I’ve been sitting on a secret for almost a year….

Last October I was walking with Con in the botanic gardens in Auckland when we were both over there for the LIANZA conference . We were chatting about unconferences and the fact that Michael Stephens would be visiting Perth this October for the  Australian School Library Association XXI Biennial Conference 2009 . The group of us organising the W.A. Library Unconference had been toying with the idea of holding the next one on a Saturday to  keep it fresh and hopefully attract people who were unable to make it on a weekday….and so we wondered whether Michael would be interested in coming along the day after the ASLA conference…

I was very, very excited when Micheal accepted our invitation to be a participant at Library Camp Perth on October 3 .

Instead of announcing that Michael would be there, we wanted to wait until after the registrations had opened, so that the people who registered were there to participate with each other rather than to hear Michael. Last year the 100 places filled up within about 2 days and there was a waiting list.  This year we have 66 people registered so far – not bad at all, but there hasn’t been the takeup that there was last year. Maybe it is because we are holding it on a Saturday, or maybe it is that people are a bit unconferenced out. This year’s Perth Barcamp 3 had a lower turnout than the last two years too.

If you have not signed up yet, you can still register and then put your name down to facilitate a session or do some other job on the day. Further details are on the wiki, Library Camp Perth.

If you have already registered, it would be great if you could read the list of sessions on the wiki so far, add any more that strike your fancy, and think about facilitiating one on the day.

So far we have:

• * · iPhone apps – Kathryn
• * · Can we use Kete or Omeka in Western Australian Libraries? (eg. Kete Horowhenua) – Kathryn
• * · Setting up a new library
• * · RFID
• * · Using drupal for library web sites
• * · What are the next 23 things- technologies on the horizon
• * · Keeping up to date – what tools do you use? – Con
• * · Mandatory Internet Filtering in Australia – Amy
• * · LibJam
• * · What should we stop doing to make room for new library services?
• * · Outrageously expensive, ambitious and impractical ideas for libraries
• * · Beyond death by Powerpoint try Keynote!..and how not to use everything Rosemary
• * · Engaging non-users
• * · Open Source and libraries
• * · How do we prepare now for the library of 2019?
• * · My favourite web tools and tricks
• * · Step-by-step hands-on creating a LibX toolbar for your library
• * · Zotero vs Refworks vs Endnote Cage Match
• * · If our brand is books, then what is the future of the format and how does this affect our future ?

We are opening our house for Sustainable House day from 10am – 4pm this Sunday, 13 September.

Sponsored by the Australian Government, Sustainable House Day gives people an opportunity to talk to homeowners about what works and what they would do differently in their sustainable house. Three houses in Hilton/Hamilton Hill are opening up. Maggie’s house has some great raised garden beds in water tanks, and Amy and Adam have a huge rainwater tank  and a huge vege garden almost cut into a steep hill.

Visitors do not pay to visit, but the government provides some sponsorship that we are all donating to the Hilton Community Harvest Garden.

We built our house in 2000 using the designers, Solar Dwellings.

The temperature inside the house generally ranges between a very comfortable 19 and 22 degrees Celcius. (66 and 72 degrees Fahrenheit).

External temperatures range between 0 and 45 degrees Celcius ( 32 and 113 degrees Fahrenheit).

Internal temperatures range between 16 and 28 degrees Celcius ( 61 and 82 degrees Fahrenheit).

Features include:

• North facing orientation
• Rafter extensions on the North side with “fins” that provide shade in summer and let in the sun in winter
• Solar pergola with “fins” that provide shade in summer and let in the sun in winter
• “Thinking Cap” roof ventilation that opens up when it is hot, closes when it is cold
• Pelmets and block out curtains on North Windows
• Tiled floors for thermal mass
• “Anticon” insulation under the roof
• Cavity insulation East and West walls
• Windows positioned to catch the prevailing winds
• Windows in each room positioned to allow cross-ventilation
• Marmoleum floor coverings
• Solar hot water system
• Light sensor in the kids’ toilet to automatically switch it off and on
• A teeny-tiny garden with around 10 different fruit trees, many types of edible flowers, vege garden, compost, worm farm in a bath-tub and my favourite feature – the chicken tractor in the mandala garden.

