Personalise your output

In thinking about how and why libraries would let patrons choose their content output it becomes apparent that the broader web trend of increased personalisation could allow libraries to offer much more for people with vision and or hearing impairments.

At the moment libraries have to buy pre-formatted content from publishers. For example, you buy the print version of the book, and then you have to separately buy the audio book, large print version, and the ebook. If you are dealing with internal or locally produced content (e.g. oral or written memoirs in local history collection) and you want to make it available in different formats, you need to reformat in house. Not surprisingly, for most libraries, content suitable for people with vision or hearing impairments represents only a small part of their overall collection.

BUT,... if the ReadWrite Top 5 Web Trends for 2009 becomes mainstream, there may be scope for library clients to pick the output of their choice. If data is more structured and more and more things are tagged, content could be reformatted on the fly. This could open up much more of the collection and give patrons real choice. For example, patrons could choose if they want to read an book on a screen, printed it out, or a computer read it to them.

The does mean that the content has to be formatted to begin with, but as with XBRL for business reporting, the principle is that you format it once and then open it up to be used and reused in many different ways. Of course there would be copyright and content licensing issues that need to be addressed.

There is certainly a lot more software out there that can read xml, or listen to audio and render it as text, See following for a few examples.

• www.say-now.com
• www.naturalreaders.com
• www.browsealoud.com

Given more and more of this type of software is free the possibilities are huge.

Top Web Trend 3 of 5: Personalisation

As ReadWriteWeb said in their Top 5 Web Trend for 2009, "ultimately personalisation is about web sites and services giving you what you want, when you want it." While this is true, personalisation is also about giving people what they want in the formats they want. For libraries therefore, personalisation means being able to deliver the information people want, when they want it 24/7, and in the formats they want it. While this is easy to say it is not always easy to do. For example, commercial licenses and insufficient bandwidth, are two factors that can stand in the way of delivering anything and everything 24/7. Furthermore, even with Google Books a lot of information is still only available in print format.

Ultimately there is a tension between what people want and what libraries can technical deliver within their budget constraints. However, because good libraries understand their patron's needs and wants, they should be able to leverage off the advances in Web personalisation and offer even more responsive and relevant services that better meet client's needs.

So what does this mean in practical terms? ReadWriteWeb goes on to say that the personalisation is driven in part by:

• Filtering the Real-Time Firehose: richer and better tagged semantic data means people can pull out only the bits they are interested in, and there are a growing number of dashboard services that make this happen by giving the user control over the filtering.
• Open Web: More Data About You, Better Personalization: The growth in personalised filtering is made possible because the underlining data is richer and more structured. It is also possible because to quote ReadWriteWeb "the more data about you and your social graph that is available to be used by applications, the better targeted the content and/or service will be to you."
• Recommendation Engines: watch what you are interested in and personalise their suggestions to your preferences.

Libraries have being offering personalisation for some time. My public library lets me identify what interest me and I get an email if new stuff comes in that is mapped against my interests.

Libraries (and of course web services and platforms) also offer users the ability to personalise their web sites. Example include:

• www.library.vcu.edu/mylibrary
• opl.bibliocommons.com/dashboard
• books.google.com/googlebooks/mylibrary
• www.bbc.co.uk
  the BBC has done a great job in allowing people to personalise their site.

Libraries are also increasingly allowing patrons to personalise the way they engage with the library through the use of widgets / gadgets. Patron can grab and embed a bit of the library into their own preferred web platform. For example (because they have been in the news of late) see libwww.freelibrary.org/extras/#widgets. Gone are the days when patrons had to go to a library's web site to use the library's online services.

While this is great, the type of services and trends mentioned by ReadWriteWeb will take personalisation to a whole new level. Mixing personalisation with the other 4 ReadWriteWeb trends (Structured Data, Real-Time Web, Mobile Web / Augmented Reality, and Internet of Things) will give libraries the potential to offer incredibly rich and compelling services that are directly targeted to each individual patron's needs and wants. Welcome to the brave new world!

Top Web Trend 2 of 5: Real-Time Web

The "real time web" is no longer a future trend, its here. As ReadWriteWeb noted in its second top 5 web trends: Real Time Web "has become a core part of many Internet products this year: Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, Google, Delicious, Wordpress, and many others. Because real time web is about communicating information that is both immediate and public, it is also having a profound impact on what and how libraries can harvest information, as well as deliver information to their client base.

Let’s not forget that real time web functionality also allows a library's client base to communicate among themselves (as well as back to the library) in real time. However, because the communication is immediate there is an expectation that the response, or answer, will also be immediate. Despite the introduction of excellent services such as Ask a Librarian, are libraries really set up to meet this expectation? For example, on Sunday afternoon as I write this blog post the "Ask a Librarian" service is not available. In the brave new world of social media, real time web implies 27/7, and not 10 am to 7 pm Monday to Friday Australian Eastern Standard Time.

