Deborah Fitchett

The opportunity of the SOPA blackout

2012-01-18T22:26:00.000+13:00

I don't know how this will come across, but I have serious reservations about the suggestion I've seen in a few places that libraries can take advantage of Wikipedia being down to promote the library.

I mean, yes, we can do that, but if libraries are only useful when Wikipedia's down then libraries are pretty crappy. And yes, I know that's not what people are meaning when they're suggesting/doing this, but it's what it comes across like to me at least. I envisage hordes of students desperately trying to finish their assignments grudgingly admitting, "Okay, for that one 24-hour period in a lifetime when Wikipedia's down, the library's kinda useful. Apart from being slow and clunky and not giving me enough or up-to-date enough information. Thank $Deity Wikipedia's back up tomorrow!"

Because to be honest, when it comes to ready reference, everything sucks compared to Wikipedia. I'm a librarian, I know my library's resources, and I'm also a geek and know how to search the web at large, but if I want a quick introduction to almost anything I go to Wikipedia. If I want to figure out what model my cellphone is, if I want a description of a database that isn't a salespitch, if I want a listing of all the episodes of White Collar, if I want a summary of King Lear, if I want to decode a biochemical reference query I've just received by email so I can start answering it...

If I want to know something and I want to know it now, not in two minutes time, I go to Wikipedia. Because none of the library's references resources is anywhere near as convenient, easy to use, up-to-date, or thorough.

(If I need to know for certain I'll double-check elsewhere. But that doesn't happen nearly as regularly as needing to know it now.)

So to me, the blackout as an opportunity to promote the library as a replacement for Wikipedia is just an opportunity to show people one of our greatest weaknesses. The strengths of a library are so much more than that, but we can't promote them by setting up this comparison.

The real opportunity of the SOPA blackout is to educate people about intellectual property and freedom of information. You know -- that thing which the blackout was supposed to be about.

Beyond the simple ethics of not hijacking an important cause (and btw, I have even graver misgivings about using the blackout to promote the databases sold to us by the publishers supporting SOPA!), teaching people about this stuff is a much more important part of our mission than pointing them to the encyclopaedias. And fulfilling this mission will do far more to promote our real strengths.

How US intellectual property laws affect the rest of us, and what we can do about it

2012-01-09T16:32:00.000+13:00

How can it affect us?
Imagine a New Zealand website which sells (eg Fishpond) or gives away (eg NZETC - Eric Hellman discusses Project Gutenberg Australia) ebooks of material in the public domain. Now imagine that a law in the US allows for this site not only to be blocked from the US, but also to be removed from search engine results (search engines widely used throughout the world) and blocked from receiving any revenue from the US (including revenue for legitimate sales of in-copyright books).

Wait, what?
New Zealand's copyright law puts books in the public domain 50 years after the death of the author (which is bad enough - I'm a fan of our original copyright period of 28 years OR life, whichever was longest); US copyright law currently means any book published after 1923 won't get into the public domain until 2019, if ever (see also the Mickey Mouse Protection Act). The difference between the two means there's a whole bunch of books which are legal for anyone to freely distribute in New Zealand, but illegal to distribute without permission from the rights-holder in the US. Currently we just cope with the disparity. I mean, the authors have been dead for at least 50 years anyway. However...

What are the proposed US laws?
The proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is written such that if any foreign site that is "US-directed" (defined as any site that doesn't actively prevent people in the US from accessing it) distributes anything against US law, then the US can hit it with a bunch of sanctions. Theoretically these sanctions are probably intended to just prevent the site trading with people in the US; in practice, they'd prevent people in most of the world being able to easily access or use the site.

I'm not sure of the relationship of SOPA to the proposed Protect IP Act (PIPA), but that seems to have similar intentions. "Don't Break the Internet" at the Stanford Law Review Online discusses the potential effects of these two bills.

If that's not bad enough, there's the proposed Research Works Act (RWA) which is designed to make open access mandates illegal - and thereby cut down on the amount of open access material available to researchers worldwide. (The rationale is that private publishers publish it, so it shouldn't be free to the public. But if the public is funding the research grants and paying the salaries of the researchers and the peer reviewers then why it shouldn't be locked behind a paywall benefitting only the private publisher, either.) Here's a thorough roundup of blogposts on RWA.

Who would want to do such a thing?
The Association of American Publishers' Professional and Scholarly Publishing put out a press release in support of the RWA; here's a list of AAP/PSP members. One of the sponsors of RWA has received campaign contributions from Elsevier. So has the other.

Elsevier is also on the List of SOPA supporters (pdf) along with quite a lot of other publishers (academic and fiction).

What can we do about it?
If we voted in the US we could contact our representatives and ask them to vote against these bills. But they probably don't care much what foreigners think.

If this were really a free market we libraries could say "Nah, we're not going to buy from [Elsevier] this year, we'll give our money to some other science-publishing company." But publishers have a monopoly on their titles, and academics would generally have words to say if we didn't provide access to the Journal of Important Research in My Field.

But publishers don't only rely on libraries' purchasing money. They also rely on researchers (including non-US researchers, and including library researchers) providing them free articles to publish and providing them free labour in the form of peer review. So what any researcher can do is withdraw that free labour. And while we librarians are encouraging other researchers to take a stand, we can put our money where our mouth is.

The Library Loon has compiled a list of library and information science journals published by Elsevier which librarians can strike against.
Or you could even take the Open Access Pledge. Here's a bunch of Open Access LIS journals.
Anyone in a position to proclaim a Journal declaration of independence gets super bonus points.

For the record, I personally am not going to publish anything unless either a) I get to CC-license it or at least put a copy in my institution's open access repository; or b) I get paid for it (unlikely in the scholarly publishing world, but relevant for fiction). Tenure's not an issue for me so I demand either fame or fortune before I give my work away.

(I'll create it for fun. But to give it away I require something more.)

French open data and historic monuments

2011-12-22T09:13:00.000+13:00

Way back I had this idea I'd keep up with library blogs in French (and another couple of languages I was semi-competent at, at least with the help of Google Translate) and feed back the occasional roundup of interesting stuff into the anglophone world. I did it a bit, then ran out of steam, then the rss feeds I followed got out of date so nowadays I've no idea where the really interesting conversations are happening.

But I still see the occasional tidbit, such as (via Des Bibliothèques 2.0) the launch of the official French Open Data website data.gouv.fr. (A nice touch is that down the bottom of the page they link to Open Data initiatives in a bunch of other countries too.)

And even more cool, (via the same), Monuments historiques, a mashup of data from data.gouv.fr, OpenStreetMap, INSEE, Wikipedia and DBpedia, and Yahoo! (see more on the sources and process) which lets you search or browse for nearly 44,000 monuments in France by type, historic period, region, Metro stop... and gives you data, description, and images about each monument in a really pretty interface.

Closing panel #lianza11

2011-11-02T12:30:00.000+13:00

Key messages the panel noticed
* Karen Coyle: We're all in the same boat. And we're all working toward solutions.
* Andrew Booth: The power of stories. Everyone has a story - every user - can we harness that power?
<small earthquake happens (possibly a mag 3-4?) and I get briefly distracted>
* Michael Houlihan: Passion is important, and confidence is important. These go together. Librarians as leaders.
* Martin Molloy: Spent so much time trying to survive and look after colleagues. Tend to forget what this is all about, and being here is a good reminder. Also, we're all in the same boat but not necessarily rowing in same direction! Need to use the strength we've got, our comaraderie.
* Jenica Rogers: Concerned that might be minimising difference between countries, but pleasantly surprised that we are very similar. (But downside is we don't have magic solutions to her answers either.) Very encouraging that we've got people all around the world working on these problems.
* Audience #1: Each one of us has the power to transform something at our own libraries.
* Audience #2: Climbing hills and not giving up - as long as it's a hill worth climbing.

Issues for next 5 years
* Jenica Rogers: Concerns about readiness of librarian leaders. We're not supporting as much as we need to. Moved up early because she chose to. But many wanting to do this aren't finding the path or the support to do that.
* Michael Houlihan: Disagrees. Thinks many are preparing. Not sure the things we care about are always the preserve of professional librarians. Have brought in professions from elsewhere - can be in danger of isolating ourselves. Libraries sometimes pushed into slow lane.
* Martin Molloy: If David Cameron has his way won't need to worry about younger generations because older ones will always be there unable to retire. Politicians are a key area for the next five years, and the advice they get from their policy offices re which services are vital/expendable. Librarians haven't stepped up to the mark in managing corporately and advocating for libraries at the same time. Need to get more economists (etc) speaking for us.
* Andrew Booth: In past thinking about challenges have always thought about externalities, but Jenica's presentation reminded that restrictions in our own head are the big challenge.
* Karen Coyle: We have many practices that are hundreds of years old that we need to transform into new technologies - and to do this we need to understand them (the practices) better. Have to re-examine what we take for granted, to transform for a new information-era.
* Sue Roberts: We have a strong professional collegiality and association that helps us work on these together and we shouldn't underestimate that.
* Audience #3: "Nothing in this world is certain, all you get is the sun rising and setting." Retention of traditional knowledge. When we see everything coming at us it might be an opportunity to look at ourselves and see how we need to change ourselves to face the future.
* Audience #4: We've got challenges but we have to prepare the next group. The next level are saying they don't want the pressures. Need to look at doing things differently. We can get our message across if we position ourselves. Need to look beyond where we are and see if there's something else.
* Carolyn Robertson: Don't advocate a natural disaster to break the mould, but notes the "Other duties as required" - civil defense duty. As manager had to retrieve staff because they were so fantastic in other areas people wanted to hold on to them. Can take inspiration from INELI leaders.
* Heather Lamond: Has heard a few times that people don't want to be leaders. So those who do want to be leaders have to let people know that.

Advice on working politically
* Karen Coyle: Attend a non-library conference. Be the only librarian and speak up as a librarian.
* Andrew Booth: We see things through librarian glasses. Work out what buttons to press with those with evidence. "Slip out of librarian skin; slap down librarian biases; slop on some reality."
* Jenica Rogers: When making a case she's rarely doing it to librarians, so has to translate it to broader audience. Had to learn how to do this. Communicating to people without librarian background is hard and very important!
* Martin Molloy: Simple to explain and difficult to do: Politicians are just like us - they have things they care passionately about and you need to work out how they tick and what their agenda is. Need to work with people who work with politicians to find out who's doing what where. Politicians want to get reelected every four years, so need stories about how things change within four years. Local politicians are motivated by stories in their community; national politicians have more varied agendas. Time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted. Can't leave this to someone else - managers, etc - "I" need to do it within "my" role.
* Michael Houlihan: We're all holding a bird that says "Celebrate" (promo for next conference) - need to tell people what we've done and how we contribute. Show the relevance of what we do to the goals of people who control the pursestrings. Likes the "Turning knowledge into value for New Zealand" motto because it says so much.

Audience #5: Asking what panel will take away to change what will come back.
* Jenica Rogers: Has realised her actual staff have never heard her do this. (Sue says she might scare them!) Fear is a good motivator. :-)
* Karen Coyle: Will try to bring passion, humanness etc to meetings in future.
* Michael Houlihan: LIANZA is like a mini-IFLA - both contributions from worldwide and new innovators within NZ. Hopes to bring some of this to Wales.

And LIANZA 2012 will be in Palmerston North, 23-26 September with a theme of Ipukarea (referring to the ancestral homeland - a place that represents our history, where we go to be rejuvenated) Celebrate, Sustain, Transform.

[Waiata: Tu mai ra]

Power to print disabled people #lianza11 #p25

2011-11-02T11:26:00.000+13:00

Mariann Kraack, Wendy Nasmith
Power to print disabled people through passion for information

Most popular RNZFB service is braille and talking book library. By the end of this year all audio will be sent on CDs. Door to mailbox service. Issues continues to increase: July 2010-2011 324,000 audio items; estimate 576,000 next year.

Only 5% of print material is in an accessible format. In their experience the more material is available, the more people borrow.

DAISY - Digital Accessible Information SYstem. international standard for structuring digital audio content, makes it more accessible to readers. Made up of mp3, html (may have text or just navigation) and SMILE (synchronises audio and text) files. Tries to keep it as usable for a print-disabled reader as print is for others. Playback software can be downloaded from DAISY website for free.

RNZFB DAISY player is the Plextor PTX1 Pro designed in Japan. From any place in the book can tell reader what page they're on, how far from end of book. Create and remember bookmarks. Sleep timer. Synthetic voice, can read from SD card or memory stick. Internet capable for downloadable books.

"Burn on demand" service. A CD can hold up to 40 hours of listening - 6 books (so less time for things to be delivered) or 20 magazines. Reduction in cost of postage despite more books being issued. Player is lent to members. Personalised CDs are burnt with borrowers' individual book requests and posted out. When it's returned, a new one is sent out. Borrowers can choose which day they want to receive magazines. No missing or damaged items to replace, no waiting lists, digital recordings have better audio quality.

6000 items available in DAISY format. Producing 100 new titles a year including NZ titles. Purchase titles from overseas. Only add unabridged titles, all structured according to standard. Digitising old titles and adding DAISY structure. 20 magazine titles (eg Women's Weekly, National Geographic, Mana) recorded in DAISY audio. Braille titles also distributed and want to digitise these in future.

New title and subject bibliographies are produced weekly and distributed by email listserv and by Telephone Information Service. TIS also delivers newspapers, government and regional news, and uploads of book reviews by staff and readers, and audio extracts. Library magazine produced thrice yearly. Expensive to produce as printed large-print. Can search on accessible OPAC. Need to upgrade.

What readers like about it
They like the quality; getting more content in a more timely manner. Less handling of physical items. Easy to use player - Mr H thought he'd have to get help setting up but could use instructions all himself. Audio testimonials from supremely happy users.

Creating partnerships
Public libraries have increasingly more content in CDs or Overdrive. "Tea with Tales" event at some public libraries where library staff read extracts to both sighted and blind people. Simple to organise and very successful. Book groups: old cassette system was awkward but new digital services let print-disabled people participate. Can advertise events held by local public libraries to library@rnzfb.org.nz

Christchurch Public Library with JAWS software. APNK includes software as part of its standard suite (having listened to a single customer). Infrastructure is in place but do people know it's available and do staff know how to teach people how to use them? Want to hear success stories to share with members, which would make it easier for them to visit library.

Have worked with Wellington to help people using Overdrive. Worked with Auckland on making website accessible.

In future want to collaborate with public libraries. Small steps. Advancements of technology open up world of communication. Huge range of levels of expertise among users - not always related to age. Increasing numbers using email, OPAC, asking about other material online. But older members prefer to use DAISY; younger members more technosavvy. Can't provide all info needed to members on their own - there's too much.

Hopefully in future will use internet. Want to create partnerships to help provide information to all.

Charity, funded by public donation. Operates under Section 69 - print-disability - blind, visual impairment, can't manipulate books, can't move/focus eyes, has a handicap re visual perception. Add copyright statements to recordings.

Now distribution is easier may be able to offer services to stroke/arthritis sufferers, people with dyslexia or neurological conditions, but currently funds earmarked for blind/partially-blind people.

Can provide awareness training on adaptive technology and physical spaces. Simple things like the design of a form contribute. Many public libraries provide database access, but members may need support to start using them. Would like to work with public libraries - needs awareness of how technology is used. Ebook readers available have different levels of accessibility. Some have text-to-speech capability, but not all titles have it enabled. Books can't usually be navigated - touchscreen unhelpful. Some devices use same button for different functions depending what mode you're in. Emerging technology and features will improve in time. YouTube video about ebooks for blind/partially-sighted

Questions
Q: A couple of years ago had trouble getting DAISY readers to members - how's progress?
A: Should get them to all members by end of week. Very need-based - old technology was breaking down.

Q: Are your members better informed than other NZers?
A: Many members not working; for many it's one of the main things they can do. Desire to read is strong.

Q: Plexitor is internet-capable - is that currently in use?
A: This is the next step, to send books by internet. DAISY protocol is being finalised. One site is using it, streaming to player. The dream is getting closer.

Q: Work with dyslexic kids - can we tell them to go to RNZFB.
A: Yes. Just need something to prove they meet print-disabled requirements of the Copyright Act. Used to be hard to serve all people with cassettes, now able to serve a bigger group. There is a funding dilemma re device so they may have to meet those costs to get the DAISY player.

Q: Recorded or text-to-speech?
A: Send out human-narrated books.

[demo of DAISY player]

Q: [Re databases]
A: Someone went to library to get help using databases, but miscommunications re technology, and trying to solve over the phone was awkward!

Reality-based librarianship #lianza11 #keynote8

2011-11-02T09:56:00.000+13:00

Session chair recounts the Chalk notes as a valid communication format story.

Jenica Rogers
Reality-based librarianship for passionate librarians

We live in a liminal time - internet, digital divide, shifting economies. Some cling to the past, some plunge forward, some standing still and waiting to see what'll happen next. Future will take care of all of us in the end, but we need to decide our position, based in our own realities. We can all be passionate, successful, plunge forward - but foolish to think we can all do it in the same way.

How do we get places? We go there, do it, be it. We are our own best weapon against the things we want to change. We are our own best resource.

First have to find our passion. Many great ideas at this conference. But fraught with uncertainty about our own job.

Step 1 - figure out why you like an idea. Why are you fixating on this technique, this equipment, this change? What resonates? If you can figure it out you can advocate for it in a compelling way. Complaints that some keynotes haven't explicitly linked their talks to the library situation - but that's our job. When we go home, a list of what we heard is less compelling than "I heard this, thought about it, and linked it to what we're doing at our library." We've had a lot of talk about telling stories - we need to take stories back home. So name your passion.

Step 2 - make your passion actionable. Quotes from Rands in Repose: You Are Underestimating the Future A passion combined with a belief it can be done.

"There's always a hill to climb - and some are worth dying on. Only some." Acting on your passion is a hill. Everyone has a hill to climb. People who don't know what their next project is haven't named their passion or don't believe in it. Uses her blog to do this - eg blogging about bad vendor service.

Sometimes legacy processes protect core of what we do. Can't know what this is unless we challenge it. So challenge things when we get back! We've got ideas from conference - will hit wall of "You're just one person". So pick a hill, look at your energy levels and work out which one's worth climbing. When you find barriers (economy, earthquakes, inertia...) decide, "Is this a hill you want to die on?" Some battles aren't worth fighting, sometimes the cost of winning is too high, sometimes the victory isn't strategic enough. Choosing a hill is intensely personal so only you can know which is which. But we have the power to choose which hills are worth it.

"Approach success as you would any project. Plan for it, organise it, manage it." Change doesn't just happen. Need person in right place, right time, right idea, who does it. You have to put yourself in the right place and time. So plan for it. Can't just tell manager "We should have ebooks" - need a plan. Any goal can and should be project-managed.

This applies to everything

identify your goals
map out the steps - how do you get started (depends on who you are, who's in charge, who are your allies, what will it cost in money, time, political capital). May need user needs survey, may need to meet people, may need to write a budge projection.
understand your personal need for accountability. How much do you need to know and report to people; how much do others need to know and report to you? Prepare to ask for info and give it in return. If you're prepared you look smart!
understand your need for support systems. Do you want to work as a loner or be part of a team? If you know, you can agitate for it.
include all of these issues in your plan and make a map

Make a map and follow it! Needn't be detailed, guiding you every minute of the day. But thinking about things gives you confidence - a script to follow if things go wrong. Can protect you from yourself.

Imagine you're an astronaut. Want to go to stars but you *can* go to the moon. So that's your goal. To do this you have to build an ugly rocket. You hate it - but it'll get you to the moon. So "Embrace process and love even your ugly rockets." Eg when planning to update survey you know that you'll have to do a user survey. You don't want to, think it won't tell anything new, but the powers that be require it. Doesn't matter if you're right or wrong - you have to do it to get to your goal.

At the same time, "Don't lose sight of your goals - and remember that sometimes the wise choice is to turn back." Sometimes rockclimbing you've put in so much effort and pain you can't imagine giving up. But sometimes you need to remember your goals - why are you doing this? Think about your passion. Have you passed the point of no return? Or can/should you say it's time to stop? Serving needs of others is part of our operating principles so turning back can feel unaccepting. Sometimes altruism can prevent success by preventing failure. If it isn't working and can't work then you'll keep pouring resources (altruistically!) off a cliff. Have to parse out what's probably and what's possible and what's "possible but only with nuclear weapons".

"Success requires some tolerance for failure. What's yours?" How high are you willing to climb? How strong/fragile is your egg? Strong things can be fragile if you know where to knock them; fragile things can be strong if you know how to hold them. Before you start chasing passion, ask "What's the worst that could happen?" Easy to think about "What's the best that could happen?" We pick projects because we can imagine success - but consider failure too. Once you know the worst, ask "Can I handle that?" Not asking these to operate from a place of fear - that just makes us small and weak. But we need to know how far we can push ourselves before we break.

Remember other people have points of fear too - different fears than ours. When they hit this, they can become a brick wall; or maybe just a closed door. "If fear of failure is what stops people, ask why. Then ask 'What can I do about it? How much do I care? Am I the right person to deal with this?'" If you know that they're immoveable you know to stop hitting your head against that brick wall and look at other options. May not be able to move them, but you can move yourself. Be creative.

Of course sometimes that brick wall is your boss. You can't go over or around your boss. But can you find an advocate who can say things you can't say? "Find a community that loves you. You can't do it alone." Sometimes her power in uni admin team doesn't come from herself (because she's newest and youngest) but from finding an ally. Even if you can't win, you still need the support, people who will get you and feed you passion when the world sucks you dry. Your support network might be in your organisation or out of it - national, international, online.

You're going to need to network someday. "This is not your last job." If you follow your dreams you'll sometimes find you've outgrown your job. At this point your network may give you leads, support.

"Know thyself and set your priorities accordingly." You need to know what you want and what you need. If you can identify your strengths and values you'll know what hills to climb and how to get there. Doesn't care what our passion is. "I don't give a shit how bad things are. [...] This is life." Long ago noticed that farmers never have a good year. But they keep farming! Libraries are the same. We've been here for a long time and never had a good year. We're all struggling - so what? Get over it, move on. Keep farming anyway. "Go do something. Change the world."

Questions
Q: Do you get fitter the more hills you climb?
A: Yes, every time you get more skills, and it hurts less.

Evidence-based librarianship #lianza11 #keynote7

2011-11-01T16:42:00.000+13:00

Andrew Booth
Evidence based library and information practice: harnessing professional passions to the power of research

Passion
Wants to talk about a passion for continually monitoring, evaluating and improving our practice.

Four-square of:
Research | Practice-based research
Practice | Research-based practice

Need to be using research and researching our own service. Not just research that gets into journals, but local data.

Myths:

EBLIP has a bit of a "cold fish" reputation. Wants to get away from this idea. Really initiative and enthusiasm is vital.
The Librarian knows best (aka the Divine Right of Librarians). Our passion may colour our view of what's best for users. Have to be cautious about thinking we know what our users want - doesn't always match up. See also cognitive biases (eg primacy effects, recency effects, stereotypes, perseverance of belief, selective perception). "And we all suffer from Question Framing Bias, don't we?" Librarians keep assuming there's a right way of searching, rather than showing users how to harness the skills they have - eg "the dreaded Google Search typically displays a PubMed Abstract on page one".

Can harness evidence-based practice and passion together. Quotes an informant from Partridge (2007) saying they're passionate about things so wanted to have things to "back up my passion".

Profession
We need to be evidence-based. Difference between barber (just the same inventory of skills as ever) and surgeon (body of knowledge continually built on) - also talks about the "Oops" factor: how do they behave when things go wrong? Note that abuse of evidence-based practice can be as dangerous as cutting off the wrong leg.

Using research = best practice + best use of resources. Lets professionals add value to work practices. Need to evaluate both ourselves and our professional practice. At the professional level it can inform practice, help see where we're going, raise profile of librarianship, and improve status of library.

If we're not practicing EBLIP we might be deferring to (Isaacs & Fitzgerald, 1999): eminence-based LIP, vehemence-based LIP, eloquence-based LIP, providence-based LIP; diffidence-based LIP; nervousness-based LIP, confidence-based LIP; propaganda-based LIP.

Must align evidence, profession and passion.

Role of evidence-based library and info practice
"Difference between research and using evidence-based practice to make workplace decisions". Quotes someone saying there's nothing wrong with reinventing the wheel - it's reinventing the flat tyre you want to avoid.

Not just about research. About integrating user-reported, practitioner-observed, and research-derived evidence. Not undervaluing what staff say, but restoring balance to value users too.

Four-square:
Start starting    | Start stopping
(innovation) | (discontinuing
                                 | ineffective practice)
-----------------------------------------------------
Stop starting    | Stop stopping
(not introducing | (continuing
ineffective practice) | effective practice)

The 5 As:
Ask a focused question
Acquire the evidence
Appraise the studies
Apply the findings
Assess the impact

Reflection for, before, in, on action and Re-action.

EBLIP comes from medicine and is suitable for healthcare but less so for other systems. So must adapt the model, not adopt it uncritically.

Eg doctors are often autonomous; librarians work together.

So rewriting 5 As:
Articulating the problem
Assembling the evidence base
Assessing the evidence
Agreeing the actions
Adapting the implementation

Questions
Q: Your last slide is about ultimate goal of EBLIP to create a toolbox we can dip into, and thus to write itself out of existence - that was the last slide six years ago so how long will it take?
A: Did think about it! There's been progress. Still people see EBLIP as a project to stop and start, not to sustain.

Q: Can you give examples?
A: One workshop he does is called "Walking the Walk". Some great examples around developing webpages - many poorly designed - Cancer Library in the UK came up with webdesign guidelines backed up by evidence. Much has been done esp in Canada around evidence-based collection development.

Online tutorials #lianza11 #rs2

2011-11-01T15:16:00.000+13:00

Fiona Salisbury La Trobe University
More than a quiz: a new approach for empowering first year university students to navigate scholarly information

Curriculum renewal 2009-2012 organised around undergrad curriculum design (integrating into every subject), defining assessment standards (early feedback for students), curriculum mapping, coordinating first-year services.

