The fact that we have over 1500 followers is good only in that it increases the chances of us having meaningful conversations with people. This is important because many of our followers are actually people in DC.

I was impressed with an exchange I noticed the other day and would like to show you.

Twitter user Tamikalashelle registers a complaint that she couldn’t find some info on our website and has a library question:

A DCPL twitterer (there are a few of us) responds in a pretty much classic “we’re here listening to you on Twitter” way:

This response evidently worked for her. She went from having a gripe with the library and saying negative things to being excited about the library and a vigorously retweeteing our stuff:

I’m not quite sure how to measure the effectiveness of a library’s presence on Twitter but as long as I keep seeing people communicating with the library and helping to amplify our voice it seems worth our time.

Is Facebook Really The Point? by Casey Bisson

It is essential that we build social features into our libraries. Comments, easy linkability (short, sensical URLs), and findability in search engines are must haves in our systems. But that isn’t enough. We also need outstanding librarians to breath life into them.

Library 2.0 Debased by John Blyberg

Of course, that means we have to have a working framework to begin with that compliments and adheres to our tradition of solid, proven librarianship. In other words, when we use technology, it should be transparent, intuitive, and a natural extension of the patron experience. If it can’t be transparent, then it should be so overwhelmingly beneficial to the user that it is canonized not by the techies, but the users themselves.

One thing I’d like to highlight is that both posts seem to be begging libraries to provide authentic online social experiences for patrons. I don’t think John’s idea of offering technology that is a “natural extension of the patron experience” can occur without the use of technology being a natural extension of Casey’s “outstanding librarian.” The outstanding librarian can’t just understand the importance of the read/write web on a theoretical level. The outstanding librarian must be a participant.

“This stuff can’t be faked” is another way to state this. Faking it, like dabbling with a social networking site (”simply thrusting a MySpace page in their face”), doesn’t recognize the deep and disruptive nature of social technology that John mentions in the beginning of his piece. He doesn’t explicitly mention this disruptive nature again, but make the implication when he raises the issue of “thorough recalibration of process, policy, physical spaces, staffing…”

Like a wise man once said, “Let’s get serious!”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/d_vdm/509996632/

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On Dec. 13, 2006, TIME named us all Person of the Year. The cover read, “You Control the Information Age. Welcome to Your World.” It should come as no surprise that this declaration set the Web atwitter. Some people saw TIME’s choice as a validating instance of mainstream media recognizing the shift occurring in the production of information and online content. For younger people, the people we’re teaching in our school libraries, there was no shift to recognize. Many of them have never known an information landscape without things such as blogs, YouTube, MySpace, and instant messaging. They’ve always known the Web to be not just for reading content but for writing content as well.

Let’s not mistake their acquaintance with Web 2.0 for expertise. While our students might be able to click through Web sites with ease and change the layouts of their MySpace profiles in the blink of an eye, there are still many things we can teach them about the read/write Web. There are also many ways we can teach our students using the read/write Web. Underlying these opportunities is the possibility to use the read/write Web to discuss the issues of authorship, authenticity, and the production of information—all topics for rich discussions of information literacy.

This article will provide a cursory review of some of the best online tools you can use to excite teachers and to prepare students to be active agents in today’s participatory culture.

Start a Conversation

Don’t think of Weblogs as a certain type of Web site. Certainly there are plenty of blogs that fill the “online diary” stereotype, but we’re not necessarily concerned with these here. Think of Weblogs from the back end. Blog systems are powerful pieces of software that allow nontechies to publish things on the Web. That highlights their potential a bit more, doesn’t it?

Ease of use isn’t the only reason you should employ blogs. An important reason is the availability of interactivity. Usually blog posts are enabled to receive responses through comments. Blog posts and comments are a great way to get students talking about books online, and this is already taking place in commercial venues. See the Readz section of the tween blogs site AllyKatzz, for example. The blog Student Reflections on Night by Elie Wiesel is an example of students responding to posts about a book through comments. Students can also use blogs for creative writing purposes. They might really enjoy writing a blog from the perspective of a book’s character or historical figure. Whatever content they are putting online, they are sure to be engaged with the process of blogging more than the process of turning in a document to a teacher.

