes & Noble in Evanston, IL (where I met my wife, Shanon) Bookseller and personnel manager at The Tattered Cover Bookstore, Denver, CO. Interlibrary loan staff at the University of Delaware Library 4 Movies I can watch over and over: Rushmore Grand Illusion The Wizard of Oz Children of Paradise 4 TV Shows I love to watch: Freaks & Geeks Veronica Mars Homicide Olympic Games opening ceremonies (silliest. thing. ever.) 4 Places I have lived: Middletown, CT Austin, TX Newark, DE San Diego, CA 4 Places I have been on holiday: Santa Fe, NM London Paris Big Sur, CA 4 of my favorite dishes: Greek salad (with the fries on top) at Cross Rhodes in Evanston IL Chicken Tikka Masala (which I only recently found out is ersatz Indian food) Pad Thai from Tommy's in Denver Pancakes at home with my son 4 of my favorite books: Good Bye to All That, Robert Graves Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino The New York Trilogy, Paul Auster Cloud Atlas, Steven Mitchell 4 Websites I visit daily: del.icio.us Google ...daily? Aside from this site, that's probably it. 4 places I'd rather be: Other than the Internets? I have no idea! At the risk of suffering seven years bad luck or six more weeks of winter or something, I'm going to resist tagging four more bloggers (I think all the people I actually know have already done this). Posted 9:18 PM to Navel gazing Comment from: Meredith February 11, 2006 08:18 AM

Maybe I already knew this and am just totally flaking out, but I think I didn't know you lived in Middletown! When did you live there? I went to Wesleyan from 1995 to 1999. Did you go there or work there or just happen to live in the area? I really miss it and my fantasy is to get a job there in the library one day. Comment from: K.G. Schneider February 11, 2006 12:47 PM Hey, that was my first meme. I didn't even really understand what it meant to be tagged, except I stumbled across it myself. I was pathetically grateful to be tagged. Are we too needy? ;) Comment from: Steve Lawson February 11, 2006 01:32 PM Meredith, I doubt I have ever mentioned that I lived in Middletown, because I lived there when I was a boy, from 1976 to 1982 (1st grade though start of 7th). My family had no connection to the University, though our housing development was called Wesleyan Hills. I have a lot of fond memories of Middletown, but I don't know that I'd want to go back. I'm a westerner at heart now. Comment from: Steve Lawson February 11, 2006 01:44 PM Karen, of course we are pathetic and needy. After all, we exhibit the "narcissistic sensibility of this self-absorbed blog sub-culture," with our heads "well up in the self-intoxicated ether of the blogosphere." Comment from: K.G. Schneider February 11, 2006 04:25 PM You sly boots! Did you catch Michael McGrorty's assessment that the Council list is MCR's blog? Comment from: Meredith February 11, 2006 09:07 PM Cool! Middletown would probably have been a great place to spend childhood, with all the great outdoorsy places nearby. Too bad you didn't go to Wesleyan; the library there is absolutely gorgeous with lots of cool nooks and crannies to disappear into and comfy chairs to fall asleep in. :) I guess I've never felt particularly attached to any region of the U.S. I found it easy to adjust to Vermont after Florida (probably because it was a tremendous improvement in quality of life), and I'd probably be happy anywhere quiet with nice scenery and wide open spaces. Arizona and parts of Northern CA have always been on my list of places I could live. But I really do love where I am now; rural New England rocks!

Writing without hyperlinks

February 12, 2006
I'm getting close to the deadline for that Library 2.0 article for Colorado Libraries that I have mentioned before, and I'm finding it a bit of a challenge to break my habit of writing for the web. I'd like to write a paragraph or two about the current state of the ILS and the online catalog (does everyone else hate the word OPAC as much as I do?), so my natural inclination is to write something like this: John Blyberg's ILS Customer Bill of Rights kicked off a lot of discussion regarding what libraries might demand of ILS vendors, especially in terms of enabling individual libraries to create our own services to sit on top of the ILS. The new North Carolina State University library catalog, which uses an Endeca front-end on top of its Sirsi catalog, and Casey Bisson's WordPress front-end for a III catalog are two examples of experiments in this vein, while the report of the University of California's Bibliographic Services Task Force, Rethinking How We Provide Bibliographic Services for the University of California (PDF) puts some of the same concerns in the wider context of an enormous state university system. Now, that paragraph might not be brilliant online, but in print, without hyperlinks, it would be downright impenetrable. So back to the drawing board to figure out how much context I need to provide for readers who haven't been following along online for the past six months, and who I doubt will be keying in long URLs from the bibliography. Tags: library, writing, hyperlinks Posted 10:07 PM to Blogs and blogging, Navel gazing Comment from: Meredith February 13, 2006 06:44 AM I totally feel your pain! I've gotten so used to writing in blogging style or writing very academic papers, that I've had a very hard time finding a happy medium with the book (since it really shouldn't be either). And yes, the no hyperlinks thing is driving me crazy! Good luck!

Four more for the road

February 14, 2006

At the risk of being extra dorky, I thought of some other lists of four (four more lists, to be exact) that might be fun/illuminating/not horrible. Four intimidating books I haven't read, but plan to someday, once I finish reading all these comic books graphic novels: Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne The Arcades Project by Walter Benjamin The works of Ludwig Wittgenstein Bleak House by Charles Dickens Four things you will likely never hear me say: I have to agree with Focus on the Family here. No coffee for me, please; just a nice cup of tea. Hooray for Microsoft! I have no opinion on the matter. Four songs I listened to a lot last year (the first three of which I downloaded from Emusic, an online music subscription service I recommend--MP3s with no DRM): "A Fond Farewell," Elliot Smith "July, July!," The Decemberists "History of Lovers," Iron and Wine / Calexico "Since U Been Gone," Kelly Clarkson (what can I say, I'm a trendy jerk. Plus, I'm a sucker for the PowerPoint) The first four libraries I remember visiting, and what I think I remember about them:
A photo of the Russell Library (Middletown, CT) Meriden Public Library, Meriden CT: Going to evening story time in my pajamas. Getting a (paper) library card and learning how to fit it in the little children's section as I remember it in the mid-to-late envelope it came in. 1970s Russell Library, Middletown CT: Orange decor, white "tulip" tables. (After writing that, I found the photo above. I'm right about the tulip tables!. The photo is in B&W, so I can't confirm the orange. Now that I see the photo, I remember the spiral stairs, too. There are more photos at the Russell Library photo archives.) Levi Coe Library, Middlefield CT: I think I checked out many of the classic childhood series books from this library (the Wizard of Oz books, Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain, maybe some of the Narnia books). I bought a copy of Plato's diaglogs at the book sale because I liked the green leather on the spine and because it looked very mysterious and old. I belive I still have that book at my parents' house. Wesley School library, Middletown CT: I am sure that I checked out The Voyage of the Dawn Treader here, as I can picture that cover staring at me in the wire rack. I also checked out The Dragon's Handbook over and over again. I haven't seen that book in over 25 years; maybe it is time to hit abebooks for some nostalgia.

Posted 7:48 AM to Arts & Humanities, Library, Navel gazing Comment from: Jessy February 14, 2006 04:39 PM Wow, what a good idea to think about your first four libraries. I am thinking about my first four right now, too. I could easily write about twenty pages about them. But I'll try to control myself and just mention that the Fairport library had these wacky chairs in their YA section, legless rocking chairs -- I can't find a picture of anything like them anywhere. Comment from: Laura February 14, 2006 07:16 PM My first two would be the Iowa City Public Library, first in its Carnegie home, then in its new one across the street (recently remodeled and expanded). After that I'm not sure--but it's a wonderful addition to the meme! Comment from: Emilie February 14, 2006 07:20 PM Well, I'm glad to hear that I am not the one who harbors a secret love for "Since U Been Gone". One of my first four library memories is of course Tutt...I can recall all the different places the reference desk has been, and all the different incarnations of it, although of course as a kid, the real excitement was taking turns with my sister pushing each other around on the old wood book trucks. Comment from: Steve Lawson February 14, 2006 08:04 PM Thanks, all for your comments. I was thinking this could be a more "G-rated" version of Spalding Gray's Sex and Death to the Age 14; maybe Libraries and Parades to the Age 14? Seeing the photos of the libraries and the book covers last night was a powerful nostalgiac experience.

If you post on this topic, let me know. Emilie, if you have photos of the book truck races, send 'em my way. Comment from: Mom February 14, 2006 09:50 PM I enjoyed your trip down library memory lane. There were several libraries where we spent a lot of time prior to the ones in CT, but I guess you don't remember them. Downers Grove IL had a nice library and we often went there on Saturday mornings, starting when you were two. We also went to one in Romeoville (?) IL, but I seem to recall that as being some shelves in a room at a public school. There's no reason that you'd remember that one. Seeing the pictures of Russell Library brought back a lot of memories. Thanks! Love, Mom Comment from: Steve Lawson February 14, 2006 09:55 PM Nope, mom, I don't remember the Illinois libraries at all. But thanks for taking me to them! Love, Steve Comment from: sharon June 22, 2006 10:22 AM We still have a good library in Downers Grove... www.downersgrovelibrary.org

Michael Stephens to Tame Academe

February 14, 2006
I say Michael will "Tame Academe" as a play on his blog's title, Tame the Web, but if anything, he will be shaking it up. Michael announced today in his post, Reinvention, that he will be leaving his job at St. Joseph County Public Library for a full-time, tenure track job on the faculty at Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University. Michael, that is HOT! ;) My very sincere congratulations. I "met" Michael on iChat at Internet Librarian 2005, and since that time we have carried on an IM and email conversation. I consider Michael a friend and colleague, and am very excited for him. I expect him to make me want to take back all the snarky things I ever said about library school faculty (and, Michael, be sure they keep the word "library" in the name of the school, OK?). A brief aside on what a dope I am: for years when I saw anything about the library school at "Dominican," I thought it was in the Dominican Republic. Sheesh, what a dope. Edited to add: check out my contribution to the congratulationsmichael Flickr tag. Posted 3:38 PM to Blogs and blogging, Librarians and the profession

This card has now become very collectible, as Michael has been traded to Dominican University's GSLIS

Building a blog to the 18th century

February 14, 2006
Update (2/22): Overholt has added photos. Now you can see engravings used as an anti-piracy device, watercolors as early paint-by numbers, sloppy printing, and a bookplate of a rotund jester. Thanks, John! Jessy has pointed me to a wonderful blog that I hadn't seen before: Hyde Collection Catablog, "The world's greatest Samuel Johnson collection, one book at a time." In my experience, this is a unique idea for a blog. Cataloger John Overholt of Harvard's Houghton Library is cataloging the Donald and Mary Hyde Collection of Dr. Samuel Johnson. As he encounters interesting books or Johnson anecdotes, he writes them up on the blog. You need not be a Johnson expert or enthusiast to enjoy this blog. Overholt's tone is fairly light and informal; I submit the entirety of the post What did you say your name was again? as exhibit A (the blog has a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, so I feel OK reposting it here):

This copy of Rasselas has what looks exactly like the signature of a previous owner, except that the name is "Steadfast Bunny". Our index lists several people with the last name of Bunny, so I guess it's not impossible, but still I feel strange putting "Bunny, Steadfast, former owner" in my record. That's not a name, it's the title of a children's book! "..and so, the Steadfast Bunny returned to his warren, having learned a very important lesson about the value of friendship." Overholt also gives a great feeling for the thrill of holding and examining 18th century books in all their various states (I think it was Michael Winship I first heard say that every manuscript is pretty much the same, but every copy of a book is different), as in the post Time travel: now in book form! My only complaint? No pictures! Show us the goods, John! Tags: library, harvard, special_collections, samuel_johnson Posted 8:29 PM to Collections Comment from: Laura February 14, 2006 09:21 PM How wonderful! Thanks for pointing this out--I believe I'll add it to the Bloglines account I set up for my mom (or use it for the "and here's how to add a subscription" lesson I'm planning).

Technorati charts
February 16, 2006
This may be old news, but I just noticed it. When you do a search on Technorati, part of the results is a graph of "mentions by day" that shows the frequency of occurrence of your search terms over the past 30 days. Click on the link for "more," and you can adjust the language and "authority" (as Technorati defines it) of the blogs searched, as well as the time period covered by the graph. Lastly, they have a "blog it" link to give you the code for the chart if you want to put an automatically-updating chart on your site. Which looks like the one here for "library 2.0" (I, arguably, improved the look with the background color and border). Gee, I wonder what happened on January 8, 2006 to make it spike like that? Posted 10:11 PM to Blogs and blogging Comment from: walt February 17, 2006 10:06 AM Lessee. It was a Sunday. People have more time for blogging on Sunday. Yep, that must be it.

Posts that contain "library 2.0" per day for the last 90 days.

The Daily Show on social networking sites

February 17, 2006
All of you who are considering getting your library on MySpace or the Facebook need to watch a very informative video from Daily Show's "Trendspotter" Demetri Martin. (You might have to scroll down to find the link to the Windows Media video.) Favorite quotes: Besides candy, online networking is the thing young people like the most, and old people like the second least. and So what are social networking sites? First of all, if you don't know, you're a loser. It was also great to see scholar and blogger Siva Vaidhyanathan as the expert "old person" and "professor smallbeard." Demetri (who really does have almost fourteen thousand friends on MySpace) wraps up with this line:

The bottom line is that today, if you want to communicate with the youth, you gotta get into social networking. The only other way that I know is: emo rock. Good to know, because either way, libraries have it covered. Posted 1:40 PM to Social software

Keeping up with Computers in Libraries 2006

February 18, 2006
Update 2006-02-26: added Information Today blog to list below and to OPML file I'm not attending Computers in Libraries which is being held March 22-24 in Washington D.C. But I do want to keep up with what is going on there. So I have set up a temporary folder in my RSS reader with the following subscriptions (text hyperlinks lead to HTML pages, while the icons lead to the feeds): Information Today, Inc. Blog del.icio.us/tag/cil06 del.icio.us/tag/cil2006 flickr - cil06 - Everyone's Tagged Photos flickr - cil2006 - Everyone's Tagged Photos Technorati Tag results for cil06 Technorati Tag results for cil2006 cil2006 wiki If you want them all in an OPML, I have that too. Right-click or ctrl-click on this to save it: CIL2006 OMPL file. If you haven't used an OPML file to get multiple RSS subscriptions, here is how it works: Once you have it saved, go to the "import subscriptions" function of your newsreader. If it's a desktop newsreader like the great NetNewsWire for the Mac, the import function is probably under the "File" menu. In Bloglines, once you are logged in, click the "edit" link in the left-hand tab. Scroll down to find the "Import Subscriptions" link. A few words about the feeds I chose: I'm guessing people will use both "cil06" and "cil2006," but you might want to delete feeds for one or the other if it turns out that only one of those tags is getting used. And the pbwiki feed might not be everyone's cup of tea, as you'll get notified every single time someone makes an edit on the wiki. If you grow weary of notifications every time Meredith changes a dinner date, you might want to unsubscribe from that one, too. This is one of my first experiments in sharing OPML files using OPMLmanager.com. Let me know if it works for you or not, and if there are other feeds I should include. Tags: cil06, cil2006, library, opml Posted 10:17 AM to Conferences Comment from: K.G. Schneider February 18, 2006 12:06 PM Thanks--I imported these into Bloglines with no trouble! Comment from: Meredith February 18, 2006 12:30 PM "If you grow weary of notifications every time Meredith changes a dinner date..." Are you trying to say that I'm fickle? ;) Very nice! I know Information Today wants everyone to use cil2006 (for consistency) but I wouldn't be shocked if some people end up using the other. Comment from: Steve Lawson February 18, 2006 08:37 PM

@Karen: Thanks for reporting back. @Meredith: Well, it originally read "every time Michael Casey changes a dinner date," because the first change that I actually saw through the feed was a change in his dinner plans for the 21st. But I know you better than I do Michael, so I thought I'd tease you instead. I'm trying to say that you are popular, and will need to keep a flexible schedule to accommodate everyone who wants the pleasure of your company! Comment from: Meredith February 19, 2006 07:05 AM Pleasure of *my* company? Boy, these people must not know me well. ;) lol

Carnival of the Infosciences no. 25 at ...the thoughts are broken...

February 20, 2006
The Carnival of the Infosciences no. 25 is being hosted this week by Mark Lindner at ...the thoughts are broken.... The Carnival was almost broken this week, as Mark got only one submission, and that from yours truly. And today is his birthday! But Mark makes lemonade with a nice collection of links he had to collect himself, poor thing. He's looking for commentary and discussion, so drop by and share your thoughts on the shortcomings of library systems, whether images can be metadata (I'm going to say sure, but at this point I bet they would cause more problems than they might solve (can't really search them, present their own set of preservation problems, etc.). They might need meta-metadata!), and more. Next week's Carnival is at Data Obsessed. p.s. Nice choice of images, Mark. Posted 9:52 AM to Blogs and blogging

Denver Zine Fest, March 11, 2006

February 20, 2006
Updated 2006-03-07: I changed the image to link to the new version of the flyer. Make sure and read Stevyn's comment for the time and place. I don't know if I'll be able to make it, but the Denver Zine Library and others are sponsoring the Denver Zine Fest on Saturday March 11 from 10-6 at More Matters Studios, 2132 Market St., Denver. Exact time and location are still to be announced. We have a small zine collection at Tutt Library; I hope we'll be able to buy a lot of Colorado zines at the zine fest to start growing the collection. At the very least we plan to send a flyer letting zinesters know that we are looking to buy their stuff for the collection. If you aren't familiar with zines, the Wikipedia entry for zine is as good a place as any to start. If you kids are good, someday I'll tell you how I was a zinester long before I was a blogger. Tags: library, zines, denver Posted 2:33 PM to Collections, Tutt Library Comment from: Stevyn March 5, 2006 04:36 AM Hi, here are a few more details: www.denverzinefest.com Just wanted to let you know how excited we are to report that we will be holding the 1st annual, Denver Zine Fest on Saturday, March 11th from 10-6. We are having the fest at the More Matters Studios, at 2132 Market Street on Saturday, March 11th, from 10-6. A zine is any small press publication that is self-published, and

most of the time photo-copied. Usually they have small press runs, and are about a social, political, personal, or artistic subject. Zine is an abbreviation of magazine. If you are interested in learning how to make your own zine, or want to trade, or sell yours - please come to our Fest. This is a free event - to both vendors and attendees. We are also having various workshops, such as how-to silkscreen, how to make a video documentary, how to do book-binding, and also a demonstration on the letter-press. Please come on down, and spend a day browsing, and chatting to creative zinesters who are sharing their work. We have people coming from New York, Cleveland, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, Denver and many more locations

Librarians and IM survey

February 20, 2006
In case you haven't seen this yet, Michael Stephens of Tame the Web is doing a survey on librarians and instant messaging. It takes five minutes, maybe less, and you should take the survey regardless of whether you or your library uses IM. In the illustration (from my buddy list) we see that Mr. Stephens is "dreaming" while tuttlibrarian is still hard at work (of course, Michael is two time zones ahead of me, so we'll cut him some slack). Posted 9:52 PM to Librarians and the profession, Social software Comment from: Michael Stephens February 21, 2006 06:14 AM I admit it: I got to bed EARLY! Comment from: Steve Lawson February 21, 2006 06:48 AM I just commented on it because I was jealous. Keep dreaming.

Meme 2.0
February 22, 2006
I was in the virtual peanut gallery at this morning's SirsiDynix Institute Conversation: "The 2.0 Meme Web 2.0, Library 2.0, Librarian 2.0." The panel was the Library 2.0 Gang of Four, i.e., Stephen Abram, John Blyberg, Michael Casey, and Michael Stephens. All four men were in good form, sounding the themes that are familiar if you read their blogs. Stephen Abram as emcee knocked me out once again. Here are two pseudo quotes from my notes, though I don't think these will be nearly as funny here as they were out of Abram's mouth: Something simple like Flickr [for photos of "Rock the Shelves"] can make libraries cool, hot, sick! I don't know how we get people to play more in libraries, but we need to do that--it is less stressful than saying "library management has decided that we will all blog!" By the end of the week, the seminar should be archived on the SirsiDynix site. Tags: library2.0, web2.0 Posted 10:43 PM to Digital libraries, Librarians and the profession, Service

The Great Queue of China

February 22, 2006
Like many bloggers, I have a text file full of half-finished (half-assed?) blog posts which are, as Dan Traister says about his in-process papers, "in various stages of drafty undress." Recently I read Andrea Mercado, of Library Techtonics fame, calling her backlog "The Long Queue." I like that, and will henceforth call my backlog The Long Queue as well.

To compensate Andrea for appropriating her phrase, I have made a small donation for her upcoming trip to China. Emphasis on the word "small"; let's hope there is a favorable exchange rate. If you, dear reader, would like to help send a librarian to China and have more funds at your disposal than I, you can read about her plan here and send her some yuan via PayPal here. Posted 11:07 PM to Librarians and the profession Comment from: Andrea February 23, 2006 07:08 AM No donation is too small, the fact that you gave at all is what touches me most. Thank you so much, Steve, for the donation *and* the good press!

LibraryThing reverse engineering FRBR?

February 23, 2006
It looks like Tim Spalding at LibraryThing is reverse engineering FRBR. That is the thought that leapt to mind, but I felt a little unsure about blogging it, as I'm not an expert in FRBR or in the exact way that LibraryThing is combining different editions into single "works" (as seen in the Invisible Man book covers in the screenshot; dig also the link to "OCLC Find in a Library" (aka Open WorldCat)). What he calls a "work" might not be exactly what FRBR would call a work, and what he calls a "copy" is more what I think FRBR would call a "manifestation," but still. But then a quick search shows that William Denton at the FRBR Blog has had a similar thought. So, I say again: it looks like Tim Spalding at LibraryThing is reverse engineering FRBR! Tags: library, librarything, frbr Posted 4:06 PM to Digital libraries, Social software Comment from: walt February 23, 2006 05:34 PM I wouldn't say "reverse engineering" so much as doing what others have done, although probably less rapidly than LibraryThing has done it--that is, "FRBRizing" through some set of algorithms. That's what RedLightGreen does (AFAIK--I may work here, but not on that project), and it's fairly typical: Not creating actual hierarchical works records, but providing at least portions of the appearance and usefulness of such records. Which strikes me as a good thing, understand! Comment from: Steve Lawson February 23, 2006 08:26 PM Walt, you are right. I think I mean something close to the opposite of "reverse engineering." It isn't that he saw FRBR and decided "I want to do that." Instead, he saw the same problem that FRBR is trying to solve--sometimes all Hamlets are just "Hamlet," and sometimes you want to distinguish the bad quarto from the bad Mel Gibson movie--and is solving it through similar means. (Geez, I wish I hadn't said "reverse engineer" three times in the original post!) Spalding does not, however, appear to be solving this "through some set of algorithms," unless algorithms encompass human labor. Here is the relevant portion of his blog post, linked above: The response has been startling to say the least: In three days, users have combined 17,000 times, mashing together 42,000 works! Users have spent hours at the task, and debated the nuances in a blog post that now sports 182 comments. Although only a few of these Christmas elves are actual librarians, but most are experts on the authors they labor over. As one wrote on the blog, Isaac Asimov's Nightfall the short story collection, is distinct from Nightfall the novel and from Nightfall One. Do libraries know that? Does Amazon? [emphasis in original] Well, I sure hope libraries know that, but I see what he means in general. To see what he is talking about, here is the "combine/separate works" page for Bohmil Hrabal. I just combined all those translations of Closely Watched Trains. Think I messed it up? Click the "separate" link next to the edition in question. Thanks for your comment, Walt. Comment from: Tim Spalding February 24, 2006 04:28 AM Hello! Right, it's NOT algorithmic. The base system is a rather lame algorithm, but all the heavy-lifting has been user-driven. It's Del.icio.us not Google. I should add that I considered more complex structures. I am well aware that books can be related to each other in an extraordinary number of ways. (Librarians shouldn't imagine FRBR or any other system captures them all either.) LibraryThing's concept is therefore a

little simplistic. But simplicity has its merits. And LibraryThing's understanding of relatedness is designed to compliment its explicitly userand social-centered goal. That too is pretty novel; traditional cataloging is author- and publisher-centered. Incidentally, I considered using the ISBNx project as a base. Besides licensing issueswhich I think could have been overcomeI just wanted to try something new. As I wrote on the blog, public cataloging is not bad cataloging. The people who really KNOW Asimov are his fans. There are, of course, problems with this approach, but it's definitely worth trying. So, what should LibraryThing do now? Comment from: Steve Lawson February 24, 2006 07:13 AM Hi, Tim. Thanks for stopping by! I think the user-driven nature of the combining is just right for LibraryThing. It makes LibraryThing users feel more invested in the community, and it is fun. I know that I got a little charge just from the little Hrabal combining I did, so I can see why people spent hours working on all this. It is also very cool to see that my particular edition of Shakespeare's works is now "aware" of all those other editions--hey, LibraryThing is like a Friendster for the books themselves, uniting them with long lost friends and relations! (OK, maybe not.) I like the line "At LibraryThing everyone is a librarian" on the combine/separate works page. How about "Unleash you inner librarian!" Comment from: walt February 24, 2006 09:44 AM I'm impressed... Among other things, I think Tim is getting to one of the things I finally talked about in the current Cites & Insights: That "folksonomy" should complement cataloging, not necessarily replace it. Using distributed experts to enhance the structure of the presentation is a great idea... Comment from: Tim Spalding February 24, 2006 08:30 PM Speaking of "Friendster for Books Themselves," I should do a "Six Degrees of.." for books. Considering each book to "know" all the books its owners own, I'll bet you can get from any book with ten owners to any other book with ten owners in three moves. From Noam Chomsky's 9-11 to the Left Beind Series, anyone? I could do it with authors too, although that would be even easier. It needs a catchy name. What's the book equivalent of Kevin Bacon? "Unleash your inner librarian!" I like it. Comment from: lorcan February 27, 2006 06:24 PM When I worked in a public library many years ago, I always thought the best staff were the ones who not only remembered the books in a user's life (what kinds of books a particular reader liked) but remembered the users in a book's life (what types of users liked particular books). We did some work a while ago associating books based on co-occurrence frequencies in collections. The idea being that the more often books co-occurred in a collection, the more likely they were to please common readers. Maybe we should try it again. Comment from: Tim Spalding March 1, 2006 12:29 AM It seems to me that co-occurence in collections is a pretty rough tool. The big libraries on LibraryThing contribute the least to the algorithm, and LibraryThing tops out at around 8k. Are libraries scared to try "people who borrow X also borrow Y." It would require a big data set certainly, but maybe an OPAC provider could facilitate it. Is there a law against this? If users were given an opt-in choice when they took out a bookand got back an instant reading listwould they really huff and puff about it? Sorry, I should stop haunting this blog... :) Comment from: Steve Lawson March 1, 2006 06:44 AM Tim, haunt away! "Six Degrees of 'Bridges of Madison County?'" "Six egrees of 'The Stranger?'" "Six Degrees of Six Characters in Search of an Author?'" I don't know, but the feature sounds like fun. I don't really know how useful co-occurrence in collections would be, but I will point out that when Lorcan says "we," he means OCLC, or the people who do WorldCat. So if anyone has the dataset to make it work, it would be them. I don't think there is any law against "people who borrowed" information in library catalogs, but librarians have a strong professional committment to keeping borrowing information private, so we tend to be conservative in this regard. Personally, I hope we continue to explore the idea. There is at least one library doing it now: the Library Success Wiki led me to the University of Huddersfield catalog which, according to the wiki, "includes a 'people who borrowed this, borrowed that' based on analysis of 10 years of circ data." See an example: The printing revolution in early modern Europe. (They also have permalinks, which I hope will be a given soon.)

