I’ve used quite a few library OPACs. I’ve also used and sought out the best of the open web. You’ve probably done the same and like me, you’ve probably been dismayed at the disparity between the two worlds. The open web can be fun and inspiring. Would you say the same of our OPACs? I’ve thought about what OPACs should be like in bits and pieces and decided to assemble them here.

A Problem
Besides all of the small, simple usability enhancements OPACs need (listed way below) a big concern about library websites and OPACs is the distracting transition between the two. You know the routine. Ubiquitous “Click here to search the catalog” links take users from one place to another and create a disjointed experience.

A Solution
One way to provide a seamless experience is to put some OPAC functions into the website, letting people accomplish OPAC tasks without having to leave the library website. In my dream OPAC this go-between is essentially an ecommerce shopping basket but called a backpack or bookshelf in this instance. Just like on amazon.com, when logged in, a patron’s library backpack appears on every library webpage, whether it be the homepage, a book list, or the results list of a search. Any item cover on the website can be dragged and dropped into users’ backpack/bookshelf.

[drag and dropping a book cover - click for big on flickr]

Dragging and dropping triggers a dialog that allows people to get more information, find where an item is located or place a reserve. Here’s a concept of the resulting dialog from dragging an item to a backpack.

[resulting dialog, rest of screen greyed out - - click for big on flickr]

Patrons could be given the chance to customize what happens when they drag an item to their shelf. For instance, the backpack could be set to place reserves automatically. Speaking of customization, patrons should be allowed to choose which metaphor they want to use, a backpack or a bookshelf. The default should be associated with the patron’s age, giving young people backpacks and older people bookshelves.

The library backpack also serves as the basis for user profiles in the OPAC since patrons can choose to share their bookshelves with others. People reading the same book are given access to a dedicated book discussion room that has great content seeded by librarians. (This type of automatic affinity group creation is what happens on 43 Things.) When browsing people’s shared backpacks/shelves (naturally a nice graphical representation with item covers) patrons can drag items into their backpacks to initiate the dialog. User profiles are important because they’re the basis for interactivity. There can be no community without individuals.

Here are some other features that should be part of the interface between our content and our people:

Display
→ A relevant, modern (not looking like a geocities site from 1996) design built using CSS so that users can select from a few themes when logged in.

→ Options for browsing such as:

• Text lists
• Tag clouds
• Item covers

→ Persistent URLs for bibliographic/item records

→ New title lists by title, book covers, genre

→ Display most popular items, highest rated items

→ Bib/Item Record Options

• Favorite it
• Get citation
• Share/email
• Add to book list

User generated content
→ User profiles. This allows people the ability to:

• make comments/reviews
• rate items
• make, display and share book lists
• mark items as favorite, review and display favorites, and see who else has favorite items
• recommend items to others
• record personal checkout history and display it

Finding options
→ single search box, with the option for “advanced” search

→ Ability to search

• just the catalog
• catalog and web
• catalog, web and databases
• web and databases

→ Sort results by relevance, date published, title, author, number of circulations

→ Filtering search options by material type, author, subject, location

→ Summary of book upon mouseover (with the option to turn off) [idea credit: Jenny Levine]

→ Where is this item located? (Display on a map all branches where the book is located, clicking on a branch loads a map of the library)

→ Links to related websites and databases on appropriate bibliographic/item records

→ Movies have a link to imdb.com entry, CDs have a link to allmusic.com entry, books lead to some relevant site or database. Novelist, perhaps?

→ New item RSS feeds galore:

• entire collection
• genre
• material type
• author
• OPAC searches

The feeds should be modular in that the limiting factors should be combinable giving the ability to produce a feed for, say, new audiobooks from author John Steinbeck.

From Theory to Practice
All of this stuff could come together to make a modern, functional OPAC. Some would be easy to do (and in fact has been done) and some slightly more difficult. None of it comes even close to being impossible or too much to accomplish. What’s stopping us?

There is a good chance that an interface approaching this is going to exist within the next 6-12 months, one way or an other. That’s all I can really say except for that I’m pretty thrilled about it.

Please leave further suggestions in a comment. How would you like your OPAC to behave?

[In this post I used images from vufind, brooklyn public library, DC public library, and crumpler bags. I made up that totally lame logo all by myself.]

Kathleen McEvoy of EBSCO commented on my social database mockup with a link to an informational page about EBSCO’s redesign/ next product called EBSCOhost® 2.0.

Just so I’m not accused of constantly bashing library product vendors, I’ll tell you straightaway that despite the fact that “2.0″ appears 17 times on the informational page, the actual interface looks much, *much* nicer. I haven’t used the product yet but from the demo it looks like the default interface is just one search box.

