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May 31, 2006

What Are Knowledge Behaviours?

I like this post from Anecdote which asks "What are knowledge Behaviours?"

It's a quick read but an interesting list to think about. What would be on your list? Are library behaviours different than knowledge behaviours? What would this mean for information fluency education?

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 7:35 AM | Comments (2)

eBooks Hit the Mainstream

Just in case you were wondering if e-books have hit the mainstream yet, Harlequin (Canada's largest pubisher)has expanded its e-book program based on real "overwhelming" success. It probably cannot be said that these e-books are for a specialized market of technogeeks. This is the romance of reading central.

From LibraryJournal.com on May 31st:

"Harlequin Releasing Electronic "Minis"

At the recent International Digital Publishing Forum in New York City, Malle Vallik, Harlequin Enterprise's director of New Business Development, revealed that since launching an ebook line of its signature Romance novels in October 2005 with 65 titles, the response has been so overwhelming that the publisher is moving 40 percent of its frontlist into the digital realm by this July. As a bonus, Harlequin is launching "Harlequin Minis," 10,000-word short stories that can be downloaded for 99¢. Harlequin also is launching an ebook store as part of its eharlequin.com site."

I wonder if there area couple of good ideas for libraries here too. After all libraries can beat the price! After all, I read recently that in China eBooks are now the preferred format.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 6:49 AM | Comments (0)

May 30, 2006

Academic Libraries and Student Recruitment

Steven Bell points to and comments on this article here on the ACRLBlog.

The article titled “The Impact of Facilities on Recruitment and Retention of Students” appeared in the March/April 2006 issue of Facilities Management.

It has got loads of great data, comments, analysis and charts which show that the physical library ranks very high in potential students decision making process in selecting the IHE.

More importantly, poorly maintained or inadequate libraries ranked high enough on the reasons for potential students to reject a college or university. Hey, it works both ways!

This might be an article to print out and leave lying around for decisionmakers to trip over... or maybe just send it to them with a cover note -- Time for a new Learning Commons, a new building, an Information Commons, Paint job, rugs, wireless, PC's, ...? What's on your wish list?

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 10:27 PM | Comments (0)

Conference Tips

Getting the most out of your Conference Experience
(and for many years to come)

Every year I update this list of tips based on the hundreds of conferences I have attended and the feedback and tips of friends and colleagues. As we enter the main conference season for CLA, ALA and SLA, it's time to put them out there again.

The Basics

Turn your cell phone off or set it to vibrate. Relate to folks face to face!
Survival includes aspirin, Advil or ibuprofen, water bottle (conference venues tend to be very dry),
Layer your clothing so that you can go from frigid air conditioning to high humidity (temperatures and room comfort varies widely and there is precious little conference organizers can do about that). Try not to be running around complaining about the temperature of the rooms. Almost no one can do anything about it and savvy conference goers come prepared to any temperature and are usually confortable.
It is not uncommon to get conference evaluation forms back complaining that the same room is too hot and too cold. Plan ahead.
Bring at least two pairs of shoes (you'll need the change and variety!).
Bring an extra bag for bringing stuff home (clothes expand somehow while away!).
Bring an office prepaid courier slip to courier brochures and materials back to the office (You're not a mule!).
You MUST have business cards - either make your own on the laser printer or photocopier or have extras made up by your employer.
Wear your nametag high so people can see it. Take it off when you leave the venues. You don't want assorted homeless people calling you by name!
Upon arrival, orient yourself. Familiarize yourself with all of the conference locations (conference centre, hotels, and special events locations). KNOW where the coffee is - you'll be surprised how much you'll want it. Know where the washrooms are. Nothing's more frustrating than being lost in a strange place. If you're lost - ask a local. There's usually a local map in the conference program - study it. It's amazing how confusing big conference centres can be! It is easy to get turned around. For safety's sake - know where you are and where you're going. Look at the floor plans in your program; they give you a bird’s eye view of what’s usually not a simple grid floor plan. Figure ot the room naming and numbering conventions.
If you’re on a restricted budget, bring your own water and snacks. There's always a local store nearby and you can buy it at local prices. Conference snack bar prices are on a par with airport prices.

Before the Conference

Should you wish to save on accommodation cost, use your discussion lists or blog to find a potential roommate.
Check out the local city's web site for tourists. Book or schedule a few side trips as well. Exciting tours have been scheduled for delegates and their guests.
If you can, add a vacation day or two on to the conference and enjoy the local sights or side tours.
Look at the program before you get there and plan your day. A simple Word or Excel document makes it a lot easier. Soetmes there's a great conference timeplanner planning software on the association site.
Make appointments in advance with those vendors you must see. Make or use an exhibit hall map in advance so you 'work' the hall strategically. It will result in a better conversation if you warn your vendors in advance that you want a deeper meeting.
If you work in a specialized area with information pros from around the nation, conferences are a great place to meet each other - for a meeting, coffee, lunch, dinner, drink, or just to say hi! Give these folks an e-mail or phone call and see if they're going to the conference. Networking is so much richer when you have seen your closest contact's face (insert Internet irony here.)

The Sessions

Make your schedule in advance (at least at the start of the day, but earlier if possible). Include all of the options you might like so that if one desired session is cancelled or doesn't meet your expectations or needs then you can hop over to another. Make sure you note the room locations so you can evaluate how much time you have to get there between sessions.
Plan to attend the First Timers’ session if you're a first-timer to make a few new friends and get an orientation! Every conference has its culture and it's worth learning it early to get vaue for money.
If a session isn't meeting your needs, leave. Your time at this conference is important and you should get the most out of your investment in time, effort and money. If you don't see another session you want then that means head for the Exhibits.
Generally you are 'allowed' to attend all sessions, including business meetings of the Association, divisions, and committees unless these are specifically marked 'in camera' or 'executive session'. CLA, SLA and ALA are very open associations and you should see how your association works for you. It's also a great way to find out what you might like to get involved in and volunteer.
Make sure you get your tickets early for ticketed events. If you miss out on one event that you desperately want to attend - check out the message board area where there is often a ticket exchange for extra tickets.
If you attend a business meeting and wish to be heard on an issue, you have a right to speak as long as you are in order. Just ask permission and you will be heard. If not, get out your Rules and make them work for you.
If you want a good seat at a session, arrive a little early. If you're late, have a little courage and take a seat. Don't hover and shuffle at the back of the room or in the door. Librarians tend to sit in the end seat of every row and you'll have to shuffle theatre style to get a good seat in the middle of a row. Whatever you do, don't stand for an hour - you'll regret it.
Always try to go to the opening plenary - then you'll have something in common to talk about with new people you meet for the rest of the conference. The Plenaries are designed to be engaging and challenging. Don't pre-judge the speaker - they're almost always thought provoking.
Evaluate programs from many directions - speaker, topic, title, blurb, sponsor, or convenor. If you're not sure it's for you, the speaker can usually be asked what level they will be speaking at just before the session. Then again, even if you're at an advanced level on a certain topic it's always useful to learn how to communicate the topic at an introductory level so you can use it for users and management!
Don’t forget to take advantage of the pre-conference workshops. You get deeper training there than in some sessions designed to provide highlights.

The Exhibits

Remember your business cards. You can enter draws. You can have materials sent to you later. You can have contacts follow up later with more detailed information. You can look professional.
Write notes on the back of the business cards you pick up to remind you what you learned or what you'd like to follow up on later - even if it's just to visit an exhibitor's Web site or request a product trial.
Don't know how to approach a booth? It's easy. Just ask the top three questions…
What do you have that's new?
Can you demo something interesting for me about your new/enhanced/improved products?
Are you making (Have you made) any announcements here this year?