Of course real time information in a library setting does not have to be driven by physical librarians staffing some sort of online client contact centre (the mortal in the portal). News feeds, be they driven by RSS or Twitter, or links to community-of-interest forums, are two other ways of embedding real time updates into a library portal. These and other methods allow a library to provide real time information updates 24/7, though of course they can't necessarily answer specific reference questions.

It is interesting, given the growing importance of real time information, that library portals offering updated real time content on the fly seem far and few between. Interesting, because in my experience, embedding automatically updating information does help make for a very compelling library portal. For example, the library I work at has (like many libraries) an internal wiki. However, many of the articles in the wiki now present buttons which launch updated information harvested from specific news and blog searches. The underlying feed is often aggregated, filtered and de-duplicated before being presented in either relevancy or reverse date order. This means that breaking or more up to date information on the specific topic can be embedded directly into the wiki without the need of library staff (or patrons) to manually update the content.

Lots of libraries offer RSS feeds alerting clients when there are updates and changes in the library's content, but why don’t more libraries embed information that has been filtered and delivered on the fly? After all, it is the skill of the librarian as an information professional that is essential in setting up the filtering to ensure only the best results are delivered. Hopefully one of the top trends for libraries will be an increase in the use of embedded real time information.

In the meantime there is a very good post on the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) blog which lists some of the characteristics of the real-time library. These are:

• The real-time library is socially networked but it’s about more than just owning social network accounts; the real-time library has an active presence and shares information in real time.
• The real-time library updates its status regularly.
• The real-time library offers targeted services to the networked community.
• The real-time library is accessible on real-time communication devices.
• The real-time library is ready and waiting – all the time – to deliver information services.
• The real-time library monitors the multitude of emerging real-time web services and experiments to find those with the potential to enhance service in real-time mode.
• The real-time library designs information services specifically for delivery and use on the real-time web.
• Real-time librarians are adept at creating relationships with real-time library users.

The Library as a kids place

I have been looking at the Libraries for Children and Young Adults and Library Buildings and Equipment session at the recent International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) conference in Milan and keep thinking of the line "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man" which is attributed to St Francis Xavier. This is also the quote which forms the basis of the long running Seven Up documentary. Basically the line means that who we are as adults is shaped by our childhood.

If this is the case (and I think childhood is incredibly important to shaping who we are as adults) then some of the libraries currently being built for children have the potential to make a real difference and inspire a joy of reading, learning, and discovery. If libraries want to continue to have a role for future generations, creating stimulating and fun places for children can only help. After all it is not only about technology. But back to the IFLA conference, there are a lot of very good papers in this session but the stand out for me was the paper from Denmark "The red tread - new central library in Hjørring, Denmark" [PDF].

This Danish presentation (with lots of great pictures) shows the new central Library in Hjoerring. It does not take long to read.

• I love the red ribbon pathway through the library (it even encourages kids to crawl through one of the book shelves).
• I love the slippery slide between the book shelves.
• I love the more adult club chairs in the older kids reading area.
• I love the messy activities area with paint and costumes.
  
• I love the V.I.P. (Very Important Parent) corner, and
• I love the tree structure and the soft floor mats in the kids reading area.

If only libraries where like this when I was a child. The librarians at Hjoerring are clearly very good at creating fun spaces that kids would love to use. They also seem very good at using technology, and (importantly) having fun. There is some very good information about this library on the librarybuildings.info web site and there is even a YouTube video of them building the fit outs for this library. Enjoy!

Top Web Trend 1 of 5: Structured Data

Structured data has always played a role in libraries. Think MARC and MARCXML. Therefore, any increase in the importance of, growth of, and reliance on, structured data will have an impact on libraries. If the process of adding structure to data is increasingly automated, or becomes a seamless part of building online content, this will also have a huge impact on libraries.

Using structured data libraries will be able to build content that is richer as well as more accurate. It also means that information can be harvested and reused in more meaningful ways. For example, XBRL is structured data for financial reporting. Using XBRL companies can code up their financial reports and all the various regulatory authorities can automatically harvest these reports and process the information they contain without the need for humans to "read" and decipher them. A lot of companies and governments are hoping this will significantly reduce reporting and compliance costs. For libraries it means we could more deeply and accurately harvest mashed up information.

Structured data by its very nature is created through establishing links (structures) between bits of data. These links are based on meaningful associations and as a result they help turn data into information. One example cited in the ReadWrite Web top 5 web trends is Calais. The library I work for is already using Calais to categorise content relating to specific people, places, companies, facts, and events.

But what does this means, how does it work, and why is it important? Well, there is a good description on the Drupal OpenCalais project site which says "Using natural language processing, machine learning and other methods, Calais analyzes your document and finds the entities within it. But, Calais goes well beyond classic entity identification and returns the facts and events hidden within your text as well. The web service is free for commercial and non-commercial use."