There’s a nifty slider for limiting the date range of search results. The citation tool looks really easy to use with a one click copy to clipboard feature. Adding articles to a folder to save them takes one click. Deleting them is as simple as X-ing them out. These things make me happy.

It’s a bit strange to be praising a company for doing the things that should have been standard all along, but I’ll highlight the effort regardless. I haven’t actually used it yet, but EBSCOhost® 2.0 seems to have addressed some usability issues. This is good. Now they’re free to facilitate interaction and make it social. When I get to actually use the interface I’ll report any additional thoughts.

I’m glad Kathleen commented on the post. This is a *good* example of a library vendor being responsive to the conversations that are taking place.

…

Ok, one more little gripe, not really related to their redesign. Just me being a logo nerd. Why is the “host” in EBSCOhost® in italics when it is text, but not when it is in their logo?

Caleb Tucker-Raymond provides a review of the new widgets available with OCLC’s virtual reference software QuestionPoint at his L-net blog. Titled “QuestionPoint widgets and what to do about them”, his review is entirely fair and instead of simply pointing out the faults of the QP widgets he offers a workaround.

Read his post, but I’ll tell you in short that he likes the way the QP widgets handle patron privacy options.

That’s about it.

What he doesn’t like is that the widget continues to not facilitate the type of collaboration that Oregon’s L-net is all about. The specifics get into some QP geekery concerning the widgets being assigned to only one QP “queue.”

This isn’t a software problem so much as a policy problem. OCLC has made the assumption that our virtual reference services will be very very popular if we implement this kind of interface and the 24/7 Cooperative and the paid OCLC Backup Staff won’t be able to handle it. As a result, the widget functions in the way I described above.

Talk about fear of success! I’ve sent several complaints and suggestions for other strategies to measure and manage this potential problem, but have yet to get a response or acknowledgment from OCLC.

…

The main practical problem with us using the widget is that saying that chat is unavailable isn’t truthful - we’re available 24/7, it’s the widget that is not.

His solution to the problem involves some javascript to hide widgets at certain hours. That is, hide the problem. L-net libraries can either lie to patrons or sweep the vendor’s dirt under the carpet, which renders the widgets less useful. This whole story is another example of the inadequacies of vendor driven solutions to library problems, and perhaps their unwillingness to enter in a dialog and/or be responsive.

Caleb references the open source library chat box project libraryh3lp but doesn’t go so far as to recommend ditching QP and going with an open source solution. Clearly L-net has a decent amount of money and training time invested in QP so I can understand why he might be reluctant.

I just wonder when libraries are going to get fed up with buying things they don’t really want.

How are Canadians so cool? Not only does the Vancouver Public Library have a beautiful, entirely usable website that features library users on the front page, they also have a neat set of programs coming up. Here’s a bit of the press release:

SPEAK UP 2008: MY VIRTUAL WORLD LIBRARY DIALOGUE SERIES EXAMINES E-WORLD

(Vancouver, B.C.) – From February 19 to March 11, the Vancouver Public Library will host a lively exchange of ideas and discussion at Speak Up 2008: My Virtual World, where participants will explore the role of technology in our lives.

During this intriguing four-part series, expert panelists representing a broad range of perspectives on technology in the virtual and real worlds will address four key aspects of e-activity: Online Privacy, Gaming, Information Online and the Social Impacts of Our Virtual World. Participants are invited to share their thoughts about the role of technology in our world and how the rapidly advancing virtual world is increasingly intersecting with our daily lives.

There’s also a nice looking PDF, SpeakUp 2008 Booklet, My Virtual World, that contains info about the events, and lists relevant library books and databases. What an interesting and timely series of talks.

Ok, one more thing about the front page of the VPL website. Take a look at how much above the fold screen real estate they devote to featuring a library user. About one fifth, right? Someone made the decision to be literally user centered in this case, and it works. It illustrates that the library is full of people. It is social.

And each patron quote highlights a related library service.

Their website is newly redesigned, and I know this because they’re offering a one hour “Virtual VPL: The New Library Website” class. Clearly I’m a fan. Way to go VPL!

Here’s an old picture of the lobby of the MLK Library in Washington, DC. I would be a happy person being in that room for 8 hours per day circulating items or providing information. I’m really into Bauhaus architecture and still can’t get over walking around the building. It was designed by Mies van der Rohe and contains a surprising amount of original furniture and fixtures. You might notice the Barcelona pieces in the foreground. Someone may very well be sitting in one of those chairs right now. The fact that the stuff has never been replaced is amazing, and the fact that some of it has lasted this long is also amazing.