Comment from: Lorcan March 3, 2006 07:47 PM By co-occurrence, I am meaning that if one book co-occurs in five thousand library collections with another, a reader who is interested in one may be interested in the other. If a book co-occurs in five library collections the appeal may be less. This would not be definitive ... but it might give some nice hints. And nice hints are good. As I say, we have not returned to the topic but it seemed relevant to the thread. Yes, circ data would seem to have potential and there are some experiments with it.

Speak of the devil

February 24, 2006
"Speak of the devil and he is bound to appear" has been running through my mind lately. Now that everyone who would like to be anyone on the web has ego feeds set up through Technorati, PubSub, IceRocket, etc., it seems that all one needs to do is name that person and link to him or her to conjure them up--if not in the flesh, than at least in the comments. For example, as much as I'd love to think Roy Tennant and Lorcan Dempsey are feverishly refreshing See Also to be the first to read my new posts, in reality they ended up commenting on this post because I named them and linked to them. Same with LibraryThing's Tim Spalding today. It makes sense. I had a "false hit" in my ego feed today: a Christian blogger named Doug McHone linked to See Also under my name in a post on his blog Coffee Swirls. The problem is, he thinks I am a Baptist minister (he would be so disappointed to know that I am an atheist librarian). I left him a comment on his web form to let him know he had the wrong guy. It's also funny that anyone could comment on this blog with a fake name and email address. If it sounds enough like the person in question to be plausible, I'd never think twice that it could be an impostor. Anyway, I thought I'd play Doctor Faustus and see if I can summon any more famous (or famous to librarians) people to the comments. I have already named Tennant and Dempsey so let's call: Jessamyn West! Jenny Levine! Leslie Burger! Or, more ambitiously: Merlin Mann! Cory Doctorow! Jason Kottke! Ah, hell, let's go for broke: MICHAEL GORMAN! Tags: egofeeds, conjuring, doctorfaustus, fridayafternoonsilliness, Posted 1:51 PM to Navel gazing Comment from: walt February 24, 2006 05:40 PM You're not a Baptist minister? Then how can you expect to be Roy Tennant when you grow up? I used to wonder what I'd be when I grew up, but I came to suspect that would never happen... Sorry I'm not one of your seven conjurees. (Now there's a word you don't use everyday...) Comment from: Steve Lawson February 24, 2006 07:27 PM Maybe I could convert to Hinduism and hope to be reincarnated as Roy? I'm a little unclear on how this works. Maybe I should just grow a moustache. And Walt, you would have been one of my seven deadly conjurees had you not commented on the previous post, tipping your hand as an at least occassional reader. (W00t!) Comment from: Tim Spalding February 24, 2006 08:19 PM Nancy Pearl! Callimachus!

I had the same experience with mentioning Perl-author Larry Wall. Every time I'd mention his name he'd pop up. Kinda like Nyarlathotep. But much nicer. PS: I don't ego-feed, really. Just "LibraryThing" and its variants. Comment from: Steve Lawson February 24, 2006 09:33 PM Yeah, Tim; for better or for worse, only the URL-based ego feeds work for me unless I want to read what's going on with that bass player. And I don't even want to talk about the half hour or so I had an ego feed for "See Also." Comment from: walt February 25, 2006 10:14 AM Steve, Sloppy wording in my comment: I'm not sorry that I didn't make your list (you put together a great list!), I'm sorry that the first comment on your post wasn't from one of the seven. Nothing occasional about my reading, thanks to some newfangled thing called, um, Bloglines, is it? Comment from: Steve Lawson February 25, 2006 02:45 PM I'm just glad you guys showed up! I guess I'm not much of a Dr. Faustus... Comment from: Jenny Levine February 26, 2006 10:12 AM Red rover, red rover, send Steve on over! :) I've been offline for a couple of months, but when I am reading my aggregator, you are so way in there, Steve! Comment from: K.G. Schneider February 26, 2006 01:43 PM Hmmmm... hmmmmmm... because she appeared, does this make Jenny the Devil? Comment from: Steve Lawson February 26, 2006 04:17 PM Thanks, Jenny. We have missed you while you have been offline. And Karen, don't sound so surprised. There have been so many comments on this blog lately, which is really great. I just changed the template for the right rail so that some of the most recent comments blog-wide are now listed at the top of every page. I'm considering a comments feed for the blog, but I don't really like any of the usual options (separate feed or in the main feed both seem to have problems for the reader in my experience). Lastly, this comment marks the point where the number of entries and the number of comments pull even, which is a milestone of some kind (though about half of those comments are from me). It's 98 comments and 98 entries, which means I'm coming up on another little milestone... Comment from: Lorcan February 27, 2006 06:15 PM More seriously .. as I note at http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/000937.html watchlists are actually quite useful as a 'smart' layer over brute aggregation. I spend quite a bit less time now looking at individual feeds than I used to. Having a name which is not commonly held is also useful ;-) Comment from: jessamyn March 5, 2006 09:33 AM what's going on over here? I just woke up. I think Gorman may be the toughest one to summon in this way because while the rest of us have blogs [with trackbacks and comments and technorati links embedded into our wordpress builds, if you're me. this isn't ego surfing as much as it's just keeping up with the churn.] he's not really 1) blogging and 2) concerned with being part of the social network of online library folks, or any folk as near as I can tell. Also agreeing with Loran, there's only one other really prevalent Jessamyn blogger -- Jessamyn North, no I am not kidding -- so it's nice to be able to do a first-name search and know that your hits are pretty accurately about you. Now if I could only get that "other" Jessamyn West to stop showing up when I egoi-surf on Amazon.com.... Comment from: Steve Lawson March 5, 2006 09:54 AM Yeah, the Gorman thing was silliness. Part of my effort to keep things cute around here. I agree that "ego feeds" sound narcissistic, but I don't really think they are (no more narcissistic than self-publishing my thoughts in a blog already is, I mean). If people are linking to you and talking about what you write, it makes sense to employ these virtual "clipping services" to keep on top of it all.

A friend of the devil is a friend of mine (on Flickr)

February 24, 2006

...or how keeping up with social software might help with your actual job. A little while back, my friend and colleague Sarah, the Academic Technology Specialist for the Humanities here at CC, asked me if I had any ideas for an art history professor who was looking for software that would enable her students to annotate a digital image of a work of art. Sure! Not only will Flickr let you annotate an image, but I knew that someone had done it before for an art history class. So after about a two-minute "training session" on Flickr, Rebecca Tucker, the art history professor (and also a friend and colleague), was ready to give it a try. This block (CC is on a somewhat unique block plan where students take one course at a time for four weeks) she is team-teaching a class on Dante and Michelangelo, and has asked her students to comment on Giotto's Satan from the Arena Chapel. (I can't link to the actual Flickr page since Rebecca has made it visible only to her Flickr friends--i.e, the students in the course and me--but you can get the idea from the screenshot here). It remains to be seen if this is the best thing since sliced bread. She might decide that Flickr doesn't offer everything she'd like in this kind of project, or that there is some other problem with this assignment. But this is an example of something that Stephen Abram mentioned in the Meme 2.0 web discussion the other day: academic libraries need to get e-learning support at the lesson level. Once the assignment/course is over, I'll try and post again with Rebecca's (and the students'?) reactions. Posted 10:53 PM to Service, Social software

Congratulations, Sarah!
March 02, 2006
Congratulations to Sarah "Librarian in Black" Houghton on her new job at the San Mateo County Library. Sarah is the first library blogger I met "in real life" as my son Luke would say, back at Internet Librarian 2005. She is a great blogger and a neat person, and this job sounds like it will be a wonderful move for her. Hooray! Posted 9:20 PM to Librarians and the profession Comment from: Sarah Houghton (LiB) March 3, 2006 04:25 PM Thanks Steve! It was definitely fun hanging out with you at IL 2005. Hopefully that will be a repeat event!

The Century Mark

March 03, 2006
This is post number 100 on See Also, coming about six and a half months since I started this thing. We hit 100 comments a few days ago with this comment from Lorcan Dempsey (Lorcan has won a free lifetime subscription to See Also for being the 100th commenter! Congratulations, Lorcan!). The little red FeedBurner subscriber counter over there in the left-hand column has been flirting with 100 for weeks now, but, for the moment, it can't seem to get into three digits. Edited to add: the FeedBurner subscriber number obligingly went to 100 overnight. It will probably fluctuate, so here is proof! It probably makes sense to wait a year to really try and recap the effect of the blog on my life and career, but I hope you will indulge me briefly. In short, I'd say that blogging has been everything I'd hoped it would be. I said in that first post that I wanted to get more involved in the discussions I'd been reading in the "biblioblogosphere," and I think I got all the action I could handle in the Library 2.0 discussion this winter. Bring on the next one--have we fixed ALA yet? At Internet Librarian 2005, I felt like having a blog was akin to having a press pass or
map symbol - 100

something; it helped me overcome my natural reluctance to go up to people I don't know and introduce myself. Which is not to say that I think I impressed other people because I had a blog--you couldn't swing a laptop at IL05 without hitting a blogger--it just gave me an excuse.

Originally uploaded by LeoL30.

While I think the word "biblioblogosphere" is goofy, I think the biblioblogosphere is actually a very cool place. People talk about the "A List" and all that, but I have found the A-listers to be very welcoming and willing to engage in conversation or debate. I had hoped that writing a blog would help me focus my thoughts for more formal presentations and articles, and it certainly influenced my presentation at the Colorado Association of Libraries, Teach an Old Blog New Tricks. I wrote a little thing on Library 2.0 for Colorado Libraries which should appear this spring. So far, so good there. So what is bad about writing a blog? Sometimes I forget it isn't my job. It feels like work sometimes; it is certainly entwined with my real job as the humanities librarian at a private liberal arts college, and trying to write something intelligent and intelligible about libraries isn't always easy. But it's not what they are paying me for, either (though it's nice of them to host the thing). In any case, I'm with Steven Cohen when he says about his blog "If people stopped reading it, would it ruin my day? Honestly, yes. It would." It's true. This blog is part journal, yes, and part outboard brain, but my main hope is to connect, to communicate, to start and to maintain conversations and relationships. And it has done that better than I had dared hope when I began. My sincere thanks to all of you who are reading this post, and to all of you who read regularly. What the hell: free lifetime subscriptions for everyone! Posted 9:51 PM to Blogs and blogging, Navel gazing Comment from: Meredith March 4, 2006 06:55 AM You're so cute, Steve. ;) I honestly can't imagine what my life would have been like had I not started my blog (which I hadn't expected to amount to anything). Maybe I wouldn't have my job. I definitely would not have a book deal. I definitely would not be speaking at conferences. I probably would not know half of the terrific people I've met through blogging. There is something so amazing about writing things and then actually finding that people are reading them and that they like what you're writing (it certainly came as a big surprise to me). Your blog is terrific, Steve. Keep up the good work! Comment from: Steve Lawson March 4, 2006 09:44 AM Thanks for reminding me Meredith: cute! That is what I wanted this blog to be! The cutest little blog in blogdom! A blog that makes you want to pinch its cheeks! Comment from: Mark March 4, 2006 10:31 AM Congrats Steve, consider your cheek pinched! Comment from: walt March 4, 2006 10:41 AM Heck, I think "biblioblogosphere" is a goofy word--and I've done as much to spread its use as anyone, because it's the shortest way to say "all those blogs run by library people." I'm in a minority here: It probably wouldn't ruin my day if everybody stopped reading Walt at Random. Now, if everyone stopped reading Cites & Insights...well, it wouldn't ruin my life, but it would make for a bad day or two. As with others: congrats, and keep up the good work. Comment from: Laura March 8, 2006 02:38 PM What they said! Although I must confess I rather like the word "biblioblogosphere." But then, I also like the words "impecunious" and "omphalaskepsis" and "defenestrate," so I may be kind of an edge case. Comment from: Steve Lawson March 8, 2006 10:48 PM Ah yes: the famous "Defenstration of the Biblioblogosphere" at the 2007 ALA Blogger's Roundtable... I hope you are adjusting to Mountain Time, Laura. How are you enjoying the only state squarer than my own (geometrically speaking of course; Colorado is hipper than, say, Nebraska)?

RSS for comments and other housekeeping

March 04, 2006
The comments on this blog have really picked up lately, which is exciting for me. Last week I added a "recent comments" section to the right-hand sidebar on all pages, but it wasn't updating properly on pages that weren't getting "rebuilt" by Movable Type, so now it's just on the home page. In addition, I have created a See Also comments feed to join the See Also entries feed and the See Also linkblog feed (which is redundant if you are getting the FeedBurner version of the regular site feed).

Let me know what you think about the comments feed. I don't know that there is any perfect way to do this. Comments-only feeds often seem divorced from the original blog entries, so I tried to make it very clear in the feed what entry the comment is about. The alternative is to have the comments in the main feed with entries showing as "new when updated," but I'm not fond of that option myself; even though I should know that is what is happening when I read one of those feeds, I still think "hey, I read this before" every dang time. I changed the way those links look in the sidebars a bit too; it's not entirely right yet, but the links work, and I can live with it. By the way, you might want to check the URL for your main See Also feed; it should be http://feeds.feedburner.com/seealso and not a URL starting with library.coloradocollege.edu. If you have the "wrong" URL, that's not the end of the world, but in a perfect world everyone would be getting the FeedBurner version, which includes the linkblog posts as a daily summary. Posted 10:28 PM to Navel gazing

Online Learning Daily on hiatus

March 08, 2006
Updated 2006-03-09: I changed the title from "Online Learning Daily goes offline," since that isn't really true. The site is still there, but Downes is taking a break. I want to read and write a little more about academe and higher education, so in the past few months I have picked up several higher ed. blogs in my aggregator. One of the most consistently useful and interesting was Stephen Downes' Online Learning Daily, or OLDaily. I say was because as of Monday, Downes has announced he is taking an indefinite hiatus. The announcement was so sudden and cryptic, that he felt the need to publish a "hiatus FAQ" letting his readers know that, while no, he's not sick, and no, he hasn't been fired, things aren't great: But, are you ok? Not particularly (I mean, d'uh) but I will be fine. Please don't worry about me. Think of this as a preventative measure rather than an emergency. I have been reading OLDaily for a few months now, and I'm catching on to the idea that Downes (who, I'm sure I'm not the first to note, has kind of a David-Crosby-gets-a-PhD look about him) is something of an intense and controversial figure. He certainly doesn't hesitate to say what he thinks, and he seems to both think and say quite a lot; he's puttin' the "pro" back in "prolific" if you know what I mean. I think it is quite plausible that he is taking a break just to give the rest of us a chance to catch up. This was all meant to be introductory to a post about the read-write web in academe, but I think I'll let this stand as-is and take up the wider issues in my next post. Posted 10:27 PM to Academe and Education

The read/write web in academe

March 12, 2006
A while back, I said that someday soon, we won't be talking about the "read/write web" or "Web 2.0"; instead we will just say "the Web" and mean exactly the same thing. As more and more people take advantage of social software and create their own content online, the less we will settle for top-down management of our online experiences. That idea is not original to me, of course. I want to pull in a few lengthy quotes from education blogs around this subject: what does all this mean to academe, to learning, and to students (if not our current students, then the ones we will be seeing very soon)? These links are a little old for the blogosphere (some over a month old; shocking, I know!), but I don't think that they have had much play in library-land, so I hope you will excuse me. This got a little long, so you can read the full post after the jump. Tags: academic, higher_ed, web2.0, read_write_web E-Learning 2.0 First up is Stephen Downes, whom I mentioned in my previous post. He has this to say in a post titled Is E-Learning 2.0 for Real? (I know, I know, we are up to our eyeballs in 2.0's. This isn't about the labels, though; it is about what people are trying and doing and learning and becoming): Why, indeed, would people choose to write their own encyclopedia from scratch when there is a perfectly good Encyclopedia Britannica already available to them? If you don't understand this, then in my view, you don't understand web 2.0, and if your response is simply that they should be forced to read the Times or Britannica because they contain information people must read (and might not read otherwise) then in my view the response is simply not adequate.

As to the question, is web 2.0 (and e-learning 2.0) for real, well, this is an empirical question, and I would suggest that the rise of things such as blogging, social networking, tagging, Wikipedia, and the like, suggest that it is an empirical question well and truely answered by the evidence. Think about it. Web readers, in massive numbers, are choosing to read each other rather than the official sources. What does this tell us? What does this mean? To miss the importance of these questions is to miss what is genuinely different about web 2.0 and to misunderstand the direction that the web - and learning - is taking. I certainly won't attempt to answer those questions right now; suffice it to say that I'm interested in them, too, and this blog is an effort to explore and participate in the discussion around those questions. I would like to see the library and the academy in general encourage and support the impulse to read "each other," though we will continue to have a vested interest in reading the "official sources" (however those may be defined by the discipline). Since one of the core values of a liberal arts education is understanding and persuasion through argument, I'd think that the read/write web should be a wonderful tool toward that end. Whose blog is it anyway? Of course, one good way to take something interesting and empowering and exciting and make it into something deadly dull is to institutionalize it. Many education bloggers are concerned about that, and Alan Levine at CogDogBlog writes about The Dissonance of Blogs in Education (which I found via Stephen's Web) The disconnect for me is this phrase presumes that blogs can be something that lies solely within the confines of education, excluding the personal nature of blog writing, the personal ownership of blog writing, and the connectivity in our lives that naturally does not stop at the edge of campus. How arcane is it going to sound when the MySpace generation crashes on the shore and we ask them to write just their Chemistry notes in Big Us Official Blog That Allows Only Lab Notes? This notion that an educational blog is something unique and separate from our whole experience is jarring to me. Our lives are strung together from an array of overlapping experiences that transcend boxes, yet we continue to advocate these boxes for learning experiences. To many it may sound arcane--it certainly won't sound like a "real" blog. But I'd expect that many students would take solace in the idea that their Chem notes wouldn't be on the web for everyone to see, and that they may not want their freshman English compositions to be as much a part of their public persona as their MySpace page. I continue to try to keep in mind that students will be increasingly arriving with accounts on MySpace, Blogger, LiveJournal, del.icio.us, Flickr, the Facebook, etc., etc. For us to design "academic-only" tools that duplicate what they area already getting elsewhere (or provide a pale shadow of what they can get elsewhere) is a recipe for virtual tumbleweeds blowing through those online ghost towns. I'm trying (and failing) to find a link to another education posting I read recently where the blogger said that we should always resist the impulse to duplicate tools that are already available. There has been some buzz on these education blogs about an as-yet-unbuilt project called EduGlu modeled loosely on SuprGlu that would not only aggregate a person's feeds but would also allow them to organize their information from many sites, run queries on the aggregate, present slices of it in different ways based on different contexts. A tool like this could allow students and faculty to maintain their data, photos, blogs, etc. in as many different services as seem necessary, and bring them together for research and publication (at least I think that's the idea). Something like that could either make the need for a "blog in education" less pressing, or make it easier to get that blog "out of education" and more into the user's real life. Creating a complete existence online Last up is Will Richardson of Weblogg-ed and his post Caring About the Content: If you don't yet understand the power of all of this ["this" being blogging and the read/write web -SL], consider taking it away. I don't think I've actually appreciated the depth of my connection to this body of work and thinking and conversation. It's become such a part of me, "so inextricably linked" that I can't imagine a complete existence without it. And it's all about the investment that we make in this, the idea that what we're writing has a legitimate audience. ...How nice will it be when we finally get rid of the physical (and metaphorical) recycling bins in our hallways where 99% of our students' content ends up at the end of the year. Given an opportunity to build community around content that we create and care about, it's simply not as easy to throw it away. Again, I think this is a great vision, but one that will require a shift in mindset, not only for the faculty, but also for the students. Prior to the excerpt above, Richardson writes about students being concerned when their class-related blogs were taken offline at the end of a class, or moved from one system to another. So it sounds like these students are already making the change. I'd think that students should have the opportunity to preserve work of their choosing online. The freshman anarchist is often the senior business school applicant (or, I suppose more rarely, the freshman campus conservative is the senior Greenpeace applicant), and I think we owe it to them not to keep their essays online in perpetuity in an institutional repository-like "roach motel", but allow them open access to their own content once the course requirements have been fulfilled. So that's a small slice of what I have found on the "read/write" web in the world of education blogs. If you have other blogs or posts on the subject that you would like to recommend, please leave a link in the comments. Posted 4:19 PM to Academe and Education, Blogs and blogging, Social software

Submit to Carnival of the Infosciences!

March 13, 2006
The Carnival of the Infosciences will be here at See Also one week for today (on Monday, March 20)! For those of you who know what that means, don't let me down. Submit your stuff early and often to slawson@coloradocollege.edu or by leaving a comment on this message. The deadline is late next Sunday evening. For those of you who don't know what that means, the Carnival is a weekly traveling roundup of what's going on in the "biblioblogosphere." (It's a carnival because it travels each week, not because the games are rigged and it makes you want to throw up. I think.) You, the reader, are invited to submit links to the best posts of the week (from today through Sunday). Self-nomination is encouraged, so if you have a new blog or an under-recognized blog, this is a great chance to get a little more exposure. Of course, you can also submit a link to someone else's blog post. I'll write up the submissions I get, add a few editor's choices, and publish on the 20th. The following week (the 27th) the Carnival goes back to its home base at Open Stacks

Centripetal Remix Originally uploaded by MindSpigot.

Posted 3:16 PM to Blogs and blogging, Librarians and the profession

Carnival on snow delay schedule

March 20, 2006
The Carnival will be held a little late today. We are on a snow delay schedule. Posted 7:41 AM to Blogs and blogging

Carnival of the Infosciences Number Twenty-Nine

March 20, 2006
OK! Step right up for the Carnival of the Infosciences number twenty-nine! Keep you hands, feet, and laptops inside the ride at all times, and don't get cotton candy on the keyboard. And absolutely no refunds! I'm very happy to be hosting the Carnival for the first time. I had a bit of a week last week, with responsibilities both professional and familial keeping my head out of the "biblioblogosphere." So this has been a nice opportunity for me to catch up a bit. First the submissions from you, the public, without which none of this would be possible: Teresa Koltzenburg, editor of the ALA TechSource blog, submits K. G. Schneider's post, How OPACs Suck, Part 1: Relevance Rank (Or the Lack of It). (Note the "part 1": I wonder how many posts it takes to completely describe how OPACs suck? I'm guessing rather more than the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.) Teresa writes, "Karen's most recent contribution provides a straightforward explanation as to why 'OPACs suck,' breaks down how relevance ranking works, and highlights the importance of creating search mechanisms (for the library's collection) that users find familiar and will help get them the materials (that they're searching for) FASTER." Lots of actions in the comments, including a kinda lame one from yours truly. Remember, folks, this is part one. I don't think she is saying relevance ranking is the be-all and end-all, just that OPACs suck at it. Charlton Braganza submits a post from Reference Work on providing services to immigrants. The main idea of that post is that "immigrants" are not a homogeneous group and that libraries need to consider a wide variety of factors to reach out to those sub-groups. Laura Crossett of lis.dom says "now that I've settled (and have internet again!) I've resolved to start submitting to the Carnival of the Infosciences again.... Hope you get lots of submissions--hosting is fun!. She submits her post, Wyoming Librarianship: A Sample, which she calls "a day in the life of a small town librarian in the West." This, also, would have been an editor's choice, had Laura not submitted it herself. It sounds like Laura is settling in to Meeteetse, WY, pop. 351 (is that including Laura? Did they change the town signs when she rolled in?), and I hope she continues to give us these reports on small town librarianship. Welcome to the big square states, Laura!

