Librarian by Day

The blog of Bobbi L. Newman, geek librarian, USA

Archive for October 2008

Pecha Kucha

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Pecha Kucha – 20 slides 20 seconds a piece on a single topic

Rebecca Jones - I didn’t get good notes, sorry :)

Stephen Abram – trendspotting
is television affecting our world, Kennedy vs Nixon debate, then Obama vs McCain, blinking
youtube video of Palin saying she can see Russia from porch
visual popular – twitter
Olympics yahoo trumps NBC
webkinz – when your stuffed animals have a social life online
club penguin – Disney kids on social crack,
soccer mom is average gamer
geocaching
portability
mainly mobile focus – phone not laptops, we’re old with our laptops in front of us

David Lee King
the librarian is the product
libraries have a lot of products magazines, books, databases, websites, search engines, reference we can answer your questions on the phone, at the desk, im, blog comments,
all this lets us show our personality, makes lib more human
what product should we be selling?
Books amazon does it better
info Google does it better
staff? Maybe we should be selling ourselves so the librarian is the product
we need to promote ourselves, our stuff is just stuff, the value added is the ppl

Nancy Dowd
Google answers the question we improve the question
what do we call the ppl who come in? members guests patrons customers – name them
be transparent in marketing
I will not longer support the silence of silos
I will support innovation – pic of Helene Blowers on screen
I will make demands on my vendors
I will make friends with my long tails
I will honor all choices of communication
I will embrace diversity
I will ACT green, no more just thinking green, why are you print brochures? Print on demand
I will find the ‘me’ in my library – pic of Michael Stephens on screen
I will measure the right stuff – measure according to your goal
I will market to voters – the ppl who support our libraries are not coming into our libraries but they want to know that we are transforming lives
I will tell stories so that when ppl think of transformation they will think of the library
multi media story about Sean

Greg Schwartz is going to make us vote for a favorite – looks like Nancy won

questions -
how do staff behind the scenes market themselves? Remind ppl what you are doing and why you’re doing it
you have to identify who your client is, if yo are behind the scenes you client is the front line

question about Nancy’s video – in new jersey they are teaching librarians to tell stories, simple it was voice over still photo

Written by Bobbi Newman

October 22, 2008 at 7:56 pm

Twitter & how the “twittest” use it for keeping up

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Michael Sauers and Christa Burns

cant explain you have to to do it, and you have to do it with friends to get the experience

post – tweet
tweeting
methods – web, desktop client, bookmarklets, via email, via sms, blog to twitter (twitterfeed)
url past 140 character limit will usually convert to tiny url

twitthis
twitterfeed – run rss to twitter account
twirl

@username if replaying
d username message – private message
nudge username
l: location informatin
follow username
leave username
block username
invite phonenumber
#hashtag

direct messages go to only you, other msgs are public,
can have a public or private account, private only ppl you approve can see it

can read your friends via your twitter homepage, also rss

uses
ultra simple blogging
conferences
references questions
new
emergency services
weather
presidential campaigning
website updates
conversations

marsphoenix lander is tweeting, a person is tweeting in first person for the lander
LA fire department has a feed

twitter search to track keywords

twitterference – so many sms to your phone you cant make a phone call
too distracting
if you don’t participate you wont get anything out of it

7 tips to being a good twittter -

http://www.meryl.net/2008/04/7-tips-to-a-good-twitter-experience/

  1. follow others
  2. @comment others
  3. link to your stuff
  4. don’t take non responses personally
  5. be patient
  6. avoid addiction
  7. use your name

Jezmyne Westcott & Cindi Trainor
choose a twitter name you are willing to be called in public
twitterati – your ppl on twitter, you can get help from them, often there is no one doing what you do where you work
twitterverse
tweetdeck – see your replies and tag cloud
friendfeed – aggrigaor for feeds other than twitter
flock – browser, use tabs and sidebars to show your twitter feed while your working, show media stream at the top of flickr tag

question – how do you meebo thru flock? Meebo plug in for firefox, may work in flock

do you have to ask permission to use twitter, answers – don’t ask don’t tell, its a useful social network tool, you can get answers and help

twitter is like ….. inspired by dave free and peter bromberg

Written by Bobbi Newman

October 22, 2008 at 3:32 pm

Crafting the user centered library – Cliff Landis

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Crafting the user centered library Cliff Landis

its not enough to shove your bad services into a new space, we know our opacs suck so why are we cramming them into myspace and facebook

