Book Review: Library 2.0 by Casey & Savastinuk

I've been slowly chewing on Library 2.0: A guide to participatory library service by Michael Casey & Laura Savastinuk and finally finished it this morning. As a review or primer, it's fantastic. It's exactly the book to hand to a senior administrator or library trustee who is willing to read it (=relatively open-minded about new initiatives). The authors explain the basics of Library 2.0 and describe the distinctions between the theory behind participatory library service (Library 2.0) and the technology that can support it (Web 2.0). The writing can be somewhat repetitive, particularly toward the end, but that might just be because they were telling me lots of things I already knew.

Many of the changes outlined in this book are things I've seen the beginnings of in my own institution. Service review teams that cut across staff lines vertically and horizontally; a verbalized commitment to openness and trust of one's staff at all levels; a recognition of the need for constant, moderate, moderated change; and more. All of these are components of Library 2.0 and are described in some depth. The final chapters on Getting Buy-In and Maintaining Momentum are particularly useful for those of us who are trying to push foward some of these changes and need advice for the next step in the process.

In short: a good summary for those already on the Lib 2.0 cluetrain, and a reasonable first book for the as-yet unconvinced. I recommended it to two senior-level managers just this morning, and their first response was to suggest that the whole management team needed individual copies. Rah!

Enjoy!

Whither thou goest, librarian?

Ah, productivity. I'm so glad to find it again...

And yet, no posts in a month and a half? I guess the short answer is that I did find my productivity, but it largely played out in my paying job and not in these pages. Also, there's been a post brewing that needs out, and it's finally ready.

But first, announcements: In the next two months, I have three professional speaking engagements, two local and one at a national conference!

Tuesday, October 16th: I'll be presenting a two-hour workshop on "Taming the Online Infoclutter: Using RSS to Keep Current and Manage Overload". 10a - 12noon at the Boston Public Library, Training Room. Registration is through the Boston Region.

Wednesday, October 31st: On the last day of Internet Librarian, I'm giving a 15-minute Cybertour on the same topic. 11:30-11:45am in the Exhibitor Hall. (Yes, I'm speaking at a national librarian conference. How excited am I?!?)

Tuesday, November 6th: My second workshop for the Boston Region is "You Can Be the Expert: Helping Library Users with Basic Computer Troubleshooting," a look at how to diagnose what problem your patrons are having and what, if anything, you can do about it. 10a - 12noon at the BPL Training Room. Same registration link as above.

Next up, a post sure to raise some eyebrows and make you think. Ciao!

As promised...it's August and I'm back

Hi, all. My thanks for your patience for the radio silence. But now, the show is over and I'm refocusing my attention on my blog.

To ease myself back in, I'll start off with a couple of links from Bloglines:

Headlines and hotspots in a just a Couple of Minutes. via LibraryStuff

Using LinkedIn productively via the Librarian In Black

You can find me on LinkedIn, by the way ------>

I've also added a couple of titles to the Squidoo list ---->

Ah, productivity. I'm so glad to find it again...

Squidoo!

Oh, one more thing. I finally made public the Squidoo lens that I've been working on:

Reading Outside the Library Box: useful stuff for librarians
You can get to it at any time using the "I Squidoo" button over on the sidebar there. ----->

It's very much a work in progress, but I've gotten enough up there that it's worth looking at. Go, enjoy, and if you have any suggestions for more stuff let me know.

From the Freakonomics blog, we get a great discussion about whether public libraries could be created today if they didn't already exist. I'm fairly sure I saw most of this article appear somewhere else recently, but the truly interesting discussion is happening (of course) in the comments. Arguments for and against libraries, but also a ton of information about what our patrons think libraries are for.

Neat stuff, and worth checking out.

By the way, the show I'm technical directing (and now stage managing as well!) opens on Thursday the 19th, and it's the last big thing that I need to be doing this summer. As hoped, it should mean some more down time for writing here. Thanks again for your indulgence on the silence, and I'll be seeing you soon!

One post a week in July

Good evening, all. In a perfect world, I'd be filling this blog with poignant and useful tidbits of information and insight. Alas, this is not a perfect world, and my offline commitments have been eating all of my awake time (with a recent incursion by Desktop Tower Defence). I've barely been keeping up with my Bloglines feeds, let alone being able to post here.

Fortunately, the most intensive of my other roles will be over as of the end of July. I'm technical director for Theatre@First -- a local theater company -- and the show goes up in three weeks. Most of my non-work time is spent at the theater, in rehearsals or construction. I'm also attending a library leadership institute here in my home state, though that only lasts a mere three days.

So, for the month of July, I'm going to aim to have a post a week on something, even if it's just an interesting link. Come August, I'll go back to a more comprehensive writing schedule.

Thank you for your patience and tolerance of the low volume over here. I hope to bring up the relevance factor of this blog next month. Meanwhile, enjoy your summer!

