Technology Essentials

When economic times are tough staff or professional development can be one of the first things to go. It's a bummer because just when many library staff most need new skills or support from their colleagues, resources just aren't as readily available to ensure that they have what they need to meet new challenges in their work. It's so important to find cost-effective ways to connect - to share what we're facing, what we're learning, and how we're coping.

WebJunction's first online conference is happening next week on February 9 & 10. The conference theme is "Technology Essentials" and there are five sessions with fabulous speakers lined up for each day. Recently, ALA TechSource interviewed our conference organizers, the incredible Sharon Streams and Jennifer Peterson. I tell you these people that I work with are crazy awesome, btw. In their interview, I was struck by their perfect description of the goals and purpose of the conference:

The goal is to provide an affordable and accessible venue for library staff to share practical and timely solutions for their needs! Now more than ever, we need to band together to solve problems, and that we recognize that attending an in-person conference is completely impractical for many library staff. Looking at how online programming has changed over the past five years, I think we’re in for an exciting time of online conferences!

The full interview is great - exploring trends and topics in online conference planning and attendance, but also the reasons why we might be seeing more of these down the line. I don't ever think that online connections will take the place of the benefits of in-person meetings or face-to-face interactions. But when we just can't get to see each other (for whatever reason, but cost is obviously a big one) this is one way we can try and connect anyway.

Please pass the word on to anyone you think might enjoy or benefit from these free online sessions. We look forward to sharing how our first online conference goes.

Happy Birthday WebJunction

"When I was One,
I had just begun.

When I was Two,
I was hardly new.

When I was Three,
I was barely me.

When I was Four,
I was not much more.

When I was Five,
I was just alive.

But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever.
So I think I'll be Six now forever and ever."

-A. A. Milne, "Now We Are Six" (via Sharon)

If you have not been to WebJunction lately, please visit, sign in, and add your avatar to your profile in preparation for our big splash about web-based tools for connecting next month.

"Why Public Libraries Close" Webinar

In September, WebJunction published Dr. Christie Koontz's paper, "Why Public Libraries Close," based on research she and her co-authors, Dean K. Jue and Bradley Wade Bishop, had presented at the ALA conference this summer. The publication sparked a flurry of discussion, including considerable critique of the thesis and research methods used in the paper.

On November 13, at 2:00 pm Eastern time, WebJunction will present a free webinar with Dr. Koontz on her research and this paper. Find out more about this important topic, and get the details directly from the researcher!

people are content. networks are collections.

This little tweet warmed my heart when I first saw it last week. I wasn't following Jeremy, but saw his tweet because I have a WebJunction twitter search set up on one of my Google tabs (you can also see a feed on our About Us page).

First, it was great to see because in preparation for our relaunch on the new platform, our team had done some extra work getting new topic areas ready - particularly in the areas that we'd heard from our members that they wanted content or resources, but they just hadn't been collected yet. My colleague Betha went to work creating a nice set of collection development resources as part of this effort and it was very nice to see that it was being noticed.

But perhaps more importantly, it was the way Jeremey said it. "I'm a resource..." This is exactly what we hoped to better facilitate on the new platform - people as resources to one another - and this was one little testament to the possibility that we're on our way.

Thanks Betha, and Jeremey, for being a part of it all.

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.

WebJunction sneak peek

You may have heard about the new WebJunction, coming later this summer.

It's true!

We did a sneak peek with our WJ Advocates yesterday and (1) I was extremely proud of the staff who put the program together and (2) I was extremely thrilled with the initial feedback from a few of our most active members.

Thank you for waiting patiently, libraryland, for the new version of WJ to come around. You won't have to wait much longer, and I think you'll find that you like what we've started. It's a very nice place to build from, together.

If you're interested in the details, we're doing blog posts on the new site features (Next WJ tag over at BlogJunction) and we'll be highlighting the new services at ALA. First week of July, we'll do a virtual preview of the site in beta for a full release in late July.

Stay tuned...

where's the party?

Many of us are getting ready for ALA in California, but I've got something coming up a tad more quickly that's keeping me from settling on any ALA plans. I'll be in Dublin, OH next week along with some of my WebJunction colleagues for a face-to-face meeting with our community partners. The purpose of our meeting is to train partners on the use of our new platform at WJ, and we're excited to further (and finally) show it off to everyone, not to mention having them get in there and start playing with things themselves. I say finally because we had to push off a partner preview period in order to, well, get a few things in order before showing it off. Surprises abound, let me tell you, anytime you're planning and implementing a major platform switch-a-roo.

