Reality 2.0: Attracting and Engaging the Millennial Library User

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2008

Timberline Leadership Symposium

I had the distinct pleasure of participating in the first Timberline Leadership Symposium last week at Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood in Oregon. It was a great experience in a perfect location. 14 feet of snow and that was after a melt! It was up to my second floor window.

Anyway, we did a lot of stuff including a new preferences diagnostic called DISC that I just completed too - for those of you who were there I am apparently an I and not a D like I suspected! My contribution was the economic, demographic, social and techology SWOT for libraries to help underpin the vision exercise.

Here are the slides:

Reality 2.0: Leadership and Strategy

Great group of folks. I hope to meet them all again.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 10:42 PM | Comments (1)

Mind Map of Information Literacy Resources

My kids were always creating mind maps before they started any project. I love them as a way to outline.

Anyway, here's a great little Mind Map of Information Literacy Resources.

It's organized into:

General Resources
Standards
Second Life
Professional Associations
Conferences
Listervs
Online Tutorials & Videos
Blogs
Podcasts
Wikis
Facebook Groups
Open Source Tools
Other Web 2.0 Tools

Cool little map!

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 9:26 PM | Comments (1)

Twitter at SLA in Seattle 2008

Twitter at SLA2008!

As president of SLA this year, I wanted to create a neat learning and innovation opportunity at the conference in Seattle. And some folks on my SLA innovation team delivered (Thanks Daniel and Cindy et al!)

Want to learn about Twitter and microblogging but just can't commit for life!? Well now you can try it for the conference alone.

As part of SLA's Innovation Lab, and for the first time at an SLA conference, SLA will be using Twitter to make the conference experience more collaborative via use of a backchannel. SLA2008 has been created on the Twitter website for conference attendees and non-attendees alike to follow. More on using Twitter at conference is here.

If you are already on Twitter, follow sla2008 by:

1. Sending "follow SLA2008" from IM or your phone.
2. Clicking on the "follow" button on the sla2008 profile page.

If you aren't on Twitter, create an account and follow the instructions above.

Follow the updates on the sla2008 with_friends timeline.

Don't know what Twitter is? Watch this great introductory video from the folks at Common Craft.

For Further Reading

Twitter FAQ
The Official Twitter Commands

And lots more here.

Of course, there wsill be tons more innovation stuff at SLA. Watch for the Learning 2.0 23 Things project to try to learn new stuff this summer and beyond. Watch for the launch of the SLA Innovation Laboratory. Watch for SLA in Second Life. And that doesn't even begin to describe a great SLA conference in Seattle. Still time to register...!

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 9:03 PM | Comments (1)

Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, et al

Well it has been a busy week!

Microsoft started winding down both the Microsoft Live Academic Search and their book and journal digitization project, MS Live Search Book.

I believe that this is the result of a fundamental problem in the schizophrenic way MS approaches search. They don't seem to know whether they are targeting enterprises like businesses and institutions or whether they are targeting consumers and end users.

Their alliances with the Open Content Alliance, to which a large number of libraries are a party, are now forced into a self funding model and a re-evaluation of any potential or predicted revenue from ads and sponsorships. Brewster Kahle of the internert Archive and OCA said this recently:

"The Internet Archive operates 13 scanning centers in great libraries, digitizing 1000 books a day. This scanning is financially supported by libraries, foundations, and the Microsoft Corporation. Today, Microsoft has announced that it will ramp down their investment in this area. We very much appreciate their efforts and funding in book scanning over the last 3 years. As a result, over 300,000 books are publicly available on the archive.org site that would not otherwise be.

"To their credit, they said they are taking off any contractual restrictions on the public domain books and letting us keep the equipment that they funded. This is extremely important because it can allow those of us in the public sphere to leverage what they helped build. Keeping the public domain materials public domain is where we all wanted to be. Getting a books scanning process in place is also a major accomplishment. Thank you Microsoft.

"Funding for the time being is secure, but going forward we will need to replace the Microsoft funding. Microsoft has always encourage the Open Content Alliance to work in parallel in case this day arrived. Let’s work together, quickly, to build on the existing momentum. All ideas welcome."

"Onward to a completely public library system!"

Interesting.

