I Told You I'd be back......

Greetings once again!

Here is a bit from my last library column about one of the new and exciting things happening at the library. Yes, we finally got our new electronic locker system up and running! So, here it the first public announcement of it. And yes, I did see the "Music Man" this summer at the Stratford Festival.

Maestro! May I have a drum roll please? Rat Ta Tat Tat. And perhaps a flourish from the trumpets? Dum da da dum! I would like to make a very important announcement. Starting immediately – if not sooner – you will be able to pick up the books you have on hold any hour of the day or night! That’s 24 hours a day, seven days a week (Well, in most weeks anyway.) “How is this amazing new service possible”? I hear you ask. Well, it’s not because we have the library open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is because of technology! With a capital “T” and that rhymes with “E” and that stands for “Electronic Lockers”. Yes, my friends. We have a set of newfangled lockers located on the south side of the library building right next to the book return. Now just imagine, my friend, you’re getting dolled up to go out to a fish fry on a Friday night. And you look at the clock and you see that the library will be closing any minute and you wanted to pick up those dvds and books that were sitting on the hold shelf waiting for you. So, what you do? Do you rush to get dressed and hop in your car and speed over to the library and risk getting a ticket? No.Do you say to yourself, “Well dash it all. I guess I’ll just have to get them sometime on Saturday, but that means that I can’t go to the blood bank and some poor person who needs type AB negative blood will just have to wait for their transfusion.” No. Because now you can call the library and ask them to check the books out and put them in a locker. Then you can swing by the library after you’re filled with fish, fries, and slaw (and maybe a little dessert), pop open the locker and get your materials which have already been checked out to you by the ever friendly, pleasant, and helpful library staff. “But how is this possible?” I hear you ask. Well, friends. When you call the library to ask to use the locker, you will be given – or you can mutually agree upon – your very own, special, one-time only PIN number!!!!! You simply punch your code into the keypad and viola! A door behind which your materials are patiently waiting pops open and you can collect your materials! Isn’t technology grand? If you would like to try out this new service, please give us a call at 846-5482.

That's two posts in one day -- in case you're counting! In my defense, it has been raining all day here so this gives me something to do to keep me out of trouble -- with a capital "T" and that rhymes with "Pool".

Ciao!
Ratty

This is unacceptable!

Goodness Gracious me!

My how time flies when you're not engaged in a project that asks you to blog regularly. How is it possible that I haven't written anything since March. March!!! I mean really. Since March, I've been on two vacations. One to the East Coast which included Gettysburg, Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown, Monticello, Mt. Vernon, and the Hiddenite Emerald Mine in Hiddenite, North Carolina where I went panning for gemstones and got a few too! In August I made my usual pilgrimage to Stratford, Ontario to immerse myself in a week of two-a-day theater experiences. I returned to work 27 days ago and have not had a day off since then. I have had one meeting after another, have had to put together a number of budget scenarios and a power point for a presentation to our village's Finance and Administration Committee, worked the primary election and had a library board meeting on the same day, and have generally been busy, busy, busy. I do write regularly. I email daily to a friend, which I could just as well do here and it would have the added feature of keeping me blogging so if ever I do link this to our library's web page, it won't have 6 month gaps. I mean really. How is that even possible? So, gentle readers, my apologies. I will post again soon -- possibly even tomorrow -- about some of the exciting things that are happening at the library. And there have been exciting things which is one of the reasons I've found it so hard to keep writing here. Until tomorrow, then.

The Rat is back!!!!!

I Am Curious ! -- Mellow

Greetings !

