Friday, August 22, 2008
Rediscovering Gems: Easter Island
Elsa Pendleton travels with her husband, who is sent by the Royal Geographical Society, To Easter Island where she finds her passion collecting ethnographic information. Greer Farraday is a botanist who specializes in paleobotany and who goes to Easter Island to try to find out why the forests collapsed on the island.
The novel is filled with rich information about ethnography, epigraphy and paleobotany. Vanderbes shows the dogged, grueling work of a scholar that may be enlivened by discovery. However, this is conveyed through engrossing stories of the women and the island during their respective stays.
Who would enjoy this: This would be an excellent choice for book clubs and for readers who are interested in exotic places, anthropology and even readers of Jared Diamond.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
iPhones for Students
Stanford has asked a student-run company to develop special applications for the devices including a map and a directory. And, this seems to me the better approach--to use the devices to elicit a program from students and faculty for their best use in education. Computer science students can develop specialized applications, the college newspaper can set up an RSS headline feed, the library can send alerts when new items are available and old ones due. Library students can help organize the podcasts or video downloads available. Professors can produce podcasts or ask their students to make oral presentations via podcasts. In other words, the device can be part of the education experience because mobile devices are part of our world and this is excellent preparation for students.
I am in a distance learning program now and when I was accepted I asked whether an iPod was required. My advisor was taken aback by the question--she said that no one had asked it before. But I had assumed that a distance learning program would take advantage of technology to enrich the experience for students.
We communicate via a bulletin board system and post to that or to some collaborative space such as wiki or Google Documents. I have only had one professor (and I have taken 10 courses) use screencasting with audio. There have been no podcasts, no video lectures, no creative use of existing technology.
Earlier, this year, there was consternation among some in the library community because non-librarians (specifically, people without a Master's) were named in Library Journals annual list of Movers and Shakers. Many people were exercised by the folks upset at the naming of non-librarians because they thought those people were treated with disrespect by the degreed people. And, that is true but is missing the larger point--in my previous field we looked outside our own field to find improvements or new services. This was routine. We actively sought ideas from others that we could use--they did not always work but we tried them and analyzed what worked and what did not so we could learn from that experience.
We have been asked to write about the future of library automation (although I am probaby doing the alternate assignment) but it seems to me that libraries lag behind other industries in implementing new technologies and routinely examining other industries would help libraries adopt technologies quicker and more effectively.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Library Automation Class
So far, I am doing both. I spent a lot of time with the data and there is quite a bit that I am not able to access without a login (which we do not have). I had a number of interesting things in mind to test but I cannot access data that addresses it. I came up some things to test but I am not sure whether they are really appropriate for the assignment.
I am working on the Future of Library Automation essay so that has involved reading about technology trends. I have several lists I am working from and once I identify the trends that I think are relevant to libraries, I am gathering more information on them. Yesterday, I researched more about Service-Oriented Architectures and today is my mobility day.
I will only turn one in--just not sure which one I will submit yet.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Rediscovering Gems: Swimming to Antarctica
Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long Distance Swimmer was published in January 2004 and was written by Lynne Cox, a long distance swimmer who broke records by swimming the Cook Strait, the Bering Strait, the Cape of Good Hope and the Magellan Strait. Through her training she realizes that her body is unusually capable of withstanding extreme cold. She decides to swim a mile in the Antarctic Ocean, a swim conducted in 32 degree water, that she finishes but leaves her with some physical damage due to the extreme cold.
It is a story about discipline and sacrifice. Her commitment to long-distance swimming means that she spends much of her time in the water and is able to spend less time on in-land relationships. It reminds us that obsessions and talent have consequences, that the choices we make affect our lives and relationships.
