2010 : The Only Year of the E-Reader is a post on Kit Eaton’s blog at Fast Company.  He argues that the days (well, years) of the e-reader are nearly through, because the multi-function tablet seems to be coming into its own.

I agree, but will take it a step further:  we are in a period of technological convergence.  Our cell phones are cameras, organizers, and many things once reserved for the realm of computers (such as web browsers and e-mail software).  Products like the iPhone, Droid, and Nexus have shown what can be done in a small form factor.

Take things a few steps further, and there is no reason that future devices won’t have larger screens (folding? flexible?) that will serve well as e-readers.  In fact, one can keep adding software functionality and see that these will be primarily limited by our ability to interact with them.  The best smartphone keyboards only approximate what we can do with a standard keyboard, and I suspect that fixing that problem will be a quantum leap for users.

I expect this convergence to continue, until we will be carrying our computers on our hips and simply connecting to whatever networks and user devices we need at a particular location.  This is a common thing for web browsing and e-mail, watch for it with other functionality.  And yes, the “cloud” will play a big part (even though we are currently seeing a backlash against it).

When this day (year) arrives, will libraries be ready to integrate these new behaviors into our routines?  Will we see “reference as a service” or location based offerings become part of our forte?  I suspect that it will be like many current library technologies… we will get there eventually, with some leading the way.

found via Bobbi L. Newman at Library by Day

A link to a thought-provoking article on Open Source business models was posted by Stephen Abram on his blog, Stephen’s Lighthouse.  If you follow that last link, you may note that not only does he post the link “without comment”, he has also turned off the option for his readers to comment on the article.

I suspect (but truly don’t know) that this is because of the firestorm of attention he received surrounding a position paper he wrote, and that his company was circulating to some of their customers.  If comments were enabled on his post, the following thought (probably compressed) would have been left by me.  Now it is a post all its own:

What libraries need now, more now then ever, is a good, open discussion of software and service models.  Many of our problems derive from weaknesses in those models, and many of our future problems will derive from weaknesses in the models we choose to move forward with.

The New York Times article is a good example of reporting that misses the elephant in the room:  the Open Source model is not the same as the Closed Source model.  The closed source model uses sales and company profit to determine success.  An open source project could succeed in that way, but looking simply at this ignores the model.

If a group of people put the effort into creating, maintaining, distributing, and using an open source software product, it will survive.  If the project is dynamic, and responds to the needs of the users, it will thrive.  If it does all of the above better than the closed source companies that make competing products, then it is not fair to judge them based only on sales and profit.

One other thing to add to the mix:  don’t ignore the wealth created and saved by those who use the product.  If this were calculated and compared, there might be a few surprises in store for companies, including some companies that have libraries for their customers.

Lorcan Demsey discusses a previous post about Metadata that he wrote a couple of years ago, and the implications for how we approach the creation and selection of information about information.  His four categories:

1. Professional. Produced by staff in support of particular business aims. Think of cataloging, or data produced within the book industry, or A&I data.
2. Crowdsourced. Produced by users of systems.Think of tags, reviews and ratings on consumer sites.
3. Programmatically promoted. Think of automatic extraction of metadata from digital files, automatic classifcation, entity identification, and so on.
4. Intentional. Data about choices and transactions which support analytics or business intelligence services. Think about ranking, relating, recommending in consumer sites (e.g people who like this also like this) based on collected transaction data.

The traditional library approach has been the first category (Professional).  The downside is that it it far too time consuming to keep up with the firehose of new resources.  When was the last time you heard someone discuss cataloging the internet?

The challenge with the remaining options is the opposite.  There is a great deal of metadata being generated, and the challenge is to organize and/or standardize what we use.

Where does this leave library catalogers, and libraries in general?  How should we focus our efforts?  Should we focus on traditional metadata creation, or should we attempt to update and adapt our processes and standards to a changing world?  Potential rewards, and possible troubles await either choice.  Can we forge a path that allows us to do both, or is that doomed to failure.

Just some things to think about….

Circulating Zen posts about dealing with a staffing issue on a holiday weekend. She is faced with a student worker scheduled to cover several shifts (allowing other students to travel home for the holiday weekend) who has come down with influenza.

Her solution is one that doesn’t fit the guidelines of her workplace.  It does, however, fit the guidelines of her work ethic : professionalism.

Read her post, and remember the instances where you, and others, have stepped beyond your working hours, your job classification, or some other guideline to solve a problem.  Why is this done?  Someone sees a need, determines a solution that fulfills the need in a way that best serves the principles of libraries and their own work ethic, and follows through.

Simple?   Not really.  It is easy to say “not my job” or “I’m simply following the rules”.  Far more challenging is determining when and how to step beyond what you are supposed to do, and do what is truly called for in the situation.  Especially since the person potentially exposes themself to criticism by doing so.