DCPL has received a severe amount of neglect, and not just the MLK library. The good news is that it is going though a for real transformation and with these changes, a rebranding process. I’ll be working in DC a bit this year to help plan and evangelize the web aspects of this transformation. We’re first going to do damage control on the current site and fix some of the user hostile things there. I’ve also done a tiny bit of window dressing since its so easy [check out the neighborhood libraries displayed as sets and the info listed on a specific library’ page] , but the larger project is akin to building an entire house. We’ll likely go beyond doing a redesign of the current site and make a leap to an entirely new, great one. Even more than the whiz-bang cool stuff that might end up on the site, perhaps the most interesting part of this process for me will be acting as the bridge between the librarians and IT/web team. Among other things this will include the challenge of developing a workflow that will enable and encourage librarians to contribute content to the website, providing real people with which the public can interact. Hot stuff.

Here’s a current picture from close to the same spot. I couldn’t get the exact same perspective because there’s a bookstore/giftshop where the original sitting area was (and I don’t have that wide of a lens either). I’m sure the librarians wouldn’t have appreciated me climbing on one of the walls to get the shot.

I haven’t been treated to two thoughtful, synchronous posts like this in a long while. They don’t say the exact same thing but they’re complementary and there’s some overlap. Gobs worth thinking about.

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/

It will be no surprise to most of you that I’m all for using WordPress to power library websites. The list of reasons to use it is long, but there’s one thing of which I’m not too terribly fond. The URLs. I dislike when URLs/look/like/this/and/contain a bunch of words and slashes, and WordPress URLs can get to be that way.

Let me say straightaway that WordPress URLs can easily be changed from something ugly and useless like:

http://example.com/?p=130

to something pretty like:

http://www.example.com/130.

That’s what I use on this site just because I’m picky and I like how clean it looks. WordPress URLs can move beyond just being not ugly to being useful and informative. Something like:

http://www.example.com/about.

Great! Moving beyond post numbers and putting content in the URLs is good for spiders indexing sites, right? This even prettier permalink arrangement uses WordPress page titles as URLs. It isn’t difficult to accomplish. Here’s the page in the WordPress Codex on Using Permalinks.

What’s not to like then? Even though they’re pretty, WordPress URLs can get long when pages are nested under other parent pages, especially if the page titles are more than one word. It would be possible to not have any nested pages, but it is useful for the sake of organization. I also do it so only main pages appear on the header of my library’s site.

The URL for the Loan Periods page on the NPPL site isn’t too long:

http://nplibrary.org/about/loan-periods/

but the URL to our Click-A-Story page is way too long. How are we supposed to advertise the program with a URL like this?

http://www.nplibrary.org/kids-and-teens/click-a-story

Yikes! That’s way too unwieldy to put on promotional material.

fun with 301 redirects

To use 301 redirects it is necessary to edit a special file called .htaccess. It is a little tricky making and or finding your .htaccess file, but the Codex has a great section called Where’s my .htaccess file?

My redirects are probably not 100% well formed, but they work. Here’s how I changed the long Click-A-Story URL into http://www.nplibrary.org/clickastory.

Redirect 301 /clickastory http://nplibrary.org/kids-and-teens/click-a-story

It’ll also work wonders for our wireless network adverts. http://nplibrary.org/about/wifi-at-the-nppl changes to http://www.nplibrary.org/wifi.

Redirect 301 /wifi http://nplibrary.org/about/wifi-at-the-nppl

To promote patron access to their accounts we can advertise http://www.nplibrary.org/account instead of using the long Polaris URL.

Redirect 301 /account http://www.wccls.org/polaris/patronaccount/default.
aspx?ctx=1.1033.0.0.1

While our library cooperative did a nice job making the URL http://www.wccls.org/search to lead to a search page, http://www.nplibrary.org/find will take users what I’ve found to be a more reliable search page.

Redirect 301 /find http://www.wccls.org/polaris/Search/default.
aspx?ctx=1.1033.0.0.1

Using these redirects to create URLs that are easy to print, remember and use is the best of both worlds. The real URLs contain good descriptive content for search engine spiders, and patrons have easy URLs. Hurrah.

what’s missing

I’d like to get a bit more fancy and use mod_rewrite for these redirects. mod_rewrite is an Apache server module that can manipulte and rewrite URLs. I tried to use it before and had a bit of success, but I’m not ashamed to say it isn’t easy. Even its own documentation calls it voodoo. With mod_rewrite, I’m pretty sure it would be possible to not only redirect from user-friendly URLs, but also display them in the address bar. If anyone wants to tutor me I’m all ears.

One more thing. Using redirects isn’t just for WordPress. I’m sure there are plenty of library URLs that could use simplifying and redirects also might come in handy when doing website redesigns. When you need to change the structure of your URLs that are already indexed, and in your users’ bookmarks, you can do so without fear of losing rank or causing 404s.

Happy redirecting!