why do you use emerging technologies in your library, not just bc everyone else is, doing it for service and outreach, get away from creating things for user and look for things created by the user

how do we approach new ideas

planning – find out in the end of a lot of work whether is succeeds or fails

committee approach – take an idea and kill it

youtube video – association professionals thru the ages

lets try to assess and reflect as we go along – don’t need to drag process out

action steps

  • try
  • be fast – try to do it within 3 months
  • be human – be patient with yourself, you dot have to get it right the first time,
  • don’t over plan
  • do you like me – yes or no, maybe? Assess our relationship with our users
  • you cant measure progress without out measuring, write assessment into your plans
  • reflect – sometimes your users just want a book,
  • be willing to fail – if you’re gonna fail, fail spectacularly

think back to your most amazing user experiences – what made is special? Always remember best and worst dinning experiences, ask users what they remember about your lib, they will tell you either their best or worst experience

how to gather the tools

  • surveys – surveymonkey, limesurvey, polldaddy
  • focus groups – can be tricky dot need a lot of ppl and dot need a lot of questions
  • user observations – camtasia, captivate, clickheat – set up user on pc ask them to use the libraries websites, find out where they tripped up
  • conversations – are the most powerful tool beyond these tools, if you are the ref desk close your email, talk to your users, ask them questions, what do they like the most, what do they like the least

gathering your volunteers

have something to offer as compensation for their time

get out of the library – talk to ppl who never come to the library, find out why they aren’t coming

everyone loves to give their opinion – ask them they will tell you

embrace the power of selling out – you can get freebies by offering additional advertising

grab swag from conferences then give it as prizes

implementation – something will always go wrong

getting the boss’ buy in

  • get stories, get numbers, gather data driven results
  • make it publishable

the practice of social research by earl r babbie – for processing data

go ahead and do it half-assed, dot wait until everything is perfect and everything is planned,

you can always refine and redo later -

be user centric

be willing to be the work – dot expect others to do your work for you, if you have an idea be willing to do the work

evolution will take care of the bad ideas – failure often will not be a giant explosion, but will just peter off, dot beat a dead horse

create a culture of innovation, dot be a naysayer, dot let other ppl be a naysayers

questions –

how do you set up a structure for evaluating user feedback?

Reference meeting, faculty meetings, make sure its vertical, get wide experience, wide age range

how do you deal with haters? Let the haters hate, it cant be unicorns and candy everyday, let it run off your back

how do you deal with the librarian who is still working in the library from 20 years ago, you cant change other ppl, all you can do is expose them to new ideas, you cant make every person get excited, audience suggestion – pair them up with a new person

Written by Bobbi Newman

October 22, 2008 at 1:32 pm

Social media and networked technologies: research and insights

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Social media and networked te3chnologies research and insights

danah boyd – phd candidate at berkley

social media in context, historical perspective

web2.0
tech crowd sees it as a shift in deployment, perpetual beta, user generated content
business crowd – hope, came after tech bubble crashed,

rise of the social network sites – certain things are consistent across them
does not say social networking – just social network bc what makes these sites unique is that they have to do with the public socialization of your actual social network

profiles – physical world, dress up, do hair etc, online have to do dress up formally, dressing up your profile is a way to make yourself known online, you create a profile you think expresses who you are to the ppl around you

most ppl lie about their age onilne, adults decrease, young ppl increase, adults are descriptive young ppl think no one needs to know

dress up profile as they would their bedroom or backpacks

Friends – are you my friend yes or no? Have to publicly answer that, the term friend means something different to different ppl, some have lower level friends are using sites to connect with ppl they are really close with. Some pppl have hundreds, these are the connections with ppl they work worth, go to school with, went to school with

ppl who connect with as many ppl as possible, celebrities, politicians, and 14 year old boys

myspace top 8 dangling carrot for superficial acceptance, used to be if you let me play with you on play ground you can come to my bday party

young ppl have system for dealing with top 8, adults haven’t developed one yet

Third aspect is the the wall – comments on wall is social grooming, I like you, I like you too, similar to chit chat over coffee but online

status updates on facebook, myspace similar to twitter, microblogging

creating a culture of peripheral awareness, duplicating the peripheral awareness you have when yore in the same room with someone

why are ppl spending so much time on these sites
gossiping, flirting, sharing info, connecting
this is an important process

social network sites are the mall, or the parking lots of our teenage years, in part because kids are not allowed outside as much as they used to be, there is data on who much we have decrease the mobility of young ppl, so online is very important, fear is part of the restriction, upper middle class over structuring of kids lives, is part, lack of mobility is part,

