nichole's auxiliary storage

WAPL08: Notable genre book discussion (and bonus Have You Heard...)

Four well-read librarians with delightfully diverse tastes brought a pile of really good books to this session - some highlights I've added to my own list:

• See you in a hundred years: four seasons in forgotten America by Logan Ward - "Better Off" redux?
• Life as we knew it by Susan Beth Pfeffer - apocalyptic YA novel
• Unwind by Neal Shusterman - Parts: The Clonus Horror for teens
• Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson - sounds sweet
• Driven by Eve Kenin - possible romance/road  B-movie fun

With the exception of Green Gables, I seem to have latched onto the eschatologically-flavored titles. Hm.

Another good source of yummy reads that I learned about in the "Have You Heard About" session was twitterlit.com, which feeds you 2 first lines of books every day.

Well, that's all I've managed to blog. Post-conference resources, slides etc. will be on the WAPL site soon. Happy trails, all!

Cap Times covers NorthStar report on libraries' economic worth

If you missed the WAPL keynote by David Ward, this article in the Capital Times gives a synopsis (without, sadly, the good jokes David sprinkled in - he's pretty funny for an economist!).

In other library news, the Madison PL library board unanimously approved the new building plan for Central Library. That's one step...

WAPL08: Digitization of Local History Materials: LSTA Success Stories

Posting from the Wisconsin Association of Public Libraries conference, Stevens Point, WI.

The take-home lesson from this program was that digital projects are within reach of just about any library with the desire to undertake one.

Sally began with an update on the LSTA competitive grant program for digitization projects, including the partnership with UWDCC (who provide training, digitization, metadata, hosting; basically the whole technical structure) and grant requirements - first-time applicants are encouraged to apply for $2-5000 to digitize historical materials. One caveat is that libraries should anticipate enough staff time to cover a project, particularly for image and map collections. She also ran through the steps in a digitization project.

Nanette spoke on Kiel PL's project, starting off saying, "It really helps if you have a local history collection dropped into your lap." A local history enthusiast donated 100 notebooks, collected over 20 years, organized by topic from ice storms to WWII. She formed a committee with the donor and members of the local historical society to determine what to finish first, and settled on the theme "Big streets in a little city." She used community volunteers to help choose what photos to include.

KPL prominently features a link to the collection on their web site. Patrons love the collection and the original donor continues to receive contributions of photos and diaries (and more) from the community. The library has been contacted by people all over the world who have found the collection online.

Waterford PL made a very snazzy 18-month wall calendar featuring local photos and notable dates to promote their collection. Pamela shared a touching thank-you letter to the library from a family in Indiana. She also found that some of the potential donors didn't understand the "digital" part of the library's project, but once they saw examples, they were more likely to contribute their materials.

Oshkosh celebrated a big anniversary by digitizing city directories. (They've also found that providing copies of obituaries is a good revenue stream for the library.) A subsequent project involved digitizing large maps that were previously un-digitizable due to their size. They found that the libraries in the smaller, surrounding communities were very grateful that the Oshkosh PL undertook the project.

These libraries' experiences are inspiring - and the best news is that projects on this scale will continue with the collaboration of Wisconsin library and cultural institutions, and the help of LSTA funds.

I learned the punchline as "Wanna ride bikes?"

This checkout slip at FOUND Magazine is even better than the overdue fine receipt I found once - for three late personal finance books.

Overcynical or undercaffeinated

Hell's Kitchen, Minneapolis, 8am. I go in to save my spot for lunch. It's packed with librarians from the Public Library Association conference (tote bags a dead giveaway - ho ho). There appears to be a line at the hostess station.

Me: Are you in line?
Hopefully not a reference librarian: You need to put your name on the sheet.
Me: I'm making a lunch reservation.
HNARL: Smiles unctuously.

I thought that HNARL was a little speedy to assume my needs. Where's the classic reference-interview follow up? "May I ask why you need to know?" Heh. Anyway.

Later, in the skywalk, I hear a voice behind me: "Oh dear, I'm lost." I apologize that I don't know which way the speaker should go; a custodian, overhearing two librarians in distress, points out the helpful map in plain view six feet away.

