Bibliothekia

Personalise your output

2009-10-02T12:56:00.031+10:00

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.

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

Top Web Trend 3 of 5: Personalisation

2009-09-28T07:58:00.044+10:00

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

2009-09-27T16:53:00.037+10:00

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

2009-09-21T07:32:00.021+10:00

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

2009-09-20T21:40:00.033+10:00

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

2009-09-20T20:53:00.027+10:00

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:

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

2009-09-18T12:24:00.029+10:00

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

2009-09-17T14:40:00.006+10:00

...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)

2009-09-17T12:52:00.030+10:00

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!

RSS in the cloud

2009-09-15T12:31:00.012+10:00

There is an interesting post on trendsupdates.com about WordPress is going for RSS Cloud. It is interesting in that the post reminded me how far we have come as we move from listservs to RSS, to twitter to... whatever comes next.

RSS cloud will bring bloggers and podcasters will get a step closer to real time updates on WordPress. I agree with Trendsupdate.com "the big question is whether or not bloggers will be willing to shift from social networking sites to RSS Cloud to get regular updates on their feeds." I also wonder if RSS Cloud will work with Yahoo Pipes. After all Yahoo Pipes is a great way to consolidate, filter, and dedup multiple RSS feeds.

Get your library listed in a mobile phone augmented reality

2009-09-14T23:19:00.019+10:00

Augmented reality on your mobile phone! It had to happen sooner or latter. Check out WorkSnug. It's a pity that as of September 2009 it is only available in London, but their web site does say they are going to go global.

Worksnug provides an information overlay on top of your phone's camera. Point the phone into the street or down the road and the WorkSnug overlay tells you about what you are looking at. Designed for all those road warriors in the business community, it shows you the nearest and best places to go online, it even rates the coffee. How cool is that!

If you look really closely at their promotional video you will notice they feature a library as a place to go. How very wise. After all, many libraries have become seriously switched on and hip places to work, study, learn, socialise, and play (and of course read). The text on the WorkSnug video says the featured library is a "friendly, vibrant space, lots of varied activities going on, encourage mobile work." Need I say more.

But here's a word of warning, the WorkSnug team go out and rate sites. So if you want your library to get a favourable mention you better make sure there are no grumpy staff on desk duty when the WorkSnug reviews come and visit. Not that you have any grumpy staff now do you.

As an aside it is also interesting to see the simplicity of the WorkSnug web. There is very little text. Most of the content about what it is and what it does is all in the 1 minute embedded video. Does this really mean that YouTube is wining over Google as the search engine of choice for the digital natives?

Books or no Books? But is that the right question?

2009-09-14T21:06:00.053+10:00

Like a lot of librarians I was interested to read that the Cushing Academy in Massachusetts had decided to discard all their books and move to a digital future. Instead of a library full of books they plan to spend their money building a learning centre with flat screen TVs and datapoints, and in place of the reference desk they are going to build a cafe.

What is was really interesting about this news item is that it generated so much debate as well as so many comments in the media. Cushing Academy even got a mention on CNN.com/technology. Why? Universities across the world have been busy for some time building learning centres with little or no books. Just look at the following floor plans that popped up when I did a search Google Image for "Learning Commons" - Q. What do you notice? A. No to little books.

In 2008, Princeton (which of course is an Ivy League University) opened its new USD $74 million Peter B. Lewis Science Library. At the time the Bloomberg.com asked "But where are the books?" The "stacks you'd expect to find in [the library] have largely been banished to a surprisingly small high-density storage space in the basement." Clearly Cushing is not alone in "banning the book" - but is this Fahrenheit 451?

I have refrained from adding my two cents worth about Cushing and libraries without books until I noticed the following post and associated comments in Kathryn Greenhill's excellent "Librarians Matter" blog and I quote.

"During community consultation about the new library in the last few years, the requests have been for books, books and more books. Some of the new libraries I most admire have created more room for users and less room for books. There are so many new formats, accessed so many different ways. To me much of print publishing has morphed into a “push that product, move those units” cynical marketing exercise, that often does not give or expect sustained intellectual effort by either writer or reader. How can I support what the community obviously wants while bringing to them also the online, alternative and exciting content that exists in other formats and via other channels?"

Kathryn raises some very real concerns, and like a lot of librarians I feel we are all still working this out. Don't get me wrong I love books, and as I write this post I am in my study surrounded by bookshelves groaning under the weight of many, many books. BUT...

Are the options available to us really limited to books or no books, and how much of the debate is driven by a very deep emotional attachment to the physical item rather than a objective debate about the future of libraries and the best way to deliver information? Notice this is a question, not a statement. I work in a law library, and more and more legal information is only available online. Yet when we recently moved the library we were obliged to take 9 bays (almost 50 metres) of the UK law reports, not because the clients use these reports (on the contrary they use the online version), but because they like the look of the bound volumes lined up on the wall. If we had discarded these bound reports we would have had some very unhappy campers.

For me there is a place for both book and the online. I suspect the balance depends very much on the type of library and the type of collection. In disciplines such as science, medicine and technology, by the time something some thing is published in a book it can be very much out of date. Yet I still like being surrounded by books, and going to bed with a Kindle is not the same as going to bed with a book.

Libraries cost money to run, and money is increasingly harder to find. So for me the debate has to be about what is the most cost effective and efficient way of delivering information to the client base, and what best meets the needs of most of the client most of the time within the allocated budget. I love books, but as a responsible librarian I don't think I can allow my love of books to get in the way of what is best for the clients and the future relevance and sustainability of the library. I also take comfort in the Aarhus Public Librarian's comment in the CNN.com/technology article about Cushing Academy in which Rolf Hapel say very simply "The library has never been just about books".

Web applications and fun stuff

2009-09-11T07:04:00.012+10:00

Way back in 2007 when I started this blog as part of a Learning 23 Things exercise I had to have a look at cool stuff such as Flickr's the Color Pickr. Color Pickr of course let's you find public photos in Flickr that match a specific colour. I was therefore curious to see the BokehType experiment from The Man in Blue. the man in blue is (and I quote) "the alter ego of Cameron Adams, a Web Technologist in Sydney, Australia. (That means he does graphic design, HTML/CSS, JavaScript, writing, server-side jiggery pokery, and anything else that takes his fancy that day.)"

Cameron has quite a few other experiments which are worth the look. Some are useful, some are fun, and some are both. For example check out his Mouseboard, widgEditor, Circtangles, and Technicolor.

It is also great to see that Cameron has embraced the whole open source approach. The widgEditor code for example is released under a GNU General Public License. Cameron, you're a living legend (and I was not paid to say that).

Thanks also to Chris for putting me onto BokehType.

Keeping the costs down via an expensive city

2009-07-27T19:52:00.007+10:00

A magazine arrived today from the USA. It had been sent to me via airmail and while there is nothing remarkable about that, I did stop and pause at the postage (once a serials librarian always a serials librarian). I noticed that it had been shipped to me via Zurich, Switzerland. In fact the return address was not in the USA but was an address in Zurich-Mulligen. Isn't it interesting that in order to keep their costs down, the US publisher air freights my magazine via one of the world's most expensive cities. I guess there must be something in the Swiss Post tag line "We get things moving" that is for real. Something to ponder on as I read James Wolcott’s essay in my magazine on the impact of Kindle, iPods, and flash on highbrow literature.

VALA2010 Keynotes: I'll be there

2009-07-26T10:01:00.023+10:00

This week Australian librarians have received notice of the keynote speakers for the VALA 2010 which is being held in Melbourne in February 2010. I'm biased, but with speakers of this calibre, VALA2010 is shaping up to be the best Library IT conference in this part of the world.

As well as these six international keynote speakers, VALA2010 will feature a number of new and practical programmes sessions, so watch the VALA2010 web site for details. And yes, the very popular VALA L-Plate series of introductory presentations (free for VALA delegates) is coming back in 2010. The Conference will also feature quality papers from the Australian, US, New Zealand, and South East Asian library and information sectors.

Here is a list of the VALA2010 keynote speakers. Even though these people are internationally recognised and respected, I think more detailed blog postings on each may be in order.

Karen Calhoun is Vice President, OCLC WorldCat and Metadata Services. In this role, she is charged with charting a course for the future of cataloging and metadata services and extending WorldCat’s global reach. With a background at OCLC and at Cornell University, Ms. Calhoun is active professionally in research and as a speaker. Recently Ms. Calhoun was principal investigator for The Changing Nature of the Catalog and its Integration with Other Discovery Tools, a Library of Congress-commissioned study that proposed new directions for the library catalog in the digital era. See also http://www.oclc.org/reports/onlinecatalogs/summary.htm.

Xiaolin Zhang is Executive Director of the National Science Library of Chinese Academy of Sciences, one of the largest research libraries in China. He has also been active at the national level for coordinated and collaborative development of digital libraries, for strategic planning of the National Scientific Information Platform, for promotion and experimentation of knowledge-oriented services, and for leading the national effort in digital library standards. He led the large scale study of copyright issues and policies for the Chinese Science Digital Library, was one of the first to be involved in the Open Access movement, and was instrumental in organising Chinese studies on digital preservation policies and infrastructure. He has been a Governing Board Member of IFLA and is a Standing Committee Member of Asia and Oceania Section on 2005. See http://www.las.ac.cn/zxl.

Stephanie Orlic is head of the Unit "Projects and Partnerships outside the museum", in the Multimedia division of the Cultural Production Department at the Musée du Louvre. Stephanie is in charge of the joint Louvre - DNP Museum Lab project (
http://www.museumlab.jp/english), which is using geospatial tagging, mobile devices, and multilingual systems to engage with patrons. A graduate in Art History and in Information and Communication Sciences, she worked in multimedia companies with the audiovisual group CANAL+ before arriving at the Louvre in 2005, where she has been working on the issues of multimedia mediation for art museums.

Marshall Breeding is the Director for Innovative Technologies and Research from Vanderbilt University (http://staffweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/breeding). Marshall is also the person behind http://www.librarytechnology.org, as well as being the author of the annual survey into library automated systems, and of a number of important ALA Library Technology reports on open source ILS and next generation catalogues.

Lee Rainie is the Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a non-profit, non–partisan "fact tank" that studies the social impact of the internet. Lee is a co-author of Up for Grabs: The Future of the Internet, Hopes and Fears, and the forthcoming Ubiquity, Mobility, Security, a series of books about the future of the internet published by Cambria Press and based on Project surveys. Lee is also co-authoring a book for MIT Press about the social impact of technology with sociologist Barry Wellman that will be published in 2010. The working title is Connected Lives: The New Social Network Operating System. An internationally respected speaker, Lee gave the opening keynote address at the recent 2009 US Computers in Libraries conference. For further details on Lee, see http://www.pewinternet.org/Experts/Lee-Rainie.aspx.

McKenzie (Ken) Wark is the Associate Professor of Media Studies, Eugene Lang College and the New School for Social Research (http://www.newschool.edu/lang/faculty.aspx?id=23748). Ken is a theorist of media and new media with interests in new media technology, intellectual property, computer games, and new media art and culture. He is the author of A Hacker Manifesto (2004), Gamer Theory (2007), and other works. Ken was a member of the Nettime network of new media artists, theorists, and activists for many years and served as co-editor of their anthology Readme! (1999). He has also worked with the Institute for the Future of the Book http://www.futureofthebook.org/mckenziewark.

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The Main Announcement and Registration Brochure will be available in August 2009 - contact the VALA Conference Office at info@wsm.com.au if you would like to be added to the list to receive a copy.

Video versus Text in the Library

2009-07-24T23:06:00.029+10:00

Yesterday I had a conversation with a colleague about kids using YouTube rather than Google as their search engine of choice. I've heard a few people say this over the last 6 months, and while it kind of makes sense, I wondered if anyone has any hard facts on the matter. If "video killed the radio star", could YouTube supplant Google? Is this why Google spent so much money to buy YouTube?

Using both Google and YouTube as search engines I went looking for answers and this is what came up.

Using Google as a search engine I found that there is a post from November 2008 on ReadWriteWeb titled "Is YouTube the Next Google?". This post considers the fact that YouTube is now the second most used search engine. However, according to to Compete.com YouTube still trails behind Google and Yahoo.

Using YouTube as a search engine did not bring forward much that was relevant (or useful) about YouTube over Google as a search engine. The YouTube search results did however bring back results relating to YouTube versus Viacom and MSN which was interesting in itself.

So what does this mean for libraries? Well..

* There is obviously still much more text based information but you can no longer ignore video as online content, or video as a vehicle to promote the library services. Therefore if you are not already doing it...
* Consider populating your library portals with appropriate video as well as the usual textural content. Moving forward libraries will no doubt be offering a lot more online video and audio content so get with the flow and be an early adopter.
* The instructional, skilling, how-do-I modules on your library portals may be more useful if presented as short videos rather than text based instructions. (Honestly, did you really read the instructions last time you purchased white goods, so why should library patrons be any different). The University of Arizona is doing some great work in this area with their library minute series of instructional and promotional videos. These short and engaging videos are all under one minute, with each video focusing on just one topic.
* Promote your library using you Tube. Personally, I like the fabulous promotional library video "Discover a New World at Columbus Public Library" in the USA. See following for details.

If you can't afford to pay for a high quality promotional video, consider running a short video competition among your patrons and staff. The University of Technology, Sydney did this with very good results. Check out their "LIB:Flicks 2009 Video Competition". The winning video by James Shepherd (it is not clear if James is a patron or a library staffer) is both amusing and engaging.

YouTube as a consumer advocacy tool

2009-07-24T07:10:00.016+10:00

David Carroll, the lead singer with Canadian band Sons of Maxwell, has used humour and the Internet to get back at United Airlines for breaking the band's guitars.

In the face of denials and disinterest from United, the band created a music video called “United Broke My Guitar” which they then posted on YouTube on July 6, 2009. As of 24 July the video has been viewed 3,719,721 times. As a result United has woken up to the fact that their reputation has compromised and it has forced the airline to finally compensate the band.

While David Carroll is not the first person to use the Internet, or indeed YouTube, for revenge, he has been highly effective. Does this underline the power of the Internet as an agent of change? Well, the technology enabled the message to be delivered far and wide, but it was the creative humour of the video that made the message appealing and started a viral marketing process. I guess this is a reminder to any organisation - be wary of delivering bad service to creative types who are technically savvy, they can fight back.

What we now need is someone to create a music video on Youtube targeting Lyn Kosky and drawing attention to her shocking incompetence as Victorian transport minister (and before that education minister - remember the RMIT financial fiasco) and the resulting crappy service delivered by Melbourne trains and trams.

To find out more about the United Airline versus the Sons of Maxwell saga check out David Carroll's MySpace profile.

Library of the Future: Interactive RFID Information Touchwalls

2009-07-23T21:13:00.021+10:00

One of the key attractions at the 2009 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival was a huge multi-user “Touchwall” created by Schematic that served as an information hub. Multiple delegates could interact with this touch screen through RFID chips in their delegate's badge.

The multi-user wall offers interative maps, a schedule application and integrated social networking.

It does not take too much imagination to see how an RFID enhanced interactive touchwall could work in a library. Using their RFID enhanced library cards patrons could interact with the wall to check out events, work out where they are located on the interactive map, and then book themselves into the session. By touching their library card up the screen patrons could renew items, search and download content from license databases, or see where physical items are located in the building. Being interactive, patrons could use the wall to transfer information from one user to another, or use the wall as a medium to transmit social networking content.

Such a touchwall could help underline the library of the future’s role as an exciting place for interactive and immersive learning and discovery. Now all we need to do is iron out the bugs and get the price down. However given Coca Cola is releasing multi-touch vendor machines maybe the prices will come down.

For more comments see:

* RFID Touchwall: The touch screen with RFID effect,
* Schematic’s Intelligent Touchwall Serves as Information Hub of Cannes Lions 2009,
* Cannes Attendees Find Future Is Now for Touch-Screen Tech

and the watch the following videos:

Touchwall Demo from Joel on Vimeo.

Is the Education Revolution Boring?

2009-06-24T08:14:00.033+10:00

It was interesting to see a recent news article in the Australian titled "
School designs 'outdated' as rushed Kevin Rudd rebuild a missed opportunity". In this article "the global head of architecture giant Woods Bagot's educational division has called for a move away from outdated school design templates and towards modern, collaborative learning classrooms, while warning that the Rudd government's schools rebuild is being rushed." Also quoted in the article "is head of the Australian Institute of Architects, David Parken, [who] urged the government to consider environmental sustainability during the primary school rebuilding rollout. Mr Parken said the plan was relying on 10-year-old templates "pulled out of the bottom drawer" and said a vital chance to reduce CO2 emissions was being missed."

I'm a librarian (and I don't work in a school and I don't work for the Victorian Government) so have no agenda or axe to grind in this dispute; and where I recognise that Woods Bagot is indeed one of Australia's leading and most innovative architectural firms, I wonder whether they have seen the Victorian Government school templates. These templates are designed by the architectural firm of Gray Puksand and they appear to be anything but boring. They also seem to support and promote environmental sustainability.