Google seems to know it's all about eyeballs. Google appears to be continuing well into its digitization efforts. Millions of books and thousands of publisher alliances in place already. Then again, they have been neglecting Google Scholar and use of Scholar has been dropping a lot in a world where ordinary search is increasing by double digit growth. What's up? Are folks waiting for a new place to grow for scholarly work?

Then again, this could all be part of the wonderful orchestrated dance as Carl Icahn, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google play nice in cutting up the search pie and the Cloud. Hmmm. Throw in Facebook's market share in the academic world and the MS investment there . . . and AOL's investment in Bebo . . . and MySpace and Dow Jones and Murdoch and it just gets . . .

Too interesting.

I think, like others, it's all about the cloud and collaboration and online social networks.

One person last week said that no one will ever really accept commercial interests in the cloud or social networks. I said, yeah. I heard that one when the created the .com domain when everyone said no academic would every accept the commercial internet and web!

As I've said before, I don't think we've heard the end of this story yet. It's just beginning.

I am really looking forward to SLA and ALA to discuss these things in person. How's that for hybrid irony!?

Stephen

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

May 22, 2008

CCLI in Santa Cruz

Also, last week, I got to do a session for the California Clearinghouse on Library Instruction in Santa Cruz. The theme of the day was "It's the Millennium: Do You Know Where Your Users Are?". Here's my contribution:

Reality 2.0: Engaging the Scholarly User

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 11:04 PM | Comments (0)

May 21, 2008

OPAL Podcast

Last Friday I had the pleasure of doing an online radio show for OPAL with Tom Peters. Here's a link:

A Casual Conversation with Stephen Abram, conducted on May 16, 2008.

Streaming audio of the casual conversation with Stephen Abram (runtime 52:08)

Downloadable MP3 audiorecording of the casual conversation with Stephen Abram (16.3 MB; runtime 52:08)

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 7:14 PM | Comments (1)

May 15, 2008

AISTI Annual Conference

I love visiting the AISTI conference in Sante Fe NM. It is always an interesting time with a very bright group.

Here's my presentation:

Building Capacity for Change:
Preparing Our Enterprises for New Information Strategies

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 4:21 PM | Comments (0)

May 12, 2008

Mid-York Library System

I had a lovely Saturday with the good folks at the Mid-York Library System in Utica NY. We had many library staff and trustees to review trends in the library world. Here are the slides:

Top 25 Technologies to Watch And How Libraries are Changing

Afterwards I had a nice visit to the local art gallery.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 11:09 PM | Comments (0)

May 11, 2008

Book Clubs

From ther Book Group Buzz blog:

25 Ways Libraries Can Serve Book Groups

Lots of fun ideas. Others ideas that might be useful too:

1. Check out your shelves for sets of 6-10 bestsellers from a year or two ago. Create book club bags that hold a bunch of copies as well as the publishers reading guide.
2. Have a book club idea blog from your library shared by the whole system.
3. Set up a chat room or Facebook or Ning group for book clubs in your library area for folks to share ideas and discussions.
4. Popular book for clubs? Make sure you you link to Syndetics or Amazon reviews as well as the publisher's reading guide.
5. Don't forget to do a nuche club like a guy's club, teen club, mom's club, etc.
6. Start a virtual club that doeasn't need to meet in person - perfect for the housebound, disabled, or busy working parents, etc.
7. Check out author videos online, in Syndetics or YouTube and use them to promote your club support.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 11:12 AM | Comments (2)

The Mobile World

I liked this posting which started like this...

"In March of 2008, someone – probably in India – bought a mobile telephone. By itself, that wouldn’t be particularly noteworthy, yet it represented a watershed: the halfway mark of humanity’s accelerating interconnection. Over 3.5 billion mobile subscribers, or one person in two, are wired into the global network. Most of these people live in the “developing” countries, where incomes average just a few dollars a day. Desperately poor by the standards of the “developed” world, why would these people waste their meager resources on something that, to most of us, seems little more than a useful toy?"

"For the nearly two hundred thousand years of human presence on Earth, our lives have been bounded by how far we could throw our voices."

A nice thinking piece.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 10:56 AM | Comments (2)

Learning to Change

An interesting YouTube video from

"The U.S. Department of Commerce Ranked 55 industry sectors by their level of IT intensiveness. Education was ranked number 55 — below coal mining."