Learn a stump speech about you and your employer to answer the booth staff's questions. They are trying to learn about YOU in order to make sure that they can give you the information you need in context. Being shy or furtive about your needs denies you the right to ever complain that your vendors don't understand you!
Some Exhibitors host hospitality suites for their best or prospective customers. If you're invited, go. They're often fun and you'll meet key players in the library world.
Others invite you to workshops, demonstartions, announcements, breakfasts and parties, etc. Don't accept the invitation and then blow them off. It's rude.
DON’T be embarrassing! Hoovering through the exhibit hall looking for free pens and avoiding eye contact with anything resembling booth staff is not the image librarians want to project.
Please remember that vendor staff are also often professional librarians. Booth staff are often not only account managers but often vendor executive teams and key training or customer service staff come to the conferences. This is your chance to develop deeper relationships with key vendors and ask specialized questions.
DO pace yourself. Look at the map and choose whom you absolutely MUST see and go there first. Better yet - make appointments in advance.
DO ask as many questions as you like. If the booth person doesn't know the answer they will find someone who does and get back to you later. Cel phones work wonders in booths these days.
DO attend vendor demos in the booth - these give you an idea of what's there that might be new or they might serve as mini-training sessions.
DO help yourself to the marketing materials in the booths - that's what they're there for! If the vendor offers a 'goodie', make sure you have a conversation and learn what's new.
DON'T assume that your old familiar vendors haven't changed and that you know everything about them. This is your opportunity to learn what's new and different.
If you have no idea what a vendor does - they're completely new to you - ASK. This is your opportunity to learn something new. Booth designs are notorious for not telling you WHY you'd want to talk the people there - overcome that barrier.
Remember that vendor staff are people first. Don't stereotype. Don't be combative just for the fun of it - vendor bashing is a sport where no one wins. Be open to their suggestions - they've usually seen lots of libraries and library situations and have something to share. Many see hundreds of libraries and librarians a year. They know stuff.
DO wear comfortable shoes. There are rarely many places to sit in the Hall.
DON'T be reluctant to say "No Thank You" if you're not interested.
DO thank the vendors for sponsoring the conference in so many ways. As a result of their participation, your conference experience is definitely richer and less expensive.

Networking and Social Events

Take time for yourself on field trips, tours, or social events. You are working much longer hours at a conference than 'average' and it is just fine to take a break. You'll definitely absorb more if you rest occasionally! There are no more martyr awards at the conference than there are at home.
Learn these 'Ice Breaker Questions'. Even if you're shy, they will often induce even the most recalcitrant and shy person to open up.
"Hi - I'm your-name-here and I'm from your-town-or-library-here. Where are you from?"
"What's new at your shop?"
"See anything new at the conference?" "Attend any great sessions?" "Learn something new?"
Come to the conference with specific people, institutions and contacts you'd like to meet. Learn the art of the nametag glance to see what networking opportunities you might find. Don't project false cliques or status on people - ALL of the people you'll meet were in your shoes once.
You're going to be in lots of lines (for food, for coffee, for meetings, etc.) Take this as an advantage and network with your line buddies - don't just stand there.
Leave the office at the office - professional networking does not ALWAYS have to have a 'pure' business purpose. It's great to have professional friends and acquaintances that are outside of your normal 'box'. It stretches you and it's one of the great values of the CLA Conference.
Don't horde your business cards - they're not gold in your pocket - they're like smiles - they only have value when they're given away.
In general, assume anyone who's wearing a ribbon is extra-approachable. They will tend to be people who have volunteered to make the conference a success. Help them by networking with them.
Local librarians staff the hospitality booth - ask their advice for restaurants and sights. They know. They live there!
Don't be afraid to ask people to join you for dinner or to set up dinner groups - eating is a great networking opportunity.
Be nice to a student. Welcome them to the profession by treating them as a colleague.
Always try to go to the conference wide event party. It’s guaranteed fun and you’ll make friends for life.

Getting Involved

Be positive - no one wants to be involved with a whiner. Librarians will listen because they're polite but don't take that as endorsement for bashing the association, the conference, individuals or vendors. People remember your positive contributions and interactions in a better way than negative ones.
Fill out the conference evaluation forms. That's how your input gets to the conference planning teams who can make a difference.
You'll probably meet your next employer at a conference. First impressions are important. Dress for the job you want.
Write a report or memo to your boss or team and explain the value of the conference to you and what you learned. Start laying the groundwork for coming back next year.
Volunteer - let people know that you're interested in trying new things or experimenting with a role in your association, committee, unit, chapter or division. It's the classic win/win situation!

The Association

Please make a point of attending the Annual Business Meeting. It's where you can see the real work accomplished by the Association's leadership and volunteers this year. You'll also likely meet our Association's Executive Director or CEO and staff. These folks are almost always in listening mode - so speak! Our staff works hard for us every day and at the Conference. Meet them and thank them.

Valuing Your Conference Experience

Here's what I think are the best benchmarks that I use to value my CLA conference experience:

I met at least one new person every day.
I learned at least one useful thing I didn't know in a session every day.
I had at least one substantive discussion with a vendor about a new product that I might need.
I had fun, every day.

Stephen Abram, MLS

* These hints owe a huge debt to the Special Libraries Association Fellows and in particular Dan Trefethen and Susan Klopper, who created a First Timers’ Package for the Los Angeles SLA International Conference in June 2002.

Posted by stephen at 9:56 PM | Comments (3)

Search Engine Market Shares

Here's an interesting Press Release from comScore this month. It's just about search and not about the overall popularity of a web property. For instance, I am told that Yahoo! gets 2.5 times the traffic of Google overall, for instance. It does show the power of brand to drive traffic. Is the library brand strong enough and in the right head space? The OCLC Perceptions report would seem to say no. I also wonder whether libraries should be building toolbar searches for our sites. They are an important battleground for searching market share. The emergence of MySpace as a search portal is interesting too.

As with most poll/survey results you end up with more questions. I also have questions about mobile search (eg. GOOGL on your cel), Amazon A9 as a search portal, and how many people use multiple search engines for the same query. Now if Google bought Facebook, if eBay's partnership with Yahoo! grows well, and Amazon replacing Google with MSN Search changes things, what's next, hmmmmmm?

All I can say is that I don't believe the search landscape is stable or static for the next 5 years. This is an opportunity for libraries to shine.

Either way, resisance is not futile. We need to capture the important searches.

Google Gains U.S. Search Market Share For Ninth Consecutive Month
comScore Releases April Search Engine Rankings

RESTON, Va., May 22, 2006 – comScore Networks today released its monthly qSearch analysis of activity across competitive search engines. In April 2006, Google gained in search market share for the ninth consecutive month and maintained its status as market leader with 43.1 percent of all U.S. searches conducted on its sites. Yahoo! remained in second place with 28.0 percent, while MSN ranked third with 12.9 percent.

Detailed chart here. Share of Online Searches by Enginechanges
April 2006 vs. April 2005

• Americans conducted 6.6 billion searches online in April 2006, up 4 percent from last month.

• Google Sites led the pack with 2.9 billion search queries performed, followed by Yahoo Sites (1.9 billion), MSN-Microsoft (858 million), Time-Warner Network (457 million), and Ask Jeeves/Ask Network (384 million).

• MySpace.com has been added to the search engine rankings for April 2006, coming in at 6th place with 43 million search queries performed (0.6 percent share of the U.S. search market). Will this smaller player eventually be able to grab a substantial share of the search market due to the site’s remarkable popularity?

• Google and Yahoo! continued their dominance among toolbar searches, combining for more than 95 percent of the market share in April. Google grabbed 48.0 percent of toolbar searches, while Yahoo! captured 47.6 percent.

qSearch includes Web searches originating from the search engines reported, other Web-based searches such as News and Image searches and channel searches conducted on portal sites (e.g., Finance and Movies). qSearch does not include Yellow Pages or Maps searches.

For more information on comScore qSearch, please email searchsolutions@comscore.com or call (650) 244-5412.

About comScore Networks

comScore Networks provides unparalleled insight into consumer behavior and attitudes. This capability is based on a massive, global cross-section of more than 2 million consumers who have given comScore explicit permission to confidentially capture their browsing and transaction behavior, including online and offline purchasing. comScore panelists also participate in survey research that captures and integrates their attitudes and intentions. Through its proprietary technology, comScore measures what matters across a broad spectrum of behavior and attitudes. comScore consultants apply this deep knowledge of customers and competitors to help clients design powerful marketing strategies and tactics that deliver superior ROI. comScore services are used by global leaders such as AOL, Yahoo!, Verizon, Best Buy, The Newspaper Association of America, Tribune Interactive, ESPN, Fox Sports, Nestlé, MBNA, Universal McCann, the United States Postal Service, Merck and Expedia. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com.

Contact:
Andrew Lipsman
comScore Networks
(312) 775-6510
press@comscore.com

Posted by stephen at 8:40 AM | Comments (0)

Some interesting stats

People are going to tell me that I am obsessed with MySpace and Facebook! It's just my basic idea to copy their success and to create social networks of 'young adults' in the library space. Hmmm.

From the Stanford Daily:

1. "Facebook.com now has over eight million registered users. That’s roughly equal to the combined populations of Los Angeles and Chicago."