Cox is matter-of-fact about the problems and focuses on the training, the swimming and all the auxiliary activities she needs to complete them. It is a terrific story and Cox is a terrific writer. She helps you understand why long-distance swimming is so important to her and she works to have the swims mean something to the world hoping that the swim through the Bering Strait will remind people how close in distance Russia and the US really are. Writers often say that they write because they have to, and this is a trait that is found throughout the creative professions. Cox shows that her talent and ability for long-distance swimming became something she had to do and in her book, she shares her successes as well as her challenges. Although this is about swimming, it is indeed a universal story.
Who would like this book: You certainly don't have to be a swimmer to enjoy this book. It is also a good tie-in to the Olympics. Further it is a good book to highlight the importance of discipline and the consequences (the good and bad) of following your dreams.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Visualizing Statistics
I just saw this neat article on "Self Plagarism is in Style about Dewey blobs. Here is the enlarged version. This is a great way of getting more information about what Dewey classifications circulate the most and this would also be a great start to identity areas for weeding.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Rediscovering Gems: The Singular Pilgrim
Beautifully written Mahoney struggles with her belief and the search for God. It is also a memoir describing the end of a relationship and her life as a writer. A simply wonderful book.
Who should read it: Readers who loved Eat, Pray Love and were drawn by its discussion of spirituality. The Singular Pilgrim focuses mostly on Christian pilgrimages but Mahoney does describe a pilgrimage by the Ganges.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Kindle for Distance Learning
One of the reasons that I am so fascinated by e-readers and the Kindle, in particular, is that I getting my Master's in Library Science through an online program and I can see what a terrific market the online learning community is for a Kindle or other reader. Of course, now the Kindle can only access what is available through Amazon or books in the public domain and that would have to be expanded.
For my classes,I access a bulletin board in which the professor and the students post and respond. Through this bulletin board, also access my assignments, find papers to be read and access other course tools such as our wiki. A Kindle or Kindle-like device would allow distance students to easily keep in touch with the bulletin board, get their email and research. The wireless capability is the key along with the keyboard because students could use the device not just to read items on the bulletin board but post as well.
A lot of distance students complain about the lack of community and face-to-face interactions. That bothers me less because I managed a development group remotely for several years. What I would like to see to increase satisfaction in distance learning is improved access and a portable device that I can always carry and like the Kindle, is always connected to a wireless network.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Market Electronic Availability
It is not that I think coming to the library is a bad idea, but this recognizes the fact that many people do not use the library because they do not have the time. When I worked at my previous job (a way more than 40 hrs a week job), I seldom used the library because I could not get there often. I travelled a lot and going to the library took time,I often did not find books that interested me and if I did take something out, I had to worry about whether I would be around when it was due so it was easier to go to the bookstore than go to the library.
For years, I have kept a notebook of books that I wanted to read; the notebook was organized by month so I would know when books were coming out and I kept another couple of pages for books that might be older but had attracted my interest. Now, that I can request books online I seldom use the notebook because I can read about something and add it to my library wish list immediately whether the library is open or not.
I often read articles about the importance of marketing libraries and their services and while I agree that is important it has often seemed to me that these articles focus on getting people into the library, but seldom treat those users who do not come to the library but would still be interested in the services of the library--I think of this as the virtual service population.
This is simply a terrific marketing opportunity--you can use all of the services of the library from home now including getting the items delivered to your home. There have been a number of articles about how libraries should work on creating open spaces and be more like bookstores, but I have always thought that the secret to a successful library is in the service and 24/7 electronic access is a winner.
We recently had a discussion in my class about library blogs and whether they make sense for a library. I think that they do but as part of an electronic presence for the library. Patrons like to come to librarians for suggestions about books, they can come to the blog to get those. I have also seem library blogs featuring things like website of the day which is also useful for your virtual service population and it shows that the library is embracing the electronic world. A library blog part of the electronic strategy of the library and an important component of marketing the new virtual 24/7 library.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Fall Quarter Registration
I always register early on the first day available to me and usually get the courses that I want. However, this morning there was a problem. I registered and got a strange error message but thought that the registration might have gone through, but no luck. I tried several times again with the same result. I sent email to my advisor and she registered me in the class so all is well.
