This space will be a place where you will be able to find the very edge of new technologies, as well as tips and tricks about how you can do interesting things with existing technologies. I’m going to try and introduce technologies that libraries and librarians should be paying attention to, and at the same time give you tips and tricks to make better use of the technologies that you may already be playing with.
A few examples of the sorts of things that I’ll be covering in this space: How to get any piece of text you want onto your eReader, How to automate delivery of information to your staff and patrons, setting up your own Media Server for your library, and much, much more.
In addition to these sorts of “Lifehacker for Libraries” posts, I’ll also be posting interesting things that I find around the Library and Technology infosphere, and I’ll be producing some video podcasts as well. Expect the first of these very soon, as I am even as I type this on my way to the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show. I’ll be reporting over the next several weeks about my discoveries there, and will include audio and video interviews, demos, and anything else I can think of that might be interesting.
Of course, this brief post sent me over the moon:
Spoke with an unnamed source last night that gave me the following: Tablet is based around a 9.67 inch LCD, not an OLED. Definitely launching early in year, possibly even immediately after January 27th announcement.
Exciting for libraries: deals coming with LOTS of content providers, print content mainly magazines, not newspapers. Start thinking about a “magazine” with embedded video, inline social features, and more.
American Libraries is rolling out a newly redesigned website, tentatively scheduled to appear January 4. The site, which is live now but still carrying the “beta” label, is at www.americanlibrariesmagazine.org. We encourage you to take a look and update your bookmarks and any links to us in your blogs and websites. The AL Online RSS feed will relocate to www.americanlibrariesmagazine.org/news/rss.xml. Making the switch to a new domain could be tricky—we could risk losing readers who are used to our old domain (of course, redirects will be in place, but it’s still going to be a bit confusing), so we wanted to get the word out early.
A bit about the site: It was built entirely in-house in Drupal by Associate Editor Sean Fitzpatrick and offers some pretty clear benefits to end users over what the old site could do. For example, we’re really excited to be able to start offering HTML versions of pretty much all the content from our print magazine (so you’ll no longer need to go through the ebrary platform). Also, all the articles are comment-enabled, something readers have been asking us to do for some time.
Switching to Drupal is also a clear win for us on the back end. Back-end usability has been a dream so far. We look forward to spending more time writing and pushing out content—and less time fussing with CMS issues.
We hope you enjoy the new platform. You’ll see some more official announcements later in AL Direct and in the pages of American Libraries, but we wanted to give you a head’s-up now because switching over your links to our new domain will help make the transition smoother. We welcome your feedback.
George M. Eberhart - Editor, AL Direct
Sean Fitzpatrick - Associate Editor, American Libraries
Sherri Vanyek, Director, Information Technology & Telecommunication Services at ALA wrote to WAC yesterday:
I’m pleased to inform you that our website has been recognized for outstanding achievement in web development. Our site was awarded a Non-Profit Standard of Excellence WebAward. The WebAward is issued by the Web Marketing Association, a thirteen year-old organization focused on setting a high standard for Internet marketing and development of the best websites. Award winners face substantial competition to achieve their recognition.
You can find complete information about the award program at www.webaward.org . You can see and reference the award page here: http://www.webaward.org/winner.asp?eid=13053 Duo elected to submit our website as an example of their best work for the 2008/2009 award year in the Non-Profit category.
On behalf of the American Library Association Website Advisory Committee, the purpose of this letter is to officially commend all of the American Library Association Information Technology & Telecommunication Services staff for their exceptional contributions and dedication to the organization and the membership.
Sean Bires, Maribeth Chapman, Louise Gruenberg, Matthew Ivaliotes, Sheila Joy, Jim Kanis, Jenny Levine, Irene Marquez , Tim Smith, Sherri Vanyek, and Donavan Vicha all make these contributions on a daily basis to consistently improve the Web experience for the membership while working on innovations to enhance connections and collaborations between divisions, committees and workgroups. Sometimes a thankless job, as technologies do fail, this group has continued to work tirelessly and respond to the needs and questions of members.
We formally thank them for their service to our profession.