Circulating Zen sums it up well:  “I shouldn’t pawn it off on anyone else. It’s not professional.”

Jenny Levine makes a great case on The Shifted Librarian for adding a feature to your sites that allows users to easily share your content via social networks.  Not only will this offer a way for your users to help spread the work about services and activities that you offer, but it can help them keep track of information they find so that they can revisit it later.  This will be a benefit for users of mobile browsers, which are rapidly becoming a more significant portion of visitors to our web sites.

You may notice that I have followed her advice and have added the Add to Any service to this blog, visible at the bottom of every post (and checked to ensure it validates against XHTML and CSS standards, of course; a requirement I have for any add-on).

The Perfect Storm is a brief essay in the current issue of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) newsletter.  G. Sayeed Choudhury, the author of the essay, states that

“Universities have authentication and authorization systems to identify who you are and what you can use; they also have office software or course management systems to support collaboration.    How many passwords do you use within your university system? How easy is it to collaborate with people outside your university? Yet within and without our universities, many faculty, students, and staff collaborate daily using Google’s suite of tools.  This trend will almost certainly grow once Google Wave is launched later this year.  With its impressive integration of services and novel method for identity management, Google Wave may become a tsunami that washes away the office software suite—and perhaps even the course management system.”

I am not so sure that Google Wave will be the tipping point, but it is certainly another step in this direction.  How many of us have stepped outside of the boundaries of the traditional tools we use for our work and schooling?  It is humbling to recognize how much time and effort can be saved through the proper application of a new software program, or an online service, or even tapping into social networking to gain insight (it is interesting that e-mail lists are considered standard, while Facebook, Twitter and blogging still have the “Library 2.0″ label stuck on them… they are all different forms of social networking, with their accompanying strengths and weaknesses).

Choudhury adds:

Too often we fail to examine trends beyond our own institutional context; we are reluctant to embrace risk taking when developing services or infrastructure.  The choices that universities and libraries make regarding infrastructure in the next few years will have profound implications for the future.

I would take it a step further, and suggest that we not only don’t look beyond our own context, we fail to grasp the possibilities that exist with new technology and new applications of existing technology.  When the environment surrounding our libraries changes, the environment within our libraries changes as well – whether we incorporate these changes or remain passive.

In other words:  We ignore tools such as Google Wave, Open Source, Open Access, Wikis, Blogs, Social Networking, social library catalog tools, and everything else at our own peril.  These tools have changed our libraries, are currently changing our libraries, and will continue to change our libraries as far into the future as we can see.  If we want to remain relevant (in other words:  if we want to survive), we need to pay attention.  Libraries as they have existed in the past will continue to play a role, but that role will be viewed more as an archive than a dynamic library.

We have lost a lot of ground, but we have the ability and the resources to do this, and it starts with each and every one of us.  How can we do our job better?  Smarter?  Faster?  What tools can we use?  How can others help?  The libraries that pay attention to those questions, and strive to answer them effectively, will be the ones to thrive.

I challenge you to, within the next week, find one new tool, idea, or resource that makes you better at your job.  Repeat, ad infinitum – from here it appears that it is Turtles all the way down.

The Proverbial Lone Wolf Librarian has a short “rant” about what libraries need and don’t need, and it is very much worth reading.

He urges us to “Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero – ’seize the day and place no trust in tomorrow’”, and seek out “inclusion, relationship and commitment.”

He also stresses that “our success or failure will not be determined by new programs, plans, conferences, education or technology.”  I would counter that any new programs, plans, conferences, education and technology should serve to increase inclusion, relationship and commitment.  Otherwise, he is spot on, and I think we all need to have these brief rants, whether they occur in the blogosphere, around a restaurant table, along the walking path, or to ourselves while we shower.  They can help keep us focused on the tasks that lie ahead.

You know it, even if you don’t admit it… your library has books that should have been weeded years ago, but have hung around until they become anachronistically funny.  To give you an anonymous outlet for this outlandish situation, there is Awful Library Books, a blog highlighting (only in a metaphorical way) those library books that serve to let us know that ours is not the only library that needs a good cleaning.

found via LISNews, who found it via Time

Shorpy is a collection of photographs presented using a blog, but it is an especially captivating collection.  A combination of historical photographs, found images, and personal/family photos, there is rarely an entry that doesn’t hold some interest for the viewer.

I especially like the pictures with an element of mystery… the attempt to gain some context of what is happening or where/when the photograph was taken.

found via Librarians’ Internet Index

A few items of note to update yesterday’s post:

The Library is Now Closed (a.k.a. Shuttered Library) is a blog created by an Ohio librarian named Mike (didn’t see a last name) which is compiling links to a vast amount of information and resources for libraries and supporters in Ohio. (thanks Jessamyn!)