Brian at The Laughing Librarian submits his post Library 2.0 is evil, which proposes that the "Library 2.0" label be replaced with "Ideas Worth Stealing" (which may itself be worth stealing), and announces an MP3 song called Library 2.0 (link to MP3) which I haven't listened to yet, as my home internet connection is lousy this week. Connie Crosby at Slaw submits Requests for Legal Seminar Publishers, and introduces it this way: "This is one of a series of posts I have written to Canadian legal publishers from their clients' (librarians') perspective; however, many of the comments apply widely to the publishing industry. I expect more such posts to come in this series as the need arises. SLAW is a co-operative blog on Canadian legal research and IT, and contributors are librarians, lawyers, law profs, and KM managers from a variety of organizations. My own blog for law librarians is http://conniecrosby.blogspot.com" Now for the editor's choices this week: Andrea Mercado of Library Techtonics is in China. If you haven't been keeping up, it's probably best to hit the China 2006 category on her blog and read backwards. For the real Carnival s(l)ideshow, check out Andrea's Flickr photostream and see the librarian eat a scorpion! The O'Reilly Radar blog has two posts this week about a summit meeting called Reading 2.0 (er, should that be "Ideas Worth Reading," Brian?). First is Link List: Reading 2.0, in which Tim O'Reilly runs down the main presenters, many of whom--Lorcan Dempsey, Cliff Lynch, Herbert van de Sompel, to name a few--will be very familiar in libraryland. The second post is Top 1000 Books in Library Collections which runs down Dempsey's talk in more detail. The comments are interesting for the way the non-library crowd is begging for correlation with other information such as circulation stats or demographics. I also enjoyed Derek Powazek's SXSW to MPAA: STFU (notice how I didn't put an <abbr> on STFU?), which describes what happens when a panelist at SXSW says "Hello, my name is Kori Bernards, and I'm from the Motion Picture Association of America," and proceeds to get reamed by the audience for the next hour. Check out his Powazek's paragraph: Until we (users, industry groups, lawyers, and politicians) finally make a clear legal and procedural distinction between copying a work for noncommercial creation of new works (like mashups or backups) and wholesale piracy for profit (like duplicating a work for the purpose of resale), we're just going to keep shouting at each other in conference rooms and newspapers, and real innovation will never get made. Do you think we could shoehorn "libraries" in there between "users" and "industry groups" in the list of parties with an interest in fair use and sane copyright policy? This week also saw the posting by Raizel Liebler on LibrayLaw of the insanely great post, The Tale of One Bunny, Copyright Statements, & Public Domain: A Cautionary Tail, which traces the complicated history of the rights (not just copyright, but trademark too) surrounding the Beatrix Potter books and original illustrations. Lastly, we have Congratulations All Around from Meredith Farkas at Information Wants to Be Free. Lots of good things happening to people this week, including a lot of the blogging tribe being selected as Library Journal Movers and Shakers (including Meredith herself). We all know these folks are doing great work; it is satisfying to seem them recognized by the establishment. Good going! Whew! And with that, the Carnival moves on in a cloud of silicon dust, leaving only memories and regrets. Next week, Carnival number thirty, as it heads home to Open Stacks. Thanks for coming! If you are new to See Also, please look around a bit! Posted 2:55 PM to Blogs and blogging, Librarians and the profession Comment from: Angel March 21, 2006 02:23 PM Whatever little sympathy I may have had for the lady from the MPAA disappears as well as soon as I remember all the ways they are just trying to make me pay for the stuff I already paid for and own. That they manage to sneak in little contract traps in the name of "protecting the artist" should be something that should earn the MPAA a tar-and-feather session, to put it mildly. I guess until we really find ways to hurt their pocketbooks, they just won't get it. In the meantime, all the good fair uses that we should be able to do suffer at the expense of petty bureucrats, of which that lady is a representative. Actually, I am amazed she got out of the conference in one piece. Best, and keep on blogging.

Digital Letters: a blast from the past

March 20, 2006
Back in 2002, I was the Digital Projects Librarian at the Science and Engineering Library at the University of California, San Diego. My boss at the time, Anna Gold, suggested that I could make myself useful by trying to keep the rest of the staff up-to-date on what was happening with the Digital Library Program Working Group (or DLPWG or Dill-Pwig--one of my favorite things about working at a small college now is the relative lack of silly initialisms and acronymns). To that end, I started a printed newsletter, Digital Letters, and a blog, diglet. I left UCSD after only a few months of the blog (yes, the entries from April to October 2002 may say they are by "jrjacobs," but they are really by me--I was the one who broke the news to UCSD that Fair Use Has a Posse, damnit!). diglet has thrived since I left in the hands of two guys named James Jacobs (I am not making that up), Trish Rose, Marlo Young, and perhaps others. I hadn't known what had happened with Digital Letters, and was actually just thinking about it a few days ago. Then I see in my feed reader today links to ten issues of Digital Letters. I am responsible for number one and number two (PDF links), and am quite happy to see

that they have kept up with this project over the last few years. The latest issue, number ten, has articles on GIS and social software. The audience is still internal, I'd say, so I don't know how interesting this will be to those of you outside of UCSD. But it gave me a charge today. Posted 10:09 PM to Digital libraries, Navel gazing

Feeling uncool
March 23, 2006
Walt Crawford said it: it feels like all the cool kids are at Computers in Libraries (well, some of the cool kids are at PLA, but that's not my scene, man). Even Flickr knows that "cil2006" is hot--no kidding, check out the pics. Just a reminder that you can stalk the cool kids from afar with the CiL OPML file I concocted. A few of the sessions I'm sad I missed, but glad I can read about online: David Lee King's Basics of Web-based Experience Planning and the Cool Tools Update for Webmasters from Frank Cervone and Darlene Fichter. All the conference bloggers are doing great work, but special thanks to Karen Coombs at Library Web Chic for the nice posts with hyperlinks included. I remember well from blogging Internet Librarian that putting in all the links is a minor headache, so I really appreciate her doing it. Of course, all the blogs in the world can't capture the joy of eating, drinking, and b.s.ing with my fellow library geeks. Tags: cil2006 Posted 5:04 PM to Conferences Comment from: Andrea March 24, 2006 07:12 AM Awww. I'm flattered to be called a cool kid. I'm bummed to miss CIL, but really, PLA has been awesome, so it's cool. Comment from: Jessy March 24, 2006 04:06 PM I like the pictures of the food at CIL! Comment from: Laura March 26, 2006 01:50 PM Well, you know, I've always known I wasn't cool. . . but hey, I get to live in Wyoming. So there. :-)

Librarians to presenters: don't bury the lede!

March 25, 2006
Two posts on presentations at Cil2006 reminded me of one my pet peeves when watching conference presentations: presenters who don't "get to the good stuff" right up front. First, Sarah Houghton at Librarian in Black warns us to Beware Ego Centric Conference Sessions: The thing that annoys me the most at conferences is not PowerPoint slides, or people reading directly from their notes, or people's cell phones going off...it's presenters who stand up and talk to you for an hour about the minutiae of what happened at their library during a certain project, talking in great excruciating detail about how their library "did it" including each administrative step, what specific challenges they faced from their administrators/boards/patrons/staff, and really giving you nothing to take away that is useful. I'm afraid that most times, though, these offenders aren't really "egocentric," but simply clueless (I have no problem with egocentric people who actually deliver). My pet peeve is a subset of what Sarah is talking about. Amanda Etches-Johnson at blogwithoutalibrary.net comes closer to what bugs me. Writing about Paul Miller of Talis (who apparently is the counterexample for my pet peeve) she says: Minor aside: the session overview is so crucial. It has the potential to hook your audience or lose them from the get-go. Im often amazed at the lack of attention paid to the overview. But anyway. Pauls overview was great succinct, interesting, and had me looking forward to the rest of the session.

Exactly. I often feel like presenting librarians have made a genre error when preparing their presentations. Their talk feels more like a parable or children's story ("Once upon a time, there was a little library who didn't have a budget for a big, bad virtual reference program...") where they don't want to give away the ending too quickly. As Sarah points out, they include too many dead-end, deadly dull details about their own situation ("And then the consortium decided not to fund that project after all...") and tell you what the actual solution was in the last five minutes (by which time I have usually bailed out for another session). Instead, we need to present as if we are writing a news story with an attention-grabbing headline and a lede sentence and paragraph that tells the audience why they should stay put and not go down the hall to hear Cliff Lynch or something: "Virtual reference systems stink. At Groovy college, we use free instant messaging for online reference and, if you listen to me for the next half hour, you can do it too." And, as Sarah also points out, you need to deliver on that promise. If your solution is too specific to your institution or if you aren't willing to put the relevant details on a handout or web page, you are again wasting my time. I understand we all need to present at a conference to have something to put on our annual performance reviews, but let's try and make it worth everyone's time. Posted 4:06 PM to Presentations Comment from: Jessy March 28, 2006 03:38 PM Awesome balloon slide, man.

Is the Medium the Message for Library Blogs?

March 31, 2006
[Note: the post below started out as a comment on Library Juice, but I decided to move it over here as it got a bit too long and wide-ranging for a comment. Besides, I have been doing a lot more commenting than blogging lately (to the point of being a virtual squatter in one thread at Walt at Random) and wanted to get back in the swing.] Rory Litwin posted a thought-provoking entry to Library Juice earlier this week entitled Questioning the Techie Mission. I'll trust that you can read his post yourself, and won't run it down point-by-point, but his main argument is that there is an over-emphasis on technology in library blogs, and--due to a host of often unstated assumptions behind most library blogs involving technology--many library bloggers tend not to be very objective when it comes to technology. I agree that there is sometimes too much emphasis on technology in library blogging, but also agree with Nicole Engard's comment that blogging librarians tend to be more tech-y or we wouldn't be blogging. Blogging is getting more and more mainstream, but it seems to still be true that the people who are going to see the value in setting up and maintaining a blog are people who are, if not hardcore techies, then serious "netizens" who already read lots of blogs and see a value in online communities and the tools that make them possible. I do value those blogs that don't take technology as a primary focus, and I think there is a real opportunity for people who want to take a non-techie subject and run with it, the way that Jill Stover has done with Library Marketing-Thinking Outside the Book or John Overholt has with his Hyde Collection Catablog. If someone has a great blog about instruction or signage or something, I'd love to hear about it (actually, a signage wiki or Flickr group could be fantastic...) Many library bloggers, myself included, aren't full-time systems librarians, but "blended librarians" or "tech-librarians-by-default." For my part, as a younger librarian (at 35 I'm not that young, but I have been the youngest librarian at both of the schools where I have worked), I didn't come into the profession wanting to be a techie (and to real techies, I'm a techie wannbe), but it seems like that is where the opportunities are for newer librarians to lead and distinguish ourselves. It doesn't mean that reference or instruction or other roles aren't important to me; it means that when I arrived at a new job and looked around at how I could make an impact, technology was an obvious answer. I haven't really felt that "they [meaning my colleagues] just don't get it"; instead that "they" welcomed someone who wanted to do some trend-spotting or to keep abreast on developments in web design and technology. I think one of the problems of filling that role is not only that it can be easy to slip into technophilia, but that it can be easy to "oversell" new technology or technology trends. Are blogs and wikis and Flickr and MySpace and del.icio.us interesting trends? I'd say yes. Should libraries have someone on staff willing to explore those kinds of services and sites and report back to the rest of the library on their potential? Again, I'd say yes, though I recognize that smaller libraries may not have the luxury of staff time to devote to that kind of exploration. But do I think that blogs and wikis and social software in and of themselves are the most important thing about libraries? No way. I'm with Steven Cohen that it is more important to be a good searcher than it is to post photos to Flickr, and I am sympathetic to Rory's observation that: The focus on the promotion of technology as an end in itself can distract techie librarians attention away from the educational mission of libraries, so that as they learn more about technical tools, they learn less about the subtleties of interpreting and responding to user needs, and less about the bibliographic (electronic resources included) knowledge of subjects thats needed to be a good reference librarian. Perhaps that is right. Yet I have two observations: (1) this need not be an either/or proposition; promoting technology "can distract techie librarians attention away from the educational mission of libraries" but it need not. And (2) most libraries have more than one person on staff. As long as those of us who are interested in all this techie stuff can avoid the "Us vs. Them" attitude Rory mentions, we can be an important part of a library staff. We can learn about those subtleties of reference and instruction and collection development from librarians who have been doing it successfully for years, and they can learn from us about new ways of reaching out to users or making

collections more accessible through technology. Posted 3:26 PM to Blogs and blogging, Librarians and the profession Comment from: Laura March 31, 2006 05:31 PM Well said, sir. I don't think of myself as a techie at all, but I use enough technology and am familiar and comfortable enough with it that in my current workplace, I'm better able to a lot of techie stuff (especially newer, social software type stuff) than anyone else. I haven't learned the location of all the books on the shelves yet, but luckily I work with people who do. They don't necessarily feel comfortable setting up a Flickr account, but--I hope luckily for them--I do. As you said, that's why we have multiple people in our libraries, and why it's good that we can rely on each other's strengths. On another note, I've been thinking of just becoming a professional biblioblogosphere commenter, rather than an actual blogging contributor. :-) Comment from: Mark March 31, 2006 09:14 PM I'd like to 2nd Laura, and to say thank you for this! It certainly is not an either/or, but it shouldn't just be an automatic "yes" either. Comment from: Steve Lawson April 1, 2006 08:41 AM Thanks for the validation, Laura and Mark. I should point out that I'm a little late to the commentary party on Rory Litwin (whom I think I called "Rory" at least once above, showing that I'm not fully signed on to Mr. Litwin's blogging pledge as I violated the first article. No disrespect intended!). Mark Lindner (above) posted a long commentary to ...the thoughts are broken... entitled How to lose your tech librarians and Rory Litwin: Some thoughts and a long follow-up, Further discussion, responses to Jenny and Alex. Jessamyn West also weighed in with a post just called tech. All worth checking out. Near the start of Mr. Litwin's original post he writes "My blog entries arent getting a lot of links to them and I dont feel much a part of the library blogging 'conversation.'" Well, this is how you do it; write something somewhat critical of library bloggers and we are like moths to the flame! (Not that his post was a flame... You know what I mean!)

No Foolin'
April 03, 2006
I was going to complain about the lack of April Fools jokes in the "biblioblogoswhatevertheheckwearesupposedtocallit." About the only one I'd found on April 1 was the Library Journal Booze, Beads, and Beignets story (librarians + jello shots + pastries = a new disaster for New Orleans), which was pretty good. I had planned an April Fools post, but one of the punchlines involved Steven Cohen undergoing a Christmas Carol-style conversion to Library 2.0 believer. But after his heartfelt (i.e., very much not an April Fools joke) Steven 2.0 post, I didn't want to look like I was making fun. But then I came across this very exciting link to The Cure for Information Overload. Simple, but fun, and had me laughing out loud. Posted 12:19 PM to Blogs and blogging Comment from: Alice Yucht April 3, 2006 01:38 PM Uh oh -- you missed this one http://schoolof.info/infomancy/?p=183 by Chris Harris! Comment from: Steve Lawson April 3, 2006 01:46 PM Fool 2.0! I like it. Let me know what else I missed, though Wikipedia may already have it covered. Comment from: Steven Cohen April 3, 2006 02:32 PM Under the circumstances, that was probably for the best. When we are at the point when we (hopefully) look back and laugh at this, I'm sure it will be funny! ...maybe next year.

HigherEd BlogCon starts today

April 03, 2006
HigherEd BlogCon starts today, with the teaching track running this week. (That means I

have two weeks before I have to have my piece for the Websites and Web Development track completed. Whew!). This is a free conference: free as beer, free as in Creative Commons-licensed presentations. What is not to like about that? The other tracks are: library & info resources (April 10-14) admissions, alumni relations, and communications & marketing (April 17-21) websites & web development (that's mine!) (April 24-28) There will be new stuff happening each day for the duration of the conference, so you are going to want to get the feed for the whole shebang, and maybe the comments feed too. If you are hardcore, you'll want the Technorati higheredblogcon tag feed, too. I am excited about this; the tagline for the conference is "transforming academic communities with new tools of the social web," which I think is a very interesting and worthwhile goal. Tags: higheredblogcon, library, education, academic, conference Posted 4:43 PM to Conferences, Social software, Web design

Historical Colorado College library photos on Flickr

April 04, 2006
My friend, colleague, and occasional commenter on this very blog, Jessy Randall, has posted a photoset to Flickr of historical photos of Colorado College libraries. Some of the photos may just be interesting to Colorado College folks, but who wouldn't love Coburn Library, shown here, with its (now missing) Winged Victory statue? Coburn was razed in 1963. I also like the photos of the book move from Coburn to Tutt in 1962. Check out the professorial type in the sweater vest, jacket, and bow tie on May 16th! And for those who think our current concrete Tutt Library is a monstrosity, at least this photo gives you an idea of what Skidmore, Owings & Merrill had in mind. Posted 3:41 PM to Social software, Tutt Library

Coburn Library Originally uploaded by Colorado College Tutt Library.

Naked day at See Also

April 04, 2006
When I saw that Dorothea Salo at Caveat Lector was going naked today, I thought I should join in. It's all for a good cause, and goes nicely with my presentation for HigherEd BlogCon, where I'll be talking about how to get dressed with style. Posted 7:15 PM to Blogs and blogging, Web design

Today the Wall Street Journal; tomorrow Today?

April 05, 2006
As Michael Stephens has pointed out, putting yourself out there on the web can lead to strange and interesting encounters. On Monday, I got an email from Jessica E. Vascellaro of the Wall Street Journal. She was writing an article about how people use online mapping services, and had come across my See Also post on Google Maps and directions for Tutt Library (which was, incidentally, only my third post to the blog). She wanted to interview me.

I called her back and we talked a little bit. I thought she'd want to talk about how easy it was to use the Google Maps API so that people can create their own custom maps and mashups, but I guess that wasn't her angle. I talked about how I use them all the time, printing out a map whenever I am going somewhere I haven't been before, giving them to people at the ref desk when I refer them somewhere across town, trying out newer services like Ask.com Maps, etc. I also remembered something a little unusual that I use Google Maps for. In meetings of the Colorado College Design Review Board, I often pull up the aerial view of the campus to help me visualize where a proposed building or improvement is going to go. The photos are getting a little old (our newest buildings aren't on there), but they are still helpful for me. As you can see from the clipping, that is the part she picked up on. The story is on page D1 of today's issue. Neat! I didn't really say I was an online map "junkie," but whatever. Things got even funnier when I got a call from the Today Show this morning, wanting to talk to me about the same topic (it isn't going to happen--Colorado Springs is too far from their Denver bureau for them to come down and talk to me). That is getting a little bizarre. I am no kind of expert on online maps. They could probably ask anyone my age or younger and get as good an interview. Anyway, the caller from the Today Show asked I knew anyone in the DC area (um, Dorothea? Want to be on TV?) and I reminded him that there are some big libraries there that might be able to help him. I also wished him well in the post-Katie-Couric era ("yeah, we knew it was coming," he said). So this is all no big deal, but it is fun to see my name (and my institution's name) in print in a national paper. And it just goes to show that if you "put yourself out there," people will find you. They may find you for tangential, slightly random reasons, but find you they will. Posted 11:01 AM to Blogs and blogging, Navel gazing Comment from: Dorothea April 5, 2006 11:43 AM I'm not a big online map person, or I would! Maybe I'll pass this on to our GIS person, though. Comment from: Steve Lawson April 5, 2006 11:51 AM OK, I sent you contact info for the Today Show guy via email.

Feeling a little overwhelmed

April 13, 2006

[Warning: whining and complaining ahead. -SL] I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by: 1. Comment spam. Like Walt Crawford, I'm getting hammered with stupid comment spam. It isn't the amount as much as it is the seemingly innocuous nature of the spam is making it past my filter. I want to make it so that if you have commented here before, your comments are published right away, but if you haven't, they get moderated. It looks like I can't do that without enabling icky TypeKey, which I won't do. But I have tweaked the SpamLookup settings to try to put into effect a "guilty until proven innocent" setup where all spam is presumed junk unless it gets credit for email and URLs matching previously-published comments. Let's hope that does it. 2. HigherEd BlogCon. I should have known that putting together a few two- to five-minute screencasts with audio would be a lot

harder than it seemed. My problems are compounded by the fact that I use a PowerBook, and there doesn't seem to be an acceptable screencasting program for Macintosh. So I'm doing the video in Camtasia on random PCs around work, and recording the audio in Audacity on the Mac. Tune in last week of April to see if it is a total train wreck. After HEBC, I have two reviews that I have signed on to do, then no more extra-work commitments for me for a while. 3. The sniffles (and worse). I can't remember the last week when one of my children wasn't sick with something, necessitating my wife and I to miss some work to take care of them. And now the allergy season is coming on strong. Sigh. When I started this blog, I told myself I wouldn't do "sorry I haven't been posting much lately" posts. But that's what's going on with me. See you in a week or two. Posted 9:02 AM to Navel gazing Comment from: walt April 13, 2006 09:58 AM Sorry to hear all this. My spam story seems to have a happy ending, at least for now: Taking the excellent advice from a trio of readers and installing Spam Karma 2 seems to be doing the job, even at default settings. That won't help you, though: It's a WordPress plugin. (It's fascinating to read Spam Karma 2's comments on the "questionable" cases, e.g. the "Flash Gordon was here!" note when a comment's submitted too rapidly for it to have been legitimately entered.) Comment from: Steve Lawson April 13, 2006 10:47 AM Walt, the fact that SpamLookup pulled the velvet rope aside for your comment is a good sign. Let's see if it bounces the bad guys now. Comment from: Laura April 13, 2006 12:38 PM Okay, I just had to see if I was cool enough to get past the velvet rope, too, or if I'm going to be consigned to hanging out outside the club being glared at by the bouncers. . . . In all seriousness, though, I'm surprised you haven't felt overwhelmed before this--I think somebody wrote something about life trumping blogging once upon a time. Comment from: Steve Lawson April 13, 2006 01:38 PM Of course you are cool enough, Laura! As a frequent See Also poster, you have a +3 Sword of Commenting to get past the Spam Dragon. (Actually, if that makes any sense to you, you are just a big a geek as I am). And I suppose I have felt overwhelmed before, I just haven't felt moved to comment on it before. Comment from: K.G. Schneider April 13, 2006 07:00 PM Several weeks ago, I spent an entire day highly stressed and short of breath... and realized that was the day I had to say "no" and mean it. I keep repeating it. No, I can't do X. No, I'm sorry, I'm not attending Y. No, I'd like to, but Z is out of the question. I just did that again today. Yes, I would like to see ABC on the MNO committee happen, and I know if I do it that it will happen faster and the way I like it... but I need to let that go. Good luck--I know once you've committed you're the sort that follows through. You'll weather this storm. But remember the magic "no-word." Remember also that those seemingly small tasks loom very large once the deadline actually hits! Comment from: Carlos Ovalle April 13, 2006 08:55 PM Hmm... one of Hokusai's famous views of Fuji? ^_^ Comment from: Steve Lawson April 13, 2006 09:54 PM Well, the good news is that my old UT Austin schoolmate, Carlos, has shown up. The bad news is that his comment *should* have been blocked, since this is is first time here, I believe. Hi Carlos! Welcome! And yes, I should have titled that image. It is Hokusai's "In the Hollow of a Wave off the Coast at Kanagawa," and is indeed one of his views of Mount Fuji. There is also this version from the design team Kozyndan. Perhaps I wouldn't feel as overwhelmed if I was swimming in bunnies: http://www.kozyndan.com/new_portfolio/GR28left0.html Karen, thanks for the kind words and good advice. Comment from: Carlos Ovalle April 14, 2006 05:45 AM Thanks! I found a link to your blog through your comments elsewhere and then I started seeing you referenced all over the place. Glad to see you're doing well. ^_^ I am back at the ol' alma mater working full time. My wife is a big fan of Ukiyo-e in general, as well as Hokusai, so I recognized that particular image. Comment from: K.G. Schneider April 14, 2006 09:26 AM

P.s. This isn't whining and complaining; it's a valuable reminder to all of us. I know your presentation will go great. Welcome to Justsaynoistan. ;-) Comment from: Laura April 14, 2006 01:57 PM I am clearly not as big a geek as you, as I am afraid the +3 Sword business makes no sense to me whatsoever--but then a few of us need to stay on the not-total-geek side of things so as to be able to communicate with the non-techie natives. The bunnies are quite impressive, although I'm not sure I'd want to be washed in them, either. Comment from: Steve Lawson April 14, 2006 02:05 PM Laura (and others who may be answering "quien es mas geeky?" questions at the reference desk), here is a handy chart to find where people rank in the geek hierarchy: http://www.brunching.com/images/geekchartbig.gif It mostly concentrates on science fiction/fantasy fandom, so maybe we need to create a new geek chart for librarians.

