Thoughts from a Library Administrator

Books Read in 2011

2012-01-08T06:35:00.000-06:00

End of the calendar year is often a time for reflection. This year it seems like I read less than usual (and I can't quite put my finger on why.) I have also listened to more radio and fewer books. A part of that my be related to the rearrangement of the collection at MPOW from an accession number arrangement to Dewey. Here is the list. (It is in reverse chronological order, since I just cut and pasted from the side bar where I keep track.) Note that this is a full year list, not a half year like some prior lists.

Books Read (paper)

The Chalk Girl by Carol O'Connell ARC
The Invisible Ones: A Novel by Stef Penney ARC
Grimus: a novel by Salman Rushdie
If Jack's in Love: A Novel by Stephen Wetta ARC
Lionheart by Sharon Kay Penman ARC
Too Far by Rich Shapero ARC
Broken Pieces: A Library Life, 1941-1978 by Michael Gorman
Delirious New Orleans: Maifesto for an Extraordinary American City by Stephen Verderber
The Quiet American by Graham Greene
The Weird Sisters: a novel by Eleanor Brown
The girls from Ames: a story of women and a forty-year friendship by Jeffrey Zaslow
Doing social media so it matters: a librarian's guide by Laura Solomon
Saving CeeCee Honeycutt: A Novel by Beth Hoffman
Mary Ann in Autumn by Armistead Maupin
Room: A novel by Emma Donoghue
The Glory Wind by Valerie Sherrard a review copy
The Rievers by William Faulkner

I had been planing to read Water for elephants by Sara Gruen in paper, but I wound up listening to it.

Read on the Nook

Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares
A Voice in the Box: My Life in Radio by Bob Edwards
Main Street Public Library: Community Places and Reading Spaces in the Rural Heartland, 1876-1956 by Wayne Wiegand
Advance PDF copy for review in Public Libraries

Recorded books/Listening

Lots of NPR on both WWNO and WRKF
Neither station covers my whole trip. I also sometimes listen to NPR Now on Sirius XM

All the king's men by Robert Penn Warren, read by Michael Emerson
Play Dirty by Sandra Brown, read by Victor Slezak
Cream Puff Murder by Joanne Fluke, read by Suzanne Toren
Lies and the lying liars who tell them: [a fair and balanced look at the right] by Al Franken, read by the author
Car talk: doesn't anyone screen these calls?: calls about animals and cars
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan, read by Robert Whitfield
Various speaker disks to select a speaker for an upcoming even
'Tis by Frank McCourt, read by the author
Islam : a short history by Karen Armstrong read by Richard M. Davidson
Water for elephants: a novel by Sara Gruen, read by David LeDoux and John Randolph Jones
Remarkable creatures by Tracy Chevalier, read by Charlotte Parry and Susan Lyons
The necklace: thirteen women and the experiment that formed their lives by Cheryl Jarvis, read by Pam Ward
Attack poodles and other media mutants: the looting of the news in a time of terror by James Wolcott read by Dennis Boutsikaris
Executive privilege by Phillip Margolin, read by Jonathan Davis
My year of meats by Ruth L. Ozeki, read by Anna Fields
Stonehenge: [a novel of 2000 BC] by Bernard Cornwell, read by Sean Barrett
My life as a fake by Peter Carey, read by Susan Lyons
Smoke by John Ed Bradley, read by Christopher Hurt

Hiatus?

2011-11-23T16:59:00.000-06:00

If anyone still reads this, you may have noticed that my posting frequency has declined quite a bit. Only 37 posts in the first ten months of the year. Of those, 4 were vacation notes in July, 3 were "Library Day in the Life" posts (2 for round 6, one for round 7), and 7 were related to ALA (midwinter, annual, and the LITA "kerfluffle").

While one of the recent uses has been for me to track some interesting blog posts from others (by including links here), I am considering a hiatus. Most of the posts during this calendar year (12 of 20) were collections of links. That is an average of "only" one per week for the non-special topics.

So, maybe I no longer have much to say. Or maybe I don't have the time and burning desire to say it. How long long will the hiatus last? I don't know.

Permanent death? Maybe, we will see.

Early September Links, volume 2

2011-09-20T19:18:00.001-05:00

Well, here is the second part, and my list of unread posts in Google Reader is finally back to zero! Now to tackle the work email in-box, where I keep getting automatically generated "mailbox full" notes!

Iris Jastram always writes thoughtful pieces. (Often they are based in her real-life experiences.) She recently posted about her philosophy of librarianship. It is well worth reading, it notes the important role of librarian (especially reference librarian) as generalist. In fact, it makes me think that once upon a time when I was part of a team doing book selection, we made it a point to include one of the support staff who worked the circulation desk (and handled ILL). She brought some of that real-world grounding to our work.

One of the library humor blogs on my list is obnoxious librarian from hades. Its subtitle is : a satirical look at life in a large bureaucracy. One of the more recent posts, while posted as a satire, really pegs the state of e-books and libraries today.

I mentioned here that Abigail Goden is doing a series of "Data Friday" posts which continue this week. The most recent post talks about a book published in the UK (and soon to be published here) about access to web data.

Letters to a Young Librarian has a recent post by a law firm librarian talking about professional development. (This is also falls into my category of "continuous education.") Here is a key "take-away" quote:

It is true that you get out of professional development what you put into it. Anything that you can use to further your career, enhance your skills, or support learning and progress in librarianship counts as professional development.

There were a couple of posts about mobile apps and libraries. First from Bill Drew who casts his headline as either/or between mobile apps and mobile web sites. It turns out that he refers to two separate articles in Computers in Libraries each of which tackles one of the two topics. Based on his comments, the web sites will be easier to produce in the short run. I wonder how long the "apps" portion will be relevant.

Aaron Tay has a fairly long post about mobile friendly databases being offered by libraries. He notes both of the trends talked about by Bill, but focuses on database access as provided by our vendors (i.e. not library created). Because he is a librarian in Singapore, he takes a (literally) more global view than do many other bloggers I read.

Librarians are on strike at the University of Western Ontario. The author (Mita) blogs library issues at New Jack Librarian. She has an interesting philosophical take on information, copyright, the library's role, and how the university should be treating its librarians. (I will confess, while I have heard about the strike, I am not very well informed on the issues...)

Rory Litwin is continuing Library Juice and Library Juice press, but he has returned to school for a PhD, and has started a new blog, Non-Robots and Their World. One of his recent posts is about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and has the great title
Feeling and not feeling.

Finally, there are a series of four posts from Eric Hellman (I have mentioned him before). I am going to list them and comment in the order of chronological appearance:

The first is on the value of a book. The post includes graphs and some sophisticated economic analysis. I'll probably have to read it a couple more times to really understand it.
The second is about his new venture which is the process of raising money to make creative-commons licensed ebook editions of the books ... so that everyone, everywhere can read them.
The third reflects on the sense of smell. I have often heard that it is the most powerful of the senses in memory recall. I have certainly experienced that in my life, times when just an odor brings back a very strong, vivid memory. One of my favorite quotes is: "When we smell a book all of these feelings resonate across time and they comfort us."
Finally, Eric posted about orphan works and finding the true copyright holder. He noted that the Hathi Trust had proposed posting some orphan works. The Authors Guild then sued them. As part of their prep, the Authors Guild used its membership (and blog readership) to identify many of the authors not found by Hathi Trust. Eric's post is full of links.

Unintended Consequences/Emergency Preparations

2011-09-18T14:37:00.001-05:00

I had an "A-HA!" moment recently.

I was at a mandatory training at MPOW where we were going over the procedures for evacuating the building. Always important to do this, and October is Fire Safety Month (or something like that) when a lot of fire drills take place.

One of the unintended consequences of loosing staff, is that there are fewer people in the building, and there may be parts of the building which used to have staff present, but no longer do. That happened at MPOW, so some of the evacuation plans have now been tweaked to make sure that we do get everyone safely out of the building.

Early September Links, volume 1

2011-09-16T18:38:00.002-05:00

I started this post thinking it would be a short one with a few links...it is now turning into a two-part post. Here is "volume one."

First some humor. While most librarians know about Unshelved (along with its computer programing cousin/half-brother Not Invented Here), one of my favorite library humor sources is Shelf Check. It has not been as frequent of late, but the latest is a great one.

LISnews alerted me some time ago to the wonderful book based paper sculptures which are popping up (literally) in libraries around Scotland. It started in March, and the most recent (that I have learned about) appeared at the end of August. Here is a blog post which has photos and descriptions of all the items which have been reported so far. In the comments there is speculation as to who the creator is.

There is a longer web version (and shorter print version) about pricing of database packages from academic publishers (mostly). Commonly it is referred to as "the Big Deal." Richard Poynderhas a good explanation and history. In a lot of ways the sub-title says it all: Not Price But Cost.

I don't remember where I picked this up, and I have always had a good relationship with IT folks, but I love the headline: Why IT pros should be more like librarians. One of the points that the article makes is about the ability to communicate clearly about what is happening. I'll say that in my present place of work (MPOW), the folks in IT respond quickly to requests, and do keep us informed about what is happening.

Stephen Abram has been blogging for just about as long as I have. [He started his blog, two days after I started this one! He is much more consistent and prolific, though.] Stephen picks up stuff all over, and shares it willingly. Two recent posts struck me:

The first concerns the use of location based services. Stephen is a huge fan, I am not as sure about that. However, it does have implications for library services and as he notes: "libraries have branches and multiple locations because geography is important for face-to-face service, community and learning. That’s one reason why I track location based services so much." And later he says: "I believe that geo-based web services and products will be essential to library strategies in the future." Both of those are statements with which I agree.
The second post covers an important topic and has an insightful title: Preparation for Living in a Public World. He wrote the post for the AASL Banned Sites project. As you might expect, he is against schools blocking specific technologies, and suggests that students would be better served if schools taught appropriate sharing behavior. I encourage you to read his post.

To follow up on the first of the two items immediately above, smartphones and e-books have been a continuing topic of interest. My friend Michelle Boule writing for ALA Techsource talked about what the growth in smartphone use means for libraries, including library web sites. A good article if you missed it.

This post reminds me of why we gather statistics. And the title says it all "Assessment isn’t about the data, it’s about the results." I think, for me, there is another important aspect of assessment which is buried in Jenica's post, and that is the value of anecdotal evidence.

David Lee King has a great recent post about the importance of relationship building for libraries (as institutions). It is a great concept, one which I always tried to implement (including in the days before social networking technology). It reminds me of one of my favorite sayings: You can never have too many friends!

Abigail Goden who used to work for my friend Rochelle in LaCrosse has started a series in her blog Hedgehog Librarian, called "Data Tidbits." It has been appearing regularly on Fridays. The first one was August 12, and as the name suggests, it is a mish-mash of items. (In this one she suggests following data "queen" Dorothea Salvo on Twitter....I loved reading her blogs, I guess I am going to have to go back to Twitter.) Both the first and the second ones include data jobs as part of the post. Both the third and the fourth ones continue in the same vein. Well worth following.

"I quite like using the word 'assets' with reference to library collections." This is the introductory sentence of a post by Lorcan Dempsey. I guess it is my MBA education and activity in the business part of the library that I have always thought of them as assets in the accounting sense. However, Lorcan goes on to say "We tend to think of assets in positive terms, as things that are valuable." I think that may be the more important part of his message.

I am not sure where I first picked up on Jennifer Meyer's blog. She is a (the?) librarian at a for-profit college. Her blog is called careercollegelibrary. She posted in a series about some of the perspective from that kind of institution. I was put off a little bit because in the first one, she uses "perspective" when she means "prospective." She does focus on the library's potential role in recruiting students. In her second post, she focuses on retention. This is especially important as higher ed institutions are being judged on graduation rates, and retention is what is needed to keep that rate high. Her third post focuses on the final phase of higher ed, critically important to for-profit institutions and one where they have been most criticized, placement. It is a slightly different take on the world, and I think a blog worth following.

Also in the nitty-gritty of the library world, Michelle McLean (Connecting Librarian) talks recently about some of the mechanics of information flow. It is certainly worth a read as you try to manage organizational blogging, tweeting, and other social networking activities.

On Gorman

2011-09-03T14:45:00.005-05:00

First about my relationship with Michael Gorman. I first met him when I started Library School at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in June 1975. He was teaching the introductory class for the library school at the end of his first stint in the US. Later, our paths crossed occasionally at ALA, including on ALA Council. At the Midwinter Meeting in 2003, I was nominated for election to the ALA Executive Board. Michael Gorman was nominated from the floor. When we gave our speeches to Council (the extent of our "campaigns"), I was assigned to sit at the end of the table on the podium, with Michael Gorman next to me. Thank goodness I got to speak first!

Along with Jim Rettig, we were both elected to the ALA Executive Board. The three of us began our service at the end of the ALA Annual Conference in Toronto. It was a lot of hard work, and a lot of fun. It was during our three year terms that Michael ran for, and won election to serve as the ALA President in 2005/06. So, at the ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans (2006), he ended his term as ALA President as Jim Rettig and I ended our terms on the ALA Executive Board. (And for those who don't know Jim, he ran for, and won election, as ALA President in 2007, serving as President in 2007/8.)

So, why am I blathering on about Gorman? I just finished reading Broken Pieces: A Library Life, 1941-1978. It is his autobiography. I found it fascinating, partly because I know him. It is also very personal and revealing about some of the mental health issues which he faced as he began his library career.

Cataloguers (especially those of a "certain age") will find the discussion on the production of AACR2 (Ango-American Cataloging Rules, 2nd edition) most enlightening.

As is his style, he is very forthright about his opinions. In this book, most of those opinions related to cataloging issues, from his evaluation of the older rules (pre-AACR) used in both the US and UK, as well as the proposal for a whole new scheme for cataloging methods.

He notes that AACR2 probably should not have been called the second edition, but been given a whole new name. Based on what I read in his work, I think I agree. I also agree with his comments about "tagging" versus the controlled vocabulary offered by Library of Congress Subject Headings (even with the shortcomings of LCSH).

It will be interesting to see what happens in the cataloging world. I feel better prepared to think about it and talk about it.

I think the book is well worth the time to read, even if you do not personally know Michael Gorman.

A Statistic -- Oh, and license plates

2011-08-15T18:51:00.003-05:00

Well, I was bold enough in my last post to observe about the number of cars on the side of the road. Last Friday night, I became one of them.

For a couple weeks, off and on, the tire pressure warning light would come on in my car. One tire seemed to lose air (rear, passenger side). I'd fill it up and it would be good for a week or more. I had done this the weekend before, and on Friday morning, the light came on. I didn't think too much, and after work headed out to the Interstate (about 1/2 mile). As I accelerated up the ramp, the car sounded different. But with sort of heavy traffic, it was hard to pull over. About a mile and a half, there was a safe spot, on the side of the road, and it was even in the shade. I pulled out the car battery-powered tire pump and plugged it in.

After about 10 minutes, nothing had changed, and I decided it was time to pull out the spare. First I had to grab the book and see where the jack went, and had to get some of the items stored in the trunk into the back seat. Other than a moment of panic when I could not find the special nut for the "anti-theft" device on the tire, it went smoothly. Of course, I had just lowered the car, and was getting ready to do the final tightening of the nuts when the Motorist Assistance Patrol van arrived. So, about 45 minutes later, I was back on the road.

Only to get to LaPlace, where despite the lack of warning on the traffic signs, traffic was backed up all along the 12 mile bridge. I don't know what the problem was, but after a long, hard, stop-and-go drive, I got off as soon as I could. It was traffic for the Saints game.

Oh, one thing I have noticed is that you can see a large variety of license plates here. In addition to the usual neighboring states (Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi), and other nearby states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia), I recently passed a car with plates from Alaska. It is not uncommon to see other Midwest/Mississippi River state plates (Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota). I think that it is the schools (universities) that attract folks from New York, Connecticut, Washington, California, Colorado, New Jersey. Some day I'll get ambitious (organized?) and track them.

Reflections on Driving

2011-08-10T18:38:00.001-05:00

With the Library Day in the Life project over, perhaps I have been in a more reflective mood than I have been in a while.

Perhaps too, for those who actually look at the sidebar to this, and not just the feed, I have been listening more to the radio (generally NPR) as I commute to and from work.

I have been reflecting on some of the similarities and differences in my drive now, and drives I have done in the past. The beginning and end of each drive is city driving. Not much to say about that, it is what it is. In Baton Rouge they are doing a project to widen parts of I-10 between the I-10/I-12 split and the edge of the city. It seems to me that it is being done in a somewhat haphazard way, with some parts having work completed, but not being able to be connected to other parts. And, frankly, there is a stretch where the new road surface is a foot or more above the currently used surface, and I wonder how that will be resolved.

The parts between the cities vary between suburban and very rural. Some of the drive is literally swamp (Maurepas Swamp Wildlife Management Area).

One thing I noticed some time ago, I don't see much roadkill along the highway. Once in a while there is a dead armadillo. In a huge change from both Wisconsin and Connecticut, I have never seen a dead deer by the side of the road. On the other hand, "dead" vehicles are there all the time. In the 80 mile trip, there are an average of about 8 vehicles on the side of the road. Most have one tire off. Some remain there for extended periods of time (as in, more than a week).

One thing I know from experience, in Connecticut, they don't let cars sit there very long. Deer can be there for a while, but cars no. I don't have a strong recollection of vehicles along the road in the Upper Midwest where I lived, but there were often deer, turkeys, even the odd coyote or wolf.

Panama Vaction Pics

2011-08-01T22:30:00.001-05:00

OK...so I am a month late...but I finally got approval from "she who must be obeyed" and there are now pictures from our vacation in Panama which have been posted here, on Flickr.

Because I am now used to getting up very early...like 5 am, there are a whole series of sunrise photos. The fact that our room faced the mountains to the East is another factor.

So here they are (including the coffee plantation tour).

I am disappointed at the lack of granularity for the mapping of places outside the US in Flickr. For US locations you can get to the street level. For Panama, at least, at best you could get city areas...roughly. Mind you, Rancho de Caldera is out in the boonies, but even the level of detail for Boquete is fairly "gross."

Enjoy!

Library Day in the Life Project - Round 7

2011-07-29T17:55:00.004-05:00

Bobbie Newman has been diligently convincing library bloggers to participate in the Library Day in the Life Project, semi-annually, where we each talk about what it is really like to be a working librarian. This is Round 7. Over 200 librarians are participating this time! What a resource.

This is my second time participating. Last time there were two posts. The first covered Monday, and then there was a summary post for the rest of the week.

Post-ALA, it has rained a fair amount. The weekend was quite rainy. Monday was, well Monday. One of the reference staff is out for some surgery this week, and that went well for her. That also means that the remaining three of us are spending more time than usual, staffing the two public service desks. One nice aspect of Monday was that, since my wife was off of work, she drove to Baton Rouge, and we got to have lunch together! Doesn't happen very often any more. Much of the rest of the day was either on the desk, or dealing with email.

Tuesday, I was motivated to get moving (for some reason), and it was "gas day" for me. [Since I drive 80 miles, each way, every day, I get gasoline in the car every other work day, or about every 320 miles or so. What a racket.] In addition to being on the desk, today's activities included my first meeting as the Volunteer Coordinator for the book festival held at the end of October. I learned even more about what is expected, and have now started with a number of new tasks. The afternoon was pretty quiet, with a fair amount of desk time.

Wednesday dawned. This was the first of three days in a row (two of them open to the public), when there are only two of us in to staff the two desks. That means that except for lunch and the occasional "comfort break," we are both on the desk all the time we are at work. It was pretty slow for me in the morning, and I was able to catch up on assorted professional reading. The highlight of the day was an interesting reference question. The patron was looking for information on “nazzorites.” One of the things we started doing a while ago was keeping a wiki with a number of things including interesting reference questions. [More on this below.] I look at it as a way to provide the library administration with some concrete, real-life examples of the service we provide. Thank goodness, the drive home was very uneventful, and I had a chance to chat with my eldest son on his birthday.

Thursday was day 2 of the long reference days. Had a quick hour on the desk, then a database/discovery tool demo which ran more than 30 minutes longer then I expected. More desk time, lunch, desk, then a meeting with other staff here. Whew! In the mail were several "prisoner letters." These are reference questions which we receive by mail from the inmates of several prisons of the state. We try to answer them as best we can, knowing that they do not have any internet access. The questions about Louisiana, we can send to that section of the library, and the legal questions we forward to the state's Supreme Court Law Library. We do track the "prisoner letters" on the internal Wiki. I started doing that just to get an idea of where the questions were coming from. I'll also note that we have some "regular" correspondents who make frequent requests.

