Jamie Coniglio, George Mason University

- com­put­ers aren’t tech­nol­ogy
– inter­net is bet­ter than tv
– doing is more impor­tant than know­ing
– learn­ing more closely resem­bles nin­tendo than logic
– mul­ti­task­ing is a way of life
– typ­ing is pre­ferred to hand­writ­ing
– stay­ing con­nected is essen­tial
– zero tol­er­ance for delays
– consumer/creator are blurring

quick overview of social net­work­ing and dif­fer­ent types of sites

at George Mason Uni­ver­sity, they’re play­ing with:
– wiki for inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion
(showed Chad Boeninger’s busi­ness wiki as an exam­ple of a pub­lic wiki)
– Meebo wid­get chat box
– blogs, although they have fewer now than before because they were using them to route around the fact they didn’t have a CMS
– mov­ing to a research por­tal that blends Word­Press and the Inter­net Scout Toolkit
– have fooled around with MySpace, and they’ll respond, but not much going on for them there
– same thing with Face­book
– seri­ously look­ing at LibGuides; play­ing with it right now
– have dis­cov­ered Zoho and are try­ing Zoho Show as a way to share mate­ri­als among staff
– del.icio.us book­mark sets
– showed the UThink blog­ging project at the Uni­ver­sity of Min­nesota
– vir­tual real­ity
– showed the browser Flock

mar­ket­ing & social net­works
– keep your con­tent fresh
– pro­vide reli­able con­tent
– know your mar­ket
– have good content

from an orga­ni­za­tional point of view, where do we put the per­son­nel for this

chal­lenges
– declin­ing visits/gate counts (at least in acad­e­mia)
– fewer ref­er­ence desk trans­ac­tions
– fewer cir­cu­la­tions of print mate­ri­als
– com­peti­tors in the infor­ma­tion envi­ron­ment
– disintermediation

- being where our users
– being use­ful where our users are
– real­iz­ing we aren’t in con­trol (chaotic ver­sus struc­tured)
– silo-ing or per­son­al­iza­tion
– who’s on desk
– face time ver­sus online
– pri­vacy? her staff uses nom de plumes on Face­book to pro­tect their email addresses and iden­ti­ties
– keep­ing up/“losing” skills
– getting/keeping good para­pros
– rid­ing the tsunami
– orga­ni­za­tional structure/agility
free the bound peri­od­i­cals? and more?
– dis­com­fort (cer­tainty ver­sus uncertainty)

stu­dents aren’t using their GMU email addresses because they already have other per­sonal ones

responses
– stay aware of “über” envi­ron­ment to kee up
– pilot/try it out (if some­one wants to try it, she says sure)
– stu­dent input/feedback/training us
– keep/move on/ can’t be wed­ded to “one way“
– avoid search­ing for a magic bul­let; can’t empha­size flex­i­bil­ity enough
– depart­men­tal facil­ity; take advan­tage of your staff’s exper­tise
– stream­line aspects of “stan­dard” job ele­ments
– read spe­cial library “tac­tics“
— cre­ate zones of exper­i­men­ta­tion
— build­ing a “knowl­edge prac­tice;” start with the ones who will work with you
— closer align­ment with cur­ric­u­lar changes, emerg­ing and redesign aca­d­e­mic pro­grams
— move­ment from “sup­port ser­vice” toward col­lab­o­ra­tion and part­ner­ships
– value risk-taking
– reori­en­ta­tion toward user-centered ser­vices; noted Uni­ver­sity of Rochester’s anthro­po­log­i­cal report pub­lished through ACRL

ser­vice trans­for­ma­tion to
– vis­i­ble
– trainer/learner
– col­lab­o­ra­tive
– infor­mal
– visual