Created two learning objects for information literacy.
#1 inquiry/research quiz (designed to be delivered in LMS) with videos, questions - if they get it wrong the avatar explains the answer and links to more information. Each question addresses a learning outcome based on NZ standards.

8 subjects trialed the quiz - all different approaches, but all completed in first weeks and then revisited later. Sometimes voluntary; sometimes integrated as a hurdle; sometimes the mark was recorded and low marks would go on to an Academic Skills workshop. 3000 students completed it with final results of 80-90%. (Multiple tries were allowed.) Where voluntary, completion rate was 30-60%.

For many, trial and error without guidance is a frustrating and negative experience.

Very good feedback from students (eg going back to re-view videos when stuck searching) and academics (re student learning outcomes, quality of referencing). Has let library break complex skills down into manageable chunks for first-year students. No dictating to academics exactly how they do it, and no academics asking them for endless customised courses. Time student spends depends on their prior knowledge (15min - 5 hours, mostly 1 hour).

Want to continue developing learning objects to support infolit outcomes. Role would be less about customised classes for first year and more supporting staff.

Meg Cordes
Elements in common? Antipodean online tutorials and overseas’ literature

Online tutorials - usually interactive teaching tools delivered over the internet. Can be flash, video, text-based (older)... Universities moving towards screencapture and interactive and away from text-based.

Gap Hypothesis - that published literature not used by tutorial developers - specifically researching the hypothesis that there was no significant difference in features being used in tutorials developed based on literature.

Most common content: assistance ('help', where else you can go), audio, interactivity, modularity, navigation aids. Considered the principle of least effort - does modularity have an effect on how easy a tutorial is to use?

Frequency of elements in the literature - eg interactivity comes up over 70% of the time, modularity and navigability over 60%. Frequency in tutorial sample is 40%, 30% and 90% respectively. However didn't reach statistical significance of literature, and had limited search to library journals. Mostly studied uni libraries (not polytech libraries).

A snippet #lianza11 #rs1

2011-11-01T14:38:00.000+13:00

From the very end of the first research session, I walked in on the middle of:
Liz Wilkinson, Penny Bardenheier, Hēmi Dale, Tauwehe Tamati
Me whakarongo ki te kōrero: let the conversations be heard

New call number structure with the Framework-Kete Sublevel Series-Letters Title-Letters eg K-HAa PUR KAI

Used Ngā Ūpoko Tukutuku - still remains gaps for subjects in Māori language readers. Sometimes a feeling of indecision about whether a term can be used. Would support workshops.

User-centred access lets users browse by difficulty level, or search by difficulty or topic. Supports language and literacy development, and supports relationship building. Have made some great connections between library and Te Puna Wānanga.

---

Koha / demonstrating value #lianza11 #vs1

2011-11-01T14:28:00.001+13:00

Two papers in this vendor session.

Shelley Gurney (http://koha-community.org/)
Giving librarians a voice - using open source libraries to build a better system

Myths:
"We're too small"
"We're too big"
"You need to be a techie to run Koha" - there's always someone on listserv to help and answer questions
"It's difficult to migrate" - usually yes, but with Koha in fact you can have a painless migration
"The quality of the ILS is not great" - the British Archives, French police are using it without issues. Government departments - so security's not an issue

FOSS - Free and Open Source
Why money isn't everything - she can give us a CD now for free with the whole ILS and documentation. But will take time - which is why there are companies who can do this set-up for you.
Collaboration and community are the cornerstones of FOSS - and libraries - so we can have a say, a voice, in making it just what we want it to be. Can be customised exactly how we want.

Version 3.6.0 just released. (Upgrades every six months; bugfixes every two weeks.) Looking at using RFID with the system. Book covers, RDA compliant. Works with Te Puna, Worldcat. A library in India might ask for a new system to deal with children's books, and will pay for its development - then it's available for everyone to use.

Try it out at http://mykoha.co.nz - reset at 6pm every evening but you can catalogue, circulate, etc just as if it was live at your library, and see how users would use it. Search history and borrower history - deleteable by user. In staff view, things most often used on left, and others linked from right. Circulation screen looks like a friendly webpage. Fast cataloguing available - with Z39.50 search so you can look up in NLNZ or LoC.

Questions
Q: Why is NZ so behind in adopting Koha?
A: Partly don't understand open source (think it's free therefore no good) and partly hesitant to change. Lots not knowing what open source really means - advises to go to these sites, look around, and ask existing users how they're enjoying it.
Comment: Often open source debate is about cost of actually maintaining it.
A: If you make it too complex this is true, but if you just take an existing system it should basically run itself (as much as, or even more than, anything else).
Comment: Used at ASB Community Trust - very small organisation and library. Migrating to Koha was so much easier than any other migration. Can pay for any specific customisations (per hour for development).
A: And if you need help, there's a turn-around of 10 minutes for an answer.

Q: Smartphone and tablet aps?
A: Some developers working with RFID and integrating with tablet aps so can walk around and scan items in the library - mobile version of the main system that you'd be able to use on your phone. Also aps for users in the library.

Stephen Pugh Oranjarra Partners
Librarians are not hospice workers: best practice strategies for demonstrating value and influence in academic libraries

Currently seems like librarians are like hospice workers - looking after the patient while it dies. Sums up issues with vendors, suppliers, aggregators - market dominance and effective monopoly.

Best practice is not new in NZ. Streamlining of collection development. Idea of return on investment. Pushback against the Big Deal.

SCS - Sustainable Collection Services - irony of someone who spent first half of his year selling big packages, now telling libraries how to get rid of them.

World class collections aren't created in a vacuum... Focus on relevant content. Academic libraries don't want to put things in silos - is it a monograph, a journal, a CD - but look at whether it's relevant. Also want to look at alternative models. Some are publisher-agnostic.

Various practical studies of return on investment. Tend to focus on research grant money but this measure is less relevant to institutions that don't have a solid sci/tech base. Likewise summits on the value of academic libraries.

Evaluation has to do with standards. Assessment has to do with goals.
Usage and such measures = implied/empirical value
Testimonials = explicit value
Time and cost savings = contingent value

Questions for your toolkit
How does your library contribute to: student retention, graduation, success achievement, learning, experience; faculty research productivity, grants, prestige.

#2 issue in facilities in recruiting students is the library (article in "Facilities Manager")

Survey (results on website)
People know of trend to measure ROI; many don't think ROI can be accurately measured but do think metrics can be applied to Collection Development activities. Think admin/funding bodies more interested in ROI than faculty/students/community. Some measuring it; more "might at some stage".

Oranjarra's work will be informed by this trend. Hard to measure to get result you want. Need to decide if it's a political issue or if there's intrinsic value in it.

The future of metadata #lianza11 #keynote6

2011-11-01T14:28:00.000+13:00

Karen Coyle
Five steps to the future of metadata

Everyone on Facebook has created a webpage. We expect to be able to comment on news stories. Still have the Powers That Be - but also Wikileaks. Can't do anything without expecting user interaction.

Devices and interfaces still very crude to the point that libraries have to help users, though users expect to be able to Just Use It.

Access means getting a copy - and hard drives get cluttered and messy. We don't have good means for helping manage that.

Communication is increasingly remote and faster. The "slow conversation of books" cf IM and SMS.

Much training is in video form.

Everything is becoming part of the record. Every cat has a webcam. Email is used as evidence in court.

What are libraries doing about this?
Linked data - this year the concept of linked data has become mainstream in library (though we may not have heard about it...) Internet developed (before web) for sharing of documents. About 12 years ago idea of semantic web - instead of documents on the web can put data on web and let it link.

Linked data is a simple concept but the technology can be complex. Data can be linked to more data - a web of data. The link itself has meaning - doesn't just link between Melville and Moby Dick, but says "he's the author".

Plus anyone can link to me. Data remains intact, but the linking leads to knowledge creation. See http://linkeddata.org. Shows a link cloud full of sets of data from various organisations. Many scientific data sets - everyone works in narrow environment but know it probably connects with other people's data. Government data - big efforts in UK and EU to get data out for people (and other agencies!) to use.

Some library data (though not a complete picture) starting to appear. W3C Consortium wants to get more on the web - huge interest in library data. People begging for us to get our data on the web!

Five steps
* Data, not text
** Identifiers for things
*** Machine-readable schema
**** Machine-readable lists
***** Open access on the web

Web of data only functions when people can make free use of what they find. Some organisations have a hard time with this. Open Data movement; concept that bibliographic should not be considered proprietary.

LCSH, BnF RAMEAU subject headings, Dewey Online (just the summary) are available online in linked data format, and soon LC classification. MARC geographic and language codes but not MARC itself. All RDA Elements and RDA controlled vocabularies are out there - though no applications using them.

FRBR and ISBD. Virtual International Authority File (merged name records - access via MARC and linked data formats).

Getting open access to citation data would be great; friend-of-a-friend data.

Linked data format more flexible - can add into existing network without disrupting what's there.

When we try to meet everyone's needs we build something so awkward no-one will use it.

Expressing library data as linked data isn't rocket science. British National Bibliography is put out as linked data, Swedish catalogue, German libraries have done this. We can do this - the question is, is this what we want to do?

What might this let us do? Open Library does this. Lets you have different views. Page for author doesn't just give list of titles, but information about author. Page for work gives general info and list of manifestations/blurbs.

Current metadata, much is useless - xii, 356 p. ; 23cm - it's like the secret language of twins, and yet this is our face to the users.

Our classification schemes are incredibly rich. Bing, Google, etc do keyword search not because it's effective but because it's easy. You can't say broader or narrower. No categories. It's up to the user to turna complex query into a simple search - all the intelligence is on the user, so it depends on the user's skills.

It is good for nouns, especially proper nouns. Doesn't work for concepts.Terrible if searching for common terms. Can't ask specific questions. Linked data can let you ask and answer this type of question - cf WolframAlpha.

Why is Wikipedia always near the top? Because it's organised info and people love it.

When we get results that don't help us we forget it - we use our human intelligence to ignore everything that isn't helpful. Keyword searching is like dumpster diving, trying to find that one sandwich among the trash.

Tagging is okay but it's not knowledge organisation. Miscellany has its role but puts a great burden on the user.

Need to change our concept of what the library catalogue is. Need an inventory for librarians, but this inventory is not what users should see! Need to link to circulation too. But need something users can access and use because OCLC report shows only 2% of users start with the library catalogue. Our data needs to be elsewhere, where the users are. Must be willing to free our data.

Need to focus on knowledge organisation - have rewritten our rules but haven't looked at classification. Finding books by title or author isn't the most exciting thing people can do! Should assume people looking for something are doing so because they don't have the information.

Followup
W3C Library Linked Data group - has a good discussion list
LOD-LAM forum in Wellington, December - where people talk about what we can do
The Data Hub

Karen Coyle's site will have links

Breaking news: this morning got an email that LC has just released Future of Bibliographic Control report.

Tai tokerau taniwha rau #lianza11 #p10

2011-11-01T11:32:00.000+13:00

Cherie Tautolo and Bernd Martin
Tai tokerau taniwha rau: empowering library patrons to achieve

Te Tai Tokerau campus
Sylvia-Ashton Warner Library (located between railway track and intermediate school, next to high school fields) - primarily supports Faculty of Education (three Education degrees offered), 868 students, over 3/4 extramural. 52% are under 30 years old; 48% percent over. 50% Māori, 50% non-Māori. Presentation focuses on on-campus group.

Need to focus on retention/success especially for equity groups including mature students, those from rural, low socioeconomic backgrounds.

Mere's story

Equity of access in libraries - barriers
Personal, Institutional, Societal (refering to Gorman (2000) p135 - thanks @greengecko29)
Need to think about what we have control over, can improve.

Strategies
Need a layout that makes ethnic minorities more comfortable. Ghastly painting replaced with tapa cloth. Some may have little experience with libraries/academic libraries. Need to make our purpose and roles clear to patrons. Some patrons have experiences of racism or marginalisation so especially need to be made comfortable. They've moved the reference collection to create a more open space. Grouped tables to create discussion area for laptops. Photocopier, laminator, etc in one area. Moving further back in the library gets quieter - self-regulated.

Collection reflects needs of users. Māori readers - project underway to reclassify these (cf RS2 session this afternoon about this). Small reference collection - only core bit left. Short loan collection is open access in same area.
Information literacy workshops - work with student learning people to have tie-in lectures: eg first student learning workshop then library workshop. Try not to be authoritarian, invite input from group where possible to build rapport. Groups can be large, sometimes 20+. Remind that people can come back for followup/one-on-one - helps them to relax if feeling it's too fast.

Relationships - especially with student but also faculty and support staff. Make the librarians' role more effective and easier. Personal approach to greeting patrons - learning names - and greeting in Māori when comfortable. Body language especially important! Move away from desk when appropriate. Culturally appropriate acknolwedgement means feeling respected and valued. Taking interest in students as people means better able to serve them. Had a relationship with a student so could ask why they hadn't seen him - he replied saying everyone seemed to know what they're doing so he was embarrassed not to. Gave the opportunity to show him around - and 10 minutes later he was showing one of his friends around.

Reciprocity - students aren't the only beneficiary of relationships. Students gathered outside library one day to sing Happy Birthday to Cherie in English and Māori. Another time presented her with a card to support her in her illness. Received a gift of a kete from a graduating student. Gets offered a ride home when raining. A feed of oysters!

Students feel uncomfortable when lack of Māori students and staff. Need to normalise the presence of Māori students and staff. Eg get classes brought in, student discussion groups.

Silence - some people uncomfortable with silence - feels unwelcoming, cold, formal. Different spaces important - need gathering spaces - noise of discussion can feel more welcoming.

Participation in campus events - because small campus often involved in things that aren't technically library purview. Reinforces relationships and contributes to campus life. Food plays a big role!

Empowered students achieve.

Questions
Q: You have good support from faculty to get library courses embedded - did that take a long time? Course programmes so tight we can't muscle in.
A: Sometimes have to work on it but mostly they're good. Mostly the reciprocal thing - goes two ways.

Q: When moving out into campus activities is the library closed? Tension between participating and keeping library open when poorly staff.
A: At powhiri time (before semester starts), everyone's expected to close and go. Other times would stay open.

Te Papa #lianza #keynote5

2011-11-01T09:57:00.000+13:00

Michael Houlihan (at Te Papa since 2010)

Passing an item around the audience, asking for an identification.

Theme of transformation coming up again. How do we engage in changing lives?

Museums originated in disciplinary society hoping to educate working class and expose them to middle class behaviour - and even now the first thing we see going into museums is a list of rules about behaviour.

Libraries have the power for change.

Te Papa is now 13, a spotty adolescent, getting into that awkward phase. Can't keep living day one, needs to develop a new narrative. Have posed themselves twelve questions.

1. What's your story? Curatorial vs educationalists, marketers. Tension within organisation. Tensions regarding money too. How do we build a narrative that we feel comfortable with but gets these tensions out on the table?

2. Who are we here for? Paradox of globalisation vs fragmentation.

3. Why? What's so special about what we do? Te Papa is unique in being bicultural. (Wales is bilingual but not bicultural.)

4. Where? Visitors/audience/customers are in fact the owners.

5. What? 36,000 toilet rolls per year at Te Papa. We're a business - we have to make sure people have a comfortable visit. Need to generate money, but also tell a story. Curators' research is funded by shop's money.

6. Are you transformational? Impact on the nation is very important; equally important is impact on ourselves (our organisation).

7. Accessing all areas? How are we sharing our collections, skills, knowledge, with community? At Te Papa story has been about "to here"; next 13 years will be about "from here" - getting collections out. Decision was to bring all history into one place that people would come to, but movement now with iwi reasserting rights/ownership to care for their own taonga. Demographics - how to respond to big demographic shift north of Taupo? Also have an international responsibility, show NZ to the world and the world to NZ. Cultural tourism will place new demands on us.

8. Being a forum for the future? Create and act as catalyst for discussion around culture, environment, politics.

9. Treauring the treasures? Museums talk about knowledge, not about wisdom. Have been challenged that we collect the natural environment, but not science. Where do we go to see the history of science in New Zealand? Inspiration for the future is critical.

Language - we have a responsibility to act as a bridging role. Need to work on supporting Te Reo and mātauranga Māori.

10. Have you got an issue? Te Papa will be pushing the environment for the next 5-10 years. Doing international research. Also responsibility to act locally. We like to preserve things in NZ - which we do by slapping up air conditioning which is bad for the environment.

11. Connecting with people? Te Papa does this well. Currently make learning engaging and fun but need to focus on learning outcomes too.

Co-creation very important in future. Genealogy is about people telling their own stories. People don't want to be given a narrative, but to create their own.

Museums becoming more personal rather than supposedly-objective.

12. Mana taonga / sharing authority? Te Papa working with iwi to help/let them tell their own stories. Need to bear in mind that Te Papa only holds collections in trust - and it needn't be in Te Papa, but can happen in the community too.

---

What about the impact on ourselves? Need to change how we do things, get a different focus, and these can be the most difficult areas to deal with.

Going digital? It's about how you build capacity and capability. No shortage of ideas! No extensive research about how sites are used - how do they meet objectives about changing lives?

Keeping fit? How to be a learning organisation. Future depends on continuous development of staff. Staff need to be involved in determining values. Also important to evaluate.

Staying in touch? Governance here is less transparent - people get shoulder-tapped. In Wales meetings were open and all documents published. How do we engage with individuals to keep them involved? How do we engage with youth? Values are critical to give you a framework about the future. Has never worked in an organisation with effective internal communication.

Getting down to business? Value for money. What does the organisation do that's special? this will give you ideas.

Telling your story? Institutions have to blow our own trumpet, because no-one else will. Social, cultural, economic capital. Added value to tourism, employment - politicians understand these arguments.

Building sustainable leadership? One of NZ's big challenges is - well, the reason he's here, all the way from Wales. Why couldn't there be an NZer in this role? We need to develop staff for leadership. How do we become the employer of choice? This is a long-term thing but is about transformation.

---

Item going around is a heel of a boot from 1914 British Army. That boot was probably at Battle of the Somme, at Mametz Wood 1916 when the Welsh army came in to attack. Shows a photo of the field where he found it. Starting to build context, a story, around it. We've been able (or some of us!) to touch history. What libraries and museums do is unlock the obscure, give meaning, create emotional reaction - can provide knowledge, but essentially unlocking a world.

Questions
Q: Many GLAM institutions have moved together - what are your thoughts on ways we can support each other?
A: Many good examples of that eg in New Plymouth. Where there's a strong sense of community and what's important. Idea of memory can drive museums and libraries. There's an intellectual synergy but may be an economic synergy too. Thinks it's a good thing. Need to explore potential around this, especially digital. With synergy can explore idea of community forum. Harder for individuals but easier with larger bloc.

Q: Where an item's maintained in a community, whose responsibility is it re preservation?
A: Belongs with community but preservation is an issue, and iwi are very aware of this. Museum has responsibility re care and preservation. Challenge is not just about giving rules, but getting involved. Not impossible to do it, there are already steps to take, opportunities to share collections instead of just being colonial about it. Permanent arrangements are the harder challenge. Te Papa as mothership and getting collections out there to work.

Belated notes from ITSIG #lianza11

2011-11-01T08:39:00.000+13:00

[I'd dumped my laptop back at the hotel to recharge (and give my hands a rest) before coming to the ITSIG workshop but ended up writing some notes longhand - all without attribution, sorry.]

To define a social media policy, you need to know why you're doing it, who for, and what values you want to uphold. (I noted this especially because it reminded me of the planning process that I got out of Sally's Project Management workshop.)

Libraries and publishers don't understand each other and need to work together better. This is the point of view that HarperCollins are perfectly within their rights to insist on their 26-loan deal. An audience comment pointed out that we accept a lot of crap from publishers in terms of interfaces that even librarians can't cope with, they're so broken, let alone our users - should we just deal with it? The answer was yes and no - we have to buy the stuff (we can't just tell our customers, "Sorry, you can't have that super popular book because we're having a tiff with the publisher") but we do need to work with publishers to improve things.

[Personally, I think there are ways to phrase it that could leverage the customers' unhappiness - eg, "Sorry, you can't have that super popular book because the publisher broke it so it would take longer to set up your ereader to use it than it would to read it," because honestly it's not much more of an awkward conversation than, "Sorry our catalogue claims it's available when the publisher's removed it from their holdings," or "Sorry the loan for this academic textbook you need to refer to regularly for the next few months expires after a mere four days," or "Sorry the site claims getting this is a three step process when it actually requires installing and upgrading and more upgrading and escalating to various levels of library support." None of these latter situations make us look any better - unless we explain it's the publisher's fault, people will still assume it's the library's fault, so why not go for broke?]

"Librarians don't need training, they need to learn." (I believe this got retweeted a few times.)

In training/learning sessions found library staff who couldn't right-click, unfamiliar with installing software, nervous about Adobe signup. Users buying ereaders who struggle to find the on-button. (Or bought by people for parents.) We have to be engaged in helping with tech issues or we'll become just a repository.

Also need to look at the challenge of getting other ebooks, eg from NZETC, downloadable by people whose devices are based around aps.

Building customer relationships #lianza11 #p07

2011-10-31T17:12:00.000+13:00

Lucy Lang and Louise Mercer
Using influence and power to build a good customer relationship
Monday abstracts (pdf)

Power is a tool for good.

Define power
Audience suggestions: Authority, influence, control, imbalance, ability to make a decision
OED's definition includes effectiveness. Power is also the ability to make power, to empower people.
Short search has words: might, force, authority, potency, energy, motive, philosophical, managerial, political, actuate

Two forms of power: power over (which can be negative, reduces available options) and power to (not related to other people but our own intentions).

When you have power need we retain it, or can we share it?

Discuss customer expectations - audience brainstorm
As a provider:

a polite welcome
results, efficiency
knowledge - reliable information
developing relationship
empowerment
that we listen
respect

As a customer:

quick and timely service
helpful and friendly
welcome and listening
quality service/product
a good experience
consistency
an appropriate service - appropriate to your needs
efficient

Their research
Similar to what we said. Interviewed tertiary librarians (ran out of time to contact wider network.)

Expectations around communication, knowledge, attitude, service provision, service outcomes.

Communication - keep the customer informed even if you don't know the answer. A quick response can be as useful as a lengthy query. Communicate on an emotional level - understand their situation and emotions. Body language is important here!

Knowledge - If we don't know the answer find out. Context is important - understand what they need. Know the alternative solutions and pros and cons. Know our own limits - when to keep going and when to refer.

Attitude - Start by assuming that people are reasonable. They want personal connection, to feel like an individual. Someone has to be control - not always us, not always customer, but we need to read situation to decide where the power best sits. Giving up power empowers customer. Stay confident and consistent and let customer know they're not just a number in a queue.

Service provision - be clear about how long things will take and keep promises. No unnecessary referrals (hard to gauge). Interviews often didn't realise they're using strategies to manage eg listening. Be adaptable, cheerful, consistent, honest. Many customers think we're their only option - may become more needy, difficult, formal, guarded, have low expectations. We need to understand they're relying on us.

Service outcome - Not just the solution but relationship building - trust and rapport. Need to help customers help themselves. Not just about whether they get what they want. True outcome is about how we got there. People remember how they feel more than whether they got what they needed.

What's in the literature?
Tucker (2010): library needs to balance needs of one against all users.
Brewer (1995): empower frontline staff as representatives of library. Invest in training.

Product vs service - products can be machine-made; when provided a service people come away with a memory.

Beyond the library sector
Four strategies for influencing customers:

Assume leadership role
Humanise relationship
Advertise expertise
Unlock information vault - control of info is source of power

Minimise inequalities in the relationship.

What influences customers? It's what they see and especially what they feel. A single interaction can influence how they view your organisation. Look at what they experience. What messages are they getting? How services are provided can be more important than the outcome. End result is still important, but good emotional response is vital.

Practical tips

Listen - simple but key. Hear what people mean not just what they say
Create a connection
Keep your promises

Questions

Q: Cf Auckland work on customer experience
A: Yes, want to look into that, just haven't gone past tertiary yet. Asked librarians about their expectations as providers and then as customers - interesting to see differences even when it's the same person thinking in different roles.

Notes from Wales #lianza11 #keynote4

2011-10-31T16:26:00.000+13:00

Andrew Green (on Wikipedia) Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru National Library of Wales
Notes from a small country

Small country. Has only smasmodically been its own political entity - mostly dominated by England. One of the first countries to become industrialised. Employment dominated now by public sector and light industry. Welsh and English are the two official languages. Number of Welsh speakers increasing thanks to efforts to develop it as a living medium in school and everyday life.

1997 decision in referendum to move much power from Westminster to Cardiff. Most areas of public policy could be addressed by people directly elected in Wales. Some hoping for full federalism or even full separatism. Currently in period of nation-building.

CyMAL (=a joint eg in the body): Museums Archives and Libraries Wales.
Has helped public libraries upgrade/build new buildings. Encouraged growth of regional consortia. Monitoring standards in Wales. Funded all-Wales catalogue and initiative to give free online access to reference and family research resources in libraries.

But still a steady drain of resources, including professional staff. Trying to get cross-border cooperation.

People's Collection Wales - Casgliad y Werin Cymru - online showcase of culture. Can log in, upload, create own scrapbook, create a trail or follow a trail, create a map to link in with mobile device.

Principles
Libraries are public goods. Noone should be prevented by lack of means from taking advantage of GLAM institutions. Prefer to deliver digital knowledge for free and without restriction. You can register for no charge and little formality. Can't always negotiate licenses for as wide access as want, but do the best. When creating/digitising material, insist it's available for free without charge or need to register.

Keep core services, core permanent staff, then use grants/funding for special projects.

Theatre of Memory project to digitise whole history of Welsh corpus. Want to build an alternative National Library - not bound to physical building which will be inaccessible for many. Will be the largest online corpus to date of material in the Welsh language.

Welsh is a precious asset, needs to be protected by government and people in everyday lives. Libraries play a big role in this. Librarian developed Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru Welsh Books Council. Policy to treat Welsh as equal to English - it's actually the language mostly spoken within the library so Green mostly uses English only when speaking with users.

Archifau Cymunedol Cymru Community Archives Wales - a project from CultureNet.

Digital Inclusion Wales

Library acts as de facto national archives - only official documents go to National Archives in London.

