November 2005
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Month November 2005

Entries 10 Total

simple google map “hack”

Nov 28, ’05 9:14 PM

Many moons ago I posted about some library fun with google maps API. I’ve finally made some time to add data into the map I had for the Western Springs History (for which I also chose a new WordPress theme). Take a look at the Western Springs History interactive map, and if you like it, here some code. Libraries could use something like this to display the location of the building/s, or maybe just map out the best places to eat around the library.

The code for the map calls in an XML file named “data.xml” which should reside in the same directory as your HTML file. You’ll need to change one thing in the code before you try load it into a brower. Sign up for a google maps api key and paste it in where the code instructs towards the top of the document. You’ll likely also want to Ctrl-F to find “map.centerAndZoom(new GPoint(-87.899300, 41.812600), 3).” The first two numbers are the latitude and longitude that will be displayed when your map is loaded. The third number is the level of zoom. Unlike Yahoo! Maps, Google Maps doesn’t do any geocoding, so you can’t simply enter an address for your new GPoint. Fear not, you can use the free geocoder.us to get the lat/long data of an address.

There are all kinds of fancy things you can do with the XML, but here’s what I chose for my map:

<markers>
<marker lat=”XX.XXXXXX” lng=”-XX.XXXXX” img=”URL TO IMAGE” descr=”TEXT THAT APPEARS ON THE RIGHT” addr=”ADDRESS INFO” url=”LINK TO HOUSE RECORD”/>
</markers>

Add in as many points are you like.

Once you have an HTML file with the altered code and a data.xml file in a folder, open it up and see what happens. You can easily customize your map further by reading the Google Maps API Documentation. Also take a look at EZ Maps and the list of map projects from Mapki.

Comments (1)

simple google map "hack"

Nov 28, ’05 9:14 PM

Many moons ago I posted about some library fun with google maps API. I’ve finally made some time to add data into the map I had for the Western Springs History (for which I also chose a new WordPress theme). Take a look at the Western Springs History interactive map, and if you like it, here some code. Libraries could use something like this to display the location of the building/s, or maybe just map out the best places to eat around the library.

The code for the map calls in an XML file named “data.xml” which should reside in the same directory as your HTML file. You’ll need to change one thing in the code before you try load it into a brower. Sign up for a google maps api key and paste it in where the code instructs towards the top of the document. You’ll likely also want to Ctrl-F to find “map.centerAndZoom(new GPoint(-87.899300, 41.812600), 3).” The first two numbers are the latitude and longitude that will be displayed when your map is loaded. The third number is the level of zoom. Unlike Yahoo! Maps, Google Maps doesn’t do any geocoding, so you can’t simply enter an address for your new GPoint. Fear not, you can use the free geocoder.us to get the lat/long data of an address.

There are all kinds of fancy things you can do with the XML, but here’s what I chose for my map:

<markers>
<marker lat=”XX.XXXXXX” lng=”-XX.XXXXX” img=”URL TO IMAGE” descr=”TEXT THAT APPEARS ON THE RIGHT” addr=”ADDRESS INFO” url=”LINK TO HOUSE RECORD”/>
</markers>

Add in as many points are you like.

Once you have an HTML file with the altered code and a data.xml file in a folder, open it up and see what happens. You can easily customize your map further by reading the Google Maps API Documentation. Also take a look at EZ Maps and the list of map projects from Mapki.

Comments (1)

a message from the library

Nov 26, ’05 9:06 PM

This afternoon the YA librarian sent me an instant message. Here’s a snippet of our conversation:

ianmckndrck: there is a whole gang here
ianmckndrck: from last night
ianmckndrck: wanting to play
ianmckndrck: I said no, because I can’t supervise
ianmckndrck: but they are hanging out now
ianmckndrck: just reading and talking
xxagentcooperxx: NICE
xxagentcooperxx: I LOVE IT
ianmckndrck: so funny
ianmckndrck: I felt so bad telling them no

How about that?! Maybe if we do the right things and really engage teenagers on their own terms it isn’t terribly difficult to get them in the library after all.

If you’re confused about this, the previous post another successful DDR night might help

Comments (2)

another successful DDR night

Nov 26, ’05 10:34 AM

I spent Friday night at the library co-hosting a night of Dance Dance Revolution. DDR, if you’ve never played it, is the game that requires players to jump on a four-way dance pad in sync with music and arrows on the screen.