I have looked at the syllabus for Public Library Service and it looks good. I have a lot of questions about funding and administration and it looks like we will address those topics in the class.
This will be the first time that I have taken two courses at a time. I have not been in a hurry to finish and there are plenty of things that I like to do outside of work and school and taking only one class made that possible. However, I am getting closer to finishing and want to accelerate the process. I suspect that I will spend about the same amount of time on school that I do now, but I will just need to allocate that time over two courses rather than focusing so hard on only one.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Rediscovering Gems: Random Family
LeBlanc does not preach or use statistics to make her case--she simply presents these lives as they happen. The women assume their own dignity but for many readers their lives will seem more like fiction than most novels because the women's experiences are so different from the lives of many readers and yet, they started off with many of the same dreams.
While there is much sadness in this book, LeBlanc's depiction of the family and their lives is engrossing, touching and well done. I started out wondering how she researched it but quickly fell into the story of their lives.
Who would like it: People who like family sagas, but more realistic ones. People who are interested in sociology and city life.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Vendor Analysis
Symphony is the product that we use in my library and I have a much better understanding of the features, the migration necessary to move from Unicorn to Symphony and a greater understanding of the information that is avaialable to SirsiDynix customers. For example, they produce detailed Release Notes so you can find what has changed or been added in each new release. I have always asked for Release Notes whenever we had a upgrade and none were ever provided to us but now, I can find them myself.
All-in-all a very worthwhile project.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Rediscovering Gems: The Lymond Chronicles
Dunnett is a superb author and she handles the sweeping history of the Lymond Chronicles with ease. Clearly the books are lovingly and exhaustively researched but the reader is in the hands of a wonderful storyteller so the history comes through as part of the story not like a lesson.
There are several reading guides available for this book including this site put together by Random House that includes images of all of the books, a history and reader's guide to the books.
Wikipedia has a terrific entry on the Lymond books which includes major characters, both historical and fictional, and a synopsis of each book.
Dunnett wrote another series, The House of Niccolo, that has a linkage to the Lymond Chronicles. A link to the family tree of the House of Niccolo is available through the Wikipedia link above. However, if you have not read the House of Niccolo you may find that the family trees gives away an important revelation in the final Niccolo book (I have not finished the Niccolo books so I have not yet checked out the family tree because I do not want the surprise to be spoiled.)
Who would like this gem: People who love history would love these books and the success of the Patrick O"Brian books and the rediscovery of the Horatio Hornblower books show that there is a readership who enjoy books that combine history with a sweeping story. And, Lymond is a wonderfully romantic creation and these books will appeal to those readers who enjoy a romantic figure at the heart of the story.
Friday Feature
Libraries are like Netflix in that they have a tremendous backlist--a lot of wonder books, movies and CDs that are gems but undiscovered ones or ones that simply need to be rediscovered by today's patrons.
Friday is going to be Rediscovering Gem day. Each Friday, I will feature a title that I think would appeal to today's readers if they only knew it existed. I will also point out ways that I think that these books can be publicized by the libraries.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Personal Librarian
For example, book displays are great but only work for patrons who come into the library. I also like the idea of a library blog that features new titles but I wonder whether this has been studied and if it is effectly. Clearly, this would depend on a number of things: Is the blog updated frequently? Does the writer have an interesting voice?
Hairdressers keep index cards on file about their customers. They update it when the client requests a new hair-do or comments about considering a new style. They probably add information about how the hair looks during very hot or cold weather and makes a note to themself to suggest that they recommend a treatment or style to the client next time. I would imagine that they also update the cards with personal information about the client so the next time they see the client they can be sure to ask questions about an event the client recently attended or ask about a member of the family that they discussed in a previous visit. It makes the client feel that the hairdresser listens to them and remembers what was said.