New anti-spam plugin installed

April 17, 2006
Edited 2006-04-28, 06:45: So far so good. If you try this on Movable Type, don't forget that you still need to get a free WordPress API key via WordPress.com and fill it in under the settings for the Akismet plugin. If you forget that step, and you disable your other spam blockers as Akismet suggests, you will be entirely without spam protection (as I was for a few minutes before I realized my mistake). I went ahead and disabled the native SpamLookup anti-spam plugin, and am now relying on Akismet. I'll keep a close eye today and tomorrow--let's hope I don't get buried in donkey pr0n. Posted 4:52 PM to Blogs and blogging, Navel gazing Comment from: Steve Lawson April 27, 2006 02:15 PM testing my new MT-Whitlist spam filter.

Back it up, bloggers!

April 20, 2006
Time to back up your blog database. Do it now! I just did (thanks for the reminder, guys). You'll want to be able to show the kids in seven years. Posted 1:01 PM to Blogs and blogging

I love the self-promoting over-prolific alpha librarians

April 20, 2006
If you have been reading library blogs this week, you have seen the discussion on "shameless self-promotion" and the like. Meredith Farkas' Shameless self-promoter at Information Wants to Be Free is the latest one I have seen, and she recaps the previous posts, so you can start there and work backward if you have missed out. I don't want to beat a dead horse, and I certainly don't want to take anyone to task for previous posts or comments. But I did want to say something about self-promotion. I love the over-prolific alpha geeks on the web. Take Cory Doctorow. His profile seems a little lower than it was a few years ago, but in the early aughts, Doctorow's blogging at boingboing is what got me excited about the web again, after it seemed like all the interesting weird stuff on the web was getting overtaken by corporate web gunk. For a while there, he seemed like the mayor of the Web. He blogged incessantly, he promoted his science fiction writing (releasing the full text of his novels online with Creative Commons licenses) and generally was omnipresent. He also was (and is) a shameless self-promoter. He promoted his books, his talks, his ideas, everything he was into.

And I ate it up. Doctorow's posts on boingboing about copyright, the Creative Commons, digital rights management, and on and on were often my first exposure to the subjects (not to mention Internet trivia and culture like "all your base", 1337speak and the like). These days, I'm also a big Merlin Mann fan. His flagship site, 43 Folders, covers lifehacks and the like. That site has mutated into a one-man self-publishing, community-building empire with 43F Podcasts, 43F Wiki, the 43F Board, and the 43F Google Group (there is probably a 43F pirate radio station and a 43F credit union that I just haven't heard of yet). Cory Doctorow and Merlin Mann aren't necessarily the smartest guys or best writers out there (though I think they are both plenty smart and quite good writers (just about every Merlin Mann post has an LOL moment for me, anyway)), but they know how to hustle, promote, and sell themselves. I'm very happy that we have a group of over-prolific alpha librarians on the web. They may not always be the best librarians--there is always someone somewhere that knows more--but the mere fact that they are moving and shaking and getting people excited about blogs or wikis or institutional repositories or library marketing or whatever is great. And I think that blogs make these folks so much more accessible than research articles or even magazine columns did in the past: I have had at least one email or blog-comment contact with just about every big-deal library blogger, and the same with Cory Doctorow and Merlin Mann. I don't say that to claim that I am a big deal because people return my email; it's just that the kind of people who blog are the kind of people who want to engage with their audience. Of course, the flip side to all this moving and shaking is burnout. Steven Cohen has blogged about it recently at Library Stuff, and who can blame him for wanting to spend more time with his family. I have had my own minor burnout in recent weeks. But, in general, I have a high tolerance for self-promotion. Maybe it is because I once wanted to be an actor, a profession where self-promotion is a basic requirement. If a person is consistently interesting, thought-provoking, and generous, I don't much care if they come off as an egotist or a climber. I'm happy to latch on and see where they take me. Posted 2:20 PM to Blogs and blogging, Librarians and the profession Comment from: Carlos Ovalle April 20, 2006 06:04 PM I had no idea you were into librarian.net, boingboing, and all your base back in library school. ^_^ Should've been paying more attention. Comment from: Steve Lawson April 20, 2006 10:06 PM Well, Carlos, I'm sure I'd found librarian.net in those days, but I confess it wasn't until a little after library school that my wife turned me on to boingboing (early 2001, I'd guess). But, lest I blow all my cred, I will have you know that I was into boingboing back in the early 1990s when it was a printed zine, bOING bOING about cyberpunk and pop culture and the like. And I'm sorry to have to ask, but are these ^-^ raised eyebrows? Comment from: Carlos Ovalle April 21, 2006 09:26 AM Nope, it's a smiley, although it's more of a Japanese/Asian style- ^_^ is pretty much the same thing as :). Since the first mailing lists I was on were Japanese, I've been using those forever. ;; or ;_; crying, ^_^; or ^^; embarrassment (which is more symboloic of an asian convention used in anime/manga), and so on. Here's a list: http://club.pep.ne.jp/~hiroette/en/facemarks/body.html

Library Shenanigans
April 20, 2006
My friend, colleague, and occasional commenter on this very blog, Jessy Randall, has a new little project: Library Shenanigans, a list of library pranks and other silliness. My new favorite is "Reading On a Dream," the musical-theatre duet sung in the middle of the library to an audience of unsuspecting students (apologies for all the porn links on the host page). If you know of (or have perpetrated) other library shenanigans, please let Jessy know, or leave a comment on this post. Posted 3:58 PM to Library Comment from: Jessy April 24, 2006 11:23 AM I've just added three shenanigans from the Colorado College library: streaking, the "Tutt Crunch" relay race, and Chas in costume. Nobody has emailed me with any further shenanigans, but I can't believe there aren't more, a lot more.

Comments feed for your Movable Type blog

April 21, 2006
About a week ago, Michael Stephens mentioned parenthetically "I think I need a way to offer comments as a feed....". Since I have a comments feed for See Also, I copied my template, made a few small changes and sent it to Michael. He seemed to appreciate it. So I thought that other Movable Type types might want to copy that file, too. Here it is: comments.xml. (Right-click (Macintosh users ctrl-click) to download this file to your computer.) One of the things I like about this particular comments feed is that it provides a bit more context than comment feeds often do. The headline in the aggregator will say "Comment by [name] on [blog post title]". The main body of the feed contains the entire comment, followed by an excerpt of the original post. There are links to the comment, the commenter's URL (if provided), and to the original post. This template should work for Movable Type 3.2 with a minimum of customization on your part. To use, create a new index template on the Templates screen in Movable Type. I gave mine the name "RSS 2.0 Comments" and the filename "comments.xml", but I expect you could call it anything that ends in ".xml". Movable Type will automatically replace the MT template tags in the document with the name, description, URL, etc. of your blog (as well as the appropriate comments, of course). You do need to specify a URL for an image (if you would like your blog logo to show in certain feed readers) and text for a copyright statement. See the comments in the template file itself for guidance as to where to put that information.. Once you have it set up, the URL will be http://[your blog url]/comments.xml (or whatever filename you gave it). Load that URL in your browser. It will look like unformatted XML (like my raw comments feed), but you should be able to read it well enough to be sure it is pulling the appropriate comments from your blog. If you have experience using the template tags for your blogging software, this kind of feed is pretty easy to write. I just looked at the stock MT feeds for the entries, referred to the RSS 2.0 specification and did a little troubleshooting when I made this feed. One last caveat: it looks like almost no one subscribes to my comments feed! That's OK, because it is useful to me. And if I can get some more good discussions going here in the future, perhaps more people will want to pick it up. Posted 3:38 PM to Tools Comment from: Laura April 23, 2006 04:57 PM I admit, I don't subscribe to your comments feed--but your posts show up again in Bloglines when there are new comments, so I tend to pick them up that way. Comment from: K.G. Schneider April 23, 2006 06:20 PM That's a nice solution, though I still find I want to read the comments in context of the post (which is how I have my feeds set up). Comment from: Steve Lawson April 23, 2006 08:41 PM Laura, I forgot that Bloglines marked it as new when it got a new comment. So I can see why Bloglines users wouldn't bother. Karen, yes, I had thought of doing it your way, too. My problem with that is having to scroll through the original post and previous comments to read the new one(s). The benefit of doing it your way is that readers get to see all the comments together, so if people are having a conversation, you can see it all. There's no one right way to do it, of course.

Life 2.0
April 25, 2006
So that's my Second Life avatar, Hatchibombotar Stein, standing in front of the horse statue that is outside the Second Life Library 2.0. I may end up making him blue like Krishna or Dr. Manhattan or a Smurf, but he's OK for the time being. If I ever have some time to burn, I might make him look more like Lucien, the librarian in The Dreaming. I doubt I'll spend much time in Second Life (my hands are pretty full in the First Life, thanks), but after reading Michael Sauers' posts at TravelinLibrarian (Second Life and Virtual Attendance) and looking around at the Second Life Library 2.0 blog (if "Library 2.0" = "L2," does "Second Life Library 2.0" = "2L-L2?") I wanted to check it out. Business Week is also doing a cover story on Second Life this week. After a short time in-game, I guess I'd say that the possibilities for Second Life are very intriguing, and were I ten or twenty years younger with more time to burn, I'd be all over it. Then there is the technical element; the game tests the limits of my

sluggish DSL connection, and threatens to cook the processor on my PowerBook. Basic accounts are free, so if you are curious you can take a look without any risk. The 2L-L2 folks are going great guns with their reference desk, hosting instruction sessions, and having an organizational meeting tonight at 6:00 Pacific time, following the book discussion of the book "Norwood" at 5:00 Pacific (I love how they give all the time zones except Mountain Time! What are we, chopped liver? Or the only folks who can be trusted to add and subtract?). Tags: library, library2.0, second_life Posted 6:49 AM to Digital libraries, Social software

Name that book: a fiction subject headings quiz

April 26, 2006
I have often thought that Library of Congress Subject Headings for fiction were kind of funny in they way they can reduce a complex work of art into a few words. And the "-- Fiction" part just seems funny to me, as in "Middle-aged men -- Fiction." So here is a a little quiz: nine classic (or at least well-known) works of world literature, as described in library catalogs' subject headings and genre terms. First one to get all nine correct in the comments wins a free lifetime subscription to See Also. (I suppose I should add a spoiler warning, as one of these gives away the ending of the novel in the subject headings! Also, I expect I'm not the first person to find this funny; if you know of similar pages/quizzes, please let me know.) Edited to add: if you have other funny examples, please put them in the comments. 1. Whaling ships -- Fiction Ship captains -- Fiction Mentally ill -- Fiction Whaling -- Fiction Whales -- Fiction Runaway teenagers -- Fiction New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction Bildungsromans Middle aged men -- Fiction Girls -- Fiction Erotic fiction Love stories Physicians' spouses -- Fiction Adultery -- Fiction Suicide victims -- Fiction Middle class -- Fiction France -- Fiction Domestic fiction Paris (France) -- History -- 1789-1799 -- Fiction London (England) -- History -- 18th century -- Fiction Paris (France) -- History -- 1789-1799 -- Fiction London (England) -- History -- 18th century -- Fiction Historical fiction War stories Computer hackers -- Fiction Business intelligence -- Fiction Information superhighway -- Fiction Nervous system -- Wounds and injuries -- Fiction Conspiracies -- Fiction Japan -- Fiction Science fiction Cowboys -- California -- Salinas River Valley -- Fiction. Men -- California -- Salinas River Valley -- Fiction. Friendship -- Fiction. Survival after airplane accidents, shipwrecks, etc. -- Fiction Regression (Psychology) -- Fiction Islands -- Fiction Boys -- Fiction Psychological fiction Rabbits -- England -- Fiction. Community power -- Fiction. Allegories.

2. 3.

4.

5.

6.

7. 8.

9.

Posted 10:13 AM to Books and reading, Catalogs Comment from: Jessy April 26, 2006 10:50 AM I'm doing this without looking at any catalog records, since that seems to be the spirit of the quiz (even though we are librarians and the itch to look things up is almost irresistable). 1. Moby Dick 2. Catcher in the Rye 3. Lolita 4. [?] 5. [?] 6. Neuromancer? 7. Brokeback Mountain? 8. The Lord of the Flies 9. Watership Down

Comment from: Dorothea Salo April 26, 2006 11:40 AM 4. Madame Bovary? 5. A Tale of Two Cities There is no "The" in Lord of the Flies. :) Comment from: Steve Lawson April 26, 2006 11:59 AM Between Jessy and Dorothea we have them all correct except for number 7. Here is a bonus one. I haven't read the book, but I belive you don't really get the feel for the book's style from this one. World War, 1939-1945 -- Fiction. Americans -- Europe -- Fiction. Rockets (Ordnance) -- Fiction. Rocketry -- Fiction. Soldiers -- Fiction. Genre/Form: War stories. Science fiction. Comment from: manogirl April 26, 2006 12:04 PM 7. Of Mice and Men (?) Comment from: Andre Keyzer April 26, 2006 12:08 PM 7: Of mice and men? Comment from: John Russell April 26, 2006 12:12 PM Is no. 7 Of Mice and Men? I fear that the bonus is Gravity's Rainbow. Comment from: Steve Lawson April 26, 2006 12:27 PM Yes, yes, yes, and yes! (My spam filter is marking everything as spam so manogirl, Andre, and John couldn't see each others' responses.) Last one for now: Married women -- Sexual behavior -- England -- Fiction Adultery -- England -- Fiction Erotic stories Hint: according to Wikipedia, during the obscenity trial for this book the chief prosecuter asked if it was the kind of book "you would wish your wife or servants to read." Your turn: lay some good ones on us. For older books, try more recent editions to find records with subject headings. I promise to check the spam filter frequently. Comment from: Dorothea Salo April 26, 2006 12:37 PM Lady Chatterley's Lover. Comment from: Jenn April 26, 2006 12:56 PM

That one almost has to be Lady Chatterly's Lover.... How about this one? Fathers and daughters--Fiction. Race relations--Fiction. Trials (Rape)--Fiction. Girls--Fiction. Southern States--Fiction. Comment from: Meredith April 26, 2006 03:02 PM To Kill a Mockingbird? Comment from: Steve Lawson April 26, 2006 03:05 PM Yep, Lady Chatterley it is. And I ready Jenn's mystery book in junior high. Gregory Peck is great in the film. You know, we haven't even tapped kid's lit yet. I love this: Swine -- Folklore. Piglets -- Folklore. Wolves -- Folklore. Housing -- Folklore. Comment from: Meredith April 26, 2006 03:16 PM This is fun! Here are a few more before I run to dinner: 1. Fugitive slaves--Fiction. Male friendship--Fiction. Boys--Fiction. Mississippi River--Fiction. Missouri--Fiction. 2. Migrant agricultural laborers--California--Fiction. Labor camps--California--Fiction. Historical fiction. 3. Triangles (Interpersonal relations) -- Fiction. Separated people -- Fiction. Upper class -- Fiction. Married people -- Fiction. New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction. 4. Architects -- Fiction. Man-woman relationships -- Fiction. Individualism -- Fiction. 5. Burial -- Fiction. Death -- Fiction. Mississippi -- Fiction. (this one may be a toughie)

Comment from: Steve Lawson April 26, 2006 03:21 PM Meredith, you stumped me with number 3. I'm not looking it up yet, but I wonder if I haven't read it. Got the rest, though. Comment from: Jessy April 27, 2006 04:06 PM Oops, I can't believe I put The Lord of the Flies. Clearly I'm too big a fan of The Lord of the Rings. Or is it The Lord of the Dance? Comment from: Jessy April 27, 2006 04:07 PM And here's another one for the quiz:

Fishers -- Fiction. Aged men -- Fiction. Male friendship -- Fiction. Cuba -- Fiction. Comment from: Steve Lawson April 27, 2006 04:15 PM Here's another one that I like: Infants switched at birth -- Fiction Islam -- Relations -- Hinduism -- Fiction Hinduism -- Relations -- Islam -- Fiction Children of the rich -- Fiction Poor children -- Fiction Supernatural -- Fiction Comment from: Jill April 28, 2006 12:47 PM To answer Meredith's items: 1. Tom Sawyer 2. Grapes of Wrath 3. [I have no clue!] 4. The Fountainhead 5. As I Lay Dying Comment from: Steve Lawson April 28, 2006 01:47 PM I haven't checked, but could Meredith's number three be The Great Gatsby? Doesn't seem exactly right, but it could be. And, Jill, I think the "Fugitive slaves--Fiction" heading means that number one has to be Huckleberry Finn rather than Tom Sawyer. Comment from: Laura April 28, 2006 03:08 PM Sorry to have arrived so late to the party, but I'm glad there are so many other people out there as fascinated by fiction subject headings as I am. I started reading CIP data long before I ever thought of being a librarian; I suppose I should have taken it as a sign. Gatsby seems like a good bet for #3, but I'm not sure. Here's my contribution: Women college students--Suicidal behavior--Fiction Depression, Mental--Fiction Autobiographical fiction Psychological fiction Comment from: Meredith April 28, 2006 04:44 PM sorry for answering so late, but #3 was The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (would have been helpful if they'd had a time period in there). Nice guess with Great Gatsby (certainly fits in there as well)! And 1 was Huck Finn. Jill had the rest of them right! Comment from: Steve Lawson April 28, 2006 06:25 PM Here is Gatsby: Long Island (N.Y.) -- Fiction Traffic accidents -- Fiction First loves -- Fiction Rich people -- Fiction Mistresses -- Fiction Revenge -- Fiction Comment from: JanieH April 28, 2006 09:15 PM The answer to Laura's contribution must surely be Plath's The Bell Jar. Although, it could also be Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted Comment from: Simon Chamberlain April 28, 2006 09:27 PM Is Steve's last one The God of Small Things? Laura's could be The Bell Jar? Comment from: Steve Lawson April 28, 2006 10:07 PM My last one isn't The God of Small Things. I guess the spoiler alert should apply to that one, too, as I think the first subject heading is a

pretty major revelation some many pages into the book. And no one has tried Jessy's yet. Would it help if I added "Heavy-handed Christ symbolism--Fiction" and "Really big fish--Fiction"? Comment from: v smoothe April 29, 2006 12:56 AM Midnight's Children. Comment from: Steve Lawson April 29, 2006 06:54 AM v smoothe got mine! Comment from: Ellen April 29, 2006 07:34 AM Ooh, fun! How about this one? Young women -- England -- Fiction. Courtship -- England -- Fiction. Sisters -- England -- Fiction. England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction. or: Wizards -- Fiction. Magic -- Fiction. Schools -- Fiction. Magic -- Juvenile fiction. Wizards -- Juvenile fiction. England -- Fiction. or: Leonardo, da Vinci, 1452-1519 -- Manuscripts -- Fiction. Cryptographers -- Fiction. Comment from: Simon Chamberlain April 29, 2006 09:24 PM Jessy's was the Old Man and the Sea. Ellen's are Pride and Prejudice, Harry Potter and the Da Vinci Code (I guess...). World Series (Baseball)--Fiction. Public relations--Fiction. Fathers and sons--Fiction. Women artists--Fiction. Ex-convicts--Fiction. Executives--Fiction. Baseballs--Fiction. Cold War--Fiction. New York (N.Y.)--Fiction. Passivity (Psychology)--Fiction. Genetic engineering--Fiction. Totalitarianism--Fiction. Collectivism--Fiction. Triangles (Interpersonal relations)--Fiction. Rejection (Psychology)--Fiction. Rural families--Fiction. Foundlings--Fiction. Yorkshire (England)--Fiction. Comment from: Steve Lawson April 29, 2006 10:22 PM Good ones, Simon! The first I recognized right off as DeLillo's Underworld; for the others, I had to cheat. Speaking of DeLillo, I love the subjects for White Noise: Industrial accidents -- Fiction. College teachers -- Fiction. Stepfamilies -- Fiction. Middle West -- Fiction. Death -- Fiction. Humorous stories. "Death -- Fiction.; Humorous stories." Love that.

Comment from: Jessy April 30, 2006 01:07 PM Here's another, quite obvious but I enjoyed the last LCSH: Chocolate factories -- Juvenile fiction. Chocolate -- Juvenile fiction. Candy -- Juvenile fiction. Good and evil -- Juvenile fiction. Some of the records for this book have only one subject heading: Human behavior -- Juvenile fiction. I believe, from looking at other books with that subject heading, it's supposed to mean something to do with manners and politeness (Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, The Berenstein Bears Forget Their Manners). Not too intuitive, though. Comment from: Laura May 1, 2006 04:10 PM Yup, The Bell Jar is right. Simon, is your third one Tom Jones? The White Noise subjects are fantastic. Comment from: adrienne May 4, 2006 01:55 PM My favorite subject-heading-wise has always been: Despair -- Fiction Rural poor -- New England -- Fiction Marriage -- Fiction Farm life -- New England -- Fiction Interpersonal relations -- Fiction Berkshire Hills (Mass.) -- Fiction New England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction I particularly enjoy it b/c every teenager I've helped find the book has been feeling "despair" in a less fictional way at the thought of having to read it. Can't say as I blame them.... Comment from: Simon May 7, 2006 08:03 PM Oooh, forgot about this. Steve is right with Underworld. The third one is Wuthering Heights - not 100% obvious and I can see why you would think Tom Jones. My second one was Brave New World. Comment from: JBD May 16, 2006 08:15 PM Moving out of fiction just briefly, here's one I thought was amusing. Fathers and daughters -- Drama. Political refugees -- Drama. Shipwreck victims -- Drama. Magicians -- Drama. Islands -- Drama. Spirits -- Drama. Comment from: Steve Lawson May 17, 2006 12:48 PM Thanks, JDB; nice one. I had had trouble finding Shakespeare with subject headings. No one has tried adrienne's title yet. I think I may not have read it.

Second Life on the brain

April 26, 2006
I hung out on Second Life a little more on Tuesday night. I'm getting a little better with the navigation, though I did jump off the roof of the library at one point. I met a few more people and am now officially Second Life "friends" with Planetneutral Fackler and Max Batra (or my avatar, Hatchibombotar Stein, is friends with them, anyway). I still don't think I can devote much time to Second Life, but nobody told my brain that: my sleep was broken Tuesday night, and it seemed that every time I woke up, my brain was churning through something or other on Second Life. So here is a little brain dump to try to avoid that fate again (not playing right before bed will probably help, too):

The main ice-breaker conversation seems to be a chat about your avatar: "Hey, nice wings," or "where did you get the texture for that kitten-fur coat?" I'm reasonably comfortable communicating with strangers via IM, but the chat on SL is pretty slow for me. So I'm afraid I come off as slow myself. I think it is nice that when people see my avatar they say "Hi, Hatch." It ain't the Metaverse, to be sure, but it is pretty interesting to walk around SL and see all the various creative and commercial efforts. The atmosphere--people in crazy costumes very busy doing strange things--feels like walking through Lollapalooza or something. I had posited "2L-L2" for Second Life Library 2.0. But people don't say 2L, they say SL. So SLL2? I gather there are questions about what the SLL2 collection will consist of. I hope they concentrate at first on information and literature created in SL. I know so little about this, but is there already a place in the game to go for information on how to make a great avatar or build cool stuff? Is there a collection of SL folklore yet? This might have a "you-had-to-be-virtually-there" quality to it, but my favorite chat exchange of last night went something like this (the game doesn't seem to keep the chat history from session to session, so I can't quote exactly.): Green-haired female avatar in cyberpunk getup: "What kind of books are here? Just the ones near the front door?" Four male avatars w/relatively "straight" appearance: [dead silence for a full minute. Avatars shuffle their feet, look at the sky.] Green-haired female avatar: Um, did I come at a bad time? Finally, Planetneutral Fackler (or PF) spoke up and said that the silence was mainly due to the fact that the library was so new that we didn't really know what to say yet. Whew! Felt like junior high there for a minute! Luke Rosenberger and Michael Stephens have also weighed in on Second Life, but the Second Life Library 2.0 blog is really the place to go. Even if you aren't likely to be a real "regular" there, you can think of the Second Life Library 2.0 as a librarian hangout. In short, if you are interested in libraries and have been curious about Second Life, this is a great time to jump in and see what the heck this is all about. Tags: library, second_life Posted 10:49 PM to Social software Comment from: Greg April 27, 2006 05:45 AM I would've responded sooner to her, but I was multi-tasking and not paying attention, which is bad, but not atypical for me. Comment from: Michael April 27, 2006 10:19 AM One advantage that SL has over the metaverse is that the avatar's are stored on the server-side. You can switch from one computer to another and every you need is downloaded to the client you are using. I bet Hiro would have appreciated that. Comment from: Steve Lawson April 27, 2006 02:43 PM @Greg: I would have responded sooner to her had I not been such a helpless n00b! @Michael: yeah, I have had an urge all week to go back and re-read Snow Crash. Comment from: Michael April 27, 2006 09:14 PM My copy is in a box. Now I realy want to dig it out.

