NJLA 2009 — NJ Libraries Rock!

Yesterday, 4/29, I attended the annual NJLA conference in Long Branch, NJ. Here is a brief synopsis:

• Keynote speaker — Paco Underhill, the CEO of a research and consulting organization (Envirosell) that focuses on retail clients. Paco is the author of several classic books on retail, and is an regular contributor on NPR & the BBC. His talk was about how and why we should merchandise our libraries. His presentation was insightful, humorous and contained some great ideas. He gave us examples of how to make the exterior and interior of our libraries more attractive to patrons. He suggested that we use art and objects to highlight our collections. He talked about library signage and why ‘check out’ is a better term than ‘circulation’ for the front desk. A detailed post about his talk is available here – http://sla-divisions.typepad.com/itbloggingsection/2009/04/why-we-borrow-a-talk-at-njla.html
• ACRL/CUS Luncheon — Awards were presented to WPUNJ for technology innovation, TCNJ for research and Rutgers for distinguished service. The lunchtime speaker was Eileen Fenton from Portico — a non-profit organization that offers a permanent archive for scholarly literature published in electronic format. Her talk was inspiring as she outlined a number of ways that libraries can take a leadership role in managing digital initiatives for their institutions. This is something that our director firmly believes in and is working toward through our recent acquisition of a hosted ContentDM environment where the FDU Library can begin archiving digital content.
• IT Section — Ranjna Das, the NJLA webmaster and a college friend of mine, gave an excellent presentation on how to use several Google tools to enhance your library’s web presence and to learn more about the use of your web resources. The tools are Google Analytics, Custom Search, Google Maps, and Feedburner. I have created numerous Custom Search engines and am a regular user of Feedburner. I know that there are others on our library staff that use Google Analytics and I have assisted a few of you with Google Map questions. There is a lot more that we can do with all of these tools.
• Subject Guides 2.0 — this last session is the one that I moderated. The presenter was Sharon Yang, Systems Librarian at Rider University. Sharon gave an excellent presentation that looked at a variety of tools (both commercial and open source) that libraries can use to build interactive, multi-media, web 2.0 subject guides. I came away with a lot of good ideas from this session. Sharon showed us how to use blogs, wikis, and social bookmarking tools like del.icio.us to guild subject guides. She also reviewed some popular commercial and open source subject guide packages, and discussed the pros and cons of each.

Other FDU Librarians were in attendance and should feel free to add their feedback in the comments section.

ELUNA 2009

Next week I will be attending ELUNA 2009 in Richmond, VA. ELUNA is the annual ExLibris North American conference. I hope to learn a lot about Voyager 7.0 and the future direction of ExLibris during the conference. To that end I will be moderating the following session:

V2. Using a Project Management Approach for Customizing WebVoyage 7.0.1
Vani Murthy, Library Technical Services Manager, Montgomery College
Brenda Braham, Digital Initiatives Librarian, Montgomery College
Jenny Hatleberg, Librarian, Montgomery College

This presentation will describe Montgomery College Libraries’ project management approach to customizing WebVoyage 7.0.1. Staff members from Technical Services, IT, Circulation and the Reference department were recruited to work on this project. We created 3 teams that focused on design, usability testing, and implementation. Each team was dependent on the research and subsequent recommendations of the others. We used LibGuides software as a communication tool, since we are geographically divided across three campuses. Presentation attendees will see demonstrations of our new OPAC and the LibGuides interface, and will leave with an understanding of the benefits & drawbacks of our approach.

Copyright Video Makes Copyright Fun!

The Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) created a short video explaining how copyright works.

CCC is making the video available for free for anyone who wants to use it for educational purposes.  The video is available for viewing online and anyone who is using it for educational purposes (e.g. to teach the library staff in your institution) can request a downloadable file by filling out this online form.  The video is quite clever and probably the most digestable explanation of copyright I’ve seen/heard.  Take a look!

Computers in Libraries 2009: Digital Library Track Programs

Below is a summary of the programs I attended at the Computers in Libraries 2009 conference. I attended all but one of the digital library track programs.

Digital Preservation, E-government, and ERM

This presentation had two parts. The first was presented by two National Defense University librarians, Julie Arrighetti and Trisha Bachman. They offered a demo of the MERLN (Military Education Research Library Network) system. NDU keeps archives of web sites and documents relevant to military policy. In this demo, they focused on their Iraq War Collection. MERLN has a set of online research guides called MIPALs. These are subject guides that sift through hundreds of U.S. policy statements and commentaries from scholarly journals and think tanks, providing the archived Web pages and documents with the best and most relevant information. The web pages are saved via Adobe Professional in PDF format, and imported into Content DM. NDU developed their Web archiving process in response to the new Presidential administration—when the new President takes office, the old administration’s policy statements come down from the White House website, and possibly disappear. They have had the added challenge of trying to collocate Barack Obama’s policy statements, as he has chosen a more informal blogging approach to the White House web page. Formal policy statements usually need to be culled from elsewhere. They aim to be a niche version of Google, providing the most relevant military policy information. They were looking to have an interface modeled on the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee digital collections page.