So, why can't we do this for patrons? In a larger library, this would be difficult but even in a larger library there are patrons who are regulars that you develop a relationship with--can't we be more proactive about recommending titles for them? In one of the branches, a patron who identified herself as an infrequent reader and user of the library, came up to me at reference, showed me a book that she had just read and asked for one that covered similar topics (women in the Middle East). I found a book for her and she was delighted and told me how much she enjoyed the previous book and was looking forward to reading this one. At the end of our conversation, she asked me to start thinking about the next title that I would recommend. The transaction was quick and I did not get her name, but I think about her often whenever I see a book that I think that she would like.
Blogs, displays and programs are great, better yet we could be the patron's personal librarian, the one who calls them or communicates with them when something that we think they would like come in or is ordered. Personal shoppers do this and I think that it is a model that could be tried in libraries, one patron at a time.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Today in the New York Times
Interesting points in this article include the fact that the device and trial are sponsored by France Telecom and the content will include advertisements as a way of increasing revenue. The article points out that it is difficult to effectively track the viewership of on-line ads through such a device. The article also mentions that the e-reader will eventually be able to access other content such as books although it does not mention any active partnerships.
The device seems to lack a keyboard and one tester mentioned that they would really like to be able to cut and paste articles but that did not seem possible at this point with the device. They are not disclosing the cost yet and the article seem to indicate that France Telecom was considering selling the device for a lower price if the customer bought a contract. Elsewhere in the article, it was suggested that the price may be about $800 which would make it more expensive than other readers such as the Kindle.
Another thing that struck me about the article, although not related to e-readers was the percentage of newspaper readers in various countries. In the US and France, that percentage was in the 40's (48% in the US and 43% in France) but the readership in Germany of newspapers is 73%. One must ask why are they so much more popular in Germany.
Overall, very interesting that this is being developed and marketed by a telecommunications provider rinstead of a content provider such as Amazon with the Kindle.
The other interesting article was a column by David Carr, Hey Friend, Do I Know You? about the increasing use of Facebook for professional users. Carr describes "meeting" and "friending" other reporters online and using Facebook to develop his online network. Sounds like Facebook is moving on from merely being a social, social networking tool, to a business social networking tool.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Showcasing Older Books
One book in this category for me, is Frankie's Place by Jim Sterba. It is about the courtship and marriage of Sterba and Frances Fitzgerald and is most centered in her place in Maine where they stay from June to October. This was a lovely book--about their romance, their lives as writers, their activities and friends in Maine and it also includes recipes. Good ones too--I copied some of them and made them myself.
This is also a great seasonal read. It is a book about summer and is terrific to read during that time of year. Of course, you can also read it in the winter when you are yearning for summer, but for this, this is a summer book.
But back to my original question: How do you share books like this with your reading public? Displays help but I would like to see something more proactive to help readers discover wonderful books that they might have missed the first time out.
Friday, July 18, 2008
What is your Library School concentration?
We got email today explaining that concentrations would be available in the future--back again, I suppose and I looked at the chart with interest to see based on the courses I have taken and plan to take where I fall in terms of a concentration. And it seems that I fit in most closely with Digital Libraries. I wonder about some of the choices they made, some classes would seem to be a better fit with the concentrations than others but overall with a few exceptions, I seem to fit in the Digital Library track.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
A new e-reader
An e-reader that has a keyboard would allow me to take notes and I like the fact that many of the e-readers can hold several books at a time. Imagine going on vacation with one device and not having to tote 10 books along with you.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Typographic Art
I heard about the site, Wordle which allows you to create art from tag clouds. I used my resume to create
this wordle.
It is an interesting visual representation of my career to this point. When I look at it, I see many of the activities, places and concepts that are important to me and I think describe the work that I have done.
You can vary the font and color scheme in this program to create your own wordles. It is fun and illuminating at the same time.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Nearing the End--INFO 780
I am developing new Pathfinders for Choosing a Cat or Kitten and Finding Mystery Novels. I have drafts of both of them and am continuing to research the topics. The research is fun as always and I have found some interesting new sites to include.