2. Facebook "has grown astronomically in its first two years and now sits as the seventh most-visited page on the Internet."

3. "The networking site has expanded to every college and university in the United States, as well as into 14 other countries."

USA Today reports that:

1. Facebook "is used by 65% of undergrads at four-year colleges and is now open to high-schoolers as well."

2. "Traffic on Facebook has grown 272% in the past year, making it the 66th most popular website in February, according to ComScore Media Metrix, which tracks Internet use."

3. "Traffic on MySpace has grown 318% in the last year to 37.3 million visitors in February, making it the top social networking site on the Web and the eighth most popular website overall, according to ComScore Media Metrix."

4. "In July, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. bought MySpace for $580 million."

If I recall correctly, NCSU reported recently a poll that showed that over 90% of their students were on Facebook and my own random polling of my kids' friends, and those I meet by happenstance, is interesting. I can't find anyone who doesn't have a Facebook page in this demographic.

The New York Times reported recently that:

1. "MySpace is adding as many as a million registered users each week who create or peruse Web pages of other members, sharing photos, blogs and such, it has so far attracted little advertising revenue relative to its audience size."

NetFamily reports this eMarketer data:

"Research firm eMarketer recently looked at traffic from 12-to-17-year-olds and 18-to-24-year-olds to the top 6 social-networking sites: MySpace, Xanga, Facebook, MyYearBook, Hi5, and Friendster. Interestingly, teen traffic increased between November and December (the latest figures available) at MySpace (+9%), Xanga (+29%), and especially MyYearBook (+44%), while it decreased at Hi5, Friendster, and Facebook (whose 18-to-24-year-old traffic increased for that same period). Another firm, comScore Media Metrix, has numbers showing how integrated online activity has become in 12-to-17-year-olds' lives. ComScore has a chart showing the top 10 Web sites for this age group from 2/05 to 2/06, MySpace being No. 2 and Facebook No. 5."

CNet is reporting that teens are increasing their use of these sites:

1. "From April 2005 to April 2006, the overall number of teen visitors (between the ages of 12 and 17) to MySpace grew from roughly 3 million to 7.8 million. That was up 162 percent, according to ComScore Media Metrix. (That doesn't account for MySpace's 14-year-old age minimum.)"

2. "The number of teen visitors to Yahoo, still tops for the age group, dropped 1 percent over the year to 11.6 million, according to ComScore. AOL, whose Instant Messenger is the most popular among teens, lost 10 percent of its teen visitors, falling behind Yahoo this year for the first time, at 10.9 million visitors."

3. "Of the major Web sites, only Google got a bump from teens in the last year; the number of teen visitors to Google jumped 24 percent to 10.7 million from April to April, according to ComScore."

4. "CNET Networks, publisher of News.com, lost 19 percent of its teen audience year-over-year. It attracted just more than 3 million teens in April."

5. "Wikipedia, the controversial and fast-growing open-source encyclopedia, drew 2.9 million teens in April 2006, up 221 percent from the same period a year earlier." (April 2005 to April 2006)

6. "No other age group matches teens' enthusiasm for the Web--nor their use of broadband connections. Roughly 87 percent of the 12 to 17 age group is online, many at least twice a day, according to a recent Pew Internet and American Life study. That bests the activity of 25 to 29 year olds, which have an 85 percent penetration. And 49 percent of teens have high-speed connections at home--more than any other age group. That means it's easy for them to watch video, chat with friends and listen to MP3s while doing their homework."

So there you have it. I've been saying that this generation is already here and are dominant by many measures; they have different expectations, and are changing their usage patterns very quickly. Let's just not watch, let's participate. The advertiser supported web folks are desperately trying to keep track of these changes. Libraries have a lot to offer. Are we?

This reminds me of a song lyric:

There's something happening here.
What it is ain't exactly clear.
There's a man with a gun over there,
Telling me I got to beware.
I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down. (Buffalo Pringfield and Stephen Sills)

What is going down here?

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 8:07 AM | Comments (0)

Going Beyond Facebook and MySpace

Loads of libraries try to create sections of their websites and portals that attract teens (especially public libraries) or have a significant portion of their user base who are teens (universities and colleges).

I think it's interesting to review those sites that are currently attracting teen users. Obviously, whether I like these sites or not, there's a lot to learn by reviewing them for what makes them interesting and sitcky. I am not advocating copying these sites but just learning from them.

Here's some sites that are working for them:

Tagged.com

Bebo.com

MyYearbook.com

www.uthtv.com

www.omnik.com

www.absolutepunk.net

www.collegehumor.com

www.karmaloop.com

www.pandora.com

You can find out more about these sites in this article, Buzz Focus: Surf's Up at These Hot Sites by Tina Wells, May 2006 issue of OMMM Magazine.

Maybe we can steal some good ideas here for our teen portals?

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 7:48 AM | Comments (0)

May 29, 2006

The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time

I am embarrassed to say that I have owned and tried to use many of these!

PC World Friday, May 26, 2006
The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time:
These products are so bad, they belong in the high-tech hall of shame.
by Dan Tynan

Check out the details and reasons in the article for the list below.

The Complete List of Losers

1 America Online (1989-2006)
2 RealNetworks RealPlayer (1999)
3 Syncronys SoftRAM (1995)
4 Microsoft Windows Millennium (2000)
5 Sony BMG Music CDs (2005)
6 Disney The Lion King CD-ROM (1994)
7 Microsoft Bob (1995)
8 Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (2001)
9 Pressplay and Musicnet (2002)
10 dBASE IV (1988)
11 Priceline Groceries and Gas (2000)
12 PointCast (1996)
13 IBM PCjr. (1984)
14 Gateway 2000 10th Anniversary PC (1995)
15 Iomega Zip Drive (1998)
16 Comet Cursor (1997)
17 Apple Macintosh Portable (1989)
18 IBM Deskstar 75GXP (2000)
19 OQO Model 1 (2004)
20 CueCat (2000)
21 Eyetop Wearable DVD Player (2004)
22 Apple Pippin @World (1996)
23 Free PCs (1999)
24 DigiScents iSmell (2001)
25 Sharp RD3D Notebook (2004)

Squirm. Oh well, you're just not learning hard enough if you're not making mistakes.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 7:19 PM | Comments (5)

Young Folk and Newspaper Reading

My young friend and colleague, Daniel, has started a new blog, Yankee in Canada, which is off to a nice start. Today's posting reveals the new Canadian Newspaper Association study on Reading Between the Lines: Debunking the Myths About Young Newspaper Readers. It's a very readable 32 page PDF.

Highlights from the Backgrounder:

Among the conclusions of "Reading Between the Lines: Debunking Common
Myths about Young Newspaper Readers," a D-Code study commissioned by the Canadian Newspaper Association:

1. Young newspaper readers are involved in the world around them. As a
result, there are strong social benefits correlated with newspaper
readership among youth. These include: increased participation in the
political process and increased involvement in community activities.
2. Young newspaper readers readily form opinions and seek out
opportunities to express them so as to influence others.
3. Young newspaper readers are socially active and outgoing. They are
more likely to visit shopping malls, restaurants, bars or night clubs
than infrequent readers.
4. Young readers depend more on conventional sources than on new media
for information on issues of importance to them. They rate newspapers
highly for credibility, but prefer online sources for world news,
entertainment and weather.
5. Young readers participate in new media and embrace new technologies
more than less frequent readers.
6. They are plugged-in, but not tuned out. The news-heavy front sections
and local news are the top two content areas read by young readers.
7. If young people have not become newspaper readers by age 24 they are
unlikely to become readers later in life. Exposure to newspapers in
schools as well as in the home has a significant impact on future
readership.
8. Newspapers should not take their younger readers for granted. Young
readers actively seek out news and information and have embraced all
the technologies that deliver it. They will go elsewhere if they
cannot find what they are looking for in the pages of a daily
newspaper.

I'll be doing a YALSA session at ALA in New Orleans and I wonder how often we believe things about the younger generation that, well you know. How many impossibe things do we believe?

"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Alice in Wonderland.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 7:06 PM | Comments (0)

BusinessWeek gets it

The May 30th, 2006 Small Biz column by Stacy Perman tells a few stories of small businesses that made it with the help of their local public libraries.

The Library: Next Best Thing to an MBA
"Across the country, public libraries are giving would-be entrepreneurs a helping hand with resources and expert guidance"

Here's another underused support group for libraries.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)

Dysfunctional Behaviours Caused by Information Politics

One of the great KM Gurus in Toronto, Dave Pollard, author of the How to Save the World Blog, did a great post recently on dysfunctional information behaviours. They're worth a read here. He notes that these behaviours fall into four categories: information politics, information unawareness, faulty sensemaking and poor reward systems.