I feel a little like a party hostess getting ready for guests (who've been asked to come a few weeks later). Online facilitation often feels like party hosting. But the stakes are higher now that anticipation is mounting *and* we'll all be together for the first time since last June, not to mention a few more additions to our partner group. I am in constant amazement of my colleagues here at WJ and all the hard work they've all done to make sure the meeting and all its preparations are a complete success.

At this meeting we expect to show off improved functionality the new site brings both to WJ members and admins. This includes enhanced personalization, professional networking, and ease-of-use. Contributions can take place in-line right from the page after a member is logged in (right now we use a separate, back-end content management system). Pages can be tagged and bookmarked, friends and groups will form, surfacing more relevant content based on your interests. Altogether, we think we're onto a much more engaging experience for members. On the admin side we'll show off easier management of content, courses, and users, and well as the ability to better message groups, control access to private resources, and track member engagement. What's more, our course catalog will be much improved, with Mac accessible 'just in time' course content offered in a much more blended online learning environment. All around, we're excited to hear what our partners think of the work we've done on the platform so far, and look forward to working with them over the coming months to get ready to show it off to everyone who'll be visiting and using the new version of WJ coming later this year. Woot! Woot!

WebJunction Welcomes Bloggers to PLA Reception

Hey, library bloggers---

If you're attending the PLA Conference in Minneapolis next week, please consider yourself invited to the WebJunction Member Reception on Thursday, March 27, from 5:30 to 8:00 pm at the Hyatt Regency.

I hope to see you there, and maybe even at my program with Joan Frye Williams, "It Ain't Necessarily So: Challenging the Assumptions of Legacy Librarianship" on Saturday morning at 8:30 am (gulp) in room M101 of the convention center.

IL2007 & work with WebJunction - it's fun!

I'm at IL2007 and am having a great time. WebJunction people (pictured on our homepage here) are blogging our conference experiences here and I think we're all having a great time. Be sure to check it out if you'd like to hear more about what's happening at this year's festivities - you can also follow me at twitter if you want the play-by-play.

Meanwhile, applications are rolling in for three open Community positions on the WebJunction team. If you're interested in social networking tools and online community programming, or helping library service agencies build their own communities, please check out these current opportunities on the OCLC careers site (search for Seattle if you want to check out the jobs I'm referring to, or for WebJunction if you just want the general scoop), and LMK if you have questions!

socializing the social

I was at the Dublin office all of last week and although I was working rather hard, I had a lovely, lovely time. I spent my time there in three ways: first, working on wireframes for the new social networking features that will eventually show up on WebJunction; second, doing a series of meetings with other OCLC product managers and their friends to find out which, if any, of those features might be useful to their services and/or community building efforts; and three, working closely with my WJ colleagues Dave Ungar, Michael Porter (libraryman), Clayton Wood, and our Seattle-based colleagues on the future direction and strategy for social networking at WJ. LMTU, jam-packed fun and excitement.

First night, libraryman and I were blessed with the opportunity to connect up with Jasmine & Bob (OCLC Social Networking) along with Lorcan, Thom, Stu, and Eric (OCLC research) over dinner. The bulk of our conversation fell on the topic of the relevance of emerging social tools to OCLC services and the cooperative at large. Later, over a makeshift bar (with contributions from Stu) at Lorcan's house, we meandered around current implementations and process, as well as discussed the im/prudence of "disruptive" technologies and "subversive" processes in the context of a much larger organization. We left with varying degrees of agreement on the extent to which both patron and library staff services should be "socialized" but we sure had fun dreaming up new ways to get stuff done that's not just cool, but ultimately supports the cooperative on the whole. BTW: Lorcan pointed to this cool list of tools yesterday. you may have already seen it, but I was wowed by it and wanted to pass it on here, just in case.

Next few days we rocked the WJ wireframes process, although we didn't quite get them into full draft (yet). As soon as they and initial design drafts are finished, we'll take them out to our community for initial review and feedback. Preview: what are you and your friends doing (in libraryland)? ;) Please leave comments, email, directmail, or whatever your preferred method of contact if you're not a regular WJer and you'd like to be involved in this feedback!!

Mid-week I spent a (too brief) lunchtime with George, whose careful leadership and trusted mentoring are always welcomed. If only he'd move to Seattle. This in between non-stop (literally) meetings with everyone from WorldCat.org to Delivery and Collection Analysis. I know there are those who like to refer to us as the "Anchor People" of libraryland (nice!) or to our OCLC headquarters as "the Deathstar" (not so nice, but funny!), but when you take a step back and think about it - we do some fairly mind-blowing things together as a cooperative.