There’s even a tele ad 🙂

The electricity just went off at my house, and won’t be on for about two hours. I had been procrastinating for days on some writing with a tight deadline and I had *finally* written one sentence when I lost power.

I am now working at my favourite coffee shop, and it occurred to me that my local public library is closer to where I parked my car. So why am I here, not in there?

Here’s my list of why I’m choosing a coffee shop for study. I’m not saying that my local library does not offer any of this . I would love our new library building to be destination of choice for people like me in the community we serve…so why am I here?

• The space has personality. It does not feel like a cookie-cutter, glitzy plastic franchise.
• The furnishing makes me feel like I can relax, maybe spill my coffee and it will all be OK – red leather couches, mismatched wooden tables and chairs.
• The people behind the counter act like hosts – talking to me, taking an interest in what I am doing, telling me about what they are doing (The barista explained to me in depth how he hand-mixed and brewed my chai in a teapot filled with milk – which is *exactly* how I like it)
• There is a mix of people here – mums with small kids, a guy sitting at a table outside with his dog on a leash, someone sitting on a couch knitting, someone on a table nearby talking on a phone and working on a laptop.
• I feel like I am part of a community and have privacy too. Knitting Lady just agreed to watch my laptop while I put more money in my parking meter, even though we are complete strangers
• I can eat and drink while I work. Good, healthy food prepared with care.
• I feel like I can stay as long as I like.
• There is sunlight in the outside courtyard and the temperature is pleasant inside.
• I don’t feel like I have to dress up to be here.
• I know that other things happen here – music nights, poetry readings, ever-changing local artwork on the walls  – so I feel like I am part of an exciting venue where things are going on.
• There is easy access to electricity and I feel comfortable grabbing their powerboard and plugging in.
• I don’t mind the lack or wireless access, as I bring my own – but I appreciate that they used to provide wifi until the backpacking hostel next door kept hogging it. They understand that it is important.
• The music playing is funky, mellow jazz and it blocks out the sound of other people’s conversations and my heavy-handed keyboarding….so I don’t feel disturbed or like I am disturbing anyone.
• Distractions of home are not there, so I am more likely to work – if I ever stop writing this and procrastinating more…

The image I used above is from Para Coffee in Charlottesville, Virginia – another space that “had it” – whatever the elusive “it” is that makes me feel welcome and like I can work well. I want our new library space to have “it” too.

So many possible new projects at my new job. They need to be prioritised.

Often potential projects are solutions looking for problems. I’d like to spend some time finding the relevant problems, then measuring them against potential projects.

Here’s my ideas about how we can work out where to point my skills and energy – in no particular order. It probably works as a checklist for prioritising library work generally.

1. Team decision – It needs to be a team decision, not just mine.

2. Mission – We need to align whatever we do to the mission of  the library and our councils.

3. Giving priority means giving time –  By employing me, a different skillset has come into the library but no extra hours. For me to spend x hours of my skills on new projects, x hours of existing projects need to be freed up – either done smarter, done to a different standard or stopped. Just deciding that a new project is a priority is not enough. We need to decide what else should be done differently in response.

4. User focus – Our users are the reason we get paid. The reason we do things is not our books, what other libraries are doing or other staff. We need to to focus on our users and their needs.

5. What if we look at it as a user problem ? Do our users have problems that we can solve with any of the projects? When talking about what needs to be done, can it be phrased as a user need, not a problem that I have as a librarian? So not “we pay for subscriptions to databases and need to encourage our users to use them more”…. but instead ask “is it too difficult for our users to find the best information we can provide?” . So not “we need more people to use the self-checkouts” but  asking “do users have their books issued as quickly and privately as they would like?”.

6. Know the visions – Each user has different vision for the library. Each staff member has a different vision for the library. These can be contradictory – and only sometimes be reconciled.  A noisy, high-energy space and a quiet, still space may not be able to exist in the same building.  Compare the vision of the librarians interviewed in the CNN article, The future of libraries, with or without books or the vision of the headmaster in the Boston Globe article Welcome to the library, Say goodbye to the books with the vision of people who made comments on the articles.  Sometimes one could toss a coin and be guaranteed to offend as many people as we please whichever option we take. This is where library science becomes an art and relies on experience and a good librarian’s radar.

7. Get deeply local -We should identify what we offer that users cannot get online, in other libraries, or elsewhere – the deeply local – and use this to guide where we put our energies.

