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20 reasons why learning emerging techologies is part of every librarian’s job

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In my last post, Why should I learn about that when I’m busy with other stuff?, I concluded that if library staff are going to trade a couple of hours a week to learn about emerging technologies that they can’t even use yet in their jobs, then there better be some compelling reasons for it.

With items to catalogue, instructional material to write, users to help, budgets to balance, outreach to plan and systems to troubleshoot, why is it good management for staff to be released from these tasks to spend some time learning about emerging technologies?

Here’s my list. I’d love to know what’s on yours.

1. Core business. Our core business is linking information and people. There are new and better ways to do this and we need to know how.

2. Productvity. All of the tasks listed above can be made easier using emerging technologies, but you need to know how to use them.

3. Understanding all formats. Users will ask us about these information sources. Are we serving them well if we say “sorry I only know about information in some formats?”

4. Trend watching. Tools are constantly evolving and changing. What starts as a seemingly pointless diversion can become a potent information source when it reaches critical mass or people discover a new use for it. (eg. twitter). We need to be there watching this and understanding it

5. Our skills are useful. Tagging, metadata, data-mining, indexing – new technologies need our skills.

6. Experimenting gains skills. It’s like Solitaire when Windows first came out. People needed to learn how to use the mouse interface – and this was the fastest, most efficient way to educate the workforce. Some seemingly pointless sites (yes, I’m looking at you boomshine, and you, Second Life) teach us new interfaces.

7. Dealing with vendors. If we don’t know what can be done, for free, using new tools, then library software vendors can continue to sell us “solutions” that are inflexible and costly.

8. Being prepared. What a few early adopters are using now, others will use in 18 months.

9. Core concerns being redefined. The definitions of some core concerns of librarianship are being re-negotiated – copyright, plagiarism, scholarship, authority, privacy and recreation. We need to be in among the conversations on sites where this is happening.

10. Manage our workforce. We need young, tech-savvy, passionate, clever library staff to deal with the changes, and we need to know enough to manage these people and get the best out of their new skills.

11. Fun. If staff are given permission to have fun and be creative as they learn in a supportive environment, it can lift workplace morale.

12. Better service. If we know how, we can offer better service to our users, where they are and using their preferred tools. (eg. SMS output of item location records to their mobile device via wireless)

13. So we can tell the IT dept what we want. If we feel overwhelmed by web-based technologies that are now only available in beta, imagine how it feels if your job has been to set up software, protect a network and standardise operating environments. If we have a centralisedl IT department, then we may have to know more about the tools we want to use (eg. software we’d like for an internal blog).

14. Our users are required to keep up. In academic and special libraries, our users are required by our organization to keep up to date with technology in their fields. To support them, we need to know what that is.

15. International perspective. Your network of professional contacts does not have to be restricted to your own country. New tools make “communities of interest” easier to form. (Thanks to Darren Draper for the last two).

16. Finding out what other libraries are doing. Printed journals and conferences are no longer the best way to find out about the successes and failures in other libraries. With blogs, wikis, podcasts – all harnessed into your aggregator via a subject search, you can keep up and have an avenue to discuss these things with professional colleagues.

17. Standards are different. The tools we will use from now on aren’t standards like AACR2 and LCSH. The best tool for the job shifts and changes daily with our users’ needs. We need to learn general flexibility and skills to adapt to this. Skills like how to register at a social software site, how comments culture works on blogs, how to assess Open Source software, how to tweak templates and products to fit our library.

18. Can’t predict the future, so need to experiment. Without crystal balls, we don’t know for sure what will be widely used. We need to try and assess many services to find what works for our users.

19. Crowds are fickle. Good quality tools with easy user interfaces may not be favoured over early established tools with a critical mass of users…and the crowd may switch. This happened when a mass of people migrated from bloglines to Google reader as their preferred aggregator. Today’s unused startup may be the Next Big Thing.

20. Better collaboration Libraries have a culture of sharing resources and ideas with each other. Emerging technologies enhance this . For example, I threw out a post to twitter: “ Trying to articulate why library staff shld learn about emerging technologies that have not immediate application to thr jobs. Suggestions? Within minutes, I received replies from Vicki , Sarah , David , Joshua , Gary, Jenifer, cindi , Michelle and Sue. Some of these ideas have been used in this post.

