Reason 19561 that I like working in a university.

Tuesday night I walked about 500 metres from my office to hear Baroness Professor Susan Greenfield give the Annual Sir Walter Murdoch Lecture.

Susan Greenfield  is Professor of Synaptic Pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford. She has written several books that make the science of the brain accessible. Her books take the findings of neuroscience outside the lab and into questions about how we live now and will live in the future.

She took  us on a journey where we leaned about the human mind, what shapes it and its plasticity. We considered what it meant to move from a sensate world – of yuk! and wow!- to one where we have developed enough neuroconnectors to understand contextual meaning of objects in our environment. In considering what made us inviolably human, she suggested that an obsession with status is unique to us, but is also causing us misery.

She suggested that maybe our brains are changing in response to technology and that future generations may have very different conceptions of identity, pleasure, generational difference and risk taking. She suggested a “sun rise” scenario where this difference was enriching, and a “sun set” scenario where it was destructive.

One of the contrasts she mentioned was between the “people of the book” and the “people of the screen”. People of the screen have shorter attention spans, are likely to be less risk adverse, emotionally shallower, less likely to be influenced by dogma and spend a lot of time responding to visual stimuli. She did not describe the people of the screen as inferior necessarily, but it seemed to me that she was suggesting  there wasn’t much overlap between people of the book and people of the screen.

I *think* that she was suggesting that the experiences of younger people are changing their brains, so they will have with different patterns of connections between brain cells, thus have inherently different minds. I’m not so sure that there is such a dichotomy. Online games seem to have changed from solitary, simplistic pursuits to very complex social systems that can only be navigated by sustained and rather deep connections and understanding of other players.

Susan Greenfield also mentioned Second Life, but seemed to focus mainly on it as an environment of consumption, without mentioning that the major activity of many, many residents is to use the platform to create. This was particularly interesting, as she suggested toward the end of her talk that creative actions would be a mediating force and redeeming for many people dulled by screen culture.

I was very, very heartened yesterday to read Sue Water’s account of a project that Dean Groom in Sydney is conducting with his Year 9 class. To me it epitomised how education can have a role in synthesising “people of the book” and “people of the screen” to create an integrated individual with strengths from both. Here’s her account:

Dean Groom was nice enough to talk tonight with me about how he uses Second Life with his students. Currently he has thirty year 9 students working on a Shakespeare project to create 2 minute Machinima.

The students have 6 weeks of 1hour per week in class to:

• Create a story board for their play
• Make their own outfits for their avatars using Photoshop
• Build their own set for their play
• Learn to manipulate their avatars and use the camera to film the performance
• Film the scenes in Second Life and edit their movie using iMovie where they will add the voice to go with the avatars

Each week the students are required to complete reflective writing — you can check their progress here. The students chosen were those struggling with literacy skills. Not only does this process help them visualise Shakespeare’s work better but they also gain a wide range of other skills including collaboration, leadership and improved digital literacies. Dean also commented that these projects often open up the shy, quiet students who become more confident as a result.

Here is a video of his students working hard — right at the end you will hear two students discussing their set design.

I’ve taken the title from Sue Cook‘s post about dinner last night, so that I can point you to the rest of it with pretty photos: Dinner with librarian bloggers .

Morgan, who writes the Exploded Library blog is in town for the ALLA Law Librarian’s Conference, the Art of Information. Sue and I joined Morgan and Con (Ruminations) and her husband Mike for dinner at That Little Mexican Place. Morgan and Mike ate cactus in their burrito!

There was much iPhone ap exchanging and reviewing from Morgan and Sue, who patiently explained that they couldn’t download the iPhone Light Sabre ap.

As Sue mentions, I tried a little filming. I’ll be travelling about in the next little while and hoping to bump into very interesting library folk, so I thought I’d resurrect the little movie project I toyed with doing when I went to VALA and Beyond the Hype earlier this year, but didn’t find time to do.

I want to take movies of librarians answering three questions and a shot of them just looking into the camera – then sew them all together into something interesting. Who knows whether it happens but it started last night and there is already some great material there.

The questions are:

1. Why do you continue to work in libraries?
2. What is something that library workers today should be learning about?
3. What skills and qualities would you look for if you were hiring someone to join your team at work?

Yesterday I gave a presentation called “… but I don’t have time, and THEY don’t get it”: finding time and reasons to learn about emerging technologies at Scitech. It was for a seminar called “Collections and the Web“, organised by the very competent Joy Suliman who is doing some great things with providing online access to Australia’s museum, library and gallery resources. Check out the CAN Collections database to see what I mean .

