I read this morning that the Library of Congress has announced several partnerships within the private sector to help to create metadata standards for digitally-born records - specifically for photographs, films, sound recordings, videogames, and cartoons. Why should this be exciting?
Well, I must admit that electronic records scare me a bit. When I think about how many years it's taken me to feel comfortable with describing the various physical formats that I work with within my job - books, journals, archival collections, DVD's and CD's, etc - and then think about how to approach a record that has been created digitally, I find it pretty intimidating. Here I am learning all the idiosyncracies of how to catalog formats that have been around for decades or even centuries and I'm expected to learn how to catalog and describe and potentially archive formats that change so rapidly that the systems they were created on are often outdated within months?
Having standards set and maintained helps to ease my mind. I'm sure that the day is not so far off that I may just be called on to catalog and maintain access in our online catalog to the electronic versions of much of what we're now used to seeing in print. Our E-books collection may continue to grow; perhaps we'll replace our DVD and audio collections with online access; our archives will begin to recieve digitally-born photograph collections and electronic files. And from an archival perspective, it's just mind-blowing to think about how we'll maintain access to these things as technology continues to change and upgrade. Overwhelming, but exciting.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Monday, August 6, 2007
Task : Summary
Final thoughts on the Lane Library 2.0 experience - overall fantastic. I've decided to keep the blog up and running and will try my best to maintain it with new posts. I've had a lot of fun going through the experience and definitely feel like I've learned a lot. I was either already aware of or very comfortable with at least half of the things on the task list, but there were definitely new things that I tried out that I had previously been a bit intimidate by before (wiki's and feeds for example).
In the end, I can definitely see the personal and professional value to this exercise. I'll incorporate many of the aspects into my own personal life and have been really challenged to examine how I can incorporate them into my professional life as well. In the end, I really can see the value in almost all of the different aspects that we looked at - one exception for me is Facebook. In that case, it's not that there isn't/couldn't be value, but I think that I am really stuck in my own prejudices about it. I don't particularly like the interface and found it difficult to browse through it and on top of that I think that I'm a bit stuck by my own use of myspace. However, I can see that it could be successful for other users as just one more tool to gain access to libraries and librarians.
In the end, this whole experience has really made me aware of just how much is going on online. While I like to think of myself as relatively computer-savvy and in touch with what our group of patrons are using the digital environment for, I've realized that there is so much more happening that I realized! Being able to speak meaningfully to our patrons about where they can find information online, how to evaluate it, and how they can creatively use it is integral to our success as a library. I am convinced that in order to have those conversations, we need to maintain our awareness of what's actually happening out there.
Kudos to our library director and our marketing team for pushing this program forward!
In the end, I can definitely see the personal and professional value to this exercise. I'll incorporate many of the aspects into my own personal life and have been really challenged to examine how I can incorporate them into my professional life as well. In the end, I really can see the value in almost all of the different aspects that we looked at - one exception for me is Facebook. In that case, it's not that there isn't/couldn't be value, but I think that I am really stuck in my own prejudices about it. I don't particularly like the interface and found it difficult to browse through it and on top of that I think that I'm a bit stuck by my own use of myspace. However, I can see that it could be successful for other users as just one more tool to gain access to libraries and librarians.
In the end, this whole experience has really made me aware of just how much is going on online. While I like to think of myself as relatively computer-savvy and in touch with what our group of patrons are using the digital environment for, I've realized that there is so much more happening that I realized! Being able to speak meaningfully to our patrons about where they can find information online, how to evaluate it, and how they can creatively use it is integral to our success as a library. I am convinced that in order to have those conversations, we need to maintain our awareness of what's actually happening out there.
Kudos to our library director and our marketing team for pushing this program forward!
Task : Flickr
Even though the task is technically to create a Flickr account, I don't have any images on my desktop handy that I would want to bother to post online. And I keep forgetting to do this when I'm at home with my lappie or digi cam which stores all my photos. So instead, I'll talk about Flickr generally.
