Odds and Ends

Went and watched Coraline today with the spouse and 3 yr old. We all really enjoyed it. We haven't read the book yet - but the movie has piqued my interest so I think I may download the audio version of it from our OverDrive collection at work.

Initially I was not to sure about taking our daughter because I heard that it might be too scary. But I found a great site which helped us decide - Kids-In-Mind: Movie Ratings That Actually Work spelled out all the Sex, Violence and Language in the film and gave play-by-play spoilers so we would know if it would be too much. We also looked up other movies that she currently enjoys for comparison to see exactly how the rating system worked with what she already enjoys watching.

I liked this site because it does not throw in a bunch of self-righteous indignation regarding the films - instead it lists "just the facts" and lets us decide. A great tool for parents and reference desk librarians alike. (although as of the writing of this the site seems to be down...)

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Let's see what else - oh as many of you know I've been working with Openbiblio as a catalog for my other job. Well, it's been great - but I just don't have the time to develop it like I would like to or to learn all I need to learn. So I'm starting the slow process of migrating everything to LibraryThing - and to use that as our online public catalog.

So far it's a slow painful process. I have MARC records from our other system - many of them are skeletal. So I can't just important in ISBN for all 4,890 titles (many are too old to have ISBN and others that info was never entered into the catalog prior to my working there). So I started emailing tech support at LibraryThing a week and half ago. One person said they could upload my MARC records for me - but I've not heard anything from her since I emailed her the file. When you pay a couple thousand dollars for a database it's easy to call a vendor and demand service -- but in this case - since this was a non-profit pricing of less than $20...I really don't feel like I can just call and demand service. So I'm impatiently waiting for something to happen or someone to contact me so I can get all my titles added and can start the tagging process... The cool thing is once I get this up - I think we'll have one of the largest Jewish material collections on LibraryThing.

I really think it will be great once it's all working...but so far the tech support aspects of Librarything have been frustrating.

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Oh - I also got an email this week from Tim @ TCCL who had this to say:

I thought I'd write to tell you that based on the original program by The Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenberg County, the Tulsa City-County Library System is embarking on our own "23 Things" program at http://tccllearning.blogspot.com. Sponsored by the New Technology Committee, this self-paced continuing education class will be performed over the course of 13 weeks, beginning February 2. Participating TCCL staff will work hands-on to learn about Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds, online photo & video sharing, social bookmarking, & LibraryThing just to name a few. All staff will create their own blogs, be encouraged to comment on each others blogs, and perform such tasks as embedding a video, subscribing to RSS feeds, & editing a wiki.

On top of our current email, IM & text message reference services, we're hoping that TCCL becomes a hot bed of tech-savvy librarians. Check us out!

I'll be curious to see how that goes and if there's any pre and post testing they are doing to see if it actually helped the librarians become more tech savvy.

Google goes lively

So Google has a virtual world now - called lively. Here's my oval room...maybe .. if this works...



and here is what I look like... (oh and you need a google account to try this)

Wifi hotspots nothing but telephone booths?

I found this article via DaniWeb. And it sparked the following brainstorm (which of course is a creation of my own self-diagnosed ADHD mind and it probably wrong but hey I have a few minutes so here goes)....

An executive with Ericsson says:

Hotspots at places like Starbucks are becoming the telephone boxes of the broadband era.

Which is an interesting thought - and potential Oh Noes! for libraries.

More libraries are tauting free wifi, coffee shops, meeting rooms, etc to bring in patrons who don't want to use libraries for their traditional uses. What will happen when a large number of people are equipped with a broadband mobile? What new tech perks will libraries have to offer? What's the sell of free wifi for travelers, students, business folks and lay peoples? Sure, now they can get to a library's myspace or facebook from anywhere at the touch of a screen but why come to the library? Or perhaps libraries will have to de-emphasize their in-house tech offerings and instead move to promote traditional programming and instruction instead?