The presenation title comes from the two phrases I hear most when people find out what I do. If they are lukewarm about new technologies, they tell me that they don’t have time to learn about new technologies in their jobs. If they are enthusiastic, they often tell me that “THEY” (their workmates, their organisation) just don’t understand why they should spend time finding out about new web tools.

The presentation covers:

1. What are emerging technologies ?
2. Five reasons to learn about them
3. Compass points to work out where to put your energy
4. Preparation
5. Tools
6. Useful sites
7. Convincing THEM (Taking it back to your organisation)

If I sound breathless on the audio, it is because I’d spent the morning in bed with a child-borne virus and I was hoping to make my voice last until the end of the presentation.

Mr10 goes to choir practice on Tuesday mornings, so me and Mr6 spend half an hour before class begins snuggled up in the Junior School Library reading to each other. When the Junior School Librarian asked me to give a talk at a meeting for Junior School librarians in Perth, I was delighted to be able to share and do so at a “home” venue.

Last time I spoke with school librarians, the issue of blocked sites came up. The group of librarians today were all fired up to create a wiki for running their group business when some of them pointed out that sites “with the words wiki or blog in their URL” are blocked by their school’s IT departments. It’s a similar story to the Ning network that was used as a conference website for the Web 2.0 Beyond the Hype  symposium in Brisbane at the start of the year.  Several health librarians, including those giving papers, could not access the site due to their IT department’s blocking policies.

What to do? There are sites like ibypass.net, which let you get past your IT department’s restrictions and access blocked sites – unless they read this blog, of course ’cause I’ve just blabbed. I like the discussion from Harriet Wakelam about the issues and some of the solutions to blocking sites in an educational setting in her post ,Blocking YouTube.. a short fairy tale about access.

I think the main thing to do is to talk about what happens at our sites, and for those with relatively unblocked sites to publish statistics about the number of bad incidents and the extra staff time taken up due to free access – oh, and maybe the educational benefits they get when they can use a gamut of web tools.

Here are the slides from the presentation that I promised to put here on my blog. The first part of the talk was about new tools and how they can make global connections between children. For the second part, we were going to create a wiki using pbwiki.

Big thanks to Judy O’Connell for the wise counsel last week about what I should put in my talk.

1. Simply Books

More information: Simply books site. Blog post at Hey Jude, Simply Books, Simply Web 2.0 

Judy O’Connell , wearing “Head of Library and Information Services at St Joseph’s College” hat, is using a variety of Web 2.0 tools, like WordPress, Wikispaces, Flickr, Delicious and YouTube to create a single site designed to:

promote reading and good literature, as well as providing links and information about quality approaches to boys reading education!

2. Techno Expo at Gold Coast Libraries

More information: Techno Expo Flyer

9am – 7pm tomorrow (11 September 2008) the Broadbeach Branch Library is running a session to introduce their community to “all sorts of gadgets, tools and concepts” . They have workshops, presentation, information displays and a chance to book a 20 minute slot with a gadget guru. Topics include blogging, privacy and managing online presence, getting the most from your MP3 and digital photography. I love the way they have sprinkled the timetable with a couple of introductory sessions to the library’s online resources.  

3. State Library of  Western Australia creating a special study space for Year 11 and 12 students

More information: Study @ the State Library

Two special study areas have been set aside for Year 11 and 12 students – one next to past exam papers, and one next to the study guides.They are also promoting the free wireless service and encouraging students to ask their librarians. 

I’m doing quite a few presentations in the next couple of months and travelling about. Please feel free to come up and say hi if our paths cross at one of the places below.

This post is also an advanced apology to anyone who emails me and doesn’t get a speedy reply in the next little while, or who I walk straight past with a glazed look on my face when I should stop and chat. 

9 September 2008 …but I don’t have time and THEY don’t get it. Finding reasons and time to learn about emerging technologies” Presentation for  Collections and the Web Perth. Seminar presented by Collections Australia Network Scitech, Perth. 

10 September 2008 Session for Junior School Teacher Librarians in Independent Schools at All Saints College, Perth. I’m bringing along my XO laptop and we’ll probably end up with hands on the library PCs to make wikis. 