This is the last assignment for the second and last semester of Project Play. I was intrigued by the video clip about curiosity and the final question to be addressed in this blog that has to do with Project Play. The questions posed are( and I paraphrase) : Do you think you are a curious person? and What relationship does curiosity have to Project Play, the things you've learned, and keeping the Project Play torch burning? Glad you asked! I wasn't sure that I would describe myself as curious, because for me the word "curious" has a slightly negative feel. So rather than be inhibited by my sense of etymology, I went to an on-line dictionary and looked up the word. The first definition is "eager to learn more" and comes from a Latin term Unduly inquisitive; prying.meaning inquisitive / careful. Which pretty much describes me. And since I was interested -- I'm the type that gets lost in dictionary for hours which I suppose makes me "curious" -- I looked at the second definition which is the one that carries the more negative connotation of "unduly inquisitive; prying". Having reached a certain age and with it at least a basic understanding of myself, I would describe myself as curious about how things work and how process works, and even about how things and process could work in the future, but I' m not -- as a general proposition-- as interested in people. And I think I'm not as interested in people because that's were the second definition of "curious" joins up with my social sensibilities and I feel that being curious about people gets you into the realm of "unduly inquisitive and prying". Let's face it, I'm a Midwestern Norwegian/Danish mix that firmly believes that if someone wants to tell you about themselves and their lives you stand their and listen and make appropriate, encouraging noises even while every ounce of your being and upbringing tells you to run away. So, I think I have answered the first part of the question. Ja, sure. You betcha. I am curious.

Curiosity and the tenets of Project Play go hand in hand. Playing and learning are deeply linked. Good learners are playful with ideas. They like novelty. They have learned to be risk-takers and try new things. "Fear is the little mind killer" -- to quote Frank Herbert in "Dune" -- and you can't think or learn (much) when you're afraid. The big issue for any hierarchical institution ( and I think you'd have to allow that most public libraries are hierarchical due to the very nature of the classification system that organizes the books on the shelves. This classification system seems to spill over into the institution so that it's easy to become tradition-bound and easy to believe there are correct answers for every question.) is how to create a culture that rewards risk-taking. Believe me, I have tried. Believe me, I don't have any answers except to try to model the behavior myself, encourage others to try, and to be sympathetic and non-blaming if things don't work out. I believe that curiosity is integral to keeping current with technology and being able to pick and choose what will work best for your library and its customers. You have to be constantly exploring the ever-changing landscape of the Internet to discover what's out there. Then you have to have the courage to choose. Courage is a attribute of the curious. You can't have risk-taking without having the heart, the courage, to overcome the fear of the unknown, the fear of failure, the fear of humiliation.

Project Play has done a great job of offering an environment where it is safe to take risks, where it is safe to fail, and where there is a "guide at the side" to help us rise from the ashes of our failures. I personally think the "coolness" factor of some of the applications we have looked at and played with have added to the learning. Never underestimate the power of cool.

I'm glad the Project Play learning community will attempt to stay together. Mutual support has been a real asset of this project. It has kept us motivated. I will continue to explore the new brave new world that is evolving daily on the web. With the help of everyone associated with Project Play, I will try bringing some of these applications to my library's users.

See you in the funny papers!

The Rat

Make Mine Mashed...

Greetings!

Mashups have given me more pause than any of the other technologies we've looked at. I think this is because there are an infinity of combinations of APIs possible and the sites I've looked at seem to have just scratched the surface. Once again, I think that some of the examples looked at such as Ann Arbor's are great and useful for customers(also transparent) but aren't possible for this individual library to use on its pacs because it would have to happen at a system level. The mapping applications are nice and in fact we have used one of these already here in DeForest. We got a list of patron addresses without names and used a mashup that mapped these addresses onto a google map so we could see where our patrons lived. The information wasn't startling or unexpected -- the closer you live to the library the more likely you are to be a library patron -- but it was nice to see a visual representation on an actual map of the area of where our customers are coming from. That LibraryThing for libraries where you can import recommendations, see what's hot, find similar authors, etc. is awesome. But, this would have to be undertaken at the system level and perhaps our database is of a size it would overwhelm LibraryThings capacity. I have seen the Encore ILS which seems to have some of these features -- I'm not sure where their program gets it's data. But I digress. So, I like mashups and think they're great because anyone can play around with them and create something new and useful -- and without a lot of technical education. This may be moving the world towards the ability to customize almost infinitely -- which is a good thing. But large systems, by their very nature push towards uniformity, and most public libraries anymore do not stand alone. This creates a real tension between customization and uniformity which goes a long way towards explaining customer complaints like " I just don't see why I can't...... (fill in a verb and/or adverbial phrase). or better yet " I don't see why they won't let you.... So, until systems get so large that their vastness starts to look like customization ( I'm patterning my theory on the chaos theory of physics ( if you get far enough away get enough perspective) you will see the pattern in what you thought was chaos)) this tension will continue to exist and I'll continue to scratch my head and think "Wouldn't it be cool if...!!!!"