if you are not on myspace you don’t exist – you have to have a profile on these social network sites, if you are able to get out and get together, online becomes an archive of those outings

these sites have become public spaces

properties:
persistence – what you stay sticks around, every ephemeral act is now persistent,
replicability – can copy something from one channel to another, you don’t know the copy vs the original, you don’t know how its been modified or chopped up, makes Jon stewart fun but also how young ppl bully each other
scalability – potential for it to be ready by millions and millions of ppl, but the reality of reaching nobody, the average blog is read by 6 ppl
searchability – ppl don’t know where you are in space, your not searchable when you’re walking around, but when you participate online you become serachable, even by those you don’t want, searchability is most deadly when its available to the ppl who have the most influence over you, bosses, teachers, etc

invisible audiences – if you are in front of a group you can see your audience, online audiences are invisible, even if we know who is there now, you dnot know who will see it later, by copy and paste, searching
public articulation of friends is a public articulation of the intended audience
collapsed contexts – can be socializing with your boss at the same time you are socializing with your kids, you act different
public = private

what does this mean?
Radical changes in ways info is spread and the ways ppl participate

tagging -
wikipedia – we are not teaching ppl to think about this in a way that is interesting, how is knowledge produced, american revolution page on wikipedia, american and british historians trying to come to a consnsus

breakdown of traditional forms of authorship and ownership, no distinction btwn comsumption and production – fanfiction

our traditional ways of informatin access can be modernized,

will work for attention sign

libs get the changes better than many ppl even when we dont like, have to remember we are just one player in a very broad system

4 key pts social forces, social norms, market, architecture, law

net neutrality – all bits are created equal, or does your isp decide what comes up, how do we deal with this? This is about the futre of innovation, the future of culture participation

DRM – defectivebydesign.org, about locking all forms for culture contribution, restricts ability to make new cultural artifacts

what do we mean by open access, how do we balance the orgnial intent of copyright against the needs of consumers

fair use – ppl say cant link to them, publishers say cant use more than 10 words, fair use is only a defense, its not proactive, only comes into play when youve been sued

flickr – creative commons at its best

we about to see all of this get much more mobile, we don’t have standards in mobile space, if you are not on the same platform, you cant use same apps as each other, phones cant connect

(de)locatibility – regardless of where yo uare in the physical world you can bring the digital to you, you can take what ever is in the physcial space relevant in the broader context, move physical space to internet, find nearby restaruants

technology is readically reshaping public as we know it

how do we ant to shape and move not just the tech but the ppl around it, guide ppl who are engaging with technology

Written by Bobbi Newman

October 22, 2008 at 12:06 pm

Ubiquitous computing and library future

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IMG_8117Ubiquitous computing and library future

Michael Porter Libraryman

Chris Peters – maintainit – small part of TechSoup, new cookbook coming out soon,

definition a model of human computer interjection which information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday object sand activities

when computing and info access happen when and where we need it, enabled by unobtrusive technology

Moores law

rfid an example of ubiquitous computing that exists in libraries

libraries = content + community

android – google phone operating system

there are already more cell phones in use than tvs

MP talks about all the new gadgets that are out there
irobot connector – visiting robot
chumby – I want a chumby
surface
convergence
seattle public library has voip communicators
appletv
directv sat to go
slingbox – lets you watch tivo or other electronic devices on laptop frm anywhere with internet access

portability & ubicomp
bug – open source
phone pen
projector that fits in a cell phone

Chris
terminology

  • ubiquitous computing (ubicomp)
  • pervasive computing
  • ambient intelligence
  • internet of things

computers should become invisible and unobtrusive

baltimore wimax

cheep information processing
cheap memory and storage
wireless networking
interoperability and open standards
universal addressability – ie Ipv6
sensors
position awareness
power

spimes (space + time)

  • everyday objects have
  • location awareness
  • social awareness
  • time awareness (history)

rooms that adjust lighting temperature and music based on who you are

calm technology

  • a photo with a scene, when a new email comes in more people show up on the screen, each email msg equals a person
  • umbrella with weather alert handle, glows with a certain color depending on the % of change for rain
  • ambient orb changes colors based on stock market
  • wikipedia articles near you

printer that actually builds a 3D object based on what you sent, ex – watchband, gumby, doesn’t have to just be plastic can also be chocolate! (yum!)