I’m finishing this post with a ranty little manifesto:

  • Do we have to know every new application that is released? No
  • Do we need to make our resources available and communicate with our users via every new tool? No
  • Should we forget about the 80% of users who are not yet using most emerging technologies? No
  • Should we plan our future services presuming people will not start using emerging technologies? No
  • Should we be surprised when it is overwhelming, confusing, enjoyable and sometimes seems irrelevent? No
  • Will we continue to be funded and still have jobs if we don’t adapt? No

Why should I learn about that when I’m busy with other stuff?

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Any librarian who is running a Learning 2.0 (23 things) program or an Emerging Technologies group should listen with respect to staff that tell you:

  • their service points are too busy for them to play
  • they don’t understand how they can use new technologies in their jobs now
  • they would rather just read about them
  • they just want to be told which ones are relevant and just learn about those ones.

These people are not dumb grumps, they are usually people with busy jobs honestly expressing legitimate concerns. They are telling you where the bridge needs to be built.

Backroom disaster (3) uploaded to Flickr on September 1, 2006 by Travelin’ Librarian

Our Emerging Technologies Group involves weekly “hands on sessions” alternated with project work the next week.The group is voluntary and the hands on workshops have covered things like:

  • how to get a gmail account and google docs and aps
  • RSS and using the google reader
  • creating a wiki with PBwiki
  • libraries and YouTube
  • creating an avatar in Second Life and doing more with it
  • podcasting using Audacity
  • doing more with Firefox

I sat down to write up the program for this month and realised that most of the topics I had up my sleeve were topics most staff had not heard of, could not be immediately applied to their jobs, and hence staff would be unlikely to turn up. I was thinking of topics like:

  • social bookmarking using del.icio.us/connotea/citeulike,
  • high use social networks like twitter, facebook, pownce, myspace
  • bundling RSS feeds into an OPML file
  • creating a google widget
  • BIGWIG sharecase
  • LITA’s top technology trends.

What to do? The whole point of an Emerging Technology group is to look at what is being used by early adopters and how this may impact later on our services. If everyone has heard of it, it’s too late to be trying to assess the impact.

CW suggested that maybe we could try using the time for a reading group. Maybe we could formalise it and run a 23 things program aimed at staff who haven’t participated yet? Perhaps we could make the sessions less frequent and give them a set of self paced tasks and readings as well as the hands on workshop?

If Emerging Technologies are so important, however, I should be able to address staff concerns. My next step is to try to articulate exactly why library staff should take up their time to learn about Emerging Technologies, even those with no application right now.

Next post – wish me luck…

What do you do at an unconference ? Perth barcamp 2007

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Here’s my answer to anyone who asks “so – what do you do at an unconference or barcamp ?”….

Getting there

Co-Pilot and I went to barcamp today. A very good day that was stimulating, harmonious, efficiently organised, had minimum officiousness and lots of good displays of geekery (these people know where to buy USB powered slippers to warm your feet). By the end I coveted a teeny-tiny Macbook, not a hulking big one.

There was freshly ground coffee, a whole lotta milk and fizzy drinks in cans. The entire event was free due to sponsership, including pizza or sandwiches for lunch, but we spent $10 for a barcamp t-shirt. We also picked up PerthNorg t-shirts.

Just as the first attendees began getting social, someone realised the wireless was available. Conversation stopped and we all dived for our laptops. Here’s a twenty second clip, BarCampPerth, setting up

Deciding what we talked about

About a week before barcamp, people posted topics they’d like discussed on the wiki. Other people offered to prepare a presentation. On the day, a whiteboard was divided into 16 sessions, and presenters wrote the session times in the slots. Next, people ticked the presentations they wanted to attend and we dispersed. Simple. About 5 spots were initially unfilled, but by the end of the day, this was the timetable:

Schedule: Room 1

Schedule: Room 2

What I saw

The first two presentations I attended were from women. In fact almost every timeslot had one presentation from a woman. I’m just saying….

Three presentations were from people who worked in libraries. I counted five librarian participants. (were there more?) I’m just saying…

I was so engaged in the conversation from the first two sessions that I didn’t take many notes

Sue Waters talked about mobile learning – via mobile devices and ensuring online material was suitable for them. She clarified that University sector aims at being centralised, with the lecture still the main mode of delivery, whereas the VET sector is now aiming at workplace based learning. At universities , lectures are automatically turned into podcasting via LMS (or as Trevor from ECU called them, CMS) like Blackboard. At TAFE, the lecturer uses whatever they have at hand, independently. In universities, the lecturer puts up the material on the CMS, at TAFE there are people who specially design online learning materials.