Report developed: Twenty-twenty: A long view of the National Library of Wales.
Online usage will increase bringing new opportunities and threats. Plateau of people entering buildings; number using it online increasing hugely every month. Digitising will open up collections hugely. Challenge of how to fund without restricting access or losing ownership. Need to move into sound/moving image. Have to address copyright (government may be doing something with orphan works). Interactive library in infancy. Social networking and crowdsourcing currently experimental, will develop to bring library and users together.

Physical library? (Refers to Y Llyfrgell by Fflur Dafydd - ebook here) Libraries becoming cultural centres. National library has thriving programme. More visitors for cultural use than for reading.

Working with authors to preserve their work in The Welsh Literature Archive Project.

Need to learn how to scrounge, beg, borrow. Also to keep our heads high!

Academic chair in Digital Collections in the national library - may be a first worldwide. Generating project work, fundraising. To do academic work on this but also help national library to maintain and innovate in digital collections. Example of moving forward, not just retrenching. Need to extend existing collaborative initiatives into new areas.

Questions
Q: Digitising up to 1910 - why not further?
A: First digitisation programme was 20th century so ventured straight away into in-copyright material. Second programme wanted to do as much as possible without copyright. Stopped there after taking advice - had to be conservative - left them on safe ground (originally going to stop at 1900). Copyright is 70 years after death of author so even 1910 might be trespassing on copyright. Also issues of trademarks. May need to retreat from that conservatism in future especially if Westminster government changes copyright law especially re orphan works.

Q: Do you have to measure impact re artists-in-residence, and how do you do it?
A: Difficult question, and do get asked it! Don't offer firm data. Can talk about outputs eg how many kids have been through schemes, but can't measure imaginative gain on part of children. But plenty of anecdotal and personal evidence from teachers and children of the effect on them.

Q: How do you speak Welsh internally when only 20% of Welsh speak it?
A: Policy is to be bilingual so any job interacting with users staff have to speak both. Not all in library speak Welsh, but definitely those with contact with public. Nothing in charter says this, it's just something they do and always have done, and people regard library as an organisation that will do this.

Q: Is there an expectation of multiculturalism?
A: Not legally but yes. Not always easy - some of oldest immigrant communities were in Wales. Cardiff had oldest African immigrant population in UK. Not always easy - issues with bringing material away from Cardiff where it belongs - but do have initiatives and have links with communities/organisations.

The WAI-262 claim #lianza11 #keynote3

2011-10-31T12:03:00.000+13:00

Aroha Te Pareaka Mead (Speaker notes)
The WAI-262 Taonga Claim

Treaty of Waitangi claim - WAI# is the chronological number, so 262 is a fairly old claim. The WAI-262 claim has big implications for people working with Māori knowledge.

Six original claimants: Ngāti Kuri, Ngāti Wai, Te Rarawa, Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungunu asserted that Crown had

failed to actively protected exercise of tino rangatiratanga and kaitiakitanga by claimants over indigenous flora and fauna and other taonga and also over mātauranga Māori
failted to protect the taonga
usurped tino rangatiratanga and kaitiakitanga
breached Treaty of Waitangi by agreeing to various international agreements/obligations that affect these.

Complex claim - includes all native species; Māori arts and designs; traditional knowledge, medicines; DNA, genetic modification. Covers misappropriation, offensive use, inappropriate use, and trademark laws that prevent Māori from using Māori language terms - a singer who couldn't use her name Moana in Germany because it'd already been trademarked there.

Claim lodged in 1991; hearings began 1998; 2001 other evidence; 2006 statement of issues and 2nd round of hearings; 2007 end of hearings; 2011 Ko Aotearoa Tēnei report (very long but you should either read all or nothing - can't just read a bit - but very good and recommended). Only one of the six original claimants still alive to hear the report, and has since passed on.
Report created new definitions of taonga species (significant to culture or identity of iwi), taonga works (significant because there's inherited body of knowledge associated with it and iwi or hapu obliged to act as kaitiaki), taonga derived works (works with a Māori element but generalised or adapted and combined with other non-Māori influences - eg new artform by Ta Moko experts for non-Māori requesting moko).

Report decided that:

Treaty entitles kaitiaki relationships and a reasonable degree of control but not ownership or veto over uses of IP in all cases.
Māori are not 'the other' - the Treaty partnership requires the Crown to be both Pākeha/Māori. Crown has often acted in a hostile way towards mātauranga Māori issues. Treaty principles must be read collectively, not cherrypicked.
Crown has a right to govern but Māori interests vital.
Can't do business as usual - need a more sophisticated Treaty partnership.

Mead says it's like a marriage in dire need of counselling. One partner has got a lot more out of the marriage than the other; one partner thinks the other is a continual whinges. Lots of bruises, scars, fights, but when they think about the kids, and they don't know what to do with the chattels - though one of the partners is trying to sell off the chattels.

Intellectual Property in taonga works
Should be able to protect against offensive or derogatory use. Kaitiaki should be able to object to commercial uses of taonga works. Should develop a register of cultural works such as haka, moteatea so kaitiaki can be identified. Should be a new commission to hear objections to commercial uses.

Basically tinkering with existing system. Claimants had wanted an indigenous system.

Māori and the environment
Three levels of protection:

full decision-making authority to kaitiaki
partnership with crown - shared decision-making
influence over decisions

Tribunal suggest moving to the first, acknowledging we're not even at the third.

Text in legal situations re Māori issues tend to be very waffly eg "give consideration to". Tribunal says we need to be more specific.

Wildlife Act should be amended to give Māori and Crown shared management - rather than Crown ownership. (This is the only act where the Tribunal comes straight out about.)

Taonga and the Conservation Estate
"For Māori [this is about] the survival of their own identity. Without the mātauranga Māori that lives in the DOC estate, kaitiakitanga is lost." Less than 4% of land is left in Māori ownership. Everything other than land has been given to Māori - have actually lost more land. 33% is held in the conservation estate.

So much land is 'hands off' - ideally to protect species, but it's not working. All frogs threatened, 5 of 6 species of bat endangered, 2420 species threatened, 180 species on brink of extinction. The best conservation outcomes come from communities living alongside and working with nature. "Nature without people" doesn't work - need connection between people and land.

Tongariro National Park was first park in the world to be created by a gift of land by an indigenous people.

When the Crown controls mātauranga Māori
Report points out Crown is in control of funding/managing education/arts, etc, so is basically controlling mātauranga Māori whether it knows it or not.

Distinction between kaitiaki relationship (when taonga legitimately sold/transferred) and rangatiratanga relationship (when taonga lost or wrongfully taken or newly discovered). When held in libraries/archives, Māori have a strong interest in it - but important to maintain relatively free public access. Recommend managing use through objection-based approach. Should be free access for private research but commercial use should consult/gain consent.

Recommendation to establish viable partnerships to support mātauranga māori. Real proactivity required.

Questions
Q: Thanks for speech - media never gives balanced picture and bad for everyone.
A: When report promoted, attempt by someone else to make it as racially divisive as possible - often a challenge to turn around media's challenges.

Q: Please explain more about where rangatiratanga would apply to objects acquired wrongly - is this objects overseas or within NZ?
A: Tribunal makes distinction between items wrongfully taken (especially through Antiquities Act), where Māori interests weren't identified; now you can go through Land Court to establish your interest. Gisbourne just got their wharenui returned from Te Papa. Need to be discussions - kaitiaki might decide to let the items remain. But other situations where Māori just have 'an interest'.

Q: Might a commission be set up for libraries and archives (to monitor use of IP etc)?
A: Good question - but commission the Tribunal's recommending has a specific legal and commercial reason to exist. In case of libraries probably less of an imperative. But still sitting on collections where people might access info for commercial purposes and we need to work out how we manage that access.

Q: Process around how to access information - weren't asked who they were or why they wanted, and might have been easier to access if it had been known that it was the iwi representatives.
A: Need to delegate the care of taonga to iwi, who are the people who can/should give access decisions.

Turning knowledge into value #lianza11

2011-10-31T09:52:00.001+13:00

Bill Macnaught - National Librarian
[ETA: Speech now online]

Huge management changes - much change in staff (including Macnaught) and National Library now also a part of the Department of Internal Affairs. Easy to contribute to the aims of government within the DIA.

Cites Weinberger's "Everything is Miscellaneous".

Libraries and library courses talk about organising knowledge.

Some DIA colleagues sceptical about need for libraries/librarians in the future. Can see how algorithmic tools transform how we deal with data. If you're sceptical about the future of everything as unstructured data you'll be scorned. May think librarians are locked into the past.

Old view of all knowledge mappable into a tree-structure. But the world can't be organised like this - particularly obvious now with the internet.

Michael Spence: Knowledge is "the ultimate public good". "Old knowledge has to be disseminated in every generation". Hence education. Creation of new knowledge is costly, but incremental cost of disseminating new knowledge is low (as already disseminating old knowledge). "knowledge transfer causes the productive potential of a developing economy to increase extremely rapidly". Development needn't involve high levels of creation of knowledge, but high levels of sharing knowledge.

How do libraries contribute to the transfer of knowledge?
Public libraries support kids to reading, learning. School libraries do the same and support infolit skills. Academic libraries provide specialised resources to support success of teaching staff and research communities. Special libraries deliver value to support success of their organisation - which may be economic value. School and academic libraries support learning outcomes. Public libraries 'do a bit of everything' but customers don't have to be a member of anything, don't have to justify what they're reading or do a cost/benefit analysis. Purely driven by individual curiosity.

We turn knowledge into value - not just economic value but cultural and personal value.
The National Library turns knowledge into value for New Zealand. Includes valuing our heritage. Working with Archives. Plan to move the Treaty of Waitangi. Looking at ways to share collective resources. Literacy, learning and public programmes team busy - this year much about rebuilding public schools programmes in Christchurch. (Slide of destroyed original site (probably from their Flickr site); now up and running again in Cavendish Park.)

Ultra-fast broadband in schools initiative from government. Also rural broadband initiative, working with APNK. Launch of National Library Beta.

Shoutout to Sue Sutherland and Penny Carnaby's work; and acknowledges that much of this wouldn't have been possible without National Library being part of DIA.

Big opportunities and challenges in shift to digital. Has led initiatives like Digital New Zealand, Kōtui etc from within NDL but can't rest on laurels! Asking staff to think about the environment in ten years time (using new equipment: shows a slide of a crystal ball). Plan to facilitate conversations with colleagues across New Zealand and overseas to exchange ideas of the future.

No-one has a crystal ball, but as professionals it's our responsibility to describe a desired future and persuade decision makers to support it, rather than letting the future happen to us.

Reaffirm fundamental purpose of libraries and values of librarianship. What's our purpose, how do we add value to tools like Google, etc? We value life-long learning; equality of access; intellectual freedom; rights of users to access and publish information; linguistic diversity and cultural heritage. None of these depend on organising information and can't be replaced by algorithms.

Challenges:

Unstructured data - metadata is essential; but it's mostly developed automatically. Should we develop capability to do this or focus on specialised data?
Users always connected to information online
Free! or at least affordable access to libraries. How does this remain viable? Subscription vs owned?
How do we collaborate national to improve stakeholders perspective of our value?

Can't just morph as we move with the times - transitional change isn't enough. Need transformational change. Will build relationships - can't do this alone.

Together we turn knowledge into value.
(Speech supported by waiata Tutira Mai Nga Iwi

Presidential Address #lianza11

2011-10-31T09:16:00.000+13:00

Jane Hill

LIANZA has launched its Advocacy Tools Portal.

Power in working together, connecting and using technology. Essential to build and harness expert power - we're all leaders.

We're well-placed to make a difference if we keep watching, listening, thinking analysing, collaborating, making mistakes, and triumphing.
Many trends already evident - we need to look at future implications.

[Speech is supported by singing of the LIANZA waiata]

Libraries: essential for learning and life #lianza11 #keynote2

2011-10-30T16:49:00.001+13:00

Molly Raphael 2011-2012 ALA President
Libraries: essential for learning, essential for life
(Abstract is in Sunday's programme)

Libraries can and must play a transformative role in people's lives. Tough economy but huge increase in demand/use of libraries.

In 1990s some thought libraries would fade away with rise of the internet. Instead libraries embraced the internet, proved adaptability. Now need to change rapidly and demonstrate we're as essential as any other "essential services" (police, fire departments). We're not "discretionary" or "ancillary" services though we're not effective at making our case.

Need to transform libraries and transform how people think about us.

How do we keep our libraries moving forward?
Look for opportunities. Libraries doing pretty well at this. Not just keeping up with changes in technology but also how we communicate with public - local and broader community via online. Keeping up with demographic changes.

Excited by what she sees in libraries and library websites. Balancing demand for traditional services with demand for e-services.

Physical library vs virtual library. Most libraries are somewhere in the middle, usually towards physical. We make strategic choices re what we invest in. Shift to virtual use but still lots of demand for face-to-face.

Community library vs individual library. How do we bring people together, create spaces to make it possible - community not just individual.

Collection library vs creation library. Tend to be more focused on collection side, but some more creative esp in Netherlands, Denmark, Singapore.

Portal library vs archival library.
Research on what affects public's likelihood to support libraries for more funding:
Library funding support is only marginally related to library visits - many highly believe in libraries even if they don't use them. Perception of librarians is an important predictor of library funding support. Raphael's going to stop introducing herself at community events as "Director" in favour of "Chief Librarian".

In academic libraries, "Value of Academic Libraries".

Used to look at inputs (how many books do we have), then outputs (how many books are borrowed), now starting to look at impact - how do we transform lives? This info is much more difficult to collect...

This is a frightening time for libraries but also opportunity to demonstrate importance of libraries in transforming lives.

Who can be the most effective in telling the library story?
If we tell it, sounds like self-interest. When members of communities tell it, that issue disappears. Power of people from the community telling the story. Raphael advocates, but notices the impact of parent, teacher, business leader, business activist in making the case for the library. Eg a father talking about a summer reading project turning his son into a reader, from struggling to doing well in school. Community in Oakland defending libraries from closures. Reads story from someone who went from being a school dropout, used library resources to self-educate, then went to community college and now has Master of Engineering.

When libraries seen as transformational source, not informational source, they get much stronger support.

"The Spokane Moms" spoke out in support of school libraries. Lost at local level and went to state level. State provided support for school libraries and school librarians.
Need to engage communities and empower them to speak.

Challenge: think about how our communities can speak in powerful ways. How can we direct this towards the people making decisions? Need to think of how we advocate. Not just when budgets get cut. Need to have communities talk about our value all the time (not necessarily about budgets, but about success linked to libraries). Need to move ourselves into the "essential services" category in preparation for tough economic times.

Need more collaboration between researchers and practitioners. Build bridges so research gets used, and need to share in accessible way to communities. Front-line staff essential in advocacy.

"Empowering Voices: Communities Speak out for Libraries" (see Raphael's column) - building tools to engage in communities. For USA but open to anyone. Advocacy University

Questions
Q: "Raging Readers" turned around the whole issue at [missed the location] around to keep materials free - best-kept secret was the "Raging Readers" consisted of two people.
A: A small group can have a huge impact. Politicians often interested mostly in getting reelected. Libraries seen as easy target. Libraries who fight back usually regain most of what they lost - but then exhausted. So need people to see what the library of today is like. Had a meeting with Chief Operating Officer in the library space so he saw it during the day and was blown away by its usage.

Q: In a corporate library. Every dollar counts. Have to pay people to fill in surveys because their time is chargeable.
A: Once out of the public realm it's a lot harder to get support - doesn't really have an answer to this.

Public libraries in the UK #lianza11 #keynote1

2011-10-30T15:53:00.000+13:00

Martin Molloy
Public Libraries: the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end?
(Abstract is in Sunday's programme)

(Slideshow of photos/paintings of Derbyshire countryside as background, from picturethepast.org.uk.)

400 out of 4600 libraries in the UK are threatened with closure. Street demonstrations, regularly featuring in media and blogosphere. In the UK culture is valued in mechanistic terms - return on investment. Elderly population to grow over the next 20 years, among many other big changes in progress. Molloy thinks libraries are part of the solution, not part of the problem.

How did we get here?
There's no national library service in the UK. No ring-fenced funding from government - have to compete with other services for funding from local government, so have to operate within a political environment.

The best have positioned themselves in this sphere (as well as core functions) to deliver on wider agendas such as health, economic regeneration, community safety. Can't work in isolation - need to contribute to objectives of local authority.

But too great a focus on economic benefits from local government. Some have tried to measure value, but failed to capture intrinsic value - libraries' unique position.

Spending on libraries often at barely sustainable levels.

2009 announcement that 11 libraries to be closed. Due to controversy central government had to intervene and make them consult with relevant GLAM groups. Proposal finally withdrawn.

Free internet access across all UK libraries (People's Network) but local government increasingly introducing charges.

Where are we going?
Some authorities cutting fairly and protecting frontline services. Other places massive cuts and joblosses. Molloy's department needs to save 3.5 million pounds over the next few years. Molloy's priority is to preserve the network of libraries. Have a very small backroom team. Have provided free wifi access. Share transport services. Broadest range of online resources in the region.

Derbyshire has increased business by focusing on core principles. Funds spent on materials, not initiatives. Leader in reader development.

Thinks it's possible to meet challenging savings targets while still running services. Government would probably think they're not radical enough. He lists some government ideas eg sharing backroom services, using volunteers, and others he's even more sceptical about. Cambridgeshire had an idea to hand libraries over to a charitable trust - but finally realised it'd save no money. Now wanting to squeeze libraries into kiosks in business/doctor's spaces so they can sell existing buildings....

Outsourcing to the private sector? Might work in town but not rurally - private sector would want to cherrypick. Handing over to a community group? Doesn't recall local people being asked if they want to be responsible for running as well as using libraries...

Local campaigning has resulted in 3 local authorities being taken to judicial review. (However this can only judge on procedure, not on morality of final decision.) Something wrong when locals have to resort to the law to protect the services they value!

Who is driving?
Public Libraries Network needs shared values, support from government, and inspired leaders. The librarian was once a radical. Service managers need to understand corporate working.

How's the map of public library provision being redrawn?
Arts Council of England will get responsibility - but they're wrestling with gigantic budget cuts too. Starting off with a hand tied behind backs.

Have to work with government, parent organisations. Collaboration - joint procurement. National catalogue, national reading programme. New roadmap to include new ways of delivering services. Ebook loan service getting many new users. Usage of online sources almost doubling from year to year.

Increased personal support to young, elderly. More self-service can keep libraries open longer. Need to become corporate managers, not just service-based. Collaborate with broader groups.

Need to demonstrate that libraries are a life-changing service.

Are we seeing the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end?
Many pressures - including demographic, technology. 5 years ago said libraries are as relevant as ever. Enviable usage figures and exception satisfaction levels. But confusion and lack of competence of politicians re purpose and value of libraries. Public library community also confused, lack of confidence, clarity, vision - librarians ill-equipped to defend services. "Toxic mix of short-term fixes and so-called radical solutions."

But if smart enough and flexible enough, libraries will survive. Need new approaches to engage with communities of users. Need to operate effectively within a political environment.

"What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone, but what is woven into the life of others." --Pericles

Links of Interest 19/10/2011 - infolit & student success; serials; conferences

2011-10-28T16:14:00.000+13:00

The Swiss Army Librarian posts a regular "Reference Question of the Week". One of the latest covers using file conversion websites to help a desperate patron who needs to print out a file in a format that the library doesn't support.

Sense and Reference discusses three recent blogposts on libraries getting rid of books to create spaces.

The effect of library instruction on student success
Three C&RL papers:

The Academic Library Impact on Student Persistence: "a change in the ratio of library professional staff to students predicts a statistically significant positive relationship with both retention and graduation rates." (Note that they show correlation, not causation; in their discussion they're inclined to suspect that the effect of more library professional staff is an indirect one.)
Measuring Association between Library Instruction and Graduation GPA: "if more than one or two library workshops were offered to students within the course of their program, there was a higher tendency of workshop attendance having a positive impact on final GPA. The results indicate that library instruction has a direct correlation with student performance, but only if a certain minimum amount of instruction is provided."
Why One-shot Information Literacy Sessions Are Not the Future of Instruction: A Case for Online Credit Courses: "Researchers analyzed the pre- and post-test scores of students who received different types of instruction including a traditional one-shot library session and an online course. Results show that students who participated in the online course demonstrated significant improvement in their test scores compared to the other students. This study shows freshman students' needs for more comprehensive information literacy instruction."

Serials

Jenica Rogers names names of vendors with annoying practices. Some vendors responded well; some badly. Jenica posted another followup on Vendors that delight me.
SCOAP3 is an initiative to set up a consortium that redirects library funds from paying for closed access High Energy Physics journal subscriptions to funding these journals to be made open access. The FAQ goes into more detail about how the model will work.

Conferences

LIANZA 2011 starts on Sunday - #lianza11 tweets from all attendees will be captured in a set of CoverItLive sessions and I'll be liveblogging as much as my wrists allow
the worldwide online Library 2.011 conference will follow, running from November 2 - 4, with sessions held in multiple timezones.

Thoughts on "Cheat's Guide to Project Management"

2011-09-22T12:08:00.000+12:00

Sally Pewhairangi's workshop "Cheat's Guide to Project Management" covered the planning stages of managing a project in a way that made it clear why the planning is so vital.

We started by discussing reasons projects fail -- one of those brainstorming sessions everyone always has plenty of material for and which can get downheartening. But Sally concluded this section by saying that while we can't always make these problems disappear, we can manage them; and looking back at my notes now I can see that the vast majority of the problems we talked about would be much alleviated by the process the rest of the session modelled.

This, much abbreviated and paraphrased, was:

Find out/figure out how the project fits into the institution's goals. A project to merge serials into the main collection will go differently if the aim is to free up space or to aid findability. If push comes to shove, which consideration will win?
Define the heck out the project. Make sure everyone's on the same page about exactly what is to be achieved, by when, and with what resources. What's included/excluded? Get it in writing and signed off by everyone to prevent confusion, co-option, mission creep, the sudden discovery that you have no budget, etc.
Break the project down into tasks and subtasks so you know everything that has to be done and don't get surprised.
Work out who's doing which subtasks by which dates.

For someone like me who just wants to achieve something, this often seems like a nuisance, and during the session my group was constantly having to rein ourselves back from rushing ahead to the what when we hadn't sorted out the why. But when we did plan it all, it became much easier to come up with a much more innovative and relevant approach to solving the problem.

One of the other fascinating things came during the "silent brainstorm" section that is, everyone scribbling out all the tasks they could think of in silence. No talking meant no-one dominating or being shy, and no derailing into knocking ideas prematurely. And this really brought out the different strengths of different team members - when we categorised the tasks as a team we could see one person focusing more on communicating with stakeholders, one person on technical aspects of the project. Come to think about it, this could be a good way of deciding who should be responsible for managing what.

In short, a fantastic workshop which has given me a whole new perspective on planning and, more practically, the tools to do it systematically.

Plus, the template we worked through was so useful in breaking things down, guiding us through, and giving a real sense of accomplishment at the end, that I'm now pondering how something similar might work in an infolit class: guiding students through thinking about what information they need and where to find it. I'm thinking something like:

Plan your search

1. What’s your topic?

2. What kind of information do you need?

Well-tested research <-----------------------------------------------------------> Cutting-edge knowledge

Summarised information <------------------------------------------------------------> Detailed information

Layman’s level <---------------------------------------------------------------------------> Research level

Other:

3. Who would have written about it? When? Where would they have published?

Kinds of people	Date-range published	Kind of publication

4. What words would they have used to talk about it?

Keywords	Synonyms - any other words that mean the same

5. What sources would hold the publications from #3? What search features are available?

Database or other source	Available search features

and then some stuff on analysing results, facets, pearl-growing, etc. (I may abbreviate the above to try and fit the whole thing to a single A4 sheet for a one-hour class; or may leave it at two sides for the class I get two hours with.) I won't have a chance to test this out probably until next year so would be happy to hear any ideas in the meantime!

The death of organised data

2011-09-20T09:00:00.002+12:00

I've been hearing rumours that the big IT companies may be giving up on organised data. Which is kind of a big thing for the same reason that it makes perfect sense: there are terabytes upon terabytes of data pouring onto computers and servers all the time, and organising all of that into a useful format takes a heck of a lot of time.

Especially because data organised to suit one need isn't necessarily going to suit most actual needs. If you're a reference librarian (either academic or, I suspect, public) you'll have had the student coming to your desk who can't quite understand why typing their assignment topic into a database doesn't return the single perfect article that explicitly answers all their questions.

So I think there's two ways of organising data:

"pre-organising" it - eg a dictionary, which is organised alphabetically, assuming you want to find out about a given word. It has information about which are nouns and what dates they derive from (to a best guess, obviously) but there's no way to search for nouns that were used in the 16th century because the dictionary creator never imagined someone might want to know such a thing.
organising it at point of need - eg a database which had all this same information but allowed you to tell it you want only nouns deriving from the 16th century or earlier; or only pronunciations that end in a certain phonetic pattern; or only words that include a certain other word in the definition.

Organising data at point of need solves one problem (it's much more flexible) but it doesn't actually save time on the organising end. In fact, it's likely to take quite a lot more time.

So is humanity doomed to be swimming in yottabytes of undifferentiated, unorganised, and thus useless data? I frowned over this for a while, and after some time I remembered the alternative to organising data: parsing it. (This is just what humans do when we skim a text looking for the information we want.) So, for example, a computer could take an existing dictionary as input and look for the pattern of a line which includes "n." (or s.b. or however the dictionary indicates a noun), and a date matching certain criteria, and returns to the user all the lines that match what was asked for.

Parsing is hard, and computers have historically been bad at it. (Bear in mind though that for a long time humans beat computers at chess.) This is not because computers aren't good at pattern-matching; it's because humans are so good at making typos, or rephrasing things in ways that don't fit the criteria. (One dictionary says "noun", one says "n.", one says "s.b.", one uses "n." but it refers to something else entirely...) A computer parsing data has to account for all the myriad ways something might be said, and all the myriad things a given text might mean.