I worry for my profession.

Culinary Luminaries quilt

Culinary Luminaries quilt

I'm a winner! This is a great way to start the week.

Jacob Two-Two and the Bookworm Brouhaha

So there's this Saturday morning cartoon on Qubo, Jacob Two-Two, that I sometimes catch. Last week was the "Bookworm Brouhaha" episode, which I was sure some library blogger would cover because in this one, Jacob is initiated into the Secret Library Ninja Society when two librarians notice his shelving acumen.

The show started off with such promise. The librarians were not stereotyped, there were computers in the library, Jacob was having fun working with books, and the whole idea of the Secret Library Ninja Society (complete with shushing in the secret handshake) as a parallel to library school was pretty funny.

But then there was a huge disappointment: turns out the main goal of the Society is to steal back overdue books and slap people with fines and keep them from doodling in the margins. No solving problems with information; no befriending the lonely nerds and geeks; no saving the world. Bah. What a lost opportunity.

Library 2.0 Church Hymnal (beta)

Upon driving past the L2 Church in Denver, Steve Lawson figures it must be the Library 2.0 church, and asks:

What would the sermons, hymns, etc. be at the Library 2.0 Church, I wonder?

I have some hymn ideas. My top 5:

• Our blog is an awesome blog
• Go text it on the mountain
• Glorious things of thee are Twittered
• Onward, early adopters
• They cast their nets in Google

Three contributions from JM:

• Amazing MySpace
• Wiki kings  (of Orient are)
• I'll praise my Flickr while I've breath

And two that really needed no editing, borrowed from the Anglican Hymnal 1982:

• Tis a gift to be simple
• We walk by faith, and not by sight

Happy St. Nick's Day, by the way!

WiSJ: 'Retire' isn't the final word for James Danky

Saturday's WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL had a story on the retirement of Jim Danky from his job as periodicals librarian at the Wisconsin Historical Society. I knew he was a zine's best friend, but I didn't know about the first-offender employment program he supervised that's now in danger of being cut:

He supervises first offenders who are "doing time " at the Historical Society Library. More than 2,600 first offenders, by his count, have been placed in his office to work off their community service sentences by doing mundane chores such as ironing newspapers. Danky reckons the state has saved $942,000 by using first offenders in his office.

Libraries who Drive Women in Technology to Drink

Library Journal has an article about women who drive library technology that features some short bios of several inspiring librarians. There were two bits that stuck in my head most, though. One was about pay equity:

Pay equity has improved over the years but still lags for women. LJ’s recent survey shows that men entering the profession receive higher pay than women, and the balance may even be slipping a little (“Starting Pay Breaks $40K” by Stephanie Maatta, LJ 10/15/06). Technology-intensive jobs offer some of the highest salaries, but a disproportionate number of men hold those jobs.

The other was about balance:

[She] naturally blends work and life. She enjoys a flexible schedule and admits, “I’m a night owl. I sleep with my laptop. Work and life are blurred.”

I find it odd that after presenting this striking image, the article signs off with a paean to library work as eminently suited to "a woman’s need for life/work balance" (which I suspect is becoming a euphemism for "family").

I admire those who have such a passion for their work that the pay doesn't matter, and who can blend life and work to that degree, but it's naive of the article to not acknowledge these challenges in more depth. It seems to me that libraries have always profited greatly from women's altruism.

FRBR of love

One for the catalogers: here's a whole 'nother way to explain FRBR.

Work: Whatever the ultimate source of love is - biological compunction, narcissism, or God, you pick. Just like in FRBR, this is the hardest concept to grasp.

Expression: An instance of that love, e.g. a relationship between creatures. It can even be classified into different types.

Manifestation: A kind of action or thought that conveys the love embodied in an expression - a mitzvah, a kiss, a noble sacrifice.

Item: A specific instance of a manifestation - Lawrence Oates' long (futile) walk, or the goodnight story your mom read to you on February 12, 1981.

Thanks to JM for coming up with this idea on a particularly punchy morning commute. Happy 8th engagement-anniversary, mister mister.

Nuance

The church library is getting a makeover. I noticed my use of the tag "weed" in LibraryThing is different than everyone else's.