Dysfunctional Behaviours Caused by Information Politics:
Shoot the Messenger
Peer-to-Peer Preference
Help Friends / Hurt Foes
Cult of Leadership
Louder Voices
Anti-Stories
Like-Mind Groupthink
Cult of Expertise

Dysfunctional Behaviours Caused by Information Unawareness:
'Cost of Not Knowing' Unawareness
Unawareness of What Others We Meet Know
Personal Content Mismanagement

Dysfunctional Behaviours Caused by Faulty Sense-Making
Frame Dependency
Information Overload
Can’t Tell All We Know
Preference for Images & Stories
Different Ways of Learning
JIT vs. JIC (Half-Life of Learning

Dysfunctional Behaviours Caused by Poor Reward Systems:
From-Scratch Satisfaction
Better Safe than Sorry
Tragedy of the Commons
Competing on the Curve
Reward-Driven Behaviours Don’t Last
No Reward for Sharing
Fun vs Effectiveness
Work-Arounds

The details for each item are in the post and are well worth the read. It's a special librarian's elevator speech list.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 10:57 AM | Comments (0)

And they said it was slowing down - not

"Adoption of high-speed internet at home grew twice as fast in the year prior to March 2006 than in the same time frame from 2004 to 2005. Middle-income Americans accounted for much of the increase, along with African Americans and new internet users coming online with broadband at home. At the end of March 2006, 42% of Americans had high-speed at home, up from 30% in March 2005, or a 40% increase. And 48 million Americans -- mostly those with high-speed at home -- have posted content to the internet."

From the latest Pew Internet and American Life Project report on "Home Broadband Adoption 2006: Home broadband adoption is going mainstream and that means user-generated content is coming from all kinds of internet users."

It would be difficult to not consider this in your strategic planning efforts. We're about to see the majority of Americans online with broadband - maybe by the end of this year.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 8:19 AM | Comments (0)

A Very Busy June

Well it's conference season for libraries! Here's where I'll be throughout June and I look forward to seeing many of you.

June 1 - CASLIS/GELA Evening event in Edmonton

I look forward the CASLIS/GELA annual banquet where I'll talk on the topic of "Web 2.0: the Library 2.0 in Your Future."

June 2 - NEOS Consortium in Edmonton

I'll have doing a technology forecast for this very innovative library consortium.

June 7 - Delaware State Library

On this day I get to keynote the annual Delaware Library Town Meeting about trends in libraries.

June 8-14 - SLA International Annual Conference in Baltimore

Here's a busy one. I get to become the official president-elect as well as do work on our association strategy. I'll be participating as a speaker too for the Library Management Division annual luncheon, reporting on the Canadian 8R's project as well as doing a panel on library trends. I get to make a quick visit with some library school students and attend the traditional SLA Fellows meetings and sessions for conference first timers. I'll see a ton of friends too.

June 15-17 - Canadian Library Assocation Annual Conference in Ottawa

Although the conference site in Ottawa has had to change due to a strike, this will continue to be a great conference. The keynotes are especially great. I'll be doing some meetings on the 8R's with my co-chair Wendy Newman who has done amazing work! We will also do a session on the 8R's progress. I'll do a regular conference session on Web 2.0, Library 2.0. I'll see a ton of friends again, especially the NELI alumni.

June 19-20 - LISA V in Cambridge MA

Just to bridge between SLA and ALA, I'll be giving a that at LISA V (Library and Information Services in Astronomy V). I'll be keynoting the topic of Library 2.0.

June 22-27 - ALA in New Orleans

This may be the most interesting. I'll be participating in the IRIG Utimate Debate between Roy Tennant, Joe Janes and me on whether libraries can be replaced. On Sunday morning I'll be doing a session on Millennials for YALSA. SirsiDynix will be awarding a total of $50,000 to the 5 winners of SirsiDynix Building Better Communities Awards. And I'll get to meet with many clients and friends.

On the note of ALA and New Orleans, I understand that it's on track to be a fairly large conference. That's very exciting. New Orleans needs our support right now and ALA is the first major conference to return to the city. And we need to meet. New Orleans is still a great center of food, jazz, fun, history and conventions. New Orleans is pulling out all the stops for us. As a resident of Toronto who benefited from the informed decisions made by ALA members during our SARS crisis, and the important role the ALA conference played during our crisis, I know the visit of ALA to New Orleans will be a major boost to the city. And librarians are just the type of folks to paint that town red. Be there or look fearful. Librarians are courageous.

I'll be back in Canada just in time for my daughter's 18th birthday and the end of high school. Yay!

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 7:36 AM | Comments (0)

Internet Librarian 2006

One of my favourite conferences (and I have been going to every one since the first one made Monterey the librarian's favourite conference site) has posted this year's program here.

There's also a wiki again this year here.

In the conference tradition of being ahead of the curve there are some great programs on blogging, wikis, etc. but also I am looking forward to the session on the Second Life library project. In the early years we had Sergei and Larry the founders of Google when they were still Stanford students, and Jonathan Tasini of the famous copyright lawsuit against the online publishers. Last year's highlight was a great debate including Adam Smith, lead for Google Print. IL is always interesting and educational.

See you there or be square,

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 7:26 AM | Comments (0)

May 28, 2006

How to get kicked out of the library

My favourite YouTube video this week is here.

LOL - Happy Memorial Day weekend.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 11:06 AM | Comments (2)

The End!

Jian Ghomeshi is one of the nextgen TV hosts in Canada on CBC NewsWorld (Canada's CNN). He is the pop culture specialist at CBC. In early May he did a three part TV show on "The End" where each part is 22.22 minutes long. The three parts are on the topics of the end of TV, the end of radio and the end of print.

You can link to, save and play all three (in Windows Media Player or Quicktime) here. (Remember you can right click to make these play half or full screen.)

These videos might make fun staff lunchtime sessions to support a good discussion about the future. They also might make cool events for the library to create discussion groups for teens. seniors, trustees, etc. A quick 22 minute video and then start talking. They're easy to project on a big screen too, although the quality of web videos leaves a bit to be desired.

Oh yeah, my favourite clip? Margaret Atwood asks Jian if he's ever had his system crash. Jian says yes. Peggy says "Books don't crash".

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 9:58 AM | Comments (0)

May 27, 2006

Kids Laptops at $100.00

Here's some of the early views of the laptop from the One Laptop Per Child program that you've been hearing about. The FAQ is here with answers from Nicholas Negroponte.

This nonprofit expects to ship 5-10 million laptops to the developing world in late 2006 and 2007.

This is the sort of thing that can change the world.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 4:01 PM | Comments (9)

May 25, 2006

OCLC's College Students' Perceptions Report

OCLC has released a new cut on the original Dec. 2005 Perceptions report.

They've re-cut the data on library use, awareness and use of library electronic resources, the Internet search engine, the library and the librarian, free vs. for-fee information and the “Library” brand from the point-of-view of college students and 14- to 17-year-olds.

Here's a link to College Students' Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources report.

It's worth checking out the "all-new graphs and additional analysis of how college student data compare to that of total respondents."

"Overall, respondents have positive, if outdated, views of the “Library.” Younger respondents — teenagers and young adults — do not express positive associations as frequently."

This is our future folks.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 9:05 AM | Comments (0)

May 22, 2006

Radical Trust

I've been quoting Darlene Fichter and using this slide for the past few months. Darlene hits the nail on the head that some of the evolution of library portals and OPACs will require us to understand and work through the concept of 'radical trust' with our operations and relationships with users.

It's a somewhat amorphous concept but John Blyberg has written an excellent longish posting that can form the basis for a discussion. You can read it here.

I like to think about radical trust in terms of some examples:

1. Why does Amazon work as an experience? Can libraries trust their users enough to safely share personal information to create a user recommendation experience like Amazon?
2. Why is LibraryThing growing so quickly for personal collection management? By one measurement it's now the 100th largest public library in the U.S. Can libraries trust their users to add their home collections to the major local community collection?
3. Are we comfortable with users tagging our MARC records? Can they add post-it note and comments to MARC? Are comments and user recommendtions OK with us? Moderated or unmoderated? (Don't be so fast - Are Amazon, Borders and B&N moderated?)
4. Are we comfortable with users setting their own levels of privacy and information sharing like they do in other socially driven environments rather than having libraries set it for them?
5. Are we ready for the next generation of local MySpace and Facebook or Google defaulting to local area experiences? Can libraries create this space first?