I’ve gotta say folks, video games in libraries is absolutely what it is cracked up to be. The fact that it is an excellent way to meet the cultural needs of our young patrons was demonstrated to me over and over by the number of people that came and their enthusiasm. We had over 25 kids in the library on a Friday night. It wasn’t the largest event we’ve had at the library, but you wouldn’t know that by the level of energy (and noise). The event was largely open play with a small competition (broken down by skill level) at the end. There was some interesting collaboration going on during the open play. If someone was playing the game on a level beyond their skill and wanted some help, another person would take over the front and left or right parts of the dance pad. This allowed players to get the feel for the more difficult settings and still succeed. I took some mental notes that might help you play your next gaming event:

What worked:

    observing and dancing

  • 25+ kids, two librarians and one PS2. This ratio worked out really well. The kids to video game system might seem a bit low, but we had other things for the kids to do while they were waiting in line. What’s more, evidently DDR is still fun to play without a dance pad. You’ll see in the photoset DDR @ the Library that kids practice and dance along even when they aren’t operating the video game.
  • Jenga and other games on the side. There was a variety of other things to do for when people felt like taking a break. No Jenga pieces were thrown! There were also a deck of cards, and Uno.
  • Harvesting content while they were there. This was an amazingly well behaved and smart group of kids. I mention the library’s audio review for teens, and they were lining up to be recorded. So I went upstairs, wrote a barebones outline that they could follow, fired up Audacity, and away we went. I thought I’d get mostly movie and CD reviews, but no, the kids impressed me again by wanting to mostly talk about books. Their reviews will be available at the Teen Reviews page of the library’s website soon.
  • Setting up a laptop as a sandbox. Three quarters of the way thorough the event I put a laptop on the table by the food and left a Word document open. At first the document was blank, and no one knew what to do, so I put a heading at the top. Here’s the result, no edits: DDR at the library is FUN, because…….
    We always get hyper and get excited to play

    It is very very fun to win even if you mess up a couple of times

    You get so into the game after you find the beats of the songs

    We get to hang out and play some off the hook DDR and we get to goof around to. EVERYONE SHOULD COME.

    I stink at it, and it’s funny to see me mess up!

    Joel is just a joy to have at this fantastic gamming night!!!

    p.s. joel actually ruins it

    I can’t believe we can be so lound and have sooo much fun at the library!!1

    It is th eabsolute best thing EVER!!!!!!!!!! You run around th elibrary doing absolutely nothing important(WHICH IS AWESOME)! DDR is also great. The tournaments are SO cool. NANCY IS DA BOMB. KEVIN IS THE ABSOLUTE BEST MUFFIN FLAVORED DANCER IN DA HOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!! Danny is the best he won it all.AUSTIN SUCKS AT EVERYTHING(Just most things: quote Austin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DAN IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!! Lol!!!!
    Back to the main subject,

    It is fun and there is pizza

    You get to get together and dance with all your friends and see how bad (or good) you are at dancing. I love DDR night! I have started practicing and I love to dance! It is great that they do that! And it is cool how people will just voluntarily do this! LOL! We are so loud but then again… we did heve caffine. Thank you Aron and Mr. M!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    I can easily imagine how the AADL’s gaming blog has become so popular for kids. Just like the PRE/Internet report indicated, teens are eager to create.

What didn’t work:

  • IM during the event. We let some kids sign into their “sn” to inform friends where they were, and a few interesting things happened. First, we had to drag them away from the computer to get back to the party at hand. Second, they didn’t practice very thorough online safety and left their passwords saved on AIM. So someone went back to the computer and had some fun pretending to be someone else. This caused some confusion and mild drama, but on the other hand, the kids were pretty laid back about it because, “This happens all of the time.” This leads me to believe that perhaps the lack of good security practices is offset by skepticism on the other end.
  • Human bowling. Kids will be kids. I put an end to the thought of this game quickly.

I recorded a number of entertaining and informative quotes from the kids:

“I need more Mountain Dew!”

“Can we do this again tomorrow morning?”

“I have to go home and practice for next time.”

and my favorite

“Hey Aaron, can I go upstairs to grab a magazine and book to read?”

Like our series of Lyric Opera lectures, or a craft event, a night of video games is an excellent way for the library to entertain its users and poise itself as a cultural institution. We need to keep letting our younger users make the equation “Libraries = a place that knows my tastes = a place where I can have a great experience = a place I want to be.” If we don’t do this, we risk obsolescence and empty meeting rooms in the future.