8. User demographics – If we are interested in replicating projects offered by other libraries, we should identify what is special about our users compared to other libraries’ users. For example,  it looks like 16% of the hits on our website are using Apple’s Safari browser,  whereas Safari only has 4.1% of the market share . I need to look more carefully at the source of the information, but maybe that has implications about future hardware we buy and maybe any computing classes.

9. Surpassing user expectations – Although we are paid to meet our users’ needs, I believe that we should aim to surpass expectations too. This is where research into library futures and increasing the tech skills of our staff may come in. If we know about tools that can make our users’ lives easier and if we can plan the type of library that will meet our users’ future needs,  then we will be serving them well. If asked, users probably would not have much idea of the future impact of e-books, but we do need to be thinking about these and be developing the skills to manage them.

10. Step back and fit it all together – Is it possible to step back and see disparate projects as part of the same overarching problem? For example, could cluttered noticeboards, databases not being used and a project to publish movies of the construction of the library all be seen as part of how we communicate with our users ? Would it be useful to sort out some principles and ideas about communicating with our users first and then maybe it would be much more obvious the directions the smaller projects should take?

…mine…and a new library’s…

After three weeks’ break I start my new jobshare as Special Services Librarian tomorrow. I’m working Thursdays and Fridays providing IT services and services to teens.

It’s a big life change, and like I did before I went to Aurora, I am writing my thoughts and impressions before it begins so that I can come back after I’ve been there a while and see how I have changed and progressed.

I have some ideas about what I would like to do and where I could put my energies …but I do not know the team there yet, what the needs of the community are, what the library’s aims are, how the budget works, how my skills fit in and how I can best be useful … but I do like the glimpses I have seen so far. My ideas are then really dreams and speculation because I like thinking *something*… they will hit reality soon enough and I wonder how different it will look…

But here is where my head is at tonight…

A building for 2040

* The new building opens in 2010, so in the next 12 months we will be creating the space to serve at least until 2020, and probably 2030 and most likely 2040. How can we anticipate the needs of the community? How can we make it flexible enough to grow as the purpose of the library does? How long will the Environmentally Sustainable Design features be a novelty or will much of it be mainstream within 20 years?

Non-users

* We have a community of non-users who are paying for our library via their property rates. They are going to be checking out the new building when it opens – out of curiousity if nothing else.  How can we make these non-users into passionate users? Should we try? Should we start trying to canvass their opinions now? Do we need to be all things to all rate-payers or do we have greater obligation to some groups in our community? If so, which groups – our existing loyal users? people in the most vulnerable parts of our community? our online community?

Books, books and more books

* 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?

Connecting the community

* One of the most exciting things that public libraries can offer is that “third place” – somewhere neither work nor home that is also their space. My new boss has talked about being the “community’s living room”. Online tools and spaces are being created with great potential to connect communities. What should the library’s role be in showing our users how to use these and setting up and hosting them?(either technically or metaphorically in a social way). Is it a logical extension of moves to create community information services, physical meeting spaces for our communities and running computing skills classes- or just not what we should be spending our time/money doing?

Online presence – how to work this up while focusing so much on a new space

* I would love to work up a consolidated online presence for the library. It would be a great way to keep the community informed about progress with the building and, if energy to keep the conversation going was available, a great way to find out what the community wants from the library. To create any new library channel using social media requires interesting content, engagement, interaction and a strong voice – which takes a lot of staff time. Is this the best use of resources right now? I would love to create weekly three minute movies about the progress of the building and post them to YouTube – including  interviews with the users about what they would like to see. Or a Twitter account with three tweets daily, shared among staff. Or a meebo chat box. Or a Flickr account with photos that change on our home page – showing our programmes and the new building. I’m still not convinced about a Facebook page, but it would be useful to use it as yet another aggregator from the other media channels – maybe via a feed from FriendFeed.

Open Source software

The Library management system at the new library is one I used 15 years ago, and it was great then. I don’t think its capability anywhere near matches Koha or Evergreen. I know that Open Source software costs as much as proprietary software – you hire good people instead of pay license fees. The new library also shares the ILMS with four neighbouring councils as a network. I’d still like to spend some time fiddling with getting Koha or Evergreen up and running to be able to do a good evaluation of how much tweaking would be necessary for it to work for Western Australian public libraries. Again, not sure if it is the best use of time.