By the time Friday rolled around, having spent nearly every waking hour in conversation with one or another of my colleagues about social networking, some things started to gel for me that hadn't before. Ideas are still marinating, but so far, here's how it goes:

-social tools are useful because they connect people around shared information, activities, or interests
-social tools might be efficient augments to online delivery of both tools and content (or data) because they can facilitate support, deliver news and documents, and connect people who work w/ the same stuff
-depending on what my role is in libraries, or how broadly I like to get involved or connect, I might want to have a fully integrated social experience (lots of people, lots of tools, lots of content) or very narrowly defined social experience (only people I work with, only content I care about, only the tools I use)
-if we could all get together on a shared platform (a single portal?), we could deliver the range between these extremes to "everyone" without their having to move from place to place on the web, and according to their preferences
-although i think primarily in terms of services to library staff, since that's where i spend most of my work time, consumers probably could benefit from exactly the same sort of thing - everything you can do with libraries, all in one place, and it's social

ideas are cheap, i know, but this is where my big giant dreams are starting to settle.

BIGWIG is cool

If you haven't heard about it, BIGWIG is ALA's blog / wiki / social networking interest group and they're doing a pretty cool program at the conference this year - bringing content and presentations to the web like never before. Yay! I just blogged about it over here and so I won't go on and on, but OCLC's very own Michael Porter (aka libraryman) just did one of the presentations (about the facebook developers platform) which you'll find hosted on WebJunction, here.

Thanks to Michelle (wanderingeyre) and others for putting this together. I'm excited to participate in the conversation on Saturday (1.30-2.30, Renaissance, Mayflower Rm), but also very, very happy to see this type of content reaching beyond the conference and onto the web in a dynamic, participatory way. Nice work!

welcome to the twittcapades

Last week at CIL I conducted my first twitter + conference experiment and I have to say, I'm hooked on this tool even more than before. Here's what happened...

First, I recorded some tweets about the sessions or meetings I was attending. At first I did this primarily for the folks following along at home, but quickly realized that my tweets were being picked up by fellow conference attendees in other sessions /and/ by fellow conference attendees in the same session. Same session tweets quickly turned into a mobile IRCtype chat session - we used our tweets to provide commentary on the speaker while in session. Folks in another session could get the gist of my sessions without being there. A full conference experience without the cloning! Rockin'. And the folks following along at home? One of my colleagues mentioned to me in passing "It's amazing how much you can learn about a conference with such short notes from someone else who's there." Indeed. (She's not on twitter but had been following my profile on the web.) Another colleague (this one is on twitter and is my friend and is following me) directed me to a session he hoped I'd attend. Without my tweets, would he even have checked out the program? Not likely.

Second, I used twitter to find people in their physical locations. While at dinner with my fellow IAGer Alane, I broadcast the simple message "where are you?" (since I only follow 8 people I knew I could handle the answers). Several people responded and wouldn't you know it? A bunch of our blogosphere pals were merely across the street enjoying some beverages. Alane and I headed over in haste. Moments later, my WebJunction colleagues joined the fun. Talk about socially networking.

Finally, I used twitter to take notes for myself. You'd be amazed how much you can get into 140 characters. A quick look over my tweets from this last week and I have a reliable conference record, including reminders of things to post and people to follow up with. If my notes are interesting to my friends following, all the better.

I am as surprised by this as some of you. Me? On twitter? I checked this out as an experiment. I am the last person I ever thought would move into mobile online community. I like to read about such things, sure, but do it? And here I am.

What makes twitter work? Once I successfully solved a problem or made a meaningful connection, it was hard to turn back. I've learned this over and over again with my work at the WJ: it's not about the tools we use, it's about the connections we make with them - both to people and to information.

What would make twitter better? Groups that you could separate into channels, still delivered by mobile. There are some creative ways to pipe tweets into separate strings, but it's a bit tedious and doesn't work with SMS (as far as I know). Also, I'd like the ability to block individual people from following me without blocking anyone who isn't your friend. Sorry to my library followers who I inadvertently dissed when I freaked out last week due to JehovahOne's having added me. It was a little silly, I know, but I freaked just the same. Please, follow me again if you like. I promise not to diss you again!

Let the tweets play on...

Underground Railroad Bicycle Route Launched

Just under a year ago I did a blog post about the new Underground Railroad Bicycle Route and the message board that we were sponsoring on WebJunction about this.

The route was officially launched last weekend in Mobile, Alabama, and the first ride left that city to make the journey north to Owen Sound, Ontario. The riders reached Linden, Alabama, the other night, to a wonderful reception they certainly weren't expecting. The article is here: http://www.demopolistimes.com/articles/2007/04/19/news/news00.txt

Follow-up: This morning Chuck Harmon of OCLC (and the person who plotted out the Ohio portion of the URR Bicycle Route) forwarded another newspaper article about the ride. This one mentions the library at which two of the riders stopped. Having grown up in Buffalo, I especially appreciated the reporter's mention of "Lake Eerie!"