Christina's LIS Rant
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
CIL2007: Notes from our session Innovative Libraries
Thanks to everyone who came - the room was actually pretty full and we really appreciate your support. Jill has the slides posted on her page and she mentioned trying to post her notes on her blog.
In this post I'll talk a little more about my motivations for the study, some comments on what we found, some responses to questions we received during and after, and our intentions for future work.
First, I've attended a few Computers in Libraries and similar conferences and heard some amazing young librarians describe all of the wonderful technologies they've implemented. I wondered a bit at the time how their parent organizations were able to support this what with all of the policy, social, financial and other barriers to innovation. I've also heard many library managers say things like: I wish I had person x at my library so we could do that or there's no way we could implement x because {my boss OR my customers OR my budget OR my policies OR my staff} presents insurmountable barriers. So, on one hand, you have lots of libraries doing all of these amazing things -- presumably with management support -- and you have a bunch of managers who want -- presumably -- to innovate, but see these barriers insurmountable. My hope was that we could talk to some of the managers of "innovative libraries" to see how they overcome these barriers and create the environment that fosters innovation.
This was actually borne out because people during and afterward asked (paraphrased): what about x type libraries and their particular barriers? My manager does x, did your participants provide any advice that might help me? -- Whether or not we were able to help is a question for the audience members :) Note, too, that the actual innovations are not important in and of themselves. That was another question but here's a partial list:
blogs
wikis
checkout processes
DVD management processes
podcasting
rss
teen programming
catalog updates
tagging
Some comments on the findings:
I think the audience expressed some of the surprise that I felt: the constraints on the school libraries are extreme. The financial situations in special, school, public, and academic libraries are so unique that it's hard to understand how anything can be gained by talking to managers across all of these. The customers of special libraries and public libraries are so different. What we found, though, is that some of the strategies are transferable between settings -- or more precisely, with no leading from us, the participants reported similar strategies. Nobody's got the money they need, if they do have enough money, then they've realized long ago that money wasn't the (or their) answer, etc.
From here:
We'd like to make this into a journal article. This should include a few more interviews, maybe, including some of the types of libraries we didn't get a chance to fully explore. Also, we'll need to continue analyzing some more. I think the writing up part will be key, because we need to make the case about what our work actually was and try to get it published where it might help the most people.
At the same time, this is not in my research areas for my doctoral work, so will have to be deprioritized until my schoolwork and ASIST papers are done.
I may add more here if I think of more that needs saying... right now, it's time to move on to my other projects ... If you are a library manager who has problems seeing ways to deal with barriers, consider cold-calling the manger of a library you admire (now don't everybody pick on the famous libraries -- pick someone in your region) and ask if you can talk to them for a little bit and pick their brains...
UPDATE: Jill's notes are posted. It was a pleasure to work with her, too! And she got my name right :) (although Laurel is *not* Baltimore, lol)
In this post I'll talk a little more about my motivations for the study, some comments on what we found, some responses to questions we received during and after, and our intentions for future work.
First, I've attended a few Computers in Libraries and similar conferences and heard some amazing young librarians describe all of the wonderful technologies they've implemented. I wondered a bit at the time how their parent organizations were able to support this what with all of the policy, social, financial and other barriers to innovation. I've also heard many library managers say things like: I wish I had person x at my library so we could do that or there's no way we could implement x because {my boss OR my customers OR my budget OR my policies OR my staff} presents insurmountable barriers. So, on one hand, you have lots of libraries doing all of these amazing things -- presumably with management support -- and you have a bunch of managers who want -- presumably -- to innovate, but see these barriers insurmountable. My hope was that we could talk to some of the managers of "innovative libraries" to see how they overcome these barriers and create the environment that fosters innovation.