My presentation on spiffing up your blog with CSS up at HigherEd BlogCon 2006

April 27, 2006
HigherEd BlogCon didn't end with the end of the library track. This week has been the websites & web development track, and my presentation, Know Enough to Be Dangerous: Tools for Taking

Control of HTML and CSS, is up today. A few thoughts: The screencasts I made with Camtasia turned out to be much larger (i.e., more megabytes) than I thought they would be. I hope people are able to stream them OK. The name of the presentation is misleading. It's almost entirely about CSS. It was a challenge to write to the proper audience. The idea was to help people who want to customize their blog templates, but don't know much about CSS. I didn't want to write an intro to CSS textbook, so if you have never used CSS before at all, this might not be enough of an introduction for you. If you are already building pages with CSS, there might not be much new. Either way, I hope you take a look at it and let me know what you think. I'm keeping a copy of the presentation on this site, so if I get good suggestions to change it, I would likely make changes on that copy. If nothing else, I hope my presentation encourages everyone to use Firefox, and everyone who creates web pages to try Chris Pederick's Web Developer extension for Firefox. It is an extremely useful and elegant Swiss Army Knife of a tool. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I have some thoughts as to how future HEBCs might improve the experience for presenters and participants, but I'll keep them to myself for the moment, as I don't want to look like I'm complaining. Overall, it has been a positive experience for me, and I'm happy to have had the opportunity to present. Tags: higheredblogcon, blogging, css, self-promotion, presentation Posted 7:38 AM to Conferences, Presentations, Tools, Web design Comment from: Jilly April 27, 2006 02:35 PM It loaded fine on a College network. With Opera even. Enjoyed it. Comment from: Steve Lawson April 27, 2006 03:30 PM Thanks very much, Jilly, for letting me know. Comment from: Laura April 28, 2006 03:20 PM I'm very much looking forward to looking at it (you know, when I catch up with all my freakin' feeds!)--I think I may meet the target audience in terms of CSS knowledge, though near the low end--anyway, I'll let you know what I think. Comment from: Dan Karleen April 30, 2006 12:54 PM I'm interested in hearing your ideas about how to improve the next HEBC. Thank you for participating and sharing your creative and informative presentation. Comment from: Steve Lawson April 30, 2006 04:18 PM Thanks, Dan (for those who don't know, Dan Karleen, above, was the HigherEd BlogCon Co-Chair for Programming--he was very helpful and supportive to me throughout). I have some ideas kicking around my head about online conferences in general, stemming from the few experience I have had and recent blog posts and comments from others. I'll post those thoughts to this blog after my week of being more-or-less away is up.

New spam approach: whitelisting

April 27, 2006
I just installed the Email Whitelister plugin for Movable Type and populated it with the email addresses of all the folks who have already commented on this blog. So if you have ever left a message here before (and you use the same email address as you have in the past), your comment should be automatically approved. If you are new, you'll have to wait for me to pick your comment out of the increasingly inscrutable spam filters I have set up. (Which I will be happy to do, and will add you to the whitelist for future reference). Please note that I don't publish commenter's email addresses, but I do require an address to comment. Akismet, which I installed earlier this month is a strange one. It marks damn near everything as spam, which, I suppose, is better than the alternative. But every now and then it has a hiccup and lets through something bizarre--there was a completely obvious donkey porn spam

with 200 offensive keywords that got through this morning. So I'm not sure if I should leave it running or go back to trying to tweak the settings on Spamlookup. As for trackbacks, forget about 'em. I almost never get legit trackbacks, so I'm turning them off. Sigh. Curse you, spammers! Tags: spam, whitelist, akismet, spammers_die_die_die, Posted 3:01 PM to Blogs and blogging, Navel gazing

Library Journal breaking the news

April 28, 2006
I spent the morning in high dudgeon about this news item from the LibraryJournal.com "Breaking News" feed dated today, April 28, 2006: Colorado Legislator Would Ban Library Purchase of Books in Spanish. It was actually worse than the headline suggests, as it would ban the purchase of most materials in any language other than English by Colorado public libraries. I say it "was" worse because the measure failed on Tuesday, April 25, or three days before the LJ story came out (see the Denver Post, English-only measure fails). Thanks for keeping me up-to-date, LJ! Posted 1:40 PM to Library Comment from: Stephen May 2, 2006 07:42 PM Here is the passage that stood out to me: "(b) NO PUBLICLY SUPPORTED LIBRARY SHALL, EITHER IN CONNECTION WITH THE LIBRARY SYSTEM AS A WHOLE OR WITH REFERENCE TO ANY PARTICULAR BRANCH LOCATION OF THE LIBRARY, PURCHASE ANY PRINTED OR ELECTRONIC DOCUMENTS, PUBLICATIONS, OR OTHER MATERIALS IN A LANGUAGE OTHER THAN ENGLISH; EXCEPT THAT THE REQUIREMENTS OF THIS PARAGRAPH (b) SHALL NOT RESTRICT THE PURCHASE OF EITHER TEXTBOOKS OR RELATED INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS USED FOR THE PURPOSE OF TEACHING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE OR REFERENCE MATERIALS PUBLISHED IN A LANGUAGE OTHER THAN ENGLISH." So in other words, a public library could not purchase literature written in foreign languages, etc.? That would be incredibly ignorant. Fortunately this bill was voted down by a partuy line vote of 6-5. It is hard to believe even the most conservative, xenophobic Republican legislator could support this bill. It should have been laughed out of committee. Comment from: Steve Lawson May 3, 2006 06:45 AM Stephen, before I had realized that the bill was already dead, I was planning to point out to my legislators that the bill would forbid libraries to buy copies of the Bible in Greek or Latin or Hebrew (along with everything else). I also like that it would have allowed for buying instructional materials in foreign languages, but not any actual material for those students to read as they conducted their studies.

Swearing off the web for a week

April 28, 2006
I love the web. And I love the "biblioblogosphere." But I am getting repetitive strain injury from hitting command-R in NetNewsWire to refresh my RSS subscriptions. And I stay up late reading Metafilter or trying to get my Second Life avatar just the right shade of blue instead of doing the dishes. I read ten times as many words on a screen each day as I do on paper (at least! I wonder what the real figure is?). And the returns are diminishing. So I'm swearing off the web for a week. I'm thinking of exporting my RSS feeds to OPML and deleting NetNewsWire to ensure I don't backslide. This week is/was TV-Turnoff Week, which isn't really much of an issue for me. If you don't count the kids' videos I "watch" in the morning, I probably only watch three or four hours of TV a week. The web is another story. So, starting tomorrow, I won't be using the web for anything other than work. I'll still write and answer email and will still be on IM as much as I usually am. But I won't read blogs and I won't post to this blog. I will check in on the comments every day to make sure the spam thing stays under control, and I might even write a reply in the comments. I won't be bringing my laptop home from work unless I really need to do some work at home. I will read a book or two and I will get more stuff done around the house and I will make more eye contact with my family. I might do some writing for the blog while I'm away; it has been a while since I wrote anything like an essay.

I fell a bit conflicted about doing it right now; it was great to have so many comments this week on the LCSH for fiction post, many of them from people who had never commented here before. In terms of page loads, See Also had its fourth busiest day ever yesterday. I hate to lose the momentum, but I'm sure it will pick up again quickly after a week. If I wasn't making a conscious decision about this, a week's absence would be nothing. I'll let you know how it went next week. Don't do anything too interesting while I'm away. Right now, though, I have to go--I have eight hours and thirty minutes of unapologetic web surfing ahead of me! Posted 3:31 PM to Blogs and blogging, Navel gazing Comment from: Steven M. Cohen April 28, 2006 10:02 PM Wow! For someone who is not going to do web stuff, you sure are going to do, well, web stuff. Sounds like you're just taking a blog vacation, but you'll still be writing for your blog. Too many restrictions. Just turn off the computer for a week. ;-) Oh, and good luck. Comment from: Steve Lawson April 28, 2006 10:16 PM Ha! I like to keep things complicated, Steven. I was trying to say that I'm not tired of the blog or the blogosphere, I'm tired of my own behavior, spending too much time in front of the computer. So I'm cutting back radically for a week, then trying to be more moderate when I return. Comment from: Nick Baker May 5, 2006 09:13 AM I find that I have the opposite of your experience. When I was a student I'd spend hours of free time at home surfing the web. But when I have a job that entails being on the computer most of the day, I hardly touch my home pc. And if you don't count computer code, I probably read about as much on paper as I do on screen. But it's nice to unplug once in a while, good luck with your experiment!

My week away
May 05, 2006
So how did it go? Pretty good, I guess. Bad RSS-withdrawal pains on Saturday and Monday, lessening as the week went on. A lingering sense that I was "out of the loop." Some agonizing slow hours on the reference desk. But nothing worse. I read a whole entire book (the quite good Black Swan Green, which I reviewed for our book review site, Bookends); I didn't try and read feeds at the same time I fed my baby; I didn't stay up late messing around on Second Life, etc. Did I cheat? Yeah, a little. I checked my blog stats from time to time to see if anyone was still visiting. (Between traffic for the guess the book by its LCSH game and Steven Cohen's nice shout out, the day after I "signed off" was See Also's biggest day ever in terms of page loads. I should go away more often.) I looked at web pages that people forwarded to me via email and stuff like that. But I held fast to my main principles: no feeds and no time-killing on the web. My whole point wasn't to see if I could go for a week without the web, but to try and help establish healthier patterns for using the web. Now that I'm back, my plan is to read feeds three times a day at most (morning, afternoon, evening), and no web surfing after 10PM. Now I'm itching to get back to work here. I have a small backlog of things I want to write about, so I expect to post more often than usual while catching up. Also, if you haven't looked at the LCSH game recently, take another look, as the commenters have come up with some great additions. We'll see how it goes. Now, if you will excuse me, I have 729 links awaiting me in my feed reader. Posted 9:18 PM to Navel gazing Comment from: Steven Cohen May 6, 2006 08:11 AM Welcome back! I missed you. Comment from: Greg May 6, 2006 02:51 PM 729? That's closer to one day's worth for me. Sounds to me like you have your feeds pretty well under control. Comment from: Iris May 6, 2006 05:56 PM Welcome back! I don't know quite why I kept checking your blog through the week, even knowing there wouldn't be anything there. I guess it was just hopeful thinking.

Comment from: Steve Lawson May 7, 2006 09:42 PM Thanks all. Greg, I have been paring back a bit. I was surprised that I didn't have more than a thousand. I think some feeds top out at ten items or something, and NetNewsWire doesn't cache them like Bloglines does. Not that I am complaining. 729 was plenty.

Managing mailing lists with Gmail

May 08, 2006
While taking my little breather from the web, I suddenly developed a vital interest in email lists. I hate dealing with email lists, especially high-volume lists. And yet, if I tell myself that I shouldn't subscribe to them but just check the archives from time to time, I never remember. If they come into my main inbox they are just annoying (I don't need to see each new web4lib message as it is posted; even less do I need to see each new Innovative Users Group message). Even using "rules" in Entourage to shunt them off to their own folder isn't optimal, as they are taking up valuable kilobytes in my all-too-small college mail storage allotment. My current solution is to subscribe to all lists with one Gmail account. I know that Gmail is no longer news, but this method seems to work really well, so I thought I'd share it. I had already experimented with Gmail for mailing lists, and found that its threaded "conversation" approach to mail is great at pulling together the original message and all the replies. The large screenshot illustrates how read items in a conversation "stack up" behind the most-recent unread messages, which is very handy). In that Gmail account, I filter messages based on the "to" address of the list, and apply a label based on the name of the list (I start the name of the label with an asterisk to force them to the top of the list of labels--see the smallscreenshot). Now, when I want to read web4lib, I just click on the "*web4lib" label and see only that mailing list. This makes it easy to catch up on those lists once or twice a week, skim for interesting threads, star (or even read!) the good ones, and then mark everything as read. If you don't delete anything, you also get your own, private, easily searchable and taggable archive of the mailing list. After thinking myself so clever for coming up with this, I found the post Gmail and high volume mailing lists on the delightfully floral joshuaink.com, dated almost a year ago (and he probably isn't the only one). John takes the method one step further and uses the "skip the inbox" option when creating a filter to send all the messages to the archive immediately. That might be a good move, especially if you are using the GMail account for other kinds of email as well. Lastly, it looks like anyone who is willing to divulge their mobile phone number can get a Gmail account now. If you don't want to do that (or *gasp* somehow manage to exist without a mobile phone), email me or let me know in the comments (put your real, current email address on the comment form; it won't get published) and I'll send you an invitation. Posted 12:37 PM to Tools Comment from: nichole May 8, 2006 01:22 PM Cool! This is a natural fit. I've moved every mailing list that let me to my Bloglines aggregator. I don't get the benefit of threading, but there's nothing quite like clicking "Mark All Read". Comment from: Dorothea Salo May 8, 2006 02:20 PM I could use an invite. I'm the lone cellphone holdout. ;) Comment from: Laura May 8, 2006 03:45 PM I don't have a cell phone anymore, since Cingular does not offer service in most of Wyoming, and, having shelled out the money to cancel that contract, I'm unenthralled about spending more money on another one. I also don't have a gmail account, though not for lack of invitations. . . I'm just doing my small part not to participate in every piece of the Google pie.

Using Bloglines for e-mail lists has worked pretty well for me. Comment from: Revi May 19, 2006 05:50 PM Dorothea is definately not the "lone" cellphone holdout, and I just vaguely resented being excluded from trying Gmail based on possession of a "hot consumer gotta-have" as a qualifier. That may not be entirely reasonable, but it's my current stand. I sincerely appreciate your offer to "invite" me to set up a Gmail account, and by the way, I'm quite enjoying your blog in general. Revi

Towards better online conferences (part one)

May 10, 2006
I have been thinking about online conferences lately, prompted by my recent participation in HigherEd BlogCon (HEBC) and Steven Bell's post Sure Id Attend The ACRL Virtual Conference - If It Was Free at ACRLog (the sentiment expressed in the post title isn't Steven's: it is what he is responding to). I left a comment on that post, and Steven wrote a nice response. I thought that HEBC was a great idea and a very good experience with some room for improvement. There is a lot that I don't understand about the ACRL model--I haven't attended any of their online conferences--but I have some thoughts based on what Steven wrote. In case it isn't obvious, the thoughts that follow are of the "what if?" or "why not?" variety, not the "this must happen now!" or "online conferences are broken!" variety. I have done my share of conference planning, but not for online conferences; which is to say I may not really know what I'm talking about. But when has that ever stopped me before? Why go to a conference? Presentations and poster sessions and the like are important for conferences, of course. If you don't have interesting people presenting on interesting topics, it will be tough to get people to attend. But once the attendees are there, I'd say that the part of the conference that appears in the program is less than half the story. What I remember best about the conferences that I have attended are the people I have met or re-connected with; the wider circle of colleagues and friends that conferences allow us to develop. The attendees are the conference. I remember the time I spent "hanging out" at Internet Librarian or the RBMS preconferences I used to attend at least as well as I remember any of the sessions. And even the conference sessions I remember best are the ones that are less scripted and more participatory like the Google-brary free-for-all at Internet Librarian or the Googleization discussion at CAL (I guess it helps to have a hot-button topic like Google to motivate the discussion, too). It can be tough for an online conference to replicate that sensation of haning out and getting to know people: there is no hotel bar to hang out in, no mealtimes to bring people together in groups. So I think that any online conference will need to plan for some of these informal interactions, perhaps by establishing a semi-official "backchannel" where people can comment on the conference or go wildly off-topic without distracting from the main event. Online conference attendees need something to do besides listen or read or type questions to the presenter into a little box. Free vs. paid registration and the economy of attention I agree with Steven Bell when he writes "When any program or event is free those who registered have less of a commitment to attend..." True enough. I was very enthusiastic about HEBC, but failed to clear any time on my calendar to participate. I knew that the conference was not only free, but would be available on the web indefinitely, so there are many presentations that I am interested in but still haven't seen a month later. On the other hand, as a presenter I worked long and hard on my presentation, and one of the reasons I did so was because I knew that its life wouldn't be limited to a one-hour slot on a single day. The presentation is still up on the HEBC site. The organizers insisted on Creative Commons licenses for the presentations so I have a local copy of the presentation on this server, and you could host one yourself if (for some strange reason) you wanted to. And a registration fee isn't the only way to make people pay more attention. If HEBC had had live chats or even a threaded discussion board, I would have been more motivated to keep up with the conference so I could participate in what was happening at the time. HEBC did have blog-style comments for each presentation, but they never really took off. Lastly, there is the fee itself. The ACRL/CNI/EDUCAUSE Joint Virtual Conference was $195-275 depending on whether you are a member or not. I wonder how they arrived at that figure. I know that attendees don't have to pay for travel, meals, etc. when attending a virtual conference, making it a "bargain," but paying the same price for an online conference as one would pay for a traditional conference where the organization has to pay for space and amenities seems very odd. Maybe there are good reasons for that fee, but it seems unreasonably high to me. What problem is ACRL trying to solve? In his original post, Steven suggested that "perhaps ACRL could make some of the poster sessions and a selected presentation archive or two available for free after the conference," and in my comment I let on that I thought that was perhaps a little stingy.

But part of the problem with this conversation is that I don't really understand what is going on with the ACRL conferences. Are they selling out quickly or are they barely filling up? If they are selling out quickly, what is the point in keeping the content behind a paywall for very long? Wouldn't they still sell out quickly if the "embargo" period was cut in half? People would still pay for the opportunity to be an active participant in the conference, and not to just see what happened a month later. Would registration be affected if several conference sections or sessions--ones that wouldn't be compromised by radically increasing attendance--were open to the public? If they aren't selling out quickly, maybe they need to expose more content at the start of a conference. Have day one be a free day so people can see just how great the online conference experience is and sign up on the spot for the rest of the week's activities. Like the model of many online services (Flickr, LibraryThing, pbWiki): the free product is very good and not significantly crippled, but if you really like it, you are going to want to pay up for the full version. For HEBC, the problem seems clearer to me. The conference apparently had thousands of visitors, but little interaction. I don't know that a registration fee would change that, but additional opportunities and incentives to participate might. More... I have more to say on this, particularly about why I favor asynchronous threaded conversations to synchronous chat when it comes to conferences, but I will leave that for another day. This is already getting too long for a blog post (not to mention way past my supposed computer curfew). I'd love to hear any reactions or arguments in the comments. Posted 12:21 AM to Conferences

Still a Second Life n00b

May 11, 2006
Two weeks ago, Michael Sauers said I was a "Second Life n00b" (or newbie, or clueless new guy) and oh, was he ever on target. Here's a shot from my misadventures last night at the Second Life Library 2.0. Yes, that is my avatar, Hatchibombotar Stein, with a Bible on his head. Planetneutral (aka Greg) had showed me how to pull a virtual Bible from the stacks, which I did. In trying to read it, I accidentaly wore it like a hat. Luckily Planetneutral had gone downstairs at that point, and didn't witness my humiliation live (though he did later call "Hatch, what are you doing up there?"). Am I going to Second Hell for this? Tags: library, secondlife, bible, n00b Posted 3:16 PM to Digital libraries, Social software

Barbaric yawp
May 12, 2006
No doubt you have seen Pope Michael Gorman's latest pronouncement. The one about yipping and yawping "millenniarist librarians" (whatever that means) and "pseudo-librarians" who offend the Great Leader so much with our blogs and computing devices and rock and roll music (or something). You can read the entire column on Gorman's (ahem) website--I guess it is OK to use the Internets as long as you don't actually enjoy it. There are plenty of places to read reactions to Gorman's latest vitriol: Librarian in Black, Free Range Librarian, the goblin in the library, and gnomicutterance are some of my faves.

For my part, I just find the whole situation sad. I think there is a place in our profession for conservative traditionalists. Heck, when I was in library school, I thought I was a conservative traditionalist in many ways (not politically, mind you, but in terms of library issues). Reading the rest of Gorman's column, I can see many things that I would have said when I was a student regarding the uncertain relationship of information science to library practice and the like. I have revised much of my thinking, but I still believe there are rational arguments to be made there. But why a man in Gorman's position--head of the ALA, a man who has had a long and distinguished career--feels the need to couch so many of his remarks in this sneering, bombastic language, I can't really understand. It is sad. Tags: library, ala, yipping, yawping, michael_gorman, sad_old_men Posted 12:17 PM to Librarians and the profession Comment from: Carlos Ovalle May 17, 2006 06:40 AM Gorman has done a great deal to alienate many librarians and academics with his over-generalizations. He's made it far to easy to dismiss what he says, even when he's not putting his foot in his mouth. There are some divisions in LIS education, but to me it seems like he's both widening the gap and creating gaps where they didn't exist (between librarians not interested in using certain technologies and librarians who are interested in using those technologies). LIS-development-wise, I'm in a lot of ways very different from you- when we were in school, I was not a conservative traditionalist by any means, but I've grown to appreciate and learn about "traditional" librarian practices (so I view the LoC's move away from serials subject headings with something akin to horror :P). I'm finding that I have to make an effort to continue to read about what Gorman says and rights. I've already been hearing it from real-world librarians, "Oh, it's just Gorman again..." Well, Loriene is probably going to keep her blog, and very likely will also allow comments. Does that mean she's intoxicated with self-indulgence and tecnology? I doubt it. Comment from: Steve Lawson May 17, 2006 12:46 PM Thanks for the comment, Carlos. I think if we are trying to have an actual dialog, people like you (who, if I remember correctly, have always been interested in the intersection of information policy and technology) and people like me (who used to be primarily interested in books as primary sources and objects of study in their own right) have a lot to learn from one another. We might not always agree, of course, but we can gain some understanding. Or, we could just call each other names and eventually find ourselves discounted by what we thought was our "constituency."