Maybe you know that I’m a bit obsessed with bicycles. Two of my bikes are made by a smallish company (owned by a bigger company) called Salsa. I’ve been subscribed to their Amigos Blog for quite some time. They give updates about their product line, report on cool rides they’ve done, give occasioanlly talk about their personal lives. They do a great job reminding readers that Salsa is a company made of people.

Recently, they’ve been doing something different and really neat. They’ve been directly soliciting input about their company from blog readers. They’re being user-centered. Here are the types of questions they have been asking. Not that you necessarily care about the bike bits, but pay attention to the casual, friendly tone of their posts, and the questions they’re asking.

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Imagine a bunch of little Salsa Pepperman Elves running about and building all sorts of Christmas presents for the good cycling people of the world. Santa Pepperman is looking over his crew of elves making sure everything is just right. Now, imagine asking Santa Pepperman for just one new product from Salsa Cycles. What would “IT” be?
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Greetings folks. As you know we’ve been having a lot of discussion about designs and materials. Well, we are still having these discussions and we’ve got more questions. Today, I want to ask you for your feedback on cut to length seat tubes and press in bottom brackets.
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Salsa is taking a look at our packaging and we have a few goals:

Minimize the environmental costs by using minimal packaging, recycled materials, and recycleable materials when possible.

Obviously the packaging needs to accomplish a few other things as well:

Protect the product during shipping, sufficiently and efficiently brand the product, and possibly provide for efficient display of the product on the sales floor.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on bike part packaging. Please identify whether you are a consumer or bike dealer and shop staff.
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So, here goes….

Carbon fiber is everywhere in the bicycle world! Heck, we use it already on bars and seatstays on our successful Mamasita, Campeon & Moto Rapido frames.

Do you, our readers & customers, want Salsa to offer complete carbon frames and/or complete bikes?

If yes, what models or categories would you like to see?

If no, why?

Lastly, if you respond, could you please identify yourself as a dealer or a consumer?
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(I couldn’t find permalinks for their posts)

They don’t have to take every piece of advice or request that people make. Most importantly, they’re letting their customers (and fan base) have a say and that’s valuable to the fans, even if Salsa doesn’t take their advice. It shows they are interested in their customers, and who doesn’t like to have people interested in them? Beyond this, Salsa *can* use this info to get new ideas, as a general guide, or maybe even confirm hunches. They can mine the collective intelligence of people enthusiastic about their products.

It takes a bit of guts to open up your company (or institution) like this. Many organizations might be afraid of what they’d hear. I haven’t seen this type of exchange on a library website, but think this is what we should be aiming for.

Please let me know if you’ve seen libraries actively soliciting input about library services or materials on their website.

This article first appeared in the Sept/Oct issue of “Multimedia & Internet @ Schools.” They put it online full text (yay) but I’m going to reprint it here now in case you didin’t click through, and because I can. While it is focused on Library Media Centers in schools, it is could be useful for public librarians too.

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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

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UPDATE: A few people said that the video crashed their browsers. I’ve taken it out of this post and put it on a separate page. I’ll have to sort it out. Any reports would be appreciated!
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Way back in the day at the TFML some YS librarians recorded stories, I put them online and since the site is (soon to be was, I understand), blog based, the stories were being podcast. Yay. As neat as it was to have a podcast, the interface for listening to stories online was not ideal. As you’ve likely experienced before, clicking on an mp3 takes you to a grey page with a simple controller. Not very pretty, and not good for usability.

I want to provide a better interface for listening to stories the second time I implement a “listen to stories online” program. Considering how easy it is to add artwork to audio by exporting AAC files from Garageband, I thought I’d start there.

This is fine and dandy but makes iTunes the only way to see the artwork while listening to the audio. Why? I can’t find any online tools that will let me embed .m4a files in a website. Do you know of one?

Compressor is one of the most versatile file encoding tools and I guessed that if anything could convert an .m4a file into something useful (like a QuickTime file to embed!) that would be it. It did, but with only slightly satisfactory results. Something like this will appear on the NPPL’s Click-A-Story page (yes, that’s the same name, but give me a break, the libraries are across the country). If this embedded video doesn’t appear in your RSS aggregator, you’ll have to click through:

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The offending video was here. To see it, though for some reason it might crash your browser, here it is on a seperate page.
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iTunes artwork is 300×300 pixels, but Compressor keeps turning the files into 160×160 pixels for some reason. I’ve not yet been able to find the right setting that spits out proper images. Scrolling is unsatisfactory too. I thought I’d put this out regardless as a quick proof of concept, and to see if anyone has suggestions.

Recently, Joshua M. Neff posted about his library’s Johnson County Library Online Storytime. You know, the title of their project is pretty straightforward and I like it. Another part of the project that I like and that I’m planning on replicating is having CDs of the stories for distribution. That’s a good way to get content to do more work.

I’ll be sure to let you know when the project is live and what the response is like!