Think Big

A new contest called Think Big from Yahoo and Richard Branson of Virgin Megastore/Virgin Airlines fame: one lucky small business will win 10 million free ads on Yahoo.
Two things:
1. I don't really think libraries qualify, but I wish they did. I'd love to see all 10 million ads go toward promoting use of your local library, wherever you are.
2. Even if libraries don't qualify to enter, encourage all the small business owners who frequent your library to enter the contest. How cool would it be, if someone in your community won? And that you, their trusted knowledge and technology specialist, helped them along to victory?

Story on CNET.

More Google Ad Chat

Earlier this week, Alice posted a piece excoriating Google's new advertising plans, and I disagreed with her in a follow-up comment. Walt Crawford noted our difference of opinion on his blog (under the title, "Ads and Evil"--- wish I'd thought of that one!) and said that as an "old media" person, he accepts, if not welcomes, appropriate advertising. I'm old media, too. I used to deliver the Buffalo Courier Express. I'll never forget the day President McKinley was shot. But I digress.

Today, ClickZ News (a wonderful free resource about marketing, advertising, and the web) published an article whose title sums up its content quite nicely: "Google's CPM Ads Meet Lukewarm Reception." It seems that marketers are a little uneasy about jumping in to do traditional advertising in this nontraditional space. Like librarians everywhere, they are concerned about trying to charge for what they used to give for free.

Open University Offering

The Open University is offering its course "Law, the Internet and Society: Technology and the Future of Ideas" free of charge on the web. Based on the work of Lawrence Lessig and other leading thinkers on the future of intellectual property, this was formerly a credit-bearing part of the "Relevant Knowledge" undergraduate program in technology.

There is an extremely simple registration process to enroll in the course, and the University promises that the only thing your registration will be used for is to monitor course usage.

Thanks to my colleague Eric Childress for pointing me in this direction. His suggestion led me to Dr. Paul Miller's post on the Common Information Environment blog.

Funny how the transmission of news reminds me of a 1940s Big Band hit these days.

Notes from Above the 49th Parallel

I am in Calgary, Alberta, on my way to Jasper for the Alberta Library Conference. And if you check the Jasper link and think Alberta librarians must get paid way more than you because of the swanky surroundings...nope, the ALC has been at this location for more than two decades and gets very good rates. I know it's more that two decades because I went to my first ALC in 1987.

I lived in Calgary for a total of 13 years, and I loved living here. It's a great city: large but not too large, great restaurants and coffee places, good public spaces (including a very large system of bike trails all over the city) and easy proximity to some of the best hiking and skiing in the world, a thriving arts community, home of the Calgary Stampede when even CEOs and mayors and librarians wear cowboy boots and hats, and is blessed by about 250 sunny days a year.

Not that it is sunny right now. But seeing many old colleagues and friends will make up for that.

First, I am bummed that I missed Carl Grant's presentation at OCLC that Alice wrote about in the previous post. I knew I was going to miss interesting stuff and I clearly did. Be nice if the ILS vendors and OCLC could all put all that talent to use and come up with some really fast ways to get library metadata and content into peoples' spaces in Google-like ways.

Secondly, Walt Crawford has exposed my innumeracy--correction. I exposed my innumeracy in my last post when I claimed there were 10 times less Canadian librarians than US ones. In a comment, Walt quite rightly pointed out that I am an idiot--of course he didn't say this. I am paraphrasing.

Thirdly, on the plane trip here I started reading The Five Laws of Library Science by "the father of library science," Indian librarian S.I. Ranganathan (first published in 1931). I am ashamed to admit that I have never read this despite having an MLS from a good school and being indoctrinated by Ronald Hagler who had the unenviable task of teaching the foundations course at UBC.

Well, a pleasant surprise. I've only read the "first law" pages (Books Are For Use) but S.I. is a funny writer. He is merciless about librarians interested in preserving the book as object and in unfriendly spaces built for those objects not people.