Michael McGrorty on "Technology, Books and the Librarian"

May 14, 2006
Michael McGrorty has posted a longish essay to his blog, Library Dust entitled Technology, Books and the Librarian. The essay is a consideration of the place of the library and the librarian as we look toward the future. I won't summarize the whole thing; you should read it yourself in full. But let's just say that he is skeptical of the librarian's role as a technician, and believes that the librarian needs to return to her role as someone who understands literature (broadly defined) and can put that literature in context with the rest of the culture. Two excerpts: The library has one thing, one long thread of continuity running through its millennia of existence, a single strand making up its historical warp and soul: that long yarn is composed of a billion others which come together to form the highest achievement of collective humanity, the apex of our efforts, the showpiece of the human intellect: literature. and: In order to make a profession of this calling, weve said that a degree makes a librarian, rather than that the degree is the thin veneer, an veritable eggs skin over a great mass of learning and understanding. Were turning out generations of mechanics when what we need are artisans. If you do not think this is true, take a look at your colleagues and ask yourself what proportion possess true understanding of the literatures which compose the real stuff of the library. I offer this more or less without comment. I think he is correct in many important ways; I think he may be wrong in other ways. I need to read it a few more times before I can say something intelligent in response. The point is, I believe that this is how to start this kind of conversation about the role of the librarian and the library school vis-a-vis technology and information science. Thanks, Michael. Tags: library, technology, education, literature Posted 2:36 PM to Librarians and the profession

A library role model: Leland Park

May 17, 2006

My library director, Carol, emailed us all a link to this wonderful Chronicle of Higher Education profile of Davidson College's library director, Leland M. Park. He is retiring from the college after 31 years as director (and more years than that with the college from which he graduated in 1963). By all accounts Park is an extraordinary individual, and one who can inspire us all to think how we can better be part of our communities. Some quotes from the profile: No one here is sure how Davidson will get along without him. In addition to presiding over the acquisition of the library's most recent 400,000 volumes, its computerized catalog, its Internet connections, its wireless network, and its downloadable MP3 versions of popular books, he has also hired everyone on the 27-member staff, of which he is intensely proud. He has been the faculty marshal for so long that nearly 150 holders of Ph.D.'s fear they may not be able to line themselves up for ceremonies without him. He's been taking new college employees on campus tours for years, and has told countless freshmen tales about Davidson's traditions during orientation sessions. "He is the weave of the Davidson fabric," says the president, Robert F. Vagt. ... He has run the library according to a simple philosophy: Meet the needs of users, whether students or faculty members or local residents. "The only thing that matters in this library," he has said again and again, "is who walks in that front door." ... "If he introduces you," says Ms. Byrd, the reference librarian, "he would always say, This is Sharon Byrd we work together in the library.' That's something we will continue around here." The article is behind a paywall at the CHE, so pretend I emailed you this link; it's good for the next five days. Subscribers can always use this link: Weaving Together Life and Library. Tags: library, role_model Posted 11:25 AM to Librarians and the profession

Innovative Users Group in Denver on Sunday and our catalog redesign

May 19, 2006
IUG in Denver on Sunday The Innovative Users Group (IUG)--for libraries using Innovative Interfaces Inc.'s (III) integrated library system--meets in Denver starting today. I'll be there on Sunday, and am looking forward to hearing Casey Bisson talk about his Web 2.0 catalog, and generally trying to learn more about designing less-sucky front ends for Innovative catalogs. I also want to try and learn a bit more about the enhancement request procedure. The preliminary ballot for enhancement requests is out. It is marked "confidential information for customers of Innovative only," so I can't quote it here without checking that everyone knows the secret handshake. I don't think I'm divulging any trade secrets if I say that it seems to be missing the forest for the trees: why request the ability to make this or that minor change on the search results screens, when what we should be asking for (IMHO) is for fully-editable templates for those pages? How about asking for valid XHTML pages? But I'm a newbie in this group, so I'll try to avoid acting like a know-it-all jackass. There may be a perfectly good reason for this approach. Our catalog redesign A few months ago, I led a group here at my library to redesign our catalog, TIGER. I planned to blog about it at the time, but was a little discouraged when I realized that I had broken a few of the forms, causing us to have to revert those few pages to our old version. It wasn't a big disaster, and I generally behaved in accordance with Dorothea Salo's recent advice on TechEssence.info on how to fail gracefully (my favorite quote from that post: "It's okay to say 'wow, I completely didn't expect it to die like that!'"), but I wan't up for celebrating. Plus this is very much a lipstick-on-a-pig redesign. It's still the same old OPAC underneath, even though it has CSS formatting and most of the search pages validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional. I did try an add a few grace notes to the catalog, including Web 2.0-style big fonts on the search boxes and highlighting the location, call number and status on item screens, as the usability testing I did on our catalog last summer showed me that students would find the correct item in the catalog, but not notice where it was located or if it was already checked out (I haven't done another round of testing yet to see if my highlighting helped at all). But anyway, I'll be at the IUG thing on Sunday, so if you will be, too, let me know in the comments and we can try and meet up if you want. Tags: library, catalog, OPAC, denver, iug, iii Posted 12:02 PM to Catalogs, Conferences, Tutt Library

Casey Bisson at IUG 2006 in Denver

May 22, 2006
I had the pleasure of hearing Casey Bisson present on his Web 2.0 OPAC, the WordPress-powered front end he put on his III catalog. His talk rehearsed a lot of what are coming to be articles of faith in the biblioblogosphere (the need to dis-integrate the catalog, the relative failure of the catalog to fit into the internet at large, and, by extension, to users' expectations of how a web application should work), but he did it in a way that was engaging and interesting, and in front of about 200 people. He also kept right on answering questions for another half hour after his presentation was over. Very cool. Bisson's slides are posted on his blog. My full notes on his talk are after the jump. Tags: library, catalog, opac, casey_bisson, web2.0, library2.0 [These notes are my paraphrase of the talk, not verbatim quotations. Any errors or misrepresentations are my fault. Leave a comment if you think there is anything that bears correcting. -SL] Puts web 2.0 in context (after the Internet as just for academics, after the dot-bomb). Web 2.0 is about people (a lot of people). Challenges: usability, findability, remixability. Usability
Casey Bisson at IUG 2006 in Denver

Goes over the usual complaints abou the catalog (inventory system, hasn't changed since 1976.) Self service = usability. The Internet is delivering more users to us than ever before; with proper systems we can take advantage of that. What to do? take advantage of greater memory & processing power Give them enough information to iteratively improve/refine their searches (cites NCSU catalog) enrich the catalog with non-inventory info Shows a mockup of a future catalog, 3-column display center: similar to today's typical catalog information left: facets (related subject, authors, formats) right: pull in other information (ency. entry on Shakespeare in the example) Mentions Ask.com as a site that does some of this. Findability Libraries don't have a monopoly on knowledge or search tools. The biggest mistake is to think we are competing with the internet. We are on the internet, the internet can bring us users. Evolutionary approach--exposing our data to the search engines. Links are capital on the internet. Linking must be possible, desirable, measureable. OPAC URLs are generally not linkable. Many library resources just aren't linkable, not online. Enable comments & trackbacks; encourage bookmarking and social bookmarking; tagging; RSS for everything; value users for the value they add.
Remixability

Libraries already have a complex information environment: OPAC, web site, databases. Add this to a dis-integrated academic environment (academic web site, portal, courseware, etc.), and users have a very complex information environment to navigate. Old world: web OPAC application tightly wrapped around the database. Web services model: separates the application from the database wraped in a thin layer of business/application logic. Illustrates how this can scale with many applications linking to the same database, or a single application geting data from multiple databases. Once you can do that, you have enabled the mash-up/remix.

When you build for web services, you open the door for those who are passionate about doing things better (e.g., Superpatron Ed Vielmetti) to create their own extensions of your services. Another, complimentary approach: plugins. Application <-> plugin <-> database Architectural challenges: our systms are data-rich but access-poor. Contrast our current situation with the 140K developers for the Amazon API. WPopac prototype The WPopac prototype; a front-end for the catalog in WordPress. Usability lessons learned: spell check is easy faceted searching is easy recommendations are easy (ex.: you get singificantly different recommendations when you look at Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone vs. a book of Harry Potter criticism) Natural language searching is easy (last, first v. first last) Findability lessons learned WPopac page for author Joe Monninger is now the top result on Google when you search for his name. People are commenting: I love this book; this book is unethical; People are linking back to the WPopac (from blogspot and livejournal blogs) Remixabilty Durable, stable URL syntax base url/search/keyword+keyword+keyword RSS feeds for new items and searches OpenSearch (lost me a little bit here on how it works with A9); ties this into how to find books in libraries in your community. Remember the data supports usability improvements libraries are rich with metadata (more?) QUESTION: how do we get the supporting information (e.g., the encyclopedia entry displayed based on the OPAC search)? ANSWER: Search based on certain characteristics of the MARC record, find a pattern, display top hits Q: Have you talked with III about their plans? Bisson: There is a lot of awareness among the community that we need to address this? III employee: We are doing things that fit nicely in with these ideas [though from what little he said, it sounded like these would all be III enhancements that would come with upgrades or purchases of add-ons; I don't think he was talking about opening up the whole thing for hacking and remixing. But I could be mistaken. -SL]. Casey: WP ofered built-in comments, feeds, etc. Hacked WP to search and display library data. Q: In the spirit of WP: how do I get your code? A: Shows some of the back-end stuff, but doesn't really give enough info for someone to roll his own version of WPopac. [Casey didn't give a whole lot of technical information. I think that was because he wanted to avoid going into all the little hacks and tweaks he had to do to build this proof-of concept interface and keep the conversation more on the theory and future of the catalog. -SL] Q: is this all based on buying the III XML server? A: this data is coming from the XML server. A big part of this presentation is "what do we need out of our future catalogs?" and one of the answers is direct access to the data being standard, not an add-on product that some libraries have and some don't. Q: is this a spare-time project? A: yes, but the time involved has been relatively limited: a couple hundred hours. Q: how did you get the facets? A: the standard WP database knows about posts and post authors. The plug-in takes into account other tables added to WP database with discrete information like authors. Q: is this operating on a subest of your regular catalog or the entire catalog database? A: this has the full 300K-record catalog. After the session, a few of us cornered Casey and kept asking him questions. I asked about the problems that others have suggested might come from exposing our data to search engines and flooding their results with thousands of individual records for books. He suggested that if we all linked to Open WorldCat within each record, we would be giving them the Google juice, and our records would sink further down in the results rankings.

Another person asked him about his take on structured data vs. unstructured data (Casey had said during his talk that he liked MARC for the specificity it provided). He said he expected that we would have structured data relative to the value of the individual object; so a book that we bought and paid for would get the full treatment, while web pages and the like would just get crawled and indexed. Posted 9:43 AM to

Radical trust within the library

May 22, 2006
There has been a fair amount of talk about "radical trust" in the biblioblogosphere lately. If you need to catch up, the starting point seems to be Darlene Fichter's Web 2.0, Library 2.0 and Radical Trust: A First Take, followed by those who link to that post. Much of that conversation has had to do with trust between libraries and patrons, mostly "us" trusting "them" not to vandalize the catalog when it gets all folksonomic one of these days. There is another kind of radical trust that I started thinking about when I was reading Greg Linden's series of posts on early Amazon. This series (which I found via a post on O'Reilly Radar) is a fun and interesting look back at Amazon.com in the late 1990s from the point of view of a programmer whose first "office" was a card table in the kitchen. Linden writes about working on some projects that weren't officially endorsed by his bosses, and one that he was "explicitly forbidden to do and did anyway." Once it was seen how effective (and profitable) his innovation was, it was rushed into production. As Linden concludes, Creativity must flow from everywhere. Whether you are a summer intern or the CTO, any good idea must be able to seek an objective test, preferably a test that exposes the idea to real customers. Everyone must be able to experiment, learn, and iterate. Position, obedience, and tradition should hold no power. For innovation to flourish, measurement must rule. Now that sounds like radical trust! In my other favorite piece from Linden's Early Amazon stories, he writes about how he solved the "Harry Potter" problem. (Remember in Amazon's early days, no matter what you were shopping for on Amazon--electrical engineering textbooks, erotica, assisted suicide manuals--the site would tell you that people who shared your interests also liked Harry Potter?). Here is how the billionaire owner of the company reacted: When this new version of similarities ["if you like this, you will like that"] hit the website, Jeff Bezos walked into my office and literally bowed before me. On his knees, he chanted, "I am not worthy, I am not worthy." Now let's compare and contrast those two stories with the post Radical Trust? by Ria Newhouse. Sigh. I have been fortunate in my career so far to work for organizations and bosses that give me and my colleagues a lot of latitude. The more librarians I talk to, though, the more I realize how lucky I have been. We need radical trust within libraries as well if we want to innovate. We also need much better data if measurement is to rule; sure, some things are hard to measure, but many of our online tools seem to lack sophisticated statistical reporting (or we lack the skills or motivation to use them fully). Posted 12:29 PM to Librarians and the profession
Library 2.0 formula

A Library 2.0 skeptic's reading list

May 26, 2006
Walt Crawford recently offered an "apology" of sorts on his blog Walt at Random for being the only person that the Library 2.0 proponents tend to cite as a Library 2.0 critic or skeptic. His January 2006 survey of the state of "Library 2.0 and 'Library 2.0'" (link to pdf or html; it's long, so get the pdf) is the only overtly critical reading on the ALA Library 2.0 Boot Camp Squidoo reading list (though it is hard to tell if that is the list Walt was looking at; that boot camp has a boatload of reading lists!). In a fit of enthusiasm, I suggested that I would take this particular bull by the horns and come up with a Library 2.0 skeptic's reading list. I'm not anti-Library 2.0. I like and respect Michael Stephens and Jenny Levine and what they seem to want to do with Library 2.0 Boot Camp. I like to think of Library 2.0 as a continuing conversation about the future of libraries, and it makes sense to me to try to round up some voices that challenge Library 2.0 conventional wisdom.

Working on this little blogliography, I can understand why people are tempted to just cite Walt's survey and leave it at that: he did a great job of pulling in a lot of different voices on Library 2.0. While his own critical perspective shines through, it's easy to also trace other dissenting and supporting voices. And I believe some people who are skeptical, critical, or dismissive of Library 2.0 only wrote about it because Walt put out a call for comments on Library 2.0. From what I can tell, people haven't spilled a whole lot of electrons on anti-manifestoes (with one possible exception). That is perhaps another reason why Walt is the Library 2.0 critic poster-boy: he continues to call people out and take the bait long after other Library 2.0 skeptics have stopped. In my list, I have tried to confine myself to posts written after (or not included in) Walt's "Library 2.0 and 'Library 2.0'" survey, though one or two might have snuck in. I grouped the posts loosely by topic. Within each topic, links aren't in any particular order (I know, I know: "No particular order? And he calls himself a librarian?!"). I have tried to be neutral: I don't necessarily agree with all of these criticisms, though I think they are all thought-provoking. Lots of interesting links after the jump. Tags: library2.0, skeptics, reading_list Technology Technology, Books, and the Librarian. Michael McGrorty, Library Dust I already blogged about this post, so I won't say much more here. Michael never mentions "Library 2.0," but his ideas about librarian as "explicator" as opposed to librarian as "manager" is thought-provoking in terms of Library 2.0. Questioning the Techie Mission. Rory Litwin, Library Juice Not about Library 2.0 per se, but about the place of technology in the library blogosphere: I think that there are definite assumptions involved in the technology advocacy posture, and there isnt necessarily anything supporting those assumptions. In other words, the techie mission is irrational: there would be less emphasis on technology within the library blogosphere if the bloggers involved were more objective about technology. the new library - can it provide new technology-based services? Richard Akerman, Science Library Pad How many librarians have the technical understanding to bring about radical change? But I am concerned at the gap between thought leaders, who are talking massive transformative disruption due to technology, and others who are talking safe incremental improvements to existing technology platforms (Library 2.0: it's the OPAC, but users can leave comments!) The "Ratcheting Up" of Technology. Steven Bell, ACRLog Whether its whats the next big technology we can adopt thinking taking hold of the organization, a belief that if your library doesnt have programmers customizing lots of applications youll be at a disadvantage, or just an overwhelming sense that you ought to be doing more with blogs, wikis, tagging, podcasts and other Lib 2.0 type activity, are we driven to offer our user community more technology without really knowing if it would even benefit them? Moving, shaking, blogging, and drudging. Dorothea Salo, Caveat Lector This is a wide-ranging post. The part I'm interested in has to do with Dorothea's belief that many of the most important changes to academic libraries aren't going to be on the public services side: Recently the spotlight has been falling on the crossroads between Web technology and public service. FRBR doesnt get the ballyhoo because its not a Web technology; institutional repositories dont because theyre not public service. Frankly, I think FRBR and the wave of libraries-as-publishers that IRs are a part of bid fair to have a greater and decidedly more disruptive impact on academic librarianship (note the adjective, please) than MySpace or IM or wikis or blogs or any of the Web/Library 2.0 stuff. Over the course of my career, I expect them to change some pretty fundamental things about what a lot of us do and how we do it. (Am meditating more posts on this subject, in fact.) So spotlight isnt necessarily the best measure of long-term importance, and vice versa. Privacy The Central Problem of Library 2.0: Privacy. Rory Litwin, Library Juice As serious as privacy concerns may turn out to be, the features of Web 2.0 applications that make them so useful and fun all depend on users sharing private information with the owners of the site, so that it can be processed statistically or shared with others. This presents a problem for librarians who are interested in offering Library 2.0 types of services. If we value reader privacy to the extent that we always have, I think its clear that our experiments with Library 2.0 services will have uncomfortable limitations. Culture and Economics Library 2.0: A View from the Third World. Perry Joy R. Lumabao, Filipino Librarian Considering the questions above, we must note their financial capabilities if we are indeed thinking providing for a service like Library 2.0. Not all students will be able to access an on-line type of service. Not all students will be able

to fully utilize and take advantage it. Security Library computer security 2.0?. Thomas Brevik, Librarian 1.5 Most of the skepticism here is coming from commenter Jeremy Morrow who says: I think its great that people are waving the flag for Library 2.0, but they have to start documenting the security that goes along with it or us IT people are going to take the blame for the problems that will inevitably arise. Terminology Why Library 2.0 is Dangerous. Jeffy Barry, Endless Hybrids As someone who has managed a lot of library technology projects, I feel that the danger behind Library 2.0 is that the message can be obscured by the terminology. Lets concentrate on talking about and developing those services rather than getting lost in defining versions of the library or the most appropriate rubric for describing these services. Label 2.0. Meredith Farkas, Information Wants To Be Free Library 2.0 and Web 2.0 dont exist. Web 2.0 is hype. Library 2.0 is just a bunch of very good ideas that have been squished into a box with a trendy label slapped on it.... I think were spending way too much time defining something that has existed in one form or another for quite a long time and will exist when the meme has ended. Exasperation Let's make libraries better, OK?. Meredith Farkas, Information Wants To Be Free Meredith Farkas takes stock of the situation after reading L2/"L2": Maybe Library 2.0 will inspire libraries. Maybe it will lead to great things. Maybe it will create false divisions where there are none (like the librarian who isnt a Library 2.0 proponent but is change-oriented, user-focused, and info social software). Maybe the Library 2.0 label will turn people off outside of the blogosphere. Or maybe it will just get in the way of people understanding concretely how to improve their library. A Library 2.0 hangover by me Please forgive the self-link. My bit is similar to Meredith's, above. Listen: I care a lot about many of the things that people write about under the heading of "Library 2.0." I am caring less and less about the term itself, and am certainly not interested in (a) splitting hairs about what is and isn't Library 2.0 or (b) participating in a "with us or against us" campaign. Evil Library 2.0 is evil. Brian Smith, The Laughing Librarian How could I pass up a post with that title? It's humorous, but not without a somewhat serious point. So, we propose a new label: Ideas Worth Stealing. That's what everyone's actually talking about with this Library 2.0 crap, right? Ideas others might want to steal and use. Possibly. Depending on the library's situation. YMMV. [Don't miss the Library 2.0 song (MP3) linked at the end of that post.] That's it. This will all be on the final exam, so get cracking. Posted 8:34 PM to Blogs and blogging, Digital libraries, Librarians and the profession, Professional reading, Service, Social software Comment from: walt May 27, 2006 10:57 AM Wow! I'm impressed. Most (not all) of those commentaries are parts of the growing set of conversations that can be overlooked, and they're mostly worth considering even if you disagree. Thanks. Comment from: Michael Stephens May 27, 2006 11:17 AM I added it to the Squidoo L2 reading List! Thanks for the list! Comment from: Steve Lawson May 27, 2006 05:40 PM Thanks, Walt. It was interesting tracking them down. I meant to say that people should feel free to suggest more readings here in the comments, so if I missed anything, let me know.

Michael, thanks for taking it in the spirit intended. From the few ALAL2 blogs that I read, I know that your students were approaching the ideas in a questioning, critical fashion. Comment from: Jenny Levine May 28, 2006 10:33 PM I'll ditto the thanks, too, Steve. I was planning to link to Brian's song from the course blog next week as a bit of humor down the home stretch (btw, your link to it isn't working). :) Comment from: Steve Lawson May 29, 2006 08:50 AM Thanks, Jenny. The link to the song should work now.

Tame the Web's social software survey

May 26, 2006
Library folks, whether you use social software or not, go take Michael Stephens' survey at Tame the Web. All the cool kids are doing it. And the uncool kids (I did it). So, I guess, everyone is doing it. So do it. But don't do it twice. It's like voting in that way. Posted 10:01 PM to Social software

Lazyweb request: IM log analysis for Trillian?

June 01, 2006
I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this (and I'm pretty sure it is no), but does anyone have a quick and dirty way to get the log files from the Trillian IM client into a spreadsheet? I'm looking to review the IM reference service that we provided last year, and I'd like to get information on day of the week, time of day, etc. in a format that we can analyze. Trillian keeps log files in plain text, so it is easy enough to get at the information, but in order to analyze it, I think I'm going to have to do a lot of copying and pasting into Excel. Any better ideas out there? Posted 1:35 PM to Social software, Tools Comment from: Carlos Ovalle June 8, 2006 09:52 AM Hmm... maybe use sed on unix/linux to insert tabs after the day of the week, time of day, and so on? If you're only looking for that info (rather than the text of the messages) I would think you'd be able to use sed to only grab the "Session Start" text lines, then either replace spaces with tabs or put tabs just before the fields you're looking for, and then import the resulting file into Excel as tab-delimited. If you know awk it might even be easier. I've been amazed at some of the stuff Shane can do with one line of commands using sed and awk.

Library lessons from unlikely places

June 02, 2006
I have a bunch of posts cooling their heels in The Long Queue. Posts that will change the way you think about conferences, library catalogs, signage, etc. (Well, maybe they won't change the way you think about those things. But I have high hopes for them.) But today, I have two little observations of library lessons learned in non-library places that have been kicking around in my head for the past few years (really!). How not to give a reference interview at the DMV About ten years ago, I needed to renew the registration on my car in Denver. I went to the Department of Motor Vehicles office downtown, and looked for the proper window or line to take care of it. When I couldn't tell immediately where to go, I walked up to one clerk and asked about renewing my registration. She told me to see the security guard about getting a number, and then I should wait for my number to come up. I thanked her, and went over to the guard. Me: Hi, could I have a number? Guard: What do you need? Me: I need a number, please.

Guard: What do you need? Me: Um, the woman at the counter said I should ask you for a number. So I need a number. Guard: [visibly exasperated] No, I mean what do you NEED? Me: [...?] To renew my registration? Guard: There you go!

Waiting at the DMV Originally uploaded by StickBus.

The people around us laughed and I did, too. I don't recall if the guard laughed. I think he thought I was the dimmest bulb ever. I was thinking about that experience today on my way to the DMV in Colorado Springs and thought that if I ever taught the reference interview to library students or staff, I would use that story as a negative example. Usability and the drive-thru window One year ago yesterday, my son Nicholas was born (happy birthday, Nickel!). One year ago the day before yesterday, my wife Shanon was in the hospital waiting for her labor to be induced, and I was dispatched to get fast food. Shanon wanted me to get her a grilled cheese sandwich and a chocolate milkshake from Sonic. I don't get fast food very often anymore, but for most of the major chains, I know exactly what I usually order. Not so with Sonic; I know they have tater tots and milkshakes, but when it comes to ordering a meal, I don't really know the menu. So I went through the drive-thru lane, and pulled right up to the big menu. Sonic: Welcome to Sonic, can I take your order? Me: Um. [Looks frantically up and down the menu, not seeing a grilled cheese sandwich, only reading fragments of words here and there.] Um. [Sees that someone has pulled up behind. Feeling rushed, panicky, stupid. Wondering if I should try to read the entire menu from the top to bottom.] Um, do you have a grilled cheese sandwich? Sonic: Not really, but I can make you one, no problem. Me: [Slightly relieved, but still feeling stupid.] Oh, thanks. [Starting to panic again, realizing that I don't know what I want.] Um, do you have chicken? So the guy on the other end of the squawk box held my hand and helped me order. It occurred to me that library patrons must feel something like my sense of confusion when confronted with a library home page or list of databases: "TIGER catalog? WorldCat? Databases? Interlibrary Loan? I just want a hamburger book!" My point isn't that the Sonic menu or our library pages are necessarily poorly designed--when you want to present someone with a lot of choices as with a fast food menu or a library site, things are bound to sometimes be a little lengthy or complex. I just found it helpful in retrospect to be in that position of doing something fairly trivial, like ordering fast food, and being intimidated and confused by the environment. As a librarian and long-time internet user, I don't have that "I am stupid...I can't find anything" experience in libraries or on the web very often anymore (though see my posts on Second Life for my recent online newbie experience). But something like this puts me more in the shoes of David Lee King's hypothetical patron who thinks the library is offering free iPods through their MySpace page or Jessamyn West's real patrons who are put off by Yahoo! telling them to lose weight. Posted 2:52 PM to Service Comment from: Laura June 4, 2006 01:39 PM Happy Birthday Nicholas! I don't really remember being one, but pictures suggest I was having a pretty good time. I hope you are, too. The DMV is like the reference experience from hell. . . and I hate unfamiliar drive through menus--or actually any menus where you have to make many complicated choices in a short period of time.

Shot @ Sonic, Roswell Menu Originally uploaded by clanlife.

Share without reservation

June 07, 2006
I have blogged about edublogger Stephen Downes before (see my posts The read/write web in academe and Online Learning Daily on Hiatus). One of the things I like about reading his Online Learning Daily blog is that just when I feel like I know where he is coming from, he challenges me a little more.

Take last slide of his presentation How I became (blog) literate: A final word There is no code, no ethic, that will teach us how to be good bloggers, good teachers, good citizens What matters is that we are honest with ourselves, and that we share without reservation Culture like literacy is negotiated, a conversation between ourselves "Share without reservation..." I guess I have some reservations about that. And I guess Downes must, too, since he wasn't entirely forthcoming about why he took that hiatus a while back--which is fine: it's his life and he doesn't have to share what he doesn't want to. But I like that challenge: be honest, share more than you thought you ever could, and create a culture through conversation. Posted 11:22 AM to Academe and Education, Blogs and blogging

A biblioblogger visits the local branch library

June 07, 2006
If you know who shameless self-promoter and alpha geek Cory Doctorow is, and/or you read boingboing, you may find the little skit Cory Doctorow visits a Radio Shack funny. I know that I did. (If you don't know who he is, skip it. It's one big inside joke.) As soon as I read it, I thought, "I need to rip off pay homage to this funny scene by re-writing it as 'A biblioblogger visits the local branch library.'" It's meant in fun, and I'm not trying to parody any one of us in particular: l'biblioblogger c'est moi, as Flaubert never said. A biblioblogger visits the local branch library (SCENE: a small suburban branch of a public library. BRANCH LIBRARIAN is at the reference desk. BIBLIOBLOGGER enters with laptop.) BIBLIOBLOGGER: Hey, I'm a new librarian in town and thought I'd stop by and introduce myself. Perhaps you know my blog, Library 3.0 Has a Posse? Where can I get the feed for your library blog? BRANCH LIBRARIAN: I'm afraid we don't have a blog. BIBLIOBLOGGER: Oh, you have already moved on to podcasting, then? BRANCH LIBRARIAN: No, I do our webpages in Microsoft FrontPage. BIBLIOBLOGGER: (chokes) Whoa! Maybe someday that will be old skool, but right now that is just perverse. We'll hop on #code4lib and get you hooked up with a Drupal-based open-source CMS portal authoring environment that validates to XHTML 1.1 but is fully backwards-compatible and future-proof. BRANCH LIBRARIAN: Thanks?