Since July 1, the library building is not open to the public on Fridays. Staff still reports to work, and for my department, it means that we can actually have a departmental meeting (which we did last week, this week there are only two of us here.) It is also officially a casual dress day. My day started with a blood draw (just routine stuff). Then, it seems that no matter how hard I try, the day gets chopped up. Some of my accomplishments today include:

Getting a second Center for the Book staff member set up on Facebook for tagging photos (so we can publish the work site page)
Creating an email reminder on entering statistics, and getting the language approved
Typing up notes from Thursday's meeting for my staff and a fellow department head the latter of whom was called away
Reading many, many emails
Working on an (e)mail merge for libraries who are missing data
Sent that email (with only one strange error)
Entered data from the 5 libraries which responded immediately
Spent time in the stacks with our gun books to answer questions from two different parish libraries
Almost cleared off my desk
Sent an overdue email to participants in the Library Support Staff Certification class from this spring.

Whew! What a day. I am glad that the week is over!

Reflections on living in New Orleans

2011-07-20T19:28:00.001-05:00

Ed note: I started writing this right after ALA, but was interrupted. This was followed by a week in Panama (vacation) and some time when I was not well. But such is life.

For most of the past week, I have been with my professional colleagues who came to New Orleans for the American Library Association Annual Conference. Five years ago, in 2006, I completed my service as a member of the ALA Executive Board, here in New Orleans. That included participating in the discussions which led to our decision to hold the conference here, less than a year after Katrina. Little did I dream that I would ever live here.

I am also currently reading Deliriously New Orleans, which is sort of a coffee table book about the city and its history and architecture. Among the quotes which have struck me is this one:

Many born-and-bred locals and adopted transplants openly admit to an irrational attachment to the place...This is the common ground that attracts returning native and visitors alike, because for all its flaws, its distinctive culture remains its most alluring and enduring contribution to America.

New Orleans, like many older North American cities, is a city of neighborhoods. The first immigrants were in the older neighborhoods, and subsequent waves of immigration established their own enclaves. While there are some differences, there are more unifying architectural features than not.

I recommend a look at the book which highlights some of the vernacular architecture which many "serious" architecture works will over look. He also includes information about the changes wrought by that seminal 21st century event -- Katrina.

The final chapter is about St. Frances Cabrini Church. In that chapter the author has a definite axe to grind. I have no way of judging the accuracy/truth in what he presents.

Vacation in Panama #4 - wrap up

2011-07-13T21:10:00.001-05:00

The rest of the vacation was not as adventure filled.

We spent some afternoons at the pool, when the rains did not begin too early. We had dinner most nights at Rancho de Caldera. The food was excellent, if sometimes a little sophisticated for our daily diet.

Wednesday morning, we went off to the hot springs. These are the naturally occurring hot springs which give the settlement (town is a too organized idea of what is there) its name. The springs are pictured in the Boquete area activities part of the Rancho's page. They are very hot 102 - 106 degrees, but you can cool down in the nearby rive. We walked from the bridge (about 500 meters), but it was a muddy rutted road. The folks who own the property have some "changing rooms" (i.e. sheds), and charge $2 per person.

Thursday we took a horse ride around the property. It was loads of fun with fantastic views. Our guide spoke very little English, but with my very little Spanish, we were able to communicate effectively. (I'll note that he had to put a different saddle on to start, because my big, fat feet would not fit in the original stirrup.)

Stay tuned for photos, on Flickr.

Friday, we drove to David (for the first time since we left). It was an interesting trip to do in the daylight and see the scenery. We visited one casino (small by Vegas standards, or even New Orleans standards) but with mostly penny slots - right up our alley!

Saturday was the early rising to begin the long trek home: five airports, four airplanes, and a taxi ride, plus the drive to the airport and finally home.

Vacation in Panama #3

2011-07-13T20:56:00.002-05:00

OK...so I gave up blogging while there...

Tuesday morning we had a tour of a coffee plantation: Finca Dos Jefes. I booked the tour, at Gina's recommendation [Gina is the owner of Rancho de Caldera], from the web form at the site above.

We were the only two people on the tour, which lasted the full three hours. Rich (the owner) picked us up on the main street in Boquete, and drove us up to the farm. Because it was "green season" (i.e. rainy season) we scheduled our tour in the morning. We got to see the beans growing on the trees of various ages. This is an organic farm, so they don't use pesticides. They also pay the prevailing wage to their itinerant workers, and provide decent housing for both the permanent and temporary workers. We did get to see the beans in various stages of post-drying, as they age and dry further. At the end of the tour, and after tasting some of the coffee roasted there, I got to roast some coffee. Four [4] pounds of dried, green beans (about 10.5% moisture content) will roast to 3 pounds of coffee. We also got to take some coffee home.

We ate lunch several days in different restaurants in Boquete. We had local Panamanian food, we ate in a bar, and in a Peruvian restaurant. We also ate at a very nice, upscale restaurant The Rock, overlooking the river.

Vacation in Panama #2

2011-07-04T17:20:00.005-05:00

This is a wonderful part of the world, incredible mountains and lush jungles.

Today we went zip-lining in the top of the jungle vegetation outside Boquete. We drove to the city, and were met for the drive up to the resort (3 cabins that I could see) where we started. To say that the roads were narrow and steep would be an understatement. We eventually left the paved road for a gravel one lane road (more at the end). We finally got to the starting point. There was only one other couple doing the trek with us, but there still was, what the guides called, our paparazzi - one of the staff who took photos of everything. We then drove up a track so steep that it had a pair of paved wheel tracks to the real end of the road, right at the border of La Amistad National Park. A short trek later we were beginning our descent down 3,000 feet over 12 zip lines.

The guides were great. Two of them were named Mohammed and Israel! And their command of English was amazing.

It was an exhilarating thrill to traverse the river, see waterfalls, and be on tree stands which are over 400 years old. If you ever find yourself in Boquete, I recommend Boquete Tree Trek.

It was a 4 hour adventure, and driving back down the mountain we met about 5 vehicles coming up the other way. Since the pavement was very narrow, and there were deep drainage ditches on both sides, it was an adventure to get past each one.

I am blogging tonight because we have some down time before dinner, and the afternoon rains have hit - hard. Tomorrow morning we are going on a coffee plantantion tour, then we will go another day to the hot springs, and one of the days after that for a horseback ride. We hope the weather is good enough to hike Baru, the volcano from whose top you can see both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Vacation in Panama #1

2011-07-03T16:49:00.006-05:00

So, we decided to do something different this year. After the ALA Conference as a "home game" (i.e., in New Orleans), we have gone away, and not to the beach.

Saturday, July 2, saw us on 4 planes in 5 airports. Our first flight left NOLA t 5:30. It was a short hop to Houston. After a fairly short lay-over there, we were headed to Panama City (Panama). One interesting thing was that our flight left late because of a TSA/ICE search of departing passengers. There were groups of 20 or so passengers who were asked to place their bags on one side of the jetway, and step to the other. Then a dog sniffed all the items left. Why? I have no idea. After we had boarded, we were further delayed because a few people did not make the flight, and their luggage needed to be removed.

We got to Panama City in good time. We landed at the international airport (Tocumen) and then needed to get to the domestic airport (Alport). We arranged for a driver, Mr. Kelley, who was great! He got us to Aloport in good time. Alport is very much a developing nation kind of airport -- 2 airlines, each with an A and B gate. Security was, well, lets just say interesting. Watch Flickr for photos. We were on a plane big enough for flight attendants, and the flight, which left an hour late, was about the same length as from MSY to IAH. When we got there, we did not understand that we needed to pick up our luggage out on the tarmac. But we got it figured out, and after renting a car from a different company than our reservation, oh well. It is the way here.

Our hotel is wonderful. We are outside Boquete, in the volcanic mountains, up near a national park. Facebook friends have seen the view from our bed...of the mountains and the valleys is incredible. The room is great, I am sitting on a porch which has a roof, but no screens...and there are no bugs. With the breezes we have turned off the A/C. (But the ceiling fan inside is on...) The Rancho Caldera is "off the grid." All the electric is provided by solar panels and/or a generator. The water is from a well on-site and multi-purified. The pool has an infinity edge corner. The food is cooked by great chef. Lunch is a la carte, dinner is prix-fixe menu decided by the chef each night. It is wonderful

Today has been recovery. Tomorrow we zip-line through the tree canopy, Tuesday is a coffee plantantion tour, Wednesday we hope to hike Baru. From the top, you can see both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans! Thursday we will go to the natural hot springs, and Friday we will ride the horses here on the property. Unfortunately, our adventure will end on Saturday with a reverse trip with a drive to David, flight to Panama City, transfer between airports, and then travel home. Who knows what else we will sneak in?

Seriously Social: Leveraging Social Media

2011-06-25T11:22:00.001-05:00

[Post is subject to some editing and revision, but I want to post quickly.]

Kolene Allen, Grand Rapids (MI) Public Library; David Lee King, Topeka Shawnee (KS) Public Library

What is social media, online conversations. When libraries join we join conversations they are already having.

“If you are not involved in social media you are not on the Internet.”

Twitter (Kolene):

Social networking, messaging site. 225 million accounts on Twitter as of March. 60% of all tweets come from 3^rd party appl. 456 tweets per second the day Michael Jackson died, 4000 tweets per second when Obama announced death of Bin Laden.

A way to keep up, share what we are doing, recommend books, etc. We are already doing it, just in a different forum.

Recommendation: follow your followers; retweet what your followers say; mentions (@replies), talking about you.

Use DM for private messages. Often can deal with issues for folks who would not complain in person.

#Hashtags: organize conversations, useful for searching.

People are talking about you now...this is a way to keep track of what is happening, what people are saying about you, check out what other libraries are doing, build the library audience. Can search on Twitter: search.twitter.com

Facebook (David Lee King):

How many social networking have had a movie made about them. What if you had a way for 51% of your customers for free. Right now 51% if Americans 12 and over are on Facebook.

Set up personal profile; then create organizational page, think of a shortened name. Once you have 25 friends/fans you can add that shortened name to your page. You can choose what you want for the "landing page." TSPL has just over 2,900 fans.

They have a "donate" page. With some work you can build a customized page. Can build in links to videos and pictures.

Facebook will provide statistics on "views." Therefore driving more business to the regular website.

Facebook = engaging. Easy, free, just takes time.

Planning and Strategizing:

Who is going to do the work, and then assign it (makes it a real part of their job). Use a team so that someone can handle if someone is sick or leaves. Figure out if you are going to use the events page and how, how often you post. Start with short term (one year) goals. Set goals for what you are going to do (how many status updates a week). Figure out what kind of content you will post. Figure out who your real audience is. Like button is cool which you can add to blog posts...

Important things to to:

Actually tell people about your Facebook page, ask people to "friend" us.
Remember you are creating and making connections, post things that are designed to continue the conversation. Post things for your target audience.
Remember who you represent.....Nothing you do on the web is private.

This is real work. Someone needs to decide who to friend. Need to designate staff to do this. May need to do real training. You need to engage people and give them space to reply. There is a real return on investment. It is fun. It is where the library really needs to be, it brings the library out into the community.

Questions:
First question was about multi-branch situation. Need to have folks from both branches and "central" to decide what to do. Can set up multiple pages. Topeka has separate pages for Library, Foundation, Friends, Art Gallery, and YA. Grand Rapids has only one page for all libraries, but many are doing separate pages for each branch.

ALA Conference Calendar

2011-06-22T18:34:00.000-05:00

Here is my ALA calendar using Google Calendar. It is always subject to revision!

The only info in here is my ALA Schedule from June 24 - 28. It is (of course) still subject to revision.

With any luck, I will get to blog some stuff. And I hope to write up a post conference set of comments.

Guide to Free WiFi in NOLA

2011-06-07T19:00:00.001-05:00

There is a new-ish blog about things to do in New Orleans and many of the city's offerings called 411NOLA.com. Earlier this month they posted a list of the free WiFi hotspots in New Orleans.

I certainly encourage you to go there, but for my friends/readers who are coming to town for the ALA Annual Conference, I have cut and pasted some of the information. (I am guessing that the airport part will be most useful to folks on the way home...)

Please go to the blog....there are notes here about what neighborhoods are where.

Airport

One of the amenities of Louis Armstrong International Airport is free wi-fi. Reception is best in the main terminal. Picking up a signal in the Delta-area of the airport can be iffy.

Algiers (Algiers is just across the river from the Convention Center, the ferry is free to walk on from the end of Canal Street. Just be sure to get on the Algiers ferry and not the Gretna one!)

CBD / Downtown The CBD/Downtown is the area closest to the Convention Center. This list includes Warehouse District locations.

French Quarter, Marigny, and Bywater Y'all know the French Quarter, the Marigny and Bywater are the two neighborhoods on the other side of Eslplanade Ave. -- the direction away from the Convention Center

I am looking forward to seeing you all at the end of the month!

rev 6/14/11

Paying your dues and collecting acronyms - A response

2011-06-02T20:47:00.001-05:00

I abandoned ship here for a bit, but I am back. I promised some comments on Josh's post:

To refresh, here are his questions:

Do libraries suffer when I/you/we don’t pay my/your/our ALA dues?
How much bargaining power do they have?
Are you a member? If so, will you renew?
In your opinion, what is the greatest benefit of joining a professional library organization?

I number them just to make it easier to answer.

1. ALA is the oldest and largest library organization in the world. It is a mix of librarians, other library workers, trustees and other supporters, and organizations. Interestingly, while it is the American Library Association, it is only individuals (not the library organizations) who can vote and who provide the governance.

In a way, when members do not renew (organizational and personal) the association does lose something. However, ALA is a very large organization, and the size of the membership varies. I'll note as a former chair of the Membership Committee, that the number of members has pretty steadily climbed which tells me that ALA is doing some things right.

Once upon a time, there was a National Librarians Association. However, I have searched through a number of volumes and indexes in my place of work, and have not found any concrete information on it. I believe that I was a member in the mid-to-late 1970s, and part of its goal was to advocate for better salaries.

2. I'm not sure of the antecedent here. ALA has some bargaining power. The association has worked hard on legislative issues. Some of what is happening at the FCC about e-rate and net neutrality is influenced by ALA's work. There are some things which ALA has done and supported that I think do not get much notice, the Oprah Book Club is one. ALA helped to get that going, and ALA institutional members received a benefit of receiving multiple copies of each of the Oprah selections. ALA also supports things like National Library Week, and Banned Books Week. The READ posters from ALA Graphics are well received.

3. I have been an ALA member since 1976. For more than the first ten years I did not do much besides get the magazine. (Other than job hunting when I graduated from Library School in '76 -- it was the Centennial Conference in Chicago.) It wasn't until the late 80s or early 90s that I began to be involved on committees. Yes, I will renew.

4. I learn a great deal from my professional activities. I have met some really great librarians over the years. I usually go away from every library meeting with at least one new idea or insight. But there is the other half of the equation that I hope that I have been able to help others. That is part of why I try to attend things like the NMRT (New Members Round Table) Orientation as well as the Council Orientation. While I still learn there, I also have an opportunity to share some of my knowledge with those newer to the event and/or profession.

Josh....thanks for posing the questions.

New Orleans Restaurants

2011-05-25T20:55:00.005-05:00

I have now written several emails about this so I decided to blog it. Folks who know me are coming to town, and looking for places to eat. So, I have decided to cut and past from one of those, the general information which I am sharing.

ALA's Annual Conference will be at the Morial Convention Center which is located in the area generally known as the Warehouse District. The Convention Center is a long building (not very deep) which runs along the river for over a mile.

Let me point you to a web site, and give you some neighborhood names. The web site lists all the restaurants in greater New Orleans which are sit down, and not fast food places. There are over 1100. The web site is done and reviews are written by the food critic for the Times-Picayune, Tom Fitzsimmons.

Here is the web site: http://www.nomenu.com/ For any of the restaurants reviewed, there is a link to Google Maps (you may have to zoom in).

Now for the neighborhoods:

Warehouse District - This is the area nearest the Convention Center. These are all definitely in walking distance from meetings

CBD - This area is a little further away from the river, and is between the Warehouse District and the French Quarter. Some places will not be open for dinner since they cater to the business day crowd.

French Quarter - This is the area most folks think of as "New Orleans." It is bounded by the River, Canal Street, Rampart Street, and Esplanade. Loads of places to eat, many will be pricey.

Marigny and Bywater - These are funky neighborhoods on the other side of the Quarter (downriver) from the Convention Center. It takes about 15 minutes to walk through the Quarter from Canal to Esplanade. There is the riverside streetcar which will take you close.

Lee Circle and the Garden District - these are a little further away (going upriver). If the restaurant is on St. Charles, then you can easily take the streetcar ($1.25 each way, exact change) which runs along St. Charles to Lee Circle, and then to Canal along Carondolet, and back to Lee Circle along St. Charles (one-way streets).

Uptown, Riverbend, Carrollton -- (that is the order you go through them going out from the City towards where I live) are all further away, but very accessible along the St. Charles Streetcar line.

Now, if you want to be really adventurous, you can take the ferry (free) from Canal Street to Algiers. Several times my wife and I have eaten at the Dry Dock Cafe which you can see from the ferry terminal. Oh, be sure to get on the Algiers Ferry not the Gretna Ferry. [There may be restaurants in Gretna, but I *really* don't know that area.]

Since I mentioned the streetcars, here is a link to the RTA site: http://www.norta .com/?page=home

Guest Post -- Paying your dues and collecting acronyms

2011-04-12T21:20:00.001-05:00

I have not met Josh Hanagarne personally. Our contact has all been on the web, and probably pretty one sided, viz., I read his blog pretty regularly. He blogs as The World's Strongest Librarian. He is doing a "guest post marathon" and I invited him to post here.

He raises some interesting questions in his post, to which I will respond in a separate post (later in the week). Here's Josh!

Paying your dues and collecting acronyms

“Hi sir, how are you today?”

“Fine.” I was an hour into my 12-9 shift at work. I made the mistake of answering my phone on a break.

“I am calling to inform you that your ALA membership has expired and would like to offer you the exciting—”

I thanked him, said I wasn’t interested in renewing, said good-bye, waited for him to reciprocate, and hung up. I wondered if I had told him the truth? Was I really not interested? ALA certainly wasn’t on my mind, and I didn’t renew, so I guess that tells you where my priorities were. Out on the desk, where I then commenced a hectic, lengthy, shift.

None of the patrons seemed to know that they were dealing with a newly-minted apostate.

I appreciate ALA. I think. But exciting is really not the word I’m going to apply to what has mainly amounted to the expired membership card that is still in my wallet for some reason.

Can you really need something that you never use or had never heard of?

My early career as an Acronym Gatherer

When I became a circulation assistant about 5 years ago I quickly signed up for every professional organization in existence (I’m rounding up). ALA, ULA, and MPLA.

I did this because mentors told me it was a good idea to have acronyms on a resume. Not because it was valuable, or an opportunity to network, or because of the brotherly/sisterly kinship that I could feel with my libraryland siblings.

I got on the mailing lists. I was soon unsubscribing from everything because my inbox was full enough as it was and I never saw anything very interesting to me in those emails.

It certainly didn’t hurt to join. About 18 months after starting I was offered the job to manage a branch. It took a year as a manager to realize that I’m not a manager and I happily bolted back down the ladder to librarian when the chance arose.

What professional library organizations do

They advocate for library employees, principles, and funding. They offer professional conferences; they promote freedom of access, curiosity, and knowledge. Banned Books Week is a lot of fun at our library and for that alone I hope ALA keeps on truckin’.

These are all wonderful things, although I will admit to being bored out of, although I will admit to being bored out of my skull at the two ALA conferences I have attended (as part of the Emerging Leaders program). But I know plenty of librarians who live for those conferences and “exciting professional development opportunities.”

Local or regional organizations have managed to feel even less relevant to me. I’m mildly glad to know they’re out there, but don’t really know what else to say about it.

I just don’t feel like I have needed any of them to help me do my job better, find new opportunities, or as an advocate for me as a librarian.

I have committed my life to libraries and I work here because I am part of something that matters to me. I don’t feel like my commitment is diluted in any way because I don’t care to pay for a new membership card.

So a couple if questions to start a discussion:

Do libraries suffer when I/you/we don’t pay my/your/our ALA dues?

How much bargaining power do they have?

Are you a member? If so, will you renew?

In your opinion, what is the greatest benefit of joining a professional library organization?

About the author:

Josh Hanagarne is the founder of World’s Strongest Librarian and runs a dandy online book club. This is, to his knowledge, the first time he has ever typed the word dandy.

Links - April 2011

2011-04-12T14:06:00.007-05:00

A great idea from the Librarian in Black: a day against DRM!

Here are some cogent thoughts from one of my favorite library bloggers and library writers, Karen Schneider, they were written in reaction to the presentation at Penn State by Jeff Trzeciak of Macmaster University in Canada.

The digital divide continues. Here is a link to Jessamyn West's presentation at SXSW on a topic on which we share concern. My original concerns originated in my urban roots. How many inner city homes even have land-lines these days. My exposure to the rural situation has been broadened by my Wisconsin and now Louisiana experiences.

Jessamyn also links to a nice article about SXSW.