Back to Woods Bagot for a minute, this firm designed the University of South Australia's Future Learning Space. While this space is very corporate looking, and as a result probably not suitable for a school, it did win an interior design award in 2009 and so is worth the look.

You can view a fly through of the Victorian Government design templates at the following URL.

http://www.eduweb.vic.gov.au/edulibrary/public/video/esp-primary-flythrough.mov

The Victorian Department of Education has not posted them on YouTube because that would make too much sense. Like derr, why would you want to make them readily available to everyone when you can bury them in www.eduweb.vic.gov.au.

Speaking of good library design, the Brisbane City Library by the firm of Denton Corcker Marshall ticks lots of boxes. While this is not a school library there is lots of things you could apply in a school library. They have done some some very interesting with their use of space, their dedicated sports and gaming areas has been very popular, they have a great kids area, and technology is interwoven throughout the design. Check out the following images, or see more at the always popular Free Range Librarian's Flickr album.

The Handheld Librarian 2009 Virtual Conference

2009-06-21T19:39:00.007+10:00

It is exciting to see that in a week and a half the first ever Handheld Librarian Virtual Conference is being held in the USA. Dedicated to understanding and exploring how mobile devices such as mobile phones, iPhones, and Blackberries, can be used by libraries to deliver services to patrons 24 / 7, no matter where they are, this conference is a great idea.

Also of interest is the fact this is an online conference, so you don't have to travel to New York to participate. BUT, if you live in Australia you need to be prepared to start at 1am in the morning and carry through to 7:30 in the morning! Let's hope they podcast the proceedings so you can learn what is going on and not have to stay up all night. The conference web site does say that "Registration includes access to all three interactive, live online events, as well as the recordings of the sessions after they take place for up to six months."

Building the Education Revolution

2009-06-21T16:44:00.023+10:00

As part of the Australian Government's "Nation Building Economic Stimulus Plan", 14.7 billion Australian Dollars will be spent over three years as part of the "Building the Education Revolution" program. This includes building quite a few school libraries, as well as gymnasium, and science and language centres.

While this big spending is not without controversy, it is without doubt the biggest single boost to library building across the country. As an aside, use the following two links to see the latest news and blog postings on this government spending programme:

• For the latest news on this education programme click here, and
• For the latest blog posts on this education programme click here.

Still, it is interesting to see what resources are now available online to help schools build 21 century libraries and learning places. In Victoria the State Government has a comprehensive Building the Education Revolution (BER) web site that includes templates and supporting material.

What is particularly encouraging about the Victorian example is the fact that the need for flexible learning spaces, as well as embedded and integrated information and communications technology, is being factored into the plans. From the point of library functionality and future proofing this is good. For more information on all this, there is a overview [PDF document], which unfortunately is buried within the Victorian eduweb site. If you use the link provided in this blog post you should be able to view it. The document outlines:

• Key design principles,
• Primary learning environments,
• 21st century Learning neighbourhoods,
• Teachers as learners,
• Active student centred learning,
• Embedded and integrated information and communications technology, and
• The 21st century library.

There are even a number of tag clouds popping up that group a lot of these school building resources in one spot. For example:

Library on your iphone - Go AirPac

2009-06-10T00:38:00.041+10:00

On Monday last week I blogged in despair that there appeared to be no Australian Libraries putting their portals / catalogues onto a mobile (read iPhone) platform. Well I should have looked at Deakin University Library in Geelong Victoria. While the Deakin iPhone platform does not appear to be as snazzy (Snazzy is a highly technical term describing both technical functionality as well as end-user experience) as the mobile platform used by Orange County Library in Florida USA; good on Deakin for giving it a go. Orange County seems to have the edge over Deakin in that they have already linked in video content as well as a calendar into their Library's mobile platform.

For those interested in the nuts and bolts of it all, Deakin is using the same Airpac platform as that used by Orange county. Airpac in case you don't know is delivered by Innovative Interfaces. Deakin is promoting it's mobile platform via its main library portal so check it out.

Deakin was one of the first Australian Universities to set up a presence on Facebook (I think they were one of the first 10 universities in the world to do this) so it goes to show what you can do if you have great systems staff on deck.

P.S. I have never worked or studied at Deakin so there is no hidden agenda or bias in my comments. I have also never worked for a library using Innovative Interfaces, so while I had heard of AirPac, I missed the news that Innovative was enhancing AirPac so it could be used as a platform for iPhones. I guess you can't be across everything all of the time.

Order of Australia Honours and Libraries

2009-06-08T08:20:00.014+10:00

Congratulations to the people on the 2009 Queen's Birthday honour list who received Medals of the Order of Australia (OAM) in recognition for their work with libraries. They are:

Mary Lennie McCall from WA received an OAM for service to the preservation and promotion of history through state and national organisations, and to librarianship.

and

Margaret Taylor from Tasmania who also received an OAM for service to the development of art libraries in Australia.

... and congratulations to Lionel. There can't be too many families where a brother and sister have each been awarded an OAM.

The Twitter Wave and Twitter in the Classroom

2009-06-04T23:12:00.047+10:00

The word of this week is shaping up to be Twitter. First there is a very interesting post on ReadWriteWeb titled Anatomy of a Blog Post Well Received, and then after a bit of scouting around I stumbled across Classroom Twitter.

Let's start with ReadWriteWeb. They state that "one month ago Monica Rankin posted a video to YouTube about how she uses Twitter in her classroom at the University of Texas... It's a very good video, so [ReadWriteWeb] wrote a blog post about it that saw an unusually high (12,000) views within 24 hours. [They] decided to pay very close attention to where those readers came from,... and some unexpected trends emerged from the data."

As you can see in the following graph, most of the views came from Twitter. So as ReadWriteWeb ask "Is Twitter becoming a meaningful source of traffic?" For the rest of the findings and comments go to "Anatomy of a Blog Post Well Received".

While the comments on how people are using finding and sharing information is indeed very interesting (especially for a librarian), Monica Rankin's video on using Twitter in the classroom at the University of Texas is also worth checking out.

It is interesting to hear that both the teacher and students see Twitter as a tool that helps democratise the classroom. As an aside, it will be interesting to see if Twitter takes off as a tool to help within distance education programmes.

There seems to be a common thread among the teachers using Twitter that they have been "trying to figure out just how we might use it" (it being Twitter), and people are as a result coming up with different approaches. For example, H Songhai (who's Wordle I am using) has a good post titled Classroom Twitter in which he says he uses Twitter to:

* Students use Twitter to mark themselves present
* Students and teacher use Twitter to send each other direct messages
* Students use twitter to list what they accomplished in class that day

But it is not all a bed of roses for Twitter. The Gartner Group has identified the beginnings of a possible Twitter Backlash which even includes spike in Google Trends for Twitter sucks. What will the future hold for Twitter?

How To Do Interesting Things With Twitter

2009-06-03T12:41:00.035+10:00

In rummaging around Amit Agarwal's excellent blog called Digital Inspiration, I came across a great post from last year titled Twitter Guide: How To Do Interesting Things With Twitter. I first looked at Twitter just over 12 months ago but never got all that excited. You see I am having enough trouble getting the time to do all the things I need and want to do without taking out more time to post a micro blog on Twitter. However, I am coming across more and more ways that people are using Twitter as a business tool and this is interesting. For example, a number of big portals are using twitter to allow staff to post content on the fly in real time irrespective of time and place.

Twitter is also proving to be more and more popular at library / and learning IT conferences. I understand the recent EDUCAUSE Australasia Conference in Perth they were using Twitter back channels. Mind you IT conferences have been using Twitter back channels for some time, but in May ReadWriteWeb noted that ITV (the oldest commercial television network in the UK) announced that it will use Twitter as a backchannel for its coverage of the FA Cup final in 2009. For the full ReadWriteWeb Story go to Twitter and TV: The New Backchannel. So it is safe to say Twitter is getting bigger than Ben Hur even though it only employs 43 people, it is kind of at the cross roads, and is yet to monetize its obvious success.

Earlier in 2009 The Nielsen Company reported that:

"No longer just a platform for friends to stay connected in real time, [Twitter] has evolved into an important component of brand marketing. Unique visitors to Twitter increased 1,382 percent year-over-year, from 475,000 unique visitors in February 2008 to 7 million in February 2009, making it the fastest growing site in the Member Communities category for the month."

There is even a page on Wikipedia titled List of Twitter services and applications.

But the real reason for the massive increase in Twitter traffic in Australia is because it has been taken up with gusto by my sister-in-law Amanda (Just kidding Amanda). This blog post is dedicated to you and your enthusiasm in embracing social networking technology.

Web 3.0 in Plain English

2009-06-03T00:08:00.025+10:00

Like a lot of people, I am getting my head around Web 3.0 (a.k.a The Semantic Web) and what this will mean for libraries, their patrons, their collections, and the delivery of information. There are a growing number of commentators out there talking about Web 3.0 but few are as clear and concise as Amit Agarwal. Amit, as it turns out, is one of India's top professional bloggers.

Amit provides a very clear table of ideas (see following) and ties it all together with some very good slide shows from a number of other authors. This blog post by Amit Agarwal is shaping up to being one of the best for 2009 so why miss it. Check out http://www.labnol.org/internet/web-3-concepts-explained/8908/ and see for yourself what all the fuss is about.

So, for libraries who are starting to get their head around integrating Web 2.0 stuff like, patrons sharing tags and adding comments, or linking in with external social networking platforms; chop chop, there is no time to rest. The Semantic Web will be upon us before we know it (and as the semantic web has the potential to significantly improve the quality of searches through the linking and association of an object's or concept's attributes) this is something librarians really do need to understand.

Put another way, Web 3.0 has the potential to be one very big and mighty Schumpterian wave of creative destruction. So when the surfs up it is better to ride the wave than be crushed by it.

And thanks to Mike for inspiring this post.

Library on your iphone

2009-06-01T22:38:00.015+10:00

Ok there have been no posts of late. No I am not dead, just very, very busy. One thing that has kept me occupied is reviewing abstracts for conferences. While some of them have been good (as in very good) I wish, I wish, I wish, someone in Australia was doing what Orange County Library in the USA is doing putting their library onto portable devices such as iphones. Someone (anyone) please tell me I have been asleep at the wheel while you have launched your own Australian Library iPhone app.

But back to Orange County, the Library's regular web site is at www.ocls.info, while their mobile platform web site is at http://m.ocls.info/default.asp. This library has not only done a great job putting their services onto a portable device, they have also posted onto YouTube a really, really good little video promoting and explaining the service. See following for details.

You can also click here for update blog posts on the Orange County Public Libraries iPhone app, and then of course there is Gerry McKiernan's very good blog on all things mobile in libraries at mobile-libraries.blogspot.com.

Thanks also to Amanda for inspiring me to write this post.

Joker Slumdog Milks Oscar While Vicky Cristina Reads and Walle Makes His Departures

2009-02-23T22:43:00.025+11:00

Well it HAS been a fun day. It’s always fun to watch the Oscars, especially if you are lucky enough to sit with one of the voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Not that they can tell you who they voted for, that's a big no no. But wining an Oscar does change a person's life, if for no other reason than the fact the trophy is actually quite heavy. Who needs weights when you have an Oscar? (Trust me I have lifted one) God only knows how Philippe Petit balanced his Oscar on his forehead. I suspect this will become an Oscar legend.

If the blogs are anything to go by, it looks like most people: loved Hugh Jackman, especially his opening number, were very pleased Heath Ledger won the posthumous Oscar, and agreed the Slumdog kids were very cute. There was a BBC interview with these young kids over the weekend, and surprisingly they are still living in a slum in Mumbai! Though apparently they are now going to move into bigger homes.

Yet for me, the stand out in many ways was Jerry Lewis winning the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for his fund raising on behalf of the Muscular Dystrophy Association. In the USA, the annual Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon has raised more than USD $2 billion since 1966! Now that is no mean feat.

Docummunity

2009-02-20T07:15:00.038+11:00

It is interesting to see how sectors outside of libraries approach the capture and sharing of online content within the Social Web / Web 2.0 environment. This is especially true when it is a home grown initiative. I was therefore very interested to see that those clever guys at Portable.com are at it again, though this time they are doing it with documentaries via a project called Docummunity.

"Docummunity encourages members to upload short video clips, photographs or original music based on a specific theme for use in a long form documentary. By contributing to the community, members will be afforded access to all the other uploaded media in order to make their own version of the film."

Last year on the best attended VALA general meetings was the presentation by Simon Goodrich (who is the President of the Victorian Chapter of the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association) and his business partner Andrew Apostola. Simon and Andrew explained how they are successfully using social media strategies to build online communities around online film content. They were also doing some interesting work with portable devices (i.e. blackberries and iPhones).

Libraries have been using social media to foster online communities for many years. For example, the State Library of Victoria's mc2: My Connected Community or their Inside a Dog book portal for teenagers. However, as libraries focus more and more on using multi-media online content we should be keeping an eye on what the film industry is doing with social media. And remember there is a growing evidence that Gen X and Co. are starting to use youTube over Google as a search engine. Are we seeing an emerging visual rather than text focused generation when it comes to information seeking. As libraries how are we going to respond to this? For background see:

Ping - At First, Funny Videos. Now, a Reference Tool. NYTimes.com, 18 January 2009. "YouTube is rapidly morphing into a popular search engine and a new entry point into the Web".

Is YouTube the Next Google? ReadWriteWeb, 18 November 2008 "In the first half of the 20th century, people grew up reading books and newspapers. Then there was a generation that grew up on movies and television. The last shift was to the Internet. And now web video is creating yet another generation."

Docummunity should also be supported because it is about sharing content and the democratisation of film content, as distinct from locking content away behind large multinational corporate barriers so it is difficult or expensive to reuse.

Government funding to support the creation of games and interactive content.

2009-02-17T12:17:00.042+11:00

In these dire economic times it was interesting to hear this morning that the Australian Government through Enterprise Connect is providing $17 million Australian dollars over 4 years to fund a Creative Industries Innovation Centre. This centre will be based at the University of Technology, Sydney, and will support "small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) in the creative industries sector improve their productivity and competitiveness by providing professional business advisory and development services. The Centre also builds collaboration between researchers and businesses, and assists creative businesses to access the latest technologies and market specific information."

This is of interest to libraries because the CIIC will assist Australian creative industries in the areas of publishing, writing, games, and interactive content. For Australian libraries more LOCAL interactive content can only be a good thing, right!

Gaming and interactive content is becoming more and more important in LibraryLand no matter where you are. For example, the American Library Association (ALA) has launched a number of initiatives around gamming and interactive content. For details, check out their News about Games and Gaming blog.

Look at the following image from the Australian ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) and see where libraries can fit in. I like the way CCI has mapped out the creative industry landscape, and from this diagram it is easy to see that libraries can fit into this space; either as part of the content industry sector, or the cultural industries sector.

The ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation or CCI is lcated at the Queensland University of Technology. Partner Universities include Swinburne, University of Wollongong, and Edith Cowan University. There is a growing amount of information and presentations available on the CCI Wiki so it is definitely worth checking out. The CCI does work in a whole lot of areas that are of interest to libraries including: broadband policy, creative commons, creative workforce 2.0, digital futures and digital liberties, they even do work on standards and metadata.

So why all this fuss about interactive media and the creative industries. Well, it is very simple - its worth BIG bucks. Though be aware of 2007 research from the London Business School that identifies the problems that many sectors of the creative industries have in communicating value and therefore securing funding.

If you are interested, there is a free OECD publication from 2000 titled "The Creative Society of the 21st Century" [PDF File] while the more recent 2009 OECD publication "OECD Information Technology Outlook 2008" costs USD$ 149.00.

Yesterday Sundance, Today Berlin, Tomorrow the World

2009-02-16T19:17:00.017+11:00

Yes, yes, I know it has nothing to do with libraries; but those who have followed this blog for some time will know of my previous blog on this topic.

Congratulations to my friends, the fabulous and talented Melanie and Adam, for the recognition their film Mary and Max received at the Berlin Film Festival. There was also a news story about Mary and Max in the Metro section of today's Age newspaper titled "Max Appeal".

Last year Mary and Max was the first Australian film ever to open the Sundance Film Festival. Onwards and upwards I say.

The Mighty Book List Mashup

2009-02-15T17:04:00.007+11:00

Like a quite a few people I was drawn to the ReadWriteWeb post titled "A Few Nights of Hacking Produces Reading Radar". Basically, in a very short period of time (with minimal resources but maximum smarts) a guy called John Herren has created a Mashup called Reading Radar.

From a library point of view what is exciting is that Reading Radar "lets you scan the New York Times top sellers and read reviews and related book information from Amazon; all without the distractions of other content on both the New York Times and Amazon sites."

How exciting is that! Check it out for your self. But image if more libraries started doing mashups like this! Image including geospatial stuff (like the sort of stuff Paul Hagon demonstrated at Information Online 2009 in Sydney), so that the mashup also showed if the books on the best seller list were in the library closest to you! Maybe OCLC should consider this sort of mashup in the next phase of the very impressive mobile phone interface for WorldCat.

