iPhones for Students

This article in the New York Times, Welcome Freshman, Have an iPod, indicates that several universities are giving students iPhones or iPods, as they enter the university. The schools believe that the students can use the devices to research in class,use the devices to prepare presentations or download podcasts of lectures. Predictably, there is some concern that students will not use the devices positively but instead will use the devices in class when they are bored. But, hasn't this always been the case that some students will be bored in class and not pay attention (doodling?) but it seems a high price to pay to deny these devices to everyone.

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.

Library Automation Class

I am nearing the end of my Library Automation course (a week and a half to go) and we just got a new assignment. We can either use the data on a specific library site to investigate something or we can write about the future of Library Automation.

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.

Kindle for Distance Learning

I read John Gapper's column in the Financial Times with great interest. He described the battle between the Sony Reader and Amazon's Kindle and indicated that he thought that the Kindle had won. The Kindle has built-in wireless capability, it is easy to get content from Amazon for it (now there are over 145,000 items available), you can easily subscribe to newspapers and blogs and of course, it has a keyboard. Although Amazon has not provided sales figures for the Kindle, other groups have estimated that about 240,000 units have been sold.

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.

Market Electronic Availability

I have been continuing my research for my Library Automation Vendor Analysis and have discovered that SirsiDynix is adding a Books by Mail feature. A patron can specify whether they want to pick the books up in the library or have them delivered to their home or office. Now, clearly there are implementation issues that libraries will need to grapple with, but this feature is a terrific step forward for libraries and should be marketed as being part of an end-to-end electronic capability. Patrons can now request books on-line, track their status, renew them and have them delivered to their home without needing to step inside the library. They can also ask reference questions online and access reference materials from home.

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.

Fall Quarter Registration

I am taking two courses this quarter, a Practicum and Public Library Service. Since I work in a public library and will be using that as my practicum site, I thought that pairing these two courses would work well together.

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.

Vendor Analysis

I am mid-way through my Library Automation course and have been researching the final project, a vendor/product analysis paper. I have chosen SirsiDynix Symphony. The research is going well and I have started writing the paper.

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.

What is your Library School concentration?

People in the library often ask me what my concentration in Library School is and I never really know what to answer. When I started the program, there were a few concentrations available such as digital libraries, school librarian and children's and youth services, but I found some of the courses under the digital library tract (my primary interest)to be ones that I did not wish to take. I have another Master's degree and I took some of those courses, or similar courses previously and I wanted to use the school experience to learn something new. I found out that I did not need to select a concentration and as long as I took the required courses, I could take whatever elective courses I wanted.

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.

Nearing the End--INFO 780

I am 2.5 weeks away from being finished with INFO 780 Special Topics in Digital Reference. There is still a lot to be done. I owe 2 new pathfinders and 1 updated one for the Internet Public Library. And, there is a group project that is due this Sunday. My part has been finished for a while but I missed some things in my draft and revised that this morning. All that is left is putting it together which is work but most of the thought and research work has been finished.

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.

Pathfinders

In my current course in Library School, Special Topics in Digital Reference, one of our assignments is creating Pathfinders for the Internet Public Library. Pathfinder is another word for subject guides which help the user find information or resources related to a particular subject.

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.

Content Representation

I recently finished my 8th course in Library School, Content Representation. It was a truly excellent class. The readings were great, challenging and informative and the professor was superb. When you asked a question or introduced a topic, she was always able to provide more articles to read so that you can learn more about the topic.

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.

No one would have believed...

Lee Gomes in his column, Portals, in today's Wall Street Journal lists his top technology trends of 2007 and one is flash memory which allows people to download and view movies on their mobile phones. He mentions that this is something that young people in particular and doing and it echoes something that Chris Anderson observed in The Long Tail and that is that many young people are growing up listening to music on iPods, watching movies on iPods or phones and generally reading most of their content on computers. In other words, while they are still listening to music, reading and watching movies they are doing this on none of the same devices that many of us used when we were growing up. And, further, these are devices that no one would have believed would either be available or used in this way even 15 years ago.

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.

The Long Tail and Libraries

I just finished reading The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. He writes about how business has been transformed by the Internet and the availability of choices in a business not bound by bricks-and-mortar.

The three main forces behind the Long Tail are:

1. "Democratize the tools of production"--digital cameras, video recorders enlarge the field of content producers beyond the specialist or professional to the passionate amateur.


2. "Democratize the tools of distribution"--this is the role played by aggregators such as Amazon or Netflix


3. "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.

Collection Development

I just finished Collection Development, my 7th course in Library School. The lectures and the readings were excellent, but the overall experience was somewhat marred because the professor was not able to remove files from the courseware interface that were no longer relevant so she had to add her own files on top of that. This led to quite a bit of confusion for example, there were two assignment files; one from the previous course and the one that she wanted us to us. The administration needs to work with her to fix this, I got the impression that she tried, and they were not helpful. The professor was very responsive to questions which was terrific because of the confusion of files.

The content was interesting but not really all that surprising particularly for someone with my background. I found what made the course most worthwhile were the assignments, especially the group assignments. We were divided into groups based on our interests (academic libraries, school libraries and public libraries) and I was placed in the Public Library group with 7 other people.