17 September 2008 The Art of Exploring Second Life: creating an avatar and exploring libraries . Half day workshop, Murdoch University Perth. Satellite event to the Art of Information Australian Law Librarians Association Conference

18 September 2008 Beyond the mooting avatar: lawyers, law librarians and Second Life session for the Art of Information Australian Law Librarians Association Conference, Perth

29 September 2008 – 8 October Holiday with the kids (Yay!)

9 October 2008 Second Life as a platform: art space, social space and real space : Keynote for the Cultural Connections: MySpace is an ArtSpace:ARLIS/ANZ Biennial Conference Brisbane.

16 – 17 October 2008 Just a plain old attendee of the Bridging Worlds 2008 conference in Singapore. Speakers include  Jenny Levine, John Blyberg, Peter Godwin, Bernadette Daly Swanson, Ivan Chew, Patrick Danowski and Cindi Trainor. 

20 October 2008 Launch of our next 23 Things programme at my workplace

22 October 2008 Beyond keyboard and mouse: how evolving access devices are changing education Presentation for Academic Work Matters staff education session at my workplace.

 4 November 2008 1:30pm – 2:15pm Creating a simple scripted object for a Second Life Library – for people without geek superpowers , workshop at Poropitia: Outside the Box conference,  Library & Information Association New Zealand Aotearoa , Auckland, New Zealand 

4 November 2008   4pm – 5pm The library unconference: a new model for better professional communication joint paper with Constance Wiebrands at Poropitia: Outside the Box conference,  Library & Information Association New Zealand Aotearoa , Auckland, New Zealand

I also have to write a peer reviewed paper by 14 October for next year’s Educause here in Perth.

 

It’s been September 1st here in Western Australia for 23 hours and I’ve been w.a.i.t.i.n.g all day for John Blyberg to wake up and climb down the chimney of libraryland and deliver an early Christmas present.

September 1st is the day that John Blyberg’s new version of the Social Opac – SOPAC 2.0 will be unveiled at Darien Library in Connecticut. Two weeks ago he gave us a teaser by outlining the proposed structure and functionality of this new discovery layer over the top of an Innovative Interfaces catalogue: SOPAC 2.0 What to expect .

John has totally rewritten the SOPAC module he originally created over the top of Ann Arbor’s catalogue ( AADL.org goes social ).

So, what does it do?

It will provide a discovery (search and display) layer that is independent of the Library Management System. As long as there is a connector written, it can sit over any LMS. The look can be customised to fit any theme or template used by the rest of the library website. As well as search and display of catalogue items, it allows social data like tagging, ratings and reviews.

Why should libraryland care about what is happening at Darien?

1) The module is designed and licensed so that it can be bundled up and spread over the top of any Library Management System, with no cost for the software or license.

2) SOPAC is a module for Drupal 6, a free Open Source content management system that has been adopted by many libraries to run their websites already.

3) SOPAC can be themed and templated to look however the library wants.

4) When the code is released it will be extensively documented (once the dust has settled)

5)  A community of librarians interested in Open Source is already watching the project and ready to start playing and working with it

6) The “social” elements like tagging, reviews and ratings can be pooled and shared across library systems through the use of the Insurge software library.

So, if you are interested, what do you need?

A linux box running PHP, MySQL and Apache. Downloaded and configured copies of :

1. Locum – the bit that lets the catalogue data talk to SOPAC
2. Insurge – the sharable repository for social data
3.  Drupal 6 – the engine under SOPAC
4. SOPAC – the catalogue discovery layer

A connector written for your brand of LMS that will allow Locum to talk to the LMS. Darien will have one for III libraries (although I am not sure whether one needs to have already purchased an API module$$$$ ).

You will obviously need tech savviness, a knowledge of your Library Management System and time too. This seems to me to be a prime project for a consortium to take on, or a good place to redirect the $$ we were considering spending on expensive proprietary discovery modules that locked us into the LMS-is-God-and-the-ultimate-starting-point model.

I’ve listened to the podcast that John threw to us on Twitter an hour or so ago to keep us happy, John Blyberg Talks with Talis about SOPAC 2.0 . I guess it’s time for bed and in the morning there will be something bright and shiny to unwrap. I won’t know how to play with properly, but will have fun pushing the buttons and watching the pretty lights light up.

 Where are librarians in the field of Information Architecture in Australia? Theoretically we are skilled at deciding the best ways to store and retrieve information and design related schema to structure this.

Waaay back in library school… almost a couple of decades ago … I did an exercise where I had to create a thesaurus. The lecturer suggested we get a bunch of index cards and write every topic we could think of related to the subject, then rearrange them into the categories that would logically emerge. We had to know how to structure it heirarchically and use Narrower Terms,  Broader Terms and Related Terms. It helped me to understand the structure of large thesauri when I assigned subject headings during cataloguing, but it’s not a skill I’ve used much in my career.