I have been working this morning on updating the Celtic Culture pathfinder. The pathfinder that exists is good and well organized but many of the links are now dead and new ones need to be found.
We also have a couple of small things due such as an analysis of our own contributions. I find this somewhat difficult to write but have an idea of how to approach it that should work.
We had a discussion post due this week about technological and social changes that we think will affect digital reference in the future. I wrote about the utility of bibliomining for improving digital reference and also suggested that I think that notions of privacy are changing and that will affect digital reference and the services libraries offer. I expect the privacy part to be somewhat controversial and am interested in the comments that I will get.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
The Fisher Boy by Stephen Anable
Bad things happen in Provincetown this summer, beginning with a dead dog deposited on the steps of the party that always opens the season and a murder of a friend of Mark that soon follows. Added to the usual crush of summer residents is a group called the Christian Soldiers and young blond-hair people who are pan-handling and claim to be from a Scandinavian ship. Added to this is the opening of an exhibit of the paintings of Thomas Royall that includes information about a utopian community that he founded in Truro and that ended badly.
All of this comes together to make a kind of Cape Cod-gothic novel. I doubt that it really conforms to the true gothic genre but there is something about the baroqueness of the plot that reminded me of gothic novels.
As a lover of Cape Cod and a lover of mystery novels, I enjoyed this book greatly.
Pathfinders
I have chosen to update one pathfinder on Celtic Culture and develop two new ones: Choosing a cat or kitten and Finding Mystery Novels. I think that the current Celtic Culture pathfinder is well-organized by needs to be updated because many of the links are currently broken or the website has not been updated in the last few years.
The research for "Choosing a cat or kitten" has been pretty straightforward--there are so many good and active organizations that have published guidelines for choosing a cat. I even found one that includes a strategy for choosing a cat from a shelter with pretty specific guidelines for identifying the cat with the personality that you seek.
The mystery pathfinder is great fun to research but organizing it is another issue. There are so many types of mysteries and some many sites to choose from. Right now, I am listing them and annotating the websites but it will be interesting to go back and figure out the best method for organizing it.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Content Representation
The assignments were quite interesting as well. The major deliverable was a prototype mini-thesaurus and there was also a group project which involved indexing images that are currently held at the Free Library of Philadelphia. There were also two papers assigned to discuss the indexing process and the group process in which we set parameters and agreed on consensus indexing terms.
I found the projects fascinating, particularly the group one that involved agreeing on our indexing terms. It was a fairly difficult assignment, not because of complexity but because of the need to come to agreement. There were times when I thought that terms assigned were, in fact, incorrect, but the difficulty was in finding a way to challenge them that was not personal or did not cause greater problems in the group.
I am sure that this is a real problem in working groups so it was interesting to experience it in this setting. This was definitely one of the best courses that I took in the Library Science program so far. I can see myself referring to the readings later in my career.
Last week, we attended the annual Mayan Weekend and one of the first talks was about whose story or whose version is reflected in books, histories or museums. In many ways, content representation is like that--you determine what subjects best describe a book or image and that effects how a item is perceived and how it can be found.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Londonstani by Gautam Malkani
The book is written in the jargon of the rudeboys and required much flipping back and forth between the pages of the novel and the glossary. I would have been totally lost without the glossary and found the book slow-going at first because of the constant flipping. As I got further into the novel, I picked up both the terms and the rhythm of Malkani's writing.
This is not a book for people who are offended by profane language.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
No one would have believed...