Save Ohio Libraries is a blog detailing actions that people and libraries can take to, as the title suggests, save Ohio libraries.

A couple of additional links to Pdf articles that I missed yesterday, both from the “Balanced Budget Framework” page.  Note that neither of these have been properly named; save them to your hard drive and add “.pdf” to the end of the file name so that your computer will know how to open them (or you can open your Pdf reader and open the files from the program’s “File” menu):

• Balance Sheet by Line Item (detailed budget information, including the Governor, Senate, and House versions of  budget allocations)
• Highlighted State Strategies (a list of a dozen states, with their approaches towards balancing their respective budgets)

Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest is a New York Times article about blogging, specifically about the study showing an estimated 95% of blogs have not been updated in over 4 months.

Does this signal an end to blogging?  The death of a communication tool?  Not at all.  As the article points out, much of the information conveyed through blogging can also be conveyed through other tools, such as Facebook and Twitter.

As with all tools, users will seek out the tool that best fits their task (or at least the best that fits their skill set, and will still accomplish the task).  Blogging was an early “web 2.0″ tool, and was adopted and adapted to serve many purposes.  Through a combination of better tools for specific tasks, loss of interest/time/support for the creators, and the limits of readers to follow more than a given number of blogs on a particular topic, it is no surprise that many blogs are going into hibernation.

There is also a discussion regarding the expectations of the blogger.  If one strives for fame, fortune and glory, go for it… but a majority of bloggers will not achieve that level.  I suspect that more than a few people set goals beyond what the market could provide their particular skill set and audience.

When I set out to start blogging, I simply wanted to utilize a forum that would allow me to collect thoughts and ideas that I felt were important, and to use it to organize my own interests and actions, as well as to convey what I posted to those who might be interested.  Over time the focus has expanded to include more of my thoughts and ideas (I still cringe a bit when using the word “I”), but still focuses on what is happening in the library technology world.

Blogging has been harder to maintain than I originally thought, but it has also been far more rewarding.  I am still searching for the balance between all of the activities that demand attention, but I suspect that Libology will remain in the “active” category for some time.

found via ResourceShelf

Libology is now available in an audio version.  This is made possible through a service called Odiogo, which works with content providers to enable a streamlined means of creating downloadable audio files of web sites.  What this means for readers is that you can download and listen to posts read by a machine that sounds like Stephen Hawking’s suave younger brother.

While the voice definitely is computer generated, the inflections are quite natural, and the content very understandable.  In addition, I hold any WordPress add-on to the golden rule:  thou shalt not break validation for XHTML, CSS or RSS.

Odiogo found via a post on Catalogablog

OnlineColleges.net has a post listing their Top 10 Commencement Speeches for Tech Lovers, containing descriptions and links to speeches given by, among others,  Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple), Larry Page (Google), Eric Schmidt (Google), Melissa Mayer (Google), and Ray and Tom Magliozzi (Car Talk on NPR).

thanks to Kelly Sonora for the e-mail tip!

– additional comment:  Kelly Sonora is fictional; the person most directly responsible for the content of the above linked post is Jessica Merritt.  This isn’t a problem, the blog is valid and the information is worthy of our time; just wanted make the credit more accurate….

Feedmil is a search engine for RSS feeds.  It does this specific task very, very well.  Search for feeds relating to any keywords you wish, and modify your results using a set of slides that emphasize/de-emphasize words that show up in your results.

I wish they had a more detailed “about” page, especially information on how they determine popularity, authority, quality, and relevance.

found via RSS4Lib

Eric Shonfeld at TechCrunch writes:

“Once again, the Internet is shifting before our eyes. Information is increasingly being distributed and presented in real-time streams instead of dedicated Web pages. The shift is palpable, even if it is only in its early stages.”

Twitter.  RSS.  Facebook.  Digg.  You-Name-It-Feed.  It is becoming apparent that this is the next big shift in internet usage, and, as with the previous shifts, it is hard to guess what the effects will be, and who will be affected.

And this, like previous shifts, will not supplant previous internet use trends.  HTML, or some form of it, will still be very dominant.  Blogs and Wikis will continue to exist, and will be useful tools for certain types of communication and interaction.  Integration will continue to be the norm, with the “now” infusing itself throughout.  How will this change be considered dramatic?

“Traffic occurs in bursts, depending on what people are paying attention to at that second across a variety of services. Someone might notice an obscure blog post on Twitter, where it starts spreading, then it moves to FriendFeed and Facebook and desktop stream readers such as Tweetdeck or Seesmic desktop and before you know it, a hundred thousand people are reading that article. The stream creates a different form of syndication which cannot be licensed and cannot be controlled.”

This “cannot be licensed and cannot be controlled.”  Think about this.  How much of your web presence is based on control:  control of layout, content, contributors, and most of all, control over the rate at which change occurs?   For a library web site, how much of this control is able to be ceded before the concept of a library web site itself changes, without controls?

