Cites & Insights September 2007 1

Cites & Insights

Crawford at Large

Libraries • Policy • Technology • Media

Sponsored by YBP Library Services

Volume 7, Number 10: September 2007 ISSN 1534-0937 Walt Crawford

Bibs & Blather

Something’s Coming,Something Good

Well,

think it’s good at least—I could make the casethat every public library (and every library school) inthe U.S., Canada and Australia should buy one.

Public Library Blogs: 252 Examples

will be out anyday now—literally “any day,” probably before mid-September 2007. The 299-page (x+289) 6x9 paper-back is a great resource for public libraries consider-ing a blog—and for those that have one and areconsidering more or rethinking the one they have. It’smostly examples, blogs that have been around since atleast December 2006 and show some signs of life. Thefirst three chapters break down blogs in various waysto help point librarians to blogs they might consider. As I was planning the book and putting it to-gether, I would have assumed that it’s not a bookyou’d read cover to cover. After two cover-to-coverediting passes and two more passes for proofreading,I’m not sure that’s true. The diversity of public libraryblogs is remarkable. The sample posts (one from eachblog where a sample makes sense) and metrics paintan interesting picture.The first announcement will be at

Walt at random

(

walt.lishost.org

). The book will be available at theCites & Insights Bookstore on Lulu (

lulu.com/walt-crawford

). It will cost $29.50 from Lulu. It might beavailable through another channel. More details—

lots

more details—as soon as it’s actually available and inthe next

Cites & Insights.

If every public library and library school in theU.S., Canada and Australia (and other English-speaking countries)

did

buy a copy, the future of

Cites& Insights

and

Making it Work

would be assured—butthat’s not likely to happen. Still, I believe it’s a valu-able resource for those libraries that do buy it, easilyworth the thirty bucks.

Making it Work

Some of you know I suspect this section needs to be aseparate ejournal—something that can’t happen with-out sponsorship. Why separate? Because there’s toomuch material for a section (the items covered herebarely dent my backlog), because it’s an area thatshould continue to grow and diversify as we movefrom hypewars to the sometimes small changes thatmove the field forward, because there’s plenty of otherstuff to cover in

Cites & Insights

. And because doing areally good job in this area requires more time andfocus than I can provide when it’s just a piece of

Cites& Insights

Inside This Issue

Following Up and Feedback..............................................7Net Media: Wikipedia and Other Wiki Notes..................15Trends & Quick Takes.....................................................20Interesting & Peculiar Products.......................................23My Back Pages.................................................................25

As I work on these sections, I find that it makessense to quote significant portions of the sources—and that commenting on posts as much as six orseven months old can be worthwhile. Unfortunately(for M

W as a section), that means space becomeseven more of an issue. For example, when I beganthis month’s episode, I thought I’d deal with threelittle groups of posts that represent maybe one-quarterof what I have on hand (but in three specific areas).Turns out that, to keep this section at reasonablelength, I’ve dealt with

one

of those little groups—byfar the smallest of the three.

Cites & Insights September 2007 2

What we have here, then, is what might be one of four to six sections in an issue of

Making it Work

(if that’s the final name).

Successes and Failures

Crossing two continents and two blogs, we begin witha discussion that speaks strongly to locality and feasi-bility. In a sense, it’s about failure—but it’s also aboutpossibilities, ones that may make sense only for cer-tain libraries and their parent institutions.Peta Hopkins posted “Branded environment—campus collaboration” at

Innovate

(

inn0vate.blogspot.com

) on March 19, 2007. She starts by referring to aMarch 6, 2007 post by Brian Mathews at

The ubiqui-tous librarian

(

theubiquitouslibrarian.typepad.com/

),“More on the branded environment concept.” Por-tions of Mathews’ post:

A few weeks ago I mentioned the potential of creating abranded environment. I have an example now of howwe’ve failed our students in this regard. A patron who isa friend of the Library wanted to start a book club. Wesupported her giving her space and permission to postsome flyers in the elevators and then pretty much gotout of the way.She started the book club using a Facebook Group andgot about 20 members to join. Yet now she is taking itoff FB and moving it to Google Groups. I asked her whyand she responded:“We think it will be easier to discuss things, for onething... facebook doesn’t really give you a lot of room soit’s hard to read replies. Also, a lot of people don’t checkfacebook regularly so we miss out on getting people up-dates easily. Those are the two main reasons... it justseemed that Google groups would work better.”I like that they are evolving as they assess their needsbut I wish that we or someone else on campus was ableto provide an online space for them. This is what I meanby creating a branded environment. A collaborativespace with lots of tools that students can use to be pro-ductive. Merging the campus portal concept, with regis-tration, the library, the course management system,some social software, etc. NCSU captures this spirit bygiving students blogs and wikis, but I’d like to see a big-ger enterprise, a central place with lots of tools and in-formation that students actually use…That’s what I mean about creating a branded environ-ment. I don’t think it’s something that a library can doalone, but requires participation with others on campus.Giving them content is easy, but giving them tools to dostuff, that’s the real challenge.

Did the library fail its students in this case? Forsmaller libraries (whether public or academic), anappropriate answer might be “Huh?” The kind of li-brary-based collaborative digital creation environmentmay be so far outside reasonable capabilities and ex-pectations that it’s not even worth discussing—andperhaps not within what the community would con-sider the library’s reasonable bounds. At fairly largeacademic libraries (Mathews is at Georgia Institute of Technology—Georgia Tech—a large [16,000 stu-dents], well-respected polytechnic university), suchan environment might make as much sense as digitalcreation workstations do in many public librariesthese days. (Just to be clear: I believe digital creationworkstations make sense in larger public libraries andsome smaller ones—it’s part of encouraging commu-nity participation and helping the community tell itsstories, a natural extension of local library services.)Peta Hopkins is at Bond University, a private uni-versity in Australia (Australia’s oldest private nonprofituniversity). It’s considerably smaller (about 1,800 stu-dents). Most of what Hopkins has to say about possi-bilities at Bond, partly reformatted for space reasons:

Various groups on campus at MPOW have talked at timesabout providing blogs and wikis or other collaborativespaces. And in fact some of us are using various blog plat-forms and wikis outside of the ‘branded environment’ thatBrian refers to. Why? Because we just haven’t got any-thing like this on campus -- yet! (Ever the optimist).Currently the developments in this area that I knowabout are:* a blog server set up as a pilot for “teaching and learn-ing” use only using WordPress - several student blogswere established and were included as part of the as-sessment for a course. Previously students were asked toset up a blog on any blog platform/host they liked.* trial of ‘campus pack’ a Blackboard plugin that pro-vides blogs and wikis within the locked-down environ-ment of Blackboard[…and two library blogs, a potential “blaws,” discussionof blogs and wikis, etc…] An ICT strategic framework refers to blogs and wikis asdesirable collaborative/learning tools. And as it standsthere are some great ideas and projects that could benefitthe University if these were hosted under a branded envi-ronment. But at present they are scattered on the web.OK, so if we could provide this kind of branded plat-form what other great ideas would our community comeup with?[Bullets combined] Reflective learning journals. Docu-mentation wikis/blogs. Book discussion groups. Wikisthat could be used to share/develop procedural docu-ments. Project Planning sites for student projects [or forstaff]. Personal blogs for students wanting to write abouttheir learning or student experiences. Student associa-

Cites & Insights September 2007 3

tion blogs. Research centres writing about their researchactivities, or podcasting. Staff writing about their per-sonal research or teaching experiences or their area of expertise. Space for collaboration with the university’spartners - one group I’m involved in is using a wiki pro-vided by another institution to do action planning andorganise a workshop/seminar. University Club menuand specials blog (instead of clogging up our email in-boxes). Collaboration on conference papers - last year Itried this with a colleague using Writeboard. Contentdevelopment - get some inspiration from Wikipedia. Write an online book.I could be using this kind of branded environment now.Here are a few more thoughts on the concept.* Policies are important to address concerns about whatsort of content is made available to the world - but oth-ers are doing it, it’s not insurmountable, and in factthere’s this pbwiki site I know about where some of thishas already been pulled together.* A mix of open access/closed access is essential to meetneeds of various ideas and uses* A rollout of RSS feed aggregator and the informationliteracy skills to the majority of the community wouldreally help - perhaps a feed aggregator within Outlookto harness the huge dependence on email* Mashing up some of this content would be reallycool. Mix’n’match feeds to get a snapshot of what’s hap-pening on campus in a daily fix* Syndicating some of this content to show it off onrelevant parts of the website means fresh, regularly up-dated and targeted content* It’s bigger than just one area of the University canmanage

Hopkins closes by quoting Mathews’ final paragraph.Both agree: This is not something [most libraries, evenlarge ones] can do alone. Unstated, and I really don’thave an opinion: Is this kind of branded, web-basedcollaboration environment something

any

public li-brary should be trying to achieve? Would it be usedenough to justify the investment? Is it something acommunity would expect the library to do or appreci-ate as part of the library’s mission?No answers. I think the questions—and the dis-cussions—are sufficiently intriguing to include as pos-sibilities.

If You Build It, Will They Come?

That’s an applicable question for the branded envi-ronments proposed above—and it’s a question thatapplies to most innovations to increase communityparticipation. For commenting on public libraryblogs, the current answer is “not very often, with afew exceptions.” For tagging and user reviews and thelike, there aren’t enough cases or history to draw anysolid conclusions.Leaping to a third continent and back to a fairlylarge academic library (University of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, UK, with about 20,000 students), wehave several posts by Dave Pattern at

“Self-plagiarismis style”

(

www.daveyp.com/blog/

). Pattern’s library addedfive “tweaks” to its online catalog: “did you mean?”spell-checker suggestions for failed searches; “seren-dipity keyword” suggestions for failed searches, “peo-ple who borrowed this also borrowed…” suggestions;books with similar subject headings; and other edi-tions of books.Before proceeding with the results, I should saythat Pattern offers exceptionally clear and detailednotes (linked to from a March 10, 2007 post) on whateach of those five tweaks is actually doing. The “ser-endipity keyword” tweak is particularly interesting.The “people who borrowed this…” explanation in-cludes comments noting that this feature raises realprivacy and confidentiality issues in the U.S. (andsome

possible

ways around that). The last two tweaksare becoming fairly common in advanced interfaces,which doesn’t make them less worth tracking.So how did it go?Pattern reported on early results in an April 3,2006 post (with the same title as this section). At thetime, “other editions” and “serendipity” didn’t amountto much—six and 14 “clicks per weekday” respec-tively. “Similar subjects” was at 36 clicks per weekday,but rising consistently. (None of the tweaks had beenpromoted.) Then there are “also borrowed” and spell-ing suggestions, averaging 154 and 222 clicks perweekday respectively. Those are pretty solid figureseven for a large university library. Pattern’s conclu-sions? If your catalog doesn’t provide spell checking,ask

why

—or do it yourself. He’s fond of “also bor-rowed,” but that really does raise questions for mostlibraries. The other features didn’t pop up as often, soit’s not surprising they weren’t used often. Finally, it’sworth quoting this paragraph:

There’s been quite a bit of discussion about Web 2.0’s“permanent beta” and whether or not we should be us-ing our patrons/borrowers/students to test out new fea-tures within a live OPAC. However, if you can monitorthe usage and solicit feedback, then it allows you to rollthese features out and (if necessary) quickly removethem, or make them optional.

But wait, as the infomercial would say, there’s more!Pattern left the logging running and reported on 11