ALA video

David Lee King created a video from ALA in Anaheim. Of course I can't resist posting it, because he was one of our speakers this year at the OCLC Symposium (video now available). For some reason the video requires IE, note to self. If you didn't make it to ALA this year, you can still go to the blog salon by proxy, sort of, by watching the video...

Blog salon photos

Librarians take on Captain Jack
Originally uploaded by Alice Sneary

I finally posted them, although I didn't have nearly as many as I thought I did. Add your own links in comments!

We've been quietly digging out

So you may have noticed we have been suspiciously quiet since ALA. Is it because we used up all our decent ideas at the LITA Forum? Blog salon?
Hardly.

• I think it's because we're all trying to dig out from the "ALA preparation" hole that we (at least, me) invariably find ourselves in.
• Chrystie is busy launching a new WebJunction site.
• I spent a week in Ohio and now have a new official role as the consumer marketing guru for WorldCat.org. (My words, not OCLC's).
• George is valiantly trying to have a summer in between speaking engagements and entertaining IFLA fellows.
• Eric, well, Eric last I know was organizing a baseball outing. But that was in his spare time.

If you missed the WorldCat Challenge at ALA, the WorldCat pool and wheresworldcat tagged photos are starting to grow. If you need a WorldCat t-shirt, more are coming later this summer. The first appearance was at ALA, but I'll let you know as soon as they're available. Or sign up to receive WorldCat updates and you'll know when they're out.

Chrystie on why she loves Twitter:



From the LJ ALA 2008 wrap-up.

WorldCat Challenge t-shirts

WheresWorldCat
Originally uploaded by bobrobboy

Kate Gaylord models the WorldCat Challenge t-shirts we gave out at ALA.

OCLC Symposium part 2: The Mashed Up Library

True Story about a Horrible Business meeting where "we already do that" killed all innovation ideas.

*Intelligence is wildly overrated as a virtue.* What holds us back is not that we’re not smart enough. “Yeah yeah yeah, we do that”—self-delusion is a big obstacle. If we talked about it, it’s happening?

Internet designed to be a network of networks: exchange and share information (interoperable). Exchange, sharing and interoperability.

Real big potential win for libraries: on an organizational level: which partners, colleagues and peers should we interoperate with? For us as an organization (not just as a creator of technologies.)

The most important product of the Mines… (Obligatory Profound Design Quote) is the Miner.
(Not the stuff they did out of the ground. It’s the people. It’s the system. It’s the human capital.)

The most Important product of the network is the networker. The kinds of networks we build…depend on what kinds of networkers we really want people to be.

What’s the most Important Product of the Library?

Mission statements, public documents that answer this question.
(Readers) and (Research)
“A Scholar is a Library’s Way of Creating Another library.”
What SHOULD the most important Product of the Library be?

What institutional innovations and adaptations best boost your chances of getting there? (And who owns the keys?)

“Competition” –like “innovation"—is a means to an End.
Frenemies/Froes? Are people a competitor or a co-marketer?
Spectre of competition—Institutions seek protection, instead of rising to the challenge.

“Competition” is about Perceived Value from Choice.
Newspaper circulation has stayed flat since 1950. Average reader age: 56.
Newspapers don’t know how to compete. Reluctance to creatively compete.
Rupert Murdock always buys the 2nd best—he competes. It’s the perceived value.

Libraries as physical spaces that house books and artifacts= no competition. We’re great.
Libraries as information=huge space to compete in.
Libraries are creatures of subsidy rather than market forces.

How do your uses and user communities brand you as a competitor?
“Serving the community” “Serving the underserved”
Permit Competition
Or
Permit Subsidy
?

4 particular things as suggested actions
1. Learning from our Lead users. (What is the segment of users that we learn the most from? Not just segments—but segments we learn from.)
2. With Whom Do we want to collaborate to Create value? Why?
(Collaborative—who creates value…what are our organizational protocols?)
3. Nurturing our Best Internal Arguments/Disagreements (be transparent—make your user know what’s going on. Don’t seal off the complexity
4. Establishing “Liberatory” (a mash-up of library and laboratory) that best attract talent and inspire hypotheses.

What does the institution itself stand for? Provoke new thinking and new value.
Success comes not from taking the path of least resistance but the path of maximum advantage.

OCLC Symposium part 1: The Mashed Up Library

Alice's note: Once again, hotels are not willing to provide widespread wifi access without paying through the nose in the 4 digit range. So Beth Gallaway and a few other library bloggers sat on the sides and took notes to post later.
These are them...

