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Scriblio Feature: Text This To Me

Take note of the “New Feature: Text this to your cellphone” line above. Adam Brin of Tricollege Libraries explained that the “text this to me” feature he built to send location information about items in the library catalog as text messages to a user’s cell phone is being used as many as 60 times a […] » about 100 words

Looking ahead from 2008: top tech trends

I’m excited and honored to be joining Meredith Farkas and David J. Fiander in a roundtable discussion of Top Tech Trends, an OLITA program at Superconference. We’ve made a pact not to share our trends with each other in advance, so it’ll be interesting to see how much overlap… » about 1100 words

OLA Superconference Presentation: Scriblio

I’m honored to be invited to the Ontario Library Association Superconference to present my work on Scriblio today (session #1329). A PDF of my slides is online. Scriblio has had about a year of use in production at each of three sites, and the lessons suggest that Web 2.0 technologies really do work for libraries. […] » about 200 words

LCSH News: “Mountain Biking” Replaces “All Terrain Cycling”

Even though mountain bike sales and participation are down (as a percentage of market share, biking has been declining for ten years), the Library of Congress has just issued a directive to change the subject heading from “All Terrain Cycling” to “Mountain Biking.” The term was apparently first coined by Charlie Kelly and Gary Fisher in 1979.

Is Facebook Really The Point?

A post to Web4lib alerted me to this U Mich survey about libraries in social networks (blog post) that finds 77% of students don’t care for or want libraries in Facebook or MySpace. the biggest reason being that they feel the current methods (in-person, email, IM) are more than sufficient. 14% said no because they […] » about 500 words

Scriblio 2.3 v4 Released

Scriblio 2.3 v4 is out. See it. Download it. Install it. Join the mail list. What’s new? Lots of small bug fixes. Implemented wp_cache support. Revamped SQL query logic for better memory efficiency. New widget options. Search suggest/autocomplete support (implemented in the new theme). New theme. New Theme! By Jon Link. » about 100 words

Home Libraries, Amateur Libraries

The Library Problem:

In March of 2006 my wife Mary and I owned about 3,500 books. We both have eclectic interests, voracious appetites for knowledge, and a great love of used bookstores. The problem was that we had no idea what books we had or where any of them were. We lost books all the time, cursed late into the night digging through piles for that one book we knew must be there, and even bought books only to find that we already owned them. There were books on random shelves, books on the floor, we were tripping over books when we walked up and down the stairs. In short, we had a mess.

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People Make Scriblio Better

It’s way cool to see Lichen‘s Scriblio installation instructions translated to Hungarian. Even cooler to have Sarah the tagging librarian take hard look at it and give us some criticism (and praise!). But I’m positively ecstatic to see Robin Hastings’ post on installing Scriblio (it’s not easy on Windows, apparently).

Part of it is pride in seeing something that I’ve been working on for so long finally get out into the world, but Scriblio really does get better with every comment or criticism. And it takes giant leaps forward every time somebody installs it and reports on how it went. Way cool. Thank you.

Tidens Hotteste IT-Trends

My presentation for today’s hottest IT trends is nearly completely new, though it draws a number of pieces from my building web 2.0-native library services and remixability presentations. What it adds is an (even more) intense focus on the people that make up the web. Denmark is among the most wired countries of Europe, and […] » about 300 words

Internet Librarian 2007 Presentation: Building Web 2.0 Native Library Services

The conference program says I’m speaking about designing an OPAC for Web 2.0, and I guess I am, but the approach this time is what have we learned so far? And though it’s the sort of thing only a fool would do, I’m also planning to demonstrate how to install Scriblio, a web 2.0 platform […] » about 100 words

Not Just Hip

When a writer goes looking for young Turks (my words, not Scott’s), you should expect the story to include some brash quotes (writers are supposed to have a chip of ice in their hearts, after all). On the other hand, we’re librarians, so how brash can we be? Scott Carlson’s Young Librarians, Talkin’ ‘Bout Their […] » about 300 words

Banned Books Week Dilemma

Our intention is to feature “a series of books that challenge our beliefs and test our commitment to free speech,” but on this post about Holocaust denial I found myself unwilling (and unable) to link to the free, online PDF full text of David Irving‘s Hitler’s War. And when we discovered it wasn’t in our collection (though it may have been lost/stolen, not replaced, and the record deleted), we decided not to purchase it.

Sometimes books are challenged. Sometimes they’re just not purchased.

Don’t Mistake Me (Please)

Over at KLE’s Web 2.0 Challenge I was surprised to learn:

Both Bisson and Stephens are so excited about this concept of Web 2.0 they have not taken a good look at what they can’t do for our libraries. …with all this new technology we can not forget that what is the most important in our libraries is the personal touch. We are one of the few institutions left that still offers individual attention.

KLE is doing some cool things, so I can tell this isn’t an offhanded rejection of Web 2.0 concepts, but the criticism makes me feel as though I’ve been missing my target somehow.

We wouldn’t accept poor service at the desk or over the phone, why should we treat our patrons so poorly online? I don’t think we’ve yet figured out what “good service online” is yet, but that’s what I’ve been focused on. Make no mistake, the future of libraries demands outstanding service everywhere we serve our users.

[tags]web 2.0, library 2.0, lib20, service, quality, libraries, criticism, online, good service, good service online[/tags]

Checkouts Vs. GPA?

Cindy Harper, Systems Librarian at Colgate University, posted to the IUG list with this notion today:

I’m clearing out a large group of expired student records, and wonder if anyone else has had the same idea that has occurred to me. [Our ILS] keeps track in the patron record of TOTCHKOUTs (total checkouts). At the expiration of the students’ record at the end of their four or so years, this represents a measure that is not perfect, but could distinguish heavy library users from non-users. Of course, it combines book chekouts, video and music checkouts, reserve checkouts, etc. And it misses the effect of electronic sources. I was thinking of trying to get GPA data for these graduates and use an ANCOVA (Analysis of Covariance) to see, once you’ve accounted for the effect of different majors and year-of-graduation effects, if there’s a correlation between library use and GPA?

Has anyone done this type of study? Do you analyze your TOTCHKOUT data in any way?

I’d second her question. Public libraries, I think, do better at correlating their statistics with other metrics in their communities. What do we know about academic libraries?

Building Libraries With Free Software

Sarah Houghton-Jan‘s review of my LTR on open source software for libraries reminded me I wanted to blog this related piece I’d written for American Libraries. Tim Spalding cocks his head a bit as he says it to emphasize the point: “LibraryThing.com is social software.” However we categorize it, Spalding’s baby has become a darling […] » about 700 words

Mildly Funny Scenes I’ve Come Across Recently

Not LMAO, certainly not ROFLcopter-ingly funny, but funny enough to want to snap a picture, and good enough for casual Friday here. The boat in the parking lot, UPS vs. FedEx, and Hoe For Hire are all easy enough to understand (though they leave me open to easy criticism). The fourth photo is of some […] » about 100 words

First They Ignore You, Then They Ridicule You, Then They Fight You

It’s an aside to Kathryn Greenhill’s larger point, that all this 2.0 stuff is about a shifting power to the user, but she places L2 somewhere on Ghandi’s continuum of change between ridicule and fight. The photo above (original by Monster) is in support of Greenhill’s larger point: control is shifting. Trains were once seen […] » about 200 words