See it here.

Learning to change, Changing to Learn

It is worth a big discussion:

Report Shows Stunning Failures in High-School Graduation Rates - Chronicle.com
"In 17 of the nation’s 50 largest cities, less than half of the students who entered high school in 2003 ended up graduating. In Detroit, which has the lowest graduation rate of the top 50 cities, not even one in four students finished high school."

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)

May 9, 2008

SirsiDynix Institute Announces Upcoming Webinars

I am really pleased with thias great group of stellar presenters for the next few months at the SirsiDynix Institute.

Stephen

SirsiDynix Institute Announces Upcoming Webinars

“Open Libraries” theme continues in spring and summer 2008"

HUNTSVILLE, Ala., May 9, 2008 – The SirsiDynix Institute, a forum for professional development in the library community, announced its webinar schedule for late spring and summer 2008. In keeping with the SirsiDynix Institute’s mission to help grow the skills of library professionals, the SirsiDynix Institute will focus on “Open Libraries.” The theme centers on the “openness” that characterizes successful libraries — open partnerships, open approaches, open technologies, open dialog and open communities.

The following webinars are scheduled over the course of the summer, including:

· “Trends in e-Learning: What Does It Mean for Libraries?” on May 21, with Frank Cervone, professor of education and director of the Library, Information and Media Studies program at Chicago State University. Cervone will focus on how availability and interoperability are changing the way e-learning is being delivered as well how developments in open access as well as social networking are changing the way e-learning occurs.

· “Beyond Web 2.0: Taking the Social Read-Write Web to the Enterprise Level” on June 13, with Marshall Breeding, director for innovative technologies and research at the Jean and Alexander Heard Library at Vanderbilt University. Breeding will give his view of how libraries can take Web 2.0 technologies to the next level and integrate them into their core automation infrastructure to better support their strategic missions.

· “Video on the Web: A Primer” in on July 15 with David Lee King, digital branch and services manager at Topeka and Shawnee Library in Kansas. King will teach attendees to explore how libraries are using video for outreach and learning through a variety of case studies, discover tips on what types of content work best for different types of libraries, and learn what to consider when planning for and implementing videocasting at your library.

· “Tame the Web” in August, Michael Stephens, assistant professor at Dominican University’s Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences, and a leading library blogger. Stephens will share his insights on open libraries.

“We have a fabulous schedule for this quarter and are thrilled to have so many well-respected industry leaders willing to share their time and expertise with the SirsiDynix Institute,” said Stephen Abram. “Their willingness to give to the industry in this way is integral to the mission of the SirsiDynix Institute.”

Upcoming SirsiDynix Institute events will be posted on the SirsiDynix Institute website, www.sirsidynixinstitute.com. Archives, including podcasts and Windows Media files are also available to revisit after the event at the SirsiDynix Institute website. All SirsiDynix Institute sessions are scheduled for 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time, unless otherwise specified. Additional special and international events will be announced throughout the year.

# # #

About the SirsiDynix Institute
The SirsiDynix institute was founded in 2003 and is funded by SirsiDynix, the global leader in strategic technology solutions. The SirsiDynix Institute is a forum for professional development in the library community. Monthly webinars, the SirsiDynix Institute Executive Conference and other events provide librarians with access to industry leaders and a forum to keep up to date on relevant issues and trends impacting libraries. The mission of the SirsiDynix Institute is to support librarianship and advance the work of librarians around the world. The focus of the SirsiDynix Institute is on library issues, not products. More information on the SirsiDynix Institute is available at www.sirsidynixinstitute.com.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:

Melanie Sollid
1.256.704.7127
melanie.sollid@sirsidynix.com

Posted by stephen at 8:34 PM | Comments (0)

May 8, 2008

SLA New Jersey Chapter

Here's this week's presentation to the SLA New Jersey Chapter:

Reality 2.0: Transforming Ourselves & Our Association

Lots of fun there at Rutgers and talking to the profs and students too.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 4:22 PM | Comments (1)

Connecticut Library Association

Here's the session I did for the Connecticut Library Association conference this month.

Technology Watch: What's New, What's Coming, and What You Need to Know

Mystic CT, great name!