But if you look around, you'll see parsing is already emerging. One of the things the LibX plugin does is look for the pattern of an ISBN and provide a link to your library's catalogue search. You may have an email program that, when your friend writes "Want to meet at 12:30 tomorrow at the Honeypot Cafe?", gives you a one-click option to put this appointment into your calendar. Machine transcription from videos, recognition of subjects in images, machine translation - none of it's anywhere near perfect, but it's all improving, and all these are important steps in the emergence of parsing as a major player in the field of managing data.

So yes, if I was a big IT company I might want to get out of the dead-end that is organising data, too - and get into the potentially much more productive field of parsing it.

Keeping track of contacts

2011-09-16T10:02:00.000+12:00

Last week I put an Access database template up on my website and thought I'd better get around to actually mentioning it. What it does is keep brief notes of all my interactions (face-to-face, phone, email) with the academics, research students, and undergraduates I liaise with. (The templates actually on the website of course only have dummy data.)

My old system was handwritten notes on a copy of the welcome letter each grad student received on enrolling. This was Suboptimal for many reasons that only began with the fact that I could never decide whether to sort by first name, surname, or department... The database lets me:

sort by anything I like;
see together everything I've talked about with any given person, or everything I've talked about regarding any given course;
or my favourite (which I got the fantastic help of David Friggens for coding the SQL; also more generally I want to acknowledge my colleague Margaret Paterson for her inspiring beta-testing) - sorting all my contacts to show at the top the people I talked with the longest ago so I can be reminded to catch up with them.

As I said, I'm currently using it for liaison work but I suspect it could be used for other uses too, so if anyone wants to nab a copy, there it is.

Links of Interest 8/9/2011 - news in e-resources

2011-09-08T14:17:00.000+12:00

Michael S Hart, founder of Project Gutenburg, died on the 6th September - read his obituary.

JSTOR is making much of its public domain material openly accessible. (Library Journal also comments.)

The Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Information "is a quarterly, peer-reviewed, open-access publication for original articles, reviews and case studies that analyze or describe the strategies, partnerships and impact of library-led digital projects, online publishing and scholarly communication initiatives." It's put out a call for submissions for its inaugural issue in [Northern Hemisphere] Spring 2012.

Bibliographic analysis for fun and collection development

2011-08-31T16:14:00.000+12:00

You know how you get a brand new hammer and suddenly you notice all these nails sticking out?

So I've been working more with Ref2RIS. And in the meantime some of my colleagues and I were talking about analysing researchers' bibliographies for ~~nefarious~~ purposes, and I suddenly realised that doing such a thing might also help me get the handle I desperately need on one of the subject areas I'm attempting to be a liaison librarian for without having had any handover or background in.

And then I realised that, instead of staring glumly at some PhD thesis bibliography and having my eyes glaze over, I could just run it through Ref2RIS, pull all the references into Endnote, and sort by journal title.

It did take me two hours to create the conversion file, but on the other hand I'm getting quicker at that. And then I sorted, and did a quick count, and came up with the following data:

The bibliography for this thesis contained 133 references, of which 1 was a website, 9 were books/reports/manuals, and the bulk of 123 were journal articles from 27 different journals.

16 journals were used for only 1 reference each;
2 journals for 2 references;
2 journals for 3 references;
1 journal for 4;
2 journals for 5;
1 journal for 12;
1 journal for 18;
1 journal for 19;
1 journal for 34 references (over a quarter of the entire bibliography)

I also discovered that this last journal is one that our library doesn't hold.... (We do hold everything that was used 4 or more times; I got bored before checking the less-used journal titles.)

Obviously more research is required

to find out if this is a significant gap in our collection or a fluke of this particular thesis; and
to figure out if there are any other interesting patterns in usage;

but if the researchers have had the courtesy to all use the same citation style then it should be pretty quick research.

New Zealand libraries on Twitter (part 1)

2011-08-29T09:00:00.003+12:00

[Edited 30/8 to add some more names and htmlise the @ links. Shall try not to edit further without extreme provocation. :-) ]

I tweeted that I was planning a blogpost about New Zealand libraries on Twitter, but neglected to mention that by "planning" I meant that I have all sorts of cool ideas about it in my head, the extraction of which generally depends on what other cool ideas I come up with in the meantime. This seems a bit unfair, so I decided at least I can blog this much so far, and hopefully having blogged a bit will inspire me to keep going.

So, I have a list of all the New Zealand libraries I've found on Twitter. (If I've missed one out, please let me know!) As of today, these break down to:

(Oh Access! The whole point of me typing this up in a database was so I could rearrange the information and copy/paste it out again! If I'd known you were going to be like this I'd have used Excel! --Hah, found the export function.)

Academic Libraries
@cpitlibrary
@LincolnULibrary
@Massey_Uni_Lib
@OtagoLibrary
@UnitecLibrary

Public Libraries
@AlexArchivists
@Auckland_Libs
@chblibraries
@ChristchurchLib
@dnlibraries
@Ed_Puke_Ariki (I think? or possibly should count as museum, for which I have another more haphazard list.)
@elgarweb
@GisborneLibrary]
@GreyLynnLibrary
@HDLibraries
@invlibrary
@kapiti_lib
@Kintalk
@kowhaireader
@Manukau_Libs
@mtroskillib
@nelsonlibraries
@NLNZ
@pncitylibrary
@PukeAriki
@Remueralibrary
@rodneylibraries
[ETA @RotoruaLibrary]
@shorelibs
@tararualibrary
@Taupo_Libraries
@UHLibrary
@wanganuilibrary
@wcl_library
@xenathecat

School Libraries
@anyquestionsnz
@Ashslibrary
@gbhslibrary
@Kingshighlib

Special Libraries
@EnergyLibrary
@KinderLibrary
@lilac_library
[ETA @L2_S2S]
@nzicalibrary
@rnzfblibrary
@WMLIB

Stuff that's awesome but isn't a library communicating with its users
@DigitalNZ
@newOnDigitalNZ
@Schoollibsnz
@SLIS_NZ
@Te_Ara

I ~~may remove~~ have removed this last category from my list and will remove it from any further analysis I do.

Not all of these accounts are currently in use. Further analysis to follow in due course.

Socialising vs being sociable

2011-08-26T11:34:00.000+12:00

A colleague pointed out that, Facebook being a social environment, academic libraries don't really belong. (This post will mischaracterise our conversation terribly. My colleague wasn't arguing that we shouldn't be there; just... there's a reason students laugh when we tell them that we are.)

I pointed to Christchurch MetroInfo's successful Facebook page as a counterexample, but my colleague said that the buses are taking people to their friends and parties. Academic libraries, by and large, aren't involved even this much in students' social lives.

I conceded the point at the time but seeing the examples on these tips for effective Facebook community management crystallised my lingering reservations with the distinction. Getting stains out of your clothes cannot possibly be a more social activity than doing a group research project in the library!

On reflection, I think there is a distinction: between socialising and being sociable. Few students will want their library, bus company, or detergent brand commenting on photos from their latest holiday. But if people find it useful to have a space in which to share bus route suggestions or laundry tips away from their ordinary social groups, then why not study or research tips? And this is the kind of virtual community that a library can, I think, enable.

The question of course is how...

Links of Interest 23/8/2011 - What Students Don't Know (and bonus marketing)

2011-08-23T12:30:00.000+12:00

This has exploded onto the various networks I follow, so it seems a good time to gather some other links with it:

What students don't know gives an overview of findings from an ethnographic study of how students at various Illinois universities research, and is a vital read for anyone in the academic environment working with students.

Related links:

Project home
The study will be published as a monograph.
A similar study in 2007 Studying Students: The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester is also available (including a free online version).
In 1993 Barbara Fister wrote the still-relevant and -mindblowing article Teaching the Rhetorical Dimensions of Research, reading which made me modify a class I was preparing for mid-way through pulling the powerpoint together.
Ibid, 2011, Search: How Libraries Do it Wrong draws links between problems with how we teach search to students and with how we interact with academics and "the small things, the seemingly trivial things, that can drive people to find ways around libraries."

Unrelated links, on marketing:

Gavia Libraria writes about all those times people say "So you're a librarian? So... you... shelve books?..." and suggests Representing Ourselves by telling people what we do (in elevator pitch format - she gives examples) rather than waste time attempting to argue about stereotypes.
Mr Library Dude collects a bunch of Social Media Ideas & Prizes for Libraries from various libraries.

On the Humanities and the Innovation Adoption Curve

2011-08-09T10:17:00.000+12:00

I've been catching up on my reading and am currently up to:

Herrera, G. (2011). Google Scholar Users and User Behaviors: An Exploratory Study. College & Research Libraries, 72(4), 316-330.

which looks at usage data about Google Scholar cunningly culled from link resolver logs. There's some really interesting stuff, but something they quote in their conclusion made my mind go off on a tangent:

On the other hand, the 2009 Ithaka faculty survey concluded that humanists "have been later and slower to change in many ways than their peers in the sciences, to be sure." --Schonfeld and Housewright, "Faculty Survey 2009," 34.

Which is an observation that comes up time and again, and often it's implied that this is because the humanities are inherently conservative. But is that really the case? Correlation doesn't mean causation.

Could it instead be simply that new technologies are designed by computer scientists for computer scientists? Engineering and physical sciences work similarly enough that they can adapt their usage pretty easily. But the humanities -- a few of us have been doing some mini sessions on scholarly ebooks for faculty, and what we're hearing from faculty is that in the humanities they have completely different kinds of texts which need to be used in completely different kinds of ways, and these ways are not supported by the technology.

So I rather suspect that it's rather less to do with the people than commonly implied, and rather more to do with systematic bias in the technology.

The fallacy of "push communication"

2011-08-01T21:21:00.000+12:00

It's actually been a while since I've heard people talk of push communication, so maybe I'm a day late and a dollar short on this, but I can't help when I have my epiphanies.

The idea behind push communication (when I heard it, at least) is that instead of waiting for users to come to your website for news, you could push it out to them through, for example, an RSS feed.

Hands up those of you who, when you ask your users to put their hands up if they use an RSS reader, ever get anyone putting a hand up? No, nor do I. And this is the problem: if you're pushing information out to somewhere that people don't visit, you're still asking them to pull it.

Even if you push it right to their email inbox, if they only check their email when their kids mention they've sent photos of their grandkids; or if you're pushing it to their student email account and they only ever check their dotcom-mail if that; you're still not going to be successful.

My phone company pushed an SMS message to my cellphone on the 28th July to say that my account's going to expire next year, my terms and conditions have changed, and I can get a new phone on some special offer until the 31st July. I finally noticed this message on the evening of the 31st July.

I only listen to the radio in the aftermath of natural disasters. I have friends who (by choice) don't even own a TV (I use mine so rarely I forget which buttons on the remote to press). There's no guaranteed way to push your communication to all your users short of accosting them face-to-face, and even then, even if you offer candy, a measurable proportion will still avert their eyes and walk right past you.

Of course RSS is still a handy tool, because it lets you embed the feed in places where hopefully the users will go. We embed ours on the library homepage, some subject guides, and our Facebook page. But that just gets more users, not all. (The most common response when I tell students about our Facebook page is laughter. Sure we've got 900+ followers. But that leaves probably 18,000+ non-followers.) We can communicate all we like through these channels, but the majority of our users -- even when they're motivated to find out which buildings are open to be borrowed from/returned to this week -- still don't know what's going on in the library until they get a library tutorial. (And in the last few weeks the attendance rate at my tutorials is running at about 2/3.)

Long story short, if you want a message to get to all or even most of your users, you're going to have to push hard and you're going to have to push really really smart.

Launching Ref2RIS - convert your typed bibliography to Endnote format

2011-07-16T14:00:00.002+12:00

Several months ago I blogged about Converting a plaintext bibliography to RIS format for Endnote. It's not as painful a process as typing up hundreds/thousands of records, but it's still painful.

This last week, I had to repeat the process. Eight painful work-hours later, I heard a colleague had something similar to do. And I thought there must be a way to automate it so one doesn't have to do the endless typing every time.

Then I was home sick and got bored and ended up making a basic APA converter. Then (still sick and still bored) I got all fancy-schmancy and named and documented it and everything.

Thus, Ref2RIS.

Notes:

If you really can't get access to MacOS or Linux to do this on and can't get sed on Windows, email me - I'll do it for a dollar or a good cause.
If you need a style other than APA, also email me. Whether/how quickly I get around to it will depend on a complex formula of many factors, but I think it'll be quicker to make than the first one was, and right at the moment my motivation is high.
If you use it successfully, please let me know, spread the word, and/or if you're really enthusiastic there's a tipjar on the site.

Working in a library that rocks

2011-06-13T22:10:00.001+12:00

I've been meaning to write something like this for a month or two, and being sent home after another 5.5mag aftershock (an hour before a 6.0) seems like a good occasion to finally get around to it...

[DISCLAIMER: This is about my personal experience: everyone's experiences are different. Also I take no responsibility for facts: reality changes on a daily/hourly/minute-ly basis and I can't always even keep up-to-date with the current situation let alone remember the past.]

After September, it was I think almost a week before we staff were allowed back to work to start tidying up, and I was chomping at the bit to get there and be able to do something instead of being stuck at home.

After February, it was... longer. Even when we could get back to campus, the libraries themselves were closed, and we only had a half dozen desks between us. So we had only the very occasional shift there -- and that suited me just fine. Granted work had clean water while at home I was still traipsing to the Red Cross water tanker and boiling everything. But my old 30-minute bus-trip to work was now 90 minutes or so, driving over broken roads, past broken buildings, around the perimeter of the broken city. By the time I'd got to work I'd already be on the verge of tears.

So for some weeks I worked mostly from home, through the power of the internet. Our virtual reference service proved wonderful for communicating with students, and for communicating among ourselves. We could do a lot to get our e-services and e-resources operating at a distance. And I could be home to answer the door for visitors from the Red Cross, Salvation Army, Australian police, EQC inspectors, etc. Not to mention tradespeople - I needed a chimney taken down and I'd been in the middle of getting the house painted. Water came back on but sewerage remained dodgy; I took delivery of a chemical toilet.

At work we got our smallest branch open; then another branch. Not my own branch, but we could actually work in a library. It was still nothing like normal. All the tutorials I'd normally teach in first semester were cancelled (many of the classes they taught into had been cancelled due to lack of facilities.) At some point around here I took two weeks' leave -- leave which I'd needed even before the quake.... Two weeks later I came back to work much rested and refreshed: it was a full two hours before I burst into tears.

But things settled down. Most importantly for me, my manager gave me projects to do: day-to-day business is one thing, but moving beyond survival mode I need something I can get a sense of accomplishment from, so this helped tremendously. One day I was able to visit my office to retrieve some files, and found my umbrella there from February. (My potted mandarin seedling, alas, was past its best-by.) When our temporary office space caused my RSI/OOS to rear its head again, my new manager got me a semi-permanent desk to work at. We got part of Central Library open so I even got some regular desk shifts where I could interact with real students again, face-to-face. My buses got more reliable, so getting to and from work was now only 60 minutes, and I bought an e-reader to keep myself occupied on the way.

There are still (as of the morning of the 13th June) two and a half branches closed out of the five. One and the half are/were in the process of working towards reopening. The other one -- my one -- there's no timeframe for. (The building itself is safe, it's the neighbouring buildings that there's concerns about. In the meantime we can at least make daily retrievals of requested books.) An aggregate of rumours was leading me to the impression that it would be a long time, perhaps on the order of the rest of this year or so. <-Note all the qualifications and vagueness here: this is nothing more than a concept I've put into my head so that I've got one less thing to feel constantly uncertain about. Uncertainty is tiring; an unpleasant certainty is far less stressful. So I've taken to thinking of myself as a librarian in earthquake exile.

The team whose library I'm working in are wonderful, and have been fantastic. But I miss my team, who've been broken up and scattered around. Having desk shifts again is also great. But I miss having desk shifts in my branch, serving the students and staff in my subject areas. I'm constantly thinking how tough it is for them to be without their branch, especially for those who 'lost' their branch just a year before that in a merger with ours, and especially after we were shut so off-and-on for renovations and after the September quake. I'm almost used to the new routine; but it's hard; and even without these latest quakes it was going to change again in a couple of weeks or a couple of months.

The shaking itself doesn't scare me. (I must admit I've always been fortunate in which buildings I've been in -- some sound a lot scarier.) Evacuating a library leaves me just a bit shaky afterwards. Wading through liquefaction to get home is an absurdity that makes me laugh, and seeing families gathered, on a sunny winter day, on porches and lawns and at mailboxes watching the traffic crawl by -- really it's a beautiful thing.

But the days, weeks, months ahead -- the day-to-day of a world turned upside down -- that is challenging; and rewarding; and all in a day's work; and a long hard trudge.

5 Reasons Why Print Books Don't Cut the Mustard

2011-06-09T18:55:00.000+12:00

(With apologies to Wired.)

No-one can dispute that print books have been pretty popular over the last several centuries. But really they are fundamentally flawed. Unless they can precisely duplicate the experience provided by an e-reader they're doomed, because all people want the exact same reading experience and never compromise on some criteria in order to fulfill others.

Let's skip a page of boring context and cut to the bulletpoints that are the only things anyone cares about anyway.

1. An unfinished print book isn’t a constant reminder to finish reading it.

You know the drill. You pick up a print book, start reading it, get distracted and leave it next to the sofa. Next day, when your eye's caught by another print book on the wooden bookshelf and you open its cover, the print book doesn't display the page of the print book you were reading yesterday to remind you where you were at. Two weeks later you've got a dozen half-read print books in a dozen obscure locations of your house (some of them with scraps of paper marking the point you left off - that's right, even if you pick up the same print book you were reading yesterday, it won't automatically remember your page number). Eventually you realise you're never going to finish any of them and in a tidying frenzy you dump them all back on your wooden bookshelf.

2. You can’t keep your print books all in one place.

Print books on the wooden bookcase, beside your bed, in your handbag, at work, in the car, at the physical library - it's impossible to keep track of them all. And if you finish reading a print book at the start of a commute, you can't just open it again to choose and start reading a new print book, because all the other print books are at home, on the wooden bookshelf.

Worse yet, you can't keep your print books all in two places. There's no app for syncing a print collection between two locations. If your print books are on the wooden bookshelf at home, they can't be in your handbag at the same time.

To add credibility and pathos to my opinions, I shall here mention a friend who lost access to her house post-earthquake and with it her entire collection of print books. When she got the occasional half hour to retrieve items she had to rapidly choose which to spend her time rescuing. If they'd been electronic they'd have been in her iPhone all along -- and if she'd lost that, she could have retrieved her computer on which they'd have all been synced.

3. Notes on paper margins are pointless

You spend hours reading a print book and making ink notes in its paper margins and what have you got at the end of it? All that useful information is still stuck inside the print book. You can't click and drag it into your word processor where you actually need it. You could cut and paste it and make a nice collage, but even librarians who appreciate marginalia are likely to look askance at that.

4. Print books are priced as disposable, but aren’t marketed that way.

I talked with someone today who had some print items he no longer wanted and wanted to donate them to the library. The library didn't want them and I couldn't think of any library or used bookstore that would. The best thing to do would be to throw them in the recycling bin. But he hesitated, and I found even I hesitated to make this suggestion in so many words. Because we've developed this utterly idiotic idea that the print book, each with runs of thousands or millions, is nevertheless a priceless artefact whose destruction is a kind of sacrilege.

5. Print books can't be used as a clock.

Look at the bottom of your print book and you won't see the time - only a page number. You can't go back to the title page and open up a game of sudoku. Storing too many polaroids in it makes the pages bulge. If you want to check a definition, you have to fetch an entirely different print book. The only thing a print book does is let you read that one novel.

Well, not quite the only thing. It does make nice kindling.

Links of interest 2/6/11 - collaborating with students

2011-06-02T13:20:00.001+12:00

Reading my RSS feeds sometimes a theme emerges from the chaos - this time it was ways in which academic libraries have collaborated with students to enhance both library services and student learning.

Research
Students Studying Students: An Assessment of using Undergraduate Student Researchers in an Ethnographic Study of Library Use "reports on the use of undergraduate students enrolled in an Applied Anthropology course as researchers for a library use study at Brigham Young University's Harold B. Lee Library".

Similarly, Brian Mathews writes about Exploring graduate student use patterns of the UCSB Library.

Experimentation in an Academic Library: A Study in Security and Individual Student Engagement
"The Special Collections and Rare Book Department at Western Michigan University collaborated with a student worker to develop a system to improve security and employee performance. The student was taking a course in psychology that required him to develop a workplace behavioral intervention with a client and modify an important behavior for employee performance."

Library instruction
Building a Participatory Culture: Collaborating with Student Organizations for 21st Century Library Instruction - literature review and summary of some events where the library hooked into student association events, or initiated their own in collaboration with the student association, to teach library skills.

Displays
Brian Mathews again: Reframing the Concept of Plagiarism, Or What I Learned From Banksy - on art projects in the library.

Communication
A Friendfeed discussion on Our library posts a newsletter called "Stall Times" in our bathrooms. A student using the pseudonyms "Mike Koch" and "Hugh Jass" recently made a parody called "Small Times." Our creative manager contacted him and invited him to collaborate. The conversation doesn't go further in depth but does include links to archived bathroom newsletters from this and other libraries.

Back to Brigham Young University - they're also famous for their parody of the Old Spice commercial, made by the Harold B. Lee Library Multimedia Production Crew, consisting of two full time employees and ten student employees - see their behind the scenes.

There's lots of scope for collaboration with journalism, media, music and film students. Language students could translate subtitles. History/literature/etc students could work with digitisation projects. Computer science students could work on components for open source library software. The sky's the limit...

Links of interest 7/4/2011 - reference and webdesign

2011-04-07T17:12:00.000+12:00

A bit of fun: Book Sculptures

College & Research Libraries (C&RL) will become an open access publication beginning with the May 2011 issue.

Citation Management Software: Features and Futures (RUSQ) compares RefWorks, EndNote, and Zotero from both a user and librarian perspective.

Reference and virtual reference
Search for the answer, not the question - "Assume the answer to your question is out there, and think about how the answer might have been written." I've been teaching students something like this, focusing on thinking about who would have written about something and where they would have published.

"Are We Getting Warmer?": Query Clarification in Live Chat Virtual Reference (RUSQ)
"Results indicate that accuracy was enhanced for librarians who used clarifying questions in answering ready reference (factual) questions."

Mu, X., Dimitroffa, A., Jordana, J., and Burclaffa, N. A Survey and Empirical Study of Virtual Reference Service in Academic Libraries The Journal of Academic Librarianship 37(2) pp. 120-129.
"Virtual Reference Services (VRS) have high user satisfaction. The main problem is its low usage. We surveyed 100 academic library web sites to understand how VRS are presented. We then conducted a usability study to further test an active VRS model regarding its effectiveness."

Website usability
One-Pager is a simple, mobile-friendly, user-friendly "library website template that allows your patrons to find what they want" - described elsewhere as a solution to messy library websites.

A couple of papers from Computers in Libraries are reported:

Usability Express: A recipe for libraries (worth it just for the classic xkcd cartoon)
Building Great Websites ("Take-away goal: Reduce your site by half – it doesn't mean you have bad content, but people cant find it because there is too much to look through".)

Which e-reader should I buy?

2011-04-06T14:05:00.000+12:00

Between earthquakes and RSI, I've reached a point in my life where an e-reader would be an advantage. I'm not fussy about features.

I basically want to read books on it, synced from my (Mac) laptop.
I rarely if ever read anything that requires colour.
It must have native ePub capability (I'm not buying a Kindle); ideally I'd like it to support a range of basic formats like pdf, txt, rtf, html, but can survive if some of these have inexplicably not been implemented.
I like the idea of e-ink but am comfortable with LCD screens too.
Storage space and battery life are important though not to the exclusion of other considerations (including price).
Something RSI-friendly would be nice - lightweight, comfortable, with left-hand/right-hand redundancy.

I think I'm probably looking at a Nook or a Kobo and of the two I think I like the Nook better, but this is based entirely on looking at websites and feature comparison charts. All the charts say you should try them out yourself, but last time I saw anything one could try out was in a bookstore just before Christmas, and as near as I could tell approximately a gazillion other customers had already tried them out and broken them. As for now... half the bookstores in town are destroyed or inaccessible and the other half are on the verge of bankruptcy (okay, I admit it, I can name two exceptions, but neither has e-readers) and right now unnecessary travelling wears me out.

Bonus features I'd like but aren't necessary since I don't know if they really exist:

Full Unicode support (including Māori macrons). You wouldn't think this would be so hard, and yet... Seriously, let me know if you know of anyone doing this.
Note-taking functionality - but not if to get that I have to also get a thousand other features and pay through the nose for the combo. An iPad, for example, would be ridiculously overpowered for my purposes.

Experiences, (dis)recommendations?

Earthquake update

2011-02-24T19:49:00.000+13:00

Family, cat and I are safe; I've blogged more on my personal journal. I'm disallowing comments here and encouraging comments there instead; it'll be easier for me to keep communications in one place.

Converting a plaintext bibliography to Endnote/RIS format with help from Linux/Terminal

2011-02-13T20:08:00.001+13:00

[Update 16/7/2011: See my more recent post on the topic, Launching Ref2RIS - convert your typed bibliography to Endnote format, which makes things even easier.]

You won't want to do this unless you've got literally hundreds of references. Any less, and these suggestions are way easier.

1. Format references so they're each on their own line - no blank lines.

2. Use Word's "Find Special" capabilities to replace a phrase in italics with {it}a phrase in italics{endit} and a phrase in bold with {b}a phrase in bold{endb}. (Similarly if the citations contain underlines.)