John Herren is clearly very, very smart. There are some smart people in LibraryLand (e.g. Paul Hagon from the National Library of Australia) mashing up content and giving people a richer and more dynamic online library service, but we could always use more people like this.

For those who like to know the technical details I have lifted the following information from John Herren's blog. Reading Radar is a Mashup by John Herren. It is powered by The New York Times Best Sellers API, Amazon Web Services, JQuery, YUI, and the Maintainable Framework.

Information Online 2009: B3. Mashing Up the National Library of Australia

2009-02-15T14:45:00.051+11:00

Life has been busy but I am determined to publish a record of the Information Online sessions that stood out for all the good as well as not so good reasons.

The address by Paul Hagon from the National Library of Australia stood out for all the right reasons.

For example, in Paul's Information Online 2009 abstract he asks the questions we should all be asking ourselves as we build more dynamic content based on API's, RSS feeds and tag clouds. "Are we creating an artificial barrier for entry to our collections by persisting with these interfaces and interactions? Are we building the interfaces for ourselves rather than our users? What type of interfaces can we design to break down these barriers and encourage entry into our collections?"

In answering these questions Paul used a number of case studies that showed what is possible away from the traditional library catalogue. The case studies are:

1. The Picture Australia redesign to improve the search by revising the way the search was presented and to offer relevance ranking in the search results.
2. The Picture Australia Delicious.com experiment to overcome the problem of bookmarking Picture Australia items without the interference of session details in the URL.
3. AskNow and Delicious.com API experiment so that AskNow participants could share bookmarks via Delicious.
4. The Then and Now mash-up, which experimented with using an institution’s online photo collection (in this case the Power House Museum's collection of historical photos of Sydney) mashed up with Google Maps Street view. See Paul's blog post "Powerhouse Street View Mashup" for details on this Now and Then project.

All these case studies either enhanced library productivity (as in the case of AskNow) or improved the way clients could use content.

It is interesting that while there are so many free APIs out there, libraries still seem to be a bit slow on the up take. Yes there are some people like Paul doing some remarkable stuff but this seems the exception rather than the rule. And a lot of this stuff is free for God's sake! There should be a stampede of librarians doing mashups, especially as not everything has to be as technical as the examples cited by Paul.

The question of mashing up as a new core competency for librarians was raised in Paul's Information Online 2009 session. Unfortunately a librarian from the floor confused this issue with the need for the profession to (quote) "focus on metadata". Go figure?!? Used wisely, Mashups have the potential to empower libraries and give us the opportunity to provide really rich and relevant content to clients. How many librarians, (especially those who have done
Learning 23 Things and the follow up Learning 2.1 programmes) have started using the power of mashups in their libraries? I know some have, but what about the rest? Time is ticking.

RESOURCES

Click here for a copy of my notes with a podcast of the Pauls's address.

Click here to see what bloggers are saying about Paul Hagon. Paul's own blog is called... "Paul Hagon". Not very original I know, but there is some very, very good stuff on Paul's blog so it is worth checking out.

iPhone Applications: by youngest and quantity

2009-02-14T14:54:00.019+11:00

There was an interesting news item on the radio today about iPhone applications. Doodle Kids, which is a FREE iPhone application (designed for children) that lets you draw pictures on your iPhone screen. This application is in the top 10 iPhones by the number of downloads. Cute but so what, I hear you say. Well, the programmer is 9 years old! Talk about being a digital native.

The programmer is Lim Ding Wen from Singapore. He wrote the programme for his sisters. the software was originally written for the Apple IIGS and was then ported to iPhone with the original Super Hires colour palette. Ding Wen is also "an ActionScript and JavaScript programmer. He also understand Applesoft BASIC, GSoft BASIC, Complete Pascal, Orca/Pascal and a little Objective-C."

Amazing! There is a delightful video on YouTube of Ding Weng showing how his software works. See following for details.

Oh and by the way, I last blogged about the number of iPhone applications on 4 January 2009. At the time there were (according to 148apps.com) almost 14,000 apps written for the iPhone. Now, a little over a month latter, there are over 21,000 iPhone apps of which 1,500 relate to books, another 1,500 relate to education, and 940 which relate to reference. Games (4,471 apps) and Entertainment (2,809 apps) represent somewhere in the vicinity of 35% of all iPhone apps. About 76% of all the iPhone apps cost less than USD $2.00 to download. I guess it is easy to see what is driving this market.

Information 2009: B2 Inside a Kid's Book Portal

2009-02-14T12:58:00.025+11:00

Those who know me know I used to work at the State Library of Victoria, so you can understand my interest in the State Library's Centre for Youth Literature teenage reading portal called Inside a Dog.

Founded in 1991, and located at the State Library of Victoria since 1999, the Centre for Youth Literature is one of those hard working vital institutions that make Melbourne such an exciting and literary place. The Centre and its many activities also helped underpin Melbourne's success at being recognised as the second City of Literature as part of UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network.

But back to Inside a Dog. This has become Australia's number one website about books for teenagers. According to the io2009 presentation Inside a Dog also has a significant global audience. "It promotes Australian and international young adult literature in a language (and format) that young people understand. It features news, book reviews, a writer-in-residence blog, author interviews, links, competitions and lots of opportunity for contributions from young readers."

The success behind Inside a Dog is that it:

A. Lets its audience take some control. While the content is monitored for inappropriate use, Inside a Dog encourages it's audience to be creative.

B. It provides lots of opportunities for its audience to participate. They can blog. For example, they can blog about books they like and don't like, though I must admit the number of blog posts seem a bit low. Maybe in the summer school holidays things go a bit quite. The target audience can also participate in competitions, surveys, check out featured books, grab downloads, and engage online with a writer in residence.

The Inside a Dog presentation at Information Online was uplifting and positive, and demonstrates what is possible when the target audience is allowed to run with something. In this case it is a strategy that has worked. Inside a Dog should also to be congratulated for encouraging teenagers to read.

In case you are wondering where the name Inside a Dog comes from, well apparently Groucho Marx once said "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog it is too dark to read."

RESOURCES

Click here for a copy of my notes with a podcast of the Inside a Dog presentation.

Bloggers don't appear to be saying anything about the Inside a Dog presentation. Pity, it was a good presentation.

Click here [PDF file] to access Linda Angeloni and Lili Wilkinson Information Online 2009 paper titled "Engaging Students Online at the State Library of Victoria".

Libraries Helping Bush Fire Devastated Communities

2009-02-13T20:25:00.032+11:00

Even though the threat of the devastating Victorian Bush fires is not over, it is fantastic to see that the local libraries are already considering the ways they can assist in rebuilding the effected communities. According to the local library email traffic "Local Government Victoria is working with affected councils on a range of resourcing, service and infrastructure issues, including libraries." This is encouraging, as it recognises the role all libraries (but especially public libraries) play in community building. The need for a FREE PUBLIC place (a third place) where people can come together, access and share information, or just be, is important in any community. For communities that have been so devastated it is vitally important.

However, to meet the more immediate needs of the effected communities, I agree with Julian Shortland (a Sydney based Library Technician) who emailed the following:

"One thing public libraries can do ASAP is ensure their IT people remove their blocks on Web 2.0 services such as Facebook, Myspace, bebo, etc to allow users who's PCs have been destroyed to post updates that they are still alive to put their friends' minds at rest, and to see if their friends have also survived. While many survivors may have their mobile phones and PDAs, they do not have their chargers, so these devices are now flat. Also, www.meebo.com needs to be unlocked to allow people to access MSN, Yahoo, AIM, ICQ and similar chat products without installing extra software."

It is ironic that while librarians are busy talking about how to use Web 2.0 technology and how to encourage social networking and community building, that so many of their local IT departments are busy blocking these things. I know of more than one Chief Librarian who complains of the obstacles their Council IT department puts in front of them; blocking them from offering social networking services.

It begs the question why, and I guess this can be divided into three broad categories:

A. Trying to keep bandwidth costs down,
B. Risk mitigation; protecting the local council against the "misuse" of the Internet terminals in public libraries, and
C. It is easier to say no than to make things happen.

But does it have to be all or nothing? Is there are smarter third way that opens up the use of social networking / Web 2.0 services in public libraries while still putting some parameters around things? Regional Library Services (where they control their own networks) appear to be more flexible in this respect. Rather than block things, maybe a better approach is to open up services within a code of conduct framework that patrons are asked to first sign up to. Monitoring and blocking patrons when they then breach the code of conduct would help protect against misuse. I am reminded of the ALA's Report to President-Elect Obama [PDF file], which asks now President Obama to:

* Support legislation and fund programs that include Internet safety education, as opposed to Internet blocking and filtering;
* Oppose any further filtering/blocking requirement for the E-rate and other programs; assure protection of First Amendment rights and other civil liberties in the online/digital environment;
* Support vigorous enforcement of existing child pornography laws; increase public awareness about reporting child porn and other illegal Internet activities.

WorldCat on my mobile phone

2009-02-11T22:48:00.052+11:00

When I have not been busy with a digitisation project at work, and (in my own time) my other library profession activities, trying to wade through my Information Online 2009 notes, and getting over the shock of the weekend heat wave and devastating bush fires; I have been checking out the OCLC's mobile WorldCat. This is a WorldCat interface designed specifically for a mobile phone. I have been testing the mobile WorldCat in Australia with my iPhone

According to OCLC, with this interface you can:

* Search for library materials
* Find a WorldCat library near you
* Call a library — Highlight and click the phone number in a library listing to place a call, and
* Map a route — Find the fastest way to a WorldCat library using the mapping software already on your device.

So how does it shape up? Well, from the outset let me say that OCLC has done a great job in developing a very clear and easy to use interface that fits neatly onto the iPhone. While the iPhones has a large screens as far as phones go, there is a lot less real estate to play around on the iPhone than a lap top or PC. The Mobile WorldCat could have ended up messy and cluttered but on an iPhone it is not.

As you can hopefully see from the following sequence of images. I used the mobile WorldCat interface to do a keyword search on Peter Hall's remarkable, magisterial, and seminal work "Cities in Civilization". Mobile WorldCat brought up 1,542 hits with Sir Peter's work on the top of the list. Even though there is limited screen space on a mobile phone, the mobile WorldCat interface still provides room for a thumbnail of the front cover.

It was then very clear on the Mobile WorldCat interface to see where I should click if I wanted to see related books (with very good results), related subjects (again right on topic), or find a library in my area so I could borrow the book. In addition, Mobile WorldCat also allows me to email a title link or a formatted citation direct from my phone.

So far so good, but does mobile WorldCat find a local library if I live outside of the USA? Well, the good news is (to paraphrase Obama) yes it does! It certainly works in Melbourne Australia, and that is about as far away as you can get from OCLC's home in Dublin Ohio. I entered my Australian postcode (zipcode) and up came a list of local public and academic libraries, as well as the State Library of Victoria, which is located very close by in the city centre. Top of this list of local libraries was the closest library, i.e. my local Stonnington Public Library Service.

As you can hopefully see from the series of images, it was then very easy to either use the link on Mobile WorldCat interface to go directly to my public library's catalogue record for this title so I could enter an online reservation; or (when choosing the "Get more Library Information" link) find out the more details about this library. What was really good; is that it did not just give me general information about my local library service, I actually got specific information about the closest branch! It was then very easy to click on a link which launched Google Maps on my iPhone, which then showed me where I was, where the closest library was, and drew a route on the map to tell me how to get there. As you can also see from the last of the images, the library's phone number was hyperlinked, so I could have clicked on the phone link and my iPhone would have dialed the number directly.

It must be early days, because as of 11 Feb 2009 there are only 85 hits when I searched Google blogs for posts relating to "mobile AND phone AND worldcat", but this service looks fantastic on my iPhone, it is very easy to use, it does what it says, and it is great to search the catalogues of my local libraries from my phone. And no, I am not being paid to say this.

Now, if there was a way of linking in my local library's online full text database offerings and federated search engines via my iPhone life would be wonderful. Oh well, Rome was not built in a day.

Click here to view blog postings about the mobile phone interface for WorldCat, and try it out for yourself.

As of February 2009 the WorldCat mobile phone interface is compatible with these phones and mobile operating systems:

* Windows Mobile 5.0
* Blackberry
* Palm OS 5.4 or later
* Apple iPhone
* Nokia
* MIDP 2.0, CLDC 1.1 Java

Information Online 2009: Presentation B1

2009-02-09T22:24:00.043+11:00

Credit should go to ProQuest / Serial Solutions for their ongoing research into what academics and students THINK of academic libraries, as distinct from whether they actually USE their academic library’s online resources. Both John Law and Jane Burke gave very good presentations at Information Online 2009 (io2009), but this post is about John's address, so on with the show.

As John put it, "the academic library's brand is impeccable. It is the first choice among students and faculty members alike when they must locate high quality research materials". Yet when it comes to the online offerings, academics and students appear to be turning away from the library, with "users... willing to sacrifice the quality of the search results in favor of a pleasant search experience" i.e. they are using Google rather than the library.

This contradiction (users liking the library but turning to Google rather than the library's online offering when doing research) has been discussed for some time, yet it remains an important topic of discussion and concern for any library who's focus is supporting research. The challenge for libraries is not to compete with Google (we have lost that battle a long time ago) but to mark out a space where the library can offer quality results from within a pleasant search experience.

I was pleased that John mentioned the "Ithaka's 2006 Studies Of Key Stakeholders In the Digital Transformation In Higher Education". This is an excellent report and I (along with a lot of other people) blogged about it in 2008. The Ithaka report has certainly generated a fair bit of discussion as it raises some interesting and troublesome findings. Findings that have been confirmed in the ProQuest / Serials Solutions research.

To get an understanding of how troublesome, check out the article Google Books vs. BISON from the Library Journal in June 2008. This article outlines how Google Books beat a university library's new online catalogue hands down. This is even more worrisome when you consider John Law's findings that academics and students use Google much more than they use Google Scholar or Google Books. These type of findings put the research library's online catalogue well down the list of resources clients are using.

Yet there is a positive note in Mark J. Ludwig & Margaret R. Wells Library Journal article that relates back to John Law's presentation. As a result of their work comparing their catalogue with Google Books, Mark and Margaret's library "plan[s] to implement a project similar to Google's “did you mean” tool to overcome spelling problems. [They] are also planning a regular monitoring program for “no hit” searches, with the goal of increasing overall results."

I also found their conclusion interesting and positive. They go on to say that (I have highlighted some bits):

"Our study also points out the necessity for librarians to investigate aggressively and stay abreast of disruptive technology and build it into new services wherever possible. Libraries and librarians must constantly be attuned to patrons' behavior; we need to consider how we can use our unique qualities and collections to everyone's advantage. The bar has been raised. The maturing Internet and evolving array of Web 2.0 services has turned our customer base into what many have called a “Google Generation.” We can debate that moniker, but, clearly, no one is calling this the “Academic Library Generation.” Our BISON catalog may not be extinct, but it is being hunted down by the competition. As in nature, libraries had best adapt, change quickly, and build on past successes."

Google might be bigger than us, but we don't have to take it lying down. :-)

RESOURCES

Click here for a copy of my notes with a podcast of John's address.

Click here to see what bloggers are saying about John Law's presentation.

Click here to access John's inforamtion Online 2009 paper titled "Academic Libraries and the Struggle to Remain Relevant: Why Research is Conducted Elsewhere".

Eye tracking and Good Web Design

2009-02-08T14:06:00.026+11:00

I was in a meeting last Friday that was looking at the design of a new blog, when someone asked about best practice in relation to how people view and use web interfaces. Everything that I have ever seen or read suggests that if you draw a line from the top right hand side of the page to the bottom left hand side; users will invariably view everything to the left of the line (the upper left hand side) much more readily than the content on the right hand side of the line (the lower right hand side).

I was therefore interested to see that Google has recently blogged about the outcomes of their eye tracking study. Look at the following image from this study and you can see that most viewing is in the upper left hand side.

For obvious reasons this is often known as the "golden triangle" and it forms part of good web design. See the following examples.

While there is nothing really new in this Google study (Stephen Abram for example has blogged about eye ball tracking thermals and web usability for years) it is interesting that web designers still get this wrong. For example, have a look at the National Gallery of Victoria web site. All the core information and navigation paths are placed on the page in the very places people don't check out first; and the parts of the page where people do tend to look is blank.

Not that I want to pick on the National Gallery of Victoria, but they have won awards for their online offers. Go figure!?! I guess (like this Oscars) this demonstrates you can win awards for excellence and not actually perform. Did you know that Cary Grant, Greta Garbo, and Alfred Hitchcock never won an Oscar, and I bet you have never heard of some of the films which have won an Oscar.

But back to the Google eye tracking study, it is good to see that Google is still interested in "design[ing] a subtle user interface that gives people helpful information without getting in the way of their primary task: finding relevant information." Now if only more people took this approach.

