User: Edward Vielmetti

a yearlong journey of being a patron at Ann Arbor District Library (Michigan)
got sucked into all of this about a year ago when he sent a message to the suggestion box at AADL (about RSS)
realized the staff was reading his blog, which changed his relationship with them
Eli asked Ed to be on the tech advisory board (which has met once, just before they launched the new catalog)

noted that you as a patron can easily add a comment that shows up on the Library’s homepage; was the first hint that the staff was engaging with users
had a past embezzlement issue and were strapped for cash 10 years ago
the change became apparent when they rolled out the new catalog
Ed typically gets about 100 visitors a day to his blog; he started posting some stuff about the Library; some folks would start talking to Ed on his blog about the Library – Eli would then respond in the comments
the discussion continues online on the Library’s website, making it the center of its own community
staff can make changes now that they’re no longer on 10–year old code; they can try things out quickly because they’re no longer completely dependent on the vendor’s release cycle
this represented a shift with how Ed related to his Library
now he’s checking out way more books than he can read! made him realize he wants NetFlix for books – wants the next one ready, but only needs 5–6 out at a time; the novelty of new items would make him return books (AADL is thinking about this)

Ed’s RSS experiments:
displayed his holds RSS feed on his blog in a Rube-Goldberg-like process
– lasted about a month; got comments from people doing reader’s advisory and socializing over them; for security reasons, the URL changed every time he made changes, so it wasn’t quite the right implementation; but it got people thinking that maybe the library is a place for people to share info about what they’re interested in reading, sharing, etc.
– almost never finds a book to read by searching in the catalog; the blank catalog box (search) isn’t as good a search box for any given query as Google – it’s not as rich a resource so almost never types query on library’s catalog first
– showed FireFox plugin to search the AADL catalog; it was written by a local high school student
– that’s the kind of innovation that got Ed excited to do things on his own because the Library now had a system he could play with

started the Superpatron blog
– has about 300 subscribers now! peak day when linked from Google blog was about 800 hits that day

before Library switched to new catalog, data was on library pages that were hard to deal with (as a programmer, as a user)
after, the Library became a data point on the network that you no longer have to start at; noted LibraryLookup as a first example; showed a GreaseMonkey script that puts library availability right on Amazon’s screen (including due date); esoteric, but really cool!
showed a title available on Amazon for 32cents – is he really going to ILL it??
it’s no longer an active search choice for Ed to find out if his Library has a particular item – it’s just there
can add the GreaseMonkey scripts on your own in-house computers, although that does open some security concerns
showed Book Burro plugin, too
Ed then did the same thing for Google Book Search (spent just an evening working on it)
– libraries don’t buy ads, so not all titles in GBS link to the library; Ed: “what a shame – you should buy some ads”
local users go to IMDB rather than the library’s catalog to look up DVDs, so Ed made a GreaseMonkey script to show AADL availability along with existing NetFlix, etc. links (just does a title search into the catalog)
it assumes an infrastructure and a set of knowledge you can’t assume your patrons have, but Ed and someone else who can build these things themselves that are then useful to other people, too
if you look at where innovation happens in libraries, and it’s exciting to see some of it happening not from library staff or vendors, but happening from patrons; key to that is having systems that appeal to the fractional percentages of your user population that knows how to write code & being able to find and connect with them on a human level; seed them with ideas about what could be done; this discovery process was looking things up, asking people, and finding code to reuse

about “making sense,” not about turning himself into a professional coder who wrote six lines at a time for the library

AADL has a “free space” that any person can rent for free up to 4 times a year as long as you don’t charge a fee, etc. (few constraints)
every Thursday, Ed has organized a lunch date to keep up with folks in town, and in December, it coincided with his birthday so he held it at the Library in the free space; didn’t tell the Library
one of the things he learned is that whenever you throw a party like that, you need to have chocolate – smuggled it in and even the librarians ate it (which Ed brought with him!)

since then, having been invovled with this stuff, he discovered things the Library is doing and he doesn’t have to keep reinventing stuff
there isn’t one big library story (that tells the 50 great things your library is doing) because the stories go everywhere and in directions
automated software makes booking the rooms easy
have “Picture Ann Arbor” photos collection; didn’t get rights to reuse the pictures, which was a shame; library staff will scan in the pictures for you at the Library to add them to the collection; here’s the library collecting online (as opposed to paper being stuck in a vertical file somewhere)

talked about AADL’s gaming tournaments; showing DVD clips as trailers at the movie theater
don’t force people to come into the library to find out about things
AADL staples flyers to poles downtown; the advertising is out on the street, too

noted Josie Parker, the director, is talking directly to patrons via a blog; solicits lots of comments; gives a sense of “library director as civic leader;” lets the director become part of the community and reach the community that is online

where things stand right now:
renewed a book this morning, but recently held “Library Camp” – took 5 months to plan and 1 meeting; held at AADL; had about 30 people attend daylong session; patrons AND academic and public librarians, plus some library school graduates who weren’t necessarily librarians; explained what an “unconference” is
didn’t have a plan, although they did do planning; the Library was great about doing it; was refreshing to talk about libraries in a library – could look around you and see what you were discussing
two groups – techies who read books a lot and use the computers way too much but were struggling with their digital collections; noted gulf between techies and non-techies (both for librarians and patrons)
talked about innovations for the OPAC and how much are our vendors standing in the way of our progress

one of the things that challenges patrons so much is that they just don’t know what’s there or available; a lot of library services are opaque – it’s not clear where you find them, don’t know about them unless someone tells you about them; awareness is a huge issue
AADL advertises story time to local parents mailing list

question: academic library that forces users to go different places to do different things (copying, etc.); how irritating is it when a library computer is deliberately broken
Ed: a friend of his said this is the only place I know of where the computer is less functional with the library catalog than it is at home!

question: in a public library, have all age groups so have to control what happens where
Ed: was perplexed that libraries require kids to get signatures to use internet computers; his kids aren’t at a good age to answer this, and they do all of their computing at home

question: each subsequent plugin raises the complexity for what patrons have to install – how can we package these and make it easier for patrons?
Ed: for any given system, you could package them all to make them easier to install; it’s complicated, but not hard – would have to find someone to help with this

question: how tie this into more than just one browser?
Ed: browser development is moving towards more of this

Ed: “either you’re more demanding of the vendor or you give up on them; Innovative has no user group for patrons”

question: used to ask vendors how many field tested products on students? it was always on the librarians
Ed: AADL tested users who came into the Library, which is a subset, but is still useful

question: trust is a two-way street; have to win librarians’ trust, too
Ed: say nice things about them

Ed: I hear about these 6–month and year-long implementation cycles and it’s awful

question: how is the public commenting on the website going?
Ed: showed Josie’s blog, 26 comments on the parking survey post

Michael: I’m a big proponent of the Cluetrain Manifesto – human voices, and it’s happening on the library’s website!
Ed: yes, this didn’t exist before