Catalogue Originally uploaded by Underpuppy.

BIBLIOBLOGGER: (opening laptop) Don't mention it. Hey the wi-fi signal in here is weak. BRANCH LIBRARIAN: I'm sorry, we don't have wireless. BIBLIOBLOGGER: OK, well, let me run my Portable Firefox from my USB drive on one of your public-access computers... BRANCH LIBRARIAN: We don't allow patrons to use USB drives. The IT guys won't let us. MySpace and IM are blocked, too. BIBLIOBLOGGER: Say no more. I understand. Just give me a Google Map to the IT guy's home and I'll get Sauers to rub him out. When are people going to realize that if they don't "get it," they are going to "GET IT," know what I mean? I'm sure you are on Flickr though? BRANCH LIBRARIAN: Yes, I have to apologize for that, we were supposed to have someone come in to look at the lights last week. BIBLIOBLOGGER: No, not "flicker"--Flickr! It's where you can share photos of all the great activities you are doing here. I'll show you the photos of my Livin' Large Print hip-hop night for seniors program at my last library. Have you thought of having a Marshall Stacks in the Fiction Stacks heavy metal night here? BRANCH LIBRARIAN: I don't think we are zoned for that... BIBLIOBLOGGER: Ajax del.icio.us OPML Creative Commons radical trust mashup widget! BRANCH LIBRARIAN: What?

BIBLIOBLOGGER: I didn't say anything. So just how much does your OPAC suck? BRANCH LIBRARIAN: Excuse me? BIBLIOBLOGGER: Oh, don't be self-conscious about it. Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, OPACs gotta suck. Man, the last library I was at, we had the suckiest OPAC to ever suck! I was gonna replace it with a wiki and just let the users catalog the collection. BRANCH LIBRARIAN: We do have some online innovations here. We allow patrons to pay fines online via PayPal. BIBLIOBLOGGER: You still have fines? I'm sorry, my friend, but the Cluetrain is about to pull into the station, and you are looking like Anna Karenina, if you get my drift. BRANCH LIBRARIAN: Ah! A literary allusion! Yes, I understand perfectly, though I'm not flattered. BIBLIOBLOGGER: Hey, don't take offense. Tell you what, I'm doing a thing in Second Life tomorrow called Exhuming the Paleolibrary that is designed for people just like you. Have your avatar ping my avatar and we can have Second Lunch. BRANCH LIBRARIAN: That sounds...fascinating. CODA: BIBLIOBLOGGER: Um, where is the bathroom? Posted 9:25 PM to Blogs and blogging, Library Comment from: joshua m. neff June 8, 2006 06:20 AM Man, I wish I had people like that coming up to me in the library! Comment from: Meredith June 8, 2006 07:51 AM Mmmmm... second lunch... :) See! I told you that you were funny! OMG, that just made my morning! You really should be writing satire with the Librarian's Guide to Etiquette folks. But it really is true that we can get so out of touch with what the majority of librarians are doing. If I went to my local library and asked them about blogs (much less any of that other stuff!), I would definitely get a lot of blank stares. Hey, as long as they're doing their best to meet the needs of their patrons, I don't care what tools they use to get there. Comment from: K.G. Schneider June 8, 2006 09:08 AM Steve, that cracked me up! Hot tea, right out the nose! Meredith, I guess my comment would be are we supposed to be in touch with librarians or users. Comment from: Steve Lawson June 8, 2006 09:22 AM Thanks, all. I'd say we need to stay in touch with users and fellow librarians. I was saying to Laura Crossett via IM the other day that I thought that "suck" or "sucky" was attaching itself to "OPAC" like an Homeric epithet: you have your rosy-fingered dawn, your resourceful Odysseus, and your sucky OPAC. But that might not be the best place to start with someone who hasn't been following the discussion on the blogs and email lists. You gotta know your audience. Which is not to say that the current state of library catalogs is not one of rampant suckitude. Comment from: dave June 8, 2006 09:47 AM Totally hilarious! As long as librarians are in touch w/ the needs of their paticular users and trying meet them, and making some effort to see what other folks are doing, everything is cool. What works of the most innovative libraries/ communities is definitely not going to work everywhere. Comment from: K.G. Schneider June 8, 2006 09:51 AM O.k., kind of an aside, but riddle me this: how is it that when *I* used the term "suck" with OPACs, ALA got indignant mail (from male librarians no less) about my "language"? Is this a gender thing going on? Do you ever get called on that term? Comment from: Steve Lawson June 8, 2006 10:03 AM Karen, I remember many years ago Berke Breathed got indignant mail about a character's use of "sucks" in Bloom County. "What," the reader wanted to know, "should I tell my child who says 'sucks what?'" Breathed's answer was something like "Sucks rocks. I thought everyone knew that."

Actually, I do try to watch my language around here, given that the blog is hosted by my library/college. A quick search shows that when I use that word, I'm almost always quoting someone. The exception? You guessed it: in referring to the OPAC. Modern-day epithet, I'm telling you, and you are responsible, KGS. Comment from: joshua m. neff June 8, 2006 10:10 AM Karen, I never thought "sucks" was a naughty word, but I must've been wrong, because someone in your comments (not mentioning any names) starred out the word as if it were a curse word. Maybe we should just shorten it all to "OSUCs"? Like, "My library's OSUC needs a serious upgrade!" Comment from: K.G. Schneider June 8, 2006 10:33 AM And another thing (she said, eyes roaming wildly, spittle forming at the corners of her mouth...): your piece is drop-dead funny but much of the humor comes from recognizing that the "opac sux" message hasn't really resonated throughout LibraryLand just yet. I have had directors proudly trot me to their brand-new hideously nonfunctional catalog. "What do you think," they ask, and I sez, sez I, "Why is the relevance ranking so poor?" Ah, but look at the acquisitions module, and the this, and the that... So what may seem ubiquitous to us has barely begun to filter down. Part of good marketing is repeating a statement to the point of saturation. By that time you're sick of it, but that's not the point. :-) Comment from: Bob Watson June 8, 2006 11:51 AM Being as Illinois is also known as the "Sucker State" (and I forget exactly why) ... I can assure you that all of our OPACs suck. I just not sure, though, that better "first try" L2 functionality is gonna help ma and pa sixpack find the older best-seller they *know* must be on the shelves. Comment from: Laura Crossett June 8, 2006 04:03 PM Hey, where's the link love, Lawson? (I just had to throw that alliteration in there.) I was taught not to say "suck," but clearly, I've fallen. Good stuff! Comment from: Steve Lawson June 8, 2006 04:14 PM Link love? You mean my imaginary friend Laura Crossett? Like that? Comment from: Laura June 8, 2006 04:42 PM Oh! I feel so valued now! Comment from: Laura's mom June 8, 2006 05:24 PM Oh, let me borrow the Living Large Print dance night--well, afternoon--for my ward of geriatric patients. Much enjoyed, though some of it goes past as though seen through a glass darkly... Comment from: Nicole June 9, 2006 08:28 AM Karen, You asked "are we supposed to be in touch with librarians or users" - the answer is both. I think that by keeping up with other librarians and making connections in the field you will have access to more resources. This means you can better serve your users. Also, if your users are not the kind to share or provide feedback, other librarians can tell you what their users are asking for. Steve - great post!! Comment from: Steve Lawson June 9, 2006 09:39 AM Thanks, Laura's mom. If you do the Living Large Print night, be sure and take photos. Comment from: lislemck June 10, 2006 10:50 AM Can you puhleez email your post to the IT goddess at MPOW without implicating me? I just got shot down for wireless (difficult and expensive it turns out?) . My suggestion that staff "blogs" (and I use the term loosely even though they are on Blogger) could allow staff comments met with stony stares all around. Well, at least I know it's the good fight, and somewhere, someone is rooting for me and my little library's customers. Comment from: Cheryl June 11, 2006 11:18 AM My library mostly isn't up on current trends, but you won't find many there who don't agree that our OPAC sucks. :D Comment from: K.G. Schneider June 12, 2006 11:10 AM

Oh, and Steve, I made a button for you: http://freerangelibrarian.com/2006/06/my_opac_sucks_button.php Comment from: R Bruce Miller June 12, 2006 01:44 PM Excellent. Just as much fun, similar context, substantial food for thought for any librarian: "Rainbow's (sic) End" by Vernor Vinge. Comment from: Joanie June 13, 2006 11:33 AM How funny! I just printed out a list of sites we aren't using in our library that I think our students would love - Pandora, Flickr! just to name a couple, but unfortunately I have to get support from our Ref. Librarian and our Director - both suggested we let our Mass Communication Dept know about these resources rather than include them on our website! Comment from: Steve Lawson June 13, 2006 01:34 PM Joanie, you may have already thought of this, but you could take photos at your library's next event, or of the next new display, etc. and post them to your Flickr account. Then make a group with the photos and nice descriptions and everything and show the boss how easy it is to make a mini-online-exhibit or PR piece. If that advice gets you fired, you will find this comment to be mysteriously missing from the blog. Or maybe you need a new job with a more with-it Director: Bruce, are you hiring at Merced? Comment from: Michael Sauers June 14, 2006 08:35 AM Ooh! Thanks for the mention! I kept not reading this and should have done so earlier. A thousand mia culpas... Comment from: Steve Lawson June 14, 2006 09:25 AM Sure thing, Michael. Glad you don't mind being cast as the enforcer. I'm sure you wouldn't really rub anyone out. Maybe wipe out their hard drive with your suspicious little USB drive, but not actually kill anyone. Right? Comment from: Michael Sauers June 14, 2006 09:27 AM Maybe wack them upside the head with my jumpdrive but without the intention to kill ;-) Comment from: Jay, Yikes' mom June 28, 2006 01:50 PM This is a painful truth for me to swallow. As a small rural library's director, and a digital immigrant from a third-world country (57 yrs old from Northern New Hampshire), I see myself in the branch librarian's ignorance and resistant attitude. To experience through humor, wincing, just how wide the gap is between my seat-of-pants skills and limited resources, and you wild and crazy and sophisticated bloggers out there is daunting. Comment from: Steve Lawson June 28, 2006 10:40 PM Aw, I hope I didn't write the branch librarian to sound resistant. I thought of him/her as someone who just isn't a radical trust mashup widget kind of person. S/he might be an expert in local history or have a gift for readers' advisory or be able to read a story in a way to enchant a roomful of kids or raise bucketloads of money. I believe it takes all kinds of librarians to make a successful library. And too much "wild and crazy and sophisticated" can be enough to make you want to throw up. Comment from: K.G. Schneider June 28, 2006 10:58 PM The branch librarian comes off perfectly as a reasonable professional baffled by the jargon-burbling biblioblogger (who is trying, but abysmally failing, to explain interesting services in a way mere mortals can understand). The humor comes from the gulf of the disconnect. Yike's Mom shouldn't feel bad; the joke's not on her!

New OPAC flair for your blog

June 12, 2006
Apparently inspired by our exchange in the comments on A biblioblogger visits the local branch library, K.G. Schneider, my favorite gay, Christian, left-handed, MFA student / blogger / librarian / gadfly, has come up with a nice new piece of flair:

You can put it on your blog, or the home page of your institution (your director will never notice). Link it to your catalog, as I have above. Inspired, I created a companion button:

I linked that one to KGS's OPAC checklist of shame, but you could link it to your vendor's site... Technorati tags: opac, library, flair Posted 11:41 AM to Blogs and blogging, Catalogs Comment from: Laura June 13, 2006 04:44 PM You people are evil! You're just out to get me in trouble! Do you know how hard it was for me not to send this out to a long list of people yesterday? Sheesh! Comment from: Steve Lawson June 13, 2006 11:23 PM Laura, two things I like about that site you linked to: (1) it actually "works," in that you can actually search a III catalog, and (2) seeing the stock III install makes me feel that putting a little lipstick on our particular pig was worth it. Comment from: Nicole Engard June 14, 2006 11:13 AM I love the buttons!

Bibliodyssey
June 12, 2006
Wow, what a cool blog! Bibliodyssey, which just came to my attention thanks to boingboing, is so visually rich, I don't know that I have read a word of it, so busy have I been looking at the images. Each entry features one or more scans of illustrations or book pages. This one comes from Louisa Ann Meredith's Bush Friends in Tasmania, 1891. A visual feast. Technorati tags: blog, images Posted 10:33 PM to Blogs and blogging, From the stacks

Lurving Wikipedia
June 13, 2006
The Chronicle of Higher Education's blog, The Wired Campus notes that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales says that Wikipedia isn't great for academic use. Great quote: "For God sake, youre in college; dont cite the encyclopedia." But I'm using that little semi-relevant link as an intro to how much I lurve Wikipedia. Today, I looked up ad nauseam in Wikipedia. I was hoping it would lead me to some related

Latin phrases, which it did. But the "See Also" section (hey, I should sue! "See Also" is totally my service mark!) led me somewhere unexpected: the entry for Chewbacca Defense. Now, you really should go read the whole thing yourself. But to entice you, I'll say that the "Chewbacca Defense" originated on a South Park episode where Johnnie Cochran represents a record company that brings suit against Chef. Cochran bewilders the jury with a nonsense argument involving Star Wars wookie Chewbacca. The Wikipedia summary of the South Park episode is funny enough, but what really had me laughing out loud is the analysis section: Chewbacca does not in fact actually live on Endor though early drafts of Return of the Jedi did have the forest moon of Endor populated by Wookiees rather than Ewoks. ... Also, Cochran calls for an acquittal, when such a result is impossible in a civil case (where there can only be a finding of liability or no liability). ... Finally, the Emancipation Proclamation is not a verb, and cannot be conjugated. I love that about Wikipedia: the neutral point of view combined with a fanboy's fisking of a fictional court case argument on a cartoon show. Hilarious. If that isn't enough for you, see the talk page for Chewbacca Defense, where you will learn that the entry was at one time considered for deletion! Think of the loss to humanity. I know that people say they do this with printed encyclopedias: follow up the cross-references just for the heck of it and have wonderful serendipitous finds. I like that idea, but practically, I never did it. With Wikipedia, I do it all the time. I do love browsing the stacks, and I am one of those people who will pull down a book because I was attracted to its binding. But I'm with Steven Berlin Johnson when he says "I find vastly more weird, unplanned stuff online than I ever did browsing the stacks as a grad student." Useful, helpful stuff, maybe not. But weird and unplanned, certainly. Technorati tags: wikipedia, serendipity, chewbacca_defense Posted 11:32 AM to Social software Comment from: joshua m. neff June 13, 2006 12:20 PM Hoo boy, I lurve (and loave) Wikipedia, too. I get lost there for hours, clicking on link after link, starting with notes about the latest Lost episode and ending up reading about the history of the Magyars--with a stop at the entry for the Chewbacca Defense along the way. Wikipedia is by no means an authoritative source for academic work, but as an encyclopedia of the collective consciousness of humanity, it has Britannica and the World Book beat hands down.

Wait a minute: you mean the OPAC doesn't suck? *We* suck?
June 15, 2006
Edited to fix the paragraph beginning "My point is, the vendors..," as I had left some words out, making the meaning the opposite of what I intended. Oops. In The problem with the "ILS Bill of Rights", Dan Chudnov takes ILS complainers (like me, I suppose, though his title refers back to John Blyberg's ILS Customer Bill of Rights) to task for complaining about products from the major vendors when there is an open source ILS available in Evergreen. An excerpt: These are our options: Buy a system. Negotiate the best terms you can. Enforce contracts. Buy a system. Live with it, happy or no. Hire people to build you a system. Negotiate the best terms you can. Enforce contracts. Hire people to build you a system. Live with it, happy or no. Install something Free-as-in-Speech. Negotiate support as best you can and enforce contracts. Install something Free-as-in-Speech. Live with it, happy or no. That's it. Those are the options. "A-List"-In-Our-Dinky-Subculture-BiblioBloggers May Kvetch Daily but an entire marketful of suppliers used to clients who accept subpar products and who don't play hardball and who don't sue over breaches of contract is not going to suddenly implement your favorite APIs overnight I think I understand where he is coming from. But I think the disconnect for me comes a bit earlier in his post when Chudnov writes "you can choose NOT TO BUY THE FREAKIN' PRODUCT." Well, no we can't. I sure can't. I can't go in and cancel my library's contract with our vendor. I didn't sign the original contract, and neither did my director. That decision was made at least one director ago. And even if I could move my library over to Evergreen tomorrow I wouldn't because I am fairly certain that such a move would torpedo my library's participation in our state-wide lending network, which is absolutely vital to our college's population. Which isn't to say that Evergreen couldn't handle such a network, as it is being developed for Georgia's statewide library network, PINES; it just means that I'd

have a whole heck of a lot of people to convince that this was a good idea. My point is, the vendors have many of us effectively locked in. And I would hope that the options would be more than simply (a) go open source or (b) take whatever the ILS vendor dishes out. For my part, I'd like to see librarians come together on what we really want from vendors--not feature after feature, but what environment do we want to work with. For example, I'd like to see us not ask for things like "please let us rearrange the order of the buttons on the screen," but instead ask for valid (X)HTML/CSS templates for every screen of the OPAC with semantic markup and no presentational cruft in the HTML (no <br/> tags, no inline styles, use a <ul> when marking up a list, etc.). No doubt there are more important things to ask for on the database end, but my experience is with the web design part. In the meantime, what? For my part, I plan to keep up with ideas and discussions about the future of the catalog on NGC4lib; keep working on the catalog I have to try and make it work better for our college; try to remember to watch my language and remember my audience, because saying that things "suck" isn't always the best way to get taken seriously; keep up with open source developments like Evergreen and talk them up whenever possible; and try and keep the pressure on my ILS vendor for meaningful change along the lines of, yes, the ILS Bill of Rights. Note: I had the stub of a post in my long queue entitled "DChud is the man"; seems like a good time to dust it off and post it. So here is a bonus post: DChud is the man I admit that most of the time I have no idea what Dan Chudnov is talking about at One Big Library. I don't really understand the significance of his projects unalog or unapi (though I plan to spend a little more time trying to understand soon). But when Chudnov (or "dchud" as he calls himself) writes about the big picture, I tend to read and re-read his posts. If you haven't read his blog, take a look at these posts: Because this is the business we've chosen Software, simplicity, and the librarian's corner case conundrum The greedy librarian moonshot Talk: Social Computing and Libraries Technorati tags: opac, library, catalog, open_source, put_up_or_shut_up Posted 10:19 AM to Catalogs Comment from: Steve Lawson June 15, 2006 12:41 PM OK, it's kinda lame for me to comment on my own post before anyone else does, but I wanted to point to this message on NGC4Lib (did I mention that NGC4Lib is a very interesting list? I did?) where Ross Singer replies to a "vote with your feet on bad ILS's" remark. Comment from: Laura June 18, 2006 02:48 PM I get a little sick of that "just don't buy it" argument, too--as someone who works in a place with a state-wide ILS, I *really* have very little control over the OPAC. I second your comments about NGC4LIB.

One-on-one signage
June 26, 2006
A few months back, there were a fair number of biblioblogospherical posts about signage in libraries, most of it showing negative examples, and much of it around signs regarding cell phone use in the library. At my library, we have a "no cell phones" policy, but it isn't all that effective (you are shocked, I can tell). On the one hand, cell phones are so pervasive, and our library (especially on the first floor near the circulation and reference desks) isn't exactly a silent sanctuary, so we often don't bother to enforce the policy. And the signs, they do nothing! On the other hand, students do complain to us about fellow students talking loudly on the phone. So I think we do owe them a reasonable enforcement of the policy. One of my colleagues brought back a souvenir from her most recent visit to the Regis University library in Denver. It's a card, which reads on one side "getting this card handed to you is better than being chased from the library by an angry mob..." and on the other "Please use your cell phone in the library's lobby or a closed study room. Thank you for your assistance in promoting a research-friendly atmosphere." The idea, of course, is that library staff can hand people a card rather than tugging on their sleeve and saying "excuse me, but you'll have to take your phone outside." Some of my colleagues and I

think it is an intriguing idea. It seems less confrontational than interrupting the person on the phone, though I suppose it's all in the execution--we probably would not want to take our cue from the red-card-happy World Cup referees, holding them high over the offenders' heads. I also like the fact that the more "serious" side of the card gives people options, instead of just saying "please turn it off," which just doesn't seem realistic anymore. To find out more about these cards, I emailed Regis reference librarian, Martin Garnar. I wondered how people reacted when they were "carded." Martin wrote back, "Most recipients are good sports -- we get an occasional chuckle, but most are apologetic and don't take time to read both sides. In addition, we have a 'No Cell Phone' sign in the front lobby and also mention our policy at new student orientations." Martin also sent me the text of the other two card designs: "call me crazy, call me a dreamer, just dont call me from the library!" and "peace on earth / goodwill to all / now its time / to end your call." I also like the fine print at the bottom of the card: "#1 - collect all 3." "For the sake of historical accuracy," Martin says, "we borrowed the idea of cards from Douglas County Libraries, but I'm pretty sure theirs were straightforward. I think we came up with the humor concept. In fact, I don't think humor existed at all before we created these cards, so please be sure to credit us with the origins of humor. I can't give any more details at this time, as we have a patent application in process regarding this matter." Wow! Now that is innovation! Though I think I have some prior art around here somewhere... But seriously folks, I'm about 80% convinced that this is a good idea for my library. Is anyone else trying something like this? Posted 11:07 PM to Public relations Comment from: Iris June 27, 2006 09:11 AM We don't hand out cards, but we do have varying levels of quietness and phone-talking on different floors of the library. Actually, I was just about to blog about this today... And now I have. :) Comment from: Susie Whiteford June 28, 2006 07:17 PM An interesting sidelight to the whole issue of cellphones in the library is the segment on the Today Show this week. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13529126/site/newsweek/ There are now cell phone booths, and according to The Today Show, libraries are also purchasing these booths. I can't help but wondering how long it would take our users to try using them for more illicit purposes. Comment from: Steve Lawson June 28, 2006 08:49 PM Susie, I know; we wouldn't want to see them used for any of this action (SFW). Comment from: Dances With Books June 30, 2006 01:51 PM It will be a good idea until you hand it to the one patron with the sense of entitlement who will tell you in very graphic terms what you can do with the card. And I am not just being snarky. In my workplace, we have just that type of people who have no qualms about being, well, shall we say "the vulgar term for a certain human body orifice"? Of course, for them, we got the campus police to escort them out. Comment from: Ed August 16, 2006 12:11 PM This seems like a great idea. As a librarian who works part-time at four (count 'em--4!) libraries, I am sometimes called upon to ask cell phone scofflaws to take their cell phone conversations elsewhere. It's probably my least favorite thing to do, so I'd be much more inclined to hand a person a card that injects a little bit of humor into the proceedings.

ALA Annual Conference, On not attending

June 26, 2006
This year I continued my fairly recent tradition of skipping ALA. I don't regret missing the conference, but I do regret having to pass up several invitations to get together over a beer (or a hurricane; do they still serve those in New Orleans? I'd expect the name seems less cute since Katrina) with old or new friends during the conference. I think next year I'll go to D.C., skip the conference, and just drink with librarians. But the great thing about the web is that I don't have to feel left out--I feel like I attended the conference just by reading blog posts. No, not the conference reports, silly! The conference-related snark from A Librarian's Guide to Etiquette. Check 'em out: Conferences, Returning from: "Cull out the good vendor give-aways for yourself and then dump the rest off on your coworkers or the homeless (15 minutes)"

Freebies, collecting conference: "In order to make the most efficient use of your time, don't look vendors in the eye. Just grab the freebies by the handful and go!" Totebags, On hating: from an anonymous comment on this post: "Since librarians often fly to conferences, wouldn't it be better to have barf bags emblazoned with library related logos?" I see fellow conference-skippers Steven and my new imaginary friend Iris are also giggling at this. Posted 11:59 PM to Conferences Comment from: joshua m. neff June 27, 2006 06:24 AM You can add me to the list of non-ALA-attending Librarian's Guide to Etiqutte-laughing people. (Heck, you can add me to your list of imaginary friends, too, if'n you want to.) Comment from: Steve Lawson June 27, 2006 08:10 AM Joshua, since you have left a few comments here and I have left at least one at the goblin in the library, we are certainly imaginary friends. Comment from: Iris June 27, 2006 08:33 AM Giggling... no. More like wiping my eyes and catching my breath (especially for the post about "Territorial, Being." We should set up an anti-conference! It would have freebies, the ubiquitous iPod give-away, and lots of hanging out with librarians, but it wouldn't have anything about "[insert word here] 2.0" or Millennials. It would also be free. Comment from: Steve Lawson June 27, 2006 12:32 PM You are on to something, Iris. We have been trying to imagine an online conference with all of the content and none of the "extra stuff." Instead, we need an in-person conference with only the extra stuff. We would have the very best nametag holders evar. Also, I wonder what library vendors' experiences of the conferences are like. Something tells me that an anonymous group blog of library vendors where the tell about being on the other side of the great freebie stampede would be very entertaining. This also reminds me of something I overheard on the exhibits floor of ALA. Several years ago (in San Francisco?) I overheard one swag-laden librarian say to another is a hissing whisper "those people have much better totebags than we do!" I shouldn't be too superior, though, because I was on my own quest to find the booth giving away the large, black, "Pat the Bunny" totebags. Comment from: Iris June 27, 2006 12:43 PM Hah! We would definitely have to have the tote bags... as big and brightly colored as possible, and preferably with more writing in smaller print than anyone else's tote bags. Comment from: Laura June 27, 2006 04:05 PM Oh, I'm totally down for the conference of just extra stuff, if only we could find a way to fund it. There'd have to be some write-up for library higher-ups that would make it sound like the once conference we all had to be at. Happily, I managed to miss almost all of the exhibits this year. I want a conference slave who will go to the exhibits for me, pick up cool stuff for my coworkers, and have intelligent, reasoned conversations with OPAC vendors that will result in transformed catalogs. . . well, one can dream. Comment from: Nick Baker June 28, 2006 01:46 PM What's the deal with tote bags anyway? I've been a librarian for 10 months now and already have enough to last me through the rest of my career. Does anyone in the next generation of librarians really carry these things around? Comment from: Steve Lawson June 28, 2006 02:51 PM I confess that I use those silly tote bags regularly. I often want to take more books, papers etc. back and forth to work than fit in my backpack and then out comes the Internet Librarian bag or the RBMS Preconference bag. I don't always keep the new ones I get, though, and other than the aforementioned Pat the Bunny bag (really the ne plus ultra of conference tote bags in my experience) I don't seek them out. We have established elsewhere that I'm old and uncool, so just consider this further proof. Comment from: joshua m. neff June 28, 2006 03:04 PM "Hey, you kids! Quit skateboardin' 'round here, or I'll whack ya with my tote bag!" Comment from: Julian June 28, 2006 03:33 PM I have found that conference tote bags are great for storing materials collected at conferences (after, of course, recycling all those PowerPoints, according to proper etiquette).