The Rat hopes you have a very Hoppy Easter and that the Easter Bunny leaves you lots of chocolate, jelly beans, and Peeps (and nothing that looks like chocolate jelly beans)!!!

What I Like About YouTube

Greetings!

YouTube is way cool! I have been visiting it for a couple of years now on at least a monthly basis. I was initially sent there by a friend's email and once I started looking around I was hooked. There are so many entertaining, sentimental, and educational things out there that it would be easy to get lost in time and find, suddenly, that it is four hours later ( Not that I'm writing from personal experience here. [Dictionaries have the same effect on me -- if I were writing from personal experience, mind you.]). The charming thing about YouTube is that it makes everyone a filmmaker, so there is a great democratizing effect. You don't have to be rich or famous to put together a "film" that gets a lot of visits. Also, if there was something you saw on television that you really liked and thought it might be gone forever, it probably exists on YouTube somewhere. One of the downsides of YouTube is that it is duplicative. There are many posts of the same thing -- like the Medieval Help Desk which I posted in my previous blog. The search strings seem to be very intuitive so that if you want to see, for example, those funny California cow commercials, you can type in California cows and get to some of them and one thing leads to another in YouTube sort of like citation indexing. I'm more familiar with YouTube as a source for video clips than as a social networking site although I could see where it could be that as well. As to its usefulness to public libraries, I think that it is a lot like MySpace and FaceBook. It is where a lot of people are or where they visit regularly and if you are going to market your product and try to attract more customers, then you need to go where the people are. Having a YouTube account makes a lot of sense, but only with the caveat that I trot out every time I opine about all the wonderful new technology we've been playing with, that it has to be some staff members job (not an added-on job, but their actual job) to keep the content fresh, up-to-date, and new. Novelty (what a novel idea for an institution that deals with novels en masse) drives consumer interest and thus library visits. If the customer never knows what new and exciting thing they might encounter at your library or on your library's web site(or other web presences) they'll keep coming back. I also think that if libraries are going to invest the dollars to have a web presence that there needs to be a way to count that activity ( I know, there are hit counters)and use it with funding sources and that means an ability to compare your level of activity to other libraries of a like size. The library produced movies -- like the Harper College Tour-- worked really well because they were humorous, poked fun at some stereotypes, actually got across their message, were short and pithy, and had good production qualities. I don't think any library should post something that looks like "The Blair Witch Project" unless you are actually doing a homage / send up of that film. I think that's all I have to say on the subject -- at least for now!

The Rat has spoken!

Medieval Helpdesk Movie

I really like this version of "The Medieval Helpdesk". You can learn Norwegian while reading the English Subtitles simultaneously.

Screencasts

Good Morning!

Or can any morning be called good now that Brett Favre has retired? It sure makes me sad to think of spring mini-camp without him. I can't even bear ( No pun or NFL reference intended.) to think about next season. Sure, I understand why he retired, but still.... hard day's for Packers' fans. But back to screencasts. This looks like a very useful medium for some very specific tasks which were outlined very nicely in the lessons' podcast. Screencasts seem to work great for demonstrating how to use on-line resources in a library setting. I could see where they would be good for demonstrating craft projects or even science projects. Since they combine both audio and visual they would make more sense for doing on-line story times than just a podcast. You could scan copies of the book pages and use screen shots of each page while reading the text. All well and good until the copyright police drive up to your door. I looked at the Screen-o-Matic demonstration which could be the poster child of what to avoid when doing a screencast. The speaker seemed to be winging it and because of that was saying "ummm" about once every five seconds. The University of Calgary screencast was the opposite end of the spectrum. The speaker was well prepared and had an animated voice. He sounded interested and enthusiastic so the demonstration seemed that way too. The production quality of the sound was good as well. Many of the examples I looked at obviously had not been scripted, or if scripted then unrehearsed. Some sounded like Mr. Roboto. Most had very poor sound; using the built in microphone or whatever was at hand. If a library is going to do this then they should definitely script, rehearse, and use a good microphone. However, the more I think about this the more I think producing screencasts is more appropriate at the system level ( and a system could be a library system or a main library with branches) since the material that lends itself most readily to screencasts are demos of how to use on-line resources. Since the libraries in a system tend to use the same databases and since the protocols for use within that system remain the same from library to library, it would make sense to create one screencast for the entire system rather than have each individual library doing its own thing. It would be very inefficient for each library to develop their own screencast for accessing and using Badgerlink -- 0r what have you. It's great to see that this technology is out there. Who knows? In the dark night of the soul some use as yet unthought of may dawn on me!