Google’s Web-based Weblog system, Blogger, is a good place to start because you can have a free blog up and running in less than 10 minutes. If you’re at a loss for what to put online, use content that you’re already preparing for use on paper. Better yet, put your book talks into text and post them online. Like most online tools, there are a variety of privacy settings you can explore to best suit your needs. If you want to go beyond blogger, check out Edublogs, which is a free Weblog hosting service for educators and students. The software it uses is the current darling of the blog world: WordPress. If you get serious about integrating Weblogs into your curriculum, you (or your school’s IT department) can download your own version of WordPress and host it on your school’s server. This is the most technically difficult solution, but it will afford you the most control over your blogs.

No More FrontPage!

School librarians often make Web pages for teachers who want some of their units to be online. Skill and time restraints have often forced school librarians to use the now-discontinued Microsoft FrontPage to accomplish this task. The increased usability of wikis—Web pages that can be quickly and easily edited—have pushed FrontPage further into obsolescence.

Wikis are one of the best tools to increase collaboration among school librarians, teachers, and students. School librarians can hold instructional sessions and show teachers and students how to edit wikis. Thus, the task of making a Web page for a teacher’s project becomes an opportunity to empower teachers and provides an information literacy lesson for students. Other uses for wikis include using them as a Web notebook with which to collect links and information, as a brainstorming space, and as a way to make easy to update pathfinders.

There are different levels of protection and security you can give your new wiki. The popular and free wiki site PBwiki.com allows users make their wikis private by password protecting them. Only people with the wiki’s password can see and make changes to the wiki.

Pretty as a Picture

At first glance, Flickr is a photo-sharing Web site through which people can easily upload photos to the Web. Looking further, you’ll notice that Flickr is a large pool of user-generated content and an interesting example of everyday people cataloging information and working with metadata … for fun! Users can tag the photos they upload, creating a searchable keyword index to the photos on the site. Flickr aggregates all of these tags and assembles them into a tag cloud, which is a visual representation of the tags used on the site. While students might be bored to tears if you lecture them about formal taxonomies versus folksonomies, there are still a number of ways you can use Flickr in the LMC. Flickr can be searched by tags, or full text, including photo titles and annotations. A Flickr scavenger hunt might be a good way to talk about search strategies and the reliability of user-generated content. Photos can be organized into sets on Flickr. Having students upload images to Flickr, group them into sets, and provide text annotation is a way to get them more interested in presenting their book reports. Use Pictobrowser and your Flickr account to easily create an online slide show of photos. There are many tools available at fd’s Flickr toys that you and students can use to make magazine covers, motivational posters, and more out of Flickr photos.

Buddying Up to IMers

In schools, instant messaging (IM) is often maligned as a social distraction. It is indeed a channel for powerful social interaction, a fact that has secured a place for IM in young people’s life toolkit. For many of them, IM is the preferred mode of communication; it is as important as—or even more important than—phone and email correspondence. Some libraries are responding to this by being available to communicate with their users via IM. This meets IMers where they are and removes a barrier to service.

People who IM the library often add the library’s screen name to their buddy lists, which are lists of online contacts. Libraries become the “buddies” of IMers. What a great relationship to cultivate! When libraries are on a student’s buddy list, the library has a near-permanent presence in his or her online experience. Along with friends and family, the library is there as a trusted source of information.

One of the best things about starting IM in your library is that the software is free. AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) is the most popular IM service for young people, so be sure to register for an account on their Web site. You can download the AIM software, but if you don’t want to bother (or it isn’t allowed in your institution!), try using a no-download Web-based service such as meebo. If all forms of IM are blocked in your school, you’ll have to have a conversation with the IT department and school administration.