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Karen Cal­houn

meta­data man­age­ment bw (before the web) and aw (after htet web)
bw
– or find­ing library mate­ri­als
– cat­a­log records (well-understood)
– shared coöper­a­tive cat­a­loging systems

aw
– for find­ing all kinds of things
– many types of records and sources
– loosely-coupled meta­data man­age­ment
– mul­ti­ple batch cre­ation and extract

meta­data is now really cool stuff

rec­om­mends O’Reilly’s arti­cle “What is Web 2.0?” and David Weinberger’s book Every­thing Is Mis­cel­la­neous
“the third order of order” — make the biggest pile you can
“include and post­pone” — can be orga­nized over time, some of them will be grass­roots (like Library­Thing), some will be offi­cial (tax­onomies, etc.)
– need them both, but have to pay atten­tion to the less for­mal ones

peo­ple are using meta­data to inter­act and con­tribute, even though they may not know what it is

what would meta­data 2.0 be like?
– not your father’s meta­data
– remix­ing, reuse, mashups
– wth the nec­es­sary rights
– meta­data syn­di­ca­tion
– enabling a rich user expe­ri­ence
– global, group, and local meta­data man­age­ment
– long term vision
– things you can do right now at your library

Ama­zon relent­lessly enhanced meta­data and rede­fined it for the world of books

what is a “full record?“
showed the same record from Libraries Aus­tralia, World­Cat, and Ama­zon to show the dif­fer­ences between a “full record” for each
from a user per­spec­tive, which one is the “full record?” ama­zon
– the horse has left the barn

using meta­data from mul­ti­ple sources
all of this remix­ing has gen­er­ated a high inter­est in copy­right
Cre­ative Com­mons licens­ing has proven to pro­vide an alter­na­tive to full con­trol — it’s a bridge between a world that con­trols every use (“all rights reserved”) and anar­chy where con­tent providers are exposed to exploita­tion
CC lets you pro­tect your work while also allow­ing your con­tent to be remixed

“intel­lec­tual prop­erty man­age­ment” is one of the burn­ing issues of Web 2.0

be where their eyes are; syn­di­cate your meta­data out­wards
OCLC calls this get­ting libraries to “web scale” — get­ting col­lec­tions to show up in as many places as pos­si­ble through this kind of syndication

showed World­Cat Face­book wid­get
– showed how you can share a WC list with peo­ple in FB
makes library col­lec­tions more vis­i­ble and con­nects every­day users the abil­ity to share books in new and excit­ing ways

over­whelm­ingly, users start with an inter­net search engine, not library resources
this doesn’t mean peo­ple are no longer using libraries or library resources, but it does mean they no longer begin with the library web­site
so we have to take our col­lec­tions where the users are

cat­a­log used to be our sun in the galaxy, but now it’s just a planet in the user’s galaxy
the story of the cat­a­log is not over

one library work­ing by itself is not going to make this hap­pen, is not going to get to “web scale“
can’t com­mand a huge amount of atten­tion for just one library
she believes that to keep libraries strong and vibrant in their com­mu­ni­ties, we need to work together to com­mand a much larger pres­ence on the web for library collections

talked about Open World­Cat Part­ner Pro­gram
showed an exam­ple of dri­ving traf­fic from the web to a library-owned title
chose a Ger­man title (since the inter­net and books aren’t just for Eng­lish readers)

we can be con­nected: a new vision for meta­data man­age­ment
data can flow local <–> group <–> global

worldcat.org sta­tis­tics
– num­ber of libraries vis­i­ble through WC and part­ner sites = more than 10,000
(ed. — see my Flickrstream for the rest of this slide)

every­where, the library
anchors for neigh­bor­hoods and com­mu­ni­ties, just as they always have been
wel­com­ing space in the com­mu­nity + great vis­i­bil­ity of the col­lec­tion on the web so that no mat­ter where you start, you can end up at your library

long-term vision
no less than a new age in which an indi­vid­ual library cat­a­log is one node on the web that is attached to many other nodes and the user can tra­verse those nodes eas­ily and con­ve­niently to their library’s col­lec­tions
can retain your inde­pen­dence but be loosely con­nected in Web 2.0-fashion, the same way so many other things are today