I definitely want to install Drupal as a sort of staff intranet – to give staff experience with using it and to see what we need to do to run it ourselves. I am convinced that self-hosted Drupal is the best alternative for a library web-site. Why? The ability to pull data in from other sites, customise it to look however you want , the number of plug-ins to make it do almost anything  plus the large library community using.

I’m also planning to set up a WordPressMU installation. I want to create a knowledge base of information useful for my job. I’d also love to create a public blog where I put useful links and information about new libraries, library spaces and models of service. I’ll be collecting and reading and thinking about these anyhow.

I would love to investigate running SOPAC2 so that users could add ratings, reviews and tags. Not to mention the SMS notification module…or the chance for the OPAC and library website to be just one location, not two siblings that jostle each other in the back seat of the car. Drupal would be the best CMS to use with this – another reason for starting with Drupal. And it would be very, very cool to be able to do this: If you like Roald Dahl books . SOPAC2 needs a connector to the ILMS, which I know has not been written for the system used at my new library. For Koha though…

Kete is another “would love to do” project. I think the idea of a social repository of local knowledge maintained by the community is totally in harmony with libraries today and how they can be in the future.  I would love to have a local kete (knowledge basket) up and running at the time the new library opens

Creators as well as readers

Many online tools require users to create or be part of the site if they are to consume the content. Functional literacy now includes digital literacy. The ability and equipment to fill in forms online is essential for some job applications. People are still buying items cheaply via ads in the newspaper, attending physical meetings for medical support groups and going into shops to purchase items. These things can also be achieved online also – if people know how to.  Should the library be looking at its role to promote literacy and broadening it to include showing people how to better use online spaces?

Teens

There are currently no programmes targeted at  teens. As a small building, there is not a lot of room to set up a gaming area or anything that gives privacy and allows high-energy. The demographics of the area have a low proportion of teens. Many of the families are there so that the kids can go to the nearby private schools – which have very well equipped libraries. I am not sure the best way to create relationships with the teens in the area, given that there are not a lot of them, there are no programmes currently for them and there is not a lot of room in the existing building. A couple of friends have suggested a Teen Advisory Council, which I think is excellent …but I am not sure the best way to get together a group of users and non-users and find out what they want. The library has just introduced the Your Tutor online homework help service, so I could promote this and ask teens what they want …maybe by putting flyers in books …but I’d love to have an event to invite them to on the flyer also.  Just what????

I’m also fascinated with the idea that for people under 15 or so the book is not the primary location of mosts texts/stories. Harry Potter to them is not a book by JK Rowling, it is just as much a series of movies, a computer game, a lot of associated merchandise, and even a whole bunch of fan ficiton. Same with Star Wars. Or Twilight. High School Musical. Hannah Montana. Australian Idol (TV programme, karaoke machine, music deal, website, series of blogs … ). I’m really interested in how this way of looking at stories and connecting around them fits into teen services in a library.

Some frilly stuff

I think that working from home is a environmentally sensible option, and I would like to see the library supporting people who do this. Maybe monthly Freelance Fridays? Or maybe booking the community room as a co-working space once a month for work-at-home folk to bounce ideas off each other?(UPDATE 7 September: by supporting people who work at home, I meant people in the community we serve who work from home, rather than library staff who work from home)

At East Melbourne Library there was no cafe, just a kitchenette outside the community room. I thought this sent a message of welcome to the community. I wonder whether a kitchenette somewhere as well as a cafe would work in the new building?

I want to create a demonstration worm farm on site.

I’d love to somehow start a “Thinker-in-Residence” programme, where someone is supported to stay in the area and run programmes at the library. ( dream on)

MOST IMPORTANTLY …

Balance

I will be initially working just two days a week, with probably one day pre- committed to desk shifts, shelving, book selection, meetings. How can I identify the strategic few things from the list above where it is best to put my energy?

Registrations are now open for the third Western Australian Library Unconference. There are 100 spots available. Last year it was booked out within two days.

This year we are calling the event: LibraryCamp Perth 2009: Keeping the Fire Burning . The agenda will be decided on the day by the participants. For more information about unconferences and what happened in 2007 and 2008, check out our Library Unconferences page.

Date: Saturday, 3 October 2009
Time: 9:30am for a 10am start. 4pm finish.
Venue: Central TAFE, 140 Royal St, East Perth. Map here.