Be the Change

School librarians wanting to start new, interactive Web projects often face resistance from school administration. Is there an effective way to convince risk-averse administration to green light your project? Tim Lauer, principal of Lewis Elementary in Portland, Ore., highlights the fact that “school librarians are in a unique position to help students, teachers, and administrators understand the challenges and opportunities that present themselves as technology and communication tools change and take on a more social nature. Ignoring these changes will not make them go away, so it is imperative that we help our students learn the responsible use of these technologies.” It is this urgency that needs to be expressed to resistant colleagues. If we continue to let other librarians, teachers, and administrators stick their heads in the sand, we’re not successfully filling our roles of information professionals.

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Choices, Choices! Do I Wiki or Blog?

Blogs and wikis are both tools that enable people to get content online. Once you play with both tools, you’ll soon discover that blogs are good for displaying content in order and archiving that content. Wikis don’t automatically archive content like blogs, and it is easier to keep certain content
in one place. When using blogs, new content pushes older content off the page into the archives. Generally speaking, blogs are good for always having current, different information on a page. Wikis are more Web-like and are good for having multiple, linked pages that hold specific content. Looking at the Wikipedia page for a certain topic and then a blog that covers the same topic will highlight the differences.

Resources for Keeping Up With Teen and Tech Trends

“2007 Horizon Report” by The New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE
“Highlights six technologies that the underlying research suggests will become very important to higher education over the next one to five years.” Includes discussions of social software, virtual worlds, and user-created content.

“Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century,” by Henry Jenkins

“Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants,” by Marc Prensky
A classic essay on the learning habits of young people.

Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online, by Anastasia Goodstein
This book cuts through hype and details how young people are using the Web.

Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture, by Henry Jenkins
Not only valuable for its content about the tech side of participatory culture, this book examines fandom, a realm in which many teens enter.

Ypulse: Media for the Next Generation
News and information about teens and tweens geared toward “media and marketing professionals” is very useful for librarians wanting to gain insight into the preferences of people that age.

Pew Internet Studies
These reports are useful for gauging what teens are doing online. The statistics provided can help you make the case for interactive and engaging Web projects.

-Social Networking Websites and Teens

-Teen Content Creators and Consumers

-Teens and Technology: Youth are Leading the Transition to a Fully Wired and Mobile Nation

While our students might be able to click through Web sites with ease and change the layouts of their MySpace profiles in the blink of an eye, there are still many things we can teach them about the read/write Web. There are also many ways we can teach our students using the read/write Web. Underlying these opportunities is the possibility to use the read/write Web to discuss the issues of authorship, authenticity, and the production of information—all topics for rich discussions of information literacy. This article provides a review of some of the best online tools you can use to excite teachers and to prepare students to be active agents in today’s participatory culture.

What she didn’t mention though, is that along with the iPod touch’s wifi capability, the iTunes Music Store got wifi capability too. ITMS junkies no longer have to slog over to their computers to buy music. Apple also will be delivering content through Starbucks. The new iPods will provide the details of the song that you’re listening to in Starbucks and of course make it easy for you to buy it. This Starbucks feature is cute, maybe clever, but isn’t as significant as the general concept of wireless delivery of purchased content to iPods.

If this move ushers in the age of anywhere on-demand download of music (which seems eventually inevitable) it will widen the gap between the soon to be normal way of doing things and the library way of delivering content. And will our users feel like crossing this big gap to visit us?

I read about this right before I read Jessamyn’s post (with comments worth reading) about Overdrive, audiobooks, and the iPod. I love her attitude about making the most of a crappy DRM situation and using the inevitable patron iPod denial as a teachable moment about free audiobooks online.

Similarly, I doubt libraries will be circing titles to patron iPhones anytime soon. Instead we can tell them about Project Gutenberg and iPhone formatted PDFs from manybooks.net.

I can’t remember if I mentioned that towards the end of April I was up in Vancouver, BC giving a talk about social networking sites in the context of intellectual freedom. Since then, my great guide to Vancouver, Heather DeForest, and now another Canadian librarian have emailed about a Facebook controversy going on in Ontario. Shannon LaBelle sums it up well so I’m just going to publish part of her email here!