Ratty needs to go now and work through another stage of grief about Brett Favre ( I think the Rat has made it past denial and is at the negotiating stage).

Pod casts

Greetings!

I hope everyone has recovered from the primary elections and that you all did your democratic duty and voted. It is one of the benefits of living in a democratic society that if you do your duty and vote, you have the right to complain about the outcomes. Okay, actually you have the right whether or not you voted because of the Bill of Rights, free speech and all that. What I meant to say is that I will listen to you complaints if you did your civic duty. If you didn't, you can just talk to the hand, 'cause I'm not listening. Which is a nice segue to podcasts.

I really liked some of the websites that included podcast options. Why some of the sites hardly looked like they had anything to do with a public library (high praise indeed!). I think the idea of including audio on a site is really worthwhile, especially when trying to attract teens who seem to be audiophiles by nature. I also thought the podcasts for young children were nice, but I had a couple of concerns. The narration is of a picture book, and there is no picture so the child isn't getting the advantage of seeing the words and pictures while hearing the words. If you had the book at home so that your child could look at the pictures and have the entire book experience, why not just read the story to the child so you could have an interaction around language and reading with the child instead of listening to some disembodied voice read the words? I also wondered about the legal implications of reading a work on a podcast and then "publishing" it. I believe that posting on the web is considered publishing and copyright laws may have something to say about it-- unlike the teaching / classroom exemption that a preschool story hour operates under. But then, I also worry about things legal. I was probably a lawyer in another life.

I could see using a podcasts as a way for making audio content from some programs available -- with the consent of the presenter. But Midwest weather being what it is, it would be nice to link a podcast to the library website for a program that was just presented. I particularly like the podcast "blurbs" from authors about their books and writing. I think these would be extremely popular at most public libraries. And if there was an author visit at the library, a podcast of the author's remarks would be nice to post so that those who couldn't attend could still hear the content. Adding podcast feeds to a website is easy and should probably be done. I am open to trying our own podcasts on our website as well, but I think the same caveats apply here as they do with other exciting, new technology. It has to be someone's job to know how to do it, and it has to be someone's job to keep things up-to-date.

I think podcasts are cool and should be used with just a hint of caution.

Thus spake the Bookrat!

Social Networks and the Library

Greetings!

Personally, I have had enough snow to last me from here until next Christmas. I'm all for having the white stuff falling from the skies at a reasonable rate because it fills up the water table, protects the roots of perennial plants, crops, trees, and insects. But enough is enough. I have been quoting the movie "Ground Hog's Day" a lot recently (see my column in the DeForest Times Tribune, and ask my co-workers). which I'll have to paraphrase here : "You want a prediction? I'll give you a prediction. It's going to be cold. It's going to be gray. And it's going to last for the rest of your life." This pretty much sums up my recent mental state. Which of course brings us to social networking!

I was going to say that I have somewhat mixed feelings on the whole issue, but upon a few minutes more reflection, I don't. I'm all for having a presence anywhere we can find potential customers and supporters. Public libraries -- and maybe all libraries -- are in serious trouble. Talk about the 500 pound gorilla in the room! Many public libraries seem to think what's happening in the world of technology is just another fad -- sort of like phonograph records, and then cassettes, and then cds, and then digital audio books -- we will find a way to continue to check out materials to people or provide downloads "on loan" so that our major function of loaning materials continues non-stop into the future. Well, that future may be our future, but it isn't the future of the little pre-schooler crawling around the story hour room.