Thanks to our generous sponsors below, there is no cost to participants – except time, energy, communication, expertise and engagement.

• Central TAFE, East Perth
• Murdoch University Library
• Edith Cowan University Library
• Curtin University Library
• University of Western Australia Library
• Local Government Librarians’ Association of Western Australia (LocLib)

How to register

1. Put your details on the 2009 Registrations page. If you cannot attend please take your name off the list, and let one of the people on stand-by know.
2. Share your brilliant presentation idea.
3. Volunteer to help with set up and other practical jobs on the day.

I set up a WordPress MU installation for all staff and students at our university campus. It should have taken the team working on it about 3 months to finish the customization but it took about 18 months…and isn’t quite yet finished… We have had three classes use it over the last three semesters and have over 150  blogs – experimental and active – on it at the moment.

Here are some decisions we made.

1. Build evaluation into the pilot. I surveyed users in the pilot before they started blogging about what their expectations were, what would make their blog successful to them, the customisations they wanted and how they would like support. The platform went to production from pilot without me doing the follow-up study, but if the project  had not been supported, this would have been valuable data to have.

2. Document decisions, responsibilities and actions using a wiki. This was essential, particularly when a key member of the team left the institution three months after the project started.

3. Integrate with campus authentication. We wrote a plugin so that users log in via the university’s idiosyncratic authentication system. This is good for the users, but not so great underneath. It involved writing a script to do a nightly load of users into the WordPress MU system (so all people with university IDs also have a record on the WordPress MU system). The unique key for users in WordPress MU is the user email, whereas it is an ID number in our authentication system, and not everyone has an email address…so it is a little hard to data match.

4. Release all blog content under a Creative Commons license . I stole this idea from the blogging platform at the Harvard Law School . We customised the WpLicense plugin from the Creative Commons foundation . We changed it so that the default license is a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Australia license…which involved a lot of poking about and was not as simple as it sounds. We also changed it so that one could add  a traditional Copyright license too.

5. Legal and privacy conditions. Again, I stole our Blogs – Legal Terms and Conditions and Blogs – Privacy Provisions from the Harvard Law School’s  blogging platform Terms, Conditions and Privacy policy , and worked with the university’s lawyers to change them for our institution’s needs.  We tried out the Terms of Service plugin that is only available on WPMU Dev Premium, but it didn’t do what we wanted so we had to write our own. This means that users have to agree to the Terms of Service at the time they create their blog.

6. Offer lots of themes . The beauty of WordPress is how versatile it is, so lots of themes to create different types of websites is essential. This also allows our community to learn about how to customise their digital presence. This was made easier by downloading the Farms 100 big ones theme pack . This is a bunch of WPMU themes originally tested and installed at Edublogs.org . We wrote our own custom plugin to add the same footer to every blog. (more in the plugins section below ). We also created six different “university branded” themes that were approved by our Public Relations department.

7. Be clear when the blogging platform should be used. The first step to setting up a blog on the platform is to  decide Should your blog be part of Murdoch Blogs? This is what I tell users:

It is not always sensible to host you blog on Murdoch Blogs. Sometimes it is essential that you do host it here. Below is an outline of when it makes sense and when it doesn’t.

WHEN NOT TO BLOG WITH MURDOCH BLOGS

1. Your blog is not just work/study related
2. You want ownership of it and to take it when you leave campus
3. You want to use the blog for “personal branding”.
4. The site is a “throw away” single use collaboration and you don’t mind the data being stored on a third party server
5. You want to share access with someone without a MAIS login
6. You want to customize the look and features more than the university can provide.

WHEN TO BLOG WITH MURDOCH BLOGS

1. You are required to use a blog as part of your job/study
2. Your data needs to be on University servers for ethical or business reasons
3. If the intellectual property created belongs to the university
4. If it is essential to have a murdoch.edu.au web address
5. If students need to access it without using up internet QUOTA
6. If you don’t have the skill or time to evaluate third party hosting options
7. You want to set it so that only someone with a MAIS login can read it
8. You want to use your MAIS login to access it
9. You want a system that *may* be able to integrate with other information systems of the University
10. The blog is not based on a specific Course Unit and the very basic blog facility of the Learning Management System is not sufficient
11. You are concerned about Terms of Service on third party sites

HOSTING OPTIONS

There are three places to host your blog:

1. On a third party “get a blog” service where blogs are set up and  maintained on a web site. These are good for the beginner blogger. You can make quite a few changes to the look and functions of the blog, but generally these more limited than if you hosted the blog yourself.