Our first assignment was individual and it was to critique a library collection policy. The second assignment (a selection and deselection paper) was a group project and the third, a journal article drafted for either the Acquisitions Librarian or Collection Management could be either individual or group.

The group assignments were most challenging, not because of the content, but because it was a group project done completely online. For me, it was an opportunity to re-practice my project management skills. As was the case in many of the previous classes I took, classmates did not want to seem to take charge (this was true even when there were leaders assigned to a project) but given the size of the group and the scope of the project we needed someone to focus attention on the project as well as identify what pieces needed to be written, what decisions needed to be made first in order to start and identify ways to make the final edit easier (since the paper, of course, needed to be written in one voice). The central part of the paper were the title selections that we were proposing, and to make things easier I developed a template, really an example and got approval from the professor. It certainly made the title selections look as though they were written by one person even though everyone contributed to that section.

There were problems, of course: Some people did not contribute at all even though I emailed them several times--I called that to the professor's attention and she excluded them from our project--we assumed that they were doing individual projects and as is often true in group projects, there were some who did everything but the thing that they had signed up for.

I was appointed group leader by acclamation and I must say that I was pleased with the final project (the professor said it was one of the best projects that she had seen and was doubly impressed because it was done with such a large group) but I found the process somewhat daunting in that too many files were flying around and mistakes that had been fixed in earlier versions kept showing up.

For the third assignment, I participated with a subset of the group. Our topic was "Acquiring and Publicizing Scandinavian Mysteries" and I tried to improve on the previous process by maintaining the file myself from the beginning and early in the process merging the sections that other classmates wrote. Then, we critiqed the draft (with all of the sections included) and I made the final edit based on the comments.

In this course, while I certainly learned about Collection Development, what most stayed with me was the experience of working collaboratively online with peers--as difficult as it was sometimes, it was highly satisfying.

Thoughts on Library School

This post by Nicole Engard has been much discussed in the library student community. Many commenters have focused on the distance learning aspects of her experience while at least one commenter indicated that they thought the problems were with library education in general. I am currently in library school and in fact, in the Drexel online program. Some classes are more successful than others: some teachers are better, the content of some classes is more interesting and the students more engaged. Other classes are flat: everyone seems disengaged both the students and teacher and the topics themselves are not terribly exciting. However, I found this to be true in both my undergraduate and previous graduate (both face-to-face) experiences.

In fact, I find that the students in this program tend to be more helpful and supportive than those in my previous programs and I think that has much to do with the people who become librarians. In my other programs, classmates were rivals--it might be for jobs, assistantships or better grades, but I had several group experiences in the library program that while it might have been difficult starting the group--the feedback, the interactions were constructive and downright pleasant.

I came to library school via a large corporation where I managed up to 30 professional employees who were located all across the country. This group meetings happened over the phone or via net-meeting, communication was by phone or email and even performance reviews were conducted over the phone. To do this successfully, we all had to work to make our expectations clear--I checked email throughout the day and sent everybody a copy of my schedule at the beginning of the day so that they would know I might be in a meeting for several hours and not able to respond to email during that time. My group did the same for me. Was it ideal? No, but we figured out how to make it work and even work well. It also allowed us to focus on the work and not get so caught up in the usual workplace soap operas.

And, when this is done in distance education, it works well. Communication doesn't just happen and teamwork doesn't just happen either. I chose an online program for the convenience and because I thought it would make me a better librarian. We have new tools to use for collaboration and communication and while many libraries don't use these yet, they will need to consider them for the future. And, what better way to learn about the tools than to use them while learning

I usually find that even when I am taking a course, I don't love, I find something else to interest me. Maybe it will start me thinking about a new application for the library or I might use it as a springboard to develop project management skills and always it is an opportunity to improve my communication skills because communicating with your classmates only online means that you have to learn to be concise and clear in order to be understood by your classmates and teachers.

Like every other program I have been in, or every job that I have had, you can bring more to it than you need to get by. Since I started the library program, I have discovered library blogs and wikis and new forms of communication that expand what I learn in the classroom and I create opportunities to try those things out. I suppose that I could have done that without library school but I doubt that I would have and I certainly would not have had the professional opportunities that I have had.

Why this blog?

I am in my third career and in graduate school for the second time. I bring to both of those years of education, professional experience and lifelong interests which makes my experience of my new career and my new graduate school experience slightly different from my colleagues in work and school.

After undergraduate school (BA in Anthropology) I worked at a family therapy clinic. However, it was not just a family therapy clinic but one of the best in the world and clinicians came from all over the world to train there. It was a fascinating experience and taught me about people, families, and how one could love one's work. And, it taught me about video which was my actual job.

I took a Master's in Technical and Scientific Communications and went to work at AT&T Bell Laboratories--I stayed at Bell Labs for 18 years through the various permutations of AT&T, finally retiring from Lucent Technologies. There, I learned more about people, organization, organizations, how to write books and how to manage people who wrote them.

Now, I am getting a Master's in Library Science and am working at a library in central New Jersey where I live. All of my lessons from the past are useful here and add to those a life-time love of reading and an interest in applying technology to make information accessible to people and I feel like I have arrived at the right time in the right profession.

This blog will be about libraries, graduate school, what I am reading and trends that I think can and should be applied to libraries and it is an opportunity to continue writing because communication is an important part of any job or school program.