The pictures might tell a better story than I can. Check out the flickr set: DDR @ the Library

Comments (16)

getting out there

Nov 25, ’05 12:43 AM

Considering that libraries are all about people and information it’s no shocker that some librarians are excited about the potential of all the neat social software around. Part of this excitement is an enthusiasm for the concept of “getting our information out there.” Just in the past day or two, Michael wrote about “Putting Yourself Out There” and David instructs us to“go where your customers already are.” Michael’s post details face-to-face interactions resulting from his online presence, and I think servers as a partial proof of concept of David’s thoughts about social software as a marketing tool. It stands to reason that “getting our information out there” will result in more face-to-face interactions. I’d also guess that physically getting out in the community results in more online interactions too. The emphasis here is on the word “out.” We can’t expect potential users to come groveling to us, because that’s simply not going to happen.

It isn’t difficult to paint a rosy picture of libraries and social software, but we should remember that plenty of our users don’t know a del.ic.ious account from a writeboard document. Even though the majority of our users aren’t using these tools yet, I see four reasons that libraries should invest time and effort into things like flickr, bookmarking sites, podcasts, etc..

1. They’re fun, cheap, and easy. Using tools like the ones listed above have a low barrier to entry. Not only are they mostly free, they don’t take extreme technical know-how. And because they give nice results quickly, people find them fun to use.

2. Internal utility. Not only can getting involved with this stuff be useful for your users, it can be useful for library staff too. Using flickr is a much more attractive and easier to manage system than, say, having a folder of images on your server. I’d rather search a well tagged collection of photos (or just find an appropriate set) than drill down though a bunch of folders. Staff can access del.icio.us/furl/blinklist bookmarks from any computer without the need for constantly exporting/importing favorites files. Weblogs are excellent tools for internal staff communication. You get my drift here.

3. Leadership. Libraries can promote their extended web presence and instruct their users in the process. This type of instruction will help close the participation gap and give our users skills with which to operate as the web becomes increasingly permeating. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it one thousand times, libraries need to be the infotech leaders of our communities.

4. Reputation. I’m not as concerned with the reputation of specific libraries, but rather the reputation of libraries in general. If all of the neat stuff coming out on the web is going to be the Future of the Web (for a while, at least) libraries need to stake their claim as participants. The each time a library “gets their stuff out there” the better Libraries in general are. A random flickr image of a library program might invoke fond memories of storytime. People who browse the del.icio.us bookmarks of a library might think about going to their home library instead of Amazon/Borders/Google Book the next time they need a book. Will they come to their home library (in person or online) and be disappointed that there isn’t a fun and useful web presence? Libraries aren’t as powerful of a cultural institution as we would like. We’re not impacting society as much as we would like, right? Well, imagine if 50 libraries organized and simultaneously started putting content out on flickr, del.icio.us, last.fm, and had a comments-enabled blog about new items in the library. I bet those libraries would get some attention. The blogosphere (not just library related blogs) would eat that right up and there would be a ton of links going around. I can see the title now: “Librarians Infiltrate the Read/Write Web.” This attention would be great for them, and it would be great for our institutions too. All that for $0.00 (or $25 to pony up for a pro account on flickr), plus the cost of staff time.

Panacea? No, of course not. A step in the right direction? Yes. Speaking of steps in the right direction, try to find some time soon to try out a new tool online. Do it for yourself, your library, your users, and every other library around! I’ll get you started.

Bookmarking tools

37 Signals stuff – I’m not affiliated with them, I have just have a crush on their software. It looks great and is entirely usable.

Other sites

  • flickr
  • last.fm (note: seems to be down as I’m writing this) – this site consits of streaming radio, but it also keeps tracks of music you play on your computer. Example: walkingpaper’s profile. A library could create a profile and display played songs from new CDs as a “New music in the library” page. What an interesting way to display a library’s music collection. Better yet, maybe some library coder will write a last.fm/OPAC mashup! Anybody?
Comments (3)

immedi.at

Nov 23, ’05 4:18 PM

I don’t do much quick linking here, but if no one else is going to post about this, I will. Why? Because it combines two great things: IM and RSS.

This service let’s you subscribe to RSS feeds via an IM account. It works though a bookmarket named “monitor this” which you can click on a page that has a feed. Then you simply select a service and screen name.

So I can tell immedi.at to send updates from a blog to a screen name, and when the feed is updated, it pings the screen name. Neat. When I tried this out, there was no validation, so this service is high on the prankability scale.

I’m not sure how immedi.at it really is. I my test subscription took about 1 minute. Also, you might get a “Application error Rails application failed to start properly” message since people are likely hammering their server right now.