application of this, old tech goes to 3rd world company, so replacement parts are no longer available, printer than can recreate its parts could be an option

biofeedback – can navigate a wheel chair based on biofeedback and facial expressions

problems
addressability
standards

library applications

  • biomapping of library – how people are feeling in different sections and areas of their library
  • location based reference
  • anticipatory reference
  • information reference
  • community manufacturing center

questions

Written by Bobbi Newman

October 22, 2008 at 10:17 am

Learning 2.0 and 1.8 users bridging the gap – Rudy Leon & Colleen Harris

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Learning 2.0 and 1.8 users bridging the gap

Rudy Leon & Colleen Harris

Myths of nexgen users

  • skilled online searchers

  • ease with new gadgets

  • always connected

  • effective multi-taskers

  • require constant simulation

  • must be entertained

  • learn by doing

mythbusting

they do use stuff but in a dummybox way, they don’t understand the info they are getting or who it works

we need to build a mental map for them

they don’t have transferable skills

only 62% of ppl have pc in the home

low income students have lower end machines in the classrom, they have share and they train them by drills

digital divide

  • 61.8% ownership of computers, African American is 45%, Hispanic is lower
  • fault lines
  • race
  • class / income
  • 83% 75k
  • 62% 25k-35k
  • 31% <15k

persistent effects

students start self censoring out of certain managers

students look at faculty for approval, not librarians

faculty only know the databases they use

they also believe they will figure it out given up enough time, this doesn’t work

Faculty are not highly trained in teaching,

how do we get professors to listen?

How we get the 1.8 learners up to the 2.0 level?

Get involved, get on comities

IT?

who much IT do you have, who do you get to help you implement ?

Kittens vs beer

strategies for engaging students/faculty

workshops

making equipment available

actionable assignments

partnerships

tech isn’t the point, libraries are for learning

-is the tail wagging the dog? Lets get back to focusing on learning and stop focusing on the tech

what do students what? Cliffnotes, mtv and to buy their tests

what we need to do is create services to build skills, gadgets support learning, we decide what must be, space and structure for play, more skepticism

question – first year experience and rolling all lib skills into that, used to have 2 class sessions devoted to it, but now have a virtual tour, ipod touches that only freshman can check out, so freshman experience is a fun experience, they have to come back later for meat and potatoes do do assignments

what do they think about seperate credit information literacy classes for freshman? It would be great, because we can’t grade them now we don’t have the same fear/respect their professors get

Written by Bobbi Newman

October 21, 2008 at 2:47 pm

Innovation from best practices to fresh practices – Helene Blowers

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Innovation from best practices to fresh practices – helene blowers

how do you start making change happen?

What is innovation? Not just putting saran wrap around someone else’s idea

innovation is – acting on, doing new things

innovation is not about best practice, its about fresh practice

  • application
  • audience
  • desired outcomes
  • inspiration and inputs
  • energy & passion

how do you change org culture to allow innovation to happen? There is no set process

4 parts

  • creativity – ideas
  • strategy
  • implementation
  • profitability

creativity:

idea business focus on quantity not quality

collect ideas

get outside your comfort zone

bounce your thoughts around

strategy:

change agent

make it believable – idea generator trying to convince your admin, you need to make it believable

mvv = mission, vision, values

create alliances – make connections

don’t ask for permission ask for support, if your pitching a new idea don’t ask for support for it, as if it’s a good idea but you want someone else to do it, take it and run with it. Instead pitch your idea how you will make it happen, permission vs support

sell your vision personally – ppl don’t read 17 pg report, have a visual pitch, sell idea to management team, committee, put your energy behind pitch

find a champion, someone within org who shares your thinking

implementation – managing project resources time and scope

profitability -

innovation is messy

innovation is beta

innovation is risk

innovation is looking for new patterns

innovation is part of the learning process

7 habits of highly innovative ppl

  • persistence – it takes a lot of erosion to create a landslide of change
  • remove self-limiting inhibitions
  • take risks, make mistakes
  • escape & explore new angels
  • collect ideas & write things down
  • find patterns
  • stay curious – focus on out puts not the inputs of innovation

questions from audience:

Ideas about communicating to managers that they need to get out of the way – Helenes answer let them know you are willing to take on the risk of failure, know what is important to your management and administration and cater to that, innovation starts with you

audience answers – use the phrase “I want to start a pilot project”, not caring about who gets the credit

if you are a manger how do you not just get out of the way, but foster change?

Audience member – at her lib they are giong to start reemphasizing customer service, challenge is from librarians who have been there along time, not from managers

Written by Bobbi Newman

October 21, 2008 at 2:38 pm