This was actually borne out because people during and afterward asked (paraphrased): what about x type libraries and their particular barriers? My manager does x, did your participants provide any advice that might help me? -- Whether or not we were able to help is a question for the audience members :) Note, too, that the actual innovations are not important in and of themselves. That was another question but here's a partial list:
blogs
wikis
checkout processes
DVD management processes
podcasting
rss
teen programming
catalog updates
tagging
Some comments on the findings:
I think the audience expressed some of the surprise that I felt: the constraints on the school libraries are extreme. The financial situations in special, school, public, and academic libraries are so unique that it's hard to understand how anything can be gained by talking to managers across all of these. The customers of special libraries and public libraries are so different. What we found, though, is that some of the strategies are transferable between settings -- or more precisely, with no leading from us, the participants reported similar strategies. Nobody's got the money they need, if they do have enough money, then they've realized long ago that money wasn't the (or their) answer, etc.
From here:
We'd like to make this into a journal article. This should include a few more interviews, maybe, including some of the types of libraries we didn't get a chance to fully explore. Also, we'll need to continue analyzing some more. I think the writing up part will be key, because we need to make the case about what our work actually was and try to get it published where it might help the most people.
At the same time, this is not in my research areas for my doctoral work, so will have to be deprioritized until my schoolwork and ASIST papers are done.
I may add more here if I think of more that needs saying... right now, it's time to move on to my other projects ... If you are a library manager who has problems seeing ways to deal with barriers, consider cold-calling the manger of a library you admire (now don't everybody pick on the famous libraries -- pick someone in your region) and ask if you can talk to them for a little bit and pick their brains...
UPDATE: Jill's notes are posted. It was a pleasure to work with her, too! And she got my name right :) (although Laurel is *not* Baltimore, lol)
Labels: cil2007
¶ 6:06 PM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
CIL2007: Mashups and Why Would I Want One?
Darlene Fichter
(before we started we watched: I bought it on ebay video, standup economist video, monster mash)
We’re at the beginning of this so don’t think – is that all there is – because we’re still on the playground and figuring out what we’re doing
Like how programmers don’t write everything from scratch but call routines to draw windows, etc., Programmers pull information from Technorati, Google Maps, EVDB..
Mashup ecosystem (read/write/program)
- open data
- open set of services
- small pieces loosely joined
- you
Instead of going to IT – “can you do this for me?” – do it yourself with 5 minute customization of applications. Frees up IT people for big problems, big needs, big gains…
News mashup (that’s a University of Maryland HCIL treemap thingy, I don’t think it’s a mashup, but maybe)
Pittsburgh University Library
using yahoo pipes
scopus and WoS feeds, publications by their faculty
output one feed
Easy things to try:
Google Maps, myMaps (but can’t republish on your own web page)
Get started
1) Think of something you want to do
2) sign up for a developer token
3) read the fine print about use
Community Walk
Learn from other libraries or other sites – see what they’ve done.
marker lat=" lng=""
Get lat and long from google maps – click where you want and read it out of the url
Marshall Breeding’s listing of catalogs (?)
Uses a service to convert address in database to lat and long, then uses Google api and lat long markers.
Issues
-In infancy
-Need a better way of finding APIs
-Scale and dependencies (will these be around in a few years and can they support all of the traffic, will API change and require re-do)
-How much to invest
-Right to remix? Rights to reuse data?
-Authority?
-Client side scripts – can’t guarantee what users see
(before we started we watched: I bought it on ebay video, standup economist video, monster mash)
We’re at the beginning of this so don’t think – is that all there is – because we’re still on the playground and figuring out what we’re doing
Like how programmers don’t write everything from scratch but call routines to draw windows, etc., Programmers pull information from Technorati, Google Maps, EVDB..
Mashup ecosystem (read/write/program)
- open data
- open set of services
- small pieces loosely joined
- you
Instead of going to IT – “can you do this for me?” – do it yourself with 5 minute customization of applications. Frees up IT people for big problems, big needs, big gains…
News mashup (that’s a University of Maryland HCIL treemap thingy, I don’t think it’s a mashup, but maybe)
Pittsburgh University Library
using yahoo pipes
scopus and WoS feeds, publications by their faculty
output one feed
Easy things to try:
Google Maps, myMaps (but can’t republish on your own web page)
Get started
1) Think of something you want to do
2) sign up for a developer token
3) read the fine print about use
Community Walk
Learn from other libraries or other sites – see what they’ve done.
marker lat=" lng=""
Get lat and long from google maps – click where you want and read it out of the url
Marshall Breeding’s listing of catalogs (?)