Hennepin County Library has started on this here and here. See what it looks like here. Is the rest of LibraryLand ready for this shift?

Hmmmm.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 9:41 AM | Comments (2)

May 20, 2006

Tri-State College Library Cooperative

I had a nice trip to visit the folks running college libraries outside Philadelphia.

Here's the presentation on "Just Hitting the Surf: Millennials in the Information Age" here and another on "The New WAve in Libraries: Channelling the Information Surge" here.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 9:14 AM | Comments (0)

DigitalNow

I got the opportunity to speak to a wide range of association executives (including a bunch of good library association folks) at DigitalFusion's ASAE DigitalNow Conference. It was a great way to spend a weekend in Disney World at the end of a long winter. I highly recommend the new Animal Kingdom where I spent a while communing with nature, Disney style - which might be as close to real life as the web is, but it was still fun.

Anyway, my session on "Web 2.0, Association 2.0 and Leadership 2.0" is here.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 9:08 AM | Comments (0)

Texas Library Association

This conference is huge! It's also very well organized and incredibly hospitable. I loved it. And, OMG if I can be permitted a little star worship, I got to see Julie Andrews and Rhea Perlman up close and personal.

I also got to give two presenations. The one on Millennials is here and the one "Poppies, Flyig Monkeys and Good Witches" is here (It's really a trend forcast).

Either way, TxLA is fun.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 9:02 AM | Comments (0)

Patron Day

I spent a day with the Metropolitan Libraries outside of Chicago. Alane Wilson from OCLC presented on the Perceptions study and, as usual, had a great deal to offer. Ed Vielmetti, the SuperPatron, did great presentation about what the new patron expects from libraries (and OPACs) today (This was cool- how often do patrons present to libraries?).

I did a session on Public Library Personas and how to focus on the patron's real needs.

It's an interesting theme to focus a staff conference on the patron. I wonder how often we do that, and if it's often enough.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 8:50 AM | Comments (4)

College Library Director Forecast

Here's a link to the PPT for a talk given to the library directors in Connecticut (Council of Connecticut Library Directors). It was interesting (for me at least) going through some of the key predicted changes libraries and applying them in the education space.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 8:45 AM | Comments (0)

Personas Teleconference

I did a national (Canada) teleconference on personas and knowing our commnunities for the "Partnership" which is the collaborative Education Institute of the provincial library associations in Canada. Here's the slides that were used as a handout. There were some great questions at the end.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 8:41 AM | Comments (0)

Quebec Library Association (ABQLA)

I had a lovely time at the ABQLA Conference in Montreal in May. I got to do two sessions. One on Millennials which is here and one on the future of libraries and Web 2.0 stuff here.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 8:37 AM | Comments (0)

Young Adults

It's always a problem to try to label the next generation. They're good library users and we have a lot to offer but calling them teens, young adults, millennials, etc. never feels quite satisfactory. Anyway, in preparation for my session at ALA in New Orleans, the YALSA (Young Adult Library Services) folks interviewed me for their newsletter. Here's what I sent in here.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 8:32 AM | Comments (1)

Fun Stuff to Play With

My Information Outlook column called "A Few Fun Things to Play With."

So, I just listed a few things I was playing with on the web, Squidoo, Ziki, Wikis, Maxthon, etc. OK, I know it's an easy column to write but it's fun anyway!

Maxthon BrowserSquidoo
Library 2.0 LensAssociation Innovation Lens
Library and Information Science Lens
Library 2.0 Blog
Library 2.0 wikiLibrary Success: Best Practices Wiki
Ziki

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 8:25 AM | Comments (4)

MySpace and School Libraries

Next in the series is "What can MySpace Teach us in School Libraries".

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 8:22 AM | Comments (304)

MySpace and Special Libraries

Here's my recent column on "What Can MySpace Teach Special Librarians".
It's part of a series.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 8:20 AM | Comments (33)

May 18, 2006

Solution Watch

Solution Watch surveys the new generation of the web, reviewing and providing in-depth walkthroughs of today’s best products and services. It tracks web 2.0 stuff in an editorial way and brings insights together. Stuff worth stealing.

Here's a neat post on 50 ways to take notes. Useful for meetings, blogging, notetaking, stream of onsciousness idea scribing, etc.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 12:34 PM | Comments (2)

Light

It challenges everything you think you know. I love light as a metaphor. Is there anything more interesting? I know they've made light go slow as a bucycle and stopped it dead in it's tracks. I know they've done the Star Trek transporter thing with beams of light too. But look at this article about how scientists have found a way to make light travel backwards. To add weirdness to confusion, these backward travelling pulses move faster than lightspeed as well. Cool. Our kids will see an even more amazing world and think of the information we can store in ths light! Moore's Law lives on...

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 12:28 PM | Comments (1)

Value of Libraries - more!

Another study on the heels of Florida and South Carolina about the economic value of public libraries.

"The Carnegie Mellon University Center for Economic Development conducted the study [on the value of the library], which was released three weeks ago. It documents an impressive array of benefits flowing from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, which has 19 neighborhood locations in the city, including the main library in Oakland.

According to the study, which surveyed 1,300 individuals and interviewed several focus groups, the Carnegie Library sustains 726 jobs and more than $63 million in economic output in Allegheny County annually. For every dollar the city of Pittsburgh and the Allegheny County Regional Asset District provide the Carnegie Library, the study contends that the library provides more than $6 worth of benefits."

Find the article here.

Cool. Need to see an executive summary or view the report? It's here.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)

MySpace and Marketing

Hmmmm - here's an article about a church using MySpace to market to youth. The library YA MySpace accounts like Hennepin and Thomas Ford are neat experiments in this area too. (Check out their ages.)

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 12:08 PM | Comments (0)

Two Great Library Marketing Blogs

Here are three library marketing blogs that I love - one new and two that have been around for a little while.

The M Word

Library Marketing: Thinking Outside the Box.

Creating Passionate Users

The May 16th Sudoku post is a laugh out loud riot.

Read, learn, enjoy.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 12:02 PM | Comments (0)

May 16, 2006

Bestsellers, Best Borrowed, Most Collected

I spent the day on Friday at OLITA's excellent Digital Odyssey Forum for the Ontario Library Association. It was great to get to listen for a day and not speak!

Anyway, Beth Jefferson from Bibliocommons gave a great talk on her research with library end-users and how they choose books to read. There was a great deal of interesting data and insights.

She made an interesting point. Many libraries have lists of bestsellers on their homepage or upfront. She went through dozens of library sites and showed how libraries were promoting bestsellers. She then showed the real end-user experience. This was of course finding out that most, maybe all, bestsellers in the library inventory have hundreds of holds on them and the wait is months long. Now, is this a great user experience? Clearly not.

My brother and I have drawers full of 'rain checks' from a local department store chain. This store regularly advertises great specials which seem to never, ever be in stock - even on the day the sale flyer comes out. The merchandise is usually also special orders for the sale so the rain check is pointless because the goods will never come back in stock. Ths store is in the top five stores for regularly being fined by the various authorities for advertising fraud and bait & switch. It's a national chain and I am sure they just treat the fines as business expenses. You can get people in Canada ranting around the summer BBQ about this store's practices but they stay in business!

Why am I mentioning poor retail practices? Are we doing the same thing? Is it bait and switch to advertise bestseller and have few really available? Should we be promoting more end-user reviews and pushing non-bestseller reviews? Beth showed one chart that showed end-users saw the book return cart as a key recommender of good read in the library"

Are we really understanding the long tail? Should we be promoting the cool books in our collection that are available? When we promote staff picks, maybe we should push the books not getting the force of newspapers' and publishers' attention. Do bestsellers need more promotion from us?

Combine some of this with research I am told shows that patron selected books circulate more than books selected by libraries; the research on ciriculation and the long tail; comparison of best sellers and best borrowed books; comparison's of OCLC's best collected books and what actually circulates; the NDP data... and it'd be a great debate about what libraries should collect, promote and empower for recreational circulation!

Anyway, I found Beth's challenges a good point to start a conversation.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 5:58 PM | Comments (1)

NYT and "Scan This Book"

The New York Times Magazine article from this past weekend (May 14th)is getting a lot of blog play. Phil Bradley has summarized some of the interesting stats here:

"Here are a few of the highlights:

Humans have published at least 32,000,000 books that, when digitised will fit onto a 50 petabyte hard disk. With tomorrow's technology it will all fit onto your iPod.