Find the good stuff fast

Hurrah! In Macworld, February 2007, p. 71, "Use your local library" is listed as a way to "find the good stuff fast." Library databases are right up there with search tips for Amazon, Ask.com, Archive.org, and scads of Google hints.

"Asking Non-Users Why They Don't Use the Library"

From LISNews: Asking Non-Users Why They Don't Use the Library.

From the Newtown (CT) Bee, C.H. Booth Library is looking for opinions about the library from an unlikely source: the people who do not use it.

 

Yes! We need more of this. Libraries need to look outside themselves and the people that already love them. This has implications for service, funding, and advocacy, and can't be ignored.

The library's methodology sounds a little sketchy, though - is there a statistician in the house?

The seven-question survey, which is totally anonymous, can be picked up at the main desk [...] or call the library ...

Any user research is better than none, but non-user research is best. If it's done well, that is.

From Data to Wisdom: An Interview with Paco Underhill

Over at Boxes and Arrows, some exciting news (to me) about Paco "Why We Buy" Underhill's next project:

What kinds of projects will your firm be working on in upcoming years?

We’re about to start a series of projects with different public libraries across the country, looking at how a library moves somebody up the ladder from a novice to an intermediate to an expert and their usage of a library. We’re trying to think about the design and communication aspects of a library as a lifeline to what the idea of a public library is long term.

Real research! *swoon*

ALA librarian salary survey

Man, why are the mean librarians getting such nice raises?

Librarian workplace revenge fantasy

Excerpted from p4 of the excerpt of 'Working With You Is Killing Me' at ABC News:

For ten years, Tom has worked as a reference librarian for a top university. Recently, he received a promotion to director of the entire reference department. As soon as Tom assumed his new position, Denise, his coworker of many years, began to act strangely toward him. Before the promotion, they enjoyed a warm friendship. But now Denise is cold and icy.

...
One day, Tom walks by Denise and George, another reference librarian. He overhears Denise putting him down. "Tom is a study in incompetent leadership. I could run the department more efficiently with my eyes closed." Tom feels his blood boil. He wants to kill Denise. He imagines himself "accidentally" pushing a bookcase on top of her.

Yipes!

Internet Librarian 2006: Wrap-up

By day 3 my blog juice was all dried up - but there being no shortage of conference bloggers, that's A-OK.

This conference did a lot to inspire me. Much of what I saw I was already somewhat familiar with, but seeing more examples of good stuff libraries are doing, and talking to with-it librarians, is always inspiring. (Not to mention getting an anonymous cameo - still chuffed.)

After the conference I managed to fit in some touristy stuff, too, and not just in Monterey. I saw some of Salt Lake City and had some chili in Cincinnati. And the whole trip ended just as it started:

(If I can go again next year, I'm taking the Badger Bus to MKE, flying Midwest to SFO, and taking the Monterey Air Bus to MRY. And finding a hotel with free internet. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.)

Internet Librarian 2006: The RSS and Javascript cookbook: rip, mix, burn

Meredith and Paul made their entire presentation available on pbwiki (this garnered cheers from the audience, especially laptop alley)!

They showed how to use feed2js, feedblendr and other tools to keep library's subject pages fresh, a very familiar puzzle. See if you can tell what's a feed and what's static on the International Relations Research Guide, for instance. Way cool. More by David Lee King.

Internet Librarian 2006: Flickr and Libraries

Libraryman and travelinlibrarian took a tour of the Libraries and Librarians Flickr group (hmmm, Sequoya?), shared slideshows sent by librarians from Spain and Australia (the PictureAustralia project from the Australia National Library is just amazing), and just plain cool stuff:

• Springfield Public Library
• Nancy Pearl Librarian Action Figure
• Jail finds (w00t!)
• Trading cards
• Westmont Public Library
• Colr Pickr
• retrievr
• flickr leech
• flickr graph
• clockr
• spell with flickr

More at LiB and Shifted Librarian.

Internet Librarian 2006: Mashup Mindset: moving mashups to next level

Tom from the KAPS group took a somewhat more reserved approach to mashups, warning about the hype ("they're not revolutionary, they're evolutionary") and emphasizing the importance of structure - taxonomies and metadata - to meaningful mashups.