Uses a service to convert address in database to lat and long, then uses Google api and lat long markers.
Issues
-In infancy
-Need a better way of finding APIs
-Scale and dependencies (will these be around in a few years and can they support all of the traffic, will API change and require re-do)
-How much to invest
-Right to remix? Rights to reuse data?
-Authority?
-Client side scripts – can’t guarantee what users see
Labels: cil2007
¶ 5:32 PM| (1) comments |cites (technorati) |
CIL: Open Access and the Federal Gov’t
R. James King
Ruth Hooker Library, Naval Research Lab
Background – more and more competition for scarce R&D dollars, research labs like his measure productivity not by widgets built, but by publications.
Open Access Movement-
“movement” because almost religious fever
Goal: free access to all scholarly lit to enhance research
Gold vs. Green
He’s proposing a “blue” model
- funding focus – “capturing all published literature created by a funding agency”
- (this would affect my place of work*)
- less problem with copyright bcs maintain traditional publishing routes, but use this for capturing final product not pre-print(?)
- using agency repositories
- available to the gov’t but only partially available to the public where possible – ok this causes a big problem with all of the non-governmental research organizations (universities, non-profits, for-profits) who will have an unfair disadvantage when competing with the gov’t research labs who will have free access to all gov’t funded lit (proposing – just suggesting – should be that if you’re funded to do gov’t work, that you have the same access to these resources)
Gov’t and copyright
See overview at cendi.dtic.mil/publications/04-8copyright.html
Their library –
Give the customer the illusion that they have everything they need on their lab bench laptop
They locally load content. 7.6M+ articles
- light archive undergoing testing and migration, not a dark archive
Capturing corporate knowledge
NRL Publications/Products Database
- from print bibliographies
- now use affiliation/address search in WoS
- 1920s-1980s bound reprints (we used to have these, too, but no more) – final version so unlike with pre-prints, you don’t need version control. Also can go back in time
- no author participation required – don’t have to force them to give you a pre-print before they get the kudos from the publishing (requires a lot of trust)
- expertise locator
- “km is an IT person’s attempt at being a librarian” (funny, a lot of KM people *are* librarians!)
CENDI effort to better mark Gov’t employee work that can’t be copyrighted
UPDATE: * inserted above -- my place of work means MY place of work (as in Christina's), not NRL but somewhere else that you might be able to figure out if you're a human and looking at my blog (or perhaps our slides from our session :) ) --- in general I set off my commentary with () or [] -- I guess when I do stream of consciousness, I should better separate what's coming from my mind from what's coming from the speaker... sorry!
Ruth Hooker Library, Naval Research Lab
Background – more and more competition for scarce R&D dollars, research labs like his measure productivity not by widgets built, but by publications.
Open Access Movement-
“movement” because almost religious fever
Goal: free access to all scholarly lit to enhance research
Gold vs. Green
He’s proposing a “blue” model
- funding focus – “capturing all published literature created by a funding agency”
- (this would affect my place of work*)
- less problem with copyright bcs maintain traditional publishing routes, but use this for capturing final product not pre-print(?)