Now it would be silly for a "Virtual Librarian" to play down technology in a library (after all it is the alpha and the omega) - but if your library has attached itself solely to the cart of super-in-house-tech-offerings (ebooks, databases, virtual reference, etc) be prepared for a rude awakening before your 40-something librarians retire. Because your vocal tax paying patrons, in-coming college freshman and administrators will have (if not already) a bulk of your services available at their fingertips and will wonder why they need to pay upkeep on a building. As long as you keep offering in-house specialities that can't be found anywhere else you'll be prepared for the future envisioned by the Ericsson exec.

Testing my 404 error page

So we've made the switch to our site, running on Joomla - but most the major internet search engines still are directing people to information on the old site. And that site doesn't exist. So I've set up a meebo widget on our 404 page.

It's a test thing - and will only be staffed when I'm around my computer. And doesn't work for folks using our internet filter in the library - but for those using unfiltered internet and out in the big wide world - it should work.

I'll let you know how it goes. :-)

Open Minds, Open Books, Open Source

From Inside Higher Ed | Open Minds, Open Books, Open Source

...some libraries, fed up with software that doesn’t fully meet their needs, have decided to take matters, figuratively, into their own hands. With a bit of grant money and some eager developers, institutions have begun creating their own open-source solutions that are fully customizable, free for others to use and compatible with existing systems. The result has been a whole crop of projects that, when combined, could serve as a fully integrated, end-to-end open-source solution for academic libraries, covering the interface, search mechanism, database system, citations and even course management.

Meanwhile, the increasing availability of open-source software has nudged some libraries to reconsider the role of their in-house technology gurus, and to wonder whether it would make more long-term financial sense to hire more developers than to continue paying for products over which they have limited control.

“If we truly want to remain relevant, it’s what we have to do,” said Susan Gibbons, an associate dean in the University of Rochester library system.

The code4lib conference, for example, has seen its popularity grow from some 75 attendees in 2006 to a cap of 200 this year, according to Andrew Nagy, who is on the technology management staff at Villanova University’s library....

So what OSS products are your Oklahoma libraries working on?

OK.gov reviewed by Libraryola

If you haven't looked at the e-goverment reviews at Libraryola you should.
Not a glowing review -- but not a horrid one either

...Gov. Brad Henry’s media center consists of black and white and color head shots, plus bios of him and First Lady Kim Henry in PDF form. For online user services, Gov. Henry has an e-newsletter and a legislative bill tracker, which are always nice. But one thing he offers that I don’t remember seeing before is the parole look-up service, in which you can check on the status of a specific prisoner’s parole or commutation....

Do people realize?

This may be old news -- but it was new news to me. I realize a lot of people like LibraryElf. Because it helps them keep track of their library materials. What can it "deliver"?

What's delivered?
Email and/or RSS alerts before items are due
Email and/or RSS alerts on overdues and holds
Consolidated list of yours or your family's library loans and holds
Cellphone text message alerts for holds (US and Canada)
Real-time checking by browser

But I don't like the idea of opening of my private information to strangers so I've never used it. Plus I stumbled upon something on bloglines while looking for Oklahoma library news...that some folks who use the RSS feature may not fully realize...





Surely this is just a fluke and I wouldn't be able to see anything additional... so I clicked the preview option

Personally I don't view this as a good thing (of course considering my last post I may have residual paranoia) And it could still just a fluke -- so I searched by Library Elf URL and found...3,520 posts on bloglines.

Do these users realize they are sharing so much information? Do they care? I find it rather disturbing. But to Library Elf's credit -- they do have a disclaimer in their FAQ

It is important to note that if you use public RSS aggregators (e.g. Bloglines, Feedster, Rojo, etc.) you should be aware that some of these services may allow other users to read your RSS feeds. This means that putting a private RSS feed in a public aggregator could mean that others will be able to read your feed information.

Important Reminder: keep in mind RSS feeds are not without risks. Some public RSS aggregators may allow other users to read your RSS feeds -- even if you have set your profile to "private". If you have questions about your RSS software, please contact your RSS feed service provider.

Even with it listed twice...do the users understand? You may want to make sure your patrons who use Library Elf understand.

Free Web?

Found via boingboing.
Something to get your brain thinking on this cold cold Oklahoman morning.