Next, let us see the effect of the law 'BOOKS ARE FOR USE' on library furniture. One may say with confidence 'Show me your library furniture and I shall tell you whether wou believe in the First Law of Library Science or not.' To begin with, in the days when the rival dictum 'BOOKS ARE FOR PRESERVATION' ruled, the library racks were built only with a view to preservation. The problem was to accommodate the maximum number of books in the the least space and the lowest cost. The Rule of Least Space left the height of the book stacks determined by the height of the ceiling. Not even an inch of vertical space should be wasted. Hence each rack should begin at the very bottom and go right up to the ceiling. Similarly, another corollary of the Rule of Least Space was that not an inch of horizontal space, beyond the absolute minimum, should be wasted. This required that the gangway between book-racks should be as narrow as possible--just enough for an attendant to pass through--say a foot and a half at the most [...] The Rule of Least Cost required that the furniture of the reading-room should be as simple and as cheap as practicable. The reader had no business to expect comfort.

Finally, also read on the plane trip, an interesting article in the most recent issue of Forbes on Microsoft and Google. I read it as a morality play and subsituted "libraries" for Microsoft. Forgive me for not providing a link to the TOC but the Forbes site is full of stuff--way too much stuff--and I cannot ferret out the info at this late hour--although not as late as it looks. I am on Mountain time and IAG is on Eastern

RFID presentation: convenience is key

Carl Grant from VTLS just presented to a lively group of OCLC staffers about "Why the RFID marketplace is exploding and the ILS marketplace is disintegrating."

Fascinating discussion. Carl is a great speaker and really pushed for an interactive discussion. The highlights:

Where RFID lives already
In addition to your library, you've already experienced RFID in:
*building security systems
*retail theft prevention systems
(the big clunky plastic thing on your department store purchase)
*speedpass--nonstop tollway booths
He didn't mention dogs or guitars but they can be there, too.

So RFID can help libraries with security issues, inventory control (just wave the wand!), return chute sorting--even a smart cabinet that could be loaded up with "reserves" and could sit outside the library building for 24/7 access. The smart cabinet would allow entry only to the correct RFID-embedded cardholder. I'd buy that, if I were in charge of a library...which leads me to convenience.

Convenience is key
Convenience is crucial to future library services, according to Carl. (I agree wholeheartedly, for what it's worth.) Why can't we figure out how to charge for convenience features in our libraries? We've sat at tables here and talked about Netflix and why can't the library deliver to my doorstep? And Carl's answer is: we can and we should. And we should feel justified in charging for it, because we're charging for the convenience aspect. Here's a great quotation:

"In many families, they've got more money than time."

How true, how true with almost everyone I know. An additional marketing take on the idea of charging for convenience: there's a natural assumption of value, when you are charged for something. Convenience is valuable to us, in our time-starved worlds.

Amazoogle
Which leads nicely into our discussion of Amazon/Google. Fast and easy search is usually preferrable to rich and comprehensive results...in the world of our library users.

We talked about DRM and eLearning systems, institutional repositories and why libraries need to create a space for themselves at the table. Sometimes they're not even being asked, on some of the RFPs Carl has seen.

Future
We talked about 3D visualization and the promise it holds for capturing the gamers' way of approaching knowledge.

In the end, what was really interesting for me is that Carl was advocating exactly what we've been talking about: get the library out where the people are. Embed it in the devices they use already--and will use tomorrow, and make sure we add our value to our already information-saturated experiences.

Examples he gave include:
*eLearning /Virtual learning environments like Web CT, Blackboard, Sakai
*Bookstores (why not embed a librarian in Barnes and Noble stores? If people are there for information, why not put a master of information science in their midst?)
*CD/DVD stores (same reason--there is so much out there, help me find what I'm looking for)

Summation
Basically, Carl's vision (as I heard it) is for libraries to plug in to the rest of the world. It's not us vs. them--it's us AND them. It's the AND world George has previously blogged about.

Future History: Good, Bad or Indifferent?

A cartoon in Mad magazine (I think---no source to depend on for this) once offered the observation, "History is bunk, the present stinks, and even the future ain't what it used to be."

From the amount of mail I've received about it, the hit of the ACRL conference must have been the presentation that included the infamous Google/Amazon video. This short piece is a documentary putatively made in 2014 by the "Museuem of Media History" about the history of the news business. It was masterfully done by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson.