Last week, Facebook was blocked on Ontario government computers. Here’s the story that appeared in the online edition of the Globe and Mail about it on May 3, 2007:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070503.wfaceboo0503/
BNStory/Technology/

Interestingly, shortly after the blocking was reported, the Globe and Mail had a story about how Canadian Members of Parliament in the federal government are using Facebook to connect with their constituents:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070503.wl_facebook0504/
BNStory/Technology

Today, Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, shared his comments on this issue on his blog:

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1925/135

There seems to be a disconnect similar to the one going on in the head of Illinois Senator Matt Murphy (R).

Thanks for the heads up, ladies!

This time crunch highlights the value of using a weblog as a Content Management System for a small library website. The North Plains Public Library Website is a (not extremely customized) WordPress install and it does just what it needs to do. There are a few other tricksy things going on in the site too. The library tour is powered by PictoBrowser and Flickr. The Best Sellers page is the NYT Books feed rendered as HTML.

More than the time saving web gizmos that make the site, I really enjoy the NPPL Staff page and am hoping to get some photos up there at some point. Staff were not reluctant in the least to share a bit about themselves and it makes for a richer website.

One thing that was great about the process of developing this small website is that it was not a case of thinking of a neat new way to make a library website. WordPress was just the tool that made the most sense (though of course it isn’t ideal). Another web technology found its way into the library’s work flow for the same reason. Using a Google Spreadsheet to organize the collaboration of multiple employees that are infrequently in the same room works so well. No longer do multiple staff members need to keep track of multiple documents that get revised monthly. It is all centralized for us to access at will. Ideally everyone would have their own google account, but for now staff are sharing the library’s main login. Simple.

I hope this mini case study of a time strapped library helps expose the “I don’t have time for social software” excuse to be just that: an excuse for not wanting to expand and learn.

After lunch I got a tour of the library, which has reference service, internet stations, and a reading room open to the public. I snapped some pics of the neat stuff, including a huge card catalog, and it is all in a flickr set called visiting oregon state library.

I haven’t used Meebo or other web IM clients much, so I’m not sure if embedding and HTML image or movie or piece of malicious code would be a problem, but something tells me the IM people have it figured out already.

What interested me most about this post, and others about patrons changing font colors within QP by (perhaps) writing some HTML and leaving tags open, is how vendor driven VR products are seen as safe and instant messaging is seen as insecure.

There are a number of reasons why librarians started believing this, but one reason I want to bring up is the not so subtle ageism I see present in many libraries. Because of their age and associated lack of power, it is easy for libraries to manage their behavior. Even though both groups might be participating in the same activities, librarians can much more easily act on biases they have about young people than they can act on the the biases they have about other people. There’s no difference in one patron emailing friends, and another IMing friends. Both are legitimate library activities, and should maybe even be encouraged. “Libraries? Oh yeah, that place where I connect with my friends.” That has a nice ring to it.

It is only possible for librarians to take issue with web activities like gaming, IM, blogging, and MySpace because these things are (incorrectly) seen as the territory of kids. If these things were introduced to the library world not as things that “those crazy Millennials are doing” but rather as new information trends, I doubt librarians would have been able to take such objection. Just because younger people were among the early adopters of these technologies does not give libraries the right to treat them as illegitimate.

Back to CustomizeGoogle. This little guy removes Google ads from search results, gmail, gcal, and other apps in the Google suite. We’ve all become good at ignoring these ads, but the pages are much easier to look at without the extra clutter. One other nifty thing it can do (among a bunch of other stuff) is add links to other search tools to the top of a Google search.

CustomizeGoogle might be useful for school librarians and teachers that want to get students using these tools (because they are free, or to expose them to the latest and greatest) but don’t necessarily care for making those ads part of the curriculum. Then again, is preventing students from seeing real world ads not preparing them for real world web surfing? Is taking the google ads off of a public access computer in a public library censorship?

I don’t have the answers to those questions, but CustomizeGoogle is still a great way to filter your own internet experience!