CW and Kate talked about “How to introduce Web2.0 to n00bs” They told us about projects they had been involved in using Web2.0 technologies, how these were received and gave us tips on how to cope with any problems. We had an interesting discussion about the time burden social networking can impose on teachers and on students – to set up, maintain and check material on a course blog, wiki, via SMS, traditional essay and other modalities fragments time. Do we go back to basics for administrative ease?

What use is Second Life in Education ?

I had created my presentation on a wiki, What’s the use of Second Life in Education, presuming that we’d be having rather rough and ragged conversations. Most other people had created rather polished slides and some people had obviously rehearsed and precisely timed their presentations.

Thanks to Nick Cowie who lent me his laptop that had an external wireless connection so I could live demo Second Life. Kate asked for a walkthrough session in the afternoon, so I winged it a bit, showing them ABC island and letting participants drive my av.

Some liveblogged sessions

I published the following sessions as separate posts

Yep, it’s fun

I enjoyed using twitter as a backchannel, especially to keep up with what was happening in the other room. Bit of a drawback when non-Perth twitter friends see my cryptic messages. You really need to be able to create separate channels of grouped friends on twitter.

I know that “whoever turns up is the right person”, but I was still surprised by the number of non-coders there who were interested in the same not-so-techie sessions as I was. I loved being able to twiddle with my laptop as people spoke.

Overall the mood was less frenetic than I expected. It was very friendly and relaxed, but also felt like people were extremely focussed and very engaged in each session. Some sessions felt more like a big discussion between all participants. In some sessions the audience were more quiet..but there was no mistaking it for boredom.

Well, I’m ready for the next one.

More information:

UPDATE 1 July 2007 : We didn’t all just turn up and do our bits without a whole lot of preparation beforehand from the mob organising it at AIWA – particularly Myles, Gary and Simone. Big thank yous and pats on the backs to them.

Perth barcamp 2007 – Pocasting discussion – Trevor Bennett

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  • Australia one of first countries to engage with podcasting due to Radio National using it early.
  • Copyright – Educational institutions can retain and link to podcasts via CAL license
  • Flexilecture Radio mike.
  • Podcasting is a Push technology
  • Can timeshift to where you want it to be, as opposed to streaming.
  • Consumption in the car
  • Audio books
  • Podcasting as a way of marketing yourself as an “expert”
  • Costs of podcasting – charged for download and upload. So if you get popular it can cost you
  • Podcasting not just audio. Can podcast excel spreadsheet
  • Podcast – file on RSS …podcast is not a term for a MP3 file
  • Audio podcast, video podcast, advanced podcast, chaptered podcast
  • Profcast on a mac. Talk over slide presentation and create a very small file
  • Standards – audio – save all as MP3, video – m4v (can shrink down on an ipod) ,
  • Zamzar converts file formats for free
  • Ipods have square screens
  • Keynote and Profcast for Mac
  • Garage band – if editing, drag the cuts away using non-destructive editing

Perth barcamp 2007 – Problems with the mobile web – Nick Cowie

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Presentation slides are here Problems with the mobile web

  • More internet phones sold than laptops
  • Limit 1 – small screen on mobile
  • Limit 2 – Interface of phone. Mouse and keyboard equivalent are a numberpad
  • There are many different mobile web browsers.
  • You should you build a separate web site for a mobile browser.
  • Mobile users don’t want a complex experience – they want a brief, quick user experience…don’t want fancy graphics, just want core info.
  • Touch screen vs. small keyboard.
  • iPhone uses a different protocol to what is in Australia (??)
  • Mindset of website design = presume interface used is a desktop.
  • Workflow, mundane tasks – mobile devices are best for this. Phone numbers, opening hours. Very directed info.
  • So – don’t squish all the info from website into the mobile website version. Pare it down.
  • Dec 2006 – $100 for 1 G of traffic, 3 months later $50…now if you have the right plan with 3 then you can get $30 1G.
  • Custom aps for mobile interfaces eg. google maps.
  • Opera one of best mobile browsers for mobile – can conver java to links.

Perth barcamp 2007 – WordPress loop – Gary Barber

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Gary Barber is the Man with no blog and his slides are on slideshare, Doin’ da Loop with da WordPrez

  • He promised not to be too technical
  • Was going to do it all in lolcat speak
  • Presuming know plugins, widgets, can alter source code of WP blog, know what php is, not happy coding, not pulled template apart
  • What is the loop
    • Core of WordPress
    • PHP code distributed thoughout the system
    • Lets you display comments, posts, rest of blog
    • Loop is the single central control point
    • index.php
    • remove index.php – goes back to default theme. Remove default theme after that, then deadibones.