Watch the eight minute video, and then please come back here and tell me: in your opinion, is this a utopia, a dystopia, or something else entirely?

Morgan Library, New York

Dod you see the article by Carol Vogel in today's New York Times about the renovations and additions to the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City? (Free registration may be required to access that article from the web, incidentally.) The point of the article is that the Morgan has been seen as an elitist institution in the community, and the director is trying to change that by spreading the word that it is open to all. There's also been some talk about adding the word "Museum" to the title, but apparently that hasn't gone very far.

One paragraph in the article jumps out at me, especially in connection with this blog and the scan:

"Besides moving the entrance around the corner from 36th Street to Madison Avenue, the new Morgan will have a central court that the architect Renzo Piano, who designed the expansion, likens to an Italian piazza. It is intended as a gathering place, encouraging visitors to linger." (emphasis mine)

Jan/Feb/Mar OCLC Newsletter

This really spiffy looking newsletter has been out in print for a couple of weeks but the e-version has only just been put up. The title of this issue is Gamer/Boomer: Getting and Keeping Both Generations Happy. There are three gaming related pieces.

"The Big Bang: As Gamers and Boomers collide in one of the biggest culture clashes in history, society is being reshaped. What will the impact be on libraries? And how can libraries attract Gamers and serve both generations?"

"Staying in the Game: How to create environments for Boomers and Gamers in your library. In the next five years, Gamers will be the dominant demographic for your libraries. Nonetheless, you don’t want to do anything that will offend or chase Boomers from the stacks. The key to securing and retaining these growing segments is giving each one what it wants." More good words from John Beck here.

"Zone in on Your Users. Gamers need social space. Boomers need “a third place.” Toddlers need storytelling terrain. Seniors need quiet areas. Everyone needs technology. And many want coffee!"

And among other good stuff, an article on the OCLC Advocacy program: "Public libraries pack a powerful $$$ punch."

Way to go, Newsletter team.

Future of Blogging

Somehow I missed this CNet article in my RSS aggregator (see, even with one of these, it's possible to still miss good stuff). The Future of Blogging is a long article, from Knowledge@Wharton, a newsletter from the Wharton School of Business. Lots of links.
From the article:

Wharton legal studies professor Dan Hunter puts blogging right up there with the printing press when it comes to sharing ideas and disseminating information. "This is not a fad," Hunter says. "It's the rise of amateur content, which is replacing the centralized, controlled content done by professionals."

Some other good comments about blogging can be found from Ivan Chew, the Rambling Librarian from Singapore. There are three posts related to getting management support for blogging. Post one here, post two here, and post three here.

"Last One Out Turn off the Lights..."

This is the main title of a recently published book. The full title is Last One Out Turn Off The Lights: Is This the Future of American and Canadian Libraries? It is a collection of essays by Canadian and US librarians, many of them known to me (people often express surprise about how many Canadian librarians I know...don't forget though, there's 10 times less of them than US librarians). The introduction "Change the Lightbulb or Flip the Switch--Our Choice!" is written by the two editors Susan Cleyle and Louise McGillis and starts off:

Feeling good about being a librarian in the twenty-first century? Think you have a handle on the technology and the many different information choices available today? Let's face it, libraries and librarians are perfectly situated to shine in the information age; after all our business is the acquisition, organization, and dissemination of information. If we are feeling so confident about the future, why is the literature filled with articles trying to find a place for us to fit, and why are we in a state of collective amazement that we may not be the information resource of choice for many of the technologically savvy users of today? We are no longer in the forefront--we are losing our users, and as a result, librarians are being challenged to shape up or be permanently relegated to the sidelines.

The essays in the book address five main topics: libraries and the web, library as place, getting services to the desktop, certification of librarians, and the future of library associations.