Information Online 2009: Keynote - Sherman Young

2009-02-04T08:26:00.058+11:00

I missed Dr Sherman Young's address in late 2008 at the NLS4 conference titled "Bring out your Dead: The role of books in a post web 2.0 world", so it was interesting to hear him give the first keynote at io2009 (Information Online) titled "The Trouble with Books: Finding their place in a Web 2.0 world".

Skilfully and playfully using the formulaic narrative style found in great ORAL epics such as Homer's Iliad or the Torah; and playfully giving a sideways glance to Julian Barn's A History of the World in 10½ Chapters; Sherman was entertaining (as well as informative) as he explored the development of oral communication through to print culture and then onwards to broadcast and online communications.

So after demonstrating that the written word was not always in the ascendency, Sherman then posed the question - what role is there for book and book culture in today's online, Web 2.0, multimedia, and infobyte world?

Of course Sherman quite rightly points out there is a big difference between print culture, which is also online though often in a non-linear bit format; and books, which are often (but not always) structured as long linear narratives. However, Sherman's suggestion for the role of the ‘book’ in the future was a bit like the slow food movement's answer to fast food - books slow things down and allow for the development of long and hopefully considered discourse. People will still value books / eBooks because they are better than fast facts.

Those who know my cooking know where I stand in the slow food debate, and you only have to look at my LibraryThing profile to see my love of books. However, I worry that if we rely too much on books and slowing "things down", we may end up maintaining a small boutique position in the information future. While this small boutique position will be lovely and charming; and while we may maintain the community's goodwill through an aura of nostalgia for a simpler and bookish past, we may also run the risk of being second class citizens in the information future.

Ahh... I hear you say, now you are just being controversial for the sake of being controversial (well yes a little) because you will say quite rightly that libraries have also embraced database and lots and lots of online services which are not like books. But who are the real dominate powers in this information age - libraries or Google and YouTube? Today, are libraries mainstream or boutique in the online information world? Mmmmm.

It was therefore good that Sherman raised the question of why we have books when we have Google. Sherman used Google and the Telstra Bigpond ad that explains that "the great wall of China was built to keep out the rabbits" to demonstrate that "the internet has a wealth of information but (to its detriment) it ignores the content that exists in books". Google (and Bigpond) don't necessarily answer the question, but they do give you lots of results. Yes there is Google Books, but as Sherman explains, they are hidden to most Internet users who do not look beyond the first couple of search results.

So will the development of ebooks save books, or will we (to quote Sherman) continue to confuse book culture with print culture? And given the fact that libraries and librarians are so intertwined with books and print culture, what does this mean for us?

I was very pleased that Sherman specifically mentioned Joseph Schumpeter and his theory of Creative Destruction, as this is a particularly good way of explaining the impact of disruptive technology and possibilities it gives new players to gain the ascendency over established monopolies. Think IBM in the ascendency (growth of personal computers) Microsoft in the ascendency (the emergence of the Internet) Google in the ascendency - future - who knows. But what Sherman forgot to mention is that intrinsically tied in to Schumter's theory of creative destruction is the role of the entrepreneur. This is important as the technology alone is not enough. for example, Betamax was arguably technically better than V.H.S but V.H.S still won the day.

There has been a lot of research into what makes a good entrepreneur, but unfortunately they tend to display all the characteristics you don't often see (and sometimes don't want to see) in librarians. Entrepreneurs tend to be big picture people, fast moving, they don't like getting bogged down in detail, they often like working in disorder, they don't like rules and structures, and they don't like being told they can't do something. Of course librarians can be entrepreneurial, but does this sound like the characteristics of a typical librarian? Face it, we love rules and structures, and as a rule we distruct disorder.

One could (and some do) devote entire blogs to the theory and best practice around entrepreneurship, but to be brief consider this: the OECD thinks it is so important they have "launched an Entrepreneurship Indicators Programme (EIP) to collect internationally-comparable statistics on entrepreneurship and its determinants". If you are interested (and you should be) go to: http://www.entrepreneurship-indicators.net.

Personally, I hope books (and librarians) are, to quote Monty Python, "Not dead yet", but to survive in an ever faster changing world we need to understand how to utilise emerging disruptive technologies. We also need to be even more resourceful and entrepreneurial. Sherman's address was positive while still raising all the questions we need to ask ourselves, but we need to act. To paraphrase Sherman quoting Alan Kay: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

RESOURCES

Click here for a copy of my notes with a podcast of the Sherman's address.

Click here to see what bloggers are saying about Sherman Young. Sherman's own blog is called "The Book is Dead".

Yellow is not Green

2009-01-28T07:42:00.019+11:00

Last night Sensis, which is owned by Telstra, dropped off the Yellow Pages. This also included 'Yellow™ In the Car', which is a mini paper version of the yellow pages. The whole package weighed 5 kilos.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates there are over 8.1 million households in Australia. So if we do a rough calculation and bring the number up to 9 million to include the businesses who still get the paper version of the yellow pages we get:

5 kilograms * 9 million = 45,000 tonnes of paper!

That's a lot of paper, and that does not take into account the white pages.

If considering the impact on the environment, this does not include the cost of producing or delivering these directories. Basically we are talking about a lot of energy consumption and green house gases.

Is this really necessary? More and more Australian's have Internet access, so surely for the environment's sake, Sensis should offer an easy opt out service for people do not want the print version. I for one did not bother to open the last few years print versions of the yellow pages. They send them to me and I put them straight into the recycling. What a waste of paper and resources.

If I need to find a phone number, I either use either Google or the yellow pages online. This brings me to the new(ish) Sensis product: 'Yellow™ In the Car'. If you have a mobile, and especially if you have a 3G mobile, why would you use a print version of the yellow pages in the car.

Maybe there needs to be some direct action. If Australian's started dumping all their unused and unopened yellow pages and white pages into their local Telstra shop it would become Telstra's problem to deal with the recycling. Would this open their eyes to the waste they are causing!?! Maybe, maybe not, but direct action is sounding pretty good.

Information Online 2009: Opening Address, Senator Stephen Conroy

2009-01-27T22:19:00.071+11:00

Before we start, let me say that there have been many blogs and tweets about the Senator's speech at the 2009 Information Online Conference, so I am going to try and avoid clogging up the Internet by repeating things that others have already said. However, by posting after the event I can bring together people's threads, comments, observations, insights, and yes even rants, and add some of my own. Se let's begin.

Most of the comments on blogs and tweets relating to this io2009 address seemed to agree that Stephen Conroy was very defensive for much of the speech. See the other resources listed below for details. This is not surprising, for while the Senator gave the Rudd Government’s line on the digital economy, the importance of access to information, and the role libraries play in the digital economy; most of us were really there to hear what he would say about the proposal to implement national internet filtering. So what did he say on the matter? Well here are some quotes and paraphrases:

* The Rudd Government's AUD $125.8 million Cyber-Safety Plan still includes funding for ISP-level content filtering.
* The Senator admitted the concerns about the viability of the ISP-level content filtering 'rested on technical aspects, as well as freedom of speech arguments'.
* In regards to the technical aspects of filtering, Stephen Conroy voice the belief that "index-based filtering of a central blacklist is technically feasible' while there are some technical issues around 'broader, dynamic analysis filtering of internet content".
* Specific to libraries, the Senator stated that "as public libraries provide internet access in a public space, funded by public money, the role of Government in ensuring broader public safety is an important one that needs to be considered".

It is very interesting to see that at the same time as Stephen Conroy is proposing Internet censorship for Australia, in the US the Supreme court has (to quote the New York Times) "refused to step in and save the Child Online Protection Act. Everyone can agree on the need to protect children from sexually explicit online material, but this misguided law tried to do it in ways that infringed on too much constitutionally protected free speech."

Unfortunately the American Library Association (ALA) is in the middle of a major web rebuild, so their online resources relating to Internet filtering are not currently available. BUT, I did find the PDF file of the ALA's Report to President-Elect Obama, in which it asks President Obama to:

* "Support legislation and fund programs that include Internet safety education, as opposed to Internet blocking and filtering;
* Emphasize the importance of parental involvement in Internet training and safety;
* Oppose any further filtering/blocking requirement for the E-rate and other programs; assure protection of First Amendment rights and other civil liberties in the online/digital environment;
* Support vigorous enforcement of existing child pornography laws; increase public awareness about reporting child porn and other illegal Internet activities;
* Conduct research on cyber-bullying and other types of behaviors on the Internet; promote discussion of First Amendment vs. personal privacy rights in the digital environment."

This ALA document also has some very interesting things to say about literacy and lifelong learning, copyright, eGovernment, library funding, as well as broadband and telecommunications policy. So if you are not aware of it check it out! Be aware this link points directly to a PDF file.

It will be interesting to see what tact the Australian Library and Information Association will take in response to the Cyber-Safety Plan and Internet filtering. Up till now they have negotiated from 'inside the tent'. While it is encouraging that Senator Conroy stated that the government will take an 'evidence-based approach to implementing its cyber-safety policy' the question remains who's evidence, and will the views of libraries, libertarians, and ISPs be heard; will freedom of speech be protected as well as child safety ensured? Only time will tell if we are heard. Hopefully, as Australian governments tend to follow the lead of US governments, we will not have a 10 year battle ahead of us as was the case in the USA.

So what is my overview of the speech? Well it was a competent, if some what uninspiring, speech that gave the government line. If the Senator's speech is any guide, the government does seems genuinely surprised by the level of debate and disquiet their Internet filtering proposals have generated. I am no fan of Tony Abbott, but the great political one liner of 2008 was from Tony when he said that 'Kevin Rudd hit the ground reviewing' However, when it comes to Internet filtering, the Rudd Government does not seem to have done enough consultation before raising the sceptre of national internet filtering. Is this more evidence of the Nanny State? I think I need a nanna nape.

RESOURCES

Click here for a copy of my notes with a podcast of the Senator's address.

Click here to see what bloggers are saying about Senator Conroy and Internet filtering.

OTHER INFORMATION ONLINE 2009 RESOURCE

	There is a three part video of the address on Youtube, but be warned. If you are like David Stratton, and dislike the hand-held camera school of film making, this video is going to make you a bit seasick. Still it is good the video was made and posted on the web.
	Stilgherrian has posted a transcript of the Senator's address on his blog. I have included this blog post as it also has includes interesting discussions.
	Click here to view the tweets about this speach.
	Thanks also to Paul for the photo. The original with comment is available on Flickr.

Writing notes and podcasting at Online 2009

2009-01-27T21:54:00.010+11:00

Before we delve into my more detailed notes taken during the recent Information Online 2009 Conference (io2009) in Sydney, I have a few disclaimers.

First, you are going to have to excuse my writing. My writing was never good as I was experimented on by nuns in primary school. Well that's my excuse and I am sticking to it.

But seriously, my hand writing has got worse. I suspect it is because (other than birthday and Christmas cards) I hardly ever write anything these days.

Per my previous blog post, during the conference I used a Livescribe pen from Pulse rather than schlep my lap top around to blog. In taking these notes I noticed that it DOES require a different type of note taking, and this took a bit of getting used to.

You do not have to write everything down as you can play it back, BUT it makes sense to write down a place holding word to mark a particular section within your notes. It was also interesting that not all of the presenters where very good at highlighting their next topic before launching into it. Some did not even stay within their own proposed presentation framework. I also found that if you got engrossed in the topic being discussed, and you forgot to mark something down, this could really stuff up the flow of the notes.

So with all of this out of the way... DRUM ROLL. Here come the first of the io2009, Information Online 2009 notes and podcasts from Bibliothekia via the Livescribe pen pen from Pulse.

Information Online 2009 - Overview

2009-01-26T16:02:00.052+11:00

Now that I am back from the Information Online conference in Sydney it is time to sit down and go through the notes and report back. This posting is an overview; the more detailed comments will be posted over the next few days.

So what did I learn? Well, ... actually not that much. There was no real parting of the clouds and radiant shafts of insight, nor were there any (for me) really challenging papers. This said, it was still worthwhile, and there were some good things to see and hear.

Liz Lawley's keynote address on Libraries as Happiness Engines was inspiring, positive, and very good. Maybe because of my close proximity to the local film industry (which is busy building interactive online gaming content) I did not really come away learning anything new. On the Friday after the conference I was lucky enough to visit an inner Sydney production studio and see first hand what they were doing with film, interactive online content, and games for the education sector. More on this when it is released into the public domain and I can blog about it. But back to Online; it was great to meet Liz and her new research (I am sworn to secrecy for the time being) sounds very interesting indeed. Liz and I also worked out we have a common friend in Karen Schneider. Is LibraryLand small or what!

Andy Hind was very good and insightful. It was good to see that it verified everything I have learnt in my Post Grad Marketing Diploma. Paul Hagan from the National Library of Australia also gave a very good and inspiring paper on what libraries can do to build really interesting and relevant content on the fly using mashups.

Some seemed to have found Mal Booth's comments on metadata unsettling, and they then got distracted. This is a pity, as it was only one part of his excellent presentation. Still, (to be controversial) let me say that: just as we have lost the search portal wars to players such as Google, we seem to be oblivious to the fact that we are quickly loosing (if indeed we were ever ahead) the tagging and client content war to players such as Flickr who make it so easy for people to upload content and who do not ask for '12 core metadata fields' in the process! More on this latter.

There were of course many more good papers, but there were also some very ordinary papers. However, compared to some of the comments from my peers, I seemed to avoid the worst of these papers. Maybe after going to conferences for many, many, years you learn how to pick and choose the best.

Three general observations:

A. It was interesting to see that some (and it was only some) librarians still hang onto sacred cows when rapid changes in information technology is making some of these cows fit for the knackery. These seem to be the same librarians who complain about not having enough time to do all the new things that are expected of us because they seem unable to give up any of the old. Not that everything new is good and everything old is bad, BUT it is so much more difficult to move forward when you are stuck in the past.

B. Speaking of the new(ish), it was great to see the incorporation of a wide range of social networking platforms in and around the conference. In 2009, Information Online used:

* Twitter tagged to io2009,
* a Flickr group,
* a Conference Blog,
* Technorati tagged to io2009,
* a Facebook group,
* a Linked in group, and
* Slideshare.

For this the Information Online Committee should be commended.

C. It was also good to see a new generation of tech savvy and articulate librarians participating in the conference. I wonder if it was this new generation librarians who were behind the use of social networking at the conference. For example, I notice that the links to the Information Online social networking options do not go via the conference domain, but rather go via (the very smart and tech savvy) Neerav Bhatt's domain at http://www.bhatt.id.au. Though these younger participants may still hold junior positions in their libraries, they often outshone many of their ‘older’ colleagues. This can only be good for the future of libraries.

Australia Day Honours and Libraries

2009-01-26T10:39:00.014+11:00

Congratulations to Elizabeth Ellis from NSW for being awarded an Order of Australia Medal (OAM) in the General Division for "service to librarianship through a range of professional roles with the State Library of New South Wales".

It's a pity the Australian honours database can't be updated so the 2009 recipient's details can be searched on the day they receive their awards. The only quick way to search across ALL the 2009 recipients for the term librar* was to go to the Herald Sun newspaper's web site.

There are some very poorly constructed databases offered on Australian government web sites, and the honour's database is one of them. On one hand it offers a lot of search functionality but it is impossible to do a keyword search limited within a date range. It would be easier if they added a Google Search box across the site. If there is an easy and cheaper way, and a hard expensive way; why do government agencies so often take the hard and expensive route?

Adults and Social Network Websites

2009-01-24T09:42:00.011+11:00

I have been busy at Information Online in Sydney (more on that latter) so I have not had time to blog; but in the meantime I noticed those fantastic people at the Pew Internet & American Life atProject have released an excellent report on Adults and Social Network Websites. Authored by Senior Research Specialist Amanda Lenhart, the report looks at adult use of social networking sites. This is a change from the usual research and commentary that focuses on kids as well as Gen x, y, and z and their use social networking.

While much of the findings in this report come as no surprise (e.g. online social networking is more prevalent among professionals), it is good to see this is backed up by empirical research. Key findings include:

* The share of adult internet users who have a profile on an online social network site has more than quadrupled in the past four years -- from 8% in 2005 to 35% in 2008,
* Most adults, like teens, are using online social networks to connect with people they already know,
* When users do use social networks for professional and personal reasons, they will often maintain multiple profiles, generally on different sites.
* Most, but not all adult social network users are privacy conscious.

If your library is working with and around online social networks you really need to take a closer look at this report.

The Fabulous Podcasting Pen

2009-01-18T10:15:00.034+11:00

Over the last few months there has been a buzz amoung certain Melbourne librarians about THAT pen. People have got excited and envious, and there is some serious pen envy going around. So what's this all about?

Sitting on my desk at the moment is my new Livescribe pen from Pulse. This pen captures audio as well as remembers where the audio syncs with the notes I am taking at the time. The pen also lets me upload, manipulate, and share my notes and audio via the web. As a result, the pen lets me enrich and give context to my notes, as well as making sure I do not miss any important details. This has the potential to revolutionise the classroom and work meetings.