Sincerely,
Michael Stephens
2009-2010 Chair, ALA Website Advisory Committee
Committee Members:
Marissa C. Ball, Holly Hong Yu, Alan Harkness, Marsha A. Iverson, Rebecca K. Jackman, Susan E. Marcin, Jennifer Pickle, Mary Pagliero Popp, Kate Pritchard, Jean M. Rainwater, Robin Kear, Rochelle Gwyn Carr, William Reed, Dave Hargett
ALA Web Advisory Committee
Recommendation about the Use of ALA Connect
The Web Advisory Committee (WAC) is a standing committee of the American Library Association (ALA). One key duty of the WAC is to advise the association on priorities and strategies that promote utilization and continued development of the ALA website.
In Spring 2009, ALA introduced ALA Connect, a new section of the ALA website. Fulfilling our mission of advising the ALA on website issues, the Web Advisory Committee strongly urges all ALA organized groups and ALA members to take advantage of the ALA Connect service.
ALA Connect replaces the Online Communities service that ALA previously offered as a virtual, collaborative, workspace online. ALA Connect is a centralized space where official ALA “groups” can work together online. In addition, any member can create new “communities” (unofficial ALA groups) without any staff assistance, so the site will combine association work with communities of interest in one place.
Whether you participate in a “group” for an official committee, roundtable, section or divisional activity, or whether you engage with one of the other unofficial “communities” that become available, you have a number of tools with which to work together. By default, each one has blog posts, online documents (like wiki pages), a calendar, polls, a chat room, a discussion board, and images (logos, pictures, etc.). The group can use any or all of the tools it finds valuable.
ALA Connect should be your primary workspace for committee work, for information and for networking within the ALA organization.
All official ALA organizations and committees have a page in ALA connect. To visit yours go to connect.ala.org and log in with your ALA website username and password. The Web Advisory Committee is committed to using the new Connect space to carry on the work of our committee and our task-oriented subgroups. Collaboration on this document has been done using ALA Connect.
I am totally knocked out by the excellent work ALA Emerging Leaders Team I did on creating screencasts to highlight all the wonderful features of ALAConnect. As Web Advisory Committee chair, I became the group mentor but my schedule and duties didn’t allow much mentoring – but I knew they were in good hands with ALA ITTS staff who offered support and guidance throughout the project. So please allow me to send them a public “WOOOHOO” on a job well done!
Take a look at the screencasts. You’ll find a promo video, a video highlighting how to integrate Connect with the social tools you currently use, ways to monitor other groups, and much, much more.
This one is a fave:
To all involved – great work! TAKE A BOW.
To folks who haven’t checked out Connect yet, please use these screencasts as a way to get started. You won’t be sorry.
I’m happy to share that I put LJ in touch with some of our recent grads/current students to cover programs at ALA. Katharine Johnson, Carrie Straka and Bill Goodwyn all contributed short articles for online coverage.
I have a new post at ALATechSource about the Shanachie presentation at ALA. Check out the video above to see one of the projects they highlighted in action.
Late one February evening in 2007, I found myself sitting in my Oak Park, Illinois living room with two visitors, sharing wine and talking about libraries. It was late, I had to teach the next day, but I couldn’t say goodnight. I met the he two fellows with me –Jaap van de Geer and Erik Boekesteijn of the DOK Library Concept Center in Delft, Holland–in London the year before. And now they were visiting Chicago area libraries videotaping gaming initiatives and gaming librarians. The wine was good–it may have been Australian–and I’m a little cloudy about how the evening played out but the one thing stayed with me. Erik said the role of the 21st Century librarian is three-fold:
Keep Stories
Share Stories
Make Stories
I held that close to my heart and watched these visitors make their dream of collecting stories a reality by way of the Shanachie Tour in October 2007 and beyond.
Fast forward to ALA Annual and the LITA President’s Program. Erik, Jaap and the third Shanachie Geert van den Boogaard were back in the states to talk about innovations at their library.
Libraries had better prepare for an explosion in the capacity of mobile devices as well as the transformative increase in user capacity and expectations. This was the message conveyed by a panel yesterday at the American Library Association’s (ALA) Annual Conference on Libraries and Mobile Devices: Public Policy Considerations.
After all, explained Jason Griffey, assistant professor and head of Library Information Technology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, cell phones are the most popular and ubiquitous information device worldwide; in 50 countries, cell phone penetration (phones/person) exceeds 100 percent.
By the end of 2010, he continued, 90 percent of the world’s population will have access to a cell-phone signal. Right now, more than 60 percent of people have a cell-phone subscription, and three-quarters of them use text messaging. That total, 2.4 billion people, is twice the number currently using email.