I enjoyed many of the articles and found useful things in them, but my favourite was actually the epilogue, written by Waynn Pearson, the Library Director at the Cerritos Library which won awards for its design. Waynn begins his essay by linking the redesign of the library to his reading The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre and Every Business a Stage, a book I've read, liked and thought more librarians should read (along with The Dream Society: How the Coming Shift from Information to Imagination Will Transform your Business and Brand Lands, Hot Spots and Cool Spaces: Welcome to the Third Place and the Total Marketing Experience)

Here's what Waynn's advice is on creating a vibrant library (but read the book for all the details)
* Design for the common user
* Look outside the library for ideas
* Develop a story line
* Don't limit yourself to providing information
* Communicate with more than words
* Get out from behind the desk
* Create gathering places
* Romance your users
* Play your part
* Make it fun

Not much wailing and gnashing of teeth in this collection of essays, just a lot of energetic, dedicated librarians, experienced and not so experienced, looking to "resole our comfortable shoes and [go] where users want to take us."

You all go!

Google shifts advertising strategy

So is Google selling out?
From today's New York Times article, it sounds like they're ready to trade contextual, sensible advertising for profits.

If you own Google stock, perhaps you don't mind.

For the rest of us, it signals some final death-knell of Google's claim to be different. Now they'll allow graphical ads (only on partner sites--not on "mamma" Google) and more shockingly, they'll allow advertisers to buy placement.

Before today, an advertiser had to be contextually related. Now if I'm a monster truck engine-maker, and I want to go after laptop purchasers, I can have my monster truck engine ad appear next to laptop search results--regardless of whether it "makes sense."

What happened to "don't be evil?"

Earth Day celebration

Happy Earth Day, everyone. Just remember, when you hug a book, you're hugging a tree in evolved form.

Environmental question of the day: Has anyone ever explored the idea of an outdoor library?

I can imagine all kind of issues...what about the computers when it rains? How do I keep the DVDs from walking off? Mold growing in the stacks...

Right. My question is geared to more of an architectural/conceptual idea. Anyone have photos, ideas for an outdoor library?

A few: New York, Umatac in Guam, and Vietnam.
Also: Paper about cataloging.

The Star Shone on Alabama

On Wednesday, I spoke at the Birmingham Public Library Lunch at the Alabama Library Association conference.

I have a bit of advice for you: it you ever get invited to the Alabama Library Association conference, go. I was there way too briefly, but what I saw, I enjoyed thoroughly. (Incidentally, the fried chicken at the lunch was almost as good as the best I’ve eaten, and I lived in South Carolina for seven years.)

I was met at the airport by Renee Blalock, the Associate Director of the Birmingham Public Library, who had invited me to the conference. Michele Norris, the host of NPR’s All Things Considered, was also on the flight—she was the keynote speaker for the conference. Another word of advice: if Michele Norris ever speaks within 100 miles of where you are, drop everything and go hear her. Her keynote speech was exactly what every meeting organizer hopes for: a relevant, incredibly well-delivered speech from the heart that gets discussion going for the rest of the event. Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t agree with everything she said, but the way she said it was SO GOOD! Before she became the host of ATC, Michele’s beat was education and she still cares passionately about kids (including her own two toddlers) and how they learn.

My only gripe with Michele’s talk is that I have a hang-up about the library as nostalgia. She talked a lot about how libraries used to be. She expressed concern about “point and click” journalism, and about whether information, as it becomes more common, will become less valuable.

But she was fully engaged with the audience. At one point, she said she would love to spend time shadowing the librarian at NPR, just to learn more about what she does. At that point, Elizabeth Aversa of the College of Communication and Information Services, School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama (yes, this all fits on her card) offered to have her shadow LIS students as they learn about the next generation of information provision, and Michele accepted.

Michele’s talk wasn’t all nostalgia…she was firmly grounded in the current environment. She talked about a dinner party she’d attended with a number of journalists. As the evening progressed, they started talking about stories they’d each pursued based on internet research that either turned out to be totally bogus or that took them off in the wrong direction. As it turns out, there was one librarian at this party, and after everyone had related his or her horror story, she said, “You each could have saved yourself a ton of time and embarrassment just by picking up the phone and calling your librarian.” KUH-ching!