Nearly 100% of all contemporary recorded music has already been digitized, as has 10% of the half million movies on the IMDB.

1,000,000 books a year are being digitized, and books can be scanned at the rate of 1,000 pages per hour (by machine).

The link and tag may be two of the most important inventions of the last 50 years, allowing each book, page, paragraph, word to talk to each other.

Books, including fiction, will become a web of names and a community of ideas.

The effect of copyright law, to protect the publishers, has meant that about 75% of all books have been abandoned; out of print and unable to be copied. 15% of books are in the public domain and 10% are in print.

Value has shifted away from a copy of a book towards the many ways to recall, annotate, personalize and edit a work."

Worth a read!

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 5:47 PM | Comments (1)

May 11, 2006

Gaming

I have heard for years that the gaming industry was bigger than publishing. I don't know that this is exactly true but here is one of the numbers. Read it here.

"The video game industry, which supported 144,000 full-time jobs and accounted for more than $8 billion in game sales in 2004, had an $18 billion impact on the U.S. economy that year, according to a new study to be released on Wednesday (May 10)."

Also, one of the books that explores the role of videogaming and education was just released May 2nd in paperback on May 2nd. "Everything Bad is Good for You" by Steven Berlin Johnson. He's got a cool blog too.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 12:55 PM | Comments (0)

Singalong Fun

Peter Bromberg has written a fun Library 2.0 song!

Hear or read it here.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)

Social Software in Libraries

Meredith Wolfwater at Information Wants to be Free has written a pretty comprehensive state of the sector post on social software in libraries. See it here.

Amazing post. Lots of links.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 12:45 PM | Comments (0)

May 9, 2006

Teaching Information Competencies

I am hearing this quite a few times recently. Some folks are saying that calling our training activities "Information Literacy" does not ring the bell with the people we want to train. Apparently, some think it implies that they are illiterate and we, therefore, end up digging oursleves out of a hole with the very people we want to empower.

Hmmmm, someone suggested that 'information fluency' might work better.

Anyone have any other good phrases or words? We must have evolved past the 'bibiographic instruction' or worse, "BI" of my youth!

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 3:18 PM | Comments (3)

KM and Blogs

Stan Garfield has assembled an impressive list of blogs on knowledge management from the experts. Every [special] librarian should subscribe to a few of these!

You can find them here.

Lots of mind expanding stuff here. It's like mini-PhD coursework!

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 12:46 PM | Comments (0)

Jargon

Here are a few phrases I have heard around town lately that seem interesting. Make up your own definition!

Information Warrior

Information Voyeur

Information Dilletante

Information Tourist

Information Networker

Information Pruner

Information Matchmaker

Information Czar

Information Terrorist

Information Missionary

Information Hoarder

How many potential types are there out there? Maybe this can be a meme or perhaps one of those tests like 'What kind of dog are you?' This might make a fun lunchtime game ... eh?

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 9:02 AM | Comments (1)

Department Stores

I wonder if this analogy holds?

Remember department stores? I mean real department stores with all the departments - hardware, housewares, paint, auto, clothing, cards and the whole kit and kaboodle. These stores were all things to all people. When The Gap tried to aim itself at being for all ages, it's sales declined. Ooops.

Seen too many of these broad based stores lately? Even the big downtown stores - if your town has any left - are mostly just fashion now. There are a lot fewer chains and local names too. What caused these to decline? Wal-Mart? Malls? Suburbia? Big Boxes? Busy working families?

Do libraries try to be everything for everyone? Are we too diverse and unspecialized? Can we build a community presence that engages people in a positioning of libraries that isn't overly homogenized? What positioning do you want for your library brand? Who do we want to excite?

Just asking...

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 8:52 AM | Comments (2)

Seeing The Back of Your Head

My colleague, Bob Molyneux, is fond of saying this:

"You can't see the back of your head."

I love this phrase. How do you see the back of your head? What is the metaphoric back of the library head?

Is it our non-users? What do we actually know about them. Some recent research for a large metropolitan public library appears to show that non-users support libraries at a higher rate than library card holders. Hmmmm. Why?

Is it our virtual users? With many libraries experiencing the majority of their use through their websites and e-services, how do you see these users? Are we driving decisions based on just the users who show up in person in front of our head? Can we assume they're the same? different?

What's happening outside of our libraries in the broader community? Are we there and sharing it with our colleagues? If we don't see it, is it real. Are we treating what's happening behind our head like a tree falling in the forest? It makes a sound, whether we're there to hear it or not!

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 8:44 AM | Comments (0)

An Idea Worth Stealing

Don Barlow at Westerville Public Library asks his staff to keep a log of whenever they have to say "no" to a user. What a great idea! They review these 'no lists' and determine if there is a valid reason to be saying no to a user. It helps them find service gaps, bad policies, etc. It also helps them to focus on those events where the customer experience might be perceived as negative.

Seems like a good place to start to re-regulate libraries. Are all of our policies working to our best interests and the interests of our users?

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 8:39 AM | Comments (0)

Fad or Trend

One of the key tricks in innovation is trying to figure out whether something you're looking at is a fad or a trend.

Alane Wilson from OCLC said last week that a fad can be part of a trend which makes it even more confusing.

Can you tell the difference between a pet rock and a video tape recorder?

Pet rocks were a fad. I guess Millennials might not know this reference so they can substitute pogs. Trolls were a fad - at least three times for different generations. They flashed, didn't mutate too much, and headed for obscurity (or I guess eBay now).

Beta and VHS were a trend. They were part of the overall evolution of DVD, TiVO, streaming media, YouTube and viral video, etc. etc.

Now you know the difference between a fad and a trend. Ha! It’s not always so cut and dried and it painfully dificult to see the trend when you're in the moment.

Fads aren't necessarily fun, cheap or quick. Trends aren't necessarily easy to see and they may not follow a simple evolutionary path.

Libraries are good managers of money and don't spend it on faddish things. We try to make sure that it has some long lasting value. We want to capitalize on trends.

While fads are by definition mostly short and intense, a trend is part of a longer, more complex ecological change. The trick is seeing what 'flow' the innovation is part of.

Alane talks about the fad of women bobbing their hair in the twenties and how that fad was a part of the overall trend of women's liberation. This is a good way to look at things. Is your fad part of a longer trend?

Are eBook readers, in the device of the week flavor, a fad or part of a larger trend?

Are new DRM methods a fad or a trend?

Are iPods a fad or part of a larger trend?

What about videogaming in libraries? PDA's? SmartPhones?

Are wristbands, a la Lance Armstrong, for libraries a fad?

How about garage rock band concerts in libraries or Dance Dance Revolution nights?

I think that we can learn from fads and it's not frivolous. We can learn from the components of trends and get important learning too. It probably doesn't matter that we're exactly right all the time. Those folks who have a small closet or hard drive full of old early stage software, old ebook readers, PDA's, phones, palm size PC's, games, have learned things earlier than others. They are better prepared to evaluate the next stage in the trend. Take a look at your bookmarks. Which were fads and which were trends? Are bookmarks a fad (thnk del.icio.us)? By trying new things and checking them out, we learn how to ask better questions. Deciding when to jump in and what to play with is a key skill in being ready for the changes in our lives and communities.

With this in mind, maybe we need to play and share in the sandbox more. BTW, you don't need to buy all these devices. I find just asking for demos at the (Sony, Apple, telephone, toy) store often teaches me a lot. Now that there are so many of these stores in airports, it's like a built-in playground with forced waiting! I might even buy something.

Play, Try, Demo, Pilot, ... find the unintended consequences!

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 7:10 AM | Comments (0)

Podcasting Session at SirsiDynix Institute

Oh yeah, in case you're unaware of the SirsiDynix Insitute, check it out here.

And, surprise!, the next two are on podcasting and come from esteemed expert, Greg Schwartz from Open Stacks.

A Beginner's Guide to Podcasting
Part 1 - A Consumer's Guide May 17
Part 2 - A Creator's Guide May 24

Just click on the 'register' button to, uh, register.

The webinars are open to anyone.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 6:56 AM | Comments (0)

SirsiDynix Institute Offers Podcasts

After wanting this for so long, I forgot to blog it! Bad me, this slaps with a wet noodle. This news is pretty cool.