Links (or not) and the Harper Collins Fiasco

2011-04-12T13:57:00.006-05:00

I have not posted much lately. Life has been busy.

My feed aggregator is full of saved links, mostly to the HarperCollins fiasco. For a while I was going to post them all as links, but then the number of links and comments which I saw got completely out of hand.

Part of my reason for posting links here is to have a place for me to be able to find links which I may want to use/see again. Does it work? Well, for the most part. I know I get traffic, even if the commenting is pretty sparse.

So....I'm going to clean out most of the links in my feed aggregator, and post only the most important ones here.

Eric Hellman does some nifty analysis of book use (which he calls "physics of book use"). I have to admit that my calculus and advanced math is rusty enough to not quite get all the implications...And then there is the response from a statistician which he also posted. (Eric is good at clever naming, not the least of which is the name of his blog!)

Get off my lawn! Those new kids and reading

2011-03-24T19:27:00.002-05:00

Well, maybe the title exaggerates a little bit... I was reading the latest (April 2010) Cites and Insights by Walt Crawford. His "Perspective" piece this time is about reading. ("Writing about reading" is the title.) I admire both Walt's gathering of viewpoints and his analysis. I was moving along just fine, until I got to his discussion about a piece by Barbara Fister and the reading styles of the current college student crowd. Barbara's article is called "Reading: Outmoded or a la Mode?" It is in her column called "Peer to Peer" which appears as part of Library Journal's Academic Newswire. (It took me a moment or two to find it.) It is dated October 28, 2010. Both talk about the "myth" of non-readers and short attention spans among the "next generation." First of all, let me say that while there are probably some generational differences (and certainly frames of cultural references), like Walt, I am not a fan of overly broad generalizations. Barbara notes early on in her article: "You know how kids today don't like to read? Can't focus for more than five seconds? Are so intent on multitasking, visual stimulation, and interactivity that they turn their noses up at books?" She then goes on to later reveal "So my youthful and avid-reader colleague Julie Gilbert and I did something radical: we decided to ask students what they think. ... The student made arrangements to administer it anonymously in dozens of classes spread across the curriculum from first through senior year, collecting responses from a sample that is representative of our student body, and then we crunched the numbers. ... A whopping 93 percent of our students reported that enjoy reading for pleasure. All kinds of reading: books, magazines, newspapers. Reading on the Internet (though that scored lower than reading in print)." One of the most salient points (that I can even see in my personal life) is that it is sometimes hard to find the time to set aside to read. After more discussion and surveys, Barbara found out that "the problem is that students have piles of assigned reading to complete and very active social lives and more often than not a job as well as athletic and music commitments, not to mention that often significant relationships are developing—that's what you do when you are starting adulthood—and they say, with good reason, they simply don't have time." Towards the end she tells an anecdote about a recently retired English professor who now had the time to read for pleasure. That is echoed in Walt's comment "I'm reading more books now than I have in a long time..." I certainly see that in my life. I have maintained a reading log since sometime in the 1980s. (It was recommended by Joyce Sarricks to help with readers' advisory work.) If I look at various times when I read more and when I read fewer books, there are life events related to them. Even now, I listen to more books than I read because I can do that during the 3+ hours each day that I spend commuting. Bottom line...KTD (kids these days), do like to read, and do it when they have the time. Those of you who think otherwise: Get Off My Lawn!

Post #501 - ALA Elections 2011

2011-03-19T12:09:00.003-05:00

Wow....I have done 500 posts since July 2005.

ALA Ballots are out. In past years, some colleagues would ask my advice on voting choices. Here are mine for this year.

First, for ALA President, I am voting for Maureen Sullivan.

For ALA Council this is the year we will elect 34 Councilors. There is one vacancy, so the person who is 35th highest in votes will fill out a 2 year term. I commend:

Diedre (Dee) Conkling
Martin L. Garnar
Charles E. Kratz*
Diane R. Chen*
Linda Mielke
Matthew P. Ciszek
John Carl Sandstrom
Jenny Emanuel
JP Porcaro
J.Douglas (Doug) Archer
Kate Kosturski
Shirley Ann Bruursema
Roberto Carlos Delgadillo
Pamela C. Sieving
Andrew K. Pace
Margaret L. Kirkpatrick
Em Claire Knowles*
John DeSantis
Bobbi L. Newman
Bill Turner
Patricia A. Wand
Eric David Suess
Mike L. Marlin
Barbara K. Stripling*
James K. Teliha
Toni Negro
Ed Garcia

*These folks are all former members of the ALA Executive Board, and bring a great deal of experience to the association.

Others on the list are folks who have served on Council, and whose work and opinions I respect. There are yet others who are newer to the profession, have started working their way up, and deserve the opportunity to participate in the governance of ALA. [This latter group includes: Bobbi L. Newman, Jenny Emanuel, Andrew K. Pace, JP Porcaro, and Kate Kosturski.]

I want to specifically note that Shirley Ann Bruursema is a Trustee, a group under-represented on Council, and she has served well as the ALTA/ALTAFF Division Councilor. I also want to note that Mike L. Marlin is a well-spoken advocate for special users of libraries, especially those with vision issues.

So...those are my recommendations.

Searching v. Discovery (and ALA) [Post #500]

2011-03-19T08:47:00.000-05:00

In looking at my list of posts as I edited this one and a couple others, I noticed that this is post number 500.[Actually there are three older posts in draft form that I need to edit...this weekend, I hope.] I started on July 5, 2005. At that time I never thought I would get this far, and certainly not in 5 1/2 years.

Andromeda Yelton, in her ... blog, talks about these topics. In chronological order, she starts with "The structure of ALA seems to me like a controlled vocabulary." In that post, she admits that she understands the strength and power of controlled vocabulary, but in moving the analogy to ALA she shows some insight:

I see people (including, but not only, Gen Xers) talking about the disconnect between ALA and younger librarians, they’re talking about the divide between a slow vetting process and a system that’s nimble, fast, long-tail-friendly, decentralized — chaotic, uncertain, unpredictable, emergent.

She ends with a great question:

You want to know what I spend a lot of time thinking about these days, it’s this: how do you cultivate the metaphoric parallels of tagging in a controlled-vocabulary world? How do you get there from here?

A day later she talks more about the fallacies of tagging (i.e. discovery) and less about ALA.

And finally, she gives her answers to some of the questions Andy Woodworth raises about ALA.

E-books in libraries

2011-02-25T18:18:00.004-06:00

I have posted on some of my concerns about libraries, e-books, digital rights management (and its associated software), and the fact that libraries are now purchasing "access" or licenses, and not items protected by the copyright law and doctrine of "first sale rights." Some of those concerns were framed by the way some libraries are using Netflix.

Tom Peters did a great historical survey on ALA Techsource in a post called E-Book Lending Clubs. (It is very much an irony that it hit the web just a day or two before the HarperCollins thing blew up!)

Infodocket was first on my radar screen to pick up the latest. [It is a new blog from folks with good blogging/library pedigrees.] Their post (It's Always Something) makes some good points.

Eric Hellman gives a good overview of the e-book industry and some of the issues from the publishing perspective. He ends his post with an interesting observation:

Even if the lending models of today turn out to be transitional, they help everyone involved become comfortable with library ebooks. Once the library ebook experience becomes embedded in our everyday lives, readers, publishers, authors and librarians will be able to recognize the novel digital distribution models that benefit everyone.

Maybe the transition is already beginning. But let's hope that the publishers listen to the backlash and do something for libraries rather than to which is what it seems that they are starting to do.

It seems that this issue has now become a huge concern. Here is the story as reported in Library Journal: HarperCollins Puts 26 Loan Cap on Ebook Circulations. You should read the comments.

Joe Atzberger has a succinct post and summary.

Stephen Abram posted about an article on "The Subscription Economy" where he notes some of the positive aspects and draws the analogy to what libraries are doing with serials (which also worries me, even as I weed the collections here at work). What he does not mention are the negative aspects/problems with the subscription model. What do you do when the organization which sold you the subscription goes bankrupt, or in Internet tradition, just disappears leaving only a "404 Page not found" message?

Some of my concerns are also related to what Lorcan Dempsey talks about as the university's curatorial role. In some ways you can substitute "library" for "university." What is our curatorial role, and how can we fill that role when all we have paid for is a license, and not the property rights? I don't know the answer, but I do know that it is an important question to resolve.

David Lee King is asking for input/ideas on the topic. He summarizes things nicely in Let’s Play Rent-A-Book!

Finally, one of my Louisiana colleagues has posted her thoughts about the HarperCollins plan. (Nice post, Emilie!)

Well, it was finally, except that Sarah Houghton-Jan posted more extensively her thoughts. She is quoted in the LJ article cited above. She issues a call to action. For me the most quotable paragraph is this one:

I cannot over-emphasize that we are in trouble my friends. The lack of legislative leadership and advocacy in the last decade has created a situation where libraries have lost the rights to lending and preserving content that we have had for centuries. We have lost the right to buy a piece of content, lend it to as many people as we want consecutively, and then donate or sell that item when it has outlived its usefulness (if, indeed, that ever happens at all).

Links -- End of February

2011-02-25T17:56:00.000-06:00

OK...first some fun. In New Orleans, food is always a good topic of conversation. Last summer Food TV did The Great Food Truck Race. Around the same time, I started noticing food trucks around Baton Rouge, particularly on North Street, and on Tuesdays, along Spanishtown Road. (I can see the latter from my office window.) I have eaten from a couple, and today, I found a great web site which lists all the BR food trucks along with their most recent tweet, twitter name, and web site (where applicable). Loads of fun, and the food is good, too!

Now on to the more serious stuff!

Iris Jastram is always thoughtful. Her job is so very different than mine that she gives me a valuable insight into the world of an academic reference librarian. (She works at Carleton College in Northfield MN. It is a highly regarded, small liberal arts college.)

Part of her official job includes instruction. Admittedly much of that is to what seems to a public librarian a fairly homogeneous audience. They are usually between 18 - 21 years old, and bound by the topic of the class which they are taking. More recently she blogged about learning goals.

It is an interesting post...there is a lot of content there. However, I'll note that what she talks about is what Boy Scout Leadership Training (both for youth and adults -- note: I have participated as an adult in both courses linked here) as well as my current work place call "learning objectives." When I do a presentation currently, one of the first slides is always. "By the end of this session you will know..."

The ALA Washington Office has a long (for them) post about what is going on in Congress over net neutrality. It is a good place to catch up on the latest.

Casey Bisson's blog often has topics which are so techy that they are way over my head. However, he recently posted about saving space and time while backing up his computer. (Note to self: YOU need to be better about this!)

Maybe this belongs in the post about e-books, but Jessamyn West posted before the current kerfuffle about e-books and libraries. She starts with "This is shaping up to be the year that people really start seeing ebooks and libraries as things that can go together." I hope she is correct.

Finally (for this post), the ever thoughtful Karen Schneider has a nice piece on advice for new librarians and mentoring. It is worth reading, and if you haven't read her other posts on the topic recently, follow her links.

Links - Mid-February

2011-02-16T19:15:00.001-06:00

My Google Reader is getting clogged up with saved posts, so it must be time again.

Andromeda Yelton shows up twice, first with a post on ALA Techsource about the costs of building a digital infrastructure for the National Archives. She questions some of the basic assumptions and costs.

On her own blog, she talks about what she calls "lexicality." This is the ability to express a concept in words. Her evaluation is that it is easy to clearly express and define a concept in "the sciences," but much less easy in other fields. That is what makes it so hard to look for things in catalogs...and even on Google. The bottom line is that in scientific writing, the concepts are terms which will show up in the full text of a work. The same is not necessarily true in fields like philosophy -- or I would argue, even library science.

I picked this up from Jessamyn, but several other including Brian Herzog noted it. (How did his blog slip off my list???) Would you have recognized a USB keylogger? I guess it started in England, I have not seen one.

I am sometimes looking for a library specific image for a flyer. Stephen Abram has noted a location for free images for library use.

Kathy Dempsey has a great post about why it is important to read the articles/posts/reviews/comments that are not favorable to libraries.

Karen Schneider posted about some of the trends that she has observed. They include:

the shift from DVD to streaming video (happening at a faster than expected rate)
wi-fi saturation [you'll have to read her post for this...]
laptops (at least on a college campus they are almost ubiquitous)

She ends by commenting on the need for power and tables. While I don't see that trend (and we are more like a public library than an academic), the February 1 issue of Library Journal did in an article called "The Quiet Plug Crisis."

Success

2011-02-11T19:26:00.004-06:00

Earlier this week, I posted a bunch of links. Included was a link to Karen Schneider's post "In Praise of Succeeding." The very next morning I heard a talk by Katrice Albert, whose topic was on cultural competence and diversity (her specialty).

Included in her presentation was a video of Dewitt Jones, a free lance photographer for the National Geographic , who talked about creativity. Listening to the points he made encouraged me to go back to Karen's post.

In my linking to Karen's post I had said: "Early in the essay she says (and I cleaned up the shorthand a little), 'Another blog post I don’t have time to write: how failure is overrated, and often confused with iterative design.' I like that last part....'confused with iterative design.' That is a great phrase, since I am generally a half full glass person. She draws very heavily from her experience in a MFA writing program. It is a great post."

She notes that the conversations about failure are mostly about our getting comfortable with the fact that we won't always succeed. She notes "But let’s be clear that succeeding is personally and professionally more rewarding than failing." [Oh, how true that is!]

She then goes on to talk about the importance of the iterative design process, and group processes. Karen drew on an experience from her MFA program where one student dropped out because, as she said, "This writer liked the idea of 'succeeding,' ... but was not able to handle what success actually required."

In the Dewitt Jones video he talked about the concept of "multiple right answers." This is most certainly true in his work, and he showed examples of how either changing lenses on his camera, changing his position, or changing what he (literally) focused on, would dramatically change what we, the viewers saw. He talked about positioning ourselves in the "place of most potential."

The handout for the presentation drew on these points and listed "nine concepts of everyday creativity." These belong to Katrice Alpert, and she should be credited with them:

Creativity is the ability to look at the ordinary and see the ... extraordinary.
Every act can be a creative one.
Creativity is a matter of perspective.
There's always more than one right answer.
Reframe problems into opportunities.
Don't be afraid to make mistakes.
Break the pattern.
Train your technique.
You've got to really care.

It is a great list. It can be applied to most library situations. One of the electronic discussion lists I regularly read (and is co-moderated by Karen) is PUBLIB, an electronic discussion list for public librarians. There are (the last I heard) about 7,000 subscribers. The archives are on the web. The topics covered are wide ranging. What often fascinates me is the different ways that librarians solve the problems faced in public libraries. No one solution is always correct.

Karen's post contains some real gems towards the end. (I am glad that I went back and re-re-read it!) One of them is this one: "the failure may not be in the idea, but how it is introduced and managed." She notes that if an organization can only do ten things, the eleventh idea will either supplant one of the prior ten, or will have to wait.

In my life I have dealt with many impatient people. Another gem of a quote from Karen is: "Patience, grasshopper. “Not now” is not the same as “no.” Sometimes a great idea needs to wait its turn..." There is more after that, which you should read.

So, I am grateful to two women whose names start with K who touched me intellectually this week: Karen Schneider and Katrice Albert

Google Reader, Revisited

2011-02-10T18:25:00.001-06:00

A recent post on 3 Great Ways To Read Your Google Reader Feeds [via AL Direct] reminded me that I should revisit the topic of Google Reader.

Four years ago (almost exactly) I wrote about my first experiences with Google Reader. I was not a happy camper. I had some colloquy with colleagues about tips and techniques for using Google Reader. I tried a second time, and was still unhappy. I remained a Bloglines user for a long time. Well, Bloglines essentially went away.

I now use Google Reader, pretty exclusively, to follow the 164 blogs that I care about.

I think Google Reader has changed some. What else has changed is that I now use Gmail for most of my personal email. It has the handy little link which will automatically open Google Reader. That makes it incredibly easy to read the blogs. As a result, I am very caught up, and don't mind (as much) the assumption that you want to read the latest posting first. I have set several up (manually) to post with the oldest first, and - for now - I am content.

I ran across my posts, and realized that I should "fess up" to having been converted, later rather than sooner.

Links: Late January - Early February

2011-02-08T19:13:00.002-06:00

Stephen Abram provided a link and summary of the Pew report on Americans living with disability and their technology profile. And as often as I have thought and talked about the digital divide, my focus was more on the socio-economic factors. I have not thought as much as I should about the digital divide between those of us who are people without significant life disabilities, and people who have some important life disability.

My friend Jessamyn and I have shared many conversations about the other digital divides. Her perspective focuses on the rural issues (like in her home state of Vermont). She talks about some of the issues here. Many of my thoughts are centered around the urban poor who are often equally disadvantaged.

David Lee King did a great series of posts on how to do better presentations.

I know that there are some libraries which have been doing this for years. The Ferguson Library in Stamford CT was doing it about 10 years ago. American Libraries has a post with some simple "how-to" instructions on running a passport acceptance facility (it can be a revenue stream!).

I always worry when Library 2.0 is brought up and the topic turns to 'discovery.' What exactly is meant by that. I probably should spend some time thinking about it, but Lorcan Dempsey talks about a recent report out of the University of Minnesota on discovery in the library. It is well worth reading. (And by putting it here, I won't lose it.)

Eric Hellman has thought a lot about a "national digital library." He has written a post with a proposal on how such a library could be funded, in the US at least, through tax deductions. It is very thoughtful.

Leo Lo (a recent find for me) has started a series on screenwriting for a librarians by starting with a promotional video. I expect that this will be a very useful series.

Finally, my friend Karen Schneider has written about success. She was reacting to a question about stories of failure. Early in the essay she says (and I cleaned up the shorthand a little), "Another blog post I don’t have time to write: how failure is overrated, and often confused with iterative design." I like that last part...."confused with iterative design." That is a great phrase, since I am generally a half full glass person. She draws very heavily from her experience in a MFA writing program. It is a great post.

IKEA lies - IKEA service sucks

2011-02-08T18:08:00.000-06:00

It is strong language...but it is my truth.

I previously believed it wrong. but today it was proved true.

Story to prove the truth:

We have owned a lamp for several years. (It is not an expensive lamp.)

The lamp broke at the base. It is a fundamental design flaw because it is the single week point since it is the single piece which joins the base to the pole for the lamp. The lamp you don't want to buy is the NOT.

Mine snapped off right where the base goes to the upright pole.

Clearly a weak point.

I tried to get a replacement part from the local hardware store, but since two sides are machined, it is not available from anyone but IKEA.

So, I called the national number.

They said to visit "my local store." Yeah, right. The light was purchased in Minnesota, the "nearest" store is in Houston which is almost 500 miles away.

Previously, with another piece of furniture, the customer service folks had been wonderfully accommodating. This time? Not so much. After a series of emails, here is the response I received:

Unfortunately, IKEA simply does not have the availability of an
option to purchase separate components for our NOT lamps, either in
store or online.

We appreciate your inquiry and apologize for the inconvenience, but
the only possible way a replacement component might be obtained would
be at an IKEA store that happened to have availability in its
recovery department.

Which means (to me) that, if you cannot come to our store, you are SOL (Simply Out of Luck).

Well, that is so not 21st Century. It is so not Internet friendly, and most importantly, it is not green. IKEA says on its web site:

The Never Ending list consists of all the improvements we have made for people and the environment. Here’s where we are so far.

[A long list ... not really environmental. ]

And you know what? They lie!!

I have in my car trunk, a light base, and the pole, but NO way to connect them, and I have to toss them because the manufacturer WILL NOT provide the parts. I have to toss these otherwise useful parts because of the lack of a $2 piece of shaped metal.

So, I say: IKEA lies. IKEA sucks!!!!!

Libraries and Branding

2011-02-07T18:12:00.001-06:00

This is a consciously short post.

I am reading the February 2011 issue of Cites and Insights by Walt Crawford. If you don't read it regularly you should. Walt is a good writer and has a good grasp of many of the issues facing libraries, especially related to technology.

On page 15, as part of a discussion about "Libraries: Not About Books," he expresses a very important concept which I am going to slightly paraphrase:

Libraries need to build their brand from books not by running away from them.

That is a very, very powerful statement.

Library Day in the Life - Round 6 - Part 2

2011-01-29T07:15:00.000-06:00

For the rest of the week, here is a short daily re-cap:

Tuesday: I was worried that the rain would affect my commute, but it did not. Good news for me is that the temp is still in the mid 50s (above zero). Watched "the regulars" come in this morning. It is interesting how each library has its own group. Here some of them are homeless, and use the library as a place to hang out. They also often know each other. I have gotten many of them to greet me with a hello each day. (I try to be welcoming.) There are periodic changes in the group as someone gets a job, or moves away, but this is a pretty well behaved group.

One of my tasks each morning is to open the seminar center if a group is using it. Yesterday and today it has been a training session for math instructors and is being done by staff of the Department of Education. This morning one of them asked me about our services, so I had the opportunity to promote the library.