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 4:19 PM | Comments (0)

FAME

Not that kind of fame but the Florida Association of Media Educators!

I did a presentation for them in West Palm Beach on The Ftuure Learners Will See.

Pretty place too.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 4:16 PM | Comments (0)

SEFLIN Presentation

I spent some nice time with the SEFLIN board in West Palm Beach.

My presentation was called The Future of Libraries.

They also had the CEO of the World Future Society there. Cool.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 4:12 PM | Comments (2)

May 7, 2008

Next Free SirsiDynix Institute Event

Upcoming free SirsiDynix Institute Event

Trends in e-learning: What does it mean for libraries?
Date : May 21, 2008
Start Time : 11 a.m. Eastern
Length : 1 hour

While in some sectors e-learning may seem "old hat", the world of e-learning continues to change at a rapid pace. With newer technologies such as mobile devices, technologies such as Second Life, litigation in the e-learning vendor arena, and evolving standards, e-learning remains a dynamic area that we have to keep our eye on. And while many libraries have fully developed e-learning environments, many are just getting beginning to explore the possibilities. This workshop will focus on issues related to how availability and interoperability are changing the way e-learning is being delivered as well how developments in open source and open access as well as social networking are changing the way e-learning occurs.

Frank Cervone —Professor of Education and Director of the Library, Information, and Media Studies program, Chicago State University

The author of numerous articles and four books on topics related to information technology, he writes a regular column for OCLC Systems and Services: International Digital Library Perspectives and has been an invited speaker at library conferences in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and Brazil. He was a member of the NISO working group on metasearch and is the past chair of the CARLI (Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois) Learning Objects Task Force. He has a MSEd with a specialization in online teaching and learning from the California State University, an MA in Information Technology Management from DePaul University and a Ph.D. in Management and Information Systems from Northcentral University.

Register here.

Stephen

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

May 6, 2008

Unicode

It's finally becoming normal which is great. Last December there was a new web milestone when, for the first time, Unicode was the most frequent encoding found on web pages, overtaking both ASCII and Western European encodings.

Mark Davis, Google's Senior International Software Architect posted to the Official Google blog that Unicode is now surpassing most other codes (ASCII, etc.) on the web. This is a great thing as the web becomes more multilingual.

"Web pages can use a variety of different character encodings, like ASCII, Latin-1, or Windows 1252, or Unicode. Most encodings can only represent a few languages, but Unicode will handle anything from Chinese to French to Arabic. We have long used Unicode as the internal format for all the text we search: any other encoding is first converted to Unicode for processing. So we regularly update to each new version of Unicode (and relevant related standards like CLDR and BCP 47) to make sure we are current."

Uptick in native Unicode webpages

"You can see a long-term decline in pages encoded in ASCII (unaccented letters A through Z). More recently, there's been a significant drop in the use of encodings covering only Western European letters (ASCII and a few accented letters like Ä, Ç, and Ø). We're seeing similar declines in other language-specific encodings. Unicode, on the other hand, is showing a sharp increase in usage."

Of course Unicode is a very important part of any ILS/OPAC and.user experience strategy.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 5:24 PM | Comments (0)

What Does Experience Actually Look Like?

The latest SirsiDynix OneSource Newsletter is out. My column is on this topic:

So What Does Experience Actually Look Like?

Hope you find it interesting.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 4:37 PM | Comments (0)

May 4, 2008

Microhoo

An interesting weekend on the Microhoo front. I don't think it's over yet. Jerry Yang called MS's offer a distraction. I wonder what he'll call the lawsuits and class actions when Yahoo's stock falls next week. It could take years to finish writing this story.

Either way, for libraries, there aren't many free search engine web harvests left and all suffer the influence of SEO.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 7:42 AM | Comments (1)

May 2, 2008

New ALA Report: Internet Connectivity in U.S. Public Libraries

ALA has released a new report, Internet Connectivity in U.S. Public Libraries. Link to the full report [8 page PDF]here. It is not just about the broadband / dial-up speed issue but talks to what libraries are doing with this connectivity.

"The Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study gathers a wide range of data related to computer and Internet access in U.S. public libraries – including the number of computers, barriers to high-speed Internet access, Internet services and trainings available, and funding for technology.