As with many future technology issues, now is the time to begin thinking, discussing, understanding all of this.  We cannot begin the process of deciding or planning, because none of us can predict how this will play out.  What will we have in place to deal with this, to anticipate this, to harness this?  One benefit of this process will be the inevitable inspiration that some will have about the potential of streams; a future must-have library web site technology might come from this.

Start thinking!

Saw a post on TechCrunch that indicated that Amazon has opened their offerings of blog subscriptions for the Kindle reader to all blogs that sign up.  So now Libology is available to readers of the Kindle… with two caveats:

1. It costs.  A lot.  Way more than you are paying now.  A whopping $1.99 per month (and I have no say in the price, so there).
2. I get some of the money, a whopping 30% (that’s 66 cents per month per subscription).

So really, if you don’t feel the need to pay to read this stuff, don’t.  Keep reading this stuff for free, though.  And if you are philosophically inclined (or reclined) against my getting paid, then, again, don’t.

Seriously, if you are really into the Kindle, and find the blog-perusing experience to be great, then I am glad to provide Libology as an option, just as I have provided a mobile-browser friendly version.  They do offer a 14-day trial if you want an excuse to try it out.  Just don’t feel guilty about canceling… I understand, trust me!

6 Small Things You Can Do When You Lack Discipline is a post on the zenhabits blog which addresses the stress we go through as we try to accomplish projects and achieve goals.

I like that he stresses that discipline is an illusion; what we need to focus on instead is motivation.

The only thing I might add to this would be that we often times set ourselves up for failure in our projects and goals.  Evaluating what we truly want, what can realistically achieve with the resources we have (time, money, energy, etc.), and what is actually worth doing can make all the difference.

found via Journey of a Kitten

This post will contain just a couple of links, but there is a wealth of information on the other end of each:

• 101 Great Free Sites and Downloads You’ve Probably Never Heard Of has been put together by PC World.  I will bet you have heard of at least a few of these, and I would recommend using this as a starting point in your search for resources and applications (i.e. if you see something helpful, look for other resources that provide the same… PC World sometimes skips great resources for simply new and flashy resources).  found via ResourceShelf
• 30+ Places to Find Creative Commons Media is a post on the SitePoint blog, which is a great resource for web developers.  This list is fairly focused, but many people forget about the treasure trove that is Creative Commons when they look for pictures, sound or other media resources.

In its continuing examination of library blogs, HotStuff 2.0 has added a visualization of emotional content.

Here is the current visualization for Libology:

How to read the information, from HotStuff’s description:

1. The overall scatter of words in the ANEW list are shown as small blue dots. This is shown simply as a guide to indicate the overall shape (as per the previous image that resembled the map of Australia).
2. The average emotional content of each blog post is shown as a small green cross. This is a calculated by looking for all occurrences of ANEW words in the blog post. The average position is then calculated. Therefore, if a blog post contained lots of strongly negative content, you would expect the green cross to be towards the bottom-left.
3. The average emotional content of all the blog posts is shown as a larger red cross. This is calculated as before, but is the average for all of the content on the blog. Therefore, if a blog contained lots of posts with strongly positive content, you would expect the red cross to be towards the bottom-right.
4. Word usage frequency is indicated by the transparent circles. This gives an indication of the type of words being used on the blog. Larger circles indicate that words with the same pleasure & arousal values have been used more frequently.

The red X falls in the Neutral Pleasure, Medium Arousal section, but definitely far enough towards the right to suggest that there is Positive Pleasure at work as well.  This seems about right, as I don’t tend to go negative all that often (and when I do I try to remain constructive), and my writing voice tends to be more formal, leading to a Neutral/Medium tone.

I haven’t seen anything on the HotStuff site that makes me feel that there is a grand truth in their categorization of various library blogs, but they are doing some really interesting experiments that provide glimpses of what is there.  I recommend checking out their listings for the library blogs that you follow.

And the title of this post?  Well, I had my Myers-Briggs Type – INFP – as my automobile’s license plate for several years, so this seemed to be the way to go.

found through Walt at Random

Publisher Confidential is a creation by the Unshelved crew that strives to convey to publishers what libraries wish they would know.  It consists of brief statements illustrated with the familiar Mallville Public Library staff.  The booklet is being distributed to the BookExpo America (BEA) mailing list, so a lot of publisher’s representative will see it and hopefully take heed.

Some of the selections I especially like upon first reading:

• Start your periodical with Vol. 1, Issue 1.
• Unusual packaging creates problems.
• In the book, tell us how to pronounce the author’s name.
• Free Ebooks from the shackles of D.R.M.
• Not all fonts are created equal.

There are many more… and all are worth reading.

via the Unshelved Blog