He made an interesting point about how mashups in the muscial sense are enabled by the structure of music (melody, harmony, and rhythm). 90% of existing mashups use Google Maps, another highly structured and useful data source.

He encouraged the audience to think of mashups in context:

• as content aggregation, something libraries already do
• as faceted navigation or dynamic classification
• as valuable business tool (for targeted ads, combining internal and internet content)

Before mashups can "grow up," he said a platform for more complex integration of data has to develop, involving semantics and ontology. Until content structures and format rules are exchanged as freely as APIs, mashups will only go so far. (Given that most library vendors don't even have APIs - or at least don't understand them the same way librarians do - this seems to me an impossibly quixotic goal.)

He wrapped up with how folksonomies, complexity theory, and evolution tie into mashups, and a call for a better name than "mashup" (though agreed that's not likely).

Internet Librarian 2006: What's a mashup and why would I want one?

In this "appetizer course" to the mashup track, Darlene showed some fun examples...

• zip codes
• news
• books and more books
• crime
• blogging librarians
• weather
• walks

...plus, where to look for more.

She ended with some caveats, mostly about pitfalls inherent to this stuff being in its infancy (scale, dependencies, demand, pace of development) and social issues (IP and the right to remix, provenance, authority - even privacy, if you've got an Amazon wish list).

Paul from Talis ended with a recap of their Mashing Up the Library competition 2006, of which John Blyberg at AADL was the winner and the Second Life Library team was second.

Internet Librarian 2006: Bottom-Up Web Redesign (D106)

This one hit home, and had me furiously typing notes and resolutions for my future redesign projects. Ask the users! Brilliant. Yet guilt-inducing - though I was pleased to have heard of the stuff the presenters talked about, theory and practice sometimes don't have enough synergy.* There's more on this session over at It's All Good and Queequegs.

The hands-on affinity mapping exercise was informative, but rushed. 45 minutes per session seems (so far) to be too little time for the amount of good stuff the presenters at IL have.

As an aside, "Bottoms-up web designer's happy hour" has a nice ring to it, en'a?

*This year's buzzword?

Internet Librarian 2006: OPAC tips and tricks for improving user experiences (B105)

(I finally made it in time for the last 2 sessions on Monday.)

There were lots of good "takeaway" thoughts in this session, but most memorable one was:

Do what the power users want now because it's what the regular users will want in 2 years.

Specifically this was about Greasemonkey scripts and other user-added goodies. And given the pace of library change, it's always a good idea to start new things sooner rather than later. There's more on this session at LiB, David Lee King (twice), the Shifted Librarian.

Not really about IL2006 yet.

What kind of idiot gets on a plane after seeing this kind of thing go on for 3 hours?

Me, apparently. And now I'm stuck en route, neither home nor at the conference hotel, with its adorable bath otters!

Delta, you suck.

"Kinder auf Infojagd"

Library Mistress, a librarian in Austria, wrote a recent blog post with that title. I love that word, "Infojagd" - much better than "information-seeking." The post talks about some pretty cool kids' programming the library is offering, as well as some online games on the Vienna library web site. There's Bookman, like Pac Man, and Falling Thinx, which seems to be prepping kids for careers in circ and delivery sorting.

YouTubed

I won't do this too often, promise. YouTube - How To Steal A Library Book.

By the same logic, a library blog would cost...

It's a different world: via WisBlawg, a lawyer says the annual cost of blogging is $20,000 of billable time, at 2 hours per week and $200/hour. He advises lawyers to hire someone to "manage the physical aspects of maintaining your blog".

Turner Middle IMC, 1995

Someone donated to the JLG a 1995 yearbook from Turner Middle School in Beloit, WI. Here's the library page.

I love the obligatory shush. And this bulletin board.

ALA re-up time

LITA sent me a jar opener - guess I'll renew for another year.

Origins International Game Expo and Fair

So I was at Origins last weekend in Columbus, OH. It was my first game convention ever, and also the first year they opened their "Teacher's Hall Pass" program to public librarians. With that I got free admission, great swag, discounts, and tickets to seminars, where companies like Mayfair and experts like Reiner Knizia shared classroom game ideas with teachers.   