Starting in 2008, the study research team will develop and publish topical briefs related to issues affecting communities’ access to technology in our public libraries. These documents are not intended to be comprehensive but rather to share key findings from the largest and longest-running study of Internet connectivity in libraries. At least two issues briefs will be published online every year.

Library staff are encouraged to use these briefing papers as educational tools with community stakeholders, including elected officials, funders and program partners, as needed to raise awareness of the specific – and sometimes unique – concerns of libraries around technology deployment. Staff may also use this format as a template for providing local data and examples related to a given topic.

The research team also invites your feedback about future topics we should consider and additional tools that would be useful in raising awareness around your library’s technology needs. Please write Larra Clark at lclark@ala.org."

Good work,

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 4:53 PM | Comments (0)

Reference Interview Questions

Fellow SLA member, Michele McGinnis at the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, assembled a neat list of reference interview questions through the SLA Solo Librarians Division discussion list. I liked them so I got her permission to post them here. Hope you find them useful too. (If you have other favourites put it into the comments).

What would the ideal report contain?

How do you plan to use the information?

What do you expect to discover?

What would surprise you?

How do you want me to share my findings? (Written report, Sharepoint site, PowerPoint, links to or printed articles, etc.)

How would you like the information organized?

What do you already know that you can share with me? (Emails, letters, notes, articles, websites, etc.)

What keywords would you use in searching? Share as many variations of a concept as possible.

I always ask what is the deadline--one hour, one day, one week? If they respond one of the first two, then I let them know the possibility of that given my current work load.

How current should the information be? (x days, x months, x years)

Urgency and/or impact on the organization?

Would you like to review abstracts/ tables of contents before I purchase or borrow any items (if they are available)?

Who do you want the information delivered to?

Is the information for someone else too?

Is there some way to delvier it that will make it easier for you to use the information?

Neat, eh? It's always useful to remember those old reference interview classes and skills.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 4:34 PM | Comments (0)

May 1, 2008

100 eLearning Articles and White Papers

Tony Karrer's eLearning Blog presents his list of:

100 eLearning Articles and White Papers

If you're interested in that side of the information world, it's a pretty good list and it is all in one place and linked. Cool and helpful.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)

Private Video Sites

Some places still, for whatever reason, block YouTube. That doesn't mean you can't get videos up online to share and promote anyway. Create your own video sharing site (like YouTube) in 2 minutes for free.

It is called Start Your Tube.

Start your Tube

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)

Big Bang: Creating the new library universe

I am heading to visit Australia in September so maybe I am interewsted in this rpeort for other reasons. Howver, I think there's a lot to review here.

The Big Bang: Creating the new library universe
Encouraging flexibility, rapid response and innovation within the library sector National & State Libraries Australasia 2007–09

"New technologies are impacting on every aspect of libraries. We have responded by implementing an extraordinary range of continuous improvement and innovative projects, building
on the foundation of decades of collaborative technology and standards. We have created new services and made key parts of our collections available globally.

We are now in a position to explode and reshape our core services, resourcing and infrastructure; to explore radical new approaches across all parts of our work; and to fundamentally shift our libraries to the digital world. Our response to the environment is maturing and we must re-examine our collections; the services we provide to library users; our preservation and digitisation responsibilities; operational priorities; and workforce planning.
The rate of change will accelerate in our organisations during 2007–09.

The Big Bang is for everyone working in National & State Libraries Australasia libraries. It sets out the challenges for our libraries, a set of key operating principles endorsed by all
the members, and NSLA strategies and actions for 2007–09."

Although this report is focused on Australia, there's a lot of good ideas and thinking here.

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 10:24 AM | Comments (0)

Norweld in Ohio

Last week I had a very pleasant visit to Bowling Green Ohio.
Here are the slides for the full day workshop.

Top 10 Strategies for Library Success
April 25, 2008
Norweld – Bowling Green Ohio

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 9:38 AM | Comments (0)

Ontario Public Service Presentation

I had the opportunity to present some technology forecasts to the imformation sector of the Ontario government at their annual conference. Here are the slides:

Managing Information in the Public Sector:
The Future is Now
A Tech Forecast: New Realities

Saw a lot of old friends there too!

Stephen

Posted by stephen at 9:17 AM | Comments (0)