The second part of the presentation was given by Anna Creech and Cindi Trainor, from the University of Richmond and Eastern Kentucky University respectively. They discussed the possibility of end users using ERM statistics and data, rather than just the library staff. Staff currently use ERM for ILL statistics, tracking acquisitions, and other such tasks. In the case of electronic journals, once a user has searched for an article, they are often confused about where to find it. They may get 4 or more entries in a list, and not all of them are full-text copies of the article. They felt that ERM data may help re-sort the search output, showing perhaps the most frequently chosen of the various article options—as with Google, one may assume that the highest-use choice may be the most relevant one. They also discussed the possibility of using free tools with ERM data, such as wikis, shared documents, note fields in A-Z lists, and LibGuides. These tools could be used the add management information to the databases and push it out to users.

Digital Rights Management

I had hoped this session would explain a bit more about the specific limitations of DRM. However, it was more of an overview of DRM in general. When copyright law was mostly about books, the existing laws worked very well. The two laws of importance are the First Sale Doctrine (once you buy a book, you have the right to lend it or resell it), and Fair Use (which allows a photocopy of the item to be made for research use, etc.). Photocopying a whole book does not retain the quality of the original, and originals could not be modified.

Digital media changed a lot of that—not only was it easy to copy, it was easy to modify. Digital Rights Management is actually a cluster of laws, technologies, and licensing practices that extend to the publisher, content provider, and the actual product itself. This ends up extending author and publisher rights far beyond the intent of the copyright laws. It increases the responsibility of librarians to enforce DRM policy, even though they do not have the force of law, and decreases access to intellectual works. The conflict is difficult to resolve, but the main point to remember is that Digital Rights Management should not exceed the intent of copyright law. The presenters suggested 4 possible choices for the future—new DRM policies consistent across publishers that can be enforced within the context of the present copyright law, amend copyright law to include fair use in a DRM environment, encourage new licensing arrangements like the Creative Commons, and educating the public about the social value of the free exchange of ideas.

Moving Libraries to the Cloud

This was an amazing presentation by Roy Tennant and Andrew Pace from OCLC. Roy explained that “cloud” is a metaphor for virtualized resources available on the Internet. These can include infrastructure as a service (hardware capacity), a platform as a service, and applications. The benefits of cloud computing are low barriers to entry (i.e., you don’t need to be a tech expert or have a special tech staff), you can pay as you go for what you actually use, software upgrades are automatic, and tech staff that you might have can spend their time on things more useful than just maintaining and upgrading machines. The drawbacks of cloud computing are that you do give up some control, and are reliant on network connectivity and speed. He gave examples of cloud computing in business, in libraries, and in “machine services”. The latter consist of APIs that add an XML layer to the application, separating the application from a prefabricated presentation interface. A number of library-related APIs are available at http://worldcat.org/devnet. Some of them require an OCLC subscription, others are completely free, but some of them are very cool. I liked the Facebook Worldcat citations application (allows you to search Worldcat from Facebook or your mobile phone and get citations in any format you choose), and Compare Everywhere, a phone application that lets you make comparisons while you are looking at products (i.e., in the store, in the library, etc.). Andrew Pace added to Roy’s discussion by talking about webscale for library management. This involves getting your local information out in a “webscale” environment, giving your users many more choices, and providing many of the benefits of cloud computing.

Developing a Sustainable Library IT environment

The presenters were from the Metropolitan Museum of Art library, and they discussed examples of unsustainable strategies for sustaining library technology. The first example was the “case of the vanished programmer.” This is a situation where someone is hired to do custom programming in a computer language no one else knows, then leaves. It is better to use whatever is available and known. Another example is “web design by committee”. Everyone thinks they are “special” and that they need a lot of interface customization. The suggestion was to work with something proven to work, and easy to use. Open source software and social software applications were the way to go for these presenters. The advantages are a community of support, the fact that they are built to be successful, and their familiarity to patrons and staff. The problem of the “creep of the internal shared drive” was handled by having an internal blog where all shared staff documents were posted. Everyone on staff can post materials, and no one has to wait for a specified staff person to update or add information. The last thing discussed was working with another IT department within your organization. The example given was of an IT department that did not want to meet with library IT staff, nor coordinate efforts. Oleg Kreymer (the MMA systems librarian) suggested that this actually gives the library the freedom to do what they want, if the other IT department isn’t interested. He also suggested informal networking with IT staff.