Addendum to the last post

In my excitement and pre-caffeinated state, I missed something about Photosynth that should have been spectacularly obvious:

You can only run it on MS Vista or XP SP2. Even just the test drive.

Now, I am conflicted, to say the least. I've read about the somewhat broken nature of Vista, in terms of overenthusiastic security and DRM-type restrictions, but I haven't actually tried it out. I guess I'll just move into wait-and-see mode on Photosynth and its worthiness as a product. My institution is a Windows house, so it's probable that I'll get to play with it sooner rather than later.

It's frustrating, nonetheless. A cool tool, but of limited use to someone unwilling to buy (into) the OS.

Still here, still busy

Yes, I have been remarkably busy over the past few weeks. And, as I mentioned previously, I prefer to write articles worth reading rather than spamming your feed readers with links.

You see the problem here, no?

I'm not sure how often I'll be able to post in the coming weeks, though things seem to be slowing down a bit. For now, I just have to share this with you:

A TED talk with Blaise Aguera y Arcas on Photosynth, an astounding new photo tool.
"Using photos of oft-snapped subjects (like Notre Dame) scraped from around the Web, Photosynth (based on Seadragon technology) creates breathtaking multidimensional spaces with zoom and navigation features that outstrip all expectation. Its architect, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, shows it off in this standing-ovation demo. Curious about that speck in corner? Dive into a freefall and watch as the speck becomes a gargoyle. With an unpleasant grimace. And an ant-sized chip in its lower left molar."

Link via Nicole over at What I Learned Today.

The possibilities for using this in a library setting are obvious and then some. First and foremost, this is the new Microtext platform. Forget the clunky readers or unprintable PDF images. This would have perfectly served a woman who asked for an entire issue of National Geographic (heavy on the photographs and she wanted to read multiple articles); with Photosynth she could view the whole issue from the convenience of her home computer, rather than have to be "happy" with a badly scanned printout.

Second, it makes image collections useful in a whole new way. Make all of your image collections available online and overlay Photosynth on them, and every image you have of the Mona Lisa -- regardless of the physical collection it's in -- is immediately accessible via a large image map surrounding the original image.

Third, far more mundanely, our intimidating Main Libraries can be showcased using a comprehensive virtual tour that reduces patron confusion, because Photosynth will take individual pictures and accurately translate them into a continuous panorama. Using an intuitive, analagous interface.

There are probably many more applications, but I haven't had my coffee yet and I've got to get the day on the move.

I can't quite say I wept at the beauty of this tool, but I came awfully close. Watch the video and ask yourself: how can you use this tool to help patrons of your library?

Playaways?

Reactive vs. proactive. And as the rate of change gets faster, we're pushed further and further into reactive modes.

What am I blathering on about? I just had a patron call asking about Playaways, a not-so-new digital audiobook format. She wanted to know if my library carried them; I'd never even heard of them before.

A little searching online made me feel only slightly better. Playaways have been out since 2005, and Illinois was the first library system to pilot the format (second paragraph from the bottom). OHIONET has a comprehensive FAQ about them for its member libraries, while the Rocky River (OH) Public Libraries and the Larchmont (NY) Public Library are offering them to patrons.

I'll cut myself some slack: I've only really been closely following tech trends since late last fall, so I would have missed much of the brouhaha about Playaways. And yet, if I can miss a new technology such as this, how many other less-savvy librarians out there have missed this and more?

Yes, professional development is much on my mind, for personally professional as well as generally professional reasons. I just gave that presentation that stressed that we need to be "...aware of as much of the rest as we can." So now, I live true to my own words.

So....Playaways. Very neat, very tidy, no moving parts and easy to circulate. Easy also to lose and break in a transit bag, but that's no reason not to have them for the same reasons that we have books on CD and even still on cassette. If you haven't already checked them out, give one a whirl and see if it'll fly at your library.

A new vision of a book website

There's been a neat trend running around the 'nets recently -- low-tech presentations disseminated electronically. I've seen Post-Its TM, whiteboards, scribbled-on bits of paper and other real-world communication tools, captured by digital camera and incorporated into the design of a site.

Here's one promoting a new collection of short stories:

No One Belongs Here More Than You, by Miranda July. [link courtesy of my friend John]

I won't try to explain it...just go there and work your way through it. It only takes a few minutes, and what's most fun about it is the seamless way she includes Flickr-style hotlinking into the imagery. Fun, easy and so effective.

It's also compelling, because it embodies the 'Naked Conversation' envisioned by Scoble and Israel (from their book by the same title). This is a real person, showing us a bit of her real life in celebration and promotion of her newest work. There's no PR firm, no marketing push behind it. Just someone telling us about something she's done.

Of course, the next obvious question is: Where does this sort of thing fit in to library work? Is there anything beyond simply using it as a low-threshold entry into doing Flickr- or YouTube-based training? What else might this work towards?