She said that librarians need to be right at the table when the editorial meetings are being held every day. By extension, librarians need to be at every meeting of the city council, school board, deans and provosts, student senate, and wherever else decisions are being made. That’s how we make the leap from gatekeeper to player!

OK, so sign me up for Michele’s fan club. The icing on the cake? She said her favorite children’s book is Curious George. (OK, this is a shameless plug for WebJunction. You can get your price of admission refunded at the door!)

Trading Spaces (Library Edition)

So last week, I was in New Jersey doing a scan presentation for the library association conference there. One of the people at the program, Kathy Schalk-Greene, gave me her card and suggested that I check out the web site on the card.

What a find! If you’ve read the scan or attended one of the presentations we’ve done, you’ll know that one of our themes is the importance of the library as place. Thirteen months ago, the Mount Laurel Public Library hosted a conference called “Trading Spaces: Reinventing the Library Environment” and this site is an absolute treasure trove of information about how to re-make your library into a more inviting place for your community. And the kicker is that the emphasis is how to do this on a skimpy budget. Mount Laurel Public Library and South Jersey Regional Library Cooperative each kicked in $15,000 to renovate the library, and the results are phenomenal.

But this was more than just an isolated success story. Instead, the idea was to use Mount Laurel as a showcase, and when you check out the photos and the testimonials on these pages, you’ll see why this has worked. Kathy won the New Jersey Library Association’s Librarian of the Year Award at the close of their conference last week. Just another reason to listen, eh?

In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that Karen Hyman (the director of the South Jersey Regional Library Cooperative) and I are on the dais together in Chicago for a PLA preconference called “Creating a Library Sales Force: It’s Easier than You Think,” on Friday, June 24 at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers. We also have the absolutely wonderful team of Peggy Barber and Linda Wallace, with whom I worked back in my ALA days, and Gail Griffith from Carroll County Maryland, PL, on the program. (Google Gail’s name and you’ll find a wealth of programs with which she’s been involved!)

Games, Learning and Society Conference

Here's a conference for librarians who want to learn more about the role of games in learning. The Games, Learning & Society Conference (GLS) will be held June 23-24, 2005 in Madison, Wisconsin, and "will explore issues of how videogames and digital media are impacting learning and society. Speakers, discussion groups, and interactive workshops and exhibits will focus on game design, game culture, and games' potential for learning and society more broadly." (from the conference web site)

It's going to be a small two-day conference (capped at 250, according to the conference FAQ) which often means a more meaningful experience for attendees. More exposure to speakers and other attendees, and less sessions to pick from.

The conference is sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Madison (home to Constance Steinkuehler and Kirt Squire*, panelists at the OCLC Gaming Symposium at ALA Midwinter 2004) and the Academic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Lab.


* Kurt and Constance had just had a great article published in Library Journal, called "Meet the Gamers." "They research, teach, learn, and collaborate. So far, without libraries."

Report on Massive Multiplayer Online Gaming

Noted on Stephen Downes always informative newsletter OLDaily.

From the ADL site: The The Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative released a report in March, examining multiplayer online games as a future focus area for ADL. The report, "Massive Multiplayer Online Gaming: A Research Framework for Military Training and Education." reviews relative online gaming research literature and proposes 15 primary experiments pertaining to massive multiplayer online gaming (MMOG), first popularized in the entertainment world and now finding growing interest in education and training environments.

The report is available for downloading here.

Stephen's comment: "this report is a good and in-depth study of the relation between online role-playing games such as MUDs and educational achievement. There is some discussion of how players of such games self-organize and some lighter discussion of the psychological impact of play in such environments."

And while some of us may not be entirely comfortable with the military connection, it's good to remember that the Internet itself began life as ARPANET, a military research project.

Adobe buys Macromedia

This is BIG news in the creative/design world. And for anyone who publishes a combination of print, electronic, Web.
My two favorite software makers have now joined forces. The people who brought you Dreamweaver will now be the same people who brought you Photoshop. It's a beautiful thing. I'm so excited. Go hug your Webmaster/graphic designer/communications person. He or she probably won't believe you at first. Read more from the CNET story >>

Welcome to the containerless future

A great hunk of writing came across my desk this morning from one of the information-space e-newsletters I get.