Invitation to beta test

So I've been a little busy at work -- which has cut in to my blogging time. Every minute I'm not teaching/prepping for class, at my "other library" or tending to my family I'm working on Mario. I guess for the next couple months I could call myself Princess Peach -- with all the fiddling I've been doing on Mario...wait that sounds bad. Scratch that -- perhaps I'm more Bowser -- wait that's not much better. Oh forget it -- on with the post.

Anywho, Mario is the beta website for work. We are currently in, what I'm calling, "Closed Beta" with staff. That is until January -- when we go "Open Beta" with the patron public for 2 months. For the past year we (that would be my colleague Kevin and myself) have been learning how to use, configure and ricadoo Joomla. We've tested it (with various levels of success and headache) on the Big Read and Red Dirt Book Festival sites. And we have been slowly prepping staff to be able to contribute to a CMS by using a wiki for staff sharing of information (again with various levels of success and headache).

My work's current site was cutting edge back in the day -- or at least I pretend -- to get me through the scotch-tape fixes and updates we are doing until Mario comes up out of those internet tubes. Working with Joomla has required Kevin and I to think differently about developing a website for a medium to large size library system -- and to critically analyze the online library needs of patrons in our area and the trends regarding people's use of the internet and the virtual library's role in meeting their instant gratification information needs. And based on that we are going to try some things that people will either love or hate

Luckily some of what we are going to do will happen in Phase 2 of our site development - Phase 1 is basically getting the most used and required by law items out -- Phase 2 is where we add a lot of the fun stuff.

But having said all that -- I want to ask you, the LibraryStories readers, to help with the beta testing. Many of you are library professionals or use libraries heavily and even though you don't work for my library system you still would have valuable insight. So please, stop by Mario and to drop me a line using the comment form there on what you think. The other contact information on Mario is for staff dont' worry about those email addresses.

Right now we are working on content and functionality -- not look. So please pardon the nekkidness of Mario -- we'll put his overalls and cap on towards the middle of December when it get's colder. Also, if you happen to be a patron of my work -- please know that most of the "Services" (ILL, Ask a Question, etc) are not working from Mario yet. We'll have those up in January -- all the current "Services" information is a place holder or template under review. So please please please dont' submit anyting you really want through the forms - because that ain't working

Alright, I'll patiently wait for the avalanche of criticism. Oh and Thanks! :-)

Social Networking Sites | Articles from Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication

Found this via BoingBoing

The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication has an entire issue dedicated to Social Network Sites.

Includes the following articles:

Email Flaming Behaviors and Organizational Conflict
by Anna K. Turnage
Are the attributes listed in the literature on flaming considered characteristic of flaming by actual email users? This survey study finds that six of eight common attributes form a coherent set that correlates positively with perceptions of flaming.

Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship
By Danah M. Boyd and Nicole B. Ellison
This introduction describes features of social network sites (SNSs), proposes a comprehensive definition, presents a history of their development, reviews existing SNS scholarship, and introduces the articles in this special theme section.

Whose Space? Differences Among Users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites
by Eszter Hargittai
Are there systematic differences between people who use social network sites and those who stay away? Based on data from a survey administered to young adults, this article identifies demographic predictors of SNS usage, with particular focus on Facebook, MySpace, Xanga, and Friendster.

The Creative Commons and Copyright Protection in the Digital Era: Uses of Creative Commons Licenses
by Minjeong Kim
Using a mixed-methods approach, this study characterizes Creative Commons (CC) licensors, the ways that they produce creative works, and the private and public interests that CC licenses serve.

There are 18 articles total -- and well worth a quick scan, if not an in depth read

Free access to Oklahoma legal notices

Bill Y sends this Library Story:

Oklahoma newspapers have launched a new website that provides the public with free access to legal notices:

http://www.oklahomanotices.com/

>From the site's home page. . .
Government should be accountable to the public and warn citizens of government actions affecting their way of life.

Printed public notice is part of our national heritage. For hundreds of years, newspapers have been the best form of public notice. Oklahoma newspapers take this responsibility seriously and are committed to broad dissemination of notices to the public.

Now you can read the same notices on the Internet that appear in Oklahoma newspapers. It's print power with Internet ease.

Oklahoma newspapers voluntarily created this free site at no cost to government to help citizens find information that affects their way of life.