Soooo… fast forward to a recent seminar in Wellington with Donna Spencer, who will soon be in Perth to give a workshop about Information Architecture at the Edge of the Web Conference. This description of how an information architect may decide a schema for a web site seems strangely familiar, Information architecture not simple, even for experts :

A classic way of finding out how people’s minds categorise is to give them cards with the names of narrowly detailed topics and ask them to sort the cards into categories — either adopting previously named categories or defining and naming their own.

And, just check out these session topics from the upcoming OzIA Information Architecture conference mid-September in Sydney. As far as I can see, none of the presenters work as librarians.

Are users really ready for faceted search?

Elizabeth Pek

Short Session

Easy content discoverability is a goal for any business. This session will discuss the faceted search experience and whether a Google style simple search interface works in all contexts.

 

Search and sensibility: Four tales of search

Louisa Cameron, Angus Fraser, Scott Bryant, Chris Khalil (News Digital Media)

Advanced Session

Four highly trafficked online services, four very different takes on search; we share lessons learned and tips for helping users find what they are looking for.

 

Taxonomy, Social Networks and Pace-Layering

Roger Hudson

Advanced Session

Is our growing reliance on search rotting our brains? Will social software replace conventional site taxonomy? Can pace-layering provide an answer to these questions?

 

From research fluff to useful tools

Stephen Cox

Short Session

Having lots of research data can be frustrating, what do you do with it all? Learn how News Digital Media transforms its research into practical tools for design.

 

I think librarians have lost a chance to hone our skills, broaden them to web design and let web designers know what we do. When is the last time your organisation asked its librarians what to do when the corporate website was redesigned? I think it’s possibly too late for us to join the party now – even given that the poster child for Information Architecture, Peter Morville, is a librarian.  I hope I’m wrong…

While I’m having a little rant about how our skills aren’t on the radar of web designers, I’m not sure whether to laugh, cry, applaud or throw tomatoes at this article by William Hicks from Digital Magazine, Getting The Most Out Of Your Library. It describes what the “bricks and mortar” library can offer a web designer – yes, we are a *building*. Library staff are fleetingly mentioned as people paid to help you find “stuff”. What about our library web sites and catalogues? This:

You will not be happy with many library websites. Libraries are big and beastly, offering lots of services to lots of audiences. Information architecture is rarely pretty, markup is typically much worse. You will get lost. Sorry.

and this:

  So you found the library catalog, fired off a search and found an item that sounds mildly intriguing. The result page probably didn’t have any real reviews of the book, it is doubtful there was a book cover, nor apparently any other related items. You’re most likely staring at a title, some notes on the author, a bunch of useless publication data, some subject headings, notes, and a string of letters and numbers. Amazon.com it is not. It’s not built for you the user. It’s built for the vendors, librarians, and their staff. For now, you are stuck with it. (Again, sorry.) Help or urge the local librarian to adopt newer ideas into their catalogs.

UPDATE 28 August 2008. There is a librarian presenting at OzIA – Prue Deacon, about Thesauri. Apologies Prue. Good to see you there.

Building a navigation structure for HealthInsite using thesaurus management software

Prue Deacon

Short Session

This presentation will show how the broader/narrower relationships in a thesaurus structure can be the basis for a classification scheme and hence support a site navigation structure.

I was nervous a last week about my presentation for Libjam – and posted here how my technique for getting within the 3 minute requirement seemed to be to yell. (Libjam … am I going to regret this?)

Did I yell during the Libjam? You bet. Did I speak too fast? I think so. Was it exhilarating? Oh yes. Did I get my message across? I think so. Did it seem like an effective way to communicate about a project? Yes – I think I learned a lot about what other libraries were doing and wonder why we all seem to take twenty minutes or so at conferences to pass on more or less the same type of information.

I recorded the audio for each participant, listed below.Somehow I just didn’t seem to record Hoi from Vic Park’s wonderful presentation about what happened to her when she tried to implement what she found out last unconference.

• Audio: Edith Cowan University – our learning 2.0 curve Libjamecu220808.mp3
• Audio: Curtin University Library – the story of a library blog Libjamcurtin220808.mp3
• Audio: SLWA Blog & wiki proliferation – any & all from SLWA libjamslwa220808.mp3
• Audio: Health Dept. – A Wiki as a collabrative tool in the Health Library network libjamhealth220808.mp3 plus Slides
•  Audio: Water Corporation – promoting the library with a Library Toolbar libjamwater220808.mp3

I have matched my audio to slides and made the slidecast below. I have also added some links to explain some of the sites and tools I mentioned.