I think that this change is an excellent example of the pitfalls of inside-out design which I have observed in many of the discussions with my classmates in library school. I mean inside-out design to refer to the approach to design which overweights how the individual feels about the product or service. Reactions to electronic books have been typical of this inside-out approach. Many people will say that they love books, love the feel of a physical book and therefore reading books on the computer or on an e-book will never catch on. But, of course, people do read on computers and will certainly embrace e-books if they have certain features such as the ability to search and annotate and eventually decouple the devices from proprietary formats. I must admit that I am looking forward to such a device because I currently carry around several books that I may be reading and notebooks to record my thoughts. The thought of carrying around one device is very appealing and given the positive reaction to the e-ink displays I imagine that it will appeal to other people as well. Of course, maybe this is just another example of inside-out design because it is what appeals to me.
We must be more open to the opportunities that new technology applications bring to our users and even if we do not yet see a role for a device or technology we must become familiar with it and think about how it can be used. Perhaps, we should spend some time interviewing or shadowing the youngest generation of library users and see how they do things.
The dramatic increase in storage capability has made the iPod, digital cameras, powerful laptops and phones that can act as music players and video devices. In 1983, I visited a computer graphics company that did some of the first computer animations. According to Wikipedia, they did 27 minutes of animation for The Last Starfighter and at the time this was considered to be an astonishing amount of animation and this was done on a Cray X-MP supercomputer. I had my photo taken in the midst of the Cray and it was in a single room, incredibly large and shaped like a horseshoe. No one would have believed then that computer animation could be so ubiquitous and that we would now have incredible computer power available from such small and portable devices as our current laptops.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
The Long Tail and Libraries
The three main forces behind the Long Tail are:
- "Democratize the tools of production"--digital cameras, video recorders enlarge the field of content producers beyond the specialist or professional to the passionate amateur.
- "Democratize the tools of distribution"--this is the role played by aggregators such as Amazon or Netflix
- "Connect supply and demand" --this is done by filters such as recommendations in Netflix, customer reviews and list on Amazon. Essentially, a filter orders information so a user can find items.
A library would seem to be both an aggregator and use filters via the catalogs. Most libraries allow searching for subjects as well as authors and titles and one could certainly argue that the filters used in libraries could be more robust and some libraries are attempting that by adding patron reviews or linking to patron lists or even allowing tagging by patrons to help identify items using labels that are most meaningful to them.
In my former career in publications, we found that categorizing was, no surprise, the most difficult part of determining how to organize information and we used to have to mediate disagreements between the professional developers who would tell us the proper way something should be organized versus our need to make sure the readers would be able to find the information and the two were often in conflict. We tended to go with an information organization that the readers could understand (which tended to be task-based) because if the they could not find what they were looking for our work was not very successful.
While reading the book, although fascinated by the 80/20 rule and was reminded that we discussed the 80/20 rule in our collection development class--20% of the items circulate 80% of the time. We talked about the importance of user needs surveys to improve our collection practices and our services in general. I have been thinking a lot about user needs surveys and it is clear that while they are very important they are also extremely difficult to do well and I wonder whether we can get better user needs information from examining the circulation data of our own libraries and other libraries using the library's ILS data. Do our library systems collect data about searches that patrons make that are not successful? We could use that data to determine what items they are searching for that they cannot find and determine whether they cannot find them because the items are not available in our collections or whether there is a problem with their search terms or our categorization? That would go a long way to helping us refine our choices.
Anderson argues for the importance of the filter. Businesses such as Netflix are successful because they are able to distribute older films and less-viewed items such as documentaries. In fact, it is a large part of their success because they are able to distribute many of the older and lower-priced DVD options. Most importantly, people are drawn to Netflix because of the older and more obscure films. They simply have titles not found elsewhere and they make it easy to find them via their recommendations and terrific search capabilities. Right now, many libraries do not have the appropriate terms to search for CDs or DVDs; they do not have fields particular to those media, a director, or an actor or performer might get listed as author since that was the closest field available. I can understand that this might be necessary for older systems and older entries but I was quite shocked in a recent class, that many classmates seemed to think that listing a director or performer as author was just fine. Our patrons are getting used to the search capabilities of a Netflix or iTunes and we owe it to them to produce the best search experience that we can.