The short piece lamented the fact that Intel offered $10,000 for an archival copy original of Electronics magazine that tipped Moore's law into existence. The writer ackowledged that there are photo- and digital copies everywhere, but few originals to be found. So Intel turned to the library community--who subsequently now have to protect their originals from poachers.

The writer then explored the idea of "what is an original?" of an object when the original object is in fact digital. Here's a snippet:

It makes us wonder once again how future generations will view our obsession with content containers and packages. When someone 50 years from now wants to document the rise of blogs, they'll likely point to the original posts on the Powerline and FreeRepublic blogs about the CBS documents about President Bush's military service that proved to be false and led to the downfall of Dan Rather. But what will they put in their museum? Where will the originals of those posts be? They don't exist outside the ones and zeroes on somebody's computer, and that will be true of all kinds of important documents we are creating today. What's an original when there never was a print version?

The clincher was at the end: "Welcome to the containerless future."

University of Alberta's Bike Library

A good post for a lovely Friday afternoon. This came to me via Jerome-L, an Alberta-based library list. The newspaper article referred to appeared in today's edition of The Edmonton Journal (subscription required) on page B4.

In response to calls and numerous e-mails, please allow me to advise you that the [Edmonton] Journal headline with regard to Item #4 below is misleading. The University of Alberta Library System, while providing exemplary service to campus in a variety of ways and making information resources available also in a variety of ways, is NOT engaged in loaning bicyles. The "bike library" intiative seems to be centred in the Environmental Co-ordination Office of Students. We 'peddle' books, not bikes.

4. U OF A LIBRARY SYSTEM NOW INCLUDES LOANER BICYCLES
U of A students can rent bikes, painted university colors of green and gold, for $20 a month. Bike Library saves students time and money where before had to walk 45 minutes or take bus, one student has only a 10 minute bike ride to campus. Program run by student environment office and volunteer bike mechanics fix donated bikes. Environment office hopes to expand program. Page B4; by Jodie Sinnema

Rupert Murdoch is a "digital immigrant"

Rupert Murdoch heads up News Corporation, one of the largest media corporations in the world. On Wednesday he gave a speech to US newspaper editors at a conference in Washington. The text of the speech is here.

Murdoch has adopted the terms "digital immigrants" and "digital natives" that George, Cathy and I now use when talking about generational differences in our presentations. We got the terms and definitions from John Beck who co-wrote Got Game. Perhaps Mr. Murdoch has read this book too. Or perhaps he read Marc Prensky who seems to have been the guy who first published something using the terms.

Murdoch had this to say:

"Scarcely a day goes by without some claim that new technologies are fast writing newsprint’s obituary. Yet, as an industry, many of us have been remarkably, unaccountably complacent. [...] I come to this discussion not as an expert with all the answers, but as someone searching for answers to an emerging medium that is not my native language. Like many of you in this room, I’m a digital immigrant. I wasn’t weaned on the web, nor coddled on a computer. Instead, I grew up in a highly centralized world where news and information were tightly controlled by a few editors, who deemed to tell us what we could and should know. My two young daughters, on the other hand, will be digital natives. They’ll never know a world without ubiquitous broadband internet access.

The peculiar challenge then, is for us digital immigrants – many of whom are in positions to determine how news is assembled and disseminated -- to apply a digital mindset to a new set of challenges.

We need to realize that the next generation of people accessing news and information, whether from newspapers or any other source, have a different set of expectations about the kind of news they will get, including when and how they will get it, where they will get it from, and who they will get it from."

Could be a librarian talking about challenges in our world, couldn't it?

More coverage of the speech here and here and here

The last link was to commentary by Jeff Jarvis, an experienced journalist and media watcher. Read the comments too to this post and read 1. Find sand. 2. Dig hole. 3. Insert head and the comments. Read A New Model for LOCAL NEWSPAPERS and read those comments too.Substitute the word "editors" with "librarians", and "newspaper" for "library" and see if any of this sounds familiar.

Good stuff. Food for thought. Somebody invite Mr. Jarvis to speak to librarians.