Stephen

HUNTSVILLE, Ala., April 24, 2006 – SirsiDynix, the global leader in strategic technology solutions for libraries, announced today that the SirsiDynix Institute now offers podcasting as a means of sharing its free Web seminars with library and information professionals. The SirsiDynix Institute is an ongoing forum for professional development in the library community, providing free access to industry-leading speakers and events. Library professionals from more than 10,000 libraries have attended SirsiDynix Institute seminars since they began in 2003.

SirsiDynix Institute podcasts are available for free download here and for free subscription at the iTunes Music Store . Each podcast runs approximately one hour and covers current topics of interest to librarians. Instructions can be found here.

“The SirsiDynix Institute is a one-of-a-kind professional development resource in the library sector,” said Stephen Abram, SirsiDynix vice president of innovation. “SirsiDynix’s vision is to help create a future in which libraries play a more strategic role within their communities – making sense of the vast world of information and bringing knowledge in all its forms to real people to meet real needs – and this vision motivates us to offer resources like the SirsiDynix Institute to advance the work of librarianship around the world.

“Now it’s even more convenient for listeners to access SirsiDynix Institute seminars – whenever and wherever they want through podcasts,” Abram added.

In addition to being available in podcasts, SirsiDynix Institute Web seminars are also accessible online via Microsoft Live Meeting for interaction with presenters and access to visual aids. Past presentations are also available in the seminar archive here.

Posted by stephen at 6:47 AM | Comments (0)

New Upstream now available

Here's the latest issue of the SirsiDynix Institute newsletter we put together.

Stephen

What is your library doing to build and engage the community and how is your library positioned for the future in playing an even greater role in the community? Read this issue of SirsiDynix Upstream and explore the ideas and opinions on this topic from 10 leading library experts. Whether you're a small public library, k – 12, consortia, or academic institution you will be engaged. The spring issue of Upstream is now available for free download. Upstream is an invaluable facet of the SirsiDynix Institute, posing thought-provoking questions in each issue regarding important issues in librarianship. It offers unexpected ideas and uncensored opinions aimed at provoking thought, generating discussion, and fueling creative approaches to contemporary industry topics. Like the SirsiDynix Institute Web Seminar Series, you won't want to miss reading this issue in which we posed this question:

"What is the best example of libraries building communities that you have come across or experienced? How will libraries in the future be empowered to play even a greater role in their communities?"

Contributors include:

SUSAN CAMPBELL
Library Director
York College of Pennsylvania
EDWIN S. CLAY III
Director
Fairfax County Public Library
STEVEN COHEN
Senior Librarian, PubSubs Concepts, Inc.
Editor of Information Today's Library Stuff Weblog
LINDA COOK
Director
Edmonton Public Library
THERESA FREDERICKA
Executive Director
INFOhio, The Information Network for Ohio Schools
SARAH LONG
Director
North Suburban Library System
MICHAEL STEPHENS
Library Industry
Author and Speaker
GARY E. STRONG
UCLA University Librarian and Former
State Librarian of California
JESSAMYN WEST
Editor of Librarian.net and Co-administrator
of Community Weblog MetaFilter.com
CATHY WILT
Executive Director
PALINET

Posted by stephen at 6:39 AM | Comments (0)

May 7, 2006

Other MySpaces

As regular readers know, I think that there's a lot to learn about building engaging portals for libraries from MySpace and the like. (and for those of you who think that finding fault with MySpace somehow means that nothing can be learned from it, think again.)

Anyway, there are other sites in this targeted social networking space trend. Some are more popular in other countries.

Bebo is popular in the UK.

Faceparty is another one.

Google's Orkut is very popular in Brazil.

These things are evolving like Tribbles.

I'll have a few articles out soon on what libraries can learn from Facebook and MySpace.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 11:14 PM | Comments (1)

The Evolution of the Pathfinder

Stephen Leary has a great post at his blog, The Reflective Librarian, about evolution of library pathfinders.

Here's a teaser:

"1.0 -- Typed, handwritten, or word processed
2.0 -- Web pages
3.0 -- Wikis
4.0 -- Mashups"

See the whole post here.

It's insightful. Hmmmm. Pathfinder 4.0 is so Library 2.0.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 11:08 PM | Comments (0)

Global Internet population nears 700m

Read it here.

"There are an estimated 694 million internet users [over 15 years old] worldwide, according to a report from Comscore World Metrix. The study reveals that the internet is truly expanding worldwide, with the US representing less than 25 per cent of global internet users as of the end of March."

"The 'major' Asian countries – China, Japan, Korea and India – currently represent almost 25 per cent of the world's internet population, with 168.1 million users. Combined, these four countries have a larger internet user base than the US, which has 152 million users, the largest of any single country. China comes in second, with 74.7 million users, followed by Japan with 52.1 million."

"The report also measured the average hours spent online per visitor during the month of March 2006."

Need any other reason to be Unicode compliant if you serve users globally or have users who search content from around the world?

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)

3.3bn global mobile phone subscribers by 2010

Well, we're heading for almost half of all humans having a mobile phone. Does this need to be considered in your 5 year strategy?

"The number of worldwide mobile phone subscribers is expected to grow from two billion in 2005 to approximately 3.3 billion in 2010, representing a CAGR (compound average growth rate) of 10.1 per cent,according to figures from market research firm Market Intelligence Center (MIC),"DMeurope reports."Such growth will come mainly from Asia,the Middle East and Africa.The Middle East is expected to chalk up the highest growth rate,followed by,in descending order,Africa,Asia,Eastern Europe,Latin America,North America and Western Europe".

"The share of 3G subscribers is projected to break the 10 per cent mark for the first time in 2007, reaching 296 million."

Read the article here.

Add to that the needed economic meergence of the smartphone as a key device in the world and I see a huge opportunity for libraries delivering information and service to where the users are. Is your web presence mobile ready?

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)

Join the Info*Nation Movement

Blog folks:

I have a small request for my Lighthouse readers. Below is a note from a team of Canadian library folk who are working a project from the 8R's Task Force of the Canadian Library Association (small disclosure - I appointed the task force as CLA president and I am incredibly proud of the work they're doing but take no real credit for this. It's all theirs.).

Anyway, one thing we noted was that there were too few positive stories about librarianship as a career collected in one space. We know from the 8R's surveys that we have high levels of career satisfaction. So the task force set out to address the issue. If we want to recruit the best and the brightest to our world, we better start sharing our stories. Surveys show that most people do their career choice research on the web. Let's be there!

Read Catherine's note below and send us your stories! Click here.

Stephen

I'd like to request your participation in the Info*Nation project. Your voices will give our project the impact and energy it requires to be successful. It is a project of the recruitment working group of Stephen Abram's CLA President's Council on the 8Rs. See the announcement below for more information.

I look forward to reading your submissions. Sign up here. Thank you very much!

Catherine

Catherine Steeves

******************************************************************************

Join the Info*Nation Movement!

Info*Nation is a participatory website that promotes library and information professions in Canada. It is targeted at today’s youth and other people seeking exciting career opportunities. It will speak their language and grab their attention.

To find out more about Info*Nation check out our pre-launch site here. http://www.infonation.ca. It has been designed to announce the project, start a buzz, and above all engage potential participants from the information professions.

Every nation needs its citizens. Join now! We need your help to gather the diverse voices of people that work in Canadian libraries. If you have an interesting job in the information world and are passionate and proud of what you do, join our movement by visiting www.infonation.ca and putting the reasons why into a few words. Just click here.

You can also help us spread the word! Join the campaign. Write about the project on your blog or website and grab a free graphic off our site to help with publicity. Tell your friends. If you know someone who loves their work and is interested in bringing in new recruits to the profession, you should encourage them to join up too.

How long do you have? Well, the pre-launch campaign runs throughout the month of May and the official Info*Nation website is set to launch mid-June at the CLA conference.

For more information contact us at infonation.project@gmail.com.

Oh yeah, and who are we? We are the Recruitment Working Group of the CLA President’s Council on the 8Rs look here. Our members are Jason Bird, Fiona Black, M.J. D’Elia, Karen Hildebrandt, Murray McCabe, and Catherine Steeves. But this is not about us, it is about you and our profession.

Posted by stephen at 10:05 AM | Comments (0)

May 6, 2006

Academic Use of Digital Resources

Darlene Fichter has a good post summarizing some of the results in "An Indepth Look at the Actual Academic Use of Digital Resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities"

The final report of the University of California at Berkeley's study on the Use and Users of Digital Resources: A Focus on Undergraduate Education in the Humanities and Social Science by Diane Harley et all was released April 5, 2006.