Computers in Libraries 2009: Keynote speech–Lee Rainie on “Friending Libraries: the Nodes in People’s Social Networks”

I always look forward to Lee Rainie’s presentations. Lee is the Director of the PEW Internet and American Life Project, and the statistics gathered by that group are always interesting. Lee’s presentation on Monday was about technology use in the last 10 years, the emerging “types” of technology users, and how libraries can reach out to those different groups.

According to the PEW surveys, Internet use by respondents between 2000 and 2008 has risen from about 50% to 75%; those owning a mobile phone were about 50% of respondents in 2000, 82% in 2008. He noted that the volume and variety of information flowing into people’s lives has increased, and this increase has brought about changes in the way people filter information. Additionally, the number of places to “experience” media has increased—one is no longer necessarily limited to a desktop computer.

As technological media changes, Lee suggests that most of us are living in a state of “continuous partial attention.” He also suggests that we are a different kind of human as a result: “homo connectus”. Americans today have different expectations about access to information, place, distance, presence with others, and time use.

Based on a recent study done by PEW, Lee took the various types of technology users and broke them down into categories. Generally speaking, there are 2 larger groups with 5 subgroups in each. 39% of these users are motivated by mobility—they love mobile access, and cannot imagine life without it. 61% of technology users are still tied to stationary media (e.g., desktop computers)—they are not entirely comfortable with technology, but feel obligated to use it. The full survey is available at : http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/5-The-Mobile-Difference–Typology.aspx

These are the groups mentioned, and Lee’s suggestions for reaching out to these various groups:

First main group: Motivated by Mobility

First subgroup: Digital Collaborators (8%). Typically a Generation X group, fairly affluent, and on the cutting edge with regard to new devices and technologies. Libraries can reach out to these groups by being a place for them to “jack in” with their devices, by providing a place for them to collaborate, and can enlist their help in library technology experiments.

Second subgroup: Ambivalent Networkers (7%) Feel they can’t afford to be “off the grid”, and are fond of texting and gaming in particular. While they use certain technologies, they do like to have time to be “offline”. This is largely a Generation Y group. They are not e-mail users. (This was a surprise to me, as this is probably the category most of our students fall into—one would expect that they wanted to be connected all the time, but the survey shows that they don’t). Libraries can reach out to this group by giving them a space to be “offline”, offering a gaming haven, helping them figure out the new etiquette of social networking, and helping them navigate information overload by offering filtering strategies.

Third subgroup: Media Movers (7%) Uses the Internet socially to share pictures, videos—do not contribute much in the way of written content. This group also spent a lot of time looking for online health information. Median age of this group was 34. Libraries can reach out to this group by helping them find ways to share their creations, and helping them navigate through materials that they can pass on to others.

Fourth subgroup: Roving Nodes (9%) This is the “soccer Mom” crowd, using cell phones and similar mobile devices to manage their lives. 100% of these users have a cell phone, they use the Internet heavily, and feel that technology gives them control. The median age is 39. Libraries can help by giving them access to the technology they need, help them be efficient with managing lists, time, etc., and by teaching them about cloud applications (like calendar applications, social bookmarking sites, etc.) that can be logged into from anywhere.

Fifth subgroup: Mobile Newbies (8%) Median age of this group is 50—got their first cell phone and it was like a conversion experience. Not necessarily Internet users, demographic is more rural, tend to be less educated. Libraries can help this group by offering how-to material, coaching and mentoring; offering technology access; and helping them learn more about the Web

Second main group: Stationary Media Users

First subgroup: Desktop veterans (13%) Their online life hit its zenith with broadband access. They are not interested in new technology or gadgets. Libraries can offer these users access to good computers and technologies. These users do not need a lot of hand-holding, and prefer self-serve options (like self-checkout, etc.)

Second subgroup: Drifting Surfers (14%) They have the technological tools, but they’re just not into it—classic example are parents whose teenagers monopolize the computer. Libraries should not force technology on these types of users—they prefer traditional services, though they may appreciate technical help/support.

Third subgroup: Information Encumbered (10%) This group feels obliged to use newer technology, but feels overloaded and overwhelmed by it. Libraries can help by being sympathetic, not forcing technology on these users, helping them filter information available on the Web, and perhaps being a referral service in a stressful economy. This group appreciates classic reference skills.

Fourth subgroup: Tech Indifferent (10%) Least likely users of everything, even though they have it. These users would benefit from basic 101 technological tutorials, but you also need to make the case for why they need it.

Fifth subgroup: Off the Network (14%) No cell phones, Internet use—may have tried it, but walked away when they saw no use for it. Median age for this group is 67. Libraries need to provide traditional services and community activities for this group.

Lastly—Lee summed up with the 5 things a “friending” library should provide:

• · Pathways to problem solving
• · Pathways to personal enrichment
• · Pathways to entertainment
• · Pathways to new kinds of social networks built around people, media, and institutions
• · Pathways to the wisdom of crowds