Library 2.0

I was reading Helene’s post about online chat, and remembered I had wanted to try something in my library’s catalog… and we just went live with it. What did we do? We added a Meebo widget to unsuccessful keyword searches in our library catalog. This way, when a customer searches our catalog and doesn’t find anything, they can contact us via IM and ask for help (we also display our phone number if they want to call). SO - should be interesting to see what we get from this (since we just turned it on maybe 15 minutes ago). If nothing else, it’s a solid attempt at “humanizing” the OPAC! (Source: David Lee King)

We have a professional dress code for library staff at my public library. However, the rules are more relaxed for Fridays and the weekend days. We do not have a uniform. However, some branches have polo shirts that staff can choose to order if they are interested. I will be ordering one for myself the next time that they put in an order for my branch. (Source: Forum - Library 2.0)

Hi, just a brief note to introduce Alun Edwards, University of Oxford, involved in Intute, managing blogs such as Arts and Humanities, and researching for the First World War Poetry Digital Archive. I'm particularly interested in the application of Second Life, Facebook and other participative community building tools for academia. (Source: Forum - Library 2.0)

Thanks for the info. I'm currently looking into digital voice recorders. If our discussions turn out to be anything like our last discussions of our last Big Read, than a dvr will do nicely. We haven't had large discussion groups, but maybe doing something techy will get people interested in what we are doing with the Big Read. (Source: Forum - Library 2.0)

http://gslistoolbar.wordpress.com/ The third group developed a toolbar for the Dominican GSLIS! Students, faculty and staff can download and install the toolbar for instant access to LIS resources. I have officially melted into a puddle on the floor. (Source: Tame The Web: Libraries and Technology)

This was going to be a comment in Dave Snowden’s blog post (which was a comment about one of my posts) but it has turned into a blog post. It’s basically riffing on Dave’s comment about librarians having the real KM attitude of being people connectors, which gets knowledge flowing. It also connects to a few library oriented posts I have published lately, Why did I become a librarian? Library 2.0 local I’m in document management at the moment, but in my previous corporate librarian role a big part was in researching and sourcing information for staff, as well as updating people on the latestest in their industry. This results in the librarian knowing the interests of lots of people in the organisation. We have to capitalise on this as we are one of the few people in the organisation who knows who likes what…so we introduce these people that have common interests, this is especially interesting if it’s cross disciplinary. Introducing and linking people slowly creates a network, the librarian is overworked, but hopefully the network will start to manifest its own connections, but how will this happen (assuming people want to network) without enabling technologies. Currently, and in most instances, people that have been introduced sustain their new relationship by sharing information by email, they might invite others to their informal group. This technology doesn’t provide a way to bump into others who may be interested in sharing this topic based information, in this situation we are still limited to physical connections a la the librarian. The other part is that since this relationship doesn’t have a place (like a forum/CoP or profile pages) it may not sustain connectivity. I wish I was using Google Reader in those days, as I could subscribe to various feeds related to a staff members interests and tag those subscriptions in a folder with that persons name. ...

The second group designed a Ning network for a university library! http://l2university.ning.com/ They tried to get the ads removed but never heard back from the Ning folks. Take a look. I am impressed! (Source: Tame The Web: Libraries and Technology)

It's group project night in LIS768! The first group just presented on "Library as Place." Checkout the YouTube video that features a visit to the Harold Washington Library in Chicago! The students shot a little video but encountered security enforcing the "no video" policy. Instead, they present their experiences in a Talk Show format. More Links from the presentation will follow: (Source: Tame The Web: Libraries and Technology)

Ok, so we’ve all seen the press, read the Newsweek story, and if you’re reading this you probably read my take on the Amazon Kindle. Here’s a new feature that wasn’t heavily marketed for the Kindle, that has a direct impact on library efforts…and the surprising thing is, it has nothing to do with reading a book. I’m talking about Amazon NowNow. It’s an “experimental” feature on the Kindle, but NowNow is a human-powered answer engine that uses the Amazon Mechanical Turk group to search and answer questions for users. The service is in beta, and has been for a year or so (Jessamyn blogged about NowNow back in January). So what’s the big deal? Well, the Kindle is an always-on internet appliance…anywhere you can get a cell signal, you can be online with the thing. Which means that you can ask a question and get an answer, from nearly anywhere, from a human, emailed directly to the device you used to ask the question in the first place. And this is built into the device…yes, Amazon might decide to charge for this, but right now they aren’t. Is this Reference 2.0? Imagine being asked a research question by a patron, finding the perfect article for them, and being able to send that article to the device they are going to use to read it. Yes, I realize that laptops sort of fill this goal already, but the Kindle is certainly a more user-centered way of getting at this process. The patron doesn’t have to find a way to ask us questions…the device they are using is a direct line to us. It might not be that distinct from a webpage with a meebo widget…but I think it is qualitatively different somehow. How? Discuss. Share This (Source: Pattern Recognition)

