Links - Mid-February

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:

1. the shift from DVD to streaming video (happening at a faster than expected rate)
2. wi-fi saturation [you'll have to read her post for this...]
3. 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."

Links - Feb/March and LLA warning

Well, it is that time of year again, LLA (Louisiana Library Association) Annual Conference. Look for blog posts on Thursday and Friday.

You have to love this title: Data, data everywhere as a special report from the Economist.

I forget where I picked this up (probably Dorothea Salvo) about Open Access. I am only part way through reading it, but the opening analogy/story sure caught my attention.

Iris does a great job at Pegasus Librarian, and since this is "statistics time of year" for me (parish libraries are submitting their annual statistics, due, by law, by April 1), the title How Big is My Library caught my eye.

WebJunction is hosting a wiki and discussion on the future of libraries. Now I just need to find the time to read it!

Now, I don't do cataloging, and it has been a long time since I did any. I also have not followed the development of FRBR and RDA, except in a very broad way. Jennifer Bowen (of the University of Rochester [NY]) has, and has written a pretty clear article on metadata, libraries and the cataloging principles for ALA TechSource.

Eric Hellman had the opportunity to attend the Google settlement hearing and wrote a nice summary (which has links to other summaries).

I recently updated my"ALA 101" posts to reflect name changes in divisions. April Bunn, Media Specialist, has written in Library Garden about the fact that AASL is going back to calling themselves librarians! [My favorite job title was when I was "City Librarian!"]

Peter Bromberg has an interesting take on privacy (also in Library Garden).

Jenny Levine (the tech maven on staff at ALA) has a great post on Library 2.0 including some of the recent discussions. (Like Andy Woodworth's "Deconstructing Library 2.0.")

Starr Hoffman, in geeky artist librarian, has a long (for her) post on the academic library mission. Maybe it is the work I have been doing on MPOW's planning that is keeping me so in tune with this topic, but there are some good thoughts here.

Two web items from AARP (yes, I am that old!). Both relate to changes in the workforce:

1. Communication styles vary between generations; and
2. The demographics of the workforce are changing.
   

One of the themes I used to hear from NextGen librarians was about their insecurity in feeling like they don't really know what they are doing. Most of us will admit that there have been times when each of us has felt that way (no matter which "Gen" you fall into!). Steve Schwartz has written an interesting post on this theme.

This probably falls into the category of folks not completely thinking through all of the implications of a name: iMaxi: Finally, the iPad Gets the Protection it Deserves

One of my college buddies has co-written a very long, thoughtful post about the health care conversation. I am not sure I agree with it all, but it is important to pay attention to the thoughtful items!

This piece talks about how to find things inside slide presentations posted on the 'net. It would seem to be a useful resource.

Dorothea Salvo did something that I should probably do, but won't until after the weekend. She expicitly talks about the shift in focus of her blog, and even edited the tag line. [Stay tuned, folks!]

Tax Form Season

From a post on PUBLIB, I picked up this blog posting in Closed Stacks (a group blog and this post in unsigned).

First of all, the title is great! Tax Season: Who Needs It?

The leading paragraph drives home a critical and growing issue: government agencies unilaterally deciding to end provision of paper forms without considering the impact on either the end user or the library.

In an increasingly paperless world, it seems as though people have decided tax forms, along with birth certificates, death certificates, and wills, are better off in paper form. Unfortunately, the government does not share the same sentiment. For the past few years, they have cut the amount of forms and information they send to libraries, and tell us, “It’s all on our website!”.

The library I currently work in serves all state agency employees, supports the state's public libraries, as well as any one who calls, contacts us, or walks in.

We have a huge collection of tax forms. We are seeing large numbers of people also come in for state tax forms. State forms are being made available in paper, almost exclusively, through public libraries.

In Louisiana only 42.9% of households have Internet access, compared to 50.8% at the national level. Where do various government and business entities think that the unconnected are going to get the forms, or submit the data asked for (e.g. job applications)? They are going to come to the public library.

The role of publishers and libraries

My friend Rory Litwin does an excellent, concise, and thoughtful analysis of the role of publishers. he links it to the role of libraries.

Rory is an interesting person, and knows both sides as a librarian in Duluth (MN) and as the owner(?) of Litwin Books LLC which publishes books and has as its imprint, Library Juice Press.

Nicholson Baker, on my side?