Librarians wanted

I had the chance to participate in a search engine test project a little while back - it was interesting. I just got an email saying they are looking for a few good librarians to help with their next test project:

And for our Librarian Insiders, we need more of you! Please feel free to invite any and all of your librarian friends and colleagues; send them here http://vovici.com/wsb.dll/s/ff28g2dd6e, so we can learn a bit more about them and get them set up. Once they follow this link, they will be asked to enter their first and last names. Please be sure to tell them to add your initials in brackets following their last name e.g., Jones [AEJ], so we know that you referred them.

Remember to put my intials AEJ if you sign up via this post -- and I look forward to seeing you all in the test!

Library Arcade

Ok - so I did see this subject line on Publib -- but glossed over it -- until I saw it mentioned on Kotaku (a gamer blog). So read your library listservs to see what librarians think of the Library Arcade. Here's what gamers think of it: Bizarre timewaster of the day:

Ever wondered what it's like to be a librarian at an institution where your patrons are incapable of finding the most basic of materials on their own? No? Me neither. But just in case you're dying to find out, the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries have put together the 'Library Arcade' (no, really), where you can test your shelving skills following the Library of Congress call number system or try your hand at a Diner Dash-esque fetch it game, where you have to keep hapless patrons happy and find appropriate materials for their "research." What sort of researcher can't use an online library catalog, I don't know. I can tell you I'd be horsewhipped by my advisors for wasting the valuable time of our librarians by asking them to find me the answer to 'Does daylight savings time really save time?'.

Collection of codes tools for the web

Mashable has a great list of over 250 tools and resources for coding for the web.

Everything from Ajax to XML. Not just a list for advanced users -- it contains links to tutorials on the new web basics. Give it a looksie and perhaps you'll find something you can use.

Got Oklahoma Gov't Info?

Since August I've been spending my Monday evenings at the OU SLIS instructing graduate students on Government Information.

Since this is my first time teaching the course I can only hope the students are getting as much out of it as I am (for the record - I'm really enjoying it). If their Mid Term is any indication they are at least discovering a few things. They've been working on a wiki project for ALA/GODORT

GODORT provides a forum for the discussion of problems and concerns and for the exchange of ideas among librarians working with government documents...

The project is the State Agency Databases

In every US State and the District of Columbia, agencies are creating databases of useful information - information on businesses, licensed professionals, plots of land, even dates of fish stocking. Some of this content is available on search engines, but much of it is part of the invisible web.

In any event, no resource we're aware of has tried to pull together all publicly accessible state agency databases until now....

The OU SLIS class has been collecting the entries for the Oklahoma Page.

The finds include everything Oklahoma related - Lottery numbers, Doctor inqueries, County Accessor information, and the list goes on. The Mid Term work is due next week Monday by midnight -- but I think you will agree with a little less than a week left they've compiled an impressive list of state databases available to the public.

I'll mentioned this project to the Oklahoma State Webmanagers Group yesterday, during the meeting at ODL. They seemed interested to know if all their hard work is actually able to be located by the public. What do you think?

flauntR

Found this via MoMB. And you know if a product has a cool hot pink R then it's gotta be super neat-o, right? All kidding aside this is a neat tool (and there are tons out there that do this -- but this one peaked my interest).

Libraries are always asked for photo editing software for patrons' myspace, facebook, flickr, hot or not, etc profiles -- well this site, flauntR (which is in alpha or so they say), might be a solution for those of you who get asked a lot for that functionality of public computers. Plus registration is free and easy.

I've always had issues with patrons placing photos on a library's computer -- privacy, creepiness, etc issues always come into play for me. But this allows the patron to create a profile, load up their image and edit it elsewhere -- so it's not actually resting on your library's machine. I know you all have to have your favorite site for this as well -- please share the links to them!

Here's some examples of what I could do with a photo of my daughter on flauntR:


Common edits: red eye, cropping, tinting, etc...

Fancy Border

Puzzle

"warhol"

Google Book Project - good or bad?