I also have now become the "go-to person" for stats, and get to play with the state's system of gathering statistics from our agency. And, today, I was asked to help with the library's Facebook presence. Moving forward!! Had a very productive afternoon meeting with the folks who run the other public service departments. We resolved several issues.

Wednesday: Had to get gas to start the morning trip...But today was sunny. It was 10 degrees (F) colder today when I left than yesterday, and, as usual, got colder as I drove from the city into the more rural areas (i.e. swamp). One staff member is out today, so more desk time than usual. Yesterday it was nice to have a full staff. Quiet at the Reference Desk this morning. I forget what it is, but Wednesday morning there is some event which has our "regulars" arriving late, like 8:30 - 8:45. It was quiet enough that I took the first steps to set up the Facebook page for the Library.

Thursday: Both the wife and I got up very early (middle of the night) so we did a first run at the taxes. Getting a refund! Woot! However, that could be the down payment for her to purchase the car she has been leasing for the past three years....I left earlier than usual, and had an uneventful drive, but the sunrise (in the rear view mirror) was spectacular. There were just enough clouds in the East to make the colors glorious as I drove across the swamps. Down one staff member today (as opposed to a suddenly down 2 yesterday) means less desk time than yesterday, but more than a normal day.

Got a lot done at work, in spite of spending a lot of time on the desk. Spent about 45 minutes, off and on, with an electrician who had been to a job center. They took his resume and reformatted it to post it to the job folks web site. However, this guy, an admitted "three finger typist" did not like how it looked. We went through, cutting it, pasting it, re-formatting it, saving it to Google Docs, and for insurance, emailing it to himself. It reminds me of how much I really do know!

On the drive home I was reminded again about the beauty around me. First of all, there were enough Eastern clouds, that the setting sunlight was reflected nicely in it. Right by where the Interstate leaves the swamp/lake and enters the metro area are two sights that always amaze me. I noticed the firs early in my first spring. There is a large, tall tree which has a cluster of sticks in a crook near the top. One day, I saw a bird there....I looked closely, and it was an American Bald Eagle. I have seen both male and female birds, and even the heads of the young, over the time I have been doing the commute. It is on the south side of I-10, right by the I-310 cut-off. On the other side, there is an area of "bushes" (maybe they are mangroves?). In the morning, and sometimes in the evening, it looks like white plastic shopping bags have been caught on the branches by the water. But that is not what they are....they are roosting egrets. I see egrets all over the place. They are water birds, and a bunch of my drive is along water. I have also seen them in Audubon Park here in the city. A final note is that I can tell when it is "wet" or "dry" based on the level of Lake Pontchartrain along "the Spillway." Lately it seems like the levels are dropping. We are in winter, and I guess that is OK. All the snow up north will melt, and run down, eventually into the Mississippi River, the Spillway is an outlet to keep New Orleans from flooding by diverting water into the lake. We'll see!

Friday: It is payday. Yay! It is also another gas fill-up. But, gas prices are down to $2.81! Got to work and got the last info I needed for my first time entering the departmental data into the state-wide data collection platform. It was an interesting experience, and not as difficult as I feared. Of course some of that is that folks in the other library departments are good about entering their data monthly into an Excel spreadsheet which is the basis for the organization wide data. It was a relatively quiet morning on the Reference Desk with the usual questions about tax forms....and I asked for more state forms from the folks up in the Louisiana Section (who collect all state publications, and therefore deal with the tax forms for us). I will be glad when the instruction booklets come in!

The mail brought professional journals, ads for publications, and letters from the prison. One of our jobs is to respond to requests for information from prisoners. This spring, I started an internal wiki to keep track of both the types of questions and the prison from which we were getting them. One of these days (maybe around the first anniversary, or at the new fiscal year), I'll have to sit down and analyze them.

Bonus: When I was growing up, and when my kids were growing up, we often played variations on the "license plate game" while on long trips. There are many visitors to Louisiana. Here is a list of state license places seen on the highway this week (other than Louisiana), in rough order of appearance: New Jersey, Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Oregon, Ohio, South Carolina, Wyoming, Colorado, New York, Missouri, Washington, North Carolina, Illinois, Maryland, Arizona, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Iowa, Nebraska. That's 28 out of the 50 states. I did not see any Canadian or Mexican license plates -- this week.

Blog Bonus: I read 162 different blogs in Google Reader. But I want to give a shout out to one of my favorite Monday - Thursday cartoons. It was created by half of the creative genius team behind Unshelved, and revolves around computer programing. The title says a lot Not Invented Here.

Library Day in the Life - Round 6 - Part 1

2011-01-24T19:36:00.000-06:00

I have never formally participated in this project before, but in looking through my blog archives I found this posting from August 2005 about what administrators do, and this one from September which is a very brief snapshot of that interesting day. I did participate in the Library Routes project and posted my route here.

While I live in New Orleans (NOLA), I work in Baton Rouge at the State Library of Louisiana. My drive from NOLA to Baton Rouge is about 80 miles (each way), and as a result I put a lot of miles on my car. I passed a milestone earlier this month.

I serve as a "Library Consultant" as part of Library Development, and as the Head of Reference.

Here is how today went:

Went to bed last night feeling "off." I think that my headache (which woke me up at 2 am) was more about dehydration than about anything else. I got up at about 4:50 (am) well before the time my alarm was set for (5:15). I went through my usual routine which includes looking at my checking account online, reading personal email, the usual morning ablutions, making breakfast (a slice of toast from homemade sourdough bread) for me and Miss R, and making sandwiches (lunch) for the two of us. Miss R actually was up for a few minutes for a nice morning good bye. I am sure she went back to sleep! I was out the door by 6:15. Because I had planned ahead, I did not have to stop for gas this morning -- I got it last night when I ran the holiday decorations back to the storage locker. Because I drive 160 miles each work day, I get gas every other day. I am getting about 27-28 miles per gallon, but with prices going up again, it costs me about $17.00 per day for gas alone. I haven't done the metric conversions, but I noted today that Shell is at $2.95/gallon and Exxon is $2.87. I get gas at the gas station in between them which is $2.83. Now, that is lower than elsewhere in the country. But, I'll note that I see about a half-dozen refineries on my travels every work day, so it is pumped out of the ground here, and made into gasoline here, also.

The drive was almost uneventful. My route takes me on the Interstate (I-10) past the airport. I was thinking this morning about my first post-Katrina trip. Driving from the airport, the access road dumps cars going towards New Orleans on to the highway. I was there for the American Library Association Conference in June 2006, and was one of the Board which had to decide whether we would hold the conference there. That trip, I remember seeing some less devastation than I had expected, but there were many businesses which were clearly not in operation, and many of the homes had roofs covered in blue tarps. I think the latter is probably the clearest memory of that whole stay. This summer, ALA returns. It will be interesting to actually live in the host city for a big conference which I am planning to attend.

When I leave New Orleans each morning, it is before sunrise (at this time of year), the traffic in my direction is pretty light. However, by the time I get to Baton Rouge, not only has the sun risen, but I am in the midst of the daily heavy traffic flow through the city towards the university and downtown. Today was no exception. Traffic was stop and go from Essen Lane onwards. Why? Well someone had a bad day...after Acadian Thruway, there was an accident where a smaller car had rear-ended a pick-up truck. After that point traffic cleared, and I was at work, on time, for my 7:45 opening of the desk to be ready for the public at 8 am.

It has been a relatively quiet day for me. Not much activity at the desk. After my first shift at the first floor desk, I took a walk around the green space being created across the street from the library. Every day, at least once, I try to get outside the building and walk around. First of all it gets me away from work. Second, it gets me to do some (very moderate) exercise. Third, I get to breathe some fresh air, and fourth, during some of the year, it lets me warm up.

While eating lunch, I listened to the archived version of a web cast by Toby Greenwalt called "Designing Customized Library Services: Book-a-Librarian and BookMatch." It was a good session, and since I have been asked to develop a "book a librarian" kind of service for my library, I will probably go back to it again.

I then returned for a second, short stint at the first floor desk. Although, we recently integrated our books on MP3 into our spoke word audio collection (along with the comedy "albums/collections"). A patron came up and asked about them, and I said that they were integrated. He looked disappointed, and I called the head of technical services to see if we could search for them in the catalog. The format information is there, just not search-able, yet. She quickly sent me spreadsheet listing them (which made the patron very happy), now we are working out how we can add that as a search in the catalog.

The rest of the afternoon was on the third floor (where the circulation collection 000-899 are located. (900s and biographies -- for now -- are on the fourth floor.) Here I was able to spend some time catching up on professional weeding, talking with the stacks manager about some shifting and weeding projects, and working on the files I need to send so that we can begin data collection for the federal report.

It was raining by the end of the day. That meant that traffic started off very slow, however after a few miles it picked up, and was pretty steady all the way into New Orleans. That's where it got bad. Just before the I-10/610 split, there was a spin out into the median wall. That slowed folks down. Then, as I continued on I-10, just before my exit, another spin out into the median (thank goodness I was getting off the highway!). The rest of the trip was uneventful. About an hour and 45 minutes home, home just after 6 pm.

On my way in, I finished listening to My life as a fake by Peter Carey, read by Susan Lyons, and then I started Stonehenge: [a novel of 2000 BC] by Bernard Cornwell, read by Sean Barrett.

So, this is supposed to be A Day in the Life but runs for a week. This has been my day...on Friday, I'll post any highlights between now and then.

For now, the rain is pouring down, and I hope that does not affect tomorrow's commute. As you can tell, commuting is a big part of my life!

E-Books and librararies (several takes)

2011-01-20T21:45:00.000-06:00

I decided to put this separately from my usual link articles. There are a number of articles/posts which recently hit my desk about e-books, Kindles, and libraries.

First one I saw was Stephen Abram's on Kindles and libraries. He cites a post from the Kindle Review, a blog about Kindles. Here is what that blog says is the answer: "The quick answer would be – No, not really. Not unless Amazon loses its head. Not unless another company starts beating it on the basis of library book support. Not unless there’s a gun put to its head." He notes that it is simply not in Amazon's business plan. Stephen then goes on to suggest that libraries need to not purchase Kindles and encourage patrons to purchase one of the other devices out there. [As a side note, today I had a phone call from a library user who wanted to know how to download library books on her Kindle. I was gentle, told her this story, and sent her on to her local parish library's web site for info on the kinds of e-books she could easily borrow.]

AL Online picked up on Meredith Farkas' and her post about e-books and libraries and her concerns. Meredith notes that she was surprised at how much she liked the Kindle (after using NetBooks and ebrary). It is the lack of a back-lit screen. [I am reading that as more of an endorsement for the technology than for the DRM which comes with the device.] Below are two important points she makes:

And the options that libraries now have for ebooks (in terms of content, interface, interoperability, etc.) are, by and large, piss-poor. ... But the negatives, the uncertainties of where the ebook market is headed, and the current restrictions most ebook vendors have placed on their products often outweigh the benefits.

Here are the bullet points for the other issues she raises in this fairly long piece:

There are differences between eBooks for individuals and eBooks for libraries to lend
What about ILL?
Too many platforms, too little interoperability
And how do you browse a shelf of eBooks?
DRM and crazy rules for “lending”
What do we own and what does that mean?
Patron driven acquisitions is not a magic bullet

Read the whole thing. It is worth it.

There were two "Christmas present" posts. Sarah Houghton-Jan talks about her love for her Kindle (with reservations) as does Chad Haefele and his new-found love for his Kindle, since he got one for Christmas.

Sarah clearly states that she loves the Kindle as a consumer, but detests it as a librarian. You can also watch her unpack her Kindle. Chad talks more about why he likes it, and defers to Sarah on some points.

Finally, Eric Hellman reviews some of the issues related to book and e-book identification. He attended a recent book industry presentation which shared a study of the use, issues and practice surrounding assignment of ISBNs in the US book industry. He noted that while there is a theoretical policy for assigning numbers to e-books,

Implementation of that policy is all over the map, with little coherence between one company and another in ISBN assignment practice. What's more, he found that the industry is almost unable to communicate with itself due the wide variations in the practical definitions of terms such as "format," "product," "version[,]" and "work."

Eric gives an excellent example of this in the way Barnes & Noble assigned numbers including to some "enhanced" e-books which originally only they were selling. There is much more, and Eric lays out some of the issues for libraries in very clear language. It is an aspect of e-books which I had not previously considered.

What is Community?

2011-01-20T19:23:00.002-06:00

One of the blogs I follow is written by a current library school student at Simmons. It is called Opinions of a Wolf. A majority of the posts are reviews of books, movies, and television shows. Fridays is usually a personal update, and there is enough there to keep me reading.

A recent post was subtitled Thoughts on Community and Environment. It made me think about the meaning of community, what exactly a community is, and where we build our own communities.

"Wolfie" started her discussion by noting that one of her friends "is currently on a kibbutz in Israel, and she emailed me asking me what I think makes a community."

If you go to the dictionary, you get a definition like this:

a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.
a locality inhabited by such a group.
a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists (usually prec. by the ): the business community; the community of scholars.
a group of associated nations sharing common interests or a common heritage: the community of Western Europe.
Ecclesiastical . a group of men or women leading a common life according to a rule.
Ecology . an assemblage of interacting populations occupying a given area.
joint possession, enjoyment, liability, etc.: community of property.
similar character; agreement; identity: community of interests. the community, the public; society: the needs of the community.*

Notice that the first six definitions all refer to a similar geographic location. Even the seventh definition has some relationship to close geographic proximity. I could even argue that the eighth includes a great deal about physical proximity.

I think that maybe because I did not attend the ALA Midwinter Meeting, that I have subconsciously thought more and more about some of my "chosen" communities. It may also be reflective of my holiday season gatherings. Let's go in reverse order.

My family continues to have an annual gathering of the eight of us siblings, with our spouses/others and as many of our offspring and their spouses/others as can make it. It is the one time each year when we all gather together. Given that there are eight of us siblings, and a growing number of the offspring who are married/have significant others, the size of the gathering can be overwhelming for a newcomer. (I certainly noticed this the last two years.) Are we a community? I like to think so. Physically we are stretched mostly on the East Coast from Northern Virginia to Southern Maine, with me as the outlier in New Orleans. Yet we frequently communicate with each other, and certainly keep in touch. Various groupings come together throughout the year for holidays and other events. (This year there were two weddings.) It is a special kind of community, possible most likely because of the size of our family. I guess it raises the question: Is family a community? I vote yes.

We, my wife and I, left the family gathering to spend a week in Jamaica at a resort where we knew there would be a number of friends. Each year many of us spend some time at this resort, and there are a lot of "repeaters." It makes for a kind of community for the week, with the folks who participate coming literally from all across North America (and beyond). I'll note here that social software has certainly made keeping in touch in between times very, very easy.

ALA Midwinter followed. I was able to follow what was happening (as much as I chose to) via postings to blogs, photo-sharing sites, and Twitter. Those folks are a different community. There are some who I normally only see twice a year, and not all of us attend each of the ALA gatherings. For me there are sometimes overlapping groups: from PUBLIB, current and former ALA Council and Board members, public librarians, colleagues from former workplaces and current and former states. Some folks are in more than one group. Every time I make new friends, and build my "virtual" community to be somewhat larger.

Wolfie talks about community as a group which "support[s] each other unconditionally." While she also talks about love, I am not sure I agree totally. There are some in my communities who are folks that I respect. I respect their personal values and intellect, but some are folks who challenge me to think more clearly, to reconsider positions, in general to be better. (And for my money, that is part of what "love" is about, too.)

So, I missed seeing some of my "communities" in January. The good news, is that they will be coming to see me in June at the ALA Annual Conference.

*Source: dictionary.com

LITA 3

2011-01-20T18:10:00.001-06:00

Back on January 11, I posted my first comments about the flap over web-casting the LITA Board meeting. That included links to a couple other posts.

A week later, I posted mostly in support of the eloquent thoughts of my friend Karen Schneider.

I've had a number of other communications since then, on Twitter (some private messages), and via "good old-fashioned" email.

Yesterday, the LITA Blog had an official response to what happened. (I counted six [6] tweets which refer to that response. More may have happened I only searched "LITA Board.")

I found the LITA board letter interesting, and the charge to the committee (oops, task force) which includes "monetizing" events very interesting. My personal take (as a non-LITA member) is that if you want to monetize events, the events to try that with are programs -- not Board meetings. It will be rare to find someone willing to *PAY* for a stream of a Board meeting. For a program, many people may pay a modest fee. If the cost to produce, send, and collect the money is low enough, it could be a source of revenue for the organization. I am guessing that there would be lots of youth services folks who would pay a small fee to watch the Monday morning book awards ceremony at Midwinter every year. The key question (and I served on the ALA EB, including on Finance and Audit, and have been on divisional Finance Committees) is whether the cost to recover the cost of collecting is enough. (There *is* a cost to collect registration fees.)

Somehow or other, I had missed this very good post from Bohyun Kim which raises some of the very same issues that I mention above about the likelihood of programs being a better revenue generator.

I am going to go back to several things that Karen Schneider points out more eloquently than I could:

the Open Meeting policy has obviously been OBT (Overcome By Technology);
it is happening any way [links at the bottom of Meredith Farkas' post];
OBT lawbreaking appears to be key to fiduciary health;
allowing for the impact of a very bad economy, the “streamers” are doing better overall than the “meetwares;”
however counterintuitive to the people who count nickels, the more you open your proceedings, the healthier your organization;
as as rule, ALA committees tend to get focused on the idea that something needs to be made available to the entire association, BY the association, in a uniform manner.

As ALA Policy/Governance wonk, let me say that it is the last item which has me most worried. It is what keeps ALA moving so glacially at times. Let's move on!

Links - January

2011-01-19T19:56:00.000-06:00

Walt Crawford asks about data on libraries (as institutions) using social networking.

The inimitable Jessamyn West calls one of her posts Blogging Alone – Social Isolation and New Technology from Pew. It is thoughtful and related to the question above (at least a little). She has also posted about a term new to me (but which makes sense): search neutrality.

Aaron Tay wonders about the effect on libraries of Delicious closing down (or not). [Note to self: Get work-related issue back on the discussion table.]

There is a thoughtful piece in American Libraries Online about outsourcing, from a consultant who helps libraries get through the process of becoming efficient without outsourcing.

I don't usually get to teach in a formal setting, but there are occasions in my new job where I will. I pay attention to what Iris Jastram says about what she figures out about teaching and learning. As an academic setting, her teaching takes place in a very different setting. She is teaching part of a structured, formal, semester-long course. When I teach it is a 90-minute web course, or maybe a half or full day, skills-based focused course. I found a great deal to glean from her post on specialization.

Iris also wrote a paen to the "reference interview" which took the conceptual issue further and applies its principles to broader issues in her work community.

I have not read much about the "generational divide" recently, however, Librarian Kate gave her reaction to an article on KPBS which came out of the recent ALA Midwinter meeting in San Diego. (Original post here.) As a boomer living with a NextGen librarian, I am not sure I agree about any of the generalizations, but the view is important.

And on a totally unrelated topic Fonts. Salon recently had an article on fonts. Wired also had an article on fonts. Both are drawn from the original Princeton study (which....attention Dorothea Salo seems to be OA article!.)

LITA Kerfluffle

2011-01-18T18:46:00.000-06:00

I love Karen Schneider. We first met electronically in the early days of PUBLIB. We then actually met in person at a conference, and worked together for a while on ALA Council. I have been reading her blog, Free Range Librarian, for as long as I have been reading blogs. She (along with Rochelle Hartman and Jessamyn West) was part of my inspiration to blog.

Karen has been involved in LITA and tech stuff for a while. She recently posted about ALA's Open Meeting Policy and the whole LITA Kerfluffle (thanks Karen Coombs for that term).

Karen S. was actually at the meeting in question. I was not. I was half-heartedly watching the tweets, and doing other things.

Now, I am a little bit of an ALA Policy Wonk. OK, I admit it. In the past {mumble} years I have not gone to an ALA meeting with out the Handbook in hand, and once pulled it out at lunch in a restaurant.

Post-ALA, I have poked and nudged a few of my friends in higher places about the implications of this very unfortunate scenario.

Karen gets it right, and is a very much better writer than I am. (After all, she does have an MFA in writing...) Here are a couple of quotes which eloquently sum up my take on the issue:

"...the Open Meeting policy has obviously been OBT (Overcome By Technology)." Actually, Karen was lobbying for webcasting the transcription of ALA Council meetings years ago.

"...the more you open your proceedings, the healthier your organization." This is part of why open meeting laws exist for governmental bodies as well.

This quote will not get immediate comment from me, but is strongly emphasized in her post:

ALA as a body needs to immediately point its wonkiest law-making committees at the “open meeting” question, and the response — which needs to happen no later than Annual 2011 — needs to be both informed by ALA values (such as our historical commitment to intellectual freedom) and by our urgent need to stop losing money.