3. Save as plaintext - say, source.txt. Now the fun begins... My own source text contains 600-odd lines in ACS style, like this:

Bamford, C. H.; Tipper, C. F. H. {it}Comprehensive Chemical Kinetics{endit}; Elsevier: New York, {b}1977{endb}. 
House, D. A.{it}Chem. Rev.{endit} {b}1962{endb}, {it}62{endit}, 185

4. Open up Terminal or some other Linux command line.

5. Endnote records are separated by a line

ER  -

- that's two spaces before the hyphen and one after. (All these details come from Endnote's help pages.) This is the easy part: type in

sed -e 's/^\(.*\)/\1ER  - /' source.txt > source1.txt

6. The start of each Endnote record tells you what kind of citation it is - eg a book, journal etc. To find every line that includes a colon (ie separating the publisher from the city published in) type in

sed -e 's/^\(.*:\)/TY  - BOOK@@\1/' source1.txt > source2.txt

Note 1: The "@@" is in there as a sign that you'll need to replace this with a new line later; but we want to keep everything on one line for now.
Note 2: This is a good example of why this whole method is highly suspect, because it'll also catch citations which have a colon in the article title or in a typo or whatever. So if you can think of a better sign that a citation is a book then use that instead of the colon.

Alternatively, you could type in

sed -e 's/^\(.*{it}[0-9]*{endit}\)/TY  - JOUR@@\1/' source1.txt > source2.txt

to find every line that contains {it}[some number]{endit} which, in my source, is the best indicator that I'm dealing with a journal. The same caveats apply - you'll get both false positives and false negatives.

Anyway, keep doing what seems best given your source, and fix up the inevitable mistakes by hand until each line starts with TY - something. If you want to give up and just assume that everything that isn't already assigned as something must be a journal then try

sed -e 's/^\([^(TY  - )].*$\)/TY  - JOUR@@\1/' source2.txt > source3.txt

I now have source looking like:

TY  - BOOK@@Bamford, C. H.; Tipper, C. F. H. {it}Comprehensive Chemical Kinetics{endit}; Elsevier: New York, {b}1977{endb}. 
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR@@House, D. A.{it}Chem. Rev.{endit} {b}1962{endb}, {it}62{endit}, 185 
ER  -

7. Now we keep playing with patterns. (You may be able to do large chunks of this with regular find/replace, but for illustrative purposes I'll keep using Terminal.)

For example, in my source the authors are nicely set off: they come after "@@" and before the first "{it}" (or "in {it}"), and if there's more than one of them they're separated by ";". So a few commands:

sed -e 's/@@\(.* in {it}\)/@@A1  - \1/' source3.txt > source4.txt
sed -e 's/@@\(.* {it}\)/@@A1  - \1/' source3.txt > source4.txt
sed -e 's/;\(.*;\)/@@A1  - \1/' source5.txt > source6.txt (This one I had to repeat a few times depending how many authors could be cited in one reference; there's supposed to be a way to do it globally but my unix fu is not strong.)
sed -e 's/;\(.*{it}\)/@@A1  - \1/' source8.txt > source9.txt

Journal titles:

sed -e 's/^\(TY  - JOUR.*\)\({it}.*{endit} {b}\)/\1@@JO  - \2/' source9.txt > source10.txt

Years:

sed -e 's/\({b}[0-9]*{endb}\)/@@Y1  - \1/' source10.txt > source11.txt

And so forth.  You pretty soon start to see why the first suggestion on most lists of ways to convert plaintext citations into RIS format is always "Just type it in / search for it again by hand".  The method above is really only suitable if you've got literally hundreds of citations. (I have 639, plus or minus.)

8. Eventually you'll be at a point where you can do a simple find/replace to change @@ to a new line and nuke all the {it} and so forth.  This will be a great relief.

9. Rename your final saved file from source12.txt to source12.ris and open with Endnote.

10. Bonus material:  if this was a bibliography to a paper using numbered citations in order using eg [1], then in that paper you can do a find/replace on [ -> { and ] -> }, then tell the Endnote plugin to format citations, and voila, the best magic ever.  (If the paper uses author/date citations then you'll have to link them by hand, sorry.)

A rule about rhetorical questions

2011-02-04T10:10:00.000+13:00

At intermediate and high school we learned the basics of debating. One technique we learned about was the rhetorical question; and we also learned an important rule for their use: Don't ask a rhetorical question if there's a chance your audience will respond with the 'wrong' answer.

@libsmatter reported from an ALIA panel:

What if when our budgets were cut we asked - "so - what do you want us to stop doing?"

which I used to agree with. And I still agree that if our budgets keep getting cut then we'll have to cut services. But that doesn't mean the argument will make everyone say, "Oh, right. Um, we didn't think of that. Here, have an extra million dollars."

Because if an institution wants/needs/thinks it needs to cut the library's budget, it can really easily reply, "You need to keep providing the same service. Be more efficient. Work smarter. And if you can't figure out how to do that for yourselves then well, we'll send in our favourite efficiency experts and cut your staffing for you."

And if we're not prepared to accept that answer then we should be very careful about asking that question.

Library day in the Life January 2011 – Wednesday

2011-01-26T19:07:00.000+13:00

Tuesday was more or less like Monday.

Today I started at the desk, which was surprisingly busy, with grad students and academics coming down to collect books they'd requested and renew books they had out. Someone else did the first lot of retrievals, but I went hunting for a disputed return (a book we'd send an overdue notice about, but the borrower said they'd returned it) – I found it, checked it in, and e-mailed the borrower.

Among the other little morning tasks was posting a blog entry about some e-book titles we have access to for the next week. And there was filling out an ACC form – when you get RSI apparently the first, second, and third things they make you do are fill out forms.

Just before 11 AM, I left with a colleague to go and do an Endnote tutorial: he taught while I hung in the background and helped the students keep up, as it's a fast paced introductory class. At the end of the class, one of the students asked me a question about interloans too.

On the way, my colleague and I talked about an issue that had come up in a meeting last week. So then I sat down and wrote an e-mail to our wider colleagues proposing a solution by a third colleague; I wanted to run it by her before sending, and we ended up not running into each other until after 4 PM.

In the meantime I had an e-mail exchange with a colleague in another branch about a meeting tomorrow, then lunch. At two o'clock I ran the retrievals report then was reminded about some RFID training, so I went to that and then did the retrievals.

The last couple of hours were quieter – more e-mails and reading, and a grad student asking if he could put his paper in our institutional repository if he published with a certain journal, and checking hours we can cover another branch which is shortstaffed next week, and discussions about workspace after my colleague reported back from a meeting she'd attended, and tidying up in time to go home.

There's some collections work I really want to do, but it's going to involve a lot of cutting and pasting, and I can tell my hands aren't up to that yet. Another day…

Library Day in the Life January 2011

2011-01-24T20:20:00.001+13:00

My bus gets me to work quarter of an hour early, and I spend the extra time catching up with colleagues and reading a bit more of my commute novel. We start at 8:30 at the moment – summer hours – and I catch up with the e-mails that have come in over the weekend.

Actually, my routine at the moment isn't the same as usual. (Although for one reason or another it's probably been a year since anything recognisable as “usual".) For about a month I've been wrestling with some mild RSI so when I sit at my keyboard I put on my wrist braces and I don't do any any type of work for more than an hour at a time. And I'm dictating this post with the voice recognition software I have on my home laptop.

So at nine o'clock I go and do our retrievals which someone else would normally do. These are the books that our users have requested from the areas upstairs being renovated after the earthquake. Earlier this summer the stacks were covered in black plastic, but that's been taken down now, so I don't need the torch any more.

At 9:30 I walk across campus to another branch where I can work on the front desk, which is busier than ours. I do my stretches on the way. It's still fairly quiet this morning, mostly students borrowing textbooks.

After an hour I walk back, and arrive in time for an impromptu meeting with a new supervisor and a tour of construction progress (even before the earthquake we were planning to renovate the entire ground floor. All except two small spaces at the back of the building which we've been working in over the summer while they've gutted the rest of the floor – our temporary main entrance is normally a fire escape).

I do the retrievals again, scan some blogs, and then it's time for lunch. I take my book out into the sun and by some miracle don't get sunburnt in the glorious weather.

Checking my twitter alerts, I notice a news article about the library, which I forward onto our Facebook page. Then I go back to the other branch, where we get engineering students asking about earthquake damage and a phone call with an Endnote query from a desperate student with a deadline.

II getback in time for afternoon tea, then retrievals again, and then join my colleagues with a trolley full of books that have thrown up errors in the RFID conversion process (another project going on above our heads at the moment) to determine what's causing the error in each one and whether we should be keeping each item. Most of them are terribly old, and half aren't even on the catalogue. One of my colleagues comments that we come alive when weeding, and it's funny because it's true. Between this, and issuing books to the occasional borrower who manages to find us, we fill the time to 5 o'clock, and home.

Oh, and I've made it through the day without any twinges of discomfort from my wrists. :-)

Links of interest 21/1/2011

2011-01-21T12:54:00.000+13:00

Library instruction
I've recently been pondering the idea of database searches as an experiment - hypothesis, experiment, evaluate, modify the hypothesis and try again. This might make a useful way to introduce sci/tech students in particular to the idea that you're not going to necessarily get your best results from your first search; I'll have to see how they receive it when I've actually got a class to test it on.

Incorporating Failure Into Library Instruction (from ACRLog) discusses the pedagogy of learning by failure and talks about times when it's more or less suitable for library instruction.

Anne Pemberton's super-awesome paper From friending to research: Using Facebook as a teaching tool (January 2011, College & Research Libraries News, vol. 72 no. 1 28-30) discusses Facebook as a useful teaching metaphor for databases.

Don't Make It Easy For Them (from ACRLog) - with caveats in the comments that I think are at least as important as the main post.

Databases
Heads they win, tales we lose: Discovery tools will never deliver on their promise - and don't miss the comment thread at the bottom of the page, which segues into the dilemma of increasingly expensive journal bundles and possible (vs viable) solutions.

Research data
There's a whole D-Lib Magazine issue devoted to this topic this month.

Web services
The Web Is a Customer Service Medium discusses the idea that "the fundamental question of the web" is "Why wasn't I consulted?" - that is, each medium has its niche of what it's good at and why people use it, and webpages need to consider how to answer this question.

Library Day in the Life
Round 6 begins next week, in which librarians from all walks of librarianship share a day (or week) in the life.

Wild ideas free to a good home

2011-01-18T11:17:00.002+13:00

1.You know in sf you get to say "Oh hi computer, calculate this for me / find me information about this thing / make me some hot Earl Grey tea!" and the computer says "Sure thing, my friend!" and does it?

Here's how that could work in the near future:

speech recognition - this is fairly well developed already (I've recently started using it myself for navigating and dictating on my home computer) and will continue to improve
+ a search engine
+ a whole lot of aps for different functions, with associated metadata which can be matched against what the user's asked for.

The computer, like a librarian, doesn't have to know everything, it just needs to know where to find everything. Ask it a calculating-type question and it gets a Wolfram|Alpha-style widget that can calculate the answer. Ask it an encyclopaedic-type question and it brings you an answer from a Wikipedia-type source. Ask it to convert your word processing document into pdf and it finds the appropriate ap to do that. Tell it you want a pizza, it finds the aps from the local pizza places, asks (or remembers) your price/quality/toppings preferences, and places the order for you. In due course, your doorbell rings.

I wouldn't be surprised if something like this was working within five years. I also wouldn't be overly surprised if it wasn't; while we've got all the pieces, gluing it together mightn't be quite so straightforward as an idealist would think.

2.Dynamic/adaptive website navigation. For sprawling websites: instead of having the traditional static navigation links, have the server generate the links based on the most popular recent destinations for visitors to the same page.

This one's easier to program (I think, if I put the work in, I could come up with a clunky implementation myself) - you just need server-side scripting with access to stats of a) links clicked and b) keywords searched. I'd weight keywords searched a bit higher than links clicked (partly to keep things dynamic but mostly because people will tend to click a link first if it looks even halfway relevant, so just the fact of searching will indicate that the current links are useless).

So when you go to (say) the uni library's homepage at the start of term it'll show links to the catalogue, and tutorials, and computer workrooms. Towards exam time people will start searching for "past exam papers" so that'll soon appear on the homepage, while "tutorials" will drop off, but people will click the "computer workrooms" more so that'll stay on.

There are obvious downsides to this approach. Confusion about links shifting around, for one. Also ideally it should be customisable so postgrads can see a view which isn't overwhelmed by the preferences of undergraduates for most of the year. But. It would be interesting. I'd like to try it sometime (or see someone else try it).

Review: Journal of Library Innovation

2010-12-02T13:35:00.000+13:00

My favouritest new journal ever is currently the Journal of Library Innovation. I have vague memories of issue 1 being decent but issue 2's contents are totally awesome. They include:

an editorial (pdf) pointing out that: a) when we innovate we don't have to seize on every expensive new technology, and b) on the other hand sometimes failing to use a new technology can be expensive too
Quick and Dirty Library Promotions That Really Work - whee, fortune cookies!
[I would really like to amplify this squee. I think we should do this: it puts a smile on people's face and it 99% guarantees they'll actually read the promotional message, which is at least 90% more than traditional signage. (Fudge factor because I can't remember the number I saw the other day, though I think it was less than 10% and included primarily mature students.]
Accommodating Community Users in an Authenticated Library Technology Environment - making a computer kiosk for non-members to use which respects database license agreements; not my thing at present but cool enough that I nevertheless recognise the super utility of it.
Making Physical Objects Clickable: Using Mobile Tags to Enhance Library Displays - QR tags in book displays - evidence that these increase usage of promoted materials/webpages
[See also Embedding tutorials into physical objects - using a QR code on a photocopier to link to video instructions. I think here I'd use QR codes in conjunction with a bit.ly link for people who don't have the right hardware/software combo to make it work, but this caveat shouldn't be construed as decreasing my enthusiasm for the idea.]
The Library is Undead: Information Seeking During the Zombie Apocalypse - another quick and dirty library promotion, jumping off a student event.
[Why do we insist that big promotions have to be planned months in advance? Maybe it's Parkinson's Law ("Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion") - when you plan 3 months in advance, it still feels rushed at the end so you figure next time you should plan 4 months in advance. But if you start planning 6 days in advance (as this library did), sure you're rushed at the end, but the short timeframe has forced you to forgo normal inefficiencies and brush off the temptation to perfectionism, so you save thousands of staff time and in the end you've still got it done.]
and also book reviews which seem genuinely helpful and balanced evaluations of how useful the books are and for what purposes.

Why reinvent the wheel? (a photo essay)

2010-11-24T16:18:00.002+13:00

Stone wheel in a trough (by Vincent Jones, CC-BY-SA)

Wagon wheel (by Richard Sonnen, CC-BY-NC-ND)

Steamroller (by Rog Frost, CC-BY-SA)

Car wheel (by Mr T. in DC, CC-BY-ND)

Bicycle wheel (from Soil-Net, CC-BY-NC-SA)

Bulldozer tread (by John Schilling, CC-BY-NC-ND)

Eggbeater (by Candice Wouters, CC-BY-NC-ND)

Table saw (by Patrick Fitzgerald, CC-BY)

Wheel of Fortune (by Paul Stack, CC-BY-ND)

Ferris wheel (by Josh McGinn, CC-BY-ND)

My earthquake post

2010-10-28T21:17:00.000+13:00

I've just blogged "Rocking the Library" at Libraries Interact.

Links of interest 20/10/2010

2010-10-20T18:58:00.000+13:00

QR Codes
(What's a QR Code? See QR Codes: An Overview.)

Google has launched goo.gl, a URL shortening service (like tinyurl.com, bit.ly, etc) which as a bonus gives you a QR code: eg http://goo.gl/Xxyl links to this blog and http://goo.gl/Xxyl.qr gives you a pretty QR code you can paste onto a poster. Shortly thereafter, bit.ly joined in the fun.

On the downside I recall reading (somewhere on the internet; it sounded plausible at the time) that, cool as QR codes sound, since they're mostly being used by advertisers, actual real people aren't really all that keen on using them.[citation needed] On the upside, I've also heard anecdotes from people who do use them. And in any case they don't cost any money and almost zero time.

Library tutorials

An old post I just came across: Subversive Handouts: One Librarian’s Secret Weapon - a sneaky way to get some extra face-time with a class.
When an imploring librarian is not enough - a sneaky way to get students to actually want to use Web of Science etc rather than Google Scholar

Open Access

Dramatic Growth of Open Access
The Economics of Open Access points out that "Every time a researcher or teacher cannot get to the information she needs to do her work, or must obtain it by labor-intensive means like interlibrary loan or direct contact with the author, time and knowledge, which are both worth money, are wasted; open access reduces that loss."
Open access: the world is your consortium sees open access as a new solution for the inability of library consortia, let alone individual libraries, let alone individual scientists, to be able to afford access to journals.
Almost Halfway There: an Analysis of the Open Access Behaviors of Academic Librarians "presents results of a study of open access publishing and self-archiving behaviors of academic librarians" and discusses "several strategies to encourage academic librarians to continue embrace open access behaviors".

Links of interest 22/9/10

2010-09-22T20:42:00.000+12:00

Assessing the (Enduring) Value of Libraries

MIT Libraries has created a Beta Graveyard for trial projects that aren't being continued - nice to see what's happened to old ideas.

Cyberpunk Librarian, part 1 - a librarian and a library robot; a problem and a cunning solution.

The launch of Foursquare buttons for websites - a button you can easily add to any website that lets users link your site and your physical location on their phone.

Hacking Summon in Code4Lib describes how OSU made their data display more tidily

Possible topics for crowd-sourced research

2010-09-01T12:55:00.000+12:00

Since first talking about this I've been pondering what topics would make good candidates to try out the model. I think it should be something that:

is of interest to as many people as possible; and
can be contributed to by as many people as possible;
as easily as possible.

With these criteria in mind I've come up with two possible ideas:

A. Trends in patrons' use of electronic equipment in the library
This is basically an extension of the article that inspired my thinky thoughts to start with, which did headcounts to measure laptop use in their library. We could extend this to, say, a headcount of

total people, of course;
users of library computers;
users of personal laptops;
PDAs;
cellphones;
and a handy 'other' category.

We could decide what time(s)/day(s) to run the headcount on, set up an online spreadsheet, and anyone wanting to participate could do their headcount and enter the data into the spreadsheet. Whether people can only participate once, or can do it recurrently, there'll be value either way. It's simple and quantitative and easy.

B. Librarians' perceptions of the quality of vendor training
(ie training provided by vendors in the use of their products to librarians, in case that's not clear)
This is. Perhaps a delicate topic. I've been thinking for a while about blogging about my own perceptions, all aggregated and anonymised but it still feels a bit "bite the hand that holds all our resources", because my perceptions are not good. But perhaps it would be less awkward if it came from a whole lot of librarians. And vendors are starting to respond more and more to concerns raised in social media so maybe it would actually get some attention and help vendors provide better training.

OTOH this would be an inherently messy topic to research. It'd be a good test of whether crowdsourcing a qualitative research topic could work, but perhaps not a good test of whether crowdsourcing research per se is workable. There'd need to be a lot of discussion about what exactly we want to research:

Likert scales of measures on eg amount of new info, amount of info already known, familiarity of trainer with database, ability of trainer to answer questions...?
more freeform answers about problems with presentations eg slides full of essays, trainer bungles example searches...?
surveying trainers themselves to find out what kind of training they get in how to give a good presentation?

So.
So, for anyone interested in going somewhere with this -- or just interested in reading the results -- what do you think? Topic A, topic B, topic C (insert your own topic here), or all of the above?

Links of interest 26/8/10

2010-08-26T12:36:00.000+12:00

Scandal du jour (aka the power of social media)
JSTOR's new interface made searches default to covering their entire database - so results might include articles students didn't have access to on JSTOR and which wouldn't even be linked via OpenURL to the library's subscription in another database. (Meredith Farkas describes the problems neatly.) Librarians complained loudly on blogs, JSTOR's Facebook page, and elsewhere, and a day later JSTOR has announced that they'll change the default while they continue work on OpenURL.

Tools
WolframAlpha has added widgets that focus on a specific kind of data and can be embedded into a webpage by copying and pasting the code. Categories cover all kinds of subject areas - some widgets might be relevant in a subject guide. (You'd need to add a new rich text box, then select the plain text editor and copy/paste in the embed code from WolframAlpha.)

Librarian as resource
University of Michigan Library's search results now bring back subject librarians as well as relevant databases, catalogue items, subject guides, institutional repository hits, and external websites. Their blog about this links to some examples.

eBooks and compatibility
Jason Griffey writes a clear explanation about why ebook filetypes and digital rights management means that purchasing an ebook doesn't mean you can read it on any old e-reader.

Library instruction
Cooke, R., Rosenthal, D. Students Use More Books After Library Instruction: An Analysis of Undergraduate Paper Citations College and Research Libraries (preprint)

"In Fall 2008, students from first-year Composition I and upper level classes at Florida Gulf Coast University participated in a citation analysis study. The citation pages of their research papers revealed that the students used more books, more types of sources, and more overall sources when a librarian provided instruction. When these results were compared to those produced by students in upper level classes (all of whom received instruction), it was discovered that as the class level increased, the number of citations and the percentage of scholarly citations generally increased and there was a high preference for books from all disciplines, especially history."

(They compared classes which received library instruction with identical classes which didn't.)

Links of interest 11/8/10 - open access, accessibility, statistics and more

2010-08-11T15:33:00.001+12:00

Open Access

the Creative Commons NZ mailing list.
The State Services Commission has released the New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing framework.
In a brown-bag lunch conversation about open access yesterday a bunch of us also talked about the digitisation of the AJHRs, the Directory of Open Access Journals, ways/issues with getting more open access content in our catalogue and/or Summon, and a bunch of other things.

Accessibility

Char Booth writes about e-texts and library accessibility including a great quote that "ebooks were created by the blind, then made inaccessible by the sighted."
NZETC has just posted about the 1064 works in DAISY format available in their collection for people with print-related disabilities. (DAISY = "Digital Accessible Information SYstem")

Library statistics

Dave Pattern at U of Huddersfield blogs about how "non- and low-usage of library services/resources [...] relates to final grades"
Some results from extending the Angers university library's opening hours - in French and in Google Translate's English
Stats from the Toulouse library's standard OPAC vs its mobile OPAC - in French and Google Translate's English.
And Meredith Farkas writes about "the unsupported interpretations" librarians often make based on our statistics

Miscellaneous

The first year of research on the Researchers of Tomorrow (pdf) study finds that "in broad approaches to information‐seeking and use of research resources, there are no marked differences between Generation Y doctoral students and those in older age groups. Nor are there marked differences in these behaviours between doctoral students of any age in different years of their study. The most significant differences revealed in the data are between subject disciplines of study irrespective of age or year of study."
Assessments of Information Literacy collects links to infolit tests, assessments, rubrics and tutorials available online.
Christina Pikas lists a Rundown of the new [database etc] interfaces this summer. There were some surprises, including a ScienceDirect/Scopus merger apparently due August 28...

[Edited 12/8 to fix broken links]

And I thought we did a literature review

2010-07-29T09:01:00.000+12:00

When we were preparing the case for our "Library on Location" trial, and again when we were writing up our results for the conference paper, we did a literature review - both journals and blogs. I thought we'd been pretty much as thorough as the variable terminology people assign to the concept allowed.

But I just saw a tweet linking to Theoretical Job Description for the Librarian with a Laptop, which links back to where the blogger first had the idea, which in turn links to someone else with the same idea.

(This last one is a really really great idea for implementing it at an academic library with maximum success.)

It's not uncommon for me to see the occasional new one, but for some reason this hit me with a "Argh, we librarians really like reinventing the wheel, don't we?" At one point I was vaguely thinking of doing a survey of libraries who'd done this kind of thing in order to write up a journal article about success factors, but stuff happened. Suddenly I'm all fired up again and just have to work out how to pull myself back from impending overcommitment...

In the meantime, my collection of links about libraries that have done outreach by taking books and/or laptops outside the library to meet users in popular locations is at my "onlocation" tag on Diigo.

Library Day in the Life

2010-07-28T21:58:00.000+12:00

On Wednesdays I work the afternoon/evening shift, so I spent the morning sleeping in, doing the laundry, and watching my sister ice a cake she volunteered for the "Chocolate Day" my colleagues and I had planned for today. My bus brought me to work at 12:45 and I sat and watched Top Gear with two colleagues on their lunch break while everyone else drifted in and "OMG"d at my sister's truly awesome cake.

At 1pm I was on the desk shift as the normal person rostered for that hour was on sick leave. (A propos of which, today's A Softer World strip provides a brilliant rebuttal to a certain proposed employment law change in New Zealand. I like sick leave, it means that my colleagues are less likely to come and infect me.) It was semi-steady circulation and basic enquiries, and a query about finding sources for a small literature review on pneumatic conveyers, but I also had time to do some background searches on the PhD topic of a new student in my subject area, and to quickly check my email.

Said student came at 2pm - I spent the next 50 minutes talking with her about where she's at so far (I didn't spend as much time on this part as I'd like - I'm still learning how to have this sort of conversation without sounding like the Spanish Inquisition) and what resources we have available (interlibrary loans are always high on the interest list but of course we also talked databases etc) and then I gave her a tour of the building. Before we parted I had the wit to ask if I can check in with her in a month or two - so now I can do so without feeling like I'm nagging.

Though what feels like nagging is frequently good - among my emails was one from a lecturer about setting up a time for a session with one of his classes that I'd been asking him about. I scheduled that in.

At 3:30 (we have scheduled breaks and lunch hours; I'm always a bit shocked to see overseas folk talking about not finding time for lunch) I went to enjoy a slice of my sister's awesome cake.

Back at my desk I scanned Twitter and Friendfeed and Google Reader for awesome news stuff. I compiled a bunch of that for the draft of the library section of a department's weekly newsletter; a bunch more will go in my next "Links of interest" post on the internal library blog. My colleague in the same office talked about an article she'd just been reading about the emotional dissonance between how information literacy instructors have to act in the classroom and the reactions we get from students. I'm describing it badly, I need to read it myself.

From colleagues I answered a phone query re opinions on our multisearch, and an email query about duplicate copies of something in storage. There were two wrong numbers at some point, and two misdirected emails. I tidied some stuff up, and also replied to another lecturer about some other classes in a couple of weeks (there'll 6-8 sessions) and about the associated library assignment.

From 5-9 it was just two of us staffing the branch. So at 6pm I had another desk shift and it wasn't much quieter than 1pm - lots of people borrowing 3-hour loans, someone wanting instruction on using the mopier's scan-to-email function, someone asking about an ebook that's mysteriously disappeared from the content provider's database (I sent an email to our e-resources expert).