I couldn’t see having all of my subscriptions coming in though IM, but perhaps it would be good for following some feeds closely for a set period of time. Play and enjoy! And remember, Tom the Turkey is your friend!

Comments (3)

TFML website redesign

Nov 20, ’05 8:53 PM

I spent some time redesigning and restructuring MPOW’s website. The old site wasn’t getting much attention from me because I couldn’t stand to look at it anymore. The only way to update it was to rip is apart and start over. The bad part about it is that the navigation suffered a bit, I think, but I’ve got a plan to make it better.

The good part is that the site looks so much better, and is now ACTION ORIENTED and USER CENTERED. So instead of “Readers’ Advisory,” users see “find a book or movie.” Instead of “Adult Services,” “Young Adults” and “Youth Services” users see “adults,” “teens” and “kids.”* It is still fully liquid and scales down decently to 800×600.

I’m really tickled with the corner banner reading “support your library” which Brian points out is a visual metaphor as well, holding up the webpage. If you want to put a corner banner on your site, here’s the code I used:

<div style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;float:left"><a href="PATHTOLINK"><img src="PATHTOIMAGE" /></a>

Also, here’s a link to the support your library gif [via]

It is a small touch, but I gave people the choice of three font sizes on the page. That is, if people are aware what those As on a page do.

Also, now that it doesn’t look like junk, take a look at our Click-A-Story page. It’ll be interesting to see if anyone uses it as a podcast, if people will just listen in their browsers.

I still have a huge laundry list for the site. Some of it is wishful thinking at this point, some of it is very realistic:

  • better action oriented nav
  • integration with OPAC (not holding my breath, but since John Blyberg has written some great code for the Innovative ILS, maybe I can get SWAN folk at the MLS to work with me at some point.
  • visual cues for being in a certain (age-based) section of the site. i don’t think it should be difficult to find some suitable color changes in the CSS. Also possibly a big, fun, “FOR KIDS” gif placed by the banner for the YS pages
  • breadcrumbs leading back to a page’s ‘parent’ (i.e. teen news >> homework help) displayed on each page. this will be simple to do if I make header includes for each department
  • better looking middle column content, without sacrificing its legibility
  • conversation! I didn’t want to tackle enabling comments right now. easy to do technical wise, but it’ll take some time to formulate and write a policy. this one is important and we’ve gotta get it right.
  • more content. the hard part.
  • expose RSS where it exits. the site needs some orange gifs, har har.
  • etc, etc…

We’re going to start a formal process of planning the next generation of our website in January. Participants will include a board member, four staff members and two or three members of the community.

Now that you’ve read the words, you can see some images with annotations in my flickr set new TFML site. Let me know what you think, feel free to point out anything you think is bad, and of course feel free to write me some CSS to accomplish anything I’ve listed above 😛

*note: I got the okay from the head of Youth Services to use the word “kids.” I know sometime YS librarians see the word as derogatory.

UPDATE: you too can try this at home. there are many great open source and public domain CSS layouts available on the web. this one is from ruthsarian layouts. also take a look at blue robot.

Comments (3)

this time its personal

Nov 17, ’05 12:04 AM

When people ask, “How can I get my staff or coworkers interested in blogs/RSS/IM what have you?” I have a usual response. It goes something like this: People get excited about a certain technology when it does cool things for them. Since there’s a blog about any imaginable topic, it isn’t difficult for someone to receive up to date, neat info regarding something about which they’re passionate. Getting a knitting enthusiast hooked up with some knitting RSS feeds can make the whole thing click. Getting someone a screen name so they can chat with a distant relative can turn on some lightbulbs.

Here’s a screenshot from the iTunes of a podcast about which I can get excited! [via pugblog]

Comments (1)

old v new

Nov 16, ’05 9:03 PM

This past weekend I watched the film Mondovino which is about the wine industry. It ran about 30 minutes too long, but was still enjoyable. The movie gives the viewer many things to think about, one of which is the dichotomy of old and new. Early, we meet Hubert de Montille, a likable old crank who proclaims, “Wine is dead.” He has made wine in the Burgundy region of France for quite some time and is, shall we say, set in his ways.

The film also introduces us to some new school vinters, the most egregious of which is French wine consultant Michel Rolland. He is presented as throwing technology at any issues that arise. “Micro oxygenation,” we hear him declare repeatedly. The director didn’t mince words (or images) and it is no secret where his heart lies. Hubert et al are presented as passionate, caring, real, romantic, and nice. Rolland and the new school people are glib, pompous, fake, modern, and generally evil.