I will admit that though I don't post to it or have my own account (it actually threw me for a loop that I needed to create a Yahoo account to have a Flickr profile - what does that say about my Google-centered universe?), I have been known to look through Flickr. I've definitely used it to find uncopyrighted images for my own use. I've also viewed friends posted wedding pictures. I must also admit to looking at a silly number of cute dog pictures. After looking at the site a bit more critically this time around, there are several features that I like a lot. First, I really like that they've added the Creative Commons copyright options. Knowing that you can post your images and choose to make them available for use on several levels would ease my mind at posting my own. Additionally, now that I realize that you can also set your photos to private and require that you've approved the viewer to look at them will definitly impact my interest in posting.
But overall, I enjoy their searching capabilities. While I don't always celebrate tagging for searches, it does make some searches much more specific. On the other hand, a search for very general words does bring up just too many images. Like any library searching, clearly the user needs to think critically about what language to use for a search and alternate search techniques. The big kicker for me though was the searching by map for location specific images or tags. This seems to me what John Reimer was talking about regarding bibliographic data and searching within OPAC's. I had fun looking at images posted from my hometown, our childhood vacation home, my grandmother's neighborhood, etc.
Several groups caught my eye. There are an amazing number of groups that focus on libraries and librarians. Several that were really quite fun to look through included:
Libraries from around the world
Social Software in Libraries Alternative Book Cover Contest
Librarian Trading Cards
Librarians in Shower Caps
I will admit that though I don't post to it or have my own account (it actually threw me for a loop that I needed to create a Yahoo account to have a Flickr profile - what does that say about my Google-centered universe?), I have been known to look through Flickr. I've definitely used it to find uncopyrighted images for my own use. I've also viewed friends posted wedding pictures. I must also admit to looking at a silly number of cute dog pictures. After looking at the site a bit more critically this time around, there are several features that I like a lot. First, I really like that they've added the Creative Commons copyright options. Knowing that you can post your images and choose to make them available for use on several levels would ease my mind at posting my own. Additionally, now that I realize that you can also set your photos to private and require that you've approved the viewer to look at them will definitly impact my interest in posting.
But overall, I enjoy their searching capabilities. While I don't always celebrate tagging for searches, it does make some searches much more specific. On the other hand, a search for very general words does bring up just too many images. Like any library searching, clearly the user needs to think critically about what language to use for a search and alternate search techniques. The big kicker for me though was the searching by map for location specific images or tags. This seems to me what John Reimer was talking about regarding bibliographic data and searching within OPAC's. I had fun looking at images posted from my hometown, our childhood vacation home, my grandmother's neighborhood, etc.
Several groups caught my eye. There are an amazing number of groups that focus on libraries and librarians. Several that were really quite fun to look through included:
Libraries from around the world
Social Software in Libraries Alternative Book Cover Contest
Librarian Trading Cards
Librarians in Shower Caps
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Task : Web 2.0 Awards
Wow - who knew there were so many cool sites out there. If I'm completely honest, there are times that I've sat in front of the computer completely listless and without any idea of what else there could be out there that I'd be interested in. This list of award-winning sites is a great place to go when you need something new to get excited about. I was happy to see that several sites that I already know and love were on there (Craigslist, LibraryThing, Pandora, Flickr, Threadless, Etsy and more). But it was mostly fun to check out several new sites just for fun.
I was especially drawn in to Yelp for recommendations of businesses in my area, Cocktail Builder to come up with drink recipes to finish off the large bottle of gin in my freezer, and One Sentence to see how creative people can get. Since I'm at work, I didn't even tempt myself by looking at any of the gaming sites. That would definitely be trouble.
I was especially drawn in to Yelp for recommendations of businesses in my area, Cocktail Builder to come up with drink recipes to finish off the large bottle of gin in my freezer, and One Sentence to see how creative people can get. Since I'm at work, I didn't even tempt myself by looking at any of the gaming sites. That would definitely be trouble.