Useful sites to get a blog are:

• blogger
• wordpress.com
• edublogs.org

2. Buy web hosting and control your own installation. This is useful if you want to control all your data and customise your blog intricately. Many hosting services cost around $100 a year and have “one click” installations for blogs. You do have to have some technical knowledge.

3. Have your blog hosted by the University as part of Murdoch University blogs.

8. Choose minimum number of plugins . No matter how careful you are, plugins can break during upgrades or conflict with each other.

With WordPress MU, there are two levels of plugins.  Plugins in the MU-plugins directory are switched on for all blogs and cannot be switched off. Plugins in the plugins directory can be switched on by the administrator of each blog.

Here are the plugins that we ended up using:

Installation wide – in MU-plugins directory

1. In-house authentication integration plugin
2. In-house footer plugin – puts at the bottom of each blog
   1. Links to Akismet and “Blog with WordPress” – a condition of being granted an Akismet license
   2. Links to Legal Terms and Conditions and Privacy conditions
   3. Links to the root blog, dashboard and login to the system – for easy navigation
3. Creative Commons plugin – puts a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Australia license in the blog footer by default and allows user to select a different license if required
4. Privacy Options – adds three extra options to the Settings > Privacy options . Extra options are
   1. All users on the blogging platform
   2. Registered subscribers to the blog
   3. Only admins
5. Ada Active Blogs – lets you add a widget to the sidebar showing the blogs with the most posts
6. Ada New Blogs – lets you add a widget to the sidebar showing the most recently added blogs on the installation
7. Ada Updated Blogs – lets you add a widget to the sidebar showing the blogs with the most recent posts
8. Akismet – spam protection. Needed to get a wordpress.com API key and also email wordpress.com in the way specified to get permission to use it in the institution as a non-profit.
9. Anarchy media player – detects links to media like audio files and embeds a player in posts
10. Allow Embedded Videos – allows users to embed YouTube, Flickr and Google videos
11. List-All – Creates a list of all the blogs on the installation
12. WYSIWYG print – creates a neater, tidier printout of a page for *most* themes.
13. Default Theme – allows the installation administrator to set a specific theme as the default for all new blogs

Administrators can switch on for individual blogs – plugins directory

1. Add RSS – allows you to manually add an RSS feed (eg. a Twitter feed)  that can be autodetected by Firefox or other web browsers
2. FireStats – comprehensive statistics package that includes a widget for popular posts. Will only count statistics for posts created after the plugin in enabled
3. Photo Dropper – adds a box to the bottom of page/post editor that allows you to search for a term and then automatically embed and attribute a Creative Commons licensed Flickr image on that topic.
4. Sociable – adds links to popular social bookmarking sites
5. Subscribe To Comments – lets users subscribe to further comments on any single post
6. WordPress Video Plugin – a filter to allow embed of media from many different sites by using a specified code in the guidance
7. Spam Karma 2 – spam blocker that is no longer supported, but adds a little more protection
8. Unfiltered MU – this is a better alternative than WordPress Video Plugin or Allow Embedded Videos . It allows the administrator to let users embed javascript in posts

The following extra plugins in the plugins directory were requested by a user. I probably wouldn’t have included them otherwise. One of them slows down how quickly the individual blog loads, but I haven’t had a chance to isolate which

1. Authors Widget – allows one to add a widget that lists authors
2. Page Blocks – allows widgets to be added to the right or left , top or bottom of a page
3. Snap Shots™ Plugin for WordPress.org – allows users to preview a screenshot of a link. It has advertising links as part of the window, some that link to our competitors
4. Subscribe2 – emails new posts to specified address
5. TinyMCE Advanced – expands the functionality of the visual editor for writing pages and posts

Next Tuesday 11 August at 5:30pm,  a mob of  librarians are going to sit around for an hour and watch a video of Stephen Abram talking about “transformational librarianship” . Then everyone is going to talk about it. Then five of us from different library sectors will be on a panel talking about challenges of the future.