what can you do right now?
– take libraries to a wider audi­ence, eg sur­face your col­lec­tions in as many places as you can on the web
– encour­age a Web 2.0 “cul­ture of par­tic­i­pa­tion” in your own com­mu­ni­ties; sup­port dig­i­tal cit­i­zen­ship
– part­ner with muse­ums, his­tor­i­cal soci­eties, cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions, eg to add new online content

push­ing our data out, pulling users in: libraries and course man­age­ment systems

in 2004, 40% of classes used course man­age­ment sys­tems; more now
good: embed a library pres­ence in course sites
bet­ter: cus­tomize RSS feeds to course sites, links to course readings

Amer­i­can Uni­ver­sity has done some great work inte­grat­ing conent into LMS courses using cus­tomized RSS feeds

pub­lic libraries in Canada cre­ated http://mycommunityinfo.ca/
work­ing with the com­mu­nity to index locally-relevant sites
has a “life events” sec­tion (retire­ment, what to do if you lose your pet, going off to col­lege, etc.)

pub­lic libraries in the UK cre­ated The People’s Net­work
was funded by the lot­tery
part­ner­ing with indi­vid­u­als and com­mu­nity groups to cre­ate content

ques­tion: if we spoon­feed the con­tent into the LMS, does that give stu­dents less incen­tive to learn how to do it them­selves
answer: if 2% are start­ing with the library web­site, 98% of them aren’t see­ing this stuff any­way; doing this can drive users back to using your resources and services

ques­tion: what should cat­a­logers be doing dif­fer­ently in terms of their work
answer: they should be embrac­ing many sources of data, reuse it, get it done as quickly and as eas­ily as you can; make sure your cat­a­log is cur­rent — never have a back­log; revamp your skills and this kind of meta­data man­age­ment; learn how to inter­act with your user com­mu­nity; learn how to han­dle spe­cial collections

ques­tion: is there a way for me at my pub­lic library to find out how many links are com­ing back to my cat­a­log from World­Cat?
answer: yes!

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Kate Shee­han

the OPAC sucks

showed Library­Thing
Kate stalked Tim Spauld­ing in order to be the first beta tester of Library­Thing for Libraries
LfL takes all of the warm, fuzzy, reader-generated infor­ma­tion about books and puts it into your cat­a­log
showed a record with MARC info above and LfL info below on the screen
showed tag cloud

you end up click­ing around from book to book in Library­Thing think­ing “I want to read this, this, this, this, this“
when do peo­ple ever just hang out in your cat­a­log?
LfL is great for reader’s advisory

showed the code side of it — it’s just 3 lines!
mon­keys could do this — it’s really that easy :-p
it’s like Syn­det­ics info — it’s just out­side content

using Inno­v­a­tive for their cat­a­log
imple­mented LfL in April 2007

cost:
.003-.006 cents per circ of books (not count­ing A/V mate­ri­als)
frac­tions of a penny per circ
they’re really nice peo­ple and they’ll work with you; no hard sell
why can’t we have this expe­ri­ence all the time??
*and* they under­stand the con­straints libraries are under (POs, etc.)
floor entry is $1000

staff have loved it
Kate loves how easy LfL is for folks to use with­out hav­ing to under­stand how to log in to a site
thinks patrons like it, although they don’t give a lot of feed­back about it
patrons like it when staff shows it to them

they just added stats
the ser­vice includes children’s books, but it’s stronger in YA

she had a big social jus­tice moment when they did this — “we can do this — it doesn’t have to be just the big libraries“
it’s not extra work, and it’s very easy to add
the OPAC still kinda sucks, but it’s bet­ter than it was
Dan­bury just isn’t going to be able to do a SOPAC, it doesn’t have the resources, so this is great for them

LfL has a full-time pro­gram­mer and a cus­tomer ser­vice rep
might be work­ing on patron reviews and rat­ings back into LfL

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