Task : Image Generator
For the next task, I had to use an image generator. A friend told me about how you can create your own character on the Simpsons Movie website. So here I am...Simpsonized! and drinking a beer with Homer.
Task : Crystal Ball
The task was to read these opinions by librarians regarding the future of Web 2.0 and the impact on libraries and discuss it. I read it. And now I'll discuss it.
The idea that most strikes me about the challenge that Web 2.0 brings to libraries is that it really forces our profession to look closely at our core values and purpose and to determine how valuable we can continue to be as these huge shifts in the availability of information become available. While Rick Anderson challenges the value of even continuing to build up a physical collection of materials, I do believe that the importance of the library as a physical space and the act of patrons being able to physically get their hands on works will continue far, far into our future. Given the huge scope of material out there, it just will not be possible for it all to ever be scanned and made available online. However, I do agree with his proposition (and Michael Stephens, and Chip Nilges, and John Reimer) that we need to reassess our contribution in terms of what value we bring to making that information accessible to patrons.
It's been my experience, as a user of libraries and now as a librarian, that libraries tend to be very resistent to adapting our ports of user access to what user's actually express that they would like. Let's set aside the fact that we should be as concerned with aesthetics and useability for our websites as commercial ventures are (honestly, can you fault a patron who doesn't understand library jargon for not being able to find what they need on our sites?) It's clear from the success of sites like Amazon, GoodReads and LibraryThing, that users like generic keyword searching, tagging, visual cues, reader reviews, and suggestions for additional sources. Why not incorporate these features into our existing OPACs? We say that we value libraries as a source of "community", well, these are all features that would help to build up an online community centered around our own library collections. I especially love John Reimer's idea of adding the geographic coordinates into catalog records so that a user could search using a visual map for all items regarding a specific location. What a fantastic idea!
Up until this article, I had really been struggling to see the possibilities of Web 2.0 for any aspects of library work other than reference. I had definitely been able to the possibilities that it holds for incorporating it into bibliographic instruction and outreach. But here are ideas that really go to the heart of what we do - providing access to information for people in a meaningful way. I think that the struggle that we face as a profession is understanding what "meaningful" currently is and possibly will be in the future.
The idea that most strikes me about the challenge that Web 2.0 brings to libraries is that it really forces our profession to look closely at our core values and purpose and to determine how valuable we can continue to be as these huge shifts in the availability of information become available. While Rick Anderson challenges the value of even continuing to build up a physical collection of materials, I do believe that the importance of the library as a physical space and the act of patrons being able to physically get their hands on works will continue far, far into our future. Given the huge scope of material out there, it just will not be possible for it all to ever be scanned and made available online. However, I do agree with his proposition (and Michael Stephens, and Chip Nilges, and John Reimer) that we need to reassess our contribution in terms of what value we bring to making that information accessible to patrons.
It's been my experience, as a user of libraries and now as a librarian, that libraries tend to be very resistent to adapting our ports of user access to what user's actually express that they would like. Let's set aside the fact that we should be as concerned with aesthetics and useability for our websites as commercial ventures are (honestly, can you fault a patron who doesn't understand library jargon for not being able to find what they need on our sites?) It's clear from the success of sites like Amazon, GoodReads and LibraryThing, that users like generic keyword searching, tagging, visual cues, reader reviews, and suggestions for additional sources. Why not incorporate these features into our existing OPACs? We say that we value libraries as a source of "community", well, these are all features that would help to build up an online community centered around our own library collections. I especially love John Reimer's idea of adding the geographic coordinates into catalog records so that a user could search using a visual map for all items regarding a specific location. What a fantastic idea!
Up until this article, I had really been struggling to see the possibilities of Web 2.0 for any aspects of library work other than reference. I had definitely been able to the possibilities that it holds for incorporating it into bibliographic instruction and outreach. But here are ideas that really go to the heart of what we do - providing access to information for people in a meaningful way. I think that the struggle that we face as a profession is understanding what "meaningful" currently is and possibly will be in the future.
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