Steven Bell and I wrote some skits for the Soaring to Excellence teleconference that we did. COD filmed professional actors performing our astute works and now I have copies of them. Here’s the one on IM.

Listen for my favorite line. In response to kids in the library a librarian says, “I saw them laughing!”

IM is just for kids.
Sure, IM is popular with young people, but the September 2004 Pew Internet/American Life report How Americans Use IM [pdf] reports that 53 million adults were using IM. At the time, 24% of them were doing more IM than email. No doubt this has grown.

IM is going to destroy our computers (a favorite IT chorus).
There were some problems with Microsoft’s MSN Messenger leaving computers a bit at risk, though I haven’t heard of anything lately. But do you know what is an even bigger threat to computers? Web browsers (Internet Explorer in particular). There’s no way that you’ll get rid of browsers, so why is IM verboten? If you want to do IM correctly, you probably won’t be using the AIM/YIM/MSN programs themselves. You’ll use a multi-network program to monitor all networks at once. Trillan and GAIM are good downloadable programs, while meebo requires no download. It lives on the web. It has relatively little interaction with your computer since it is web-based and is therefore all the safer.

We don’t have enough money to do IM.
Unlike virtual reference products from vendors, IM is free. This is one of the reasons why so many people use it. There’s some staff training time involved, which is a cost, but not that much.

Speaking of virtual reference, we’re already doing it with tutor.com / questionpoint / docutek. We don’t need IM.
IM will reach another, larger audience. IMers are enthusiastic about IM. The same can’t be said about web-based chat software. That’s not something people use everyday, and it isn’t something integral to their communication. If you’re worried about reaching patrons that don’t use IM, take a look at meebome. Meebome is a tool that allows non-IMmers to send IMs to someone. Once you customize how you want it to look, you paste a small piece of code into a webpage, and whammo, you’ll have a box in which users can send you IMs. 95% of the user-side function of big VR programs for FREE. You can’t push pages, but people aren’t accustomed to that anyways. There may be less functionalities for *librarians* but this service shouldn’t be in place for our convenience.

The real magic happens when library users add the library’s screen name to their buddy list. Then the library is a presence in their lives whenever they’re online and have their IM program running. Let me repeat that. Through IM, you can be available to your users, among their trusted peers, when they’re operating online. Impossible with big VR products.

We don’t have enough time to do IM.
Time is limited, yes, but training isn’t very difficult. Start in house just playing around, or communicating from workroom to workroom. Everyone will get the hang of it; typing a 100 words per minute isn’t required. Once you go live, you likely won’t get overwhelmed with IMs. If your advertising is that good, you deserve an award. Start with making IM a reference desk duty. Don’t worry, people aren’t going to get mad if you’re helping people online when they walk up as long as you explain what you’re doing. Use those moments to promote your service! If you *do* progress and find that you’re getting more IMs than you can handle on desk, you’ll have the best kind of problem: plenty of people finding your services valuable. With that type of support you can ask for more funding. Being available via IM shows that the library understand trends in information/communication, and is responsive enough to do something about it. This is how libraries stay relevant. Your library has time to devote to remaining relevant, right?

Small bonus
For a list of libraries using IM, check out the Libraries Using IM Reference page on Library Success. There just might be someone from your state you can get to talk to you about their program.

The ideas presented point out how libraries can engage not only their younger users but general community as well. They are a great illustration of how libraries can reach out and, dare I say, be proactive. School librarians can read this and get inspired, and then use it to combat the fears of admin.

Thanks to the bloggers at YALSA for this resource!

One reason why I don’t think that the error is coming from a faulty patron side input comes from a small bit of detective work. The help link at the end of the email leads to a password recovery box. I entered in my email address and never received and email. I *think* the form works because the URL for the page changes, but nothing changes on the page. Not a good user experience, eh David King?