I stayed on a bit longer while my colleague shelved books and collected the books requested by users in our branch and others. 7:20 I had my dinner break; 8pm my final shift and still no quieter though I caught a bit of time to update our electronic noticeboard (tomorrow's weather forecast, partly in Māori in honour of Te Wiki o Te Reo) and to start writing this post.

8:45 we dinged the bell to warn students it's nearly time to leave, and I walked around closing windows and picking up discarded student magazines and soft drink cans as subtle reinforcement that the day's over. There was only one group I had to tell verbally that we were about to close. Doors locked at 9pm; but I hung around inside for about 15 minutes waiting for the interwebs to inform me that my bus was about to arrive; finished this post on the bus and hit 'publish' from home.

Crowdsourcing library research

2010-07-12T15:45:00.000+12:00

Reading Snapshots of Laptop Use in an Academic Library crystallised some thinky thoughts I've vaguely had for a while about the possibility of libraries working together on library research.

The very short version of the article is that in their library "28% of students used laptops in existing spaces in 2005, while 62% of students used laptops in the same spaces in 2008". But of course they're not sure exactly what's causing the change. Is it just the changing times? Changing university policy? Changing library spaces? Something in the water? When you've only got one datapoint - your own library - it's hard to see what the real trend is.

But if you had the same data from a whole bunch of libraries then you'd be able to get a better idea of the nationwide/global trends. And if your data was different from that trend, you'd be able to get a better idea of how your local circumstances are affecting what's going on.

I've had thinky thoughts in the past about libraries sharing their statistics and research and stuff and part of the problem I recognised then was that everyone counts different statistics, so results aren't always comparable.

But. What if, when we want to do this kind of research, instead of doing it in-house, we open it up:

stick up a wiki where we can collaborate with a pile of other libraries on deciding the methodology,
stick up a Google spreadsheet where participating libraries can enter their stats,
???
~~profit~~ Publish!

Potential for awesomesauce, yes/yes? Does anyone have any burning research questions they'd like to try this with? Because my burning research question is currently "Let's do it!" which, um, technically isn't a question. <looks around hopefully>

Thoughts towards universally applicable usability guidelines

2010-06-22T12:09:00.005+12:00

Inspired by spending a few minutes trying to work out how to open a ringbinder:

Write out and/or diagram simple instructions for your product.

If the instructions take more than three steps, your product isn't usable; redesign it.
If the instructions don't actually match your product, quit smoking the good stuff on company time and write/diagram them again.
If users need both the written instructions AND the diagrams, then the product is more-or-less usable, but not user-friendly.
If users need the written instructions OR the diagrams but not both, then the product is somewhat user-friendly, but not sufficiently so as to justify entitling the instructions with "For easy operation".
If users don't need any instructions, THEN the product is user-friendly.

Other thoughts?

What lies clearly at hand

2010-06-11T16:41:00.000+12:00

Quote-of-the-day from yesterday's calendar:

Our grand business in life is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. --Thomas Carlyle.

Which strikes a chord with me, albeit in a fuzzy late-Friday-afternoon kind of way.

And it's not to say that we should never look into the distance. It's important to think about it a little. But unless you're the Hubble Telescope, simply looking probably isn't your main purpose in life.

Prognosticating can be fun, but it can be hollow too. Sometimes it just leaves me with a "But now what?" feeling. What's really satisfying - always and without fail - is when I can see something that needs doing, and do it, and it's done, and the world is a bit of a better place.

30 posts in 30 days

2010-06-09T20:51:00.000+12:00

The first round of submissions on a change proposal at MPOW closed today, so I've just emerged back onto the interwebs to catch up with everything that's happened since the end of May. Notably among them, the Australian biblioblogosphere's "30 posts in 30 days" blog challenge.

I'm a bit late to be a full participant, and not sure if my brain's up to even jumping in now, but I did spot a meme I can manage:

Do you snack while reading?
Not invariably, but frequently. I do keep an eye out for crumbs.

What is your favourite drink while reading?
Um, n/a I think - what I want to drink depends a lot more on weather and whim than on activity.

Do you tend to mark your books while you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?
I love marginalia, in fiction or non-fiction, as long as the writer isn't obnoxious about it. Bonus points if they're actually insightful. I'm not very insightful, and don't feel called to do it often; when I am I do it lightly in pencil. Except for one YA book with a character who advocated keeping a cat on a vegetarian diet: for that one I printed out a page from the RSPCA and stapled it in before bookcrossing the book.

How do you keep your place? Bookmark? Dog ear? Laying the book open flat?
I love the idea of bookmarks, but most of my bookmarks are currently in books that I got halfway into 5-10 years ago. Instead I use receipts, remote controls, cushions, a slipper, other books - whatever's handy.

Fiction, non-fiction or both?
Both, but mostly fiction.

Do you tend to read to the end of a chapter or can you stop anywhere?
Depends on how compelling the book is. And time of day: if I've got an appointment, I'll read up to the last minute and stop mid-sentence; if it's bed-time then I need to read to the end of the chapter. Or the end of the book.

Are you the type of person to throw a book across the room or on the floor if the author irritates you?
No, but there was one book that was so appallingly bad in every possible way that I burned it.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away?
No, most of the time I can work it out from context and most of the rest of the time it doesn't matter anyway.

What are you currently reading?
Dirt, greed, and sex: sexual ethics in the New Testament and their implications for today (brief summary up to where I've reached so far: homosexual acts were never a sin, they were just 'unclean' like pork and shrimp, and yes this goes for the New Testament too)

What is the last book you bought?
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemison

Do you have a favourite time/place to read?
In/on bed. Though I move around a lot to avoid stiffness - couch, beanbag, etc.

Do you prefer series books or stand-alones?
Stand-alones, or series where each book can stand alone.

Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over?
Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief et seq.

How do you organise your books (by genre, title, author’s last name, etc.)?
Fiction: by language, then author's surname.
Non-fiction: by pseudo-Library of Congress classification (pseudo because I'm not quite obsessive enough to look them up, I just go my memory/guesstimation).

Managing Figures in Microsoft Word 2007

2010-05-26T20:13:00.000+12:00

I had a question from a student about this, and had to go away and research it and email her the answer. Since it seems a shame to waste information...

To add captions, refer to figures, and create a table of figures

Select your figure, then go to the "References" menu and click "Insert caption". It defaults to "Figure 1" but you can name it however you like.
When you want to refer to it in-text, click on "Cross-reference". Choose reference type "figure", make sure "Insert as hyperlink" is ticked, and select the figure you want to refer to, then click "Insert".
Find the place you want to insert the table of figures and click "Insert Table of Figures". You can configure this however you want it.

Now if you control-click on any of the cross-references or items in the table of figures, it'll take you to the intended figure.

Note however that if you add a new figure early in the document, Word doesn't update the table or the cross-references automatically. You can do this manually by:

selecting the table of figures and then clicking "Update Table" and
right-clicking each cross-reference and selecting "Update Field".

A quicker way to fix it for an entire document at once is:

Select All
Right-click and "Toggle Field Codes"
Right-click and "Update Field"
Right-click and "Update Field" a second time - this time choose "Update entire table".

If there's a more sensible way, I wasn't able to discover it in my tinkering....

Reference / Info-literacy links of interest 21/4/10

2010-04-21T19:14:00.002+12:00

Reference
Singer, Carol A. (2010) Ready Reference Collections: A History. RUSQ 49(3)
Ready reference collections were originally formed, and still exist, because they perform a valuable function in providing convenient access to information that is frequently used at the reference desk. As library collections have been transformed from print to electronic, some of the materials in these collections also have inevitably been replaced by electronic resources. This article explores the historical roots of ready reference collections and their recent evolution.

A post on the Oregon Libraries Network notes some differences between the old and new RUSA Guidelines for Implementing and Maintaining Virtual Reference Services.

Library instruction classes
A Librarian's Guide to Etiquette suggests: A librarian should begin each library instruction class by plucking headphones from students' ears, confiscating cell phones, and searching all bookbags for contraband food. If there is any time remaining, show them all how to become fans of the library's new Facebook page.

In Getting Students to Do the Reading: Pre-Class Quizzes on Wordpress (at the Chronicle of Higher Education) Derek Bruff cites the idea that learning involves both transfer of information and assimilation of that information, and that as the assimilation is the hard part it should be done in class time while the transfer is handled before class through readings (or videos). He then discusses how he's tackled the problem of motivating students to actually do their pre-class readings by creating pre-class quizzes -- the answers to which he can then skim before class, and alter his lesson plan if students are finding some topic easier or harder than anticipated.

In the Library with the Lead Pipe is a group blog that posts longer, heavily referenced articles. In Making it their idea: The Learning Cycle in library instruction Eric Frierson quotes the idea that people learn better by putting the pieces together for themselves, and discusses ways to use this in library instruction classes, using the topic of "peer reviewed journals" as a case study.

Steve Lawson blogs about Making time at the beginning for questions - starting a library class with the projector off and just chatting informally with the students about their assignments/projects - he says, "It's like a mass reference interview."

For myself, I've had a lot of success with adding more interactivity into classes (even some large ones with 250+ students) but one series of my classes in term 1 turned clunky because (as I discovered too late) when I was chatting with students about what they needed to know for their assignment, none of them bothered to mention that they hadn't actually read the assignment instructions yet.

So for my next class I started off by asking them to explain the assignment to me - fortunately these ones had read it and could talk about it, but my fall-back position would be to stop and give them five minutes to read it, because they're not going to learn anything in class if they don't know why they're being told about it.

I spent the rest of the class alternating between asking them how they go about research and adding other sources/techniques they can use. The students were awesome and the class went like a dream. I used a PowerPoint presentation in edit mode so when I asked a question I could write their answers onto the blank page - colour-coded with white pages for my set-speech stuff, yellow pages for their stuff (and my very occasional additions when they reminded me of something) - and embed it into their subject guide after the class:

What about you: what other techniques have you read about / tried for library tutorials?

Mobile vs Smartphones & other links of interest 14/4/10

2010-04-14T20:45:00.004+12:00

Mobile vs Smartphones
Roy Tennant suggests not making any more mobile websites as research suggests more people (in the US) are getting smartphones that can support anything a normal web-browser can support. (Though I don't know of any smartphone that supports a 1024x768 screensize...) Smartphone applications seem to be trending instead. The iLibrarian rounds up her Top 30 Library iPhone Apps (part 2 and part 3). Why an application when you've already got a website? Phil Windley points out that "If my bank can get me to download an app, then they have a permanent space on my app list." The trade-off is that whereas a website should work on any browser, smartphone apps often need to be in proprietary formats (the Librarian in Black particularly complains about Apple's iPhone in this respect).

Web 2.0
Common Craft has a 3-minute video explaining "Cloud Computing in Plain English".

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries and Brown University Library provide a "dashboard" of widgets on their websites displaying current statistics about library usage.

View from the top :-)
The University Librarian at McMaster University Library blogs results from their laptop survey. Apparently laptop circulation now accounts for about a third of their total circulation stats; their survey looks into how students are using the laptops.

The Director of Librarys at the State University of New York at Potsdam blogs about "What I've Learned" in the first 10 months of her job there.

Scandal of the week...
Barbara Fister summarises recent discussion about EBSCO as the "New Evil Empire" in her Library Journal article "Big vendor frustrations, disempowered librarians, and the ends of empire".

Fun
Alice for the iPad - one of the ways technology can enhance the book.

Links of interest 25/3/10

2010-03-25T16:21:00.001+13:00

Resources
C-SPAN Video Library "indexes, and archives all C-SPAN programming for historical, educational, research, and archival uses." (Content is primarily US politics but see here for overlap with other subject areas.) All programs since 1987 can be viewed online for free.

Twitter
Following in the popular footsteps of the Fake AP Stylebook Twitter account ("Use a hyphen to join words together, a dash to separate two words that really don't like each other.") come rival accounts Fake AACR2 ("2.17B1. Describe an illustrated item as instructed in 2.5C. Optionally, add woodcuts, metal cuts, paper cuts, etc., as appropriate.") and Fake RDA ("2.3.3 When attempting to parallel title, line title up to proper title, put title in reverse, turn left, shift into drive, turn right.")

Neat stuff

Embedding chat widgets within EBSCO databases
Darien [Public] Library offers prizes to Foursquare checkins at their library
Lincoln University uses their page on Facebook to promote their own Foursquare check-in and to chat with students about famous pranks
Crowdsourcing: How and why should libraries do it? includes a huge number of examples of successful crowdsourced projects (ie projects where the bulk of the work has been done by individuals of the general public a few bits at a time) and what has made them successful
Common Craft have made a new "Augmented Reality" video in their "in plain English" series

Links of interest 4/3/2010

2010-03-04T10:52:00.000+13:00

Subject Guides
Springshare have created a Best of LibGuides LibGuide to share ideas about "the best of what the LibGuides system has to offer".

Gale notes on Twitter that "We analyzed search usage growth for 5k libraries; 20% of them use widgets. The libraries using widgets had 60% higher growth." Widgets can be built from their website (among other tools for measuring and increasing usage).

Infolit by video
Using video to address an immediate research need is an answer to a faculty complaint with students not researching broadly enough. The librarian put together a video in 30 minutes, posted it on his blog, subject guide, and course management system, and watched the video stats climb as students watched it.

COPPUL's Animated Tutorial Sharing Project collects video tutorials that can be shared among library systems to avoid reinventing the wheel - including project files so libraries can tweak it to fit their environment. The ones I've seen are licensed with a "share-alike" Creative Commons license (meaning you can use it and change it but you have to license your finished product with the same license). You can browse or search for databases eg JSTOR.

Miscellaneous Web 2.0
7 Things You Should Know About Backchannel Communication: Mostly backchannel communication happens at techier conferences but 7 Things points out that: "Backchannel communication is a secondary conversation that takes place at the same time as a conference session, lecture, or instructor-led learning activity. This might involve students using a chat tool or Twitter to discuss a lecture as it is happening, and these background conversations are increasingly being brought into the foreground of lecture interaction."

10 Technology Ideas Your Library Can Implement Next Week "to start creating, collaborating, connecting, and communicating through cutting-edge tools and techniques".

Measuring the impact of web 2.0 (via a colleague via the LIS-WEB2 mailing list):

The Twitter Experience at Chelmsford
Twittering at Sheffield library
Birmingham libraries use of Web 2.0
Case studies/guest blog posts on UKOLN's Cultural heritage blog
and the Libraries and Web 2.0 wiki

Links of interest 2/2/10

2010-02-02T17:01:00.002+13:00

Foursquare
Not a chain of convenience stores - this Foursquare is a website/application that lets you use your cellphone etc to "check in" when you reach locations like cafes, movie theatres, libraries, etc. At its worst this floods your friends with endless notifications: "Now I'm at the dairy! Now I'm at home! Now I'm at the busstop! Now I'm at work! Now...!" But at best you walk into your favourite cafe and:

read tips from other customers about what to order or avoid;
win a prize from the cafe itself;
discover that your friend is in the area and arrange for them to meet you for a quick cuppa.

Some recent blogposts discussing the value of Foursquare for libraries (read the comments as well!) include:

Publishing scandals du jour
EBSCO buys up exclusive electronic access to a number of popular periodicals which will be removed from other databases that used to provide them. Reactions:

During negotiations between Amazon and "big 6" publisher Macmillan over pricing of ebooks, Amazon removed all Macmillan titles (electronic and print) from its database. Reactions:

the breaking news;
Macmillan's CEO responds promptly;
among many many others, authors Charles Stross, John Scalzi, Tobias Buckell, Cory Doctorow weigh in;
and finally Amazon responds in an obscure location two days after it all happened (this is months in internet-time).

In case you're curious about non-Amazon options, there's a number of online bookstores in New Zealand and I've recently discovered The Book Depository in the UK with free international shipping.

Bookcovers in LibGuides
Springshare have announced a partnership with Syndetics so we can now use Syndetics bookcover images in our LibGuides. This is just like using the images from Amazon before - when adding a featured book just insert ISBN, click icon, and voila a cover image - but click the "S" (Syndetics) icon instead of the Amazon icon. An added advantage is that Syndetics works with ISBN-13 as well as ISBN-10 (Amazon is limited to ISBN-10).

European theses
The DART-Europe E-theses Portal gathers and provides "access to 123327 full-text research theses from 210 universities sourced from 16 European countries".

Links of interest 13/1/10

2010-01-13T12:40:00.000+13:00

Web collaboration

Tinychat lets you instantly set up a temporary chatroom with its own short url you can share with anyone you want to join you. Once everyone has left the chat it disappears.
Flockdraw does the same for the virtual whiteboard.

Virtual reference

Virtual provider pessimism: analysing instant messaging reference encounters with the pair perception comparison method looks at how users vs librarians are satisfied with IM reference sessions. They find that users are frequently happy with results even when the librarians haven't felt confident with how things went.
Cyberspace or Face-to-Face: The Teachable Moment and Changing Reference Mediums looks at instant messaging, chat, and face-to-face reference in terms of levels of instruction in each medium. They find that "patrons wanted to be taught regardless of medium, and that librarians responded by providing instruction in all mediums." (Although different techniques are used in the different mediums.) "These patrons’ consistently high desire for instruction reinforces the notion that the ideal teachable moment can be found in reference work."

Potluck

"But I Want a Real Book": An Investigation of Undergraduates' Usage and Attitudes toward Electronic Books
This Open Access mindmap covers what open access is, what supporters are motivated by, what it applies to, how materials are made available (eg journals and repositories) and organised. Many of the nodes have links to articles for further information.
Discussion of a simple system a Dutch library set up to encourage users to recommend or 'tag' books as they returned them - and discussion of how this system became so successful that the library discontinued it.
Karen Schneider writes Reflections on strategic plans that are neither strategic nor plans
And finally, Beyond the Bullet Points: New Years Resolution says "Let us make a resolution together. Let’s make 2010 the year of the librarian – not the library."

Deborah

Links of interest 23/12/09

2009-12-23T12:51:00.001+13:00

"star topper" by LMU Library
used on a Creative Commons
BY-NC-SA license
(Photos of tree construction.)

M-libraries (libraries on mobile devices
Library on the Go (pdf) "explores student use of the mobile Web in general and expectations for an academic library’s mobile Web site in particular through focus groups with students at Kent State University. Participants expressed more interest in using their mobile Web device to interact with library resources and services than anticipated. Results showed an interest in using research databases, the library catalog, and reference services on the mobile Web as well as contacting and being contacted by the library using text messaging."

library/mobile: Tips on Designing and Developing Mobile Web Sites shares "Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries’ experience creating a mobile Web presence and will provide key design and development strategies for building mobile Web sites".

Usability
Infomaki: An Open Source, Lightweight Usability Testing Tool describes a tool developed by New York Public Library to spread the usability testing load among visitors to their website - visitors are asked if they want to answer a single question; if not, they're not bothered again; if they do answer it they're given the option to answer another one. Because it's not asking much of an investment in time a lot of people will do it, and then because it's so easy a lot will answer more than one: "In just over seven months of use, it has fielded over 100,000 responses from over 10,000 respondents."

University of Michigan has made available two reports about the usability of their LibGuides.

Search interfaces
Google Labs is trialling Image Swirl which adds an "images related to this one" functionality to their image search in a lovely visual way.

Happy Holidays!

Opening hours

2009-12-18T11:05:00.000+13:00

I have a saved Twitter search for mentions of 'library' within 1000km of New Zealand. It gets people talking about iTunes libraries, programming libraries, and even actual book libraries. Sometimes people just mention visiting by-the-by, and sometimes they talk about good experiences (yay wireless, yay free stuff, yay nice staff!) or bad experiences (overdue fines, book wanted is out, library too noisy).

I've seen a few recently surprised at how late libraries open in the morning, but this one made me laugh:

Links of interest 14/12/09

2009-12-14T10:46:00.001+13:00

A library in a telephone booth

"Fix Your Terrible, Insecure Passwords in Five Minutes" talks about some common mistakes in creating passwords and suggests techniques for more secure ones.

Customer service
Zabel, D. and L. J. Pellack (2009) First impressions and rethinking restroom questions, RUSQ 49(1) has garnered a number of thoughtful comments, as well as reactions in the biblioblogosphere including:

Via someone I forget, who pointed out that this works perfectly if you replace the word "computer" with "library/catalogue/database/etc": How to help someone use a computer.

Information literacy
Karen Schneider recommends and discusses the Project Information Literacy report Lessons Learned: How college students find information in the digital age (PDF, 3MB).

Digital natives, scholarly immigrants on the ACRL blog discusses some of the findings of the Journal of Higher Education article University students' perceptions of plagiarism.

Links of interest 23/11/09

2009-11-23T16:33:00.000+13:00

Crowdsourcing
Library Society of the World brainstorms library terminology:

Unshelved (the library webcomic) has launched Unshelved Answers, where librarians can ask question and get answers from fellow librarians. There's a nice system of voting and rewards points to ensure quality control by the community.

Digitisation
The National Digital Forum 2009 conference is in progress; the hashtag on twitter is #ndf2009. Announced there, Make it Digital is offering two $10,000 awards for organisations wanting to digitise NZ content.

Due to popular demand, DigitalNZ announces Collaborative digitisation of the AJHR.

Google Scholar adds full-text legal opinions from various US courts.

Post-digitisation
The Ithaka report on What to Withdraw: Print Collections Management in the Wake of Digitization "analyzes which types of journals can be withdrawn responsibly today and how that set of materials can be expanded to allow libraries the maximum possible flexibility and savings in the future."

The Swiss Army Librarian writes (with photos) about printing a book from Google Books on one of Google's Expresso book-on-demand machines.

Links of Interest 4/11/09

2009-11-04T17:25:00.001+13:00

Resources
New Zealand Electronic Text Centre has posted a list of online texts for current courses at VUW.

The Dept of Internal Affairs has launched Government datasets online, a directory of publicly-available NZ government datasets (especially but not exclusively machine-readable datasets).

Complementary Twitter accounts:

APStylebook (Sample: Election voting: Use figures for totals and separate the large totals with "to" instead of hyphen.)
FakeAPStylebook (Sample: To describe more than one octopus, use sixteentopus, twentyfourtopus, thirtytwotopus, and so on.)

Information Literacy
There was a lot of interest at and after LIANZA09 about the Cephalonia Method of library instruction (basically, handing out pre-written questions on cards to students to ask at appropriate times during the tutorial). A recent blogpost by a librarian worn out from too many tutorials wonders "what if the entire class session consisted of me asking students questions? What if I asked them to demonstrate searching the library catalog and databases?"

Scandal du jour
A document by Stephen Abram (SirsiDynix) on open source library management systems (pdf, 424KB) appeared on WikiLeaks. The biblioblogosphere saw this as evidence of SirsiDynix secretly spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) against their open-source competition. Stephen Abram replied on his blog that it was never a secret paper and he's not against open source software but it's not ready for most libraries. Much discussion followed in his blog comments and on blogs elsewhere; Library Journal has also picked up the story.

For fun
Also at Library Journal, The Card Catalog Makes a Graceful Departure at the University of South Carolina - rather than just dumping it the library is hosting events such as a Catalog Card Boat Race and What Can You Make With Catalog Cards?

Things Librarians Fancy.

Deborah

Facilitating the unplannable

2009-10-26T14:07:00.000+13:00

(aka, my view of how my "Getting People Onside" workshop at LIANZA09 went. I've written before about planning and about rehearsing this workshop.)

Ingredients:

A set of slides to structure my intro/warm-up

a bunch of topics on A3 paper for people to cluster around and discuss

an egg-timer to keep track of time with

a bell to ring to prompt people to move between topics every ten minutes

a box to collect email addresses in for those who wanted to join a mailing list to continue the conversation after conference

The conference organisers arranged for the room to be rearranged beforehand from "theatre-style" to "cabaret-style", which terminology provided a certain amount of mirth to my colleagues in the days leading up to conference. We ended up with nine tables, each furnished with chairs, mints, and writing pads. I estimate about 60 people turned up, which was a great number.

I started off by introducing where I was coming from with this topic - basically that conference tends to give you all kinds of great ideas, except that you can have all the good ideas in the world, but if you're not prepared and able to deal with the various obstacles/resistance to change then they may well sink without a trace; so this was a time to think positively and brainstorm about how to be prepared.

We did some warm-ups next. First, the "Mexican Wave" - because we didn't have time to introduce 60+ people, I got people to just call out their first name as my arm swept around the room, and then we repeated that with a couple of other simple questions. It didn't go as fast as I'd intended: partly because the shape of the room made it unclear where my finger was pointing, partly because we all fell into turn-taking mode instead of the babbling whoosh I'd envisioned, and I wasn't confident enough to really get more energy in there. But it still worked and I think achieved its purpose; certainly when we moved on to brainstorming how to respond to the "50 Reasons Not to Change", everyone was quite happy to participate.

And then we split into 10-minute groups. Well, actually 9 minutes for each one, because I had a close eye on my timer. :-) I kept the 'ground rules' up on the slides during these, following a suggestion from the rehearsal. I sort of hovered and spent a few minutes at each table, occasionally sticking my oar in but mostly just listening, and it was all very cool. Some of the keywords I'd come up with as conversation starters were interpreted differently by the participants than how I'd intended them, but that didn't matter in the slightest of course. During the last 10 9 minutes I passed around my box for email addresses.

Finally we spent five minutes getting someone at each table to report back a highlight or two; and then some kind soul helped me gather all the notes people made while brainstorming, which I've now duly transcribed.

I was really happy with how it went, which of course is all down to everyone's participation - it was exactly what I'd hoped for when I proposed the session.

Links of Interest 20/10/2009

2009-10-20T12:47:00.000+13:00

LIANZA 2009
A map of LIANZA09 participants - purple for attendees, pink/orange for invited speakers, yellow for vendors.

Widgets and other neat free stuff
Gale Widgets aren't new but are nicer than ever. If I understand correctly, the PowerSearch widget searches across all Gale databases subscribed to by one's institution. To create a widget use our location ID "canterbury" - the javascript code provided can then be pasted into LibGuides. (New box -> Rich text -> Add text -> plain text editor -> paste)

SpringShare gives instructions for adding WolframAlpha's improved search widget to LibGuides.