For example, I am going to a conference next week so I will be taking lots of notes. I was thinking of blogging during the conference, but I am not sure I wanted to lug my laptop around. I was also not sure I wanted to blog via my iPhone. I have become quite proficient at using the iPhone keypad but still it is not the same as a full size keyboard. The Livescribe pen solves this problem. I can sit in one of the conference sessions and take notes as well as capture the audio at the same time. At the end of the conference I can play back the audio, bookmarking and highlighting key sections in my notes. I can then post my notes and the associated audio to the web and share it with my colleagues. Next week's conference will be a test, but I see no reason why I can't put together a blog post which includes notes and the original audio.

The Livescribe pen comes in either a 1GB (over 100 hours recording time) or a 2GB (over 200 hours recording time) version. Click here to view the full technical details.

Most of the buzz relating to the Livescribe pen comes from its application in the education and business sectors. Livescribe has also just receive a Macworld Expo Best of Show 2009 Award.

If you want to see how this pen can be used, there are some very good videos on the Livescribe site. I have embedded one of these videos from YouTube into this blog post. See following for details and watch this space. In Australia you can purchase the Livescribe pen from Officeworks, and thanks to Bart for introducing me to the pen.

News Flash: Internet Overtakes Newspapers

2009-01-07T12:22:00.017+11:00

In late December 2008 the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press released the findings of a survey that indicated that the Internet has now surpassed all other media except television as an outlet for national and international news. Following is a graph from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press which outlines the trend in news seeking behaviour over the last decade.

This is of interest because in November 2008 I blogged about the dedicated sports and gaming lounge in the Brisbane City Library. At the time, I noted that the rational behind the use of large screen TV in the library dedicated to sport was that "in the past people got their sporting information from the newspapers. Now more and more people get their sporting information from either the Internet or pay TV. So if you can't afford the internet or pay TV, and don't want to go to a pub to watch Fox Sport, you are stuck."

With the use of print newspapers declining, and the majority (70%) of people using TV as a news source, the Pew research seems to back up and validate the Brisbane City Library approach. However, it looks as though the use of TV a medium is also declining. This is especially true for young people. For example, the Pew summary states that: "For young people,... the internet now rivals television as a main source of national and international news. Nearly six-in-ten Americans younger than 30 (59%) say they get most of their national and international news online; an identical percentage cites television. In September 2007, twice as many young people said they relied mostly on television for news than mentioned the internet (68% vs. 34%)."

What was also interesting about the Pew research is that the top news stories people followed closely online all related to the state of the economy.

This research vindicates the continued trend for libraries to acquire less in the way of print resources, and more in the way of online content, or at very least the technology to facilitate online content within the "library as place".

"Library as place", along with free access to large screens is important, because with the expected increase in the use of portable devices, why do you need to come into a library? In the short term people may still come into a library to access online as well as TV content because it may be more appealing than the small screen on a portable device. In the long term the appeal will probably be the social interaction.

Cinemas learnt this lesson when video players took off in the early 1980s. Yes, you could watch a movie at home, but what was mising was the social interaction, sharing the popcorn and choc top ice creams. So while we will be able to access content, as well as learn and collaborate using a portable device on a train or walking down the street, will we still crave for that third (public and free) place away from home and work... a.k.a. a library?

Fruit Wars: Is the portable future an Apple or a Blackberry?

2009-01-04T18:13:00.053+11:00

2009 will be the year portable devices really go head to head in a battle that will probable make the 1990's browser wars look like a kindergarten tussle. If you want to read a very informative and entertaining account of the browser wars check out the oral history of the Internet.

Whereas the 1990s browser wars where primarily between Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape (do remember you Netscape), the portability wars will be between Apple's iPhone, RIM's Blackberry, and everyone else. At the moment it looks as though the momentum is with the iPhone. As quoted in a number of places on the internet: "On October 21, 2008 Apple announced sales of 6.89 million iPhones in the fourth quarter of 2008, totalling 13 million iPhones to date. They also noted that this quarter's iPhone sales surpassed RIM's BlackBerry sales of 5.2 million units". However, it is clearly too early to rule out Blackberry and large mobile phone players such as Nokia with its N97 which it unveiled in December 2008. Of course the market may continue to fracture with Blackberry ruling the corporate sector and the iPhone ruling the lifestyle personal use sector of the market.

As with the 1990s web browser fracas, the portability wars will have a huge impact on the way we access information and who controls that process. There is and will continue to be a tsunami of comments on all of this. After all, there is a huge amount of money at stake. Other fascinating questions include:

• If Apple gets too much market share will the Europeans treat Apple the same way they treated Microsoft?

• Will the US invoke anti trust laws if one player is seen as having too great a market share in the US?

• What happens to Apple and the iPhone if Steve Jobs never attends another Macworld Expo and sails off into the sunset? (Apologies to Larry Ellison).

Because this is a library IT blog, the question here is what does all this mean (if anything) for libraries? Well for starters, libraries will need to get on board the portable devices bandwagon. Libraries need to make sure their own online offerings work on portable devices, and that it is easy for patrons to upload and use.

Other than OCLC's Worldcat application for iPhones, there currently appears to be little in the way library applications for portable devices. This is a worry given there are over 10,000 iPhone applications as of January 2009, and a search on the iPhone app store reveals nothing in the way of library based applications. The table to the left is sourced from 148apps.com and shows the current number of iPhone apps by category.

Forget apps, how many libraries have started to reconfigure their Web portals so they look good and work well via portable devices? If you want to see how it can be done very well check out the New York Times via iPhone. How many libraries have even started to think about this sort of stuff? It is time to get cracking. After all, think about all those sales of iPhones, Blackberries, and other such devices, and then ask yourself how many of your patrons use these devices to access information.

To finish on a slightly more positive note, it is interesting to see that according to 148apps.com there are 740 apps dealing with books though a lot of these seem to relate to Manga (not that this is a bad thing, it just is). And speaking of the Japanese, it is also interesting to see that the Australian Oxford Dictionary (2nd Edition) can now be downloaded on an iPhones for AUD $29.99. This application is available via the Japanese based Enfour Inc. For details see http://www.enfour.com/iphone. Given the leadership Japan has shown in taking up mobile technology it comes as no surprises that Enfour is a Japanese company that specialises in applications for portable devices.

XBRL saves the day... maybe

2008-12-24T11:12:00.037+11:00

Earlier this year (on another web platform) I wrote about XBRL and the impact it would have on standard business reporting and governance, so I was more than a little bit interested to see the recent post on ReadWriteWeb on XBRL titled XBRL: Mashing up Financial Statements. Given the current state of financial affairs this is probably a good blog post to finish the year.

XBRL or eXtensible Business Reporting Language, is to quote Wikipedia "an open standard which supports information modelling and the expression of semantic meaning commonly required in business reporting". So what does this mean?

Well it means that entities (companies, government agencies, non profit organisations) mark up their financial reporting once (and in standard way), and the information can be readily harvested for governance and reporting requirements.

So what is the fuss about? Well, Ernst & Young state that "Once the XBRL standard is accepted, management, investors, regulatory agencies, and others will reap significant benefits whether sharing information within a single organization or trading documents across company lines."

In Australia, adoption of XBRL is being lead by the Department of Treasury and its Standard Business Reporting Programme while the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) is acting as a facilitator. Sponsors include: CPA Australia, The Institute of Chartered Accountants, PriceWaterHouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, MYOB, Fujitsu, and Deloittes. So it is a fair bet to say you are going to hear more about XBRL in 2009. If you want to know more there is a very good video on (you guessed it) YouTube. See following for details. While this Youtube video cites US examples, XBRL is being applied internationally.

Not that standard business reporting or XBRL on their own would have saved us from the current economic yuckiness (highly technical terms that suggests we are up to our eyeballs in crap), but hopefully streamlining and making business reporting easier, more automated, and transparent, may make it harder to hide some of the smelly business shenanigans that has brought the financial market to its knees... and that has to be a good thing.

Now all we need is a international standard xml way to record and report library performance statistics. In my experience the only librarians who hide and don't report their stats are the ones that, well... have something to hide.

Second Life TV: coming to a library near you?

2008-12-21T15:36:00.048+11:00

Last night at a party I met StarrSonic in first life. StarrSonic is the Executive Producer of SLCN: Second Life Cable Network. As the name says, this is cable TV produced in second life and distributed via second life and the web.

"SLCN is a professional video network designed to expand the in-world audience as well as deliver virtual entertainment to the real-world. All the video clips found on [their] website are archives of live events as they happened in Second Life... Typically, the live video is seen on screens at various locations in Second Life as well as streamed to [the SLCN] website... SLCN offers special interest channels for community, lifestyle in addition to sports. If you would like to add the SLCN stream to your land please see Get SLCN. SLCN.TV programs are also available as video podcasts. See the SLNC Podcast page to subscribe with iTunes or other RSS manager software." In Second Life the SLCN Offices are located at Northpoint (125, 185, 33).

If you have not come across Second Life TV, you can get an idea of what a programme looks like by checking out the Cybergrrl interview with IBM. The interview takes place in IBMs new Second Life Green Data Centre.

While digital cameras, post production processing, and distribution have revolutionised the film and television industries, Second Life TV has the potential to take things one step further. For example, Second Life TV is significantly cheaper to produce. See the following table which I sourced from StarrSonic's blog.

Currently the Second Life 'production values' are not as good as mainstream TV, however developments in gaming interfaces and film animation, together with ever increasing broadband, may see this gap reduce over time.

Second Life TV therefore has the potential to democratise and open television production. So this is an area worth keeping an eye on. As mainstream TV is very heavily regulated, it will also be interesting to see how issues such as media cross ownership, censorship, and copyright are addressed in Second Life TV.

For school, public, academic (and who knows may be even business) libraries there may be an opportunity to work with clients to create second life TV content and then wrap this content into the libraries existing Web 2.0 online offerings. 14 years ago VICNET was about empowering community groups by hosting static web content. Does Second Life TV give libraries a role in helping patrons build and present virtual multimedia content? Could libraries then allow clients to embed this TV content into other online resources such as online local history collections, group assignments, or school projects? Is there a synergy between potential content building in public and school libraries and community based web TV? I suspect anything is possible, it just needs imagination.

So congratulations to SLCN: Second Life Cable Network for building and developing what looks like an interesting and sustainable business model for web broadcasting.

Oh, and by the way, it was great to see the role women are playing in Second Life TV. If you want to see more on my views about the role of women in IT go to Is there enough Girrrl Power in Library IT.

Looking Forward: Film + Library = Hollywood Librarian?

2008-12-21T08:44:00.038+11:00

Those who know me know that the in-laws are very heavily involved in the local film industry which is why I was flicking through the December / January issue of IF: Inside Film magazine. In this issue there is an article on the top tech trends for the film industry in 2009 and guess what? Some (though not all) of the predictions could be talking about libraries.

This should not come as a big surprise, as both film makers and librarians are increasingly concerned with how to present online content in ways that the target audience will use. By 'use', film makers and librarians are interested in how audiences / patrons engage with content rather than just passively consuming content. Film makers and librarians are also interested in building online loyalty or stickiness.

Though the following quote from the article is about the film industry, it could easily apply to libraries in 2009: "The by-products of digitisation has allowed the convergence of all traditional media formats, and as audiences grow more multimedia savvy by the day, producers will be challenged to create encompassing visual content."

Where librarians have traditionally focused on presenting (for the most part) linear narratives - be it fiction or non fiction, AND where film makers have been traditionally focused on presenting film narratives; both are now more involved in exploring ways of presenting bits of multimedia information in nonlinear ways. Examples include blogs, wikis, and other interactive Web 2.0 offerings wrapped around film and television program web sites in the way that libraries are increasingly wrapping blogs, wikis, and other interactive Web 2.0 offerings around library catalogues and portals. Libraries and the film industry are also looking at how they can incorporate elements coming out of the online game industry into their own online products. Needless to say, both libraries and the film industry are concerned with issues of online copyright as well as environmental sustainability.

I suspect that if there are avenues and opportunities to share ideas, both librarians and independent film makers could learn from each other. By international standards the Australian film industry is small and there is less money floating around, so the industry has to (and often does) work smarter, doing more with less. What is there to lose by getting librarians and independent film makers to share ideas?

As of late December 2008 the text of the IF: Inside Film article on the top tech trends is yet to be posted onto the IF web site. So to summaries, the overlap between the issues faced by the film industry and libraries in 2009 is:

• Increasing Digitisation,
• Film Game Convergence,
• Environmental Sustainability, and as always
• Funding.

Scholarly Wikipedia?

2008-12-19T23:12:00.013+11:00

Earlier this year a colleague complained that she had recently returned from a meeting of reference librarians held in a certain nameless (hint - some would say souless) planned city to the north, and the day was spent with the (insert collective noun for reference librarians) bitching and moaning about Wikipedia. The crux of the complaints was that they saw Wikipedia content as biased, lacking in authority, simplistic, and basically not as good as what would be delivered by a good reference librarian. (What's that I hear - the sound of users voting with their feet.)

So without passing judgement on these reference librarians (after all I wasn't at the meeting, and all the reference librarians I know actually use Wikipedia) I was interested to read on ReadWriteWeb that the scholarly journal "RNA Biology, has decided to ask every author who submits an article to a newly created section of the journal about families of RNA molecules to also submit a Wikipedia page that summarises the work. As Nature reports, this is the first time an academic journal has forced its authors to disseminate information this way."

According to the ReadWriteWeb post, "Every new Wikipedia page will go through the same peer review process as the original article, though afterward, of course, the pages are open for editing just like every other page in the Wikipedia."

It will be interesting to see if this is an important shift in the way in which scholarly information is disseminated. It will also be interesting to see if this actually makes scholarly information more accessible to the wider community. I can just see school and university students sneaking their Blackberries and iPhones into exams to look up Wikipedia for answers. Oh the ingenuity of digital natives!

Looking back: VICNET and proto Web 2.0

2008-12-19T19:37:00.048+11:00

The end of the year is also a good time to look back as well as forward. Over the last 2 years there has been a lot written about Web 2.0, Learning 2.0, and Library 2.0; but there are examples of Web / Library 2.0 activities and software that go back much further, like back 14 years. So lets spend some time looking back.

VICNET began in 1994 and was officially launched in May 1995. In its time VICNET was Victoria's largest website. For example, by late 1999 VICNET web servers received 10 million hits a month. VICNET's success was driven in part by the fact that they hosted nearly 2,000 websites for Victoria's community groups. So with all this free online social networking, VICNET was like mySpace or Facebook years and years before mySpace or Facebook became household brands. At the time this was not called Web 2.0 or Library 2.0 because these terms had not been invented. As a aside, there is a story behind why the very successful VICNET logo was killed off, but this blog is probably not the appropriate forum for going over this sad and sorry tale. Needless to say, the person who was in charge of marketing for the State Library of Victoria at the time is no longer in that position.

But even way back then, the statistics showed the power of online engagement and proto Web 2.0 services. For example, look at the following web statistics:

State Library of Victoria Online visits versus VICNET Community Portal visits

Financial Year	State Library	VICNET
2006 – 2007	New measures implemented	New measures implemented
2005 – 2006	2,836,315	31,722,019
2004 – 2005	2,006,323	21,732,747
2003 – 2004	2,000,759	22,000,000
2002 – 2003	1,766,970	19,897,157
2001 – 2002	1,204,962	16,100,241

Source: State Library of Victoria Annual Reports,
http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/about/information/annual_reports/index.html

VICNET was (and is) more than just web hosting, but this look back into the past shows that with vision and determination libraries can indeed be innovative and ahead of the pack. The question is - what innovative and strategic things should we be doing today and tomorrow.

The matrix of the mind: Plugging your brain into Amazon

2008-12-19T16:37:00.020+11:00

I've being doing some catch up reading, and as it is the end of the year it is also a good time to think about the past and the future. Speaking of the future, I was interested to see an article in the November issue (I did say I had to catch up on reading) of Scientific America titled Jacking into the Brain: Is the Brain the Ultimate Computer Interface?

So what is all this about? Well, imaging being able to plug your brain into a computer (or a USB stick) and down load the complete works of Shakespeare, or War and Peace, or a technical manual directly into your brain. Imagine being able to plug your brain into all the books on Amazon. Imagine being able to download study notes while you sleep. This article is about whether this is possible, and what are the issues. Who knows, combined with a semantic web type product that watches what you download, there may even come a day when the information that interests you is downloaded into your mind without the need for you to go out and find it. Now what would this do to learning and libraries?

Though we know a lot about neuroscience, there is still so much we don't know. So this cyberpunk fantasy is still a long, long way off. And as any student who has photocopied or downloaded pages and pages of material for an assignment can tell you, there is a BIG difference between downloading information, processing information, and UNDERSTANDING information. So breath easy, it looks like there will be lots of sleeps before (as in the Matrix film) you can download a manual on how to drive a helicopter and then off you go.

This said, there is some really interesting and important work being done in the area of Machine / Mind interfaces. For example, there is work being done that allows amputees to control prosthetic devices by thought.