The event is a co-production of the Special Libraries Association, the State Library of Western Australia and the Australian Library and Information Association.

It will be a bit, but not quite, like this picture taken at Annalakshmi in Perth back in September 2007.

Here’s the information from the publicity:. I *think* you could still RSVP.

Do You Think Librarianship Is Changing?

Stephen Abram of SirsiDynix, SLA and Stephen’s Lighthouse fame does.

Find out more

Hear a summary of Stephen’s views on transformational librarianship and participate in a lively discussion with a panel of local librarians at the State Library of WA in August.

Think about the challenges facing our profession.

Find out who is using Web 2.0 tools and how.

Think about collaboration across the sectors and come and share your knowledge with special/academic/public/school librarians.

Where: Great Southern Room, Alexander Library Bldg, Francis St

When: 11^th August, 5.30 – 7.00 pm

Cost: Gold coin donation

Refreshments: Wine and soft drinks and nibblies

Networking: Dinner afterwards for those interested in networking

RSVP: Monday 3^rd August 2009

RSVP Contact: Annette Carter   92164542  annette.carter@chevron.com

Panel Members:

• Kathryn Greenhill, Emerging Technologies Specialist, Murdoch University Library
• Cheryl Hamill, Chief Librarian, Fremantle Hospital & Health Service
• Alexandra Dailakis, Convenor Learning Resources Network, TAFEWA
• Tricia Hille, Manager Library Services, Cottesloe-Peppermint Grove-Mosman Park Library
• Annette Carter, Library & Information Resources Coordinator, Chevron Australia P/L

Michelle McLean and Andrew Finegan are both right.

Andrew, in his post about the freedom that comes with choosing very carefully where he will work next, Librarian Idol: Sabbatical :

…something that I’ve come to realise now is exactly how valuable my time is. And, for now, I want to keep that time for myself. Yes, it’s a financially-expensive option, but so many professionals these days complain about being time-poor. The question no longer seems to be a case of “How much money will you give me for my time”, but rather “How will I be spending my time with you as an employer?” and “Is there something I’d rather be doing with my time?” Time spent being bored or unhappy is time wasted, and nobody benefits from that.

Michelle, in her post about why she wants to go back to work full time and find a  more influential position and the impact this may have on her family, Connecting Librarian: Professional and Family Considerations :

…now I find I want to do more with my profession….I want to do more as a librarian, see if I can make more of an impact on our profession and in a library service and I can’t do that as well as I would like, working part-time at a lower middle-management level position. So that means going back to full-time work and all the impacts that would have on me and my family…

….I know I can make a difference in my profession and I know there will be differences at home, I just hope that we can all adapt to it as we have done in other situations before.

.

I’m leaning toward Andrew, with the greatest of respect for Michelle and the choices that are right for her.

I have a thesis to write that is not getting written. A kid who needs hours of extra help right now to get a solid foundation for High School in six months. A  job that requires more than the 30 hours that I am paid for – if it is to sparkle and make the difference that it is there to make. A husband who I rarely get time to be with because we have the domestic  responsibility baton-passing relay-race  down to a fine art. A six year old who is wonderfully independent and undemanding who I want to cuddle more. And me – I used to play the flute and garden and cycle and hang out with real-life friends.

Something had to give.

Fortunately, it did so in the best possible way. A series of fortunate events.

Event one: February-  Christine Mackenzie explaining that one of the reasons that Yarra Plenty Regional Library manages to move so nimbly and experiment with new technology is that their governance structure is an independent body that only runs the library, nothing else. Just like Casey Cardinia Library Corporation that is implementing a drupal website and the  Horowhenua Library Trust that gave the world Koha and Kete.

Event two: March  – Josh Byrne describing, at the local public librarians’ conference, the Environmentally Sustainable Design features that will be in the new Cottlesloe/Peppermint Grove/Mosman Park library. The three councils have approved a “state of the art” building that will be an educational showpiece . It includes a thermal maze, in-ground heat exchange, double glazing and efficient use of natural lighting. There is also energy and water-efficient fixtures and fittings such as dimmable lighting control and waterless urinals, rainwater harvesting, onsite treatment and reuse of wastewater, solar panels and stormwater treatment.