Another good example which helps explain Calias (and structured data) relates to the Calais Wordpress blog plugin which is called Tagaroo. With Tagaroo, as you are write your post, is automatically analyzes it and suggests both tags and images from Flickr to enhance your blog. Other applications would include linking relevant geospatial information to information on an entity or event.

There is also a promotional video on the Calias web site. Yes it is a promotional video, but it does provide an easy to understand overview. And by the way, Calais has been developed by Thomson Reuters so there is some serious money been thrown at building structured data on the web.

Top 5 Internet web trends of 2009

Every year so many of us look out for the top trends from ReadWriteWeb and this year is no different. However, what do these trends mean for libraries and how will they shape the library of the future?

In 2009 the ReadWriteWeb top 5 trends seem particularly relevant to libraries, so ignore them at your peril. I was a bit surprised that a commentator of Stephen Abrams's stature just listed the trends and did not offer any commentary. Maybe Stephen thinks these 5 trends are self evident, or maybe he was just busy. Anyway, given the importance of these trends, and the fact they are starting to have an impact in many of the libraries close to me, I thought I would add my two cents worth (see the following blog posts for details). As you are no doubt aware the top 5 listed web trends are:

• Structured Data,
• Real-Time Web,
• Personalization,
• Mobile Web / Augmented Reality, and
  
• Internet of Things.

ReadWriteWeb has also posted their 5 top web trends presentation on to SlideShare. It is definitely worth the look. Question: How many of these things are you doing or about to do?

ReadWriteWeb's Top 5 Web Trends in 2009

View more presentations from Richard MacManus.

The Machine is using us with reCAPTCHA

Like a lot of people I am a big fan of Mike Wesch and his videos on the impact the Internet has had on society and learning. Like a lot of people I have enjoyed his take on The Machine is Us/ing Us.

A really good example of how we have become personally intermeshed into the workings of the Internet (and as a result are inadvertently building content or teaching computers to think) struck home when I saw that Google had announced they had purchased reCAPTCHA. For details see Teaching computers to read: Google acquires reCAPTCHA.

Over the last 12 months I have set up a digitisation project at work. As with a lot of other digitisation projects we faced hurdles when we had to digitise poor quality and / or old documents. As humans we could read the old text but the scanners could not make sense of faint, fuzzy, and or distorted text. What makes reCAPTCHA so interesting is that you can pass onto reCAPTCHA the images of the words your optical character recognition (OCR) scanning software has trouble reading, and then you leverage off the concept of crowds teaching computers so that the "Internet" learns to interpret and therefore process text that has otherwise stumped your OCR software.

The win win is that you are populating "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart" or CAPTCHA security devices, at the same time as "teaching" your OCR software to overcome difficulties associated with processing poor quality and distorted text. So it looks like the Machine is really Us/ing Us after all.

OECD on your iPhone

...and in case you missed it, the OECD now offer for free 100 economic indicators from their 2009 FactBook in a format specially designed for your iPhone. For more information see the OECD 2009 Factbook section on appshopper.com

Education matters (and so should libraries)

At a time when there are cuts to library budgets, and large library systems such as the Free Library of Philadelphia look like they might close for good, it is interesting to see that the OECD has come out with its Education at a Glance 2009: OECD Indicators that demonstrates that investing in education will beat recession and boost earnings.

According to the OECD "going to university pays dividends in later life through higher salaries, better health and less vulnerability to unemployment... In most countries, the difference in pay levels between people who have degrees and people who don’t is continuing to grow." The OECD goes on to say that not only do "Government budgets and the overall economy also reap an advantage from higher numbers of graduates", but that there are many other social benefits.

So what has this got to do with libraries? Well,... if you believe that we live in the information age, and that libraries (because they are about information) have a role in education, this must mean that libraries play an important role in building (and maintaining) an up-to-date, educated, and informed civil society. The OECD figures also suggest that the benefits that accrue from building and supporting such a population far outweigh the costs of supporting education (and by extension) libraries.

Of course before you get to university you need to get through school, and after you have left university you need to keep your education up to date, so these OECD figures should also give comfort to school libraries as well as the public libraries who support life long learning.

The challenge for libraries is to measure the benefits they deliver, not in terms of how many people walk through the door, borrow books, or use their databases, (though these metrics are still important), but rather measure the impact they have in boosting their population's social cohesion (though educated does not always mean people are any more cohesive), employment opportunities, health, affluence, and general wellbeing.

Following is the OECD TV report that provides a summary of the benefits they say comes from investing in education. I want to avoid participating in party politics, but the OECD findings also seem to support the Australian Government's AUD $ 16.2 billion dollars Building the Education Revolution economic stimulus programme. A considerable amount of this money has gone towards building and redeveloping Australian school libraries. At a local level it looks like we might get some very good libraries that will make a difference. Lets hope so!