Full house! Lots of people here. In fact, the hotel staff started bringing in more chairs…


Andrew Pace kicks off the Symposium
Creativity Exercise:
What is your Greatest Resource?
What is your Greatest Challenge?
What if…(dangerous ideas)
*We stopped cataloging?
*We participated fully with the FBI? (Sienfeld’s Library Cop)
*We mased up Connexion x WoW=WorldCat of Warcraft…

Michael Schrage (keynote)

The Content of the Audience is more important than the Content of the Talk.
The economics of innovation:
How do organizations use models and prototypes and manage risks and innovation?
Emphasis: Managing the challenge of institution innovation. (immovable bureacracies?)
Is it harder for a good library to be innovative than an entrepreneur?

Definition: Innovation is the Conversion of “Novelty” into “Value”
Whose novelty? Whose value?

Innovation is a means to an end. (Not an end unto itself.)
Is innovation a spice? Or the whole meal? Forces the organization to address what it really does.

*Innovation isn’t what innovators offer, it’s what customers, clients and users ADOPT.

Mobile phone: How many of us know how to use more than 20% of the features of our phones? (This isn’t being innovative for phone companies to create new, little used features…it’s being wasteful.)

We need a different paradigm: Move away from “creation of choice” and toward “Value from Use”
Make the center of gravity= Value for Use. Measure THAT.

Ask your users: “What’s the most Innovative thing you think we do?”

Blog Salon at ALA Annual 2008

I have about a million interesting ideas rumbling around in my head. Everything from the wifi in libraries being blamed for health problems to the WorldCat.org inclusion on the Web for Change list to how many WorldCat t-shirts do we need at each WorldCat Challenge session. If you have already heard about the WorldCat Challenge and suspected I was one of the culprits behind the madcap mayhem, you were right! George has kindly agreed to lead the antics for at least a few of the rounds, too.

But the one session you don't see on the list is the one most near and dear to our hearts as bloggers and blogreaders: the Blog Salon. Here are the long-awaited details, as I hope all of you can come say hello and join in some of the best, most fascinating conversations at conference.

OCLC Blog Salon
Sunday, June 29, 2008
5:30-8:00 PM
Hilton Anaheim
Avila Room Palisades Room

We'll have food and fun, lyrics and libations. Come enjoy some hobnobbing and nibbles with fellow bloggers and blogfans.

OCLC Symposium at ALA Annual 2008

Heidi has been kind enough to prompt me.
The topic for the OCLC Symposium this year is "The Mashed Up Library."

We're still finalizing the details--so don't take the description below as the final final. But the idea we're exploring here is--mash-ups are not so much about technology (while interesting) as they are the idea of taking something traditional, twisting it, combining it, and making it fresh again.

Here's the semi-official blurb:

"Developing new library services can now mean mixing data and functionality from several sources into “mash-ups” to provide a unique and powerful user experience. Some librarians have discovered how to use Web applications to adapt or create new services. Others are investigating this trend and looking for further guidance. Still others have found creative ways to deliver traditional programs to new populations. "

The keynote will be Michael Schrage, author of Shared Minds—The New Technologies of Collaboration and columnist for CIO and MIT’s Technology Review.

Then we'll also have a panel of three librarians who have developed their own mash-ups:

*Susan Gibbons, Associate Dean, Public Services & Collection Development, University of Rochester (NY) River Campus Libraries
*David Lee King, Digital Branch & Services Manager, Topeka & Shawnee County (KS) Public Library
*Mary Beth Sancomb-Moran, Librarian, University of Minnesota Rochester.

So come one, come all. It's at the Marriott Anaheim, Platinum Ballroom 1-5. Register now, for all your OCLC events. If you're not coming to conference, I am sure there will be enough tweets that you'll get the gist of it.

What cool mash-ups do you have going at your library? Or that you WANT to have going at your library?

Blue Screen of Death

I had it this morning.
On the new computer.


Happily preparing for ALA antics. There will be a blogger salon, hands-on play with WorldCat social tools workshops, a somewhat offbeat game show (complete with prizes) and much, much more.
And I just booked my flights. Oh, the anticipation of it all. Wha Hoo!

Anaheim

We've just been talking about fun activities we've got up our sleeves for ALA Annual. Booth contests, the blog salon, and the 5 of us all at the LITA President's program. Very fun--I am getting excited already.

I also saw that you can buy passes for Disneyland or Disney's California Adventure for at least $10 off the regular price. Cool.