Event three: April . Visiting Darien Library in Connecticut and listening to the staff talk about how they made the transition in January from their old building to their new building built on Environmentally Sustainable Design principles….and the opportunity it gave them to re-think and improve how they served their community. They were very smart in their  re-organization of the non-fiction and the children’s sections –  looking at user needs rather than librarian’s needs

Event four: Realising that when I had spare time during my trip overseas I was voluntarily visiting innovative public libraries, rather than seeking out academic libraries…

By about half way through my trip, I had resolved that on my return to Perth, I would approach the Manager of Library Services at Peppermint Grove and let her know that I was interested in working in the library that seemed to have the right governance structure, resources and an exciting new opportunity to rethink services.

But I didn’t.

Chickened out.

Fortunately this library had an IT librarian who wanted to jobshare. I applied when the job was advertised a couple of months ago and I start there part time (two days a week) in the middle of August. I get to do Youth Services (Teens) as well. I will be a “Special Services Librarian”.

My kids think that my Murdoch job is waaaay cool (me too) and will miss the extra money (me too) , but they look forward to an unending supply of the latest fiction (me too) and a mum who is more available to them (ummmm…).

Working two days a week also gives me time to now say “yes” to people who ask me to do freelancing. Once my study is out of the way, and the new library is open, and I have taken that family holiday, and spent a bit more time in the garden…….

The first commercial multitouch table, the Surface Computer from Microsoft , was released in April 2008 and costs around AUD$20 000. Prohibitive for most libraries.

HOW IT WORKS

The camera under the tabletop detects where objects are and allows you to replicate mouse movements with your hands. Imagine mousing from many separate points on the surface and maybe with another pair of hands joining in – all working well to communicate with the attached computer. This lets you do things like show a pile of images like photographs and toss them around the table top, magnifying, editing and emailing using your hands, as though you were handling real objects.

HOW IT IS USED IN LIBRARIES

I was jealous when Darien Library created a little video of their new Surface Computer – and was lucky enough to get to play with it in their children’s area when I visited there in late March. It was apparent that this was a social device, where kids and caregivers can work together. Although there were only simple games on it, the potential is great. At the time, John Blyberg suggested a setup where a detector works out which book is resting on the Surface Computer and then reads an interactive story to the child.

I was also lucky enough to finish my trip away at DOK Library Concept Center in Delft in the Netherlands. Last week the guys released a little video of a program created for the Microsoft Surface Computer by Koen Rotteveel. If you place your DOK library card on the surface, it reads the proprietary QR-like code on the back and then can retrieve historical images of the place where you live.

Multitouch Microsoft Surface: Cultural Heritage Browser from Jaap van de Geer on Vimeo.

DO IT YOURSELF ?

After the first Microsoft Surface Computer was released in 2008, there was quite a bit of reverse engineering happening. I was really excited when videos started appearing of how you can build your own multitouch computer using a cardboard box, tracing paper, plexiglass and a  webcam- like this example , How to Make a Cheap Multitouch Pad – MTmini

Most of the software to run these “do-it yourself” systems uses Jeff Han’s code – released for free – from his Multi-Touch Interaction Research

MY CAT LOVES A MULTITOUCH COMPUTER TOO

I came home my travels in April to find that my large computer monitor had been swiped and replaced by another one. My husband , Stewart,  needed it for parts for the multi-touch table he was developing as part of his work with the Institute for Multi-sensor processing & content analysis (IMPCA) at Curtin University.

They are building a multitouch table to work with therapy for people with autism. Acquiring language is very hard for some little kids with autism. A form of therapy called “Applied Behavioural Analysis” can involve repetitive sorting of image cards so that a child learns to categorise and generalise (eg. this looks like a dog, so it goes in the “dog” pile). Using a surface computer, images can be dealt and manipulated by child and therapist, and games incorporated as a reward when the child is performing well. The programs they have written for the table are simplistic, but it is as fully featured as a Surface table.

The best thing, though, is that they hope to produce their surface tables for under $500. My eyes lit up and I said “library” when he told me that. It’s not a plug for them, as they will not be in production immediately – but gives me hope that regular libraries will be able to incorporate multitouch computer tables as part of what they offer users.

You can see Stewart’s account of the way he created the prototype – what he did to my monitor, how he incorporated a Mac mini and keyboard in the casing – here in this blog post,  LCD Multitouch Table Mark 1 . There is even a photo of our cat, warming herself in the  computer table during development: