PLA Blog

ALA Session held Monday 1:30-3:30

OK, I’ll be honest and say that although I found the summary of this program enticing, I wasn’t sure if I’d spend the whole time at the session. It appeared to have an academic focus, and come on - it’s technical services and I am SO not a technical services kinda gal, so I staked out a seat close to the door so I could make a quick, unnoticed getaway if necessary.

It wasn’t necessary. This session grabbed my interest, piqued my interest, and held my interest for the duration. This was due to some great presenters -all of whom approached the topic differently, but with equal levels of engaging style. I’ve located copies of all slides used, and you can access them here.

The session began with Matt Barnes, a consultant with R2 consulting. He was throwing out ideas and applications left and right - and I was wishing I’d taken shorthand at some point in my life. Sure, he touched on the usual concepts like Wikis, tagging, and mashups - then followed these with more exotic (at least to me) things as the new “Geotagging” phenomenon, the Croquet Consortium, IBM’s Web Fountain and web outsourcing using the overwhelmingly amazing/cool/can’t really even get my head around how innovative Amazon Mechanical Turk Wow, wow, and wow. Other Matt nuggets:
- (re: OCLC OpenWorldcat) “Don’t get stuck thinking the only devide is the PC. Think cell phone, PDA, iPod, etc.
- 2.0 isn’t just about deploying new technology. Use Web 2.0 to solve problems based on your mission and goals
- There isn’t a final solution or correct answer - only continuous change. (Preach it, brother!)

Next up was Beth Picknally-Camden, who reported on the University of Pennsylvania’s successful “PennTags” program. The folks there created their own social bookmarking tool for their students and faculty to use. This allows them to tag catalog records and articles, and to create annotations. Beth said that in addition to the benefits of sharing and collaborating, she saw this as an excellent way to reinforce the “playing to learn” concept that is so important to web 2.0 tools (and is so undervalued in many of our organizations, I feel). She also learned very quickly that “people are watching” - meaning that she was encouraged to contribute because of the responses and connections her own contributions were making in others’ contributions. They use a tag cloud to highlight the popular tags. You need to have a “Pennkey” to contribute, but anyone can observe. Check it out at: http://tags.library.upenn.edu/

The final presenter was Elizabeth Winter, from Georgia Tech. She began her session with a slide that stated: PLAY v. PRODUCTIVITY. She then asked:

What if playing with new technologies was increasing our productivity? She also asserted that it’s OK to throw something out to “see if it sticks”. (Say it again, sister)
She then told us about their recent “see if it sticks” pilot - a GTJournals wiki. Using the easy and free pbwiki web tool, the folks at Georgia Tech set out to find a way to accomplish their goals of: cutting down on email volume, allowing all staff to share and get involved in a “common area”, track their progress, and avoid duplication of effort - relating to changes and cancellations of their many journals. They’ve locked it down, because they are including pricing and other sensitive informaiton, but you can see screen shots of their wiki in Elizabeth’s slide presentation here

An excellent presentation that sparked more than a few ideas in my “public librarian” head. Thanks academic folks!

Jed Moffitt of the King County LIbrary System began the PLA-sponsored Wiking the Blog and Walking the Dog with family stories that somehow led to a disclosure that the topic of social software in libraries is not so cutting-edge as it was eighteen months ago when the topic was chosen for the American Library Association Summer 2007 conference. The topic has matured a bit. He thought it was still worth discussing. The overflow crowd agreed.

At this “late date” in social software, the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County has already reached its second generation in training programs. Matt Gullett, the Emerging Technologies Librarian for PLCMC, described the library’s online tutorial series Learning 2.0. He invited all libraries to use what his library has created. PLCMC generally gave staff nine weeks to complete the tutorial in a voluntary program, but other libraries can take as long as they want. Gullett said the key is to be flexible and let staff learn at their pace.

The objectives behind the PLCMC effort are as follows, according to Gullett:

expose staff to tools
encourage them to play
empower individuals
expand their knowledge
eliminate their fears

PLCMC now has debuted its follow-up Learning 2.1, which is more self-directed learning. Gullett says that the results of staff training is a change in the work culture and the form of his library’s organization is changing. The new departments in the library are 1) community engagement, 2) library experiences, 3) organizational resources, and 4) research, innovation, and strategy.

Librarians in virtual worlds were the focus of Alliance Library System’s Tom Peters. Peters has been involved in Second Life for over a year. His avatar is based on his dog’s name (one of the references back to the title in this program).

Peters said that there are now at least 500 virtual worlds online. He said they are not games in the strictest sense of the term. They are alternate lives. Because many clients are going there, libraries should, too. Alliance Library System has created Info Island in Second Life and is providing services to participants in the virtual universe.

Peters thinks that libraries in a virtual world are great for answering reference inquiries, linking to digital collections, creating interesting exhibits, and running book discussions or other event programs. Libraries can design buildings that defy physics in their innovative service of clients in Second Life.

Transforming the online catalog for the Ann Arbor Public Library into social software is the trick for which John Blyberg won awards. With its tagging, reviews, ratings, and comments, the catalog has now become a community footprint and portal to the library. The catalog even has a tool for generating old catalog cards with comments written on them. So far the features have been most used by teens, as shown by the number of ratings for teen books.

Blyberg said the code for adding these features is free for other libraries to use, though it is not “plug and play.” He cautioned that libraries may want to find ways to “prime the pump” on the social features by getting a group of clients to use them to attract more general use.

In the little time that was left her, Meredith Farkas spoke about the use of wikis and blogs by public libraries. She found that wikis are well-designed for creating community knowledge bases. They foster contributions from individuals who join the community and are keyword searchable. She recommended that libraries go to Wiki Matrix to find comparisons of the competing software.