However, one of the really fascinating sections of this Scientific America article dealt with the way we would have to translate a machine's thoughts (binary code) into human thoughts. While even the most powerful computer in the world still basically operates by processing lots of 1 ons and 0 offs, it appears that the 'binary code' of the mind is much more varied, multi-dimensional, and subtle. The "oldest notion [we have to explain neural activity] is that a rate of code is made up of voltage spikes when a neuron fires in a given interval". However, it appears that there is much more going on within each spike, and the most advanced research suggests that patterns of brain activity are also influenced by the interaction between groups of neurons firing in both space and time. So much for the boring and simple binary code.

Being Digital in school, home, and community

2008-12-18T19:59:00.039+11:00

I have just being reading the recent Monash University Faculty of Education research report titled Being Digital in School, Home and Community. This survey asked 2,635 year 10 students what digital technology they use, and what they think about digital technology in their school, home, and community. "Demographic factors selected for analysis were school sector, gender, socioeconomic status (SES), geographic remoteness and cultural diversity.

So what does it say? Well; some of it will come as no surprise:

• most young Australians have home computers and use them daily,
• computers and the internet are important for schooling,
• young people multi-task when using technology,
• girls tend to use digital technology for communicating and boys use it to play games, and
• private schools have better access to computers and internet capacity than state schools;

There are also some fascinating information in the report's details. Some tidbits include:

• Lower levels of ownership of certain technologies such as computer/video games and office technologies reflect different levels of interest rather than barriers based on cost.
• 40% of the highest socioeconomic segment and just over 20% of the lowest socioeconomic segment had access to computers at home prior to primary school [talk about digital natives!]
• 20% of boys and 10% of girls use their computers for programming. Even though this is low I was surprised by this level of programming, but the report did suggest what is meant by programming is open to interpretation.

There are also some possibly controversial observations, including:

• there is little evidence of innovative use of digital technologies in schools, "although students used school computers for finding information, for word processing... spreadsheets and databases, this survey did not find evidence of creative or innovative computer use transforming educational practice in schools as judged by the young people."
• the majority of students across school sectors found that rules on internet usage interfered with their ability to use school computers for their school work. "Much of the interference related to the blocking of access to internet sites. Many of the schools surveyed limited their access to email and chat programmes thereby restricting the ability of students to communicate with each other online and send their schoolwork from school computers to their home computers using their preferred email accounts".
• young people learn about the internet mainly by themselves [what no librarians - mock horror!] "Around half of those surveyed report learning at least a moderate amount about the internet at school. However, 11 per cent of those surveyed reported not learning anything at all about the internet from school. These data may indicate that schools could be doing a better job in teaching students about the internet or, alternatively, that by the time young people begin using the internet at school, they have already learnt about it from their other sources."

It was a pity the survey did not look at where students did their after school internet and digital activities. While many young people use home PCs, a lot also use public libraries even when their have the internet at home. Why, would be an interesting topic of research. Still there is a lot in this report worth checking out.

6 forces of change in 2009 and media barons

2008-12-17T12:56:00.012+11:00

I sometimes think I must be a frustrated "futurist" trapped in the head of a librarian, or maybe I have always being interested in how things interconnect and work in real time. For example, what happens if you push this lever, press that button, or pull that halyard (maybe that is why I like sailing).

Anyway, I was interested to see a post from Ross Dawson titled Six important forces that will shape 2009. Interestingly, Ross says that the economic downturn may actually accelerate the pace of change as business and government looks to emerging technologies to deliver even greater efficiencies.

To summaries the 6 forces of change in 2009 are:

1. Constant partial attention,
2. Half of us expose ourselves; the other half watches,
3. Gen Y wakes up to Gen Z,
4. Outsourcing for the masses,
5. Companies become social, and
6. Media industry shatters.

I certainly recommend you check it out. However further to force number 6 Media industry shatters, there is also two pertinent and interesting items in the December 2008 issue of Vanity Fair. One item is about the Murdochs and Newscorp, and the other is about Bloomberg News.

What makes Bloombergs so interesting, and as a result successful, is that their business model was based from the start around online service delivery. Bloomberg must be doing something right because at a time when so many media conglomerates are shrinking, Bloomberg is growing. For example did you know that "Bloomberg News’s 2,300-person staff is larger than the combined editorial operations of the [New York] Times and The Washington Post, or that included among its 135 bureaus are 30 in the Asia-Pacific region alone, or that Bloomberg had not so much been bucking the industry-wide trend toward contractions as obliterating it." Bloomberg's annual operating profit is also estimated to be more than USD $1.5 billion!

While all may not be well with Bloomberg in the current financial crisis, "Lehman Brothers alone had more than 3,000 subscribers to Bloombergs", the following approach seems to have put them in good stead:

"Every story needed to include “the Five Fs”: first, fastest, factual, final, and future. Leads were to be exactly four paragraphs long, comprising the stating of a theme, a quotation in “plain English from someone who backs up that theme,” numbers-based details that further support it, and an explanation of what’s at stake. The use of “but” was banned—it forced readers “to deal with conflicting ideas in the same sentence.” Words such as “despite” and “however” were to be avoided for the same reason."

I guess this goes to show that if the market sees value in the information they will pay for it.

ticTOCs free table of contents

2008-12-17T12:15:00.020+11:00

What with Roadshows, Digitisation Projects, the wonderful NLS4 symposium (it was good to see so many dynamic newbie Librarians together in one spot), and the usual frenetic round of end of year functions, life has been busy so blog postings have been down.

BUT, it was interesting to see the blog postings coming out of the UK about ticTOC. TicToc is a FREE table of contents (TOCs) service. It provides access to the most recent tables of contents of over 11,000 scholarly journals from more than 400 publishers.

So far so good, what I really liked about TicToc was that it is very easy to use, it has a nice interface, and you can set up RSS feeds. (Gota love that!) As an aside, the free bit is actually important. For details see free web and the future of libraries

Following is a quote from the ticToc media release: "Using ticTOCs, you can find journals of interest by title, subject or publisher, view the latest TOC, link through to the full text of over 250,000 articles (where institutional or personal subscriptions, or Open Access, allow), and save selected journals to MyTOCs so that you can view future TOCs (free registration is required if you want to permanently save your MyTOCs). ticTOCs also makes it easy to export selected TOC RSS feeds to popular feedreaders such as Google Reader and Bloglines, and in addition you can import article citations into RefWorks (where institutional or personal subscriptions allow).

You select TOCs by ticking those of interest - thousands of TOCs, within a tick or two (hence the name ticTOCs)." How cute is that.

If you want to see the full media release go to scholarly journals new free service makes keeping up to date easy. This is located on the ticToc News Blog.

ticTOCs has been funded under the JISC Users & Innovations programme. I am often in awe of those clever people at JISC, so to paraphrase a well known Australian TV commercial for margarine: "Good on ya JISC - you aught to be congratulated".

Being Digital in school, home and community

2008-11-22T14:05:00.008+11:00

Congratulations should also go to Ilana Snyder from Monash University for being appointed a Professor. Last month, Ilana gave a very well received address to librarians in Melbourne on Literacy and Education in the Digital Age. Click here for a copy of the power point presentation.

During this address, Ilana mentioned that she was about to release the findings of an Australian wide survey on the attitudes of teenagers towards digital information. This survey also looked at the way teenagers use digital information. While this survey was focused on "understanding more about the current generation's digital communication practices and the implications for schools", this remains a topic of vital importance to libraries.

For more information on this Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant funded project go to the "Being Digital" home page at http://www.education.monash.edu.au/research/projects/beingdigital. This URL includes a summary of the survey findings with case studies to follow soon.

Mary and Max

2008-11-21T18:22:00.011+11:00

Ok, so this has nothing specifically to do with with libraries and technology but indulge me. It does however have something to do with pen friends, so there is a literary link in there somewhere. The film makers have also put together a very cool web site, so there is an interest in the way they use online communication channels.

Congratulations to Melanie and Adam and all the crew on the news that Mary and Max has been chosen to open the Sundance Film Festival. Adam and Melanie are the gorgeous dynamic due that won that Oscar for Harvie Krumpet.

I haven't had time to check the facts, but I am pretty sure this is the first time an animated film, let alone an Australian film, has opened this prestigious film festival.

All I can say is I should have taken that afternoon off work a few months ago to visit the set. Oh well there is always next time.

Yahoo Glue

2008-11-20T15:24:00.014+11:00

I have kind of been half following the discussions around Yahoo Glue but on seeing the very positive review on ReadWriteWeb I thought I better check it out. After all, if it out Googles Google you want to be there and see history in the making. :-)

As ReadWriteWeb states: "Yahoo! Glue search results include web search, images, news, blog search, Wikipedia and YouTube videos". To be fair I tried out the same searches I had used last July on Miss Dewey, so (drum roll) hear are the results as of 20 November 2008:

* 1936 Australian Tax Act - Zip, no, null results, zéro pointes. Ms Dewey gave good results on this search.
* Osama Bin Ladin - Mmmm; some videos from YouTube and the Wikipedia entry along with some blog postings. Ok, but not great.
* George Bush - Getting better. In the land of 'Yahoo Glue' George W Bush beats Osama Bin Ladin hands down.
* Alain de Botton - OK but the results are a bit limited.
* Joomla - bit better.
* Waiting for Godot - Mmm, Ok but not great. I am OK with sponsored links as long as they are relevant to the search, but I am not sure what an online Wills service has to do with an Irish play.
* Lord of the rings - Much better results.
* Legal - Good results but this is a very general search.

Bottom Line: Yahoo! Glue is nowhere near as good looking as Ms Dewey (no suprise there), but Ms Dewey also beats Yahoo! Glue when it comes to search results! Yahoo! Glue seems to work if the search is very general or very populist, but it really falls short if the search is specific or something other than mainstream. In terms of searching, Google can go back to sleep as there is no threat here from Yahoo! Glue. This said, Yahoo! Glue has a very nice results interface that groups like with like within common boxes; and it is easy to use.

I am also pleased to see that Yahoo! Glue actually presents search results when you search on Ms Dewey so all is not lost. See following image for details.

Storytlr and lifestreaming

2008-11-20T12:19:00.018+11:00

Fresh from Mashable is a news item about Storytlr which is an Web application that "enables you to create a simple event-based timeline of your photos, videos and tweets". If you have not heard the expression, StoryTlr also functions as a lifestreaming application.

Oh no I hear you say - not another trendy geek term that you have to learn. Those of you with kids and stay at home young adults are at a distinct advantage when it comes to picking up the geek speak from the street. :-)

Well don't feel to bad, as of today Google news only returns 39 hits for lifestreaming so the main stream media is yet to cotton on to this expression. BUT, as of today there are 37,199 hits for lifestreaming on the Google Blog search. Now what does that say about the main stream media!

But seriously, Lifestreaming is a concept that has been around for some time now and I know some of you are right into it (because you have told me). But if you are not already aware, those fantastic people at ReadWriteWeb have a Lifestreaming Primer. This includes a list of some of the other lifestreaming applications.

While a search on Google Trends brings forwards the following results:

"life streaming"

1.00

life streaming

22.0

lifestreaming

So what is the driver here? Is it the technology, or is it something about todays society's fascination on fame and that everybody wants to be a celebrity?

Is the blog dead?

2008-11-19T21:51:00.015+11:00

There is an interesting post and set of comments on Pegasus Librarian which relate to the question Whatever happened to the Library Blog?. Pegasus notes a drop in library blog traffic as well as the following:

"Two years ago, blogs provided a venue for people's carefully thought-out ideas as well as for their off-the-cuff thoughts, gut reactions, and general banter. In this way, they were like the sessions and the between- and after-session banter at a conference. Today I think that blogs have begun to take on the more focused character of the actual sessions at a conference."

Is this true, and if so does it matter? Are we over blogs and are we more interested in microblogging? The evidence from Universal McCann’s Social Media Wave 3 Research suggests that blogging has become mainstream, and while it has experienced strong growth in Asia the growth has plateaued somewhat in the more US market.

There is also an interesting article in the UK based NMK: Knowledge for the Digital Economy titled Record visits for UK blog sites that looks at the uptake and use of blogs in that part of the world. One one hand it appears that blogs are "increasingly displacing traditional media usage and recent statistics (less people read newspapers than read blogs) appear to back that up". Yet at the same time other are writing off blogging as passé.

Mark Twain apparently once said "the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated". Is this the same for blogging?

E-Waste Part 2: Peter Garrett fails again, and again, and again

2008-11-19T20:55:00.009+11:00

Bibliothekia ties very hard to stay out of politics, but the news item in today's Australian Newspaper IT section titled Garrett rules out electronic waste tax has left me with little choice. After all, it was only yesterday that I posted two articles How Green is your Library and E-Waste.

So what am I so heated up about? Well to quote the Australian:

"Australians generate up to 140,000 tonnes of e-waste annually, only 4 per cent is presently recycled. There is a new e-waste plant built by by Sims Recycling Solutions in Sydney that was opened by Australian Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett... [This plant] has the capacity to divert 20,000 tonnes of waste from landfill every year... and turn the hazardous tangle of broken equipment into new materials for future products."

So far so good.

But despite "Sims officials delivering a clear message that Australia needs to introduce laws for mandatory e-waste recycling as a matter of priority" Peter Garrett has backed away.

Is Peter for real? Here is a man who fronted the band Midnight Oil, who sang songs protesting against uranium and asbestos mining, and who was the president of the Australian Conservation Foundation (1989-1993, 1998-2004), but who now pussy foots around the issue of toxic E-waste. Mind you this is also the man who has:

* supported the Gunns company's plan to build the Bell Bay Pulp Mill in the environmentally sensitive Tamar Valley in Tasmania,
* approved a controversial plan to dredge Melbourne's Port Phillip Bay,
* approved a major expansion of South Australia's Beverley uranium mine, and
* introduced means testing on the government rebate on solar panels which has had the effect of gutted the solar industry in Australia. The largest local producer of solar panels (BP Solar) has been forced to take its production off shore.

Well thank God Peter Garrett is an environmentalist, because who knows what environmental degradation he would cause as Federal Environment Minister if he was anti the environment.

National Geographic and Gaming

2008-11-19T12:53:00.022+11:00

You'll have noticed over the last few weeks there have been a few posts on this blog about gaming. Personally, I think gaming and interactive interfaces are going to play an increasingly important role in libraries over the next 2 years. Gaming and interactive interfaces are also starting to play a greater role in online education. I was therefore interested to see a report on Tech News World that National Geographic has started up a gaming division in partnership with Namco Bandai Games America and Sony Computer Entertainment. Click here to see the full text of the Tech News World article, but the following quote cuts to the chase.

"The new developer's first gaming title, "Herod's Lost Tomb" is available for as a free flash-based game online as well as in downloadable versions for Macs, PCs and the iPhone. The game, the goal of which is to find hidden objects, is based on content from the December issue of National Geographic magazine as well as a television broadcast on biblical figure King Herod, airing on the National Geographic Channel."

Onlines games from National Geographic should be of interest to public and school libraries, but what should be of interest to all libraries is the fact that National Geographic is linking the online games to their print and TV content. Libraries who are getting into gaming would be wise to consider an integrated approach, but then we are wise - arn't we.

I can see the Australian War Memorial adding interactive content and games around their online exhibitions, though this would need to be done in a sensitive way. I can see public libraries integrating gaming content into other parts of the collection and programs; and I can see gaming as part of online education and being integrated into the offerings of school, college, and university collections and programmes. The possibilities are endless.

Note to Brisbane City Library (see the post gaming and testosterone in the library) - maybe you should ensure that books, tapes, and CDs about sports and sporting people are taken out of the collection and integrated into your fantastic dedicated gaming and sports area.

Oh and by the way, because the games are from National Geographic, the images are fantastic.

How Green is your Library?

2008-11-18T23:20:00.006+11:00

Unlike Karen (the Free Range Librarian) Schneider, I keep forgetting to travel with my camera. So unlike Karen, I did not take any photos of the wonderful temporary Greenhouse pavilion by Joost which is located at Federation Square in Melbourne until 29 January 2009.

"With floors of old shipping crates, tables made from fire hydrants and a feature wall of wild strawberries, The Greenhouse takes sustainability to a whole new level!" How fantastic. Check it out!

Though this pavilion is temporary, it makes you think about long term sustainability. In particular, it made me think about all those new "Library as Place" monumental libraries that have been built around the world over the last few years. How sustainable and environmental are they?

I was therefore pleased to discover a blog titled Going Green @ Your Library. The tag line for this blog is "Environmentally friendly practices for libraries and beyond" How good is that! There is also a blog titled The Green Library. So check them out and lend them your support.

One of the less obvious, but still impressive, features of the Brisbane City Library building is the fact that it was made of a lot of recycled, recyclable, and sustainable building materials. The Brisbane library building also treats and reuses water. You will notice from Karen's Flickr photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kgs/sets/72157609222728130/, that though this building uses sustainable materials it is still pretty slick. So does this mean that when it comes to sustainable library buildings we can have our cake and eat it is as well?