I am all for that, and have done a little poking myself. "One warning to all is that as as rule, ALA committees tend to get focused on the idea that something needs to be made available to the entire association, BY the association, in a uniform manner. I’m all for authority control, but we need to let flowers bloom when they’re ready, and ease up on the argument that “we can’t afford it” because ALA, as an association, can’t personally put a camera in every meeting room. "

Thanks Karen for your (usual) eloquence.

The Car

2011-01-15T06:24:00.001-06:00

In the history of my writing, and also earlier in this blog, I often talked about my vehicle. I have not done so very much recently. Even though I drive 80 miles each way, every day to work, my car has been very reliable. It is a Volkswagen Jetta which I purchased almost three years ago in Wisconsin.

Well, yesterday on my way home from work, I passed a milestone: the car turned 100,000 miles. It is definitely the shortest time it has taken me to reach that milestone. The photo above shows the dashboard -- note that I pulled over to take the photo.

Below is the view out the windshield where this momentous milestone was reached...a couple miles west of the I-10 exit for US-61 (Airline Highway). It is the middle of nowhere! If you look on a map, that is very clear.

Here's to many more driving miles in my car!

First of the Year links

2011-01-14T18:07:00.000-06:00

I have been back at work for more than a week, and finally feel like I am getting caught up. Here are some of the things I found of interest since I returned:

First, from one of my new favorite, thoughtful bloggers (along with Walt Crawford, Meredith Farkas, Stephen Abram, and a number of others...) Eric Hellman. To close out the year, he talked about "catastrophic future of libraries" and concluded with the forceful statement:

In 2011, let's build things that change the system dynamics.

He also posted about Bridging the eBook-Library System Divide. His post talks about some of the issues facing libraries with providing ebooks, and still keeping their "brand" alive.

I guess that Meredith and I must have been thinking along the same lines, since the day after I posted about the LITA flap, she added thoughtful comments including reflections on her experience with the ACRL Virtual Conference committee.

Iris Jastram has been posting somewhat less frequently than she once did, however, when she "talks," I always sit up and pay attention. One of her more recent posts was about searching, databases, and how we (or for her, undergraduates) look for information. One of the key quotes: "Search is all about term matching, and terms are often the hardest thing for undergraduates to harness." Two other key quotes/thoughts:

Google Scholar is very forgiving of bad searching. It will nearly always give you something, even if you enter “impact of cell phones on globalization” into the search box.
Disciplinary databases are not nearly as forgiving of bad searching, so they may be pretty intimidating places to start. Where they excel, however, is in foregrounding those elusive, mysterious, and powerful terms that students need so badly if they’re going to revise their searches and gather more disciplinarily relevant material.

This was driven home to me today when a patron came to the desk to ask for "books for women over 50." How do you find that? They are most often classified with the other books on a more specific topic. What did I do? Well, it is not perfect, but I started by doing a "Power" search with the keyword "women" and the phrase in keyword as "over 50." Now, Library of Congress Subject Headings have some issues, and Sandy Berman was often a vocal critic, but I was able to identify that there is an LC subject heading "Middle aged women -- United States -- Life skills guides." Now, I am not a fan of the heading, but it certainly helped me to identify some items to meet that patron's needs. And, it is all about searching, and finding the right terms.

And then there was the whole Bloglines/Delicious debacle towards the end of last year. Stephen Abram, like me, now reads his RSS feeds in Google Reader. Almost three years ago (in 2007), I tried it, and didn't like it. I even went back, after some conversation, and tried it again. Well, I admit that I did not try to move to the new Bloglines platform, and based on Stephen's experience, I am glad that I didn't. Delicious was dead, then it wasn't. I appreciate Stephen's comments on it and the alternatives.

And a final post from Stephen on change within an organization which refers to a FastCompany post and new book: Ten Questions Every Game Changer Must Answer.

David Lee King is doing a series of posts about how to use current technology to do presentations. It is called: "10 Tips to Do Presentations Like Me." He does not use PowerPoint, but certainly everything he says can be done in PowerPoint. Tip #2 is one that I use for my web presentations, presenter notes. I recommend the whole series (which is not finished yet!).

ALA has a library. It serves as the resource for ALA staff and volunteer leaders, but it often gets questions from outside that sphere. American Libraries has a feed which often includes questions that the Library receives, a recent one was about recommended web sites for libraries.

One of the non-library blogs I follow is called Principled Innovation. Jeff De Cagna posts on ideas to help organizations/associations to deal with change. This is a recent post which is the first of a series and a response to a white paper for the Wisconsin Society for Association Executives.

Now, in my various travels recently I have neither had the full body scan nor pat down. But I have to admit liking these items:

In November, George Stroumboulopoulos blogged about 4th Ammendment Underwear;
Here is a link to the official sale site; and
Finally a t-shirt that says "I got to Second Base with a TSA Screener."

ALA Executive Board member Courtney Young wrote a great post on running for ALA Council. You most likely have until the end of the month to get your petition with 25 signatures in to appear on the ballot this spring.

And in a final moment of randomness, the State of Connecticut has cut all funding for tourism promotion. As a result, they dropped the state's membership in Discover New England. So the new map simply omits Connecticut from the map.....read it here.

New Technology, Open meetings? Not at LITA

2011-01-11T06:14:00.000-06:00

I have seen some of this on Twitter, and on a blog, but I am very concerned about something that happened at ALA Midwinter.

Here is the tweet which caught my attention:

griffey I was requested, a motion was made, and the LITA Board of Directors voted to have me cease streaming and recording the Board Meeting.... 11:59 AM Jan 8th via HootSuite

Michelle Boule (Smith) posted about it on her blog, and I encourage you to read it and the comments. (14 comments at this writing, including one of mine.)

For those who are not familiar with ALA and its structure, LITA (Library & Information Technology Association) is a division of ALA. (Here is a brief discussion of ALA's divisions from my ALA 101 series.) For the business inclined, divisions are "wholly-owned subsidiaries" of ALA. Therefore all of ALA's policies apply to the divisions and their meetings.

The ALA Policies (7.4.4 for the governance geeks) require that all meetings of ALA and its units be open to members and the press. It is very simple, and very simply stated.

What happened? Well, Jason Giffey, on his own initiative and with his own equipment, started to stream and web-cast the LITA Board Meeting. Now, except when discussing "matters affecting the privacy of individuals or institutions" this meeting should have been open. If he had not been a Board member, and had just wandered into the meeting, he would have every right to record and stream the meeting. I would use as analogy of what would happen if a news report, or even citizen, walked into a City Council meeting. (It is the example which first occurred to me probably because of my extensive public sector experience.) It is a public meeting and the public has the right to know.

Jason backed down when the LITA Board got upset. A part of me respects his doing that since he is a Board member and needs to continue to work with the Board. However, another part of me is very sad that LITA took this stand.

LITA is supposed to include librarians on the cutting edge of technology. "Big ALA" has been wrestling with opening up governance and ALA Council meetings. Here was a chance for LITA to take the lead and show how it can be done, and done effectively, and at very little cost. They blew it.

Karen A. Coombs commented in a similar vein on the broader topic of the relationship between virtual and physical participants.

I heard the argument stated that the reason for shutting down the web-cast was that a consultant was presenting a report which was copyrighted. I say: BALDERDASH! If LITA hired a consultant to write a report, and based on what I know about standard ALA contracts, any copyright remains the property of the division -- as far as the consultant is concerned it is a "work for hire."

If Norman Horrocks were around, he is the one I would turn to first. I am going to urge my colleagues on the ALA Executive Board to look into this. I consider it an egregious violation of the ALA Open Meetings Policy.

Read and Listened to: July - December 2010

2011-01-11T05:46:00.001-06:00

You will note a continuing pattern (if you look at my prior lists), more listened to, and fewer read. Somehow my time for reading is being gobbled up by other activities, while my commute continues to let me listen to many titles.

So, without further ado, here is the list as cut and pasted from the sidebar:

Books read:

The spirit catches you and you fall down: a Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures by Anne Fadiman
The Soul of a Chef: The Journey Toward Perfection by Michael Ruhlman
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar
Save the Last Bullet for Yourself: A Soldier of Fortune in the Balkans and Somalia by Rob Krott [A review here]
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner [Did not finish]
Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession by Julie Powell
The year before the flood : a story of New Orleans by Ned Sublette
Folly by Marthe Jocelyn a review copy

Books listened to:

A venetian affair by Andrea di Robilant, read by Paul Hecht with Lisette Lecat and Jeff Woodman
White coolies by Betty Jeffrey, read by Beverley Dunn
Benjamin Franklin: an American life by Walter Isaacson, read by by Nelson Runger
Sima's undergarments for women by Ilana Stanger-Ross, read by Vanessa Hart
Call me Ted [sound recording] by Ted Turner with Bill Burke, read by Ted Turner with Ted stories read by Nick Sullivan ... [et al.]; featuring a conversation between Wolf Blitzer and Ted Turner
The inimitable Jeeves. Vol. 1 by P.G. Wodehouse, read by Martin Jarvis
Full circle by Michael Palin, read by the author
The witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare, read by Mary Beth Hurt
The daughter of time by Josephine Tey, read Derek Jacobi
A wrinkle in time by Madeleine L'Engle, read by the author
A confederacy of dunces by John Kennedy Toole, read by Barrett Whitener
One dangerous lady by Jane Stanton Hitchcock, read by Barbara Rosenblat
The devil's advocates: [greatest closing arguments in criminal law] by Michael S. Lief and H. Mitchell Caldwell, read by full cast
Things I overheard while talking to myself by Alan Alda, read by the author
Cataloochee by Wayne Caldwell, read by Scott Sowers
Peak by Roland Smith, read by Ramon de Ocampo
"Hello", lied the agent: and other bullshit you hear as a Hollywood TV writer by Ian Gurvitz, read by the author
Rocket men: the epic story of the first men on the moon by Craig Nelson, read by Richard McGonagle
Secret confessions of the Applewood PTA by Ellen Meister, read by Lisa Kudrow
Stone cold by Robert B. Parker, read by Robert Forster
Mates, dates and portobello princesses by Cathy Hopkins, read by Melissa Eccleston
Committed: a skeptic makes peace with marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert, read by the author

End of the year links

2010-12-22T21:26:00.001-06:00

It is the end of the calendar year, and I have personal plans to travel during the end of the year holidays. I will not be around, and for at least a week, will not even be checking my email or any other electronic device. Right about now, completely unplugged is sounding good!

So....here is a last batch of links that I found of interest:

First, tax forms...and the federal forms have not arrived here yet, I am wondering if the IRS held back printing some because of the possibility of changes (or no changes) to federal tax law. I find the ordering system initially simple, but more complex as time goes on. Brian Herzog (Swiss Army Librarian) made some comments under the clever title/quote: You May See an Increase in Patrons. Let me note here, the irony was not lost on me that the IRS announced that they were not sending forms only after the TFOP (Tax Forms Ordering Program) deadline for libraries (and others) to order forms for this next year. I expect to make numerous supplemental orders!

What every Library School Student should know

2010-12-22T18:52:00.000-06:00

Back in November, a series of posts caught my eye...it was about what Library School students need to know.

Jill Hurst-Wahl's post is from the viewpoint of a faculty member. In addition to being up beat, she has a few key words of advice which I am excerpting here:

Your coursework won't teach you everything you need to know.
Every information professional you meet during your graduate program is a person who can connect you to a job.
Your reputation, CV/resume and portfolio matter.

She then followed up (in a different forum) with some comments and links to the other posts on which I will comment below.

Bobbi Newman gathered together a number of posts which address the topic under the title "Is She Crazy to Want to Work in Libraries?"

Her post was succeeded on Will Manley's blog with two posts:

“Any Advice for an Aspiring Librarian?”

“Do Grade Point Averages Make a Difference in the Hiring Process?”

I suggest that you read both, and the comments...

Finally, Roy Tenant added to Jill's post by noting several points that I am highlighting by pasting below:

No matter how close to graduation you are, your education has only just begun.
Although it might sound like work, constant learning is fun.

and in practical advice:

Find someone in the profession you admire, and offer to take them to lunch or drinks or dinner at a conference you are both attending.

Writing/Blogging

2010-12-15T22:30:00.005-06:00

As I pulled into the parking lot at work today my almost 3 year old car turned 98,000 miles exactly.

What does that have to do with writing and blogging?

I got to thinking about some of the work-related writing I have done over the years, and this blog as well. Back when I was first a library director, I had not yet begun the habit of writing monthly reports for my Board, but I did have to write for the Annual Report. It was not a difficult task, and only occurred once a year. But then, after almost a decade I changed jobs.

I became the Executive Director of the Southern Connecticut Library Council (SCLC), a multi-type, cooperative library organization with schools, academic, public, and "special" libraries as members. [SCLC no longer exists.] There were two parts to the writing. First was a monthly report to the board. That was not so difficult, and my audience was only a dozen or so. However the monthly newsletter was different. The Director's column was on the front, and we printed multiple copies to send to our 300+ members. It scared me at first. However, I soon got used to it.

It was interesting to find out what people reacted to. During that time I also served a year as the president of the Connecticut Library Association. For the newsletter I had to write a column also, and it had to be different than the SCLC one, since most of the SCLC members were also CLA members. That is where we loop back to the opening of this post about my car. In both of the columns I wrote that year, I included occasional persona snippets including about the car which I was then driving, and turned 100,000 miles. I told stories about driving and the car at the end of some of my columns (in both publications). I was amazed at how many people commented on those remarks.

It occurs to me, that the reason is that so many own a car that they can really identify with the situations I described. (BTW, I did talk about driving in earlier posts (in chronological order): July 2005, and again, June 2008, August 2008, March 2009, and August 2009.

Now, in thinking about the writing thing, it occurs to me that blogging has helped to channel what has become a need to write. It was stirred by my SCLC/CLA experience. What I did not note is that starting with the SCLC job, and continuing through my next two directorships, I instituted a monthly written directors report. In both of those cases, I wrote the initial part, and then compiled from the reports which I requested from each of my "direct reports."

Interestingly, I was recently catching up on links and blogs and found that Andy Woodworth also wrestled with the issue of "why do I write" in a recent post.

Unlike some colleagues, I am not a trained writer. [I am thinking in particular of Karen Schneider who has an MFA in writing.] And I would note that I am not even as talented a writer as Walt Crawford who often downplays his talent in this area. Here is a link to his "writing and blogging" category. In so many ways I am a hacker at this writing thing. I know that I am more unpolished as a blogger than I was as a column writer or even as a library director reporting. In all those cases I had editors and someone to review and make suggestions for editorial revisions. At the same time, for me, and many others, this is a great outlet.

The future (of libraries, of library services)

2010-12-10T20:37:00.000-06:00

OK, so we had videos (Betamax then VHS), and then moved to DVDs. What will be the next technology? "Streaming" is what I had been told. Certainly that is the way folks like Netflix and Hulu are moving. This may be a way for libraries to deal with the "streaming" issue, or may be an interim step. I am not sure which. Flix on Stix

Mita Williams (New Jack Librarian) from Canada has a long and thoughtful post about the future of libraries. She called it The future of libraries is what we create in the present. She closes with the following, pithy statements:

When I talk about the future I really mean this afternoon.
When I talk about the present I really mean this morning.

Eric Hellman has a post called Lots of Markets, Lots of Business Models. In it he talks about the structure of the book publishing industry and starts off with this interesting analogy:

The book industry is a lot like the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union consisted of fifteen ethnically divergent states (soviets) stitched together by a highly centralized government model. When that government model weakened, it turned out that there was little holding the soviets together. The Soviet Union no longer exists.

He goes on from there to talk about the shift in book publishing from print to digital and compares the book industry with the music and film industries. It offers some interesting thoughts.

Happy Birthday Mevil Dui

2010-12-10T18:30:00.000-06:00

Stephen Abram reminded me with his posting that today is the birthday of Melvil Dui (as he preferred to spell it). He had a long and interesting career. Some is posted on the OCLC web site (they sell the Dewey Decimal publications).

I also found the New York Times obituary, as well as his entry in Wikipedia.

Links?

2010-11-23T19:14:00.000-06:00

Cognitive authority. Is this the explanation for the reason that many young people today do not respect copyright and other "intellectual property" related issues? Rory Litwin points to an article which discusses this. He does not totally agree with the author, but does note that it is an important observation which deserves more discussion.

Library management and "moving on up."

- ALA-APA's Library Worklife article

- In the Library with a Lead Pipe has a thoughtful post

- Meredith Farkas on becoming management

-Jenica Rodgers on lessons learned as a manager and micromanagement

E-books, DRM, and Britain

- Andy Woodworth has a post on the current flap

- Closer to the source is a post from the British Bookseller web site

- And there is a reply from a British public librarian

- Thoughts from the LJ/SLJ virtual presentation by Emily Williams

- And Steven Harris on the same topic, cleverly titled "I got your ebook manifesto right here!"

Meredith again (this time in American Libraries) about the importance of reading the fine print of licenses.

There have been couple posts about anonymity on the web, in both blog posts and comments. Bobbi Newman has some interesting comments on pseudonyms.

And finally, one of my alma maters (my undergrad one) is now offering its alumni access to some of the Ebsco databases in a two year trial. I wonder how far this will spread? Is it because this is a private institution with a significant endowment? My other two alma maters are both state schools. It will be interesting to watch.

And adding two more items on anonymity:

First from In the Library with a Lead Pipe a long and thoughtful post about pseudonymity and anonymity. [It is interesting to read this while listening to a biography of Benjamin Franklin who wrote a great deal using both!]

Second is a snarky take from Salon.com which reflects what is happening on some news web sites with comments.

Norman Horrocks

2010-11-21T20:28:00.000-06:00

Norman Horrocks died in mid October.

I am still devastated about Norman's death.

How often do you find me speechless, never mind that Janet Swan Hill is also speechless?

Norman was, in every sense of the word, a gentleman. He was a man who was incredibly gentle and nice. While I cannot claim to know him incredibly well, I never saw him say a really cross word, and never, even when chastising me, did he not have a gentle look of kindness in his eyes.

I am not sure that I can pinpoint when I first met Norman, but I heard of him at the beginning of my career as a librarian. Perhaps because Michael Gorman taught my "Intro to Librarianship" course and it was around the time that Norman when to Scarecrow Press.

I do know, that when I first was being oriented to ALA Council (back in the mid 1990s), my predecessor as the Connecticut Library Association Chapter Councilor talked about him.

Early on, I made my presence known on ALA Council. (I was the one who used the phrase "core values" on the floor of Council in a debate about a resolution on outsourcing in Hawai'i which resulted in two task forces, and finally a policy.)

Norman was most kind in offering comments about wording and the process suggested.

Jessamyn West (one of my Web/Library 2.0 heroes) posted a great reflection on the man.

Copyright (yes, more), outsourcing, and other links

2010-10-10T07:36:00.006-05:00

Here are two more posts on the copyright/licensing/Netflix issue as covered by librarians on the web. First up is Kent Anderson who blogs at The Scholarly Kitchen which covers scholarly publishing. He notes that

While the purpose of the use may be nonprofit and educational, if the materials are entertaining movies, if they are watched or delivered in their entirety, and if the users no longer feel the need to rent or buy the movies, 3/4 of the criteria of fair use are unfulfilled. This creates huge exposure for universities, both from Netflix and from film companies.

Read the whole post which includes numerous links back to librarians on the issue.

Andy Woodworth, at Agnostic Maybe (a great title, I think), put his finger on the issue when he says "I believe that the actions of these libraries and librarians are a symptom of a larger issue for the profession: the coping (or non-coping) with the expansion of licensed content as part of the collection." He has a lot more to say, and there are some great comments.

The second topic burning up electrons among librarians is the issue of outsourcing. In this case the outsourcing of the management of public libraries. It is an issue which was hot in the late 1990s (pre-blogging), so I guess it is not a surprise to see it come up again.

On one of the discussion lists, Pat Schmann (ALA Past President and the Schuman in Neal-Scumann Publishing), sent a link to her article called: The selling of the public library: It's not just ‘outsourcing,’ it's privatization. The article appeared in Library Journal back in 1998. It is worth re-reading. (It is an eight[8] page PDF file.]

I picked up this post on the issue which is a long, and thoughtful post on the issue. There is much more in the PUBLIB archives.

I also ran across this post in another non-library blog.

Miscellaneous other links:

I found this great blog post about how to check out a web page.
Roy Tenant offers some thoughts on managing change. There are some insightful comments as well.

Copyright, copy-wrong and Netflix

2010-09-29T18:32:00.000-05:00

First, from a month ago, some thoughts on copyright based on a composer's experience. I am not sure where I picked up this article which talks in general terms about the attitudes towards intellectual property and the rights of the creator. I was very much interested in hearing directly about a creator's experience. In this case a composer who had an online interaction (discussion is not just the right description) with someone who was giving away his creation.