Elsevier provides all their journal covers free. ("These cover images may be used in systems in which Elsevier material is offered to end users. Unauthorized use and/or modification of these images is strictly prohibited.") Perhaps could be used in a future generation of our catalogue to complement book cover images? If you just want a single image to promote a journal on LibGuides, replace the number in this link with your journal's issn: http://www1.elsevier.com/inca/covers/store/issn/00016918.gif

Plates from Buller's Birds (digitised on a Creative Commons license).

Text message reference
Penny Dugmore writes about Unitec's launch of a text reference service, and Elyssa Kroski's Library Journal column on Text Message Reference: Is It Effective?. Oh, and just in: a summary about a recent presentation on text reference, with stats on libraries offering it and more links.

Library humour
A library-themed filk of Gilbert and Sullivan's I've got a little list.

Range guide humour (alas, it's harder to get this effect with LC...)

LIANZA 2010 Conference Launch

2009-10-14T15:21:00.000+13:00

Linda Geddes is 2010 Conference Convenor. It'll be the centennial conference (first NZ library conference was 26th-28th March 1910) - aim to create a historic event. Video prepared with welcome message from Dunedin Mayor, apparently not realising that librarians can party to rival the Undie 500 delegates. :-)

Theme will be "At the Edge - Te Matakāheru" 28 November - 1 December in Dunedin, at the University of Otago.

Tim Spalding on Social cataloguing

2009-10-14T14:57:00.000+13:00

What it is, and what it means for libraries?
Tim Spalding founder of LibraryThing

Introduces self as a failed academic, worked in publishing, started LibraryThing.

Warning: Library Science being practiced without a degree

Started as a personal project, now a company. 850,000 members who catalogue their personal libraries - so far 44million books. Available in 12+ languages. (Not Māori but would be open to that - translations done by members.)

Social cataloguing is "what I say it means" because he invented it! It's what emerges when personal catalogue goes social. It's becoming increasingly important to libraries. Used in LibraryThing, Shelfari, GoodReads; Visual Bookshelf, BooksWeRead.

Ladder of social cataloguing:
- started as personal cataloguing and grew from there
- users climb the ladder
- climbing the ladder is more altruism, more cooperation, more social. But participating is primarily for self. There's some application to libraries but it's different there.

Live demonstration of adding "History of New Zealand" by Michael King to his bookshelf. Mixture of tags - "new zealand", "history", "lianza", "interesting". Bookshelf with ratings. Can add from Amazon or many other bookstores or even libraries - 10 libraries in New Zealand contribute data. Can view libraries by list, cover, tag (list or cloud); author cloud or portraits. Statistics on language, number of characters, places. Reviews and ratings. Members' profiles - social networking component but LibraryThing is more about content than people, reflected in focus on users' names rather than user icons.

23,000 people adding Twilight. All doing it for themselves but as a result there are now 1200 reviews people can read; tags are added, recommendations are generated ("Will I like it?" - it correctly predicts he won't like Twilight. :-) ) Can follow a feed of new recommendations. There's also the "unsuggester" - trying to be entertaining around books.

Example of Neuromancer - library of congress has bizarre subject headings; LibraryThing has "cyberpunk" and you can click through to read more cyberpunk. "Chicklit" is sorted by how many people have called it that; cf Library of Congress "love stories" which is just either/or, no sorting. Idea of prototypes - a robin is a really good example of a bird, a penguin is a kind of okay example of a bird...

Non-romance readers think romance readers read romance, but they don't - they read contemporary romance, trashy romance, regency romance, lesbian romance, paranormal romance....

"If you're using terms like "social capital" you've already passed some kind of brain test" so not worried about vandalism....

"magic" is problematic - Harry Potter mixed in with academic ones.
"leather" even more so

Can do tagmashes to get tagmash "France", "WWII", "fiction"

"chicklit" is now an LCSH but not geographically subdivided and will never have a "zombie" subdivision.

Tags: glbt vs lgbt "But those are the same thing!" -- but no: the books are actually different. The terms that people use encode all sorts of stuff. Many things labelled "homosexuality" actually mean "anti-homosexuality".

More than 1.5million covers added (including Albanian, Serbian editions of Harry Potter). When you upload it for yourself, everyone gets the benefit.

Social networking based on books you have in common. "Even if I don't want to be his buddy, checking out his library will be very interesting to me. Social networking for people who don't want to talk to each other."

Most popular group is Librarians who LibraryThing. Conversations about books on groups are tied into the books' own records.

LibraryThing Local - showing us map of bookstores and libraries in Portland, Maine. Can connect to local LT members; find events at bookstores, libraries. Add a photo of our libraries to these pages!

Example of wife's books - members have combined all the editions (other languages, etc) FRBR-style. Members have combined "Mark Twain" and "Samuel Clemens".

"Common Knowledge" - awards, quotes, characters and places in the story, blurbers - all sorts of things not captured in typical metadata.

Series pages - eg Star Wars series. Plus "related series". Much more information than any library has. Collated by people who know about it - the books' fans.

How many books does George Washington occur in? How many books take place in Washington, D.C., or in Hell?

LT "member" Thomas Jefferson, Marie Antoinette. No New Zealanders at the moment. Based on eg auction house records. Done by the group "I See Dead People's Books". Nice to be able to search Thomas Jefferson's library - couldn't do it before; now can see how you overlap with these people. Most popular book among all legacy libraries is Don Quixote; #2 is Complete Shakespeare.

Highest rung of ladder is altruism - flash mob cataloguing where volunteers go to library and catalogue their books in a mob in a day.

Six free ways to use LibraryThing:
1 Make sure you're in LT Local
2 Make an account
3 Libraries of Early New Zealand
4 Flash-mob catalogue your local historical society, church, health centre...
5 "Community library" to create a shared local library with LibraryThing Groups (eg two churches, a historical library, and a couple of people in town).
6 Grab our free data: common knowledge data, frbrised data etc.

One un-free way:
1 LibraryThing for Libraries eg at Seattle Public Library showing other editions and translations; similar books; tags; reviews. Four or five NZ libraries are using it.

What does social cataloguing mean for library cataloguing?
The end of the world! No!

Defends the value of structured metadata but that shouldn't be all we have.

LCSH - A book has 3-6 subjects - why? because that's how many we can fit on a card.
Subjects are equally valid because of... the card.
Subjects never change because of... the card.
Only librarians get to add subjects because of... the card.
Users don't get a say in how books are classified because of... the card.

In the digital world, none of this matters. In libraries these ideas have still persisted.

The physical library was human. The first wave of technology was dehumanising but social cataloguing can rehumanise the library. Everyone can help. (We don't need to let them do everything but they can help!) Local matters again. cf Māori Subject Headings - sometimes local communities need headers other communities don't have.

A note of caution before joining the exciting world of web2.0 - join the exciting world of web1.0! Library catalogues aren't web1.0. Often you can't link to library catalogue records; they're all session-based. Why why why? People need to be able to bookmark and share. And catalogues aren't indexed in search engines! Why?????

Go with the grain of the internet, not against it. We're not in competition with the internet. We should be open. Libraries are going the wrong way. LibraryThing gets twice as much traffic as WorldCat. Dogster gets as much traffic as WorldCat.

Be part of the conversation. Trust people: put your stuff online and risk that people might find the "wrong thing" or tag it the "wrong way".

Choose solutions that favour all this. He thinks open source is the way to go. He doesn't think open source is necessarily better, but it can be.

Social cataloguing can be a last chance to join web 1.0. Before we start struggling with ebooks struggle with the fact that people can't find our books on Google! It's an opportunity to reinvigorate library technology. To reconsider some LIS thinking and improve systems. (Had a LT project to replace Dewey. Turns out to be hard and didn't work. But it's cool to try!) Chance to embrace best traditions of librarianship: radical openness, public spirit, focus, connection to the local and social. Why would we lend books but hold back metadata?

Q: Could libraries organise own flash mobs and [? get stuff on web?]
A: Absolutely! Thinks flash mobs are good for things on the periphery, stuff that's never been exposed eg churches, historical society. So many books exist in private holdings!

Q: What proportion of books on LibraryThing do people catalogue themselves rather than pulling data in?
A: Not sure but probably a small percentage. Zines, comics, etc are the main things.

Web 2.OhMyGod to Web 2.OhNo

2009-10-14T12:28:00.000+13:00

Chelsea Hughes and Douglas Campbell
Nautical theme using the Web 2.0 Map.

MySpace - went to tell musicians "Give us your CDs, it's the law." Message was clear but didn't actively engage; then left and had no exit strategy.

Blogs - started up a couple. Also name "The Collections blog that never happened" - because would be too time consuming for staff to do necessary research. Other blogs (Library Tech and Create Readers have been successful and they're sticking around.

Flickr - Rights was an issue to start with but now joined Flickr Commons. Staying but passively - adding stuff but not joining discussion and groups.
Learned how to take risks, created relationships. But didn't have resources to really nurture their pressence - like blogs it's not really anyone's job.

2008 Web Harvest
Timeline: anger because of bandwidth. NatLib explained so people were happier. What went well - they were already in the social spaces so were alerted to anger quickly and could respond quickly.

Twitter - worked well because could apply past lessons. Identified as opportunity to promote collections. Tea-break tweets only - no system outages, media releases. Try to be at desk for 30 minutes after tweets go out in case of replies so can stay engaged. Don't measure success by number of followers but by clicks on bit.ly links and conversations. Low effort so definitely staying. Much went well; so far nothing's gone badly!

Have tested waters in wikipedia, slideshare, delicious, youtube, but so far haven't found a good fit at them. These places don't meet their criteria of having something to offer, someone to tell it too, and a way to sustain it.

Lessons learnt:
Engage, set goals, know your audience, know your limits, know yourself, be social, own it, choose your platform wisely, make it personal, take risks but be smart about it, be casual but not too casual.

Handout folded in shape of boat with chocolate 'gold coin' folded inside. Contents will be on Library Tech.

Q: Still doing Flickr Commons?
A: Yes, still adding things, just not more involved.

Q: Are you capturing NZ Tweets through NDHA?
A: No. Not sure how to identify NZ twitterers. Only covers .nz and "known offsite distributors".

Q: How do you sell Flickr etc to bosses?
A: Get a longer leash to trial it; point to success examples; show them the benefits. Get a three-month pilot agreed.

Q: Re "just do it" - but it's about the library's reputation too.
A: If you're just doing it then use a personal account but also be smart about it.

Being online is just another way of living your life - a staff member could make just as bad a reputation for you at the pub.

Implementing Web 2.0

2009-10-14T12:01:00.000+13:00

Paul Hayton

Metrics are important - available on flickr, wordpress, facebok, youtube, witter. Wikipedia doesn't.

Launch dates all refer to Dunedin Public Library's accounts.

Flickr:
consider using a secret email address; it negates most IT/Council security uploading hassles. Subject heading becomes title and body is description.
Flash-based tools may break so use the basic uploader
Pro account gives features that are worth it.
Link Flickr to blog, facebook, etc - facilitates crossposting.

Blog:
Started having news and reviews blogs. In Feb 08 merged to a single blog at wordpress.
Use Google Analytics. Hosting on own servers makes it easy to put code in.
Suggests posting every 1-3 days. Every day is too much, every week not enough.
Include youtube clips, flickr banner and links to other services down the side.

If doing more than one thing then reuse your content! Eg description on images / blog description of event. Push people through to different services by linking blogpost, photo, through to youtube video etc.

Post a little content often rather than a lot infrequently.
Link to other online spaces proactively
Review content using metrics to discover what really is popular content (eg topical links to Swayze-related collection)
Use categories, not tags to standardise search when running a blog with multiple contributors - forces authority control.

Wikipedia article - launched April 08. Anecdotally well-received but hard to read statistics. Have had one instance of vandalism - corrected by wiki community within 24 hours. When Paul started adding stuff he had people telling him he couldn't put up library-copyrighted stuff.
Tips:
Establish an account
Declare who you are
Start small, build content as time permits
Add images and links to other online spaces
Reference where you can
Seek other pages with related content and edit to include a link back to your own page

YouTube
Launched May 08; now 111 videos, average of 40-60 viewers per day.
Tips:
Invest in a tripod
Recording at 320x240 at 8 frames per second is fine and reduces both file size and upload time
YouTube has a 10min limit
Don't pan and zoom.
Be consistent in categories and tags

Facebook
Launched December 2008 - wanted to establish a profile and generate viral promotion; engage in dialogue with fans and deliver targeted promotional info to fans
Address is horrible - get a badge. (Me: if you have 100+ fans you can get a custom address)
Metrics interesting - fans are 64% female which reflects library membership. Highest fans are at 25-34%
Good conversation going.
Tips:
Have a response plan for if customers engage.
Establish a page, not a group.
Post links to other online spaces
Use the events feature and selectively send invites to fans
If you have a Twitter account, consider linking your status updates to it.
Import blog, flickr content etc to your page.

Twitter
Launched Feb 09
Can get statistics from various analytic sites eg tweetstats.com
Predominantly events stuff.
Tips:
Use web stats services to analyse account
Use the power of the + in http://bit.ly/1894XD+ to get stats on how often it's been viewed.
Firefox - install Power Twitter add-on.
"The more you give the more you get" - the more you tweet the more followers you get - but it's more about quality vs quantity.

Implementing:
- Strategy - be clear about why and where you're playing, but you don't need a full strategy before you dive in. No analysis paralysis!
- Staff/time - better to do one thing well than several things poorly. Look for something you like and do that.
- Learn by doing. Forgiveness vs permission, action vs policy.
- Proactively network with like minds.
- Spend time each week being a 'naive enquirer' to learn more.

Q: Release permission for filming booktalks, audiences?
A: Get permission for authors, performers. Camera is generally not on audience - only incidental and not very identifiable. Anecdotally - email from someone in a video who wanted a copy to send it around

Q: Problems with Wikipedia's rule against editing your own page?
A: No issues.

Q: YouTube filming at low resolution - shouldn't we film at high resolution for posterity and just upload a low-res version?
A: Yes, valid point - could be something we could do better at. But currently dealing with practical issues

From "We Shall Remain" to "Operation teen book drop"

2009-10-14T11:32:00.001+13:00

new national indigenous library services initiatives
Loriene Roy and Scott Smith
abstract (pdf); We Shall Remain librarians' website

Once American Indians were the whole of the now-USA population; now 0.1%.
Urban/homeland split due to 1950s/60s policy of relocation. Health, higher education, economics, traditions are compromised.

Initiatives to support libraries; this presentation is a status on these two projects.

"We Shall Remain"
Film is a rich media to show experience. Indigenous have been depicted in film for decades but are rarely involved in the production itself. "We Shall Remain" is a PBS show, the largest "American Experience" series produced. Aired in 5 90-minute episodes: After the Mayflower (depicting especially Wampanoag, Pequot, Nipmuc, Narragansett), Tecumseh's Vision (Shawnee), Trail of Tears (Cherokee), Geronimo (Chiricahua Apache), Wounded Knee (Oglala Lakota and Native peoples from tribes across the country). The last was able to draw on rich media coverage from the time.

Project also included a mentoring programme for Native film producers, and a website linked to many films created. Grants for states and cities to collaborate with local organisations to create public events, programming and to deepen public understanding of Native history.

Event kit for libraries gives ideas about how to organise culturally appropriate discussions. Storytelling events, reading circle ("The Plague of Doves"), exploring stereotypes, art contests and projects, discussion forums, film festival, guideleines for evaluating media resources (many preexisting guides for selecting books on Native topics; this is the first for evaluating film) - shipped to 15,000 public libraries. Won an award for design and communication. PDF copy available at We Shall Remain librarians' website. Two Facebook groups.

The "We Shall Remain" title image of the teepee and flag ("Nespelem", a photo by Bob Charlo of the Kalispel Nation, was taken at the annual powow on the Colville Reservation in Nespelem, WA in 1992): "To me it represents that we - Native people - are still here and still vibrant. We are not a conquered people. We are a contributing people." -- Bob Charlo

Highest number of states with events were Arizona, Texas, and Utah. Most popular were lectures/discussions (often about topics re the TV programmes), screenings (of previews or episodes (esp Trail of Tears) or local films by Native producers/authors, displays of books/photographs/other featuring Native history and/or authors, sometimes collaborating with local organisations); then performance and hands-on activities (weaving, basketry, games, musical and dramatic performances, crocheting afghans donated to local hospital).

Operation Teen Book Drop
Donation of 8,000 YA books to hospitalised teens in 2008-09 by publishers, organised by readergirlz, Guys Lit Wire, and YALSA. April 15th 2010 will take YA books to teens attending tribal schools on reservations. So far 27 schools registered - about 5000 teens. Featuring Lurline Waliana McGregor, Sherman Alexie, Joseph Bushac (sp?) - other names mentioned include Dean Koontz.

Coordinating national publicity plan to tribal newsletters and library community.

Will have live chat at readergirlz.com. Raising funds online.

Successes are result of collaboration, promotion, and planning.

Q: Why would schools not want to be involved?
A: Might have assumed would get a different title per student - instead it's one title for the whole community so they might feel it's too much work for a single title. Another issue is that publishers are saying "Take the books now" so storage space is an issue. Trying to locate local liaisons to help with work.

Q: Will it screen in New Zealand?
A: Needs to be picked up by tv; but can buy on PBS.

Libraries building communities: communities building libraries

2009-10-14T10:24:00.001+13:00

Jessica Dorr
abstract (pdf)

Begins with "Kia ora"; ends with "Kia ora koutou". :-)

Says our reputation precedes us.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation guided by belief that every life has equal value. Goals to improve health; strengthen education; reduce poverty. "Bill Gates has billions of dollars. Why would he give it to libraries? The answer is simple: libraries change lives." Librarians work to make information available -> strong drivers of economic and social progress.

Project to connect all libraries to the internet within five years. Spirit similar to APNK but didn't know how challenging task (including technical support) would be. Pulled it off though it took closer to seven years. Total PCs granted = 47,200; buildings receiving a grant: 10,915; training opportunities: 62,000. When started, less than a quarter had access to internet; now all do, and provide it for free. "If you can reach a public library, you can reach the internet."

Started with poorer libraries - those not already connected. Started with states in highest need -- Deep South. New Mexico was sixth state and provided challenges and opportunities. First large state they worked in. Noticed when plotted a map there were large gaps with no libraries - discovered those were tribal reservation areas. Felt it was unfathomable that there was no need so went to visit. Found lots of space, and found libraries which weren't on the state-recognised list of libraries.

Underestimated challenges of technology and underestimated the relevance of the internet to these communities. Showed Microsoft Encarta online encyclopaedia and they searched for themselves. Found mistakes in the encyclopaedia.

Began a crash course - couldn't just add libraries to a list of libraries and give them computers. Needed to do more. Used loom as analogy: if weaving this project needed to learn all six steps.

(Native communities are justifiably wary of the outside world but want education, want to learn to use computers in a native way.)

Find a sheep / Shearing / Needs assessment
Environment makes providing services more difficult and expensive.
Computers have to speak and write Native languages
Could work with tribes and network - worked hard to involve all of Navaho
Had to work with Navaho definition of library
Had to build capacity and support organisations that work with tribes long-term
Tools/equipment: scanners, microphones, digital cameras, software tools, test models, drove computers and generators out to test them thoroughly.

Wash and dye / Training
Project-based - using Native examples
Presenting information less linear, more circular/interrelated
Short days as people had to leave early to chop wood, etc
Mornings teaching staff, afternoons outreach (students, tribal elders, police, any group that had interest in training)

Card and spin / Program challenges
Connectivity - In US program didn't plan for long-term payment because government should provide. But here couldn't expect to persuade tribal governments to pay, so gave step-down funding (more first year, less next, less next) to give tribal governments time to recognise the value outweighed disadvantages like porn.
Challenge in staff turnover so training need never goes away

Dye and pattern / Examples of success
Indigenous Language Institute uses YouTube to promote preservation of native langauges
Websites developed for/by government of all chapters so can email instead of drive, minutes and budgets are online. Bartering online.
Individuals - computer lets people do homework online instead of driving hours to study.

With the tools in place, they are weaving.

Learned importance of being familiar with community needs and working with them.

Now working in other countries. Aim to bring about effective, sustainable access in developing countries. Want computers to be useful and used in ways to improve lives.

Need training for staff - both in technology and outreach
Libraries have to be accessible and open to all. Might need to include health clinic; or be on a boat.
Libraries have to demonstrate impact by measuring how they meet local needs

In terms of sustainability, suffering because assumed benefits of libraries were obvious so didn't spend effort on evaluation so libraries could prove benefits. Now work from beginning to include an evaluation component. In Latvia compare library services across other government services. In Lithuania doing a study showing return on investment. In Poland doing a study of library users vs non-users. --Different from country to country but critical to have some evaluation in place.

Need strong library systems in place to provide vision for field, develop curricula, create sharing opportunities.

More than 70% of people in US who use computers in a library say it's the only place they have internet access.

Latvia had so many people sitting outside after hours to use wireless that used bandwidth stats to argue for longer open hours.

Libraries need to radically change perceptions people have about libraries, we won't survive. Have to be bold, be more radical, be louder, use data, use stories. Must champion and strengthen the resource. Need to keep libraries on the agenda.

Story of mayor in Latvia who had to decide whether to improve roads or libraries. Decided to invest in library - and discovered ripple effect on local business, kids staying in school longer.

Q: Even with full funding, would be difficulties in some public libraries to add internet. How did you manage that?
A: There's no national library in the US - just state libraries. So asked state libraries to apply on behalf of their libraries. Because it was the Gates Foundation, states didn't want to be left out. Some were hesitant, but starting in places with most need showed their priorities. Policy to only work in libraries that would provide free internet. Some libraries didn't want to, but the momentum carried it through.

Q: How are you involved in prison libraries?
A: Haven't been yet. Have also been asked about academic, schools. But have chosen to invest in public libraries.

Q: How are libraries sustaining themselves in difficult economic times.
A: Difficult. 20-25% of libraries are at forefront and can continually refresh computers. Middle group, and then 40% really struggle and in 5 years haven't been able to upgrade. So studying what's the difference between these groups? High-performing libraries isn't due to funding as much as due to the librarian - if they're actively involved, actively promoting, they perform well. So future training is focusing in this area too.

Q: Has foundation work increased opportunity for collaboration between libraries?
A: She thinks so, and they're trying to support it. Spend time building partnerships between grantees; support them to conferences, publication, etc. Recommends looking at their website.

Q: Could the Foundation look at supporting indigenous [libraries?] all around the world to get together?
A: Good idea - will take that back and consider it.

Q: [missed it]
A: Every State Library has a different mandate, governance structure, statutes, etc. Some State Libraries didn't even know how many libraries they have. Some have state conferences, some might barely send out an annual newsletter. Would have liked to spend more time working with state libraries but weren't comfortable meddling into policy issues.

Q: Is meeting Rodney Hide and will show movie re Latvian mayor. Hoping to gather more stories re value politicians place on libraries.

A new equity emerges

2009-10-14T09:30:00.000+13:00

citizen-created content powering the knowledge economy
Penny Carnaby
abstract (pdf)

Just when we thought we had the web2 environment sussed, it's about to get more exciting for librarians world-wide. A new equity is emerging which puts individual citizens in the driving seat for the first time.

Every day someone is deleting something on the web. We're all part of the delete generation. Hana and Sir Tipene O'Regan talked about the loss of indigenous languages.

As librarians we need to take responsibility for preserving information.

Building blocks
Roll-out of broadband
National Digital Heritage Archive
Aotearoa People's Network Kaharoa
Digital New Zealand
data and information reuse
NLNZ New Generation Strategy

New government has endorsed the digital content strategy. Talks about life of asset from creation to access to sharing to managing and preserving.

Information on two axes from private <-> public and from formal <-> informal.

National Digital Heritage Archive. If we're taking citizen-created content as seriously as formally created content, how do we go about preserving it? What do we curate - porn, hate sites too?

DigitalNZ has put over 1million NZ digital assets online in one year.

Aotearoa People's Network Kaharoa - cornerstone of allowing citizen-created content. Allows local kete to emerge all over, through libraries and marae. Extraordinary emergence of citizen-created information collections.

Idea of creating a virtual learning environment in every school, founded on govt-supplied broadband. Ministry of Education looking at how APNK works and thinking about how that could work if it was in every New Zealand school. (Me: Whee!)

International colleagues see New Zealand as an "incubator country".

Announcement: Will be digitising the Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives. (Me: Whee again! This has been much-requested and will be a very valuable asset.)

As of February this year, with digital heritage archive, "we refuse to be part of the delete generation".

New equity emerging. Kiwis from all walks of life creating solutions to harness and preserve. Each of us has contributed to New Zealand emerging as a digital democracy.

What would you do?

2009-10-13T15:32:00.003+13:00

Developing and sharing creative solutions (aka Doing More With Less)
Elizabeth Whyte, Paul Sutherland
"90 minutes of user-generated discussion. In the spirit of Unconference and Pecha Kucha, hear rapid-fire presentations of ideas and challenges from your colleagues. Then break into groups, design solutions, and get inspired to do more with less."

Going to watch presentations, ask questions without answering, and then break into groups ("of at least two people because otherwise it wouldn't be a group") to generate answers.

I started with my suggestion box presentation, which I'll upload later. (ETA: it's here.) Questions about this were:
- How responded to allegation that AU is better than CU?
- How are questions and answers distributed?
- Staff training for social media sites
- Should we forego paper suggestion boxes completely?
Break-out groups came up with: (ETA - there was much more discussion that I've noted of course! These only include the 'takeaway' summary reported back at the end of the session.)
- If people ask a question/complain, respond in public so everyone can see.