Both the study and Darlene's post are worth reading.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 10:06 AM | Comments (0)

Why didn't libraries invent this

Zimbio has launched. It's a Like Squidoo lookalike but not quite a clone. When an idea starts to get copied, you know it's gaining traction. It's part of this amazing trend to see all those standalone features and functions combine into the service of some content and user-centric product or service.

These lenses or guides focus on a specific domain. Zimbio calls itself a network of public portals. "Information guides to help members quickly get down the learning curve on any topic." "Squidoo is home to tens of thousands of everyday enthusiasts. Spread your ideas, make yourself known, meet new traffic. (You could even earn a royalty). What's your topic?" They claim that if you build it they will learn.

Remember pathfinders? They were those sheets of paper that gave tips on navigating certain popular topics in libraries. I still see racks of them in libraries. I also see webliographies on some library portals and websites. Hmmmm. Why didn't we grow past this as quickly as Zimbio and Squidoo have? They have harnessed the energy of thousands of users, some of them experts.

Of course we did - SirsiDynix Rooms offers an even more sophisticated environment to create these content and context management views or portals. Rooms links to beyond the web into OPACs, licensed resources and the whole gamut of context tools.

Pathfinders 1.0
Rooms and Squidoo 2.0
Users finding success - priceless

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 9:34 AM | Comments (2)

Personas Readings

For those you who listened in for my session the Education Partnership's national teleconference on personas on May 3, I thought you might like some further reading links:

This is my favourite article on the topic:

Personas: Practice and Theory from Microsoft.

Other good reads are:

Personas: Setting the Stage for Building Usable Information Sites by Alison J. Head

Personas: Matching a Design to the Users' Goals by Christine Perfetti

An introduction to personas and how to create them by Tina Calabria

There's a good webliography here.

I highly recommend reading Alan Cooper's "The Inmates Are Asylum ". That's the basic text on the concept. It's available used on Amazon for not a bad price.

Alan Cooper runs a website where you can find out more too. His article on The Origin of Personas is there too. You cna subscribe to his free newsletter here.

Two SirsiDynix clients that have used persona work independently are the University of Toronto and Hamilton Public Library.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 9:13 AM | Comments (0)

May 3, 2006

OCLC and RLG

Well the libraryland landscape shifts again.

OCLC and RLG have jointly announced that they plan to merge July 1, 2006 after a vote.

Let's see how many years we can offer big merger announcements prior to the big library conference season!

Now if Vanna will let us buy a vowel, we can play the name game (grin).

Welcome OCLCRLG.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 7:06 PM | Comments (0)

Productivity – SSSHHHHHHH!!!)

The latest SirsiDynix OneSource is out. I know that part one of my article on productivity in libraries was read since I got a load of private e-nails from it.

That Library Word That Dare Not Be Heard Aloud
(Productivity – SSSHHHHHHH!!!) - Part 2

If you missed Part one it's here.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 6:58 PM | Comments (0)

20 Characteristics of Genius

The Idea Sandbox has an interesting post here.

Vision
Desire
Faith
Commitment
Planning
Persistence
Learning from Mistakes
Subject Knowledge
Mental Literacy
Imagination
Positive Attitude
Auto-Suggestion
Intuition
Mastermind Group (Real)
Mastermind Group (Internal)
Truth/Honesty
Facing Fears/Courage
Creativity/Flexibility
Love of the Task
Energy (Physical/Sensual/Sexual)

As they note, look at the first few characteristics. They have nothing to do with knowledge and information but they're certainly about engagement with yourelf, your work and your community.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 8:26 AM | Comments (2)

10 Rules for Innovators

Talentism has these 10 Rules for Innovators here.

(1) Innovation starts with "And"
(2) Not Just Smart, But Always Focused
(3) Make Sure You Have the "No But" Critic in the Room
(4) Build Crappy Prototypes Fast
(5) Don't Listen To Customers, Watch Them
(6) If It's Right, Change It
(7) Sell it Like you Play It
(8) Iterate 'Till You Drop
(9) Appoint One Person Bad Cop and Follow Their Command
(10) Innovation Is About Learning, not Genius

I love number 4. Make mistakes and you learn. Fall in love with your first draft and it's crap.

Worth discussing over a brown bag lunch

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 8:18 AM | Comments (0)

Googlezon

Well Googlezon takes a blow. Amazon has quietly dropped Google as their search engine for A9. They've switched to MSN (since they're Seattle neighbors, maybe all those Starbucks conversations paid off). Some sources feel that 10% of Amazon searches resulted in links to Google. Google is getting some harder competition lately - with this and the Windows Live Academic beta launch. The Open Content Alliance (with Yahoo! and MSN as partners) adds another dimension to the library/ publisher opinion drivers. John Blossom's editorial commentary and summary is worth reading.

The Internet ride is getting rockier folks.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 8:04 AM | Comments (0)

Why is Innovation Hard?

Gary Hamel has a good post on the Business Innovation Insider blog here.

The original WSJ commentary is here.

Do these ring true for your experience in libraries?

"As Hamel explains, there are four important "evolutionary risk factors" that innovators must confront:

(1) A narrow or orthodox business definition that limits the scope of innovation;

(2) A hierarchical organization that over-weights the views of those who have a stake in perpetuating the status quo;

(3) A tendency to overinvest in "what is" at the expense of "what could be";

(4) Creeping mediocrity."

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 8:00 AM | Comments (0)

Google Scholar Deficiencies

I was unable to attend and do my endnote for the UK Serials Group conference (which made me feel very bad). However, it looks like Peter Jacsó did his usual superb job. Link to it here.

Péter Jacsó, Puppy love versus reality: The illiteracy, innumeracy, phantom hit counts and citation counts of Google Scholar, a PPT presentation at the UKSG Annual Conference (Warwick, April 3-5, 2006).

He deconstructs Google Scholar nicely and really hits the Google worshippers hard!

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 7:53 AM | Comments (1)

After MySpace . . .

Alice at It's All Good has a neat list that we should try to meme. She asks the question: What's next after MySpace?

The list includes:

TagWorld
Imeem
Tagged
VarsityWorld

She points to this Wall Street Journal article too. (Just wait for the ad to finish.)

What do you think might be a leading indicator of the future here?

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 7:46 AM | Comments (0)

Getting Staff Members to Buy In

TechEssence has a good posting on the top 6 ways to get staff (not necessarily users) to buy into new technologies. This reads like a list that was learned through bruises. Meredith Farkas always writes great stuff.

1. Do not decide things unilaterally

2. Involve staff in planning

3. Involve IT in planning

4. Encourage staff to "kick the tires"

5. Offer training

6. Don't rush it

I was at one library recently that almost launched talking books / audiobooks to their communities without having a single iPod or MP3 player in house for staff to play with. Imagine the possible resistance from library staff who had never experienced the library user experience of downloading and listening to a book (but being asked questions by patrons for help!). It's a lot to expect all staff to buy or share these devices on library salaries. Should our key library strategies rest on our staff borrowing players from their kids and neices? It's a simple thing to forget but an essential part of the process of technology adoption. You could even buy extra devices and use them as contest prizes to raise awareness and new library cards. Playing with them makes for seamless learning. During work hours, let staff listen to music or a book for a 2 week period before launch. They'll learn faster and the social pressure will kick in to break the inertia between the present and the future.

Find the full post here.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 7:31 AM | Comments (0)

Definitive Lists of Web 2.0 Companies

The Mashable blog has started a list of lists for Web 2.0 companies. This should be a fun place to surf for a while. Check it out here.

Of, and BTW, the Mashable blog is an interesting blog about mash-ups.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 7:27 AM | Comments (0)

Facebook on Campus

Here's a very useful and thoughtful post about undertsanding Facebook on campus. It is called "How University Administrators Should Approach the Facebook: Ten Rules".

I like these quotes:

"The Facebook isn't going away."

"Students are forced to renegotiate their social networks every semester."

"Almost all of your institution's undergraduates are on the Facebook. I found that 94 percent of UNC's Freshman class was on the Facebook."

"Since you can't make Facebook go away, and even if you tried to, you couldn't, you might as well accept it and deal with it. The fact of the matter is that students need to understand the long view, and they need to understand the importance of the written record. They've spent their entire lives online, and they are completely comfortable posting information about themselves online. Now that they're 18, economic motivations step in, and it is our obligation and duty to protect them."

Worth a read.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 7:14 AM | Comments (0)