There is every indication that fundamental changes are occurring in the younger generations that have always had computers, email, social networking, cell phones, and social networking. It is a very different world. Sure, that argument is made by every older generation about every younger generation and has been since the ancient Greeks ( and I know this because I'm a well-read individual but I'm not sure how well-read our future generations will be.) I'm not sure even with all the move towards cool technologies that libraries will survive. I'm not real sure about reading as a way of getting information either. I have been attending reading conference lately and it seems to me that the big publishing houses and the teachers of reading are pretty convinced that it will remain the same old same old for the foreseeable future. I have heard futurist speak about implanting chips so that you can instantly speak Chinese. So why would you need a book? I wish I were less cynical. I'm worried that public libraries are rapidly becoming the best dang buggy whip makers in the world just as Mr. Ford is creating the assembly line and starting to crank out automobiles at a price that assures every family in the United States will own one in the next few years. I believe that libraries that think their job is having information and other traditional library materials are doomed. So hooray for social networking. Let's be out there where our next generation of library users and supporters live. Let's invite them to use our services and let's find out from them what those services might be.

About 15 years ago, I co-authored a paper about the future of public libraries that I presented at the International Popular Culture Conference in Oxford (that's England, not the Wisconsin correctional facility). In that paper, we opined that while traditional library materials would continue to be part of the public library's offerings for the foreseeable future, that providing real things to checkout and real experience would be a role that libraries could (and probably should) evolve into. Providing real things for loan gets you into providing emerging technology for the community to play with ( as well as chainsaws and cartoon-character-shaped cake pans, I suppose) . If there's interest and a component part (like gaming software) that it makes sense to loan, then loan it. But the more important role is providing real experiences and by that we meant face-to-face time. It is all very well to meet in cyberspace and talk about things and see pixelated people smiling into their webcams and even hearing them on voip connections, but for at least a few more decades, we will remain mammals (and gregarious ones at that) and eventually need to see the person we are relating to in the flesh. Libraries can provide a place for this kind of social networking. People with like interests can actually come together and meet each other and eat a cookie and talk. We have a number of teens and tweens that come into the library to hang with their friends. Sure, they could be on-line with them but they like being in physical proximity. Providing opportunities to play games side-by-side , in real time, in the same space,have been extremely popular. Providing public forums for adults to talk about issues that concern them or about recent books or films are a good use too of this other type of social networking. So, as I said a while ago -- before I started my sermon on libraries generally-- making potential users and supporters aware that you are aware of them, asking for their input, and letting them know that you have responded to their input, is a very good thing. Just hanging out in cyberspace to be cool is not. It's not cool (to those you are trying to be cool for) and it's not utile.

I would also note, as I so often do, that if a library is going to have a blog, or a presence on a social network,or instant messaging, or even something as basic as a website, it has to commit the staff time to respond frequently, and to keep things updated. And these are not small time commitments. I visited the myspace sites of a couple of libraries and there were broken links and I couldn't get in to one site for a very long time. These weren't necessarily the library's fault, but still.... not very cool.

Thanks very much for listening! I feel much better now.

Ratty

Take a letter

Greetings!

Well. Voice recognition software has certainly come a long way since the days of Dragon Dictate (or whatever it was called). Using Jott was amazingly simple. I spoke clearly and distinctly and didn't have a lot of background noise going on which may have helped, but it (she) understood the first time through. Very cool. Remember the Milk also work easily once I scrolled down the list of tasks far enough to find the ones ( I emailed twice because I couldn't see my email the first time) I had added. It would be a useful feature for the most recent addition to pop up at the top of the list-- especially if you were using this collaboratively. I like both of these websites because of their novelty. I'm not sure how much use they would be to me. I was an early user of PDAs and still find them useful and many of the options available online are also available in handhelds and phones. Being able to use Jott is a big plus so that you can just have your thoughts and capture them immediately. I hate to sound lilke Luddite here, but a pencil and piece of paper lets you do the same thing and doesn't cost you a phone call and you can still share those thoughts or ideas electronically later perhaps when you've had time to refine them a bit. I also worry, and perhaps this is because my understanding is shallow, when all my information is stored on-line. I know these servers are massive and there are many layers of built in redundency but still, what if there is a "fire sale" and the whole power grid goes down or just the bit that has my data stored on it? Data does occasionally get lost in cyberspace and I like to have things backed up locally in a couple of places (flash drive, hard drive) so that when power is restored, I still have the data. So, while I think these two things are groovy. I will probably stick with my pda and paper and pencil. Because as all us rats know, in desperate times paper can be an excellent snack food, while little packets of electronic data aren't.

GoogleDocs the Neatest Thing Since ....

Greetings!