As I reflect on this, I remember the whole issue with Napster and Kazaa. It is that experience that I am sure is reflected in some of the digital rights management software which is used with commercial audio and video.

Which then gets us to today and licensing and Netflix. (And may be related to libraries lending e-readers such as Kindles and Nooks, but that includes actually loaning a physical device which includes the electronic media.)

So the "Netflix "buzz'" is really more about terms of service than copyright, but it sort of is about copyright since in this case, Netflix is acting like libraries do with books, except that all the rules are much more complicated!

I picked up on this with Iris Jastram's post on terms of service. Michael Stevens had a guest post on his blog about the basic service as it is being done in one academic library. (Is this the original source?) Meredith Farkas had some insightful comments (as usual), which were picked up in several places. On the Library Law blog (a great resource for librarians who need to know about the law and libraries), Mary Minow talked about the legal issues involved.

Jessamyn includes links to many of the above, but one thing she said hit home with me: "The big issue is that Netflix is responsible to their main customers, the studios..." Hmmm, are the studios the main customers, or are we (the general public not just librarians or our libraries)?

Somehow, I wound up at The Consumerist, who adds this thoughtful bit:

Is this a violation of Netflix's terms of use? Yes. But the librarians don't particularly care, and Netflix doesn't seem to, either. Yet. As a Netflix spokesman said, "We just don't want to be pursuing libraries."

I am not totally sure what to think, other than to opine, that this is all part of the huge intellectual property/digital rights management/first sale controversy that will ensue as we move away from physical media to downloadable media.

Blogger - How the hell do you give them feed back

2010-09-09T21:32:00.002-05:00

Ok...I know that this is a free service. But, did you know that it is next to impossible to find a way to send them a message???

It may be one of the few places on the web where there is no way to give input on changes.

Today when I logged in, I find that I am required to use my Google/gmail account. This is even though, I established this blog with a different email.

Why does that matter? Well, if I want to log out of editing the blog, I am automatically, and unceremoniously dumped out of my gmail account.

As with so many Google "enhancements" (and similar to the "features" provided in Microsoft upgrades), it was unannounced (even though they *do* have my email address...or two!).

What is up with that? Look at what happened to Jstor.

Wordpress is beginning to look good.....

September Links #1

2010-09-09T21:23:00.001-05:00

The title assumes that there will be at least one other post with links this month.

From Salon, comes and an article about the trouble with Google Books.

And here is an interesting take on the concept of privatizing public libraries from Google's staff futurist. Not sure what to think about this.

Stephen Abram has a wonderfully thoughtful post about our freedoms and rights called
We strengthen our rights by exercising them. I highly recommend it!

There was a interesting series of articles about ALA's Midwinter and Annual meetings and the possibility of Reed Exhibitions taking over the management of the conferences and perhaps combining Annual with the BEA trade show. I first caught the Library Journal article which cited an article in PW. [Both LJ and PW used to be owned by Reed, but they are now separately owned by others.] ALA Executive Director Keith Michael Fiels denied this was happening. My first clue was that I cannot find anything in the ALA Executive Board documents which refers to it, and secondly, the PW article talks about a combined ALA/BEA event in the summer of 2012 in Chicago -- when ALA's conference is scheduled to be in Anaheim. ALA will next be in Chicago in 2013. The schedule of dates and locations for ALA Conferences is set well in advance, and is currently planned through 2019.

Somewhere I came across this explanation of net neutrality on the Criminal Law Library Blog. It includes links to the AALL (American Association of Law Librarians) statement on the issue.

Kate Kosturski Librarian Kate wrote some interesting perspectives about the de-professionalization/professionalisation discussion which took place just before Labor Day.

Sarah Houghton-Jan asks questions and posits some thoughts about how libraries (particularly public libraries) are handling music in this day of downloads. I don't know the answers, but do know that it is something we need to think and worry about.

And finally some fun (with a shout out to Michael Sauers from whom I got this):

Book Review: Save the Last Bullet for Yourself: A Soldier of Fortune in the Balkans and Somalia

2010-09-06T13:52:00.004-05:00

I don't generally do book reviews. I am making an exception. In this case, I actually know the author of Save the Last Bullet for Yourself: A Soldier of Fortune in the Balkans and Somalia by Rob Krott. Rob and I have met a couple times while on vacation.

The book is a memoir, and therefore told in the first person. I can so very much hear Rob telling this story. [That is a good thing, authenticity is important.]

Now, I am not a big gun person. Rob is. There is a lot of detail about munitions which went totally over my head. On the other hand, Rob also spends time talking about group dynamics and personal interactions. He has dealt with a variety of very "interesting" people in his travels. His education with the Franciscans at "St. Bony" and at Harvard Grad School do show through. I also don't want to discount the training from the US military over the years.

I wish that the book had maps for both Bosnia and Somalia. I am, in some ways, a typical American with only limited detailed geographical knowledge of Bosnia/Croatia and Somalia. I will say, that remembering those conflicts, I did gain more insight to what was going on in each of the situations.

I could see a talented scriptwriter making an interesting movie or semi-documentary from this memoir. I hope that Rob and/or his agent can find one.

Mid August Links

2010-08-21T13:00:00.000-05:00

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is what, 25 or so years old, I wonder what took so long for Final regulations on disability access to libraries and other places issued reported in Library Law Blog, among other places.

Library Society of the World (a sort of anti-ALA) has its second coloring contest (in part to celebrate the end of the summer).

The last couple days, Rory Litwin of Library Juice, Library Juice Press, and Litwin Books (among other ventures and adventures) has been waxing philosophically about libraries and librarianship. On August 18, he ruminates about standards and accreditation. The next day he wrote A Brief Note about Libraries and Elitism. Both are well worth a read.

Bobbie Newman (librarian and writer at both Librarian by Day and Libraries and Transliteracy) has a thoughtful post on the role of control in the age of social networks. [I found it fascinating since my daughter has just taken a new job where social media is part of what she does. She even gave me permission to tell her when I notice something...]

Brian Herzog (a librarian in Massachusetts) has an interesting blog: Swiss Army Librarian. There are two recent posts which caught my attention: the "Reference Question of the Week" in July and dealt with Postal Service and address changes, and a Checklist Reference Desk Manifesto. The first reflects an notable federal government attitude/policy where some things are free online and others cost, while the paper process is free. Address changes is one. Filing income taxes is another. As of this past filing season, you could file for free if your income was low enough, if you were too high, you had to pay to file electronically (even though electronic filing saves the government money). Where is the logic? The second....is on my list for work.

I just loved this Illustrated Guide to a PhD, especially since getting a PhD in LIS was a topic in the car this morning.

One of my new guilty pleasures is reading Will Manley, daily, at his new blog!

Skills and shifting skills

2010-08-19T17:55:00.002-05:00

Several days ago, a friend who is a librarian (but not working as one) sent me a very thoughtful note about the skills needed for the 21st century job hunt.

The day he sent it to me, I had spent a good quarter hour with one of our library users. He had found a posting for a job on Criagslist, but did not know how to apply. First we walked through getting an email address, and then we went through the reply process on Craigslist.

Other days it has been helping folks find their way through various job application web sites. Yesterday, it was 15 minutes on the phone with someone who was trying to apply through a civil service web site.

Here is what my friend said:

Recently I’ve been helping a group of unemployed adults apply for apprenticeships. Many of these people have been without jobs for years; some are parolees, others simply down on their luck in these recessionary times. They have many strikes against them: criminal records, long breaks in employment, lack of marketable skills. Most of them find the process is like trying to jump onto a speeding conveyor belt. And in fact it is the process that they find daunting, even more than their own personal challenges or lack of qualifications.

Over the past few years the job-seekers’ required kit has gone from simply owning a pen (for filling out applications) to the possession of a resume (required to demonstrate experience) to the ability to understand and manipulate computer applications.

Take a look at how job-seeking works these days:

There are almost no more newspaper help-wanted ads. Job seekers must search the internet for openings and then complete applications online. Most of these applications require applicants to attach documents such as resumes and to submit the whole to whatever firm or public entity is offering the job. The process assumes the following skills and abilities:

1. First, the possession or adequate control of a computer. Occasional availability leaves the person at a distinct disadvantage: it takes hours of searching to find openings, hours more to submit applications, and then the applicant must wait for results, invitations to interview, et cetera. The person forced to use the public library computer or one at a job center has too few opportunities to search and apply and respond.

2. Second, the ability to use a computer and the internet with sufficient skill to make the process work. A large portion of the population have difficulty with keyboarding; they type so slowly as to make application an ordeal, particularly in the case of resumes and cover letters—and this is assuming a fair level of literacy, which with the longer-term unemployed is often not the case.

3. Finally, a high level of patience and the ability to endure frustration. This has to do less with the win/lose nature of job-seeking than it does with the cold, faceless and often maddening character of the internet.

Over the past few years I’ve been involved in teaching word-processing and internet skills. This has meant attempting to transfer some portion of the typical internet skill set to classroom groups. Success or failure seems to be determined by the characteristics of incoming participants much more than their desire or effort.

● Successful participants will already be adept at keyboarding skills. Those who enter the class without touch-typing skill will almost certainly fall behind and, if they do complete the course, will not be able to compose text or use the computer at any reasonable level of function.

● Successful participants will have a computer at home to practice on; otherwise the learned skills will evaporate within days.

● Successful students will have a reason to continue to use and polish their computer skills, be it on a job or just internet surfing.

● It goes without saying that illiterate or semi-literate students will fail to come away with anything of value.

Though this is the case, most of the programs existing to help the long-term unemployed merely offer their clients a quick run through computer/internet skill sets, then release them into the broad world to thrash about unaided. What the system calls for is a way to offer employment that doesn’t rely so heavily on skills and abilities that are scarce among potential applicants.

There is much talk about the “digital divide,” but the real problem is that there is and will continue to be a class of people who will never become proficient in computer use, in the way that a percentage of people will never become fully and functionally literate. Teaching computer skills is important but obtaining work is much more so. Rather than attempting to teach a smattering of skills it would be better to provide ongoing services to these job-seekers, including personal guidance through the entire process of obtaining work. To believe that the long-term unemployed can simply vault onto the moving conveyor of the employment machine by themselves is wrong and counterproductive.

Let me repeat: There is much talk about the “digital divide,” but the real problem is that there is and will continue to be a class of people who will never become proficient in computer use, in the way that a percentage of people will never become fully and functionally literate.

This is so true and is redefining what libraries can and will offer, but also makes it more difficult to measure any success (outcomes) which is what so many funders want to know about.

Much food for thought here.

Mid-Summer Links

2010-08-14T10:47:00.000-05:00

Joshua Neff wrote an interesting take on the "specialness" of librarians. He come to an interesting conclusion.

Not really a library, but this place in Hungary sounds interesting. [It is tempting to chuck it all. Watching Anthony Bourdain last night in a re-run of when he sailed the Caribbean made me want to chuck it all and open a rum shop with a little library on some tropical beach...]

Steve Lawson posted on his blog a rant/tirade/thought-piece which he received anonymously from a reported Assistant University Librarian which argues that libraries are dying. It is worth a look.

I had to post this one activities in NOLA from a new-ish blog. This post is about an early July event which mocks a much older Spanish event.

The Wall Street Journal has done a series on privacy on the web here is the first one on the business of spying.

The Atlantic has a long, thoughtful piece about Closing the digital frontier which predicts the end of the browser.

The Scout Report (from the University of Wisconsin published resources on homelessness resources.

Eric Hellman starts his ever thoughtful post on copyright from with this great quote: "Here's the most important thing I've learned about intellectual property law: the lawyers who say "yes" when you ask if you can do something are much, much more expensive than the lawyers who say "no"."

"Want to Innovate? Stop Working So Hard" is the title of a thoughtful post by Bobbie Newman on her librarianbyday blog.

A good article on basic rules on making charts

Cooperation - Shrinking?

2010-08-10T18:50:00.000-05:00

I was going to just post Peter Bromberg notes on leaving Library Garden as a link in a long list of links. But then I thought better of it. He takes the time upon his departure from the South Jersey Regional Library Cooperative (SJRLC) to reflect on the continuing pattern of library cooperatives to being consolidated ... usually driven by budget forces rather than by a plan or vision.

It happened in Connecticut in 2003. It is happening now in Colorado, Massachusetts, and Illinois. It has been happening, in a way, to the OCLC "partner" systems over the course of the past year to year-and-a-half.

Now, let me note, I used to be the chief honcho at one of the multi-type library cooperatives in Connecticut. That single, state-wide organization had to fight for its life in the last state budget cycle. The systems in Illinois have been more than decimated. Several have simply ceased to exist!

Most of these cooperatives have a long history, and are the results of grassroots cooperative efforts of librarians to provide better service to the public. Most date from the 1960s.

I wrote about some of my experiences, and personal knowledge, with multitype cooperatives in an article which was published by ASCLA [the ALA division, the Association for Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies]. As I look now, I can't beleive that it has been a decade already!

It is sad to see some parts of the consolidation. I was in Connecticut when that happened, and while the Connecticut Library Consortium is, by all accounts, successful, I think some of the personal touches have gone away. As it, they are still providing some of their services based on the old [CLSU] regions.

Maybe I am just reflecting that change is hard. In a way, I hope that is all that I am reflecting. Peter has some comments on the process in New Jersey. I suggest you read his thoughtful post/article.

Read and Listened to: January - June 2010

2010-07-23T22:29:00.003-05:00

OK, I am lazy this time. The list is in reverse chronological order. And it is first books, then audiobooks.....

Books read, January - June 2010

In the Sanctuary of the Outcasts by Neil White
for the East Baton Rouge One Book/One Community

The world that made New Orleans : from Spanish silver to Congo Square by Ned Sublette

Hungry Town: A Culinary History of New Orleans: The City Where Food Is Almost Everything by Tom Fitzmorris

Thelonious Monk: the life and times of an American original by Robin D. G. Kelley

Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell

Nadirs = (Niederungen) by Herta Müller
translated and with an afterword by Sieglinde Lug

Corporate Diversity: Swiss Graphic Design and Advertising by Geigy, 1940 - 1970 by Andres Janser, Barbara Junod, Karin Gimmi, R. Roger Remington, Yvonne Zimmerman
I did not actually read the whole book, merely browsed and sampled. There are some great, classic graphic designs featured.

The passport by Herta Müller translated by Martin Chalmers

Fabulous New Orleans by Lyle Saxon
[A 1988 reprint by Pelican Press of the 1950 reprint of the 1928 original. Christmas gift.]

Letter to My Daughter: A Novel by George Bishop
Advance Reader's Edition

Listened to:

There's a (slight) chance I might be going to Hell: [a novel of sewer pipes, pageant queens, and big trouble] by Laurie Notaro, read by Susan Denaker

The Traveler: [a novel] by John Twelve Hawks, read by Scott Brick

The Associate by John Grisham, read by Erik Singer

No way to treat a First Lady by Christopher Buckley, read by Grover Gardner

Searching for paradise in Parker, PA by Kris Radish, read by Barbara McCulloh

Inside Drucker's brain byJeffrey A. Krames, read by Sean Pratt

Buyology : truth and lies about why we buy by Martin Lindstrom

Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, read by Brian Emerson

Genghis: bones of the hills by Conn Iggulden, read by Richard Ferrone

Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis, read by Anthony Heald

Thelonious Monk by Thelonious Monk, Legacy (2000) To accompany reading a biography of Monk

Monk alone: the complete Columbia solo studio recordings of Thelonious Monk by Thelonious Monk, Columbia/Legacy (1998) To accompany reading a biography of Monk

The complete Blue Note recordings by Thelonious Monk, Blue Note (1994) To accompany reading a biography of Monk

The Humbling by Philip Roth, read by Dick Hill

Inimitable Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse, read by Martin Jarvis

The prince of tides by Pat Conroy read by Frank Muller

Googled: the end of the world as we know it by Ken Auletta, read by Jim Bond

Celebrated cases of Judge Dee: [an authentic eighteenth-century Chinese detective novel] translated by Robert van Gulik, read by Mark Bramhall with Lorna Raver & Stefan Rudnicki

Breach of faith: Hurricane Katrina and the near death of a great American city by Jed Horne, read by Andrew L. Barnes

The last Dickens: [a novel] by Matthew Pearl, read by Paul Michael

Handle with care by Jodi Picoult, read by a full cast (Celeste Ciulla, Jessica Almasy, Jim Colby, Charlotte Perry, Alma Cuervo, Cassandra Morris)

While my sister sleeps by Barbara Delinsky, read by Cassandra Campbell

The dart league king by Keith Lee Morris, read by Nick Landrum

Football genius: a novel by Tim Green, read by Tim Green and the Full Cast family

Body movers. 2 bodies for the price of 1 by Stephanie Bond, read by Cassandra Campbell

44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith, read by Robert Ian Mackenzie

Blog Anniversary, etc.

2010-07-06T18:05:00.000-05:00

Well, it is my son's birthday (again), and it also means that my blog is having its anniversary also. I started this five years ago today. And, no, I did not do it on my son's birthday on purpose.

This year was the first time in a very long time that I did not attend ALA Annual, and as a result I don't have the same kind of "post-ALA blues" which I wrote about in my first "real" post on July 7, 2005.

My posting patterns have changed over the years, as has the content. I am about to head out on vacation, and for the blog I have two goals: 1) finish editing three posts from April 2009 to wrap up the PLA Spring Symposium; and 2) to spend some time reflecting on where this blog is going to go.

We will be in Northern Minnesota, and have been told that cell service is "spotty" but that the resort has wi-fi.

Stay tuned....

Social Media Rules

2010-06-17T15:55:00.001-05:00

Michael Stephens has written a post called Social Media Best Practices for Libraries. There is great content there, but it certainly does not spell out a suggested policy for a library. He does that in a separate post suggesting a policy for Anytown Public Library.

There is a great article in Public Libraries (November/December 2009, p. 23-25) by David Lee King and Michael Porter about dealing with comments. (I can't find the electronic version on the ALA/PLA web site.)

Jill Hurst-Wahl has a great series of posts on rules for using social networks. Here is #9.

Is this the end? I don't know. I think it will develop over time.

Insurance - Medical

2010-06-14T19:17:00.002-05:00

Arghh!

No matter how far away you are, or what thunderstorms are in the vicinity (we have had some strong ones tonight), you probably heard me when I picked up my prescriptions tonight.

I have two conditions for which I take maintenance medications. One of them I have been taking one prescription or another for over 30 years (think 6 doctors, in five different states). Today was the day to pick up the refills.

One refill was just fine.

The other, the cheap one (less than $5 per month) had a note: 14 day prescription. Why? I don't know. There was no other note on the paperwork (from a national chain). Ironically, 17 days from now I will be on a different health plan. (That would be my employer's idea not mine....and my fifth health plan in five years.)

Anyone who does not admit that the current system is broken, has their head in the sand, and is not grounded in reality. Why can some administrative person in an insurance company or drugstore chain decide that what my doctor (the one who went to medical school and then internship and residency, and in my case has many years of practice) had decided that I need to take, is not correct?

In 14 days, I will refill the prescription, and make them give me an explanation. [And the rise in my blood pressure is what the medication is supposed to control! They are not helping!!!]

A Great ALA Program

2010-06-10T18:01:00.000-05:00

I won't be at ALA Annual this year, however one of my friends, Sylvia Turchyn is the Intellectual Freedom Round Table's Program Chair. She has lined up a great program:

Burning Man, Libraries, and the 21st Century: The Intersection of the Individual and Society

Saturday, June 26 | 1:30-3:30 p.m.
Washington Convention Center, Room 143 B/C

Can you imagine living in a city where censorship does not exist? Where your First Amendment rights and liberties are not only tolerated but encouraged and celebrated? That culture is created and that society exists in physical form for one week every August in Black Rock Desert, Nevada in the community known as Burning Man. The Intellectual Freedom Round Table is delighted that Larry Harvey, Executive Director of the Burning Man Project, will join Lauren Christos, Chair of the Intellectual Freedom Round Table, in a lively conversation on how intellectual freedom informs the Burning Man experience and our 21st century society. IFRT envisions that our program will challenge and expand the boundaries of currently held intellectual freedom beliefs. Through the social experiment that is Burning Man, the audience may come away with new and creative ideas to explore intellectual freedom in their personal and professional lives. There will be ample opportunity for Q&A from the audience. For background information on Burning Man, please visit http://www.burningman.com

She is also looking for folks to blog the program itself (which I wish I could do), so if you are interested, send her a note.

Traditional Cultural Expression

2010-06-02T18:57:00.000-05:00

One of the topics which is likely to hit ALA Council this session, is a resolution on Traditional Cultural Expression.

I was very confused about what happened at ALA Midwinter with this....it was proposed and then withdrawn, and at the time, given very little time to read and reflect, I was admittedly confused by the content, and therefore happy to have it taken off the agenda. That document is here (as CD#20.4, you will have scroll down).

Since then I have learned more.