Farkas also showed examples of how libraries and businesses have used blogs to keep clients informed. In the case of Southwest Airlines, its public blog actually became an agent of service change, as clients expressed themselves through comments.

At the end of the formal presentation, the audience had many questions about applications of social software. The topic may not be so old-hat as Moffitt thought.

On Friday, March 2, 2007, about 55 people delayed the consumption of a well-earned dinner after a long day of learnin’ to attend my presentation on wikis and the PLWiki project. You can listen to the podcast of that presentation, attached to this post. You can also download the Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) file of the presentation, “The Wikipedia of Public Libraries: A quickie wiki primer, the PLWiki Project, and You,” and follow along (requires Adobe Reader).

At the presentation, I promised I would post a link to the original post, A wiki for public libraries: your feedback requested (posted 1/29/2007), which includes the original idea for the project and links to wikis librarians should know about, plus the 4 big questions we have for everyone:

• As a public librarian, a graduate student, a patron, an administrator, a friend of the library, or even just an onlooker, seeking information specifically about public libraries and librarians, what would you be looking for in an encyclopedia/almanac/pathfinder/ of public librarianship?
• What kind of information about public libraries and librarianship would you seek that you can’t readily get your hands on right now?
• What about Wikipedia, which is powered by the MediaWiki software, do you like or dislike? Is it easy or hard to use? What do you think would be better?
• What about Wikipedia, as an editable encyclopedia where you can search, navigate, and edit content, do you like or dislike? We’re looking for comments on the layout and usability, and not a discussion of judgments about Wikipedia itself.

We still need your feedback! Please feel free to post your answers (and anything else you want to share about the project) as a comment on this post, or email us with your thoughts. We’ll keep you posted as the project progresses!

 

 Standard Podcast [55:06m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (410)

I had the opportunity to run this idea by about 10 PLA committees on Sunday, January 21 at ALA Midwinter in Seattle, and everyone had really, really positive feedback, including volunteers to contribute people power and content, and ideas on related programs at the upcoming PLA conference in Minneapolis. You may have also seen a snippet about this in the January/February issue of Public Libraries magazine.

So, the public library association is contemplating putting together a wiki. Now, in an age where wikis are sprouting up like weeds, we’re looking to create something unique, useful, and inviting to public librarians, while striving to avoid too much redundancy and overlap with, but also driving traffic and activity to, other library/librarianship wikis.

The current, nascent concept entails building an living, breathing encyclopedia of public librarianship (not a wiki of or about the Public Library Association, but a wiki sponsored by the Public Library Association). The plan is to create a base information organization structure, with categories that can speak to patrons, friends of the library, trustees, selectmen, librarians in other types of libraries, library school students, potential librarians, and Joe and Jane Patron, and to populate that base category structure with seed content from many different corners of PLA.

The next step is setting the wiki free to the internet wild where public librarians can grow and prune the wiki as necessary with more current content contribution. Links to other blogs, wikis, and articles can serve as bibliographic references, further reading, and examples, while keeping the content of the wiki encyclopedic and balanced in nature. The Public Library Association, as the sponsoring organization, would be in charge of creating guidelines, style guides, and just overall general management and monitoring. You, as the public, will help keep the wiki living and growing.

So our questions to you are:

• As a public librarian, a graduate student, a patron, an administrator, a friend of the library, or even just an onlooker, seeking information specifically about public libraries and librarians, what would you be looking for in an encyclopedia/almanac/pathfinder/ of public librarianship?
• What kind of information about public libraries and librarianship would you seek that you can’t readily get your hands on right now?
• What about Wikipedia, which is powered by the MediaWiki software, do you like or dislike? Is it easy or hard to use? What do you think would be better?
• What about Wikipedia, as an editable encyclopedia where you can search, navigate, and edit content, do you like or dislike? We’re looking for comments on the layout and usability, and not a discussion of judgments about Wikipedia itself.

Please post your answers to these questions, and any comments you may have about the proposed project, as comments to this post, so that they can be incorporated into the development of the project.

In the meantime, have a look at the other wikis librarians should know about:

• Wikipedia
  While Wikipedia does give some librarians the heebie jeebies, the peoples’ encyclopedia can be used as a helpful resource of information (especially current events), and a good starting place for research. Librarians can easily get involved with creating and editing articles on Wikipedia by creating an account.
  
• Library Success Wiki
  Have a best practice you want to share? Looking for best practices in libraries? Check out this wiki. Just create an account, and you can add to or edit any section you like. This was a big favorite with the PLA committees I talked to.
• Library 2.0 Wiki
  A very beta wiki (the home page is very blank) about the Library 2.0 concept. The best place to start is the Links page, but there isn’t much other content on the wiki overall. Librarians can help build it out by creating an account and adding content. I’m hoping that the creators of the wiki will add more content and perhaps flesh out the current pages to tell librarians what they can do to help.
  
• Oregon Library Instruction Wiki
  “A collaboratively developed resource for librarians involved with or interested in instruction. All librarians and others interested in library instruction are welcome and encouraged to contribute.” An *excellent* source of instructional content for all types of libraries, with a nicely laid out home page to help librarians learn how to be involved.
  
• Blogging Libraries Wiki
  A collection of links to libraries with blogs, categorized by type of library. If your library has a blog, create an account to list it there. Or, if you want to see what libraries are doing with blogs, this is a good site to visit.
  
• Library and Information Science Wiki
  Also very beta, this wiki of library science presents a good start for organizational structure.