    How does the Loop works:

    • in index.php – middle bit btw header and end
    • 1. If have posts
    • 2. Gets the posts plus post meta data
    • 3. Gets it in the right format
    • 4. Does it over and over.

    Looking at default template

    • If want to make changes to happen after every post – then put it just after the <div> and before the <endwhile>
    • Look at where you add title and permalink

    Then in template div class align..

  • The loop is all through wordpress
  • Archive, comments
  • What can you do with the loop?
    • Customise the loop -display excerpt only
    • Customise CSS for different dates, times, catergories, authors, days of the week (Eg. Things written Tuesday have a blue background)
    • Change home page to static one
    • Can place items between blog posts – put it before the end while

    Before start hacking the code

    • Backup
    • Check to see whether there is a plugin or widget that does the same thing

Say yes less?

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My blog tagline is: Musing, enthusing, libraries, emerging technologies, balancing, being mum. This post fits the “musing” and “balancing” part more than the “emerging technologies and libraries” bit of it.

About a year ago, my sons became more independent and the last of my parents’ estate was almost wound up. I suddenly had more time for me. So what did I do? I said “yes”.

yes yes yes uploaded to Flickr.com on May 15, 2007 by b.frahm

I read Danny Wallace ‘s book Yes Man, where he decided to say “yes” for a year just to see what happened. Without going to the same extremes, I tried starting my response to anything from “yes”. As I reported in August last year it lead to some great professional opportunities – ones I would have previously turned down because I had too little time/wasn’t organised enough/didn’t know enough/wasn’t good enough/was scared about.

So, where has this attitude got me now? Back from a week’s holiday with rather more on my plate than I should have, and less time for my kids than I want. I LOVE all the things I’ve said “yes” to, but won’t have enough “me” left if I keep up at this pace.

Much of what I’m doing is half work related/half professional development. I do most of it outside work hours, unpaid – although work is extremely supportive and has been very generous about allowing me some time. I think they hire me to do a job – not to tell everyone about it or develop other people’s staff – although maybe I should go back and read my last post about how libraries should blow their own trumpets.

So, here’s what’s in the “yes bunker” for the next couple of months:

  1. Presentation ready for Perth barcamp this Saturday called “What’s the Use of Second Life in Education?”. I’ve created a wiki with some embedded YouTube clips as I suspect Central TAFE blocks Second Life.
  2. Revisons and screenshots for a chapter that I’m co-authoring with two co-workers for a hybrid book/wiki about Library2.0 initiatives in academic libraries. (end of July)
  3. Rewrite presentation and slides about Second Life and Libraries for Libraries, Web2.0 and Other Internet Stuff, at the State Library of Victoria, July 23rd
  4. Doing something for WA Library Unconference planned for 3 August (NOT about Second Life)
  5. Create an enhanced podcast about Libraries and Second Life and learn how to use shoutcast and winamp, for a presentation to be streamed into Second Life as part of the University of Southern Queensland Faculty of Education Symposium Online Learning Using Virtual Worlds 16th August 2007
  6. Record a voice track for the movie clip of the Australian Libraries Building in Second Life so that it can be archived by the Pandora project at the National Library of Australia
  7. If they are accepted, write one paper for the VALA conference, and co-author another.
  8. Write a couple of “how to” posts for librariesinteract.info

What have I learned from my yes-filled adventures?

  • If I am well prepared and talk about something that interests me, I won’t fall flat on my face in terror during a presentation, and can even find it enjoyable.
  • Accepting all friend offers in social networks (except the utter kooks) can lead to some unexpectedly delightful gems.
  • Each hour of presentation takes at least 5 hours of preparation, and often much, much more.
  • It’s not cheating to recycle material if its fresh to the audience.
  • It’s fun to be part of other peoples’ learning.
  • “Yes” works best with a reason behind it. These are not good “yes” reasons – “No-one else can do it”, “Housework is more boring”, “My family won’t miss the time with me”, “It’s such a good opportunity”, “I can miss a bit of sleep/exercise/leisure time”.
  • If I’m really interested in a project, I will simply not sleep, just like in High School.
  • My time is precious and I should use “no” to guard it
  • Instead of approaching situations and thinking “I can’t do that because…”, I am approaching them with the attitude “I can do this – do I want to?”.

Your comments are making me think, thanks.

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Thanks for the really thoughtful and long comments people have been making in the last week or so…I’ve enjoyed the conversation, even though I’ve been a bit absent.

I usually try to answer every comment within a couple of hours of it being posted, but I’ve been snowed under since coming back from holidays. I hope to answer them in the next couple of weeks, but please keep ’em coming.