Here is the document which engendered discussion, but note that it is not a resolution, but merely a statement. There is a web site, but it does not seem to have much newer than that to which I linked here.

Let's start with the definition of "Traditional Cultural Expressions" which is included in the document. In a footnote, the document explains the term.

For the purposes of this document, traditional cultural expressions are defined as, but not limited to, narratives, poetry, music, art, designs, names, signs, symbols, performances, architectural forms, handicrafts.

Wayne Bivens-Tatum, a librarian at Princeton, has written a long (almost 3,500 words) and thoughtful post which lays out many of the issues.

He starts by noting: "The basic thesis of the document is that librarians should be sensitive to the desires of indigenous communities regarding library collections of "traditional cultural expressions," i.e. objects, documents, etc. created by members of those communities." And like him, I agree with this in principle.

He has a section on philosophical objections which include his analysis of the language (which helped me understand). It ties the "cultural expressions" tightly to the creator or expressor. I think that is where I also begin to have problems.

I can't summarize or do justice to his long section on librarian objections. However, at one point he says:

Some parts of this document are utterly incompatible with such values. In the discussion, the other librarian posed the problem as possibly one of colonialist versus indigenous people's values. This is the cultural relativist perspective. But the Enlightenment perspective would pose it as a problem of universal versus local values. Who's correct here? Your position on this will probably determine your position on some of the more mystical portions of the document.

The tempting position to defend is that the values of the indigenous peoples should take precedent because they were both the victims of aggression and the creators of the "expressions." I'm tempted by this argument. However, one can be sensitive to the suffering of indigenous peoples without sacrificing universal values.

In his section with reasons to support a revised document, he has this cogent paragraph:

Returning some collections is also completely justifiable, but from the universal perspective of justice, not the local perspective of sanctity. Justice trumps even education and intellectual freedom. The important question is, how did these collections come to exist? Were they stolen? Purchased? Traded for? Acquired as gifts? The prominent libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick based his philosophy of distributive justice on the principles of justice in acquisition and justice in transfer. In other words, if property was initially acquired justly (via the Lockean proviso that enough and as good is left for others), and transferred justly, then whoever owns it in the end is the just owner. If we find at the end of the line that ownership isn't just, the principle of rectification requires us to reallocate resources in a just manner if possible.

Now, I would have gone even further and said, that if the "expression" had been legitimately (i.e. justly) obtained, then the control of it remains with the owning institution (library). It is part of why I support the return of skeletons, mummies, and the like which were pilfered from graves during the 19th and 20th centuries in the name of science and history.

My friend Melora Ranney Norman talks about TCEs with an "intellectual freedom" slant in her new-ish blog librarygist.

Her post is in a question and answer format. She is very up front about her issue in her second question:

Does it create a First Amendment/Library Bill of Rights conflict to officialize a document asserting that libraries should participate in the restriction of content when a cultural or religious group asks us to, whether by actually restricting the content in-house, or by returning it to the group so that they may do so themselves?

It was in reading this question back in early May that fixed the issue in my head...well, at least for now. If Melora's reading of the document (and I think mine, too) is that adopting the statement on TCE, ALA is suggesting that a group can control the distribution of something (folklore, stories, etc.) after it has left them, then we are allowing an outside "agency" to censor what we do. She uses an example of a group which believes that anatomically correct illustrations are abhorent, and therefore, all such depictions should be returned to them. She further cites the controversy of a couple years ago where a Danish cartoonist drew an image of Mohammed.

I have been going back to this over the past month, and still am both confused, and concerned that Melora is correct. If so, I am opposed to adopting the current version of the statement.

"We" have been promised that a task force, appointed by the ALA President will meet, listen, work on the document, and have public meetings at ALA Annual before anything comes back to Council. I hope that they can create a document which is both clear and inclusive, and that it avoids the pitfalls which Melora has identified.

At this point, what I long for is someone like Walt Crawford to gather any other relevant posts, digest them all, and offer his opinion from his perspective, which he refers to as "the radical middle." After all, this is what he often does in Walt at Random, and does incredibly well in Cites and Insights.

Hungry Town

2010-06-02T18:09:00.005-05:00

Huh? I can hear you say?

I just finished reading Tom Fitzmorris's Hungry Town: A Culinary History of New Orleans: The City Where Food Is Almost Everything. Now, I don't usually do book reviews here, but this one inspired me.

I met Tom at the Maple Street Bookshop when they held a book signing a few weeks ago. I will admit that it was the offer of free Sazaracs, that pulled me in.

Tom Fitzmorris has been a New Orleans food critic for a number of years, and for a variety of publications. He also has a very successful radio show. He gained national prominence with his web site which tracks the number of restaurants in the New Orleans area. Post-Katrina, it began serving as an index of the recovery of the city.

One of the statements that lives with me (and I had subconsciously found to be true), is that in New Orleans, the most common topic of conversation is food. In other cities it could be politics, or the weather, but here it is food and restaurants.

On August 26, 2005 there were 809 restaurants in the index. This includes small neighborhood "joints," but not fast food or take-out only locations. By April 17, 2007, there were exactly the same number of restaurants, and today it is almost 1,100. Not a bad place to live.

The books includes a great deal of history about various establishments, both current and closed. It also includes a few recipes, and tales about some of the famous chefs from New Orleans.

I highly recommend this book.

Food - and misc thoughts

2010-05-17T21:16:00.004-05:00

Several times recently, in Baton Rouge in particular, I have ordered "macaroni and cheese" as a side dish. In each case I have been surprised to get what I would call "spaghetti and cheese." To my literal, Eastern US mind, that is a different dish. [Actually, sometimes it was a mixture of spaghetti and linguine.]

A number of months ago, we were at our favorite barbecue joint in New Orleans, Squeal (on Oak Street). It is walking distance from home, go there! We asked why they did not have M+C on the menu. The owner/co-owner said that they had not been able to develop a dish which would stand up to waiting and being served with the right consistency. [As a home consumer, mostly immediately, I had not thought about the heat-table issues.] By the way, the menu at Squeal rocks...and they sometimes have "bacon vodka." The latter is a real treat!

I got to thinking about the meaning of the word "macaroni." For me, macaroni refers to a hollow shape of extruded pasta which has a hollow interior. For the most part, it is "elbow macaroni" (i.e. with a slight bend) and could be extended to ziti, rigatoni, and other hollow shapes. Interestingly, Wikipedia seems to agree.

I have heard Italian-Americans in the northeast use the term "macaroni" to refer to all pasta as macaroni, but that has been rare. Now, I have made pasta (linguine, spaghetti, spaghettini, etc.) but all of those are noodles, not extruded.

It has been an interesting change. BTW, Italians have been in the New Orleans area almost as long as they have been in the Northeastern US.

Impacts of budget cuts

2010-05-12T06:28:00.002-05:00

Seven years ago, at the behest of the Connecticut State Library, the four existing multi-type library organizations folded into one. I had some misgivings, but it actually has worked pretty well. I suspect that some miss the personal touch from a more local organization. [In the interest of full disclosure, I had been the executive director of one of those four networks until I left to return to being a public library director.]

Massachusetts is in the process of following this model. I will note, that the geography and the geo-politics of Massachusetts are very different than Connecticut. I grew up there. Massachusetts is very much more spread out than Connecticut. After all, you can drive diagonally across CT in a few hours, and in MA, the distance from the New York border to Boston is more than that, and then you have "the Cape."

One of my few "publications" is an article based on a talk I gave many years ago. The article talks about successful library cooperative networks. While I was a director of one, a network I admired incredibly was the North Suburban Library System, run by the incomparable (and former ALA President) Sarah Ann Long.

I recently received an email which had this in it:

Dear NSLS Members and Colleagues,

I have sad but significant news. Due to our budget situation, NSLS will be dramatically scaling back programs and services effective May 30, 2010.

From our recent Needs Assessment Survey, we know Van Delivery service is the most important service for the majority of members. We will take all necessary steps to preserve this service intact. But most other services and programs will be dramatically reduced, eliminated, or spun off. Many NSLS staffers will be laid off. I will be one of the people leaving. We are still working out the details but quick action is needed.

As you are aware, 80% of our funding comes from an annual grant from the Illinois General Assembly distributed through Sec. of State Jesse White's office. We have not received 42% of the money owed to us for the fiscal year ending June, 30. If we continue to operate without making any service or staffing changes, our money would run out at the end of July 2010. We had hoped to receive additional funding soon, but our latest intelligence tells us that we are not likely to receive any state payments until November 2010 at the earliest. We are told this is not a temporary problem. Rather, there is a trend in Illinois to continue to delay state payments, not just to library systems. This means that cash flow is going to be a continuing and growing problem for NSLS, as well as many other state funded agencies and organizations. Under these conditions, we cannot continue to offer our members the high level of service they expect and deserve.

As you can imagine, this was a very difficult decision to make. But I would not be fulfilling my responsibility as NSLS Executive Director or the System’s responsibility to our members as a whole if we did not take serious and immediate action to help preserve what is left of our budget.

To remind you how we got here, Illinois library systems have not had a budget increase in 20 years. On top of this flat funding, last August, we received a 16 ½% budget cut. Since we had just received our final payment from the previous fiscal year, we were already working under a deficit but at that time we did not recognize that cash flow would become more disabling than flat funding and budget reductions. Despite this bleak situation, we were determined to fight to ensure that systems did not receive any additional cuts. We initiated two statewide campaigns, one targeted at legislators and the other targeted at Governor Quinn and Comptroller Hynes. More recently, we initiated a campaign to inspire public library boards to contact Secretary of State, Jesse White, to ask for the release of the Live and Learn funds for regional library systems. I have also contacted our area legislators personally to see if they could do anything to help us. We achieved some results from these efforts, but it wasn’t enough.

I am confident that we have done everything possible to turn this situation around. Unfortunately, we have run out of options. Other Illinois library systems are on different time lines as to when they will run out of money, but they are also in trouble.

Many thanks to all who have participated in our campaigns, contacted legislators or offered help or solace during this crisis. I am very grateful for your support. We will keep you posted regarding the details of this change as well as additional changes to System services and staffing

Yours faithfully,
Sarah

It distresses me incredibly to get news like this.

Of all governmental agencies, libraries are the most cooperative across taxing district borders. We share a communicate with each other better than any other governmental unit! Each state has its own culture of how that cooperation happens. For most states, the cooperation between libraries should be a model of how other governmental units can cooperate to provide better service to taxpayers.

When a stellar example of cooperative service like NSLS is forced to curtail service in a time of increasing need, I am outraged!

I wish I knew that I could change/affect the decision.

Even more, I mourn the departure (however temporary) of a library leader like Sarah.

When she ran for ALA President, I did not know her well. Since then I have come to know, respect, like\ (and yeah, even love) her for the leadership she provides.

This is truly a sad day.

How did I get here?

2010-04-28T20:54:00.002-05:00

A while back I stumbled across a wiki based in Britain called "The Library Routes Project." It is an interesting project to gather stories from librarians about why they do what they do. I love this particular quote from the main wiki page:

The idea is to document either or both of your library roots - how you got into the profession in the first place, and what made you decide to do so - and your library routes - the career path which has taken you to wherever you are today. As well as being interesting of itself, it will also provide much needed information and context for those just entering the profession or wishing to do so.

So, here is my contribution.

I was always a reader. As a child, and especially in the summer time, I would walk or bike to the public library in the center of town. It was about a mile away, and in those days kids played outside unsupervised for long periods of time, and going to the library for a few hours was not a problem. It was especially inviting on very hot summer days because the library was air conditioned.

In high school, I got my first job. As a "page" in the public library. The children's librarian of my youth had become the Library Director. I suppose that it did not hurt that the mother of the boy next door (who was exactly two weeks older than I) was both the high school librarian and a member of the Library Board, but I was naive in those days. So, I worked my way through high school, usually going to work straight from school, and then heading home.

When I got to college (Brown University), my financial aid package included an on-campus job. Sure enough, they sent me to the library. Actually to the Biological Sciences Library. The librarian there was a great early mentor. During the Christmas break at the end of my first semester, the Biological Sciences Library merged with the Physical Sciences Library and moved into a brand new 14 story building. I got to work lots of extra hours helping to interfile and shelf read.

I worked in that library all four years. Some of it in Interlibrary Loan, and was often the student-in-charge for when the library closed at the end of the day. It seemed only logical to go to Library School.

I graduated on a bright and sunny Monday in early June, and one week later was in Library School classes. In those days, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign library program could be completed full-time in a calendar year. With student debt hanging over my head, that was the choice I made. Of course, I worked in the library there. I was in Interlibrary Loan (again) and also worked as a student assistant for both the Dean and an adjunct professor.

I got married straight out of library school (to a librarian), and we moved to Arizona. Well, there is a library school there, so it took me a while to figure out what to do. I volunteered and helped to organize, catalog, and teach cataloging for a good cause. Then I went back to school. I received an MBA (Masters in Business Administration) from the University of Arizona. About 9 months before I was done, I was offered a job as a young adult librarian at the public library's busiest branch. What a wonderful opportunity! After 6 months, they moved me to the Main Library as the "Business Information Specialist." As I moved up the ranks, I supervised, including a being the supervisor for a branch librarian 120 miles away!

But family called. I saw an ad for a job in Connecticut, and when I was "back East" for the holidays, I interviewed. A number of weeks went by, and I was suddenly offered the job!

I moved back to Connecticut, to the state's largest public library as the Head of the Technology & Business Department. (No, I did not do technology, I was in charge of the department which covered that subject.) After a couple years I was restless, and applied to be a library director in a small-to-medium sized suburban town. That is where I spent the next 9 years. It was a wonderful experience, and I still am in touch with staff from there.

In the winter of 1994-5, I became the executive director of a multi-type regional library cooperative. It was a great opportunity to learn some new skills (layout and design, flyer design, newsletter editing). I also had the freedom to become involved with the state and (eventually) national library associations. I served as the President of the Connecticut Library Association. I also served as the Connecticut Chapter Councilor on ALA Council. From that I had the opportunity to run for (and win) a seat on the ALA Executive Board. That, too, was an incredible learning experience. I have compiled some information on the structure of ALA, and posted it on this blog.

I left the multi-type to become the library director in my then adopted hometown. I had lived there for almost twenty years at that point, and had twice applied for the directorship. Well, this time I got it, and the great title: City Librarian. Urban public library directors face incredible challenges these days. It is constantly wearing to fight for the money, encourage the staff, be the public face of the library, and try to satisfy the public. In many ways you wind up not having much of a private life, and I also was giving to the profession and to community organizations. In short, after almost 6 years I was burned out.

I had the opportunity to move to a position half-way across the country which would give me a fresh start. I moved, leaving much behind, to a very homogeneous community. There are absolutely wonderful staff in that library, and some great library supporters in the community. However, things did not work out, and I left the position after just over a year and half.

I then moved south. After a while, I had the opportunity to work for the state library. Now, I had had many dealings with the state library in my prior two states, but here was an opportunity to see it from the inside. It was also the chance to work with library directors from all over the state, and to do something I always loved: statistics. That is what got me the title of "Library Consultant" and "State Data Coordinator." After almost ten months, I was given additional responsibilities as the Head of Reference, which I wrote about at the time.

I have moved twice to follow someone (to Arizona and to Louisiana). I had someone move once to follow me (to Connecticut). I have lived in places that I never would have expected, but I have loved almost every minute of it! Just remember to say "yes" and you will never know what will happen next.

Early April Links

2010-04-09T18:21:00.001-05:00

Just after I posted about the Julie/Julia project, East Baton Rouge Parish Library posted about Julia's kitchen! [Note, their posts are frequent but usually short, and great promotion for some aspect of public library service.]

I don't remember where I picked up this great post on managing your Gmail account. (Now I just need to do it!)

Stephen Abram has done a series of posts accumulating the various studies on the economic value that libraries bring to an economy. The public library list is here.

Then there is the EBSCO dust-up.

Meredith Farkas asked Has EBSCO become the new evil empire?
Sarah Houghton-Jan [well respected as The Librarian in Black] reflected Unethical Library Vendors: A Call to Arms for Libraries to Fight Back
Meredith further noted A lot of Davids make one heck of a Goliath

Eric Hellman (and you have to love the name of his blog: Go To Hellman) wrote an interesting non-librarian post about cataloging and the library role in helping to identify and organize information. It is well worth a read.

Barbara Fister wrote a long post about the relationship between publishers and librarians. (While I did link to it, let me admit I have not read it. I expect it to appear in an upcoming issue of Library Journal. I hope to be able to read it more reflectively there.

At PLA last week (or the week before?), a company announced DRM-free, downloadable music for libraries. I will say, about time!

Peter Bromberg wrote up Five Tips for Successful Webinars which I picked up from iLibrarian.

Personal note: I will be off on vacation next week...a brief trip, out of the country, and will be completely "un-plugged." I know that part of that is good. I will admit that I am not looking forward to the electronic piles which await my return. Oh, well.

Cooking/Julie & Julia

2010-04-05T21:08:00.006-05:00

Those who read the blog directly will notice that Julie and Julia has moved from "current" to "read."

One of the things I received/retrieved at Christmas-time was my mother's copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It is a volume which I purchased for her as a gift back when I was in high school and worked at the local public library. [Somewhere is her copy of MtAoFC Volume 2, but my siblings have not found it yet, which was also a gift.]

I saw the movie (and loved it), and then went and read Julia's My Life in France before tackling the Julie Powell book. I think that having seen the movie first, and having read Julia's book before Julie's book, helped me enjoy the Julie/Julia project better.

Now, I will also admit that my memory of the Julia book (i.e., MtAoFC) had been of my mother making Lobster Bisque (which is not in volume 1, and must be in volume 2).

Later this summer, I will be retrieving some items from my storage locker in Wisconsin which includes a kitchen Dutch Oven which will let me try some of the recipes in this volume.

Would I ever do what Julie Powwell did? No way! Do I admire what she did? Absolutely!

Books and E-Books

2010-03-24T19:47:00.002-05:00

Whither e-books? (And will there ever be agreement on the spelling?)

This started as a collection of links, which has suddenly grown.

I was reading Publisher's Weekly, when I came across a column by Cory Doctorow which talked about the recent discussion between Macmillan's CEO and Amazon's CEO over the pricing of ebook. One person commented: "This was the best break down of the Amazon vs. MacMillan slap fight that I have come across."

Tom Peters posted earlier today in ALA TechSource about how some Kindle owners (Kindlistas) are using the Amazon ranking system to show displeasure with some of the pricing schemes (which the publishers want...) It is an interesting read.

The same print issue had an article on booksellers finding the balance between print and electronic. It is also worth a read.

EBSCO announced that they are buying NetLibrary from OCLC. There is a good piece and reaction from Eric Hellman. In it he notes: "NetLibrary was a bubble-era dot-com that was the first company to try to make a business of creating, aggregating and selling ebooks." [I swear that somewhere I still have the NetLibrary bag from an ALA conference, Chicago 2000, maybe?] It is a long post, and like most of Eric's, very thoughtfully presented.

Stephen Abram posts the key concepts from a Michael Mace article "Why E-Books Failed in 2000 and What It Means for 2010."

And before I slide over to print, Eric Hellman posted just a couple days ago about the new Overdrive offer in a post called: "Overdrive to Offer Honor System eBook Lending for Libraries." He starts off talking about Newark (NJ) light rail, and segues into the DRM-free books being offered. [Of course, the announcement is timed with the PLA Conference. Oh, how I wish I could be in Portland (OR) for that!]

Finally, on the print side of life, The New York Times has an interesting article called "Text without Context."

#450 - March Links

2010-03-17T11:56:00.000-05:00

Here is post #450! Wow, who would have believed that I could be that prolific. This blog started in July 2005, inspired by then-Council colleagues Rochelle Hartman (Tinfoil and Raccoon -- now somewhat dormant) and Jessamyn West (librarian.net).

Here are the links I have stumbled on recently:

Eric Hellman (one of my new favorites) had a chance to chat with John Sargent of Macmillian about e-book publishing and libraries. He does a great write up, and the comments are also interesting.
Eric Hellman (again) forced by lack of electricity due to the weekend storm in the Northeast, went to Starbucks, and had some interesting, further thoughts on e-books and their distribution.
Jason Giffey writes about copyright and the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act" in an interesting discussion of copyright and the DCMA on his blog Pattern Recognition.
A college classmate, Dan Woog, wrote about the Westport [CT] Public Library and the additional services they provided during the recent power outages in the area caused by storms. My friend Maxine Bleiweis (the library director) is featured.

ALA Candidates - President, Treasurer, Council

2010-03-17T11:50:00.000-05:00

ALA election ballots are about to go out. I have had a couple of requests to list the folks I would endorse for office.