E-Waste

2008-11-18T22:35:00.022+11:00

And while we are on the topic of sustainability and the environment, and because this blog has a focus on technology, check out the National Geographic Magazine quiz on E-Waste located at http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/01/high-tech-trash/trash-quiz-interactive and the associated article from January 2008 titled High-Tech Trash. What is your library doing about sustainable buildings and reducing high tech waste?

More on Gaming and Testosterone in the Library

2008-11-18T22:11:00.010+11:00

In a recent post titled Gaming and Testosterone in the Library, I discussed a visit Karen (the Free Range Librarian) Schneider, Lizanne Payne (from the Washington Research Library Consortium) and I had to Brisbane City Library. Though I forgot to bring a camera, I promised I would add a link to Karen's photos once they were posted online, and so here they are.

There are photos of the sports and gaming area that has done so much to attract males between the ages of 18 and 35 into the library;

There are photos of the amazing book return system (the first of its kind in Australia). This book return system will cover its costs in 10 years via occupational health and safety savings alone; and

There are photos of the open holds area located near the entrance. The books on the open hold shelves are shelved spine down to discourage patrons from taking other peoples books.

As I said in my previous post, there is a lot that is interesting and amazing about the Brisbane City Library. Thanks Karen for posting these photos, and thanks Sharan for being such a fabulous guide. To view all the photos go to Karen's Flickr account at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kgs/sets/72157609222728130/. Enjoy.

VALA CAVAL Roadshow

2008-11-17T08:01:00.009+11:00

Well, the VALA / CAVAL roadshow is over and Lizanne Payne (the Executive Director Washington Research Library Consortium) and Karen Schneider (the Free Range Librarian & Equinox Community Librarian) have gone back to the States. Lucky for me (because I did not have to do it, and I would not have done it as well), Michelle McLean has done a fantastic live blog on Lizanne's and Karen's presentations at the State Library of Victoria on Friday 14 November. For the details, check out Michelle's blog at http://connectinglibrarian.com/2008/11/13/vala-caval-anniversary-series-2008/. Thanks Michelle.

It was also a delight and a pleasure to travel part of the way around the country with Lizanne and Karen. Both Lizanne and Karen are insightful, interesting, as well as interested, and passionate about libraries (... and food - funny how libraries and food seem to go hand in hand). All in all it was an inspirational week on the road and it was also great to catch up with colleagues from Brisbane and Sydney. Outside of the library presentations, the highlight for me was being at the Democrats Abroad function in Sydney as the returns came in from the US election. If you saw the coverage on CNN, when they crossed over to Sydney (and you looked very, very closely as it was a room full of lots of people) there we were waving and cheering. For more on this memorable event check out Karen's blog at http://freerangelibrarian.com/2008/11/05/the-whole-world-was-watching

...And finally, this roadshow would not have happened without VALA and CAVAL working together in partnership, and with the support of the University of NSW and the State Libraries of NSW, Queensland, West Australia, South Australia, and Victoria. Here is an example of the benefits of working collaboratively. We are not large well funded profession, so there can never be too much co-operation and collaboration.

The human in the WiFi

2008-11-16T22:35:00.018+11:00

Following on from my recent post Gaming and testosterone in the library, I thought I would check out the Barbican Art Gallery, as this is the gallery that put together the Game On exhibition which is now on at the State Library of Queensland. It is on the Barbican web site that I came across an interesting installation called Frequency and Volume by the Mexico-born, Canada-based artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.

"Working at the crossroads between architecture, sculpture and performance", Hemmer also makes use of technology; and it is this use of technology which is particularly interesting. Following is the text from the artists web site explaining how it works.

"FREQUENCY AND VOLUME consists of between 100 and 800 square metres of projected shadows which allow participants to scan the radio spectrum of the city with their bodies. As a shadow appears it tunes any radio frequency between 150kHz to 1.5GHz based on its position monitored by a video tracking system. The size of the shadow controls the volume gain of the specific audio channel. We can have 16 frequencies tuned simultaneously and the resulting sound environment is a composition controlled by people's movements. This piece investigates the contested radio space in the context of the increased surveillance of the body as an antenna. The system tunes all sorts of signals including air traffic control, short wave radio, cell phones, police, taxi dispatch, pagers and more."

Let's hope some Australian cultural institution picks up this exhibition as it adds a whole new (human) dimension to WiFi. It is also interesting in how it allows the audience part of the interactive process. There is a great video of this exhibition from when it was held in Mexico, it is at the artists web site at http://www.lozano-hemmer.com/video/fnv.html. Enjoy.

Google goes back in time and stops text messages

2008-11-13T12:26:00.013+11:00

Last month I read Philip Matyszak's informative and entertaining book Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day, so I was pleasantly surprised when I saw on ReadWriteWeb that Google is going to work with the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities to embed the Rome Reborn project into Google Earth. This means Google will overlay ancient Rome onto Google Earth. Fabulous, now when you do your online stalking (I mean research) via Google Earth you can step back in time.

Not surprisingly (given they own it) Google has also loaded onto YouTube a great short video about this project. The URL for the YouTube video is at http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=MqMXIRwQniA but I have also embedded it into this post.

Interestingly, Google has also released Mail Goggles. What is this I hear you say. Well, according to Google, Mail Goggles stops you sending email you might latter regret.

For example, you are attending an ancient Roman bacchanalia, and after drinking too much wine, and flirting with too many slaves, you stupidly fire off an email to the Emperor telling him that his wife looks like the side of the Colosseum. 'Buggerous' you think to your self, now you are going to end up in a staring role with a hungry lion at the said Colosseum. But don't worry, because it is Friday night and you only use gmail you are safe. Set to late-night Friday and Saturday by default, Mail Goggles can be configured to give you pause any day of the week at any time period you prefer. During the nominated time period the email won't be sent until you first answer some maths questions. The theory being that if you are drunk you will not be able to do the sums and the email will be blocked. Of course if you are a wiz at maths when drunk your stuffed and you will end up as lunch for some lion.

For more on Mail Goggles go to the Gmail lab settings.

As an aside, between Edward Gibbons and Hollywood, there is the general impression that ancient Romans loved their drunken orgies. However, if you have ever seen an episode of the UK TV shows "Ladettes to Ladies" or "Footballer's Wives", I am not sure that we in the twentieth century can point the finger at the ancient Romans. It looks like there may indeed be a role for Mail Goggles after all.

Connections, Content, Conversations

2008-11-12T13:04:00.009+11:00

It seems only yesterday that VALA2008 was over but here we are already hard at work on VALA2010.

I am biased but VALA has gone from strength to strength with each conference enjoying record attendance from delegates as well as vendors. More on this in a minute. I guess this says something about the quality of the papers VALA gets from hard working, innovative, and thoughtful librarians.

Anyway, the theme of VALA2010 is Connections, Content, Conversations. This includes the technology and processes we use to engage and partner with clients. It includes social web, semantic web, and the way we connect clients with content; indeed how we allow clients to contribute, deconstruct, and recreate content. This two-way process between librarians, as well as librarians and clients, is what is meant by conversations. And by the way, lets not limit this to librarians. The museums, galleries, and archives are also doing some very interesting work in this area. Don't you love the way Gallery, Library, Archive, and Museum spells G.L.A.M. Doesn't that make you feel special? Of course it does.

Anyway, the deadline for abstracts is not until next year but if you want to know more check out the VALA2010 Call for Papers.

VALA has clearly grown out of its current venue at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre or MCEC. So it is timely that MCEC is moving across the river into a new building. This means that VALA2010 will be located in the largest, greenest, and most technological advanced exhibition and convention centre in Australia. The MCEC building is nearly complete and there is a great gallery of images available on the MCEC web site at: http://www.mcec.com.au/About/MCEC-Complex/Gallery.html as well as an interactive green map at http://www.mcec.com.au/experience/default.html#.

Integrating cultural agencies

2008-11-11T23:06:00.013+11:00

Back in September I posted an article about the Charlotte and Mecklenburg Public Library Imaginon centre. As I said at the time, Imaginon is kind of like ScienceWorks and ACMI rolled in together with a public library and a youth theatre.

We are seeing a convergence of technology, so why not a convergence of information centres and cultural agencies? Actually, the merging of cultural agencies is not new. Back in the 1850s when they were created, what is now the State Library of Victoria, Museum Victoria, and the National Gallery of Victoria were all under one roof.

The Imaginon web site brings things together, but this is easier because all the bits belong to together and are under one roof. This is harder if the discovery centre, library, and youth theatre are located in very separate spaces, and belong to very different cultural organisations.

A few years ago the Victorian Government looked at introducing shared management services for the state's cultural agencies. It also launched the Culture Victoria web site. But is putting a fancy flash discovery layer over the top of a number of collections giving users what they want? Does it offer true Google like searching across these many collections and web sites? Is there consistent meta data in place to facilitate searching across these agencies? If you find something from one agency e.g. a book about Ned Kelly; does it give you an Amazon type of experience and suggest you check out photos of Ned Kelly from one of the other agencies?

Certainly the main Victoria culture agencies (the State Library, the Museum, and the Gallery) don't feature the Culture Victoria URL or indeed its existence from their respective web sites; so what's the point of having it? Interestingly, there does not appear to be much about the Culture Victoria portal on the Arts Victoria web site. This includes any reporting of usage statistics. I suspect the usage stats are so low they will never see the light of day. Then again, the Arts Victoria web site is so badly designed, and looks as though it was last redesigned in the mid 1990s, that you would be lucky to find anything useful on this site.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of setting up integrated and content rich portal to help people find things - but they have to work. They also have to give the target audience what they want. The problem with the Cultural Victoria web site is that it looks like it was designed to appeal to arts apparatchiks who run the show rather than the end user out there on the street. Is it any wonder that users by pass fancy smancy flash laden cultural web portals and just go to Google to find what they are looking for.

By the way, if I didn't care about these cultural agencies I wouldn't bother with this post.

Gaming and testosterone in the library

2008-11-11T21:43:00.020+11:00

After the Brisbane leg of the VALA and CAVAL 30 year anniversary roadshow; Lizanne Payne, Karen Schneider and myself checked out the Brisbane City Library. This library really is a showcase in many ways. Brisbane is blessed to have two amazing library buildings; the State Library of Queensland and the Brisbane City Library. Last year the State Library was nominated as the best public building by the Australian Institute of Architects (you should check out the outside terrace with the amazing tea cup collection), while Brisbane City Library (also no architectural slouch) is an environmental masterpiece. The City Library building uses recycled materials, there is on-site treatment and reuse of solid waste, rainwater harvesting, and a river water cooling system.

There is a lot that is interesting and amazing about the Brisbane City Library other than their amazing book return system (yes I know I am using the word amazing a lot). However, what stuck me was the gaming area and the sports area. Here there are bean bag type lounges for people to sit (or slouch and slide) on while they do online gaming. There are also dedicated large scale TVs, i.e. always tuned to sporting channels. I forgot to take my camera, but I know Karen took heaps of photos so when Karen uploads them I will point to them.

UPDATE: Karen's photos are located at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kgs/sets/72157609222728130

According to the Brisbane Council annual report, "since the move, library use has exceeded Council’s expected 30% growth. An average 91,000 people visit the library each month, an 85.7% increase on visits to the former Central City Library. Loans of books and other items have increased by 53.5% to 72,000 per month." Interestingly, there has also been a massive increase in patronage from males aged between 18 and 35. This is amazing!

While this extra testosterone can't all be caused by the sport and gaming areas, they must have helped. The comment made about these areas is that in the past people got their sporting information from the newspapers. Now more and more people get their sporting information from either the Internet or pay TV. So if you can't afford the internet or pay TV, and don't want to go to a pub to watch Fox Sport, you are stuck. Personally, I think it is great Brisbane City is providing these services and attracting what has been a difficult demographic for libraries. Who knows, the sport heads might then stumble on books by Jane Austin, Russian novels, or Pinter plays. (just kidding - but then again you never know).

There must be something about gaming in the air in Brisbane at the moment, because at the same time the State Library of Queensland was about to show the excellent exhibition Game On. This exhibition is organised by the Barbican Art Gallery in London, and was previously very well received at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne.

Gaming and interactive media is certainly something VALA is about to explore. For the last VALA meeting of 2008, we are very excited to have Simon Goodrich (President of the Victorian Chapter of the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association) and Andrew Apostola talk about the work they are doing in this space. Simon and Andrew are the guys behind the Portable Film Festival and Flickthru (which is being launched in early 2009) so keep an eye out for details on the VALA general meeting home page at http://www.vala.org.au/meetings.htm. We are planing to podcast this event.

Pipl

2008-10-20T23:06:00.006+11:00

Even though it looks as though Pipl has been around since at least late 2007 it is new to me. Pipl is a search engine that focuses on finding information about people. According to the Pipl web site, their "deep search robots continually crawls the web and extracts facts and other relevant information from general web documents, personal profiles, blogs, news articles and other publications using natural language processing and statistical analysis; this data is then automatically converted into quick, simple and interlinked people profiles."

This said Pipl also acknowledges that it "does not verify the accuracy of the facts or the relevance of the tags in each profile". They also acknowledge that they are in an experimental stage. So check out Pipl and see what you think. Does this mean that you now know that you have arrived if you have a Wikipedia entry (that you did not write or ask someone to write) and you have a Pipl profile? :-)

Will Plastic Newspapers make eBook readers redundant?

2008-10-16T12:30:00.021+11:00

It has been a really busy couple of weeks so as you have noticed Bibliothekia has been unusually quite. However this morning there was a fascinating news item on the ABC's news radio about the worlds first plastic newspaper. Basically this product, which is brought out by the UK's Plastic Logic, is getting a lot of interest world wide. For example, the New York Times asks: Will this eReader replace paper, while MIT's Technology Review provides the following quotes in their review titled Plastic E-Reader Debut. Sorry, I have not had a chance to convert the imperial measurements quoted in MIT to metric but you'll get the picture:

The Plastic Logic reader's screen is larger, the size of a standard sheet of paper(8.5 by 11 inches) but it doesn't weigh much more than the other readers. It weighs 13 ounces compared with 10.3 ounces for the smaller Kindle. And it has a display on a plastic substrate, unlike the glass screen used for the Kindle and Sony Reader, which means that it is rugged.... Instead of dealing with buttons, users can flip through the pages of a book, magazine, or PDF using a touch screen and a simple swiping gesture. The Plastic Logic reader includes a "sticky note" function and a soft keyboard for marking pages.

While the Plastic Logic reader is not flexible it uses plastic electronic technology. This makes it much more sturdier and robust than the traditional eReaders. As Plastic Logic is planning to produce 11 million of these readers a year it is probably safe to say that eReaders are starting to become mainstream. Is this the end of newspapers as we know it. Think of the paper and trees that will be saved!

See the following images for details.

More on QR Code applications

2008-09-29T12:12:00.004+10:00

Following on from the post QR Codes and Libraries, which explored some of the ways libraries could use QR codes, it is also worth looking at and considering the following:

There is a simple technical overview on QR codes at the Denso Wave site. These are the people who thought up QR codes. The Denso Wave site also has some good case studies. While these case studies consider applications within manufacturing, logistics, and sales; it is not hard to see how QR codes could be applied in libraries, especially in the areas of inventory control and library promotions.

2d-code.co.uk is an online blog / newsletter from the UK. It deals with a whole lot of issues about QR codes and provides some very good and interesting resources. For example:

• It looks like cameras that come with iPhones are not as good as some of the other phones on the market and this has an impact on the user’s ability to grab a QR code.
• Dr. Wolfgang Heubisch is making history. He is the first politician in the world to use a QR Code on his campaign posters. The QR Code resolves to a mobile site where users can have a simplistic ‘interactive dialogue’ with Heubisch.
• In the UK, the BBC has offered a QR code that has the BBC logo embedded. See the image that comes with this post. In this case the BBC QR code links to the bbc.co.uk/programmes web site.
• Taking it one step further, in Japan companies have started to embed animated flash videos into QR codes. Wow!

Want to know more?

• Well there is a short article in the Sydney Morning Herald titled Swipe your phone over a bar code to visit a website.

• There is a good video about QR codes on YouTube. See following:

• In addition, there is also a cluster of videos about QR codes and their application on Technorati.

• If you are looking for more technical information, there is also the Open Source QR Code Library, and

• Even Google has gotten into the act. Google has ZXing, an open-source, multi-format 1D/2D barcode image processing library which supports QR codes.

... and now that I have got you excited about the use of QR codes in libraries, check out the post on GoToMobile about the next generation atom tag 2D codes.

International Right to Know Day

2008-09-28T21:11:00.016+10:00

28 September is International Right to Know Day. If your a librarian, did you do anything to mark this day?

One of the interesting titbits from Mark Engelbrecht's and Kim Whittington's very good L2 Unconference presentation, was the bit about Charlotte and Mecklenburg Public Library strategic plan, and their core value that specifies the "Freedom to Know".