- using agency repositories
- available to the gov’t but only partially available to the public where possible – ok this causes a big problem with all of the non-governmental research organizations (universities, non-profits, for-profits) who will have an unfair disadvantage when competing with the gov’t research labs who will have free access to all gov’t funded lit (proposing – just suggesting – should be that if you’re funded to do gov’t work, that you have the same access to these resources)
Gov’t and copyright
See overview at cendi.dtic.mil/publications/04-8copyright.html
Their library –
Give the customer the illusion that they have everything they need on their lab bench laptop
They locally load content. 7.6M+ articles
- light archive undergoing testing and migration, not a dark archive
Capturing corporate knowledge
NRL Publications/Products Database
- from print bibliographies
- now use affiliation/address search in WoS
- 1920s-1980s bound reprints (we used to have these, too, but no more) – final version so unlike with pre-prints, you don’t need version control. Also can go back in time
- no author participation required – don’t have to force them to give you a pre-print before they get the kudos from the publishing (requires a lot of trust)
- expertise locator
- “km is an IT person’s attempt at being a librarian” (funny, a lot of KM people *are* librarians!)
CENDI effort to better mark Gov’t employee work that can’t be copyrighted
UPDATE: * inserted above -- my place of work means MY place of work (as in Christina's), not NRL but somewhere else that you might be able to figure out if you're a human and looking at my blog (or perhaps our slides from our session :) ) --- in general I set off my commentary with () or [] -- I guess when I do stream of consciousness, I should better separate what's coming from my mind from what's coming from the speaker... sorry!
Labels: cil2007, open access
¶ 12:13 PM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
CIL2007: Andy Carvin's Keynote
CIL2007: Keynote, Andy Carvin (www.andycarvin.com)
Came into keynote at about 9:20.
Current statistics, unlike a few years ago, show increasing participation from demographic minorities so the hope is that if this trend continues, the 2.0 web will look like we do.
War between “old media” and “new media” – today: the war is over – concerted attempts at finding understanding btwn media and blogosphere. “networked journalism” (Jeff Jarvis)
Media outlets are embracing web 2.0 – not only tapping creativity but also profitable
Open piloting – focus group of the whole web 2.0 @ NPR through sharing rough drafts of shows
- Rough Cuts
- Bryant Park
Radio Open Source (PRI not NPR)- Topics/content developed collaboratively on the blog
Trying a similar idea with Talk of the Nation.
Other Examples
BBC World Have Your Say – editorial meetings are broadcast on the internet in the morning.
CNN iReport (http://www.cnn.com/exchange) – citizens submit photos videos, best clips on air, others in gallery (BBC did this for the London train bombings but didn’t have the system automated to the same extent)
OhmyNews (Korean – but now has [some] Japanese and English content) – 20% from citizen journalists, ones who submit consistently get paid
Global Voices (Harvard, Zukerman?, globalvoicesonline.org?) – volunteer bloggers from various places around the world who write summaries of what’s happening in their neck of the woods – bridges. Reuters has now formed a partnership with them.
VoteGuide – students covered California’s 11th congressional district election. Video, photos, attendance at gatherings/rallies/pancake breakfasts. Can this be expanded to all political races?
Came into keynote at about 9:20.
Current statistics, unlike a few years ago, show increasing participation from demographic minorities so the hope is that if this trend continues, the 2.0 web will look like we do.
War between “old media” and “new media” – today: the war is over – concerted attempts at finding understanding btwn media and blogosphere. “networked journalism” (Jeff Jarvis)
Media outlets are embracing web 2.0 – not only tapping creativity but also profitable
Open piloting – focus group of the whole web 2.0 @ NPR through sharing rough drafts of shows
- Rough Cuts
- Bryant Park
Radio Open Source (PRI not NPR)- Topics/content developed collaboratively on the blog
Trying a similar idea with Talk of the Nation.
Other Examples
BBC World Have Your Say – editorial meetings are broadcast on the internet in the morning.
CNN iReport (http://www.cnn.com/exchange) – citizens submit photos videos, best clips on air, others in gallery (BBC did this for the London train bombings but didn’t have the system automated to the same extent)
OhmyNews (Korean – but now has [some] Japanese and English content) – 20% from citizen journalists, ones who submit consistently get paid
Global Voices (Harvard, Zukerman?, globalvoicesonline.org?) – volunteer bloggers from various places around the world who write summaries of what’s happening in their neck of the woods – bridges. Reuters has now formed a partnership with them.
