It's all good: June 2005

Thursday, June 30, 2005

(Almost) All Digital by 2020?

By 2020, only 10% of published material will be print-only, according to the press release issued yesterday by the British Library, announcing the release of their three year strategic plan. I haven't had time to read the plan (post ALA housekeeping) but it looks interesting. Their six strategic priorities:

Strategic Priority 1 - Enrich the user’s experience.
Strategic Priority 2 - Build the digital research environment.
Strategic Priority 3 - Transform search and navigation.
Strategic Priority 4 - Grow and manage the national collection.
Strategic Priority 5 - Develop our people.
Strategic Priority 6 - Guarantee financial sustainability.

I think the BL has redone its web site since the last time I visited. It's way less stuffy.

Thanks to Rafat at paidContent.org for the info.

Addendum at 8pm: Bad, bad Alane. How shaming to have to do this twice in one day. As Walt Crawford pointed out in a comment to this post, I made this error:

The press release doesn't say " By 2020, only 10% of published material will be print-only." It says something much narrower: 10% of UK research monographs will be print-only.

Last time I try blogging at the same time I am trying to recall where the heck I was going on what day for the "taxi" part of my expense report. Chicago must be the only ALA destination that my taxi receipts exceed my food receipts.

Real World Library Gaming Experience

Here's an excellent article on one public librarian's experience in circulating PS2 games from his library. The brisk business he describes reminds me of the early days of offering VHS and Beta videocassettes in the public library world. It didn't matter what kind of junk we were offering, if it was a video, it circulated. (That link should cause me some trouble...)

Podcasting is Mainstream

Well, it must be if Apple iTunes introduces a service to download any of 3000 podcasts, subject divided into 20 categories, to your iPod. Jenny blogged about this at the Shifted Librarian yesterday.

From the ad email I received:

The biggest thing in radio isn't on the radio. Podcasting makes it possible to hear thousands of free shows covering music, sports, politics, comedy, health, science, and just about anything imaginable. Best of all, you can enjoy podcasts whenever you want, on your computer or iPod.

Apple is offering this as a free subscription service so that you'll automagically get new podcasts for the ones you selected.

For sure, when you look at the names of the entities/people podcasting (ABC News, ESPN, WGBH, Disney, CBC Radio in Canada), the conclusion is that, very very quickly, many mainstream organizations have seen the value in this simple way to get messages out to people interested in hearing these messages. And of course, there are loads of not-so-mainstream podcasts.

In Jenny's post, she commented that she's not sure librarians have time to create podcasts. Maybe they don't but podcasting seems to me to be a no-brainer for libraries.

Here's a few things I think would make for useful podcasts for libraries, both academic and public: "how to" for all sorts of things such as renewing books, getting a library card, upcoming events, story of the week, interesting history fact of the week, news from the library, "did you know?" stories, any library information for people with low vision, any library information in languages other than English, anything at all that gives a human voice to the library! And I'd find staff members, regardless of their titles who wanted to be involved in podcasting and let them do it--they'd make the time to podcast.

Any readers know of libraries podcasting? Let us know!

Addendum at noon: I deleted this sentence "Like iTunes, the cost is 99 cents. Yep, people are paying for these little bits of atomized content." because an astute commenter asked why I thought there was a cost. Incomplete ferreting, Chad. I hovered over the images on the directory page and saw "99 cents" so made the incorrect leap that there was a cost. Thanks for pointing that out.

And I had a thought...I wonder if reading a published story as a podcast would violate copyright? Perhaps, as it is a public performance. Anyone know?

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Symposium follow up: John Blossom's post

I had been feeling rotten about my very good post that got lost during the Symposium last Friday, due to my power cord snafu. Especially because I lost my notes about John Blossom's presentation.

Lucky for all of us, he's blogged his thoughts here.

Very Clever

Joe Anderson of WebJunction has written a lovely ditty in honour of the Blogger Salon and posted it on BlogJunction.

Sung to the tune of the Beach Boys'"Sloop John B" there are 4 verses and a chorus....here's the first verse.

We come to the Blog Party
(thanks to OCLC)
And post to “It’s All Good” coop’ratively.
Blogging all day
Schmoozing with Jay
This is the hippest
Party at ALA.

Very Quirky

The Lonely Wombat , Elizabeth, is a knitting library paraprofessional. And she has been making knitted critters with a library theme for a display.

Here's OCLC. And MARC. And Furber.

I really like how "OCLC" has rays just like our WorldCat logo has.

(Amended based on Elizabeth's comment...and Elizabeth? Library paraprofessionals are not "lowly" in my mind at all!! Some of the library assistants I've worked with were as professional and competent as the degreed librarians--just minus the degree.)

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

United Nations Cyberschoolbus

This is a fun place to spend a few or more minutes.

Compare country statistics side-by-side with the UN's Cyberschoolbus tool, InfoNation. Search for statistics on health, education, economics, technology, and more to find out how the nations of the world compare....the data is presented in bar charts.

"The Cyberschoolbus also offers curricula on hunger, poverty, cities, women's rights, indigenous peoples, space, oceans, peace, and saving tomorrow's world."

Info courtesy of the July issue of futuristUpdate, a monthly supplement to The Futurist, the magazine of the World Future Society.

Wasn't That a Party?

Oh boy that was fun! The first Bloggers' Salon was a big noisy success. To me it was great to see so many young librarians and almost-librarians. They tend to get lost in the large crowds of boomer librarians, but at this soiree, boomers were the minority. And it was also great to talk with so many people who are passionate about their work and librarianship--and who write! Really rejuventating. Thanks to all of you who attended.

It looks like we'll be hosting another Salon...Cathy De Rosa, my boss, committed to having a second one.

Maybe we'll wait until ALA Annual because Midwinter doesn't have as many people attending.