I know and respect both of the ALA Presidential candidates. I have had the opportunity to work, and socialize with both of them over the years. I will be voting for Sara Kelly Johns. Sara's web site is here. Sara is a school librarian from upstate New York. She has been president of AASL, and is a very dynamic speaker. (I was also flattered that Sara called me very early on for advice.) Sara has been reaching out to other parts of the profession, and has served as a trustee for a public library in New York. Here is her response to the questions from the Public Library Association about the biggest challenges facing public libraries today.

For Treasurer, I am endorsing Jim Neal. Jim has been very involved with ALA finances over the years. I think he has vision and can articulate the important financial issues which ALA inevitably faces. He has a very simple web page which states his credentials.

The Council list is longer. Here are the folks I will be supporting:

Larry Romans (current Executive Board member and articulate member of Council)
Pam Sieving (Pam has been at-large and the RUSA Division Councilor)
Nann Blaine Hilyard (friend from PUBLIB, also served on Exec Board with me, been on Council several times)
Thaddeus Bejnar (former New Mexico Chapter Councilor, and former chair of the Constitution and Bylaws Committee)
Gladys Smiley Bell (former president of BCALA)
Matthew P. Ciszek (a friend on Facebook and Twitter)
Karen E. Downing (just finished her PhD)
Loida A. Garcia-Febo (president of REFORMA)
Sarah Smith (library school student at Simmons, who was persuaded to run at Midwinter in Boston - we need the voice of students in Council)
Janice Greenberg (Facebook friend)
Jason Griffey (blogger-extraordinaire)
Erlene Bishop Killeen (school librarian from Wisconsin, has a good level head)
Charles Kratz (current Exec Board member who also has a good perspective)
Mary Mallory (ASCLA colleague and advocate)
Bernard A. Margolis (New York State Librarian, even though he is not well at the moment, Bernie is an important voice)
Michael L. Marlin (ASCLA colleague and vocal advocate for people who are blind)
Melora Norman (public/academic librarian from Maine, former chair of COO)
M. A. (Peg) Oettinger (retired school librarian, now from Pennsylvania)
Michael Porter (Libraryman ... need I say more?)
Susan Roman (Dean at Dominican's library school, and former development staff at ALA)
Patrick Sweeney (up and coming California librarian)
Bill Turner (former DC Chapter Councilor, current chair of Resolutions Committee)
Patricia Wand (academic librarian who I got to know while working on the beginnings of ALA-APA, Pat is also a good thinker)
Larry Nash White (Library Educator and statistics guy)
Tom Wilding (at the U of Arizona library school, another good thinker from the origins of ALA-APA, Tom has also chaired committees)

That's my list!

Louisiana Library Association Conference 2010 Wrap up

2010-03-12T16:30:00.001-06:00

Here is a summary post with links to all of the now updated posts from the conference.

Note that the two book cart drill team performances are posted on YouTube. That link was added to the first post, and is here as well. The two teams were from Ouachita and East Baton Rouge.

There are also photos on Flickr.

I also worked at the State Library booth for a shift, including helping to pack it up and return it to the State Library. I took advantage of the opportunity to visit the LSU Museum (for free) as one of the programs. There was not a lot to say, and they did not allow photos of the exhibit. You will see some photos from the museum window.

I am not summarizing the business meeting, which is being run very quickly and run very well. It will be followed with awards and a reception.

Your web applications on your space

2010-03-12T10:58:00.003-06:00

Laren Niemla, from ULM posted her presentation and handout on her personal web site. Of note is the fact that her PowerPoint presentation includes her own notes for the presentation.

What I have below are some notes and highlights.

The theme of her presentation was about why libraries should use their own web app, what is available, finding a host site, and how to maintain it.

She noted that not everyone can come to your library, if you site looks like junk people may think your library junk. She noted that the NY Times has blogs which may or may not be by Times staff members and may or may not be edited to the same standards as the printed paper.

She suggested that you need to meet your needs. Do not find application and then find needs which it fills. Find your needs, then find the application.

She noted that librarians are far ahead of other people in their adoption of Web 2.0 – we already regularly use software like php and mysql.

Hosting is a big deal, especially if you don’t have control. You need to be sure to find a hosting service that meets your needs. Hosting space is very competitive, and there are many choices. In making your decision you need to know what databases they have, and how many you can have at a time, what programming languages are available. And perhaps the most important is what support do they have?

She talked about WordPress which is blogging software that can be installed on your own host.

She noted that it is almost always true that upgrading is harder than the original installation of the software. “It is just a reality of the Internet.”

She concluded with the important idea: You can do almost anything.

Copyright for Librarians

2010-03-12T10:06:00.008-06:00

Robert Bremer, Head of User Services at the Louisiana Tech Library spoke about copyright in libraries with a very strong focus on copyright in an academic library setting.

[Handouts gone, he will email me, I will add links.]

Fair use is the key.

Authorizes teachers to make some use of works for educational use with out the author's permission

Don't use mechanically, requires judicious use

Institutions need to give guidelines. Most institutions give bare outlines.

Three approaches: Georgia State U: all fair since it is ed use
Risk avoidance: nothing is fair
Logic: apply on a work by work basis.

Georgia State U: "All nonprofit educational use, no matter how much and no mttaer how long it is used, is fair." In Cambridge University Press v. Patton complaint (2008). In GSU administration was not paying attention, Blackboard allowed use to anyone (not just GSU student). Faculty also posted huge amounts of information.

Risk Avoidance: capitulation hidden in veil of legal analysis. "Reliance on fair use always involves some risk & public institutions are prone to be risk averse, so use a licensing clearinghouse & avoid all risk, especially now that publishers are suing univerisites for copyright infringement.

Logic: Sensibly employ the principles of fair use each time you incorporate another's work into an instruction aid. If you are re-purposing the material and use it only for that purpose, you are OK. Federal courts use common sense and "rule of reason." Cases in this area are almost as old as our country.

Look at the specific wording of Section 107 (17 USC 107). Important to review all four factors listed in Section 107. Supreme Court has added to the list "parody." Education is specifically exempted both in the preamble and in the list of factors.

If it is your own work, copyright is not an issue, nor if it is "out-of-copyright." If you are simply copying the whole work, it is a problem. Look for a case involving UCLA.

How much of the work is being used is an important consideration. If you do provide copies, do provide attribution. The courts have been clear that it is not a numbers game. (He used the analogy of the definition of obscenity by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart: "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.")

Materials must be available only to enrolled students, and must be removed, reviewed, revised, and remounted at the end of each marking period.

Non-print formats have exemptions for educational purpose which include face to face instruction (17 USC 110(1)). The TEACH Act covers only "accredited" non-profit institutions and covers online instruction.

Digital Millennium Copyright Act does not address fair use, but it does prohibit the circumvention of copy protection.

It is important to pay attention to "best practices" set up by media communities to define fair use for the group.

There are best practices on fair use as well as guidelines. The Conference for Fair Use (CONFU) put together a report that they could not agree. There is a report on fair use guidelines here.

ALA has a copyright slider to figure out if a work is out of copyright.

You can pay for permissions to get rights to avoid all risk. You can buy many rights for articles from the Copyright Clearance Center. For performance rights, you can get them from Swank Motion Pictures who will either sell them or tell you where you can get them.

Interlibrary Loan (ILL) is covered under Section 108 (17 USC 108), with Section 108(g)(2) specifically for ILL. Rule of 5, means that five articles per year per title are permitted, and 5 copies of a copyrighted book. CONTU set standards in 1978, and has become the standard.

Wrap this up in kernel: Fair use lets you use copyrighted items for educational use if you are re-purposing (criticism, analysis, compare and contrast), and only using as much as you need.

Rob answered questions from the floor, including an interesting question about re-print. He did narrow his area of expertise to copyright for instructional aids.

State of the State Library

2010-03-11T16:55:00.003-06:00

State Librarian Rebbecca Hamilton began her presentation with an overview of where the State Library is, mid-year budget cuts, and where the library is going.

The state is facing $1 billion deficit this year. Every state agency is taking a cut. For the state library, the mid-year cut is very minor $107,000. Not bad for the Library because the Library spends a lot of money on the front end.

The presentation which will be on the web site, has many graphs. Over the past few years the State Library has lost seven positions as well as funds from database budget. In 2005, the Library restructured after the storms. One of the arguments that the State Library makes on behalf of the Library is that the SLOL has already streamlined, back in 2005.

As a point of reference, the State Library pays a total of database costs of $650,000 for access for all of the libraries in the state, if libraries had to buy, it would cost libraries in the aggregate $8.5 million.

Without state-wide initiatives, almost 2/3 of the budget is personnel. Next largest is Inter-agency transfers for building and grounds costs.

Almost $4 million is spent in providing direct services to public libraries. All cuts to date have been taken on the operational side. Cuts in the future are likely to be made from the direct services to public libraries. These include: databases, ILL, delivery services, Internet, direct state library aid, services to the blind and physically handicapped, and workshops. Lots of discussion at the highest levels about cutting direct aid.

Rebbecca expects the cut to be about 3.8% of the budget which will affect the federal maintenance of effort funding. A cut of $364,000 in state funds would result in a loss of $100,000 in federal funds. For federal funding, the library also needs a 5-year strategic plan which requires a matching funds where the total budget for any federally funded project has 66% federal dollars and 34% state dollars.

The Louisiana Book Festival has been incredibly successful. It is ranked the second best festival to attend for authors. It has been a good tourism/economic development driver. The Festival has also provided more programs including a huge increase in the number of Letters about Literature.

SBPH has sent new digital players to over 1,200 users. Expect to add 2,000 titles this year. Concern is that this program affects only 7,000 people, but it is the only program in the state.

Other current programs include a very important and successful Leadership Grant from IMLS, Statwide staff days (that were so successful that this year it was done in two separate locations), public libraries have site visits by SLOL IT staff. The State Library of Louisiana was the first organization in the country which had a course approved for the ALA-APA Library Support Staff Certification Program. Twenty staff completed the class, a first in the nation.

What is next? SLOL successfully applied and has been notified that it received an $8.8 million BTOP grant. It is a 3-year grant. Had started with a cooperative app with other agencies which would have served just the Delta. Pulled out to do a grant for the whole state. It was ranked #1 by the Governor's office of all grants from Louisiana. Staff deserves great credit for the success.

SLOL is applying for Round 2 with a larger grant, the deadline is Monday, March 15.

Summer Reading Program has been a huge success.

The State Library is moving to a new software for web training sessions. The SLOL is working with the library school at LSU to have a web site for every library in the state. Recently the bandwidth for the State Library has been upgraded.

A question was asked about not the upcoming legislative session, but the one after, and Rebecca is concerned, but does not know what will happen. She worries about what will happen. Do the people that matter understand what it is that libraries (public and the State Library) do in providing service to the public.

Tweet, Tag, Connect: Using Social Networking in Your Public Library

2010-03-11T15:40:00.002-06:00

Staff from the Terrebonne Parish Library did the presentation. Lauren Ledet and Tracy Guyan.

Much of the discussion is on the Facebook "Fan Page" and differences between the two.

As a library they have a profile page, and do not see much use. See a lot of spam, marketing from authors on the profile page. For the general public, most use the fan page. For events, you cannot "invite" people who are fans, even though you can invite those who are "friends" on the profile page.

The fan page is linked to their Twitter account. One disadvantages is that Twitter is limited to 140 characters. They use tinyurl.com for shortened links.

They have a MySpace account, but are finding that the volume of use is very much lower. Also feel like Facebook is "more professional."

As the administrator of their Facebook page, they can see demographics of users. In Terrebonne, Lauren is the only one who posts. Some libraries have multiple posters. In Terrebonne, Lauren does post at the request of other staff (like her director!).

Use Facebook for marketing of events, and Lauren showed several examples. She has "friended" all of the local reporters so that they get all the updates and tweets. Tries to post every day, takes about 30 - 60 minutes distributed over the day. Because it is for the whole parish system, she tries to be sure to post for each of the locations.

They do not promote at library card sign ups, but do promote it in newsletters and signature files for email. An excellent question about choosing between Twitter and Facebook. Lauren noted that she deals with more people on Facebook, and with more organizations on Twitter.

Ouachita Parish Library is using links to promote summer reading and expects that the use of the Facebook page will skyrocket.

Tracy mentioned that they do not have a policy on social networking. They monitor what is said, however.

Tracy talked about "Text a Librarian" service which costs them about $1600 per year [originally incorrectly posted as $16,000 per year -- Lauren corrected me]. Cost is based on how many people are available to answer a question. She demonstrated the service. For them, they use Meebo to integrate all of the chat and message services. There are set hours, and there is an auto-response for when they are closed. It does have templates to answer common questions (like hours). For the people answering there is also a toolbox of commonly used URLs. Not a high volume serve.

Some of the libraries represented in the audience have much higher use (1,800/month in one). Those libraries market directly to teens, and encourage them to save the number when they make the presentation.

Terrebonne has a Meebo widget on the web site. Meebo is answers questions only at the Reference Desk at the main library (the branches are small, and have very limited staff). They have a poll on their web site.

They have also posted some things to YouTube including how to use databases, Interlibrary Loan, how to use "Text-a-Librarian," and other events. They had a former staff member who had also been a film maker so the quality is good. They have a total of 19 videos posted.

The Reference Department also has a blog. They monitor what is posted. It reflects the color scheme of the library web site. Staff will post items relevant to the date, and they repeat some of the items from Facebook/Twitter.

They had a spike in users when the offered workshops on how to use social networking sites.

The Library Director noted that when they added Facebook, etc. on the Library's site, the schools were required to block the site.

Discussion continued, but I want to add this before the session ends.

The Agile Librarian's Guide to Thriving in Any Organization

2010-03-11T12:45:00.001-06:00

Great program by an LSU prof who has a lot of field experience and has written a book by that title.

She has condensed her book (and what had been a day long seminar) into just less than 2 hours.

Here are the topics she covers (and titles of the chapters):

Know your value to your organization
Delight your clients
Expand your political influence
Please your boss
Impress decision makers
Choose an instantly credible professional image
Ensure positive communication
Marketing, advertising[,] and public relations
Gathering and using evidence to support decisions
Behaving ethically
Sustaining your green and growing career

She covered each topic and had some good examples for each one (and sometimes some very interesting war stories...)

One of her strong points was about building relationships. When she sees cuts, she asks, "what was their relationship with 'their' librarian. Is that what caused the attitude?"

Her final slide was a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. (bold added for emphasis):

Some of us, of course, will die without having received the realization of freedom, but we must continue to sail on our charted course. We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinte hope. Only in this way shall we live without the fatigue of bitterness and the drain of resentment.

Great program.

LLA Opening General Session

2010-03-11T10:45:00.006-06:00

The program began with remarks by Melanie Sims (LLA President). She thanked the sponsors and those who produced the conference. She introduced Jim Lorenz, Chief Administrative Officer for East Baton Rouge Parish and representative of Mayor-President Kip Holden. He made the usual comments about libraries and having a special place in his heart growing up in Alexandria. He ended by talking about our attendance at the conference with a joke, “keep spending your money here, we need the sales tax revenue.” He then read the proclamation declaring March 8-12 Louisiana Library Association Week.

Melanie the introduced board and mentioned the display in the lobby in memory of Sallie Farrell. ALA Chapter Councilor Stephanie Braunstein read the ALA Memorial Resolution.

Melanie then introduced Camila Alire (ALA President). [Disclosure, I have known Camila for about 15 years. We began on ALA Council as Chapter Councilors at the same time.]

Camila started by noting that she has eaten all over the world, but she had her best meal at Juban’s in Baton Rouge. She also noted that the ALA Annual Conference will be in New Orleans in 2011. As ALA President she has two initiatives, the one she talked about today is the main one. There was a great all day workshop yesterday with good attendance and covering the advocacy topic in detail. Below are some notes based on her talk and slides.

Advocacy from the front lines.

What is advocacy – active support of a cause or course of action (or supporting a group or person).

Traditional types of advocacy: legislative where library administrators, trustees, friends, and general public (library users primarily). Spokane Moms for school libraries in Washington state. Frontline advocacy includes librarians and library support staff (not administrators).
Two simple concepts: be able to articulate the value of our libraries [story about talking with NMLA members who had two reactions: “deer in headlights” not my job; my director will not allow that]; value as library employees. i.e. what can the library do for you.

Need staff to serve as connectors and talk with everyday users. Talk about what the library has. These new users will become the grassroots folks who will speak to support the needs of the library.

Camila used as an example, the University of New Mexico Library's quest to increase their base budget for library materials. They were successful, ultimately, by enlisting staff to advocate with their user groups.

Should everyone be involved in frontline advocacy? Yes, as long as the staff are working at their own comfort level. Level I: Based on title/responsibilities; Level II: other librarians and library staff.
Build a team: determine the extent of frontline staff involvement; involve librarians and library staff in brainstorming/messaging.
Empowering staff: match message with venues and delivery methods; provide scripts and/or “cheat sheets” (i.e. talking points or visuals); work with staff for input on process and delivery; staff members deliver the message; meet to assess outcomes.

Library Advocacy? It’s everybody’s job!

At the end, she said “Anyone who thinks they are too small to be effective….has never been in bed with a mosquito!”

ALA web site with tool kits

Finally she answered two questions. The first was about the timing and remaining work on the ALA strategic plan. The second was about what she what to do if school principal will not release funds for books and magazines what to do… The latter was an interesting situational discussion. The first will be covered in a separate post.

The opening general session ended with two book cart drill teams. The first was the Ouachita Girls whose theme involved the Super Bowl Champion New Orleans Saints. The second performance by East Baton Rouge Dewey Deci-Belles with a theme which promotes the Big Read book (this year, The Great Gatsby).

YouTube videos have been posted:

Ideas from the business world that libraries need to think about

2010-03-10T18:34:00.000-06:00

A while back, I started getting emails from Booz-Hamilton and their web publication Strategy + Business. I suppose I have always kept my finger a little pulse on this part of the world because of my graduate degree in business, and my start as a business specialist in public libraries.

There were two posts/articles recently that had me thinking about what they mean for the library world. That is why they are rating a whole separate post.

The first is about a topic near and dear to my heart, the health industry. Readers know that I have had my issues with health insurance carriers. And certainly there is the current national debate on health care. (Well, nominally it is about "health care" when in reality it is about how we will pay for health care.)

This article has much broader implications. First its title: When Disruptive Integration Comes to Health Care. In a way it is talking about how a "mature" industry changes and deals with changes. Besides the obvious (to me) links about how health care funding affects libraries (in our budgets if nowhere else), there is a much broader picture presented.

They talk about disruptive innovators. Let me paste the important paragraph which describes this concept and what is happening in health care.

Disruptive innovators are low-margin, experimental upstart entrepreneurs in an established market, who take advantage of untapped and emergent customer groups and other unfilled opportunities to build new types of business and ultimately reshape the industry. Established incumbents, tied to their existing customers and practices, have a great built-in incentive to overlook the potential impact of these new competitors. Therefore, they ignore them until the upstarts grow large and powerful enough to displace them. It has happened in a variety of industries, including computer components, steel, and media.

So what does this mean for libraries? Well is SkyRiver a disruptive innovator? I have seen a number of articles about how they are trying to provide a lower cost alternative to cataloging using OCLC.

Are there places out there which are offering alternative library services? What about the pay-to-get-an-answer-on-your-cell-phone service so poorly named KGB? (I talk about my opinion here.

As librarians we need to pay attention and to think outside the box.

The second article continues that line of thinking. It is Six Industries in Search of Survival. The industry which most sounded like a library to me was retail banking. I checked out the longer article (pdf) which was noted in the longer piece. Here are a couple of important quotes:

... the focus of banks will shift from acquiring new customers to building deeper relationships with existing ones. Banks must surgically identify and capture growth opportunities within their customer base. To do that, banks must significantly revamp their capabilities and evolve their organizations to: target the most attractive customer segments; harmonize the roles of segments, products, and channels; better align corporate strategy and risk; and pursue sustainable cost reduction, such as rationalizing the branch network.

By 2014, Gen Y will comprise the largest segment of the U.S. workforce and by 2025 will account for 60 percent to 70 percent of the employed population. Given its size, connecting with this generation is a must for banks. To do so, they will need to better integrate their channels and interact with customers through each customer’s channel of choice. More than any previous generation, Gen Y is shaped by the Internet and ubiquitous connectivity.

No matter which customer segment a bank targets, it must reorganize around that customer. ... Most banks remain siloed, with limited cross-product or cross-channel integration.

And then the big conclusion:

Booz & Company research shows that mass market customers prefer to conduct their banking at branches, accounting for 70 percent of traffic and resource consumption, yet they are half as profitable as mass affluent customers. The rise of Gen Y will only put further pressure on the traditional bank branch network, which banks may soon be unable to afford. Indeed, we expect that a major rationalization of the branch network will emphasize electronic channels and alternate formats. In the future, for example, branches may cater to specific customer segments, becoming “wealth” branches or “small business” branches, with fewer generic branches open to all.

Now, I don't see libraries ever failing to serve "all," I could conceive of a network of smaller branches spread across a community.

Some interesting thoughts.