A longtime library gad-fly, Nicholson Baker has an article in the August 3, 2009 issue of The New Yorker. It is about his experiences with the Kindle.

I guess, this is sort of a continuation of the attitude which earned him my personal disdain from back in the mid-1990s. He started with his blasting libraries for getting rid of card catalogs [abstract only...go to your paper copy (grin) of The New Yorker for April 4, 1994 - page 64 - or register on the site.] He followed it up with an "exposé" of the then new San Francisco Public Library. In the latter he found that [no, I was not shocked] that there were more books listed in the card catalog than in the online catalog. Apparently, he never thought about those books which never return, and when most libraries automated, they barcoded/entered items from the shelf rather than from the usually inaccurate shelf list.

Well, back to the present....He gives the Kindle a fair shot. He notes a number of shortcomings, some are technological (grayness of the screen, only one typeface available) and other are part of a bigger issue for libraries (and consumers) like the digital rights management issues. (Kindle books can be read only on the Kindle you used to purchase the book.) He even tested the reader function (I guess he got an early one), and the new Kindle DX. In spite of my prior issues with Mr. Baker, I think he has provided an interesting perspective here.

My friend and fellow netizen Michael Sauers has a much more succinct comment today also.

The Web, meida delivery and blogging

There has been a confluence of the above topics in not just the tweets I get, or the blogs I real, or even the email I get.

I am on the routing list for Publishers Weekly, and recently read the May 18, 2009 issue which has the interview with Chris Anderson by Andrew Albanese (who has written for Library Journal). This was to highlight Chris Anderson's new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price. It is an interesting interview, and I recommend it. At the same time I have a link to Financial Times piece which says "most news websites will charge within a year." It is my memory that the New York Times tried this in the early days, and it failed big time. I know that I don't even like to register to read news, I think that this is a big old FAIL.

On the other hand, Casey Bisson expresses some interesting thoughts in dissecting the old business model of the newspaper business. It is headlined: "Newspaper Business: News was a loss leader!" He talks about trying to monetize the newspaper business, and goes to argue that the Financial Times editor is probably wrong.

Roy Tenant takes the position that print is not dead, in a (usual for him) well-written piece. [He tweeted the other day that there were no comments, I see that there are now seven (7), but make him happy and comment!]

He earlier had a great post on social media pitfalls, and cites the Clinical Reader incident which Iris Jastram covered very completely (and he did not mention...)

Finally, there has been an interesting conversation started by Meredith Farkas called: "W(h)ither blogging and the library blogosphere?" Meredith has been a blogging hero to me, I started reading her blog quite a long while before I started blogging myself. (And I have even had a chance to meet her in person at ALA Annual!) Her comments are cogent, and as interesting has been the conversation on Friend Feed. [Addition 7/23 8:30 am: I should have also noted Iris Jastram's thoughtful piece about the ebb and flow of online social interaction using various tools.]

"The Cloud"

I'm reading the latest issue of American Libraries (April 2009), and got to Meredith Farkas' column on technology. (Meredith also writes Information Wants to be Free -- one of the first blogs I read, and one of my favorites.)

She talks in the column about the model of SaaS (Software as a Service) for delivering software.

It seems to becoming more prevalent, but I have to admit that it is not new. For a lot of years the technology has moved to having more computing power on the client side of our client/server networks, but not only is it an old idea (remember "mainframes" like Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey?) but I sure remember the first "live" library automation systems where there were terminals hard wired to the mainframe.

Two jobs ago, my organization was facing a dilemma. We had received "end of life" notices not only for the software for the ILS, but also for the servers on which it was hosted. At the same time a regional library consortium was moving to its next generation of automation system. Because the consortium had purchased powerful enough software, they "sold" space on the server for our data, and we agreed on a cost for maintenance and upgrades (keeping our own license to the system housed on their machine). It was not long after when the consortium took all its servers and put them in/on a server farm (meaning that local power outages did not disrupt operations). All of this happened nearly 5 years ago. For my organization it represented an opportunity to move to new software and abandon hardware while saving money. (Isn't that every administrator's dream -- better and more services at a lower cost?)

So I guess it is an idea that is coming.

What Meredith does not talk about is the possibility of portable applications on a flash drive. In my current position I have a 8-GB "Data Traveler" which has a whole office productivity suite on the drive, so I am not dependent on anyone else's software set up.