If you come here to DC next year during ALA week, I'd definitely join you for drinks with the librarians. Comment from: Iris June 28, 2006 09:16 PM Oooh, ALA's in DC next year? Am I the only librarian who didn't know that?... Well, I guess I win the uncoolness contest. Can I have my tote bag prize now?

No skateboarding
June 27, 2006
"Sorry guys, but you can't skate here" sez me to the two kids skateboarding outside our modernist concrete skater's paradise of a library. Them: "Aw, why not?" Me: "Because we don't want your parents to sue us when you break your neck, and because you are making too much noise for the people inside studying." Them: "Man, our parents can't afford laywers!" I did not add "go skate outside Stephen Abram's library," but perhaps I should have. Also, I think I am officially a cranky old dad when I go around telling kids that they are going to break their necks. Posted 3:35 PM to Public relations Comment from: joshua m. neff June 27, 2006 05:45 PM Yeah, I've had to tell skaters to take it somewhere else, too. I always feel like such a heel. Comment from: mck June 28, 2006 09:55 AM Getting old (or how my brother knew he was a father) - when talking to a young moutain biker with a broken arm, neck and leg he asked "what did you parents say when you told then about your accident?" Comment from: Concretin June 28, 2006 06:12 PM Why not tell them "You're making too much noise. It needs to be quiet when the library is open." Let them HOPEFULLY figure out that perhaps they could skate at some other time... and YOU didn't tell 'em they could... And throw in "Where's your helmet?" Just for good measure. :) Comment from: Steve Lawson June 28, 2006 08:40 PM Gosh, Concretin; how did you know they weren't wearing helmets? ;) And if they want to come back and skate when the library is closed, they could probably get away with it. They'll want to do it during the summer, though, as they'd have to skate between 2 and 8 AM during the school year! Nice site, by the way. I have no idea what you are talking about, but the photos sure are fun. Comment from: Jessy June 30, 2006 11:45 AM Steve, lemme tell you another reason they shouldn't be skateboarding there. About a year before you joined us at Tutt, a skateboard flew out from under a kid and shattered a pane of that extremely, EXTREMELY expensive glass on the front of the building -- you know our floor-to-ceiling glass panels. The library paid something like $10,000 for the panel to be replaced. That's the story I tell boarders when I'm the cranky librarian. Glenna would know the details.

First Day on the Somme, ninety years ago today

July 01, 2006

As the English curse their World Cup exit today, the historically-minded can get a bit of perspective by remembering that this is the 90th anniversary of the the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916. This Guardian Review article, 'We go tomorrow ', by Mark Bostridge, reminded me of this anniversary, and reminded me, too, of the great book, First Day on the Somme by Martin Middlebrook. Middlebrook interviewed as many veterans of that horrendous day--Britain's worst single day of warfare ever, with close to 20,000 killed--at what must have been about the last possible moment; by the time of the book's publication in the early 1970s, even the youngest participants in the Somme would have been in their 70s. The Imperial War Museum has a fine online exhibit, The Battle of the Somme, featuring images (like the one seen here of the Tyneside Irish advancing on the morning of 1 July 1916), video clips, audio interviews of combatants, and more. Tags: somme, wwi, anniversary, exhibition Posted 4:10 PM to

Women and technology and libraries and blogs

July 03, 2006
K.G. Schneider asks 2.0: Where are the women? and Dorothea Salo and Karen Coombs chimed in. As your average white guy, I don't have a good answer, and some of the answers that I have come up with sound like excuses, so I won't offer them here. I'll just say that yes, I'd like to hear more from women in technology too. The one thought or question I'd like to add is, how will blogs and blogging affect this issue in the future? Let's look at the lineup for the LITA Top Tech Trends session at the recent ALA conference: Marshall Breeding Clifford Lynch Eric Lease Morgan Andrew Pace Karen Schneider Roy Tennant Tom Wilson Walt Crawford, moderator along with Sarah Houghton in absentia, I belive. None of those men are known for blogging. Walt has a real blog which he established after he was already a well-known presence in the library technology world, and Roy Tennant is the player/manager for TechEssence.Info but I don't think of him as a "blogger." Meanwhile, the two women in the group I know because of their blogs, Free Range Librarian and The Librarian in Black; that's not to say that their blogs are the only things notable about them, just that I personally might not know who those two women are were it not for their excellent blogs. So what? So I don't know! Perhaps in the near future, having a great blog that addresses technology and libraries will "count" for more when it comes to an invitation to a group like this (though I expect it to be a cold day in hell before I see Dorothea on an ALA panel). Perhaps these blogging women will inspire more women as they enter the profession to take up technology--I know they have inspired me. Perhaps by the time those new librarians are as old as the men on that panel LITA won't be able to ignore them anymore.

Tags: ala, library, women, technology Posted 11:10 AM to Librarians and the profession Comment from: walt July 3, 2006 12:05 PM "LITA" doesn't ignore anyone. The Top Tech Trends Committee has invited more women to be part of the trendspotters panel. More women are part of the trendspotters panel. They're always open to new suggestions -- but of course the women have to be LITA members. The problem here is that the women on the trendspotters panel don't show up for the program. There is no way I know of that LITA can force them to do so. Comment from: Steve Lawson July 3, 2006 12:10 PM Thanks for the context/correction, Walt. [Whoops! This showed up as being a comment from my wife! But it's really from me. Now corrected. Given the topic, I wonder if that means something?] Comment from: Sarah Houghton (LiB) July 3, 2006 12:44 PM Let's also look at who the panelists work for. Marshall Breeding--Venderbilt University Clifford Lynch--Coalition for Networked Information Eric Lease Morgan--University Libraries of Notre Dame Andrew Pace--North Carolina State University Libraries Roy Tennant--California Digital Library Tom Wilson--University of Houston Libraries Walt Crawford--Research Libraries Group Sarah Houghton--San Mateo County Library Karen Schneider--LII.org So...the only people who attended in-peson are from academic libraries or an academic library-related group--except for Karen. And me, the only public library rep, who had to contribute in absentia. Let's think about another angle here--where are the public, school, and special librarians? Speaking for myself, my inability to attend ALA conferences is largely a financial one. My institution can't fund me, and I don't make enough to fund myself. So maybe it's more than just a gender issue--perhaps it's who works for academic libraries who can fund and support them enough to engage in activities like this. Comment from: Emilie July 3, 2006 01:22 PM I have been following some of this discussion regarding women bloggers/2.0/social software advocates (or lack thereof), yet don't really know why the situation exists as it does, or how it could be corrected. Within the context of libraries, I am inclined to agree with Sarah that those employed in an academic rather than public setting may receive more encouragement to participate in blogging activities (just as often they have to publish or present, while I have none of those requirements). The timing of your post is uncanny, because while I was looking for something else today, I did run across the BlogHer community and conference, which seems to have a mission to support and encourage women bloggers in all areas, not just in libraries. Comment from: K.G. Schneider July 3, 2006 02:33 PM I think what the blog does is give a woman a leg up so she is harder to forget when it comes time to arrange panels. My post was about the general underrepresentation of women on TTT and elsewhere; I'm not singling out LITA or TTT. Comment from: Steve Lawson July 3, 2006 02:48 PM Thanks, all for your comments. Yeah, Karen, it was an error for me to single out LITA and TTT, and I apologize for making some assumptions there. I used it as an example because of the women as bloggers/men as non-bloggers split that I saw there.

Survey Survey
July 07, 2006
Recent publication number one: With my friend, colleague, and occasional commenter on this very blog, Jessy Randall, I recently published a "humorous" "survey" in the "journal" American Drivel Review. It's worth publishing something there just to have "American Drivel Review" on my list of publications. The ADR allows authors to keep copyright as a matter of course, so I

can offer this odd little item here on the blog. You can download the PDF version of Survey Survey as it appeared in ADR, but I recommend you take the Survey Monkey Survey Survey instead. Tags: survey, drivel Posted 11:31 PM to Publications

Cheating with another blog

July 14, 2006
Edited 2006-07-24: I have no more invites. The ones I had are all gone. Any "refills" I get in the future I plan to send out to people I already know, either in real life, or from online. Edited 2006-07-19: Sorry, I wasn't very clear about something. Anyone can look at my Vox blog (or anyone else's Vox blog) and see the posts that I have set to "viewable by the world," which is most of them at this point. You need an account if you want to be "friends" or "family" with someone else on Vox (at the other person's discretion) and/or if you want to try using Vox for your own blog. My Vox blog is at http://hatchibombotar.vox.com/. Right now, the lead post is a YouTube video of an unmanned rocket blowing up. And I use bad words sometimes! It's highbrow stuff over there. Dear readers, I have been away from See Also for a time because I have been cheating on it with another blog on Vox. Vox is a new blogging platform from Six Apart, the company that does Movable Type, Type Pad and LiveJournal. It is supposed to be something like LiveJournal for "grown-ups," in that it enables you to create a blog "neighborhood" of the people whose Vox sites you wish to follow. You can also designate some of your neighbors as "friends" or "family" (as you can with Flickr). You can also control who gets to see what. So for each blog post, you can choose whether everyone can see it, or only friends, family, or both. Vox makes it easy to upload multimedia, or embed media from other sites like Flickr or YouTube. There is also a way to display books--i.e., images of book covers from Amazon--but there is little else you can do with them. I mentioned to Tim Spalding at Library Thing that I could envision an interesting tie-in from Library Thing to Vox; we'll see if anything happens there. As with your posts, you can designate your photos, videos, audio, etc. as viewable only by friends or family, if you so desire. Exploring Vox can be a little odd. You'll find many well-known web personalities like Merlin Mann, Anil Dash, Matt Haughey, and others. But (a) it doesn't seem likely that any of them will do something as interesting on Vox as they have been doing on the projects that made them so well-known, and (b) if you aren't friends with these folks, your are likely locked out of many of their Vox posts. For me, Vox is fun. It is a little liberating to have a "personal" blog for posting cat pictures, photos of my family, my thoughts on random non-library stuff, and the like. It is nice to connect a bit more with my online imaginary friends. It is generally easy to use, though I sometimes have a hard time remembering where I saw certain links or features. And there seems to be no way to write regular HTML in the posts, which can be annoying when there is a hard-to-figure display quirk. My most serious reservation is the amount of "lock-in" that Vox entails. The terms of service make it clear that you own your content, not Vox. But at the moment, as far as I can tell, there is no way to export your posts, photos, etc. I know that leaving Vox would mean leaving behind the social features, but I'd still like the ability to export my posts into a text file. At this point, Vox is by invitation only. I have two invites now, so if you want to check it out, email me. Tags: blogging, vox Posted 9:38 AM to Blogs and blogging, Navel gazing, Social software Comment from: Laura July 18, 2006 04:01 PM Oooh, cheating! That's totally what I've been doing. And it gets worse, as I've been thinking about starting a hiking blog, too. Yeesh.

You are ALA - The American Library Association's newest contact!

July 24, 2006

This is new to me: ALA is on Flickr. We got this in our library email box today: Hi Colorado College Tutt Library, You are ALA - The American Library Association's newest contact! If you don't know ALA - The American Library Association, ALA - The American Library Association is probably a fan of your photos or wants a bookmark so they can find you again. There is no obligation for you to reciprocate, unless you want to. :) Here's a link to ALA - The American Library Association's profile: http://www.flickr.com/people/ala_members/ You can see all of ALA - The American Library Association's contacts here: http://www.flickr.com/people/ala_members/contacts/ And photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ala_members/ So, check 'em out! Looks like they have two pages of photos from the recent Annual, joined a few groups, and started making contacts with libraries and librarians. Cool. Tags: ala, flickr, library Posted 11:57 AM to Librarians and the profession, Social software Comment from: Laura July 24, 2006 03:26 PM I got one of those too, on the Meeteetse Library account and I was just about blown away. . . did you know ALA has a LiveJournal account now, too? Comment from: K.G. Schneider July 24, 2006 06:46 PM Hmmm... do we sense Jenny Levine at work?? :-)

Solvitur Ambulando
July 30, 2006
I see from a pair of links in the post Why it matters from Dorothea Salo at Caveat Lector that Bess Sadler is blogging at Solvitur Ambulando* Bess is my wife's cousin, and while I can't claim to know her very well, I can say that I'm excited at the prospect of her blogging. She's a real techie librarian--the kind who posts Java code to her blog--not a poser like me, and she has what sounds like a very cool job: metadata and systems librarian at UVA. Lunch with Bess followed by seeing Lawrence Lessig speak as part of the "Open Accces, Open Minds" panel was the highlight of my 2004 ALA Annual in Orlando. Let's hope she keeps up the blog, and continues to weave in human-readable posts (lke Friday's two excellent posts on women in the open source/systems librarian communities that Dorothea linked to) with the code snippets. * Caveat Lector ("reader beware"), Solvitur Ambulando ("it is solved by walking"): makes me want to give this blog a nifty Latin title. cf. would be somewhat close to the meaning of the current title. Other possibilities (which are probably ungrammatical): Fiat Libris or Scripta Non Grata Posted 10:13 AM to Blogs and blogging, Librarians and the profession Comment from: bess July 31, 2006 08:53 AM Hi, Steve! Thanks for the kind words. That lunch at ALA was also a highlight of my conference that year. I've been secretly reading your blog for awhile now, and I should have said something earlier. Hey are you going to code4lib? It looks like a great conference, and maybe a good excuse for the family to work in a visit to the east coast. I want to see the kids again! Comment from: Steve Lawson July 31, 2006 01:44 PM

Hmm, I hadn't thought about code4lib. I was originally planning to do Internet Librarian again, but I now have a conflict and won't be doing that. I'll look into that--it could be a nice stretch for me. And the company would be good. :) Comment from: Shanon July 31, 2006 03:10 PM No. No more conferences until the kids are older! Comment from: Steve Lawson July 31, 2006 03:22 PM That would be my wife, Shanon, de-lurking to give me a hard time in the comments. Relax: code4lib isn't until February. The kids will be much older by then. Comment from: Laura August 1, 2006 12:52 PM I've always loved cf., and I use it frequently when annotating my books (many of which were my father's books and contain similar, though less legible, marginalia). I'll check on your Latin for you when I get home to said books.

Been there, done that

July 31, 2006
No doubt you have already seen the Library 2.0 Idea Generator over at Dave Pattern's weblog. I don't see what the big deal is: I just keep reloading the darn thing trying to find an idea I haven't already done: disenfranchise Stephen Abram and attain Library 2.0 Nirvana overnight (check!) introduce your Baby Boomer colleagues and then rant about them on your blog (check!) interrogate Library Elf (think I violated the Geneva convention doing that one. Check!) leverage Michael Gorman (Woof. Check!) engage your monolithic ILS and apply a liberal amount of lipstick to it (check! seriously, this time) Posted 9:49 AM to Library

Are you blogging this?

August 01, 2006

Yes! I am blogging this! Now stop yelling at me! (David Lee King celebrates two years of blogging. Looks like he filmed this at work: way to go!) Tags: david_lee_king, youtube, funny Posted 2:13 PM to Blogs and blogging

Forget the lipstick...

August 01, 2006
...my OPAC needs more cowbell. The biblioblogosphere is bringing the funny today, I'll tell you. Now, I wonder where I can put this image on my actual OPAC? Posted 2:30 PM to Catalogs
Cowbell Originally uploaded by Wandering Eyre.

The view from the Great Middle

August 14, 2006
[Warning: we are entering the first anniversary week for See Also, so expect more navel gazing than usual this week. -SL] In my first post to See Also, almost a year ago, I wrote about Walt Crawford's first biblioblogosphere survey in Cites & Insights. I finished with this: So the next time Crawford does his investigation, I hope that See Also will be right up there, and that I can thank my many (I'll settle for several) loyal readers for making See Also such a success. Well, Walt did it again, and this time See Also is indeed right up there. Of course, Walt did change his methodology and decided to look at the "Great Middle" this time rather than the liblogs with the greatest "reach" as he computed it. So that helps. And there is a nice little fluke in that the data-collection period that Walt chose (March to May, 2006) includes the post Name that book: a fiction subject headings quiz. That post got 35 comments and ended up as the most-commented post in Walt's survey. (Of course, eleven of those comments are from me....) Walt asks: I cited the title of the post with the most comments for each blog that has any comments. What conclusions can be drawn from those titles? Other than the obviousnew jobs, marriage, graduation from library school, homebuying and other major life events draw lots of commentsIll leave that exercise to others. The conclusion I draw is: come up with a sorta funny audience-participation quiz, and watch the comments pour in. Walt mentions the impact of feeds on blogs. With more people reading blogs via feed readers, it is less important (he believes) to post frequently and regularly, and that the size of the audience doesn't matter as much as it used to. I agree about the frequency of posting (I sure hope it's true, given the summer doldrums around this here blog), with a minor caveat. For blogs just starting, I think it is important to post regularly--not every day, but at least once or twice a week. I think it is important for two reasons. One, if you have just started a blog and can't manage a few posts a week while it is all fresh and new and exciting and you have a lifetime's worth of "backlog" to get out there, how on earth will you be able to keep it going in the long run? And, two, I personally am reluctant to add new blogs to my aggregator. I have too much in there already to keep up with comfortably. So for me to pick up a new blog, I usually have to see it linked several times within a short period. I think that regular posting is more likely to lead to regular in-bound links. But that might just be me. As for the second part (size doesn't matter), I'm not sure I follow the reasoning. Walt says that "the hope now is to find the right audience, which might be anywhere from half a dozen friends to a few thousand strangers." I would have thought that was always the hope; perhaps in the hype surrounding blogs a few years ago there were more people who thought they'd become rich and famous blogging? Now we all know that in the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people. But I'm not sure what feeds have to do with that. At the end of the issue, Walt notes that the project took a very long time and asks "was it worth it?" That's a tough one. I think a yearly round-up of the biblioblogosphere liblogs is a great idea, and I think Walt Crawford is a great person to do it: I don't always agree with him, but I always respect what he has to say. It might also help that he is in the blogosphere but not of it, exactly.

But I'm afraid that this list left me a little cold. I value blogs and bloggers for their voice and their sensibility; I'd rather read Dorothea Salo (for example) blog about her cats than read most other people reveal the secret of life. And this kind of study doesn't really capture much of that. I think I'd rather read a more qualitative write-up from Walt each year--one where he could exercise his own voice a bit more, and write about those voices that mean the most to him. But I realize that would be a very different project from the one he has undertaken these past two years. And others, who are more actively looking for new blogs to read may find it more useful than I do. Finally, the real worth of this surve may be as part of the historical record, when people wonder just what all these wacky "bloggers" were up to in the early 21st century. In any case, thanks, Walt, for taking the time. Tags: walt_crawford, liblogs, survey Posted 11:47 PM to Blogs and blogging, Library, Navel gazing Comment from: walt August 15, 2006 08:56 AM I could suggest that essays like this one may constitute much of the "worth" of what I did--and I think that's right. (I'm also fond of your placing me "in the blogosphere but not of it, exactly," since my blog is a distinctly secondary outlet for me.) You make an excellent point about the need for some frequency of posting in a new blog. As to readership size: That requires a much more detailed and thoughtful discussion than I provided. Finally: I also value blogs and bloggers for their voice and sensibility, even as I make a point of reading some blogs I don't care for. Your suggestion (a qualitative writeup) is interesting, but even writing that down gives me cold shivers up my spine. It's not only that it would be a very different project (a little closer to last year's), but that until/unless I'm retired, independently wealthy, and ready to either stop going to ALA or start being a whole lot more assertive than I've ever been, I'm just not willing to deal with the outcome. "Who the heck is Crawford to be judging my blogging?" That would be a natural response. I think it would be a reasonable response as well. (There would be much harsher ones.) While I believe I could offer a reasonably sound summary of voice and approach (for English-language blogs), even there I did get and would get grief. If I went further--prose quality, significance, worth--I would *deserve* the grief I would get. Indeed: Who am I to judge? So, no, that one's not happening any time soon. I think you're right about the historical record, assuming that archival issues are ever solved (note that this issue was at a new home with less implicit likelihood of long-term survival). Thanks again for your thoughtful comments; they affirm what I did by building on it. That's how it should work. Comment from: Dorothea August 15, 2006 07:20 PM Awww. Thanks, Steve; that's the nicest thing I've heard all week. (Beats "Why is DSpace broken?" all hollow.) Comment from: Steve Lawson August 15, 2006 08:17 PM Thanks Walt. A few things: When I said "a qualitative write-up," I didn't mean that I thought you should take a big sample of blogs and rank them or rate them for "quality"; that wouldn't be fun for anyone. Rather, I was thinking "here are some of the trends I have seen in liblogs last year," and "here are a few specific blogs (or posts or authors) that I found particularly interesting / funny / perceptive / whatever." As for historical record, I plan to back up my hard drives in perpetuity, so that's one copy. Comment from: Steve Lawson August 15, 2006 08:18 PM My pleasure, Dorothea. So how are the cats?

Bessemer Historical Society archives

August 16, 2006
At MPOW, we took our annual retreat yesterday. Instead of team-buliding or brainstorming or the like, we went to the Bessemer Historical Society, the site of the archives for the old Colorado Fuel and Iron (or CF&I) company, across Interstate 25 from the Pueblo steel works. The society contains the CF&I archives, thousands of cubic feet of paper records, photographs, films, X-rays (!) and more from the Rockefeller-owned, "vertically-integrated" (i.e., the company

owned the mines, the rails, the mills, the workers' homes, the workers' hospitals, etc.) industrial giant. CF&I will be forever associated with the Ludlow Massacre, in which eleven women and two children were killed as part of a brutal strikebreaking campaign in Ludlow, Colorado in 1914. (Read more in this excerpt from Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.) Now CF&I doesn't exist as a company anymore, but has been folded into the Oregon Steel Company as the much smaller Rocky Mountain Steel Mill (see the history of the company on the Bessemer Historical Society page). The archives, run primarily by archivist Jay Trask, and assistant archivist Bev Allen, are housed in one of the old CF&I administrative buildings. The building is incredible: huge, crammed with the "stuff" of the old company, and in various states of disrepair. I was so taken with the building and all the odd stuff in it, that my photos of our retreat hardly feature the librarians and archivists at all, but instead concentrate on the place.

View from the cupola

Vampire in the vault

For my volunteer work, I hauled boxes and binders out of the basement where a pipe had burst, up to a second-floor shelving and staging area for future processing. The full-time workers at the archives have T-shirts printed up, calling themselves the "CF&I Box Monkeys." Other Tutt Library staff alphabetized medical records, made inventory lists from boxes full of files, and other first-pass archival processing functions. The archives recently received an NEH grant for almost a quarter of a million dollars. These archives are a rich source for Colorado history, labor history, industrial and economic history and the like. There is so much work to be done there--being an archivist there must be such a challenge. I'm sure some days it is exhilarating, with so much potential. Other days must be discouraging when contemplating the sheer amount of work to be done, or the condition of some of the materials (Jay told us of "the pit," an open area in the steel mill where hundreds of ledger books were tossed, exposed to the elements). It was fun, fascinating, and inspiring for me to see such a different operation than the library of a small, private liberal arts college. Tags: steel, archives, pueblo Posted 2:13 PM to Librarians and the profession