In Elsevier strategically invests in Web 2.0 technologies gibt David Marques, Vice President, Architecture and New Technology, einen Überblick über die Aktivitäten der Nr.1 im wiss. Verlagswesen. Elsevier has identified Web 2.0 as a key part of our technology strategy. The elements of user contributions and collaboration are cornerstones in Elsevier’s technology strategy for the next three to five years, and almost all upcoming innovation projects in Elsevier Labs will be based on Web 2.0 technologies and concepts. Das aktuelle Heft von Library Connect ist komplett Web 2.0 gewidmet, darunter ein lesenswerter Beitrag von Wan Wee Pin: Library 2.0: The new e-world order. (Source: medinfo)

Vous avez vu : hier : pendant 24h, la BM de Lyon a demandé aux petits lyonnais de venir écrire du blog sur sa plateforme dédiée à l’événement : Lyonnais : chroniqueur d’un jour : le 27 Novembre A priori, inititiave intéressante et rigolote (pourquoi c’est toujours les mêmes qui les font ????)  Je n’ai pas participé et je ne sais quelle comm’ a été faite autour. D’où ma totale neutralité pour m’essayer à : Premiers pas sur un feedback extérieur 1. L’url : http://www.lyon27novembre2007.org/ : c’est un .org : c’est bien !!  ;^P 2. La fermeture à Minuit a échoué ! C’est de la triche. Le lendemain vous pouviez encore écrire, par ex : cela 3. De quoi ca parle ? je ne sais pas. J’ai pas lu 4. Quels thèmes étaient abordés : A priori, il y a avait une dizaine de catégorie dont :”Ma vie Perso“. Elle a battu tous les records. En 2 heures, elle a fait plus que n’importe quelle autre catégorie. Pour les autres, voilà le graphe (la science : ca paie pas !!)   5. Combien de billets ? La voilà, la question !!!  difficile de répondre à cette question. On ne peut pas lire TOUTES les contributions malheureusement. Je dirai entre 500 et 800 6. Qu’est-ce à dire ? je ne sais pas. Combien de billets pour combien d’inscrits ? Combien d’agents ont participé à l’écriture ? Quelle comm’ a été faite autour ? Pourquoi les gens ont ils blogués ? Au-delà de l’anecdote : quel était le but ?? Honnetement, je les adore, ils sont au top, mais là, ca ressemble un peu à du gadget. J’en verrai surtout un intéret pédagogique : faire entrer dans les moeurs des pros ET du public : que la Bib n’est pas une vieille dame ! Joli coup en tout cas ! (Source: Des Bibliothèques 2.0)

Thanks for enlightening, however, this threat is not towards the role of Librarian as information facilitator in a Information Age of digital revolution, We can look back the genesis of Librarianship starts from traditional books, which is becoming a extinct (rare) species in coming days of eRevolution. It is duty of Librarianship to preserve its traditional stock in trade alongwith new one e-books. (Source: Forum - Library 2.0)

UKSG (UK Serials Group) organisait le 22 novembre dernier à Londres une conférence intitulée "Caught up in Web 2.0? Practical implementations and creative solutions for librarians and publishers". Certains documents disponibles ici: The threads of Web 2.0 Leigh Dodds, Chief Technical Officer, Ingenta, a division of Publishing Technology Web 2.0 and distributed services: good things for everyone Mike Ellis, (until recently) Head of Web, National Museum of Science and Industry The adventures of LASSIE: libraries, social software and distance learners Jane Secker, Learning Technology Librarian, Centre for Learning Technology, London School of Economics and Political Science A snapshot of UK library and educational use of Second Life Andy Powell, Head of Development, Eduserv Foundation, Eduserv Via eFoundations (Source: pintiniblog)