In Australia we often take our rights for granted. We often don't think about our right to read what we want, let alone our right to information that governments or business might have on us. Yet in the "land of the brave and the land of the free" libraries have been on the front lines as the right to privacy and civil liberties were eroded under the Patriot Act. You only have to check out the relevant ALA web page to see how serious this matter became.

So, how about you take the time to mark International Right to Know Day by checking out the following two links:

1. Click here to see the 10 Principles on the Right to Know posted on the Open Society Justice Initiative web site.

2. Click here to see information from the Radio Netherlands: The State Were In programme about the right to know information especially when it is about YOU.

QR Codes and Libraries

2008-09-28T11:00:00.014+10:00

One other point of interest at last Friday's L2 Unconference was around library services and mobile platforms. With the take up of Blackberries, iPhones, and other portable devices; together with the expectations of digital natives to access information anywhere and at any time, this is an issue libraries can not afford to ignore. This is also a big area to cover, so lets focus on one small part of the equation - QR Codes.

QR Codes are two-dimensional bar codes that were originally created by Denso-Wave in Japan. The “QR” is stands for 'Quick Response', and they operate in a similar way to traditional bar codes, but QR codes allow for more customisation.

QR Codes lets people instantly pull your stuff onto their mobile platforms without the need to type in URLs or Google you.

But why would you want to do that? Well, we will get to that in a minute.

I had being looking at QR codes for some time, but I got really excited when I stumbled across MoFuse. In a couple of minutes I was able to add a QR code to this blog. (Do you see my QR code on the top right hand side of this blog?) You can read about how easy this is to do at Mobilise your blog. As you have probably noticed, I use this blog as a bit of a sandpit to test Web 2.0 applications. What I love about Mofuse is that is is very easy to use, its free, and it comes with great statistics.

In America, the Brooklyn Public Library has been experimenting with QR codes. They use the codes to identity each of their branches. They add the library branch QR code to flyers and posters. This allows patrons to grab the library branch QR code and quickly add it to their mobile phone. Then, using the code, the patron can then get the latest news about what is going on in their local library via their mobile phone.

In Australia, the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, has started playing around with QR codes in their campaign for Sydney Design 08.

Other options could be:

• To create QR codes for your patron's special interest. How good would it be to allow patrons to get web based information on their phone about the things that interest them. You could set up a QR code for different sections of your collection. These could even be posted on the end of your shelves, or against your Dewey numbers. Patrons can then choose if they want to be told about the latest cook books or crime fiction in the library.
• In the future every book and or author could have their own QR Code. Nate Hill from Brooklyn Public Library suggests that QR Codes linked to the Open Library's "goal to give every book its own web page, could prove useful in offering online information about any given book."
• Libraries could use a QR Code as a receipt for library events. The QR Code could also automatically add the date, time, and location to the patron's phone.
• QR codes linked to RFID could mean that patron's could then check out items using their phones. The library would not need to use special RFID readers. Using the QR code on a book, CD, or whatever; the client could also use the QR code to renew the item with their phone without having to log onto your web site.

If you want to learn more about QR codes, ReadWriteWeb (one of my favourite sites) has just done an excellent series of posts on QR Codes:

• Part 1 Will Barcodes Bridge The Gap Between Reality And The Net?,
• Part 2 Scanning Your Web Printouts, and
• Part 3 Barcode Scanning In The Real World.

The possibilities are endless.

Open Source and Libraries

2008-09-28T09:48:00.014+10:00

Near the end of last Friday's L2 Unconference, one of the sessions touched on open source and mobile platforms. Open source is becoming a really big issue for libraries all the round the world. Even if you don't realise it, your library already uses a lot of open source. For example, you library servers, and large bits of your vendor's software, probably use open source. It is therefore not a surprise that there are lots of blogs and web sites focusing on this topic. More on open source later. However, in November 2008 VALA and CAVAL are bring out Karen Schneider as part of an Australian Roadshow to celebrate each organisation's 30-year anniversary.

Karen is an internationally recognised expert and commentator on open source catalogues as well as other issues around open source in libraries. Karen is also one of the top library bloggers. Karen blogs about open source at blog.esilibrary.com. So, if open source is becoming an important issue for your library, I really recommend you get along to one of these roadshow sessions. Booking details are on the CAVAL web site.

If you are just starting to get your head around open source, there are also some good definitions on the Open Source Foundation web site.

Imaginon

2008-09-27T09:25:00.010+10:00

Also of interest at the Melbourne L2 Unconference was the presentation by Mark Engelbrecht and Kim Whittington from Charlotte and Mecklenburg Public Library in the USA. With some of the largest Fortune 500 companies based in Charlotte, it is obvious this a well to do community. However, the public library has being very innovative and entrepreneurial.

For example in 2006, the library received an award for Extraordinary Public Service from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. This award recognised the interesting and innovative work the library had undertaken with their Imaginon site. Imaginon is kind of like ScienceWorks and ACMI rolled in together with a public library and a youth theatre. As you can see from the photo, Imaginon is quite a place.

What I find interesting about Imaginon; is that in being a shared facility that is a interactive discovery centre, library, and theatre; there are some very interesting cross over possibilities. For example linking story time programmes with acting classes, or science discovery programmes with reading programmes.

Skoolaborate

2008-09-26T11:54:00.027+10:00

I am now sitting in the Westley Field's (from Methodist Ladies College) presentation on Skoolaborate: Schools collaborating to engage student learners. What I like about the start of Westley's presentation is his comment that we should not get too caught up with what is the right and wrong way of doing things. If we are on the cutting edge, and or starting out, there is no right or wrong way. We learn by doing. This of course touches on the theme of the unconference "Learn through play".

An important development is the use of emerging technologies in the learning environment. Westley mentioned the New Media Consortium's (NMC) Horizon Project. The Horizon Project is the centerpiece of NMC's Emerging Technologies Initiative. It charts the landscape of emerging technologies for teaching, learning and creative expression. CHECK IT OUT. This is not about science fiction; this is technology in development, and technology that will hit the shelves in the near future. Ignore it at your own risk!

So what is this new technology? Here are some examples cited:

1. services and things that beam out information to portable devices (and the portable devices are getting smaller and more flexible).
2. Screens (interfaces) that are flexible and very, very, very thin.
3. The take up of 3D holographs on flat screens.

This means we are going to be faced with more interactive, multi-dimensional, and much, much richer content. How do we deal with this, create it, present it, describe it, work with it? And it is not just about linear narratives. The individual can choose, create, add, or delete their OWN narratives and learning experiences, and then mash it up with their peer's stuff.

Westley also talked about some of the emerging online learning environments that are operating outside of the traditional school environment. For example see Global Challenge, Values exchange from New Zealand, or Mathletics. Some of these online services are paying top dollar for the teachers (mortals) behind the portal. So what does all this mean for traditional schools?

Well, some of the innovative stuff is happening because people can. It is not necessarily happening because they have a bigger budget than the school down the road. Some of the innovative stuff is also happening because the kids are creating content, interfaces, and processes. Being kids they see things in new and different ways. For example, Westly showed some very interesting virtual learning places that the kids actually created themselves in Second Life.

L2 Unconference

2008-09-26T11:23:00.013+10:00

Here I am with a whole lot of librarians at Yarra Plenty Regional Library attending the second annual L2 Unconference. I forgot to bring my digital camera, and my phone takes crappy photos, so this post is going to more tell than show.

What is great about unconferences is that the attendees set the agenda. This ensures the topics and discussions come from the bottom up.

So what are the topics being considered? Here is a list that is in no particular order. At the end of the day I will try and bring the threads together and give my 2 cents worth.

* Tags, wikis, Facebook and other social media
* Open Source
* Mobile platforms'
* Online Learning
* Technology and social inclusion
* Gaming
* Engaging with youth
* Interactive interfaces and interactive content

Now more no this later.

FFFFound, Insuggest, and the Semantic Web

2008-09-25T13:53:00.015+10:00

Here is something interesting I found on the PortableContent blog. FFFFounnd "is a web service that not only allows the users to post and share their favourite images found on the web, but also dynamically recommends each user's tastes and interests for an inspirational image-bookmarking experience!!" How good is that!

FFFFound, and service such as Insuggest, offer us a whole brave new world of possibilities. Not only can we use Web 2.0 / social networking services to create, group, categorise, and share stuff; this newer breed of semantic web services also recommends stuff. So what does this ultimately mean for some online library reference services? Is the mortal in the portal dead?

Speaking of which, what was also interesting about FFFFound, is that Ross Dawson's extinction timeline featured on the FFFound front page when I checked it out during my lunch break. You remember Ross, he is the guy that says libraries will be extinct by 2019. It's funny, I have deliberately blogged about this extinction time line a few times to see what response there is out there in LibraryLand, and no one ever bites. Mind you I'm not alone. As of this afternoon there are only 34 hits on the Google Blog search engine for [ross dawson library extinction]. Does this mean you don't care?

Ross's original post (if you're still interested) is at: http://www.rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2007/10/extinction_time.html The image of the timeline from FFFFound is below.

Awe inspiring interactive websites

2008-09-24T07:20:00.017+10:00

While we are on the topic of interactive interfaces, here are some amazing examples. Some of these come from a post on You The Designer titled 10 awe inspiring interactive websites. What is also interesting about this post is the comments. Some of the issues discussed are:

• These sites can be expensive to create and maintain. Budgets of 200K and up just to create a site is not unheard of, while the interactive web sites designed for big multi nationals like Coke or McDonalds cost a lot more again.
• They can be slow to load; the more gizmos you have, the longer it takes.
• Some of the links can be very obscure and hard to find, so people give up and move away. Yes clever web designers can win awards for tricky sites, but the rest of us would be hard pressed to find a link. Don't forget you are designing the site for your clients, not for yourself.

I guess the trick is getting the balance right, make sure the pages load quickly, that they take into account usability, and that they obviously don't blow the budget. After all, other than Ms Dewey's Ask a Librarian web site, we don't have the online marketing budget of Hollywood blockbuster.

Hollywood and the gaming market, along with multi nationals like McDonalds and CocaCola, are the drivers behind a lot of the innovations and technology behind interactive web sites. So it should come as no surprise that interactive film web sites are at the forefront of interactive design. For example, in 2008 the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix web site won the Web Marketing Association's Best of Show Award.

Libraries of course can't compete in against these player. However, the Portable Film Festival site shows is that it is not just about big bucks. You can do a lot by being smart and encouraging people to contribute content. So, if as a web 2.0 library your clients are contributing multimedia content, why not give them an attractive interactive web site to showcase their contributions? This can only build client loyalty.

But back to the WOW examples of interactive web sites. Just remember that when looking at these sites make sure you have your speakers turned on and that you are using a fast Internet connection. Enjoy!

2 advanced studio

The Mix Head

Red Interactive Agency

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Coca Cola Australia

Ms Dewey

UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage

2008-09-23T12:30:00.009+10:00

...and while we are on the topic of interactive digital content, there was an announcement on a number of listservs about 27 October being UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage. This year the celebration has the overall topic “The Audiovisual Heritage as a Witness of Cultural Diversity”.

One thing that is immediately apparent about the content on the Portable Film Festival web site is that the content has been created by people from all over the world. This includes Malaysia, Singapore, Columbia, and of course Australia. So here is a site that is very much involved with interactive and multimedia content as a "witness of cultural diversity".

So, is your doing anything to celebrate this UNESCO event?

As an aside, I understand where UNESCO is coming from, and fully support the efforts of saving and protecting our historic audiovisual content, BUT I wonder if the term 'audiovisual' actually resonates with the digital natives who are out there busy creating the online, interactive and multimedia content for this generation.

Sites to check out:

• Go to http://www.ccaaa.org/wdavh to see the CAAA: Co-ordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations announcement and trailer on the UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage.

• Click here to see the UNESCO stuff on the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, and

• Click here for the IFLA announcement on the UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage.

Interactive media and the Portable Film Festival

2008-09-23T08:14:00.008+10:00

With increases in bandwidth (cost of course is another issue) and the rise in dynamic content, there is some really interesting stuff happening in the interactive media space. This is something libraries need to think about. After all, some of the really cool stuff is being created by digital natives and these are our clients of the future.

These digital natives are creating and publishing more and more content, be it at school, university, home, or even the workforce. For example, Melbourne Australia is one of the centres for programmers working with online game software, and they are creating a lot content. This is a young and dynamic workforce, and I suspect there is a lot we can learn from them.

For example, check out the Portable Film Festival. Check out the films, the web site, and see just how young this team is. Given dynamic nature of the medium, it is not surprising that there is a cross over between the interactive media industry and film culture.

So, what role is there for this type of dynamic content in making library interfaces more appealing to digital natives? Should we tag, capture, or preserve this type of content? Is there a role for library portals as a space for showcasing local content and talent? Should / could public library spaces be used as incubators for interactive content generated by the local community?

The Portable Film Festival (now in its third year) is a daily online film channel. How good is that! They (and I quote) profile one great new release each day, every day of the year, plus hunt, tag and collect random great web-based films spotted by Portable Film Festival curators. This is the Portable Film Festival's serious commitment to international screen culture and to broadcasting and distribution models outside of traditional old media channels. Through our site, quality international releases will find audiences online, every day, all year round.

Welcome to the World Wide Web Foundation

2008-09-16T21:24:00.005+10:00

And just when we start to worry about the increasingly centralised and corporatised web that comes with cloud computing and mega server farms, along come Sir Tim Berners-Lee to announce the launch of the World Wide Web Foundation. The World Wide Web Foundation seeks:

• to advance One Web that is free and open,
• to expand the Web's capability and robustness,
• and to extend the Web's benefits to all people on the planet.

These are noble and worthy goals - let's hope they succeed.

Data in the cloud and the Library of Alexandria

2008-09-16T07:27:00.016+10:00

If you listened to the excellent ABC Background briefing on Cloud Computing, you would have heard the following quote:

Long before the Internet in 1943, IBM chief Thomas Watson famously declared that the world probably only needed five computers. As PCs and laptops multiplied, everyone remembered the prediction and laughed. But with the rise of cloud computing and the mega data centres, no-one is laughing any more.

What does this mean for libraries? What happens when we all rely on a few copies, or server farms, to store our data? You could argue that a lot of knowledge from the ancient world was lost because it was stored in too few places. Yes, there was the Pergamom, Caesarea Maritima, and of course the largest of them all, the Library of Alexandria, but when these were destroyed a lot of western knowledge was lost. Was this a case of not enough back ups?

Unfortunately, throughout history, many of libraries have been destroyed, sometimes accidentally, but often the destruction is deliberate. In his book "Lost Libraries: The Destruction of Great Book Collections Since Antiquity", James Raven talks about the resonance of loss, and he is not just talking about the loss of books. There is a loss of memory, learning, and understanding.

Of course libraries have considered digital preservation. There is www.digitalpreservation.gov, DLF: Digital Preservation, the Digital Preservation Coalition, and the NLA Digital Preservation Policy to name but a few. Is this enough? Do our existing digital preservation frameworks and policies cover us in the world of cloud computing?

Meanwhile back at Alexandria, Luciano Canfora'a book "Vanished Library: a Wonder of the Ancient World" is a great study into this library, its demise, and its impact the city and the ancient world.

Cloud computing on Background Briefing

2008-09-13T09:33:00.026+10:00

In the last few months, I have done a number of posts on cloud computing. So, I am definitely going to tune into the ABC's Background Briefing this Sunday morning to hear what they have to say on the topic. Actually, I'll probably have one ear listening to the radio while I'm watching The Insiders. After all who needs soap operas and thrillers when there is NSW state politics. Talk about a train crash in slow motion, but I digress, back to cloud computing.

Libraries are relying more and more on cloud computing, so this really is something we need to understand if we want to make it work for us. To quote Princeton University's excellent UC Channel or University Channel: "'Computing in the cloud' is one name for services that run in a Web browser and store information in a provider’s data centre — ranging from adaptations of familiar tools such as email and personal finance to new offerings such as virtual worlds and social networks." There is also a very good article on the Cloud Computing Journal titled: Twenty-One Experts Define Cloud Computing, and of course, there is the Wikipedia article.

If your library uses any of the thousands of Web2.0 services you are using cloud computing. So prior to the ABC programme here's my 2 cents worth, and yes some of it I have said before, but I think it is worth repeating:

• If like Del.ico.us, the cloud service allows you to make a local back up - do it on a regular basis. Service have been known to go under, disappear, or have service disruptions. Why even Google has been known to go down. What will you do when the software in the cloud goes sour?

• Checkout and tag sites such as cloudtrip. These sites provide lists, ranking, and reviews of cloud computing services.

• Make sure you have covered issues such as copyright and data security. When you sign up for a Web 2.0 / cloud computing service, do you actually read the licence agreement?

• See what's out there, experiment, use it, but if you don't like it (or if you see something better) move on.

• Checkout, tag, and set up an RSS feed for the online Cloud Computing Journal and / or the Cloud Computing Expo site.

• Take the time to checkout the Princeton University UC Channel Computing in the cloud web site.