Here’s the latest email directly from my account, spacing and odd left/right carats around URLs intact. Dont read it all because it is long and a bit unwieldy, which I wouldn’t expect from a mostly boilerplate, “We can’t/don’t want to answer your question” document. I want to include it all here to show just how big and hard to read it is. Another reason why I think something is up with their software is because the email answer is also found in the “question history” portion of the email. How does that work?

Yeah, I’m a bit cranky because of my previous bad feelings about QP, but I think the whole thing is odd!

Hello [patron's name]

We suggest that you spend some time searching the Library of Congress online public access catalog (OPAC) to find titles of books that are relevant to your topic. Then you can see if your local library has copies of these books, or can arrange to borrow them through interlibrary loan.

To search the OPAC, go to the Library of Congress home page at: < http://www.loc.gov/ > Click on “Search our Catalogs” or go directly to < http://catalog.loc.gov/ >. Click on either “Basic Search” or “Guided Search.” A “Basic Search” will allow you to search by author, title, subject, call number, keyword, guided keyword, or International Standard Bibliographic Number (ISBN), International Standard Serial Number (ISSN), or Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN). For a “Basic Search,” first you must choose your “Search Type,” and then enter the appropriate information in the search box. A “Guided Search” will allow you to perform a keyword search in specific fields of information, such as title, subject, author, publisher, series, or notes or a wide search in all fields. Boolean searching can be performed using a “Guided Search.”

Before performing your search, please take time to look over either the “Basic Search Tips” or “Guided Search Tips” which provide detailed and specific examples of search strategies. A detailed help guide is also available for all types of searches. The Help link is found at the bottom of each search page.

We also suggest that you discuss your needs with a reference librarian in a nearby library. For help in locating a library in your area, please look at the suggestions on our website at < http://www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/local-library.html >.

You might also wish to search for appropriate websites at The Librarians’ Index to the Internet at < http://lii.org/ >.

The Library of Congress online catalog is a catalog of bibliographic records. Unfortunately, except for very rare instances, full-text books cannot be found online at our website. It is likely that you will need to go to your local library to find the book itself or ask them about interlibrary loan if they do not own the book.

The Library of Congress has digitized a small portion of its collections focusing on graphic materials such as maps, photographs and manuscript materials and which are primarily historical Americana. If you are interested in seeing these materials, please look at our American Memory collections at < http://memory.loc.gov/ >.

There are numerous organizations that offer digitized books, though at present most free online books tend to be “classics,” i.e. older materials no longer covered by copyright. Some publishers also provide electronic versions of contemporary books but there is usually a fee involved (or you may be able to access them through a public or university library which subscribes to them.) You can find links to a number of organizations which offer free access to online books by using the search engine Google.com and typing “full text online books”. Specific sites which you may find helpful are:

Digital Book Index
< http://www.digitalbookindex.com/about.htm >

Online Books Page, University of Pennsylvania < http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/ >

Full Text Books Online, College of Saint Benedict/Saint John’s University (see the “Free of Charge” section) < http://www.csbsju.edu/library/books/online.html >

Internet Public Library Online Book Page < http://www.ipl.org/div/books/index.html >

Full Text Books and Journals, Australian Catholic Universities Libraries (arranged by subject) < http://www.acu.edu.au/library/ACUlibrary/fulltext.htm >

A free service from Bowker < http://www.e-booksinprint.com/bip/default.asp > lets you search for e-books (electronic) and on-demand titles from the “Books in Print” database.

Search E-Books < http://www.searchebooks.com/ > is a search engine for electronic books.

pbp
Reference Specialist
Main Reading Room
Humanities and Social Sciences Division
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave. SE
Washington, DC 20540-4660
202-707-3399

———————–

Question History:

Patron: hello my name is [patron's name] i was wourding if you have any books on the coins or any papers on the coins i can do so i wouldn’t bee so board. from [patron's name]

Librarian 3: We suggest that you spend some time searching the Library of Congress online public access catalog (OPAC) to find titles of books that are relevant to your topic. Then you can see if your local library has copies of these books, or can arrange to borrow them through interlibrary loan. [The email then continues to repeat itself]