VoteGuide – students covered California’s 11th congressional district election. Video, photos, attendance at gatherings/rallies/pancake breakfasts. Can this be expanded to all political races?
Labels: cil2007
¶ 9:54 AM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
Monday, April 16, 2007
CIL2007: Social Bookmarking and Folksonomies
Change from the program, Ellyssa Kroski is substituting for Jason Fleming.. she'll be talking about the Hive Mind and Libraries. Then we'll have Robert Cagna from Penn Tags.
Kroski's was very nicely done, but really very basic.
PennTags
Rob Cagna
Looking for partners and to make their code open source. Contact info in the proceedings.
-Allows users to bookmark and tag catalog entries. Available on the open web so anyone can view, but you have to be a member of the Penn community to tag.
-Bookmarklets to add tags
-make “projects” to group tags (?)
Bailed and went to Regency e/f for the NLM guy talking about AllPlus metasearch (arrived 4:50)
Showing some aquabrowser-like display with images on right, faceted search, visualization on left
(I must be in the wrong one, whoever is next door has the audience laughing uproariously)
Kroski's was very nicely done, but really very basic.
PennTags
Rob Cagna
Looking for partners and to make their code open source. Contact info in the proceedings.
-Allows users to bookmark and tag catalog entries. Available on the open web so anyone can view, but you have to be a member of the Penn community to tag.
-Bookmarklets to add tags
-make “projects” to group tags (?)
Bailed and went to Regency e/f for the NLM guy talking about AllPlus metasearch (arrived 4:50)
Showing some aquabrowser-like display with images on right, faceted search, visualization on left
(I must be in the wrong one, whoever is next door has the audience laughing uproariously)
Labels: cil2007
¶ 4:13 PM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
CIL2007: Engines for multimedia search
Came in about 15 minutes late (tried another session but it was packed)
Ran Hock
He’s talking now about image search and how the available fields are important in this. Some features are common across.
Flickr has some unique fields
Interestingness (possibly, he says, using implicit relevance feedback)
Camera (he doesn’t see the utility – but for photographers who are comparing models, could be useful)
There is an advanced search, but it’s tricky to find
Audio
Same characters, plus AOL (surprisingly enough), Internet Archive
Other considerations – cached copy at the search engine?
Yahoo – limit to podcasts or other audio, expand to get more options like format, duration.
Exalead – regular search and then you limit it – on the right hand side you get facets to narrow on
AOL – includes search formerly known as singing fish.
Internet Archive – 133,000 (compare to 50M in Yahoo) including live concert recordings (Grateful Dead as a category :) )
Audio – Podcast
Sometimes a lot better metadata – up to full transcripts available to search (either machine or human produced), enclosures in XML so there’s a lot of associated text
Podscope – automatic speech recognition (ASR) – last time when Greg showed this it came up with some funny results.
R.H. doesn’t find the search in iTunes helpful.
Audio – Music
Yahoo music has comparison shopping when you find songs you want to buy
He doesn’t mention Pandora (which has the way coolness factor in my mind)
Video
(seems to me very different from last year with the explosion of YouTube)
He showed us a really, really cool Panama Canal video – he points out how much more info they give on the right hand side – facets to pivot on and do new searches on.
“legitimate” clips to purchase
Video – TV
TVeyes (fee based – has this changed?), transcripts, $500+/mo, good for companies who need to monitor news
Shadow TV
Blinkx (not as current, big database lots of sources, advanced search)
Ran Hock
He’s talking now about image search and how the available fields are important in this. Some features are common across.
Flickr has some unique fields
Interestingness (possibly, he says, using implicit relevance feedback)
Camera (he doesn’t see the utility – but for photographers who are comparing models, could be useful)
There is an advanced search, but it’s tricky to find
Audio
Same characters, plus AOL (surprisingly enough), Internet Archive
Other considerations – cached copy at the search engine?
Yahoo – limit to podcasts or other audio, expand to get more options like format, duration.