 So the big news for this Carnival post is that most of y’all were too busy eating turkey to send in submissions.   So this one’ll be fairly short and sweet. Larry Ferlazzo thought the set of tutorials from the Calgary Public Library would be pretty useful.   I agree — it’s always good to show people where to find the good learning tools. Anna Creech, the Eclectic Librarian sent in Mark Lindner’s article on DDC with this comment:  “I know it’s a little old, but I found it to be an interesting read. It’s rare that something about cataloging doesn’t make my eyes glaze over, and this addresses and important issue with traditional library cataloging structures. “  Kathryn Greenhill put in an interesting article of her own entitled “Website or Web Presence?” basically outlining how web design is very much like web marketing these days — in all its modes:  promotion, understanding the user and so on. ANd finally, Katie of the Young Librarian sends in “LibWorld: Library and Librarian Blogs of the World” by the Filipino Librarian.  The biblioblogosphere definitely has a good lot of North Americans out there, it is nice to see that library blogging is catching on in other places as well. (Source: The Other Librarian)

I installed Fresh Del.icio.us a few weeks ago and LOVE it! It helped me identify about 100 broken/dead links I've saved to del.icio.us over the past two years. I highly recommend it. Here are a few tips before installing Fresh Del.icio.us: - You must have JAVA Virtual Machine installed on your PC. You can download it here. - The program offers some tools to help delete your del.icio.us bookmarks one-by-one, but it cannot delete all your dead/broken links in a batch format. It's a worthwhile utility if you regularly use your del.icio.us bookmarks for work, research, or reference purposes. (Source: Forum - Library 2.0)

If you aren't familiar with Google Alerts, check out this posting from webware.com on what they are and can do for you. Yahoo has a similar service as well. I use them to keep an eye open for library related articles, blog postings etc. Very cool stuff that comes through. (Source: LISNews.org)

Merriam Webster has created a new online "visual" dictionary. Its decent enough for certain topics, but at this time only has 6,000 entries and its selective. If you type in "Mona Lisa" nothing comes up. Its based upon the published version, so perhaps over time they'll add more. Courtesy of Resourceshelf.com (Source: LISNews.org)

I’m sure there are lots of little stories like this in the library bloggy world, but here’s mine: Earlier this year, my library uploaded to flickr a set of historical photographs taken around town in 1901. We thought it was a good way to make these library materials more accessible. I just noticed a comment on one of the photographs. A patron recognized another patron’s house, and forwarded him the link to our historical photograph. The second patron then uploaded a photograph of his house today to his flickr account, and linked the two together using comments. That’s great - that’s exactly how libraries can enrich their collections and communities. We didn’t really do anything, other than put our pictures out there (no real promotion or involvement after that). It was word-of-mouth between patrons that brought this about, and let the library be involved in their daily lives. Neat. And for those looking for meaning in life: note the sign in the foreground of the “today” photograph. Related: How Thin is Your Library? How Others See Us Yard Work LibCamp Boston Recap Found in Jail Libraries (Source: herzogbr.net blog)

I'm sorry, but statements like this tend to rub me the wrong way. To consider digital information a threat to libraries is ludicrous, in my opinion. The codex has been around for centuries, it's true. However, times are changing. The very nature of information has changed in the Information Age. Check out these very enlightening videos--created by a cultural anthropologist--for something to think about: The Machine Is Us/ing Us Information R/evolution Think also of the printing press and the impact it must have had on those monks who spent hours illuminating and scribing all sorts of documents. This is the same type of shift in thinking. If anything, e-books will make texts accessible to that many more people, much like the printing press did in the Middle Ages. It will probably take years for print collections to become rare and digital collections to be the norm. Technology that allows us to read electronic text is improving all the time. (Keep in mind, however, I'm not suggesting that Amazon's Kindle or the Sony Reader are the be-all, end-all of this technology.) I prefer a vision of the future where libraries--that is, digital libraries--exist so that users can download the text of their favorite novel, chat with a reference librarian to get an answer to their questions, or interact with information in a myriad of other ways. It's not a threat if the library isn't a physical space! We, as information mediators, need to stay abreast of the changes happening around us, or else drown in the wake of Progress. (Source: Forum - Library 2.0)

Kathryn Greenhill's wonderful blog "Librarians Matter" has been nominated for the "Librarian blog" category of the 2008 Edublog awards. Please take the time to vote for her blog! (Source: Everyone's Blog Posts - Library 2.0)