Having just taken a thorough tour of GoogleDocs I'd have to say that I'm totally convinced that this is a most excellent thing for public libraries. Being part of a shared automation system offers many benefits which often get forgotten in the frustrations generated by being part of a shared automation system. GoogleDocs helps eliminate a couple of those frustrations. Providing good customer service when we have been unable (until recently) to allow patrons to have access to word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation software on the PAC terminals has been a very large frustration. Patrons have wanted to cut and paste information from PAC screens into various types of documents and have been unable to do so. Helping patrons set up GoogleDoc accounts would alleviate that frustration for both the patron and library staff. Using GoogleDocs also addresses the issue for library staff to access documents they are working on at home. This was especially an issue prior to flashdrives when one was dealing with a power point presentation that used spreadsheets and photos and took up more disk space than a HD floppy could handle. GoogleDocs would have been a very easy solution. And it still is. If one used GoogleDocs from work and home, you'd never have to worry about losing your flash drive -- you'd only have to worry that the entire power grid would go down and then that the backup generators would run out of fuel -- which, of course, a really good worrier can do without hardly thinking about it! --.
GoogleDocs also provides the ability to work collaboratively on documents which is a really big plus. It sure beats emailing red-lined changes back and forth to each other. The fact that you can go back and look at all the various versions is the biggest plus. I have lost too many documents in my life or overwritten a document that I would have like to extracted a piece from later, and it was too late. It apparently never is too late with GoogleDocs! That's my kind of redundancy!

The Rat is Back!

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

It absolutely can not have been almost two -- count them 2-- months since last I blogged. I have a pile of excuses nearly as high as an elephant's eye. And I'll only bore you with a few of them. First there was Thanksgiving and I had to drive over to Mequon to visit my relatives. Then I had to recover from visiting my relatives and decorate the library for the next set of holidays that were coming at us. Then the holidays arrived and I had to go visit my relatives in Mequon for Christmas Eve, drive back and then go visit the other relatives in Lake in the Hills, Illinois. Then I had to recover from those visits. And while attempting to recover from Christmas 2007 go out and buy all the deeply discounted stuff for Christmas 2008. Then there was New Year's Eve and New Years Day -- which I won't go into at all (and not because I can't remember). I had a library board meeting to get ready for on January 3rd and since then I have been walking around saying --"Doesn't it seem like January's been going on forever?". Then of course there has been all the mandatory watching of football -- particularly THE PACKERS!!!!!! Go Pack Go!!!!! Boy, have I been enjoying this season including wearing my Brett Favre jersey on game day -- to which I attribute the Packs' winning season. Some of you may recall that I am a (sandhill) crane nut. And since one of my goals is to see cranes every month of the year, this involved a road trip in December (Cranes are smart you know. When there are 35 inches of snow on the ground, they leave town and head south.) to a place about 20 miles south of Valparaiso, Indiana (where there was no snow cover in December and about 15,000 cranes). Then since we are now in January and the Indiana cranes aren't likely to hang around very far into the month, I high-tailed it south just last Thursday to look for cranes once again. We actually managed to locate about 400 of them in the rain after nearly getting my little car stuck in the greasy gravel road. But now I'm back, and only have my on-line Frontpage 2003 class assignments and the dreaded (echo, reverb) Annual Report to deal with. And, the big news from Illinois at Christmas was that I'm going to be a Great Aunt! (My niece and her husband are expecting : Hoping for a boy so they can name him after my dearly departed brother) So, how'd I do on my list of excuses? Did I convince you? Yeah, I didn't convince myself either.



So now on to Project Play, as you can see I have added a Meebo widget to this blog. I shall be IMing project staff -- who are not yet online because I started doing this in the wee small hours of the morning. I think IM is really cool. I can see how it would be really useful for providing reference services -- especially ready reference type questions when the answer is pretty obvious and easy to find. As the podcast said, the world is IMing all the time and libraries need to provide service in as many formats as possible so that as many people as possible make use of their public library. In a world that is really into instant gratification, I don't see how you can go wrong offering service via instant messaging. (Unless of course none of your staff is ever on-line so that IM isn't a real option. Then you run the risk of disappointing and frustrating those you are trying to serve -- which is worse then not offering it. So I think there needs to be a real commitment to be on-line a lot of the time if you plan on offering IM.) End of sermon.

Glad to be back!