Exalead – regular search and then you limit it – on the right hand side you get facets to narrow on
AOL – includes search formerly known as singing fish.
Internet Archive – 133,000 (compare to 50M in Yahoo) including live concert recordings (Grateful Dead as a category :) )
Audio – Podcast
Sometimes a lot better metadata – up to full transcripts available to search (either machine or human produced), enclosures in XML so there’s a lot of associated text
Podscope – automatic speech recognition (ASR) – last time when Greg showed this it came up with some funny results.
R.H. doesn’t find the search in iTunes helpful.
Audio – Music
Yahoo music has comparison shopping when you find songs you want to buy
He doesn’t mention Pandora (which has the way coolness factor in my mind)
Video
(seems to me very different from last year with the explosion of YouTube)
He showed us a really, really cool Panama Canal video – he points out how much more info they give on the right hand side – facets to pivot on and do new searches on.
“legitimate” clips to purchase
Video – TV
TVeyes (fee based – has this changed?), transcripts, $500+/mo, good for companies who need to monitor news
Shadow TV
Blinkx (not as current, big database lots of sources, advanced search)
Labels: cil2007
¶ 4:08 PM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
CIL2007: Information Design for the New Web
Ellyssa Kroski
http://infotangle.blogsome.com
(specifically, most of her content is at: http://infotangle.blogsome.com/2007/04/02/information-design-for-the-new-web/)
(I'm in the overflow room, but in a squishy chair with a desk so I'm staying here... oh and there's also wifi here)
Simple - Social - Alternate forms of navigation
Simplicity
- the applications and their design
- overload of choice from the Paradox of Choice
Trends
- Centered design
- rounded corners
- lower case fonts, sans serif
- simple persistent navigation
- bold logos, colors
- subtle 3d - mirrored surfaces, dropped shadows, gradients, reflections
- (genuine and informal) simple icons
- adding white space by increasing line heights
- star bursts
User interface design trends
- ajax > large tabs, toggling between tabs, drag and drop, autocomplete
- wysiwyg editors for web pages
- previews (like for links "snap")
Social
- Commenting
- sharing
- subscribe
- save for later using whichever social bookmarking software
- what are other people saying (related blog posts, digg)
- share data (mashups)
- social networking
Alternate Navigation
- visual representations
- by user pictures
- by tag cloud
- what's hot, what's popular, what's new, featured } quick digests combined as a zeitgeist
- heat maps (summize -- weird)
- relationship maps
- time (digg swarm, etsy time machine)
- map (etsy)
Summary
evolve and be nimble
http://infotangle.blogsome.com
(specifically, most of her content is at: http://infotangle.blogsome.com/2007/04/02/information-design-for-the-new-web/)
(I'm in the overflow room, but in a squishy chair with a desk so I'm staying here... oh and there's also wifi here)
Simple - Social - Alternate forms of navigation
Simplicity
- the applications and their design
- overload of choice from the Paradox of Choice
Trends
- Centered design
- rounded corners
- lower case fonts, sans serif
- simple persistent navigation
- bold logos, colors
- subtle 3d - mirrored surfaces, dropped shadows, gradients, reflections
- (genuine and informal) simple icons
- adding white space by increasing line heights
- star bursts
User interface design trends
- ajax > large tabs, toggling between tabs, drag and drop, autocomplete
- wysiwyg editors for web pages
- previews (like for links "snap")
Social
- Commenting
- sharing
- subscribe
- save for later using whichever social bookmarking software
- what are other people saying (related blog posts, digg)
- share data (mashups)
- social networking
Alternate Navigation
- visual representations
- by user pictures
- by tag cloud
- what's hot, what's popular, what's new, featured } quick digests combined as a zeitgeist
- heat maps (summize -- weird)
- relationship maps
- time (digg swarm, etsy time machine)
- map (etsy)
Summary
evolve and be nimble
Labels: cil2007
¶ 3:16 PM| (0) comments |cites (technorati) |
Friday, April 13, 2007