Libraries in peril? Blow those trumpets.

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Do you think libraries are becoming less relevant and that we need to take radical action to stop this? Whether you answered yes or no, now think whether your work colleagues and library users would answer the same as you did.

Blame that John Blyberg for my impertinent question. In his latest post, My ALA baggage , he identifies two camps growing among librarians – “those that believe libraries are in peril and those that don’t”. He continues with:

This dichotomy yields some interesting implications for discussions about the future of libraries and what we should be doing now and in the future. For instance, if you’re inclined to think that libraries are in danger of becoming irrelevant, you’re probably going to be more open to many of the more radical proposals and developments we’re seeing and hearing of today. Purists, of course, are just as vehement and passionate about libraries, but want to see the core values of their libraries shored up. To them, good old fashion reference and circulation is what libraries are all about.

So the question is, how do these two groups find a middle ground that will not compromise us into mediocrity? I’m skeptical about the prospect of creating more excellent middle-of-the-road libraries. That’s what most of us are right now.

He made me think about where I fit on the “Libraries in Peril” continuum. It’s not changed much since library school 18 years ago. Back then, I wrote a compulsory essay about “The Role of the Library in Today’s Information Society“. I concluded that librarians have extremely valuable skills in identifying, organising, accessing and providing information – essential and relevant skills to most organizations. BUT – unless we blow our own trumpets to vigorously market our skills and our library services, we will be ignored and cease to be funded.

Yes, we are in peril. Yes, we do need to take radical action…and a very good place to start should be to ensure that our users and our funding bodies value us for what we can do and become our active advocates. If we are no longer reaching our users with our traditional brand – which was “trusted, unbiased information and free books” – then we need to update or re-market it.

We have a culture of excellence, but not of promoting our role rather than our work. We’re used to modestly doing excellent work and letting that speak for itself. Today, Google is shouting louder.

Here’s some “trumpet blowing” ideas that go beyond “we do it good” brochures:

  • If our users are forsaking our reference collections for Google, run classes in “how to use Google better“. Or “20 other places to look when you can’t find what you want on Google“.
  • Repackage our traditional reference desk services as a “homework club” or “one-on-one assignment research help” sessions.
  • Emphasize to our users the financial benefits of library membership.
  • Academic, school and public libraries can find ways to support the administrative function of their organizations – become “go to” people to evaluate social software, subscribe to materials and provide research support to executives who administer the organization, offer meeting rooms in the library building for the organization’s use.
  • Seek working partnerships with other people in our organizations or our communities. Intertwine their fate with ours. Records managers, PR folk, local hobby clubs, businesses, educators are all possible partners for joint projects.
  • Conduct a survey of library “non-users” from our target client group. Provide a small promotional gift for answering the survey, one that needs to be picked up from the library front counter.
  • Target new audiences with traditional services. Review the “homebound” delivery service to include mums with kids under 5 as well as the infirm, or conduct a storytelling session aimed at senior citizens. Create a “leisure reading” collection in an academic or special library.

How to talk hot tech at a library conference – BigWig style.

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How can we talk about the newest web tools and ideas at library conferences when papers need to be submitted months in advance?

In Australia, the cities of Sydney and Melbourne take it in turns to host the hottest library tech conference – one year it’s Information Online in Sydney , the next it’s the VALA conference in Melbourne. Abstracts for VALA 2008 were submitted in May this year. Successful papers need to be complete by September – 5 full months before the conference is held. This is typical for a conference, but it stops people discussing hot new tools and ideas.

Dog in big wig

Untitled uploaded to flickr.com on February 26, 2007 by mms0131

This Saturday 23 June, a mob of creative librarians are going to test an alternative to this model during the American Library Association conference. The Library and Information Technology Association’s interest group for blogs, wikis and social software (the BIGWIGS ) are holding a round table discussion of hot new tools that may have a use for libraries. They hope this will be informal and speakers will learn from participants.

Each speaker has prepared a presentation that is available on the Bigwig Social Software Showcase wiki. This includes screencasts and videos. Everyone is welcome to comment on each page of the wiki. It’s a great resource for librarians world-wide who want to be up to date. Topics covered are:

Afrotto – IMG_2517 uploaded to Flickr.com on April 18, 2006 by jeroen020

 

As noted by Jay Datema on the libraryjournal.com site ( 5 Days to a Social Software Showcase ), there are many social software tools set up so that you can follow the goings on.

While it’s great to be able to follow using all these tools, I’d love to be in the same room as the BIGWIGS on Saturday. So much shiny, shiny bright-sparking going on.