Found this via the Chronicle's Wired Campus blog - First Monday Cultural historian, media scholar, author Siva Vaidhyanathan discusses how the Google Book Project threatens copyright.
(available as MP3 and transcript)

So what does this learned man have against the oh so popular Google Book Project? Well the following for starters:

...Google’s copyright argument is problematic in the following ways. Google wants courts to rule that their project of scanning in millions of copyrighted books and then placing them on their search service in highly cut up form, in other words offering merely snippets of the entire book should qualify as a fair use of the copyrighted work. That requires a pretty big leap in terms of what fair use means, for a couple of reasons.
...
So I have a number of problems with that legal argument, but it basically comes down to this: Fair use is one the few aspects of copyright law that protects and preserves the rights of individuals to use copyrighted works freely and easily and without anxiety and without permission or payment. It brings breathing room into copyright. It allow copyright to work without cracking down on basic and necessary uses like education and criticism and commentary and parody...

The fact is this is a massive privatization of a public good. It is a massive privatization of years of collection development, years of choice and investment by the public and by librarians in these collections. And Google is getting all of this stuff essentially for free without any sort of quality control built into the system.

Google’s not required to ensure that the search engine that would guide people to these books actually delivers good results. Google is not required to make sure that the scanning process actually gets every page of every book and makes it all clear. There are no requirements that Google use metadata effectively or the metadata certainly already attached to books...

It's a really good read (or listen) so take a few minutes and see if he sways you one way or another.

Campus Edition of Firefox

The Chronicle reports

It’s the time of year to stock up on school supplies — new spiral notebooks, pens, and … a new Web browser. Last week Mozilla, maker of the popular Firefox Web browser, released Firefox Campus Edition for free download.

A key feature of the new browser is the Zotero citation system developed by George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media... The system is designed to help students and scholars mark and manage information on the Web that they want to cite in research papers.

The campus edition browser is not all work and no play, though. It also includes a plug-in called FoxyTunes that helps manage the soundtrack to cram sessions, and StumbleUpon, a service to quickly jump among favorite blogs, online videos, and photo Web sites.

TCCL says No Myspace 4 u!

KTUL is reporting that TCCL is saying No more Myspace at Tulsa Libraries

Tulsa - If you want to use the popular socializing website mySpace at any Tulsa County library, you will be out of luck.

The Tulsa Library Commission has banned the site from all of its computers. They have put up a pop-up block page if anyone attempts to log on.

The commission made the decision after receiving dozens of complaints from parents, saying the pictures posted on some of those sites are inappropriate.

"There were complaints about the content on mySpace images popping up on the screen so others in the library could see them," says Mike Meienheimer.

Some mySpace users are outraged by the decision.

"I'm 23 years old and now the library is telling me I can't get onto mySpace? I don't think they are my parent."...

I can understand a library wanting to block some content on Myspace -- after all it's a controversial site. And not all the content is suitable for children. Yet -- I know a lot of people who use it to keep in touch with family and friends and they don't post naughty pictures to their pages. I'll be interested to see how Tulsa handles blocking the content for all ages. I know there are some libraries which block MySpace only for individuals under the age of 18 because the thought is once they are an adult there's isn't much you can do - unless it violates state statutes.

Oh and KTUL should probably double check all their facts and spelling before clicking publish...I'm just saying...

Edit (8/21): Found an interesting discussion over at Bubbaworld about this issue.

An interview with Open Library

Open Library is a new online tool for finding information about books – even (perhaps especially) for titles that are out-of-print, scarce, or likely to find one reader per decade, if even that. It is, so to speak, a catalog with benefits. If a text is available in digital format, there is a link. you to it. Citations and excerpts from reviews will be available. Likewise, cross-references to other works on related topics. A user of Open Library can see the cover of the book and, in some cases, search the contents.

The project is still very much under development. Force of habit makes us speak of the pre-optimal version of a site as its “beta” version. With Open Library, given its ambitions, chances are that “gamma” is probably more accurate.

But here’s an encouraging sign: The basic framework is being established by my appallingly accomplished young friend Aaron Swartz — who, at the age of 21, has already helped create RSS (that was in his early teens), published a couple of computer-science papers, and developed Infogami, a system enabling his digitally clueless elders to set up their own websites...

Read the interview here.