Slide 3: JISC and SCONUL report –  JISC & SCONUL Library Management Systems Study

Slide 11: Skunkworks concept – Skunkworks in Wikipedia

Slide 13 LibX Toolbar. Information about the project is here: http://libx.org/  . A screencast I made to explain the concept to our library staff is here: Screencast explaining LibX

Slide 14 and 25: Matthias Liffers who works at UWA and at last years’ unconference gave presentations about LibX and Google gadgets

Slide 24: UWA Google Gadget http://www.library.uwa.edu.au/find_information/library_catalogue_tools

Slide 27 : Google Gadget editor http://code.google.com/apis/gadgets/docs/gs.html

Slide 29: My Library Tools page at Murdoch University  http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/mylibrary/tools.html

Slide 32: AddThis.com   http://www.addthis.com/ which is already being used in the State Library of Queensland’s OPAC.

Slide 33 OCLC OpenURL referrer http://www.openly.com/openurlref/

Slide 34 Open Social : See the BigWig presentation by Rachel Vacek for a rundown Apps in Facebook & Opensocial, and Why Librarians Should Pay Attention

Aha – by compiling this list, I think I’ve just answered my own question about what the extra 17 or so minutes are spent doing during a typical conference presentation – explaining what you mean.

Michael Porter and David Lee King not only write together the Internet Spotlight column in the Public Library Association Magazine,  , but they have burst into song together too with hi-fi sci-fi library. It is all about how to harness the power of “wow” in our libraries – to be the library for tomorrow and now.

As Michael (known to some only as Libraryman) explains, he is delivering one of the keynotes at the American Library Associations LITA National Forum (that’s their Library and Information Technology Association.) He wanted to bring along something special. A couple of weeks ago, he published a snippet of song on his blog and asked people in libraryland to film themselves singing along. The clip was published today with snippets from each movie. It’s a great to see a mob of librarians having fun, but we were all upstaged by Cindi’s daughter’s performance at the end, complete with swinging handbag.

Quite amazing to think how many things needed to be invented and the skills that have been learnt in the last three years or so to make an effort like this not only possible, but rather everyday.

My clip is near the start, around 1 min 14 seconds, hi-fi sci-fi library.

Click to play

The whole clip that I sent in is all of 14 seconds. Here it is, Hi Fi Sci Fi Library – Kathryn’s clipette extended play

Click to play

The song lyrics are:

Lyrics:
song: hi-fi-sci-fi Library

Here-in contains collected thoughts from our brains
when it comes to the subject of: wow!
Like: Wow, it’s amazing that for thousands of years
libraries have survived at all
The razing, book blazing, techno staff crazing
fighting competition new tech and how
to emerge like a rocketship, speedy and fast
that is demanded in our world right NOW!!!Chorus:
Hi-fi, sci-fi, library!
Hi-fi, sci-fi, library!
S. R. Ran-ga-na-than ‘long with Benjamin Franklin,
Dewey, Kilgour and good people like YOU
Learnt that Mashed up with currents and a whole bunch of circuits
info went to many not just the few.
Now we wrestle with techno, money and limitations,
that might sometimes make a good man go “ewww”
But we’re telling you brothers, sisters, ladies and others
that we’re near a massive “Wow!” breakthrough.
it is your:
ChorusTo prepare our libraries we must be informed, explore lots
and have fun learning how to evolve.
Learn about things like gaming, social software and being
just where our users are: that brings us HUGE Wows.
Look at open-source software and the creative commons,
look at netfilx and itunes and learn how
We can take competition, turn it into fruition:
THE LIBRARY FOR TOMORROW AND NOW!
It will be:

hi-fi-sci-fi-libraries!
hi-fi-sci-fi-libraries!

Now we sometimes might wonder how to succeed not blunder
since we’re underneath the specter of “how?”
It’s a do or die sea change and we cannot just remain, what we
were before or we’ll just sink down.
Take time daily, read lib blogs, build community, and
slog the through the learning, practice, wisdom and “pow!”
It will be fun we promise, you’ll work hard but will harness
and endow your libs tomorrow with “WoW!”
The wow of:

Chorus repeated

spoken over the chorus

We can do it.
We just need to be wise
and explain the situation
in a way that’s fun and savvy

Be informed
and connect with our communities.
We must engage with em all
from the kids to my mammy

banter over chorus
*fade*”