We got another presentation on "What would you do about disruptive youth in a public library?" This library is the only free sheltered space in the area. So kids will congregate which is great, but some associated behaviour (especially age 9-14) is less than delightful. Verbal abuse of staff, customers; bullying; assault; gang activity. Long-term they want kids to stay in the library and keep reading. Diagnose much activity as boredom. Are having holiday programs. Want low-key, low-cost, low-advertising, low-efforts. Have used trespass orders but a 2-year tresspass order to an 11-year old is icky. Police relationship, contacts with schools and other agencies. Blogging on an internal incident archive. Training staff. What else can be done?
Questions from the audience:
- How do older kids respond to incidents?
- Does library employ extra staff in holidays?
- What's the scope of the youth worker role?
- What about ways of getting youth to interact with library knowledge other than passive reading?
- Can you create an alternative space?
- How do you engage with parents of children?
- What are their interests?
Break-out groups came up with:
- It's good that youth are coming in; they're disconnected and libraries are connecting them into society.
- Lots of other ideas and going to work it into something coherent.

Jack Goodman
Libraries have lots of fans but not necessarily outspoken ones. Library is the cool place to hang out because we're about people. Talks about building relationships with businesses, universities, polytechs, future generations of educators. Sporting clubs. WIIFM? What's in it for me/libraries? Innovation is essential. Normally takes a lot of resources, money. Denmark $122 per capita funding for libraries; NZ ~$60, Aus ~40.
Have we thought about partnerships with local gardening centre? Example of garden centre referring to library for care instructions.
Questions from the audience:
- Can you get a supplier to support a project within the library?
- How would you make the first approach?
- Have you done this yourself?
Break-out groups came up with:
- Libraries shouldn't sell themselves short re potential partnerships. Build relationships.

Ellen Thompson from Queensland University of Technology on the unconference "It functions better when more traditional meetings fail." Traditional meeting boring - either nod off or get surly and disruptive. Would like more dynamic ideas movement going on in meetings. Wants an un-meeting. So did it - convinced boss to have a fortnightly agenda meeting and every second week have an un-meeting:

whoever comes is the right people
whatever they talk about is the right topic
when it starts it's right, when it's over it's over
law of two feet

To get a quick meeting: have it standing up. (Audience suggestion to secretly take the chairs away.) Are there any systems, practices, procedures in our organisation that we can "un-"?
- un-performance and strategic direction
- un-jargon
- joking: un-reference interview
- un-email (talk to colleagues instead)
- un-bureaucracy
- un-heirarchy of information and power
- un-serious
- un-noncontroversial
(Put the "un" in "fun"!)
- un-risk averse
- ungry!
Break-out groups came up with:
- A well-run meeting can be a beautiful thing.
- Need to have purpose and time and place.
- Don't try to mash-up agenda-meeting and unmeeting - will get the worst of both worlds.
- Some people have standup meetings and they work, so it can be done!

Claire Stent from Statistics New Zealand
We try to offer the silver service "everything to everyone all the time". But then people are in the food court! They know Google's not the best search tool but it's quick and easy and has no tutting librarian over their shoulder. They don't feel *comfortable* with our portals. So what do we do? We improve our portals and our processes. So it's not silver service any more, but there's still no people because nothing's changed: the same service is still under the hood. Uni students get a course reader - a chapter here and a journal article there.
What do we want? Something different, like a picnic or barbecue? Why be a restaurant if people don't want that? So now if people go to their research page they get training, emails, etc to do with research. Also has pictures! Getting lots of good feedback.
People don't want journals and issues; they want one subject-related article. So instead of table of contents, get a subject-related alert. RSS feed search alerts from Ebsco or ProQuest.
Don't invent your same service in a new way; invent a new service!
Questions from audience:
- Why second-guess what people want rather than asking them? (or watching what they use)
- Do your staff understand alerts and RSS feeds?
- Is the value of libraries in the food or the service or the menu?
Break-out groups came up with:
- Vote that we're about service.
- We're not convinced people know what they want. Should observe them rather than ask.
- People like different delivery methods - need to do a variety of things.

---
LIANZA Ning - if people sign up we can write up what we came up with today.

The role of libraries in emerging models of scholarly communication

2009-10-13T12:29:00.001+13:00

a faculty-library publishing partnership
Sigi Jöttkandt, John Willinsky, Shana Kimball
abstract (pdf)

Crisis in scholarly publishing
Exponential rise in subscription prices, decline in library budgets, consolidation of the publishing industry. Affects everyone in academia but especially the "book disciplines" eg humanities. Crisis for readers (access to scholarly materials decreases) and for authors (fewer publishers to be published by).

Open access as a response
Definition by Peter Suber.

Alternative publication models
"Green road" - institutional repositories freely available. Discipline-specific eg arXiv.org, CSeARCH.

"Gold Road" - open access publishing - Directory of Open Access Journals

Open Humanities Press
Slow uptake of OA among humanities scholars, perhaps because of perceptions among humanities researchers that internet isn't an appropriate publishing/researching venue. Open Humanities Press founded to counter these perceptions. Primary importance for humanities is not time to publication but prestige. Author-side fees would be inappropriate and didn't want to waste time fundraising, so instead of starting new journals, looked to gather pre-existing efforts.

Launched Open Humanities Press with seven journals. Aim to raise profile and credibility of these journals. Assess journals according to various policies
Libraries Scholarly Publishing Office. Use open source publishing software.

Found there was a perception that OHP would soon be involved in books so ran with it. Formed a model where international scholars get together to edit, peer-review, and publish books - eventually e-publishing. Aim to double publishing of books each year.

Hope model will take off more widely. Doesn't require much change from academics.

Still a community/volunteer project.

Public Knowledge Project
Open journal systems, open conference systems, developing open monograph systems

Made a dummy OA "LIANZA Journal" and Sigi says she'd be happy to talk to people about actually making the journal open access!

They're modularising the journal system to create a software platform for a monograph system.

Q: Would publishers use this system to set up open access monographs? What's the role of the library?
A: Scholarly Publishing Office is just for the conversion side of things - academics still do editing and peer review. Would like to see more libraries offer these services to scholars.

Q: Who does subject headings - authors or SPO?
A: Authors do add keywords. Journals are catalogued by libraries so subject headings are added there too.

Here, there and virtually everywhere

2009-10-13T10:29:00.002+13:00

library services for distance learners
Anne Ferrier-Watson
abstract (pdf)

[Argh, network cut out in this room.]

History of Virtual Education Reference Desk (VERD)
1997 - BTeaching started distance services
2000 - need to streamline processes so VERD was created
2008(?) - Moodle has taken VERD to a new level

Philosophy to "give students the fishing line, not the fish"
Over 3000 education students are enrolled in online papers

1.75 EFTS supporting VERD. Busier at some times than others.

Asynchronous service - answering Monday to Friday. Many questions asked have been answered before so they've got an ongoing work in progress of making previous answers easy to find

5 sections:

Request items or information (can fill out a webmail form or ask for help on forums - 7500 views in the last 12 months)
Library FAQs (started as answers to easy common queries; now starting to use it for standard answers for more complex questions too)
Help with APA referencing ("our favourite section" - laughter - 2500 views in semester B - a few pdf guides and a link to the forums too)
Catalogue guides (not high use - many just use it for the link to the library catalogue; starting to think of putting in video tutorials)
Guide to finding journal articles (high use - includes videos for using ebsco, proquest, indexNZ; also pdf guides to various databases)

Jing screen capture software - easy to use, free-as-in-beer but not open source.

Feedback from students includes:
"The video instruction is fantastic too as I find it easier to do something if I see it in action."
"now if I forget a step I can use [the online tutorials] to find the right path again"
"you are like the referencing angel"

Can look at individual activity reports so when someone asks a question you can see where they've already looked for help.

Can look at overall activity reports to give an idea of where most activity is happening and most work is best spent.

Q: What's providing the format?
A: Working around the Moodle format. Not actually a fan about the format but it's the best they can do.
Suggestion: Worked with McGovern to create ManyAnswers.co.nz which can be put on your own website. (Me: ? Not sure whether she meant the whole manyanswers service or the platform to support your own FAQ.)

Q: Forums available to all students or just distance?
A: Available to those enrolled in those papers.

Q: Are guides available on public site or just private forums?
A: Some static guides (not interactive) are available on the public website. Looking at redeveloping some of this too.

Q: re answering repeat questions
A: Some refer back to previous answers, some move them into FAQs and refer there.

Libraries on the agenda

2009-10-13T09:56:00.001+13:00

Claudia Lux

Kris Wehipeihana is covering this better than me. A few highlights:

www.ifla.org has a Success Stories section which she asks NZ libraries to add to as it's important for their advocacy functions. Success stories show how libraries develop and support the information society. They help networking and partnering; show the value of libraries; help you measure the impact your work has for a student, teacher, administrator....

Transparency - what is a librarian doing all day? Do our users know? Can we explain it? Do we explain it?

Libraries aren't visible to city planners. Need to explain what we do, advocate. Start marketing

no complaints - don't go up to the minister saying "My library leaks and no-one's coming and I need more money and more space!" - just puts off the minister. Instead try "I read your speech, it was great, and even though you don't know it, it has a lot to do with libraries, I'd love to talk about how we can support your work." Next time s/he remembers your name and that you're a nice person. :-)
good news "Great news! We've got so many people coming into the library that there's no room for them all to sit down!"
surprise your customer
define successful methods
present your normal work differently

Use success stories and pictures to convince your politician. One picture, or a short video, says more about your activity than a long report, and sticks in their mind better. (NB politicians love children so lots of pictures of children. Young adults are harder...)

What can you do?

shape the picture
collect arguments
know developments in advance
connect to the library association
help analyse possibilities
show best practice
make demands
never stop

Successful advocacy needs training and is ongoing.

Q: Is it time to update the public libraries manifesto?
A: yes

Q: re what steps we could take to support indigenous / tangata whenua (question was more involved/specific but I lost part of it)
A: Claudia promises to bring this to the governing board at IFLA. Applause from the audience.

Q: Why be involved in IFLA - how would home community benefit?
A: If you don't contribute who will? We're privileged speaking English so easier to have influence. (Three very active NZ chairs already. We're "small and smart".) Bringing many ideas, big and small, back to your library. And shows you and your library how well you're really doing.

Making IT work for you

2009-10-13T09:05:00.001+13:00

Warwick Grey and Corin Haines
Warwick from HP - never set out to do IT but fell into it.

Tech trends 2009

netbook adoption accelerates
built-in wireless broadband usage widens
unified communications increase
online data backups proliferate
social media becomes strategic at home and in business
online video gets cheaper and there's more of it
video conference solutions expand
hosted software applications
online presence gap widens as more customers use online search before they buy

"My young life was in black and white and nothing was what I chose to watch."
1970 calculator
1971 microprocessor
1974 colour television
1989 world of DOS
2008-2030 pervasive computing environment

Instead of building infrastructure should build community
create content -> create loyalty
enable transactions -> enable self-service
capture eyeballs -> capture experts
integrating applications -> integrating channels

Launching new fashion laptops - colours and imprinted designs

Increasingly looking at sharing information with many people at once instead of one-on-one email, video conferencing.

Cloud services = shared under virtualised management accessible over the internet
Social networking = staying connected with more people in more places

Corin:
People marketing business on Twitter - fast growing network.
Demonstrates a video recorded yesterday on a Flip camera and uploaded to YouTube
Demonstrates mash-up he made of out-of-copyright music from World War I with photos National Library uploaded to Flickr Commons

Warwick
Skype has been released for phones
Should be putting RSS options into news we provide
Bookmarking and sharing - even bookabach gives you 55 options to bookmark their pages
Mashup with Google Maps lets you show where you've run
Have a facebook site for your library!

Touch-screens are getting big - demonstrates touch notebook moving things on screen, magnifying video, etc - "Windows 7 is like Vista without the brain cancer"

Video showing touch-screen possibilities - fingerpainting on screen, putting together a jigsaw puzzle with a moving image, put camera on touch screen and photos appear wirelessly on the screen.

(NB I've left out most of the plugs for HP-specific technology :-)

Shows Windows Movie Maker - looks fairly similar to iMovie.

Engage customrs where conversations/activity is already taking place
Empower your internal advocates (HP measures who's most positive in their twittering about HP)
Accelerate and efforts across your organisation

Message from the Minister / LIANZA Awards

2009-10-12T17:46:00.001+13:00

Starting with a message from Nicky Wagner MP, speaking on behalf of the Minister responsible for National Library and Archives NZ, Nathan Guy. (He's in a budget meeting today.) Library has signficant contribution to make socially, economically, etc, to country's wellbeing. Driving goal of this govt is to grow the economy. Recognise difficult financial times.

Rollout of ultra-fast broadband network throughout NZ. Improving schools and frontline services to public. Need to lift educational standards. Focus on literacy and numeracy.

Another key driver is innovation including research.

Services we provide are important to society; the public expects more and more. Glad that our profession is addressing questions of services vs technology. National Library is a leading centre in preserving documentary heritage of New Zealand. Minister is keen to see more people engaging with collections housed there.

So much depends on easy access to information. Libraries make quality NZ information accessible. National Library has done groundbreaking work. Demonstrates value of cross-govt, cross-sector collaboration. Collaboration within library profession makes a lot of sense in these difficult times. APNK and EPIC are great examples.

[Pronounces LIANZA as L.I.A.N.Z.A.]

Believes librarians are very much at the front line of research, engendering a love of reading, developing new innovation.

Need more integration so NZ data is available to those who need it. Need more collaboration for efficiency and to be active at national level. Need to think carefully how sector as a whole can grow from here.

---

Warm up comedy act by "Pedro Haust" and "Pia Haust" collectively making up "The Hausts" (pronounced "The Hosts") with fake Spanish accents. Um. Well, Everyone Knows(TM) that foreign accents are inherently funny, right, because they're spoken by foreigners; but I'd at least have left out the jokes about Tourette's Syndrome and bulimics. --<wince> And I would like to hope that the final joke aimed at Barbara Garriock was done with her foreknowledge and consent.

---

LIANZA awards
2009 LIANZA Award Recipients

Rua Mano Award
Ariana Tikao

John Harris Award
Mary Ronnie for Freedom to Read
Moira Fraser for Parliametary Library 150 Years

Crown Records Management Scholarship
Anderina McLean
Adrian Jenkins

YBP/Lindsay and Croft Award for Collection Services
Margaret Ferguson

Nielsen Bookdata Research Award
Paula Legel & Kris Wehipeihana

MLIS Annual Research Prize
Highly Commended Award
[Missed the two names as we had no slides]

3M Award (see my earlier post)
3rd - Auckland City Libraries for Active Movement
2nd - Nelson District Libraries for Top of the South
1st - National Library/Marlborough District Library for Aotearoa People's Network Kaharoa

How to run a podcast poetry competition

2009-10-12T16:15:00.000+13:00

without an in-house IT infrastructure to support it
Rachel Fisher, Kris Wehipeihana
abstract (pdf)

Covering podcasting; working outside IT infrastructure; social media.

Using Blogger, Twitter, Google Calendar. But if your team isn't keen it won't happen.

Linking Montana Poetry Day activities to something that could be pushed out through to school activities. Wrote it quickly.

Clause 4 of terms and conditions - that poems are shared under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND. No questions or complaints from users.

Didn't have any speaker/microphone/sound cards/file space at all. Most work done on Rachel's own time and own computer. Used free software. Some shortcomings but advantages outweighed disadvantages.

Blogger as easy to use. Free templates can be customised but not easy if you're not familiar with html. However there's lots of instructions available online especially as Blogger is so popular.

Audacity - all you need to know is the location of record, stop, pause, play. Advanced functionality available if you're technically minded. Save-to-mp3 is an extra file so awkward step for users. Comes included in APNK package.

File hosting - two downsides include: sites require you to sign in regularly or you'll lose your account. Can also impose file storage and file size limits (but probably not a problem unless your competition is really popular).

Stat counters (eg StatCounter) lets you know how many people are visiting, whether they're repeat visitors, where they come from again. Google Analytics is another one they use and will use in future.

Last year people could only enter if they had their own equipment; now they have stuff through APNK it's opened things up for everyone. APNK should be self-managing but customers still ask librarians for help, so librarians require training.

Rodney Libraries uses a yahoo email address because their staff email has size limits - it also ties in with their Flickr account.

File hosting sponsor this year is Liquid Silver.

Ideal set up would have dedicated website where customers can fill in mandatory information and upload files directly. Computers would have all equipment and software preloaded; staff would be fully trained. Significant relationships with local schools to combine curriculum areas (technology, english, etc). One school in Rodney catchment area has more classes participating each year.

Intends to maintain presence in web2 sites so as to be in a good position when demand for these services increases.

First year had 32 entries; second year 56. (50 entries in short story competition, for comparison.)

Tim Spalding asked whether they've looked at sites where people can post poems and have them critiqued.

Some difficulties in first year of competition re dialup - but it could be done, so don't let dialup be your excuse not to do it!

Kei hea te taunga mai o aku kupu?

2009-10-12T15:18:00.001+13:00

(Where will my words rest?)
Terehia Biddle
abstract (pdf)

Archives NZ is official repository for Treaty of Waitangi and other historical documents.

Relationship objectives with Māori

Can act with respect but question is whether Māori feel respected.
Trust and have confidence
[missed two]

Obligations

Treaty obligations
legislative requirement under Public Records Act 2005
Waitangi 262 claim (flora and fauna) with respect to cultural and intellectual property issues - brought against Crown by 6 iwi asserting Crown breach of Treaty by agreeing to international agreements that affect indigenous flora and fauna and intellectual property rights, eg commercialising sacred knowledge

Building blocks

Statement of intent - responsiveness to Māori as a strategic priority
business planning documents and performance measures have sections covering responsiveness to Māori
Individual performance-based reviews from the general manager down

It's hard to build a relationship with Māori if internal infrastructure isn't set up to support it.

In last 5 years has been an increase in the number of iwi requests seeking assistance to support their efforts to access information; increase in number of iwi/hapū organisations seeking solutions in management of iwi records and information. Recognise that there's an ongoing expense attached to maintaining records. Looking at working collaboratively. Some movement from full repatriation to virtual repatriation.

Important to have conversation first rather than make assumptions about where conversation is to go. Easy to forget the large population group you're serving when you're dealing with just a few people face-to-face.

Opportunities

establish precedent for future Māori-ArchivesNZ relationships
create win-win situations between ArchivesNZ and Māori
Hands-on cultural awareness training for staff
...

Projects they've worked with:

Kai Tahu - pilot project selecting items that local hapū Ngāti Tūahuriri had. Turned out they had a system set up so ArchivesNZ only needed to create hyperlinks and they could make sure that information that was only for their people would remain secure; whereas information that could be shared with the public could be made public. Was some concern about how much information should be shared. Some didn't feel comfortable sharing it; others pointed out that their people lived across the globe. So now have mechanisms in place for those who can prove whakapapa.

Currently Taranaki Reo revitalisation Project. -Language identified as being in state of decline. Identifying and digitising records.

Tūhoe project to identify historical records re land area now known as Te Urewera National Park.

Common themes:

one size doesn't fit all
Māori are clear of where they want to be positioned in the work, discussions and decision-making process
aware of significant role ArchivesNZ can play in Treaty claims
want to be part of solution

Guiding principles

build a strong relationship with māori
competency in te reo and (local) tikanga adds to credibility
kaumātua provide guidance and advice - to get into communities, and talk to people, kaumātua open the door
iwi determine the scope for the research
iwi determine the criteria for quality of data - needs to be Māori-intuitive
involved in all phases of project, determining milestones, etc
iwi-nominated kairangahau (researchers) are appointed to do the work.
protocols re distribution of product rests with iwi
work conducted in a culturally appropriate way
database that identifies items of significance needs to comply with ArchivesNZ standards and meet needs of iwi
don't compromise originals
be clear about what is possible
when necessary, say no - gently
manage expectations and relationships well

Questions
Q re breakdowns in relationship
A: it occurs mostly when we let our ego get in the way and aren't willing to say we're wrong. Need to keep focus not on ourselves / our department, but on people we're wanting to encourage.

Q re records that might be borderline on what should and shouldn't be accessible
A: records will always be controversial, it's a matter of interpretation, fortunately iwi-nominated researchers pull out only records that they believe are of significance to them, so it helps that they're the ones making the decision.

Q re pay of researchers
A: Up to recently salary came from ArchivesNZ baseline budget. The researchers come in and learn all the jobs there so leave with good experience too.

Q re whether there's any homogenisation of Māori viewpoint vs iwi differences in a national organisation
A: Not their job to make judgement, it's about each iwi. Each iwi have their own mana.

Q re Māori-intuitive finding aids
A: Have been working on this since the Tainui project - this became the platform on which they can improve so they now have a template. 16 fields to complay with professional standards, now have added to this fields to include names of people and places mentioned in the records. Have tried to keep it simple as are looking to the database being usable by pākehā colleagues.

Copyright vs community in the age of computer networks

2009-10-12T14:36:00.001+13:00

Richard Stallman (homepage)
abstract (pdf)

Brenda Chawner, chair, says Stallman is "The most influential people no-one has ever heard of."

Talking about whether the idea of free software extends to other works. User deserves:

Freedom 0 - to run the program

1 - to look at source code, verify what it's doing, fix it to make it work as you need

2 - to help friends by sharing software with them

3 - to help community by publishing changes to software

If one of these freedoms is missing then it's proprietary. This keeps users divided and helpless.

Text isn't the same exactly as software - no source code. So mostly affected by copyright. This has developed along with copying technology. Originally had no economy of scale - ten copies took 10 times as long as 1 copy. Copies were made in a decentralised manner. Anyone who had a copy and wanted to copy it could. --Unless the local ruler didn't like the book, "but that's not copyright, it's something closely related, which is censorship".

Printing press has economy of scale. Took time to set up, required money and skill, but once it was set up you could produce many many copies. So copies were made in a centralised manner. And this is when copyright began. In England it began as a method of censorship in 1500s (originally to censor Protestants, then to censor Catholics). You'd apply to crown and get perpetual monopoly to publish a title. This was abolished, and in the 1680s reestablished as a temporary monopoly for the author of 14 years. It was a means of promoting writing.

When US Constitution was written they decided that Congress could optionally adopt a copyright law in order to promote progress, and it must last a limited time.
In time of digital technology, one-off copying has benefitted so we're back almost to the time of decentralised copy-making. Copyright is no longer adapted to the technology. It's now a restriction on the public, controlled by publishers in the name of authors. "It's no longer easy to enforce, no longer uncontroversial, and no longer beneficial."

Copyright is supposed to encourage authors to write more - but how does extending copyright in 1998 encourage the authors of the 1920s to write more? And the value of 20 years of copyright 70 years in our future is too small to actually change anyone's actions. The real reason of the law is that certain companies have lucrative monopolies and want them to continue.

Originally copyright regulated certain activities while others were simply allowed. Now, companies want to set up a pay-per-universe by turning our computers against us using DRM. First by technology, until people figured out the formats and published free software - then by law, by criminalising this software. Then by technology again. Stallman says that a conspiracy to control our computers in this way should be prosecuted to price-fix.

AACS was broken and the key was published (illegally) by being included in a photo with cute puppies so it got shared faster than it could be deleted. (cf also this story)

Blue Ray. "Corrupt disks" will play in audio players but not on a computer. Sony discs install a program to take control of your computer, to hide itself and resist deletion - these are crimes. Also included GNU code which was on a GNU copy-left license - which Sony didn't comply with. People sued Sony but focused on these specific crimes instead of on their evil purpose.

Fortunately music DRM is receding. But we're seeing a renewed effort to impose DRM on books. First by taking away freedoms from ebooks; second by convincing people to switch from print books to ebooks.

Publisher wanted to get Stallman's biography as an ebook to promote their line. He said only if it's not encrypted. They wouldn't do it. Eventually he found a publisher which would.

He thinks probably the reason there's so many stories about electronic ink is companies want us to get excited about ebook readers - which have DRM, backdoors, spyware. Eg Amazon knows everything you've bought on the Kindle. You can't lend it, can't sell it to a used bookstore, and Amazon can delete your book (which they've done with 1984).

"They want to create a world where nobody lends books to anybody anymore."

Encourages us to spread the message that by using these devices, "Other readers will no longer be your friend" because we'll be acting like a jerk by having them in a non-sharable form.

He's happy with an ebook reader which runs free software, no DRM, doesn't have backdoors, restrict your files. It's possible to have such a thing. But the companies pushing ebooks "are doing it to attack our freedom and we mustn't stand for that."

Stallman says:

Copyright should last 10 years from date of publication. The publication cycle has got shorter and shorter - almost all books are remaindered in 2 years and out of print in 3. (Was once on a panel with a fantasy author who said 10 years was intolerable - it should be 5! He wanted to distribute his own book.)
Functional works (software, recipes, educational, reference) should be free - these are necessary for your life. (Imagine if the government tried to stamp out "recipe piracy". Points out that attacking ships is bad, sharing with people is good, so should reject propoaganda use of term 'piracy'.) Works will still get made - cf recipes, Wikipedia, etc.
Works about what people thought - eg diaries, letters, memoirs - should allow noncommercial redistribution of exact copies.
After 10 years goes into public domain and you can publish your modifications.
Remixing snippets from many places should be legal outright.
Sharing copies on the internet should be legal.

"To attack sharing is to attack society."

Also proposes:

Distribute tax revenue directly to artists to promote the arts. This means not in linear proportion to popularity. Based on popularity, yes (eg through polling) and then take the cube root - so 1000x more popular would get 10x as much money.
Voluntary payments - micropayments so you could send a dollar anonymously to the artist of the song you're listening to. You could get a certificate of having supported your favourite artists as encouragement. Make friendly advertising campaigns encouraging "push the button". (Me: make it a big red button and everyone will want to push it!) Need a good system.

3M Award for "Innovation in Libraries" Finalists Presentation

2009-10-12T12:03:00.001+13:00

(Presentations available online)

Auckland City Libraries with the Active Movement programme - biggest problem now is where to park the buggies because it's so popular. Including video of snippets of the sessions including bubble-blowing. :-) SPARC will sponsor this in 50 libraries across greater Auckland area, starting today.

Aotearoa People's Network Kaharoa (on whose wireless network those of us with laptops are connected!) "Kaharoa" is the largest of the nets traditionally used for fishing. Many stories of word-of-mouth bringing in huge numbers of new users to libraries.

Top of the South - "the prow" referring to the canoe that Maui fished up and which became the South Island of New Zealand. Local providers used. Community continually adding content, comments. Many plans for website to add functionality (RSS, GIS) and content.