Further, more people are now accessing the web through mobile devices such as a smartphone. New examples include the always-on Amazon.com Kindle and the growing number of netbooks.
Read the whole article. It provides great coverage of a dynamic session and much food for thought. Griffey, Eli Neiberger and Tom Peters make up the ultra-hot panel of experts assembled to talk about mobile devices and libraries.
A great big shout out to Bob Fox, Georgia Tech Libraries, Alan Gray, Darien Library, and Francoise Puniello, Rutgers, for an incredible program at ALA.
In the Standards in Action book, there is a great 2-page spread on the self-assessment strand that speaks directly to the student. One librarian asked if she could make copies of the pages to share with students. That led me, as an ethical user of information, to check on the copyright and permissions for the book.
What I found was quite chilling. Though these two pages present a letter to students, there is no permission given in the book to allow copying of those pages to share with students. I thought maybe there would be something online, so I checked the standards website to see if there was a PDF or other permissions statements there. Indeed there is a new Permissions for Use page for the standards, but what I found there actually made things even worse.
Under the new permissions for use, I actually had to tell librarians that they can no longer quote the standards that they are using within their lesson plan documents! Given the push to spread the standards and the whole Learning4Life initiative, this is surely in unintended outcome of AASL’s attempts to secure the standards. And yet, an over zealous locking down of the standards is unfortunately preventing most use.
As stated on the permissions page: “Permission must be requested for publishing or posting a portion of the text or the original document in a print or online publication or on a Web site as well as linking to the PDF.” [AASL] A lesson plan is a print or electronic document, therefore permission must be requested for quoting the standards as is usually done in a standard lesson plan format. Additionally, a lesson plan could be considered a derivative work under the current wording: “The learning standards document is considered the core content if the publication cannot be written without the use of the content of the learning standards document. Such usage requires a license agreement and may include a fee.”[AASL]
A fee for including the standards in each lesson plan?
Most librarians in the workshop assumed that the permission for educational use granted in the standards document covered use in lesson plans. I did as well…until I read the new permissions page. The permissions page limits educational use to only the pdf document itself. “The PDF versions available on the AASL Web site are intended for personal and educational use. Printing or forwarding copies for your own private use or to share with others for purely informational or educational purposes is acceptable.”[AASL] Any quoting of the document (i.e. listing standards on a lesson plan) would fall under the “Publishing or Posting Excerpts” section and would therefore require permission (and maybe a fee) for each lesson plan.
I love the new standards. I think they represent a great new way of looking at how we need to change learning and teaching for the 21st century. And yet, as much as I love the standards, the current permissions for use make it nearly impossible for me to share them or use them.
AASL, won’t you please consider freeing the standards for a bit more use? Perhaps a Creative Commons non-commerical license? Or maybe members can be granted additional license to use the standards as part of their member benefits?
[UPDATE 11:46am] Allison Cline, Deputy Executive Director of AASL, noted in an e-mail response that this is indeed an unintended wording and that AASL does not wish to fetter non-commercial use in any way. While this is great news, the fact remains that the current permission page does restrict use…even non-commercial use. There is no educational exception made for quoting standards, creating derivative works using the standards, or even linking to the standards.
Greetings from Northern Michigan! The days of summer are flying by and I’m splitting my time between trying to wear out our new Labrador Retriever Cooper and prepping for upcoming talks at ALA Annual. I’ll be presenting for LLAMA BES (that’s the Library Leadership & Management Association Buildings and Equipment Section if you’re spinning the wheel of ALA acronyms) in a program called “Library 2.0 Buildings: Creating Zones with Heart.”
I’m excited about the topic because sometimes we get so caught up in talking about technology, the spaces and places of our libraries take a backseat. Libraries need to encourage the heart in the physical realm as well as the online.
I agree with folks like John Beck that the library can offer many spaces and opportunities to varied groups. We should constantly be looking for creative ways to create zones in the library for our different user groups. I also think it should be okay to have fun at the library – gaming, DDR, creation of stuff, etc – as well as make it comfortable and useful for others. I’m not just writing about public libraries but about academic libraries too.
For my part of the program, I’ve been batting around these “zones” in my head on long walks with Cooper at the “Quiet Area” pond nearby. I’d be very interested in feedback from our readers about these zones and any others they may have in their libraries….