As the story unfolded I started to do some generalization about the ‘old versus new’ situation found in our libraries, and the perceptions involved.. There are people that are hostile to change and technology in libraries. They privilege print materials over anything else, and they like libraries quiet. This group upholds the value of how old books smell and sitting down in a big chair with one. Lets call them Library Romantics. LRs are like de Montille in the film. I can easily imagine a LR declaring “Libraries are dead!” when observing libraries filled with noisy kids, weblogs and wireless connectivity. To be fair, not everyone that likes to read a book in a quiet spot is resistant to technology, but take a peak at “Is Technology Blowing the Library to Bits?” by Bernard Vavrek (Public Libary Quarterly, Vol.23(3/4) 2004).

The business of librarianship is the development of relationships and trust between the staff and its constituents through the purposeful application of services. Presently, these interactions are being negatively impacted by a profession that is being swept by a tide of circuitous technology.

One more quote from the article. Talking negatively of librarians’ daily tasks he writes:

The author also observed the same librarian…demonstrating the use of Yahoo! Messenger to a solicitious individual…

Right. God forbid we teach people how to use tools with which they can empower themselves.

Other people we can call Library Modernists. If you’re reading this, you’re likely a LM. I can also easily imagine an extreme LM throwing technology at any problem in a library. LMs can indeed be glib (acronyms – ha!), but with any luck they aren’t pompous, or generally evil.

I’m being careful to not call the ‘old v new’ situation a dichotomy, because I don’t want it to be seen that way. “Old library” technologies like books are going to complement “new library” technologies like WiFi for quite some time. Finding the time and money to do both of these things well is a huge challenge. Another part of this issue is our attitudes toward change in libraries. Clearly LRs aren’t going to be agents for change. That’s an important issue by itself, but the attitudes of people that are potential change agents are also important. In thinking about libraries and libraries of the future, of course we must consider what we do and where we’ve been, but is that limiting our creativity? We have no problem working on modern equivalents to things we’ve done in the past (BOCD -> BOiP, library newsletter -> library email/website) but what about things that are truly new?

Comments (2)

mobile madness

Nov 13, ’05 10:32 PM

A Japanese primate researcher announced the other day that mobile phones are turning Japanese youth into apes. Or at least that’s the sensational way to put it.

“Parents let their kids go out because they think they’re only a phone call away. And even if the kid doesn’t come home, parents don’t call them because they believe the child’s mobile phone offers them an unbreakable link…”

What does this have to do with apes? These liberated kids are evidently losing a sense of home, and aren’t distinguishing between private and public space. Chimps in the wild also tend to walk around in groups, eat wherever they get hungry, and rest wherever and whenever. I don’t think this phenomena is strictly Japanese. I often see tribes of kids walking around the town in which I live. They hang out at the local cafe, ice cream shop, and sometimes, just sometimes, the library. One thing that so fascinating about their behavior when they’re in the library is that they often tell us what they want out of a library. They come in packs, and they come for a space in which to collaborate. Group work is huge. Use of our resources is secondary. If kids act this way in this area, they very well may act this way in your area. We all have the task of thinking how we can get these people into the library more often.

This article is interesting for what it says, but it is also interesting because it doesn’t even say what these kids are doing with their phones. We know that texting, IM, and ringtones, let alone voice communication, have had a huge impact on people’s behavior, but phones are going to get even more interesting .

Take for instance Sprint/Nextel’s new walkie-talkie picture sending service. It combines the ultra-annoying bleeping and blooping instant talk found on some phones, and picture sharing on phones. It allows users to send cameraphone pics instantly, look at them simultaneously, and discuss them all the while. This real-time interaction and collaboration seems really web-like to me, which is great to see in a portable device. This, however, has the advantage that it can be used anywhere.

Nokia has developed a peer-to-peer network for mobile phones, and they are looking to develop support for the sharing of mp3 files. This is another activity leaving the desktop and coming to the little computers we carry around.

Speaking of mp3s, Japan’s largest cell phone provider, DoCoMo, is buying Tower Records. I wonder how long it will be until we see direct to cell phone downloading from the iTunes Music Store.

A bit closer to home we see Google Local for Mobile which is “downloadable application that lets you view maps and satellite imagery, find local businesses, and get driving directions on your phone.” In English, this means, Google Local for Mobile is “the first step in getting location-based advertising on your phone.” Pondering primate reminds us that they’ve been keeping track of all the text messages sent to GOOGL and are compiling a database to see what people search for on their phones. “Google knows what services were used most and where they were requested.”

Technology like this makes the development of ubiqutous computing easy to imagine.

Comments (4)