Some other highlights of the con:

1. The CABS game lending library in the Board Room, complete with Demco card pockets.



2. The podcasting panel, where gaming podcasting geeks (as opposed to other kinds of podcasters, who are universally "suave," according to Mur of Geek Fu Action Grip) gave some tips on getting started in podcasting.
3. There was never, ever a line for the women's restroom.

4. The Looney for Learning seminar, where folks from Looney Labs demonstrated classroom uses of Nanofictionary and Chrononauts.
5. The Teacher's Hall Pass got me into the expo hall early (at least on the first day, before the volunteer security people got debriefed). Note the teeming hordes, successfully avoided:



6. I got to play a game of Settlers on the fancy-schmancy three-dimensional board and on a giant board (not shown, mostly because I take bad pictures).



7. Spouseless? Make your own.



8. Pretty:
   

I'd definitely go again - and since "JM et al" will probably go next year to visit with game publishers, it's likely. A downside is that it happens at the peak of raspberry picking time, when all the tiger lilies are in bloom and there's nothing I'd rather be than on our back porch watching them wave in the breeze.

Google maps, one county at a time

LISnews reports on Ender's Google map of public libraries in Maricopa County, AZ. The potential is there for bigger maps...worth thinking about.

I just started playing with the Google Maps API for a project of my own. The best way to learn is to play, as always.

Aaron Schmidt

...came to Madison to do a tech tools talk today. Sara & Mary got Flickred. It was fun!

"What are independent bookstores really good for? Not much."

Can I spoil the end of The death of the independent bookstore by Tyler Cowen for you? OK:

Spend more time in public libraries, which offer many of the best features of indie bookshops, including informed staff, diversity, and offbeat titles. Of course, public libraries aren't exactly atmospherically "cool." The clientele is often young children, women over 40, and retired men. I visit five public libraries on a regular basis, and each one makes me feel old. But they deliver the goods.

LibraryThing now the 100th largest library

Wow! Tim asks,

Now does anyone know somebody at the ALA?

Dynamic gnomes

Yep, that's us - here's some WAPL coverage on the WLA/MATS website. Handouts for "Communication…that’s the key! Blogs, Wikis, Email…When to use what?!" (big ol' pdf) are up, too. Have I mentioned I love my job?

(I used to have this halfhearted approach to anonymous blogging, but that's obviously gone right out the window.)

b's read-a-thon diary

Over at the tigers of wrath, blogger b posts his journal of the Madison Area Literacy Council Read-a-Thon: they shoot readers, don't they? (part 1). I just couldn't wait for part 2.

Codex coda

I got a call from the director of the library whose stolen copy of Codex Seraphinianus I unwittingly bought last summer. It's back home, and I feel better.

Pronouns

Here's a rare w-rk tidbit.

We're working on branding an online service from an outside vendor. (What it does, doesn't matter to the story.) The service allows some customization, but as far as we can tell, it's got to be done through their wysiwyg interface.

I asked my colleague to ask our rep about something that might-could save us some dinking around:

"My techie coworker wanted me to ask whether there's a way to apply our CSS to the site."

The answer came back, "Tell him we're working on that functionality."

I'm just sayin'.

See Also: LibraryThing reverse engineering FRBR?

The FRBR-at-LibraryThing discussion is picking up a bit over at See Also. Cool!

Infosoup.org

is the name of the beautiful ILS interface (and more!) from OWLSnet, a public library system in northeastern Wisconsin.

FRBR comes to LibraryThing?!

Good Lord I need to sit down. Watching LT grow is amazing, wonderful and dizzying. In Work disambiguation and the "Ship of Theseus" Tim describes his solution to the problem of lumping what, in FRBR-speak, would be called manifestations (I hope, lest I lose lib cred):

The new system introduces a robust concept of "work." On the database side this means a special "works" database, where each work has a title (the most common title of books belonging to the work). It is the way whereby most LibraryThing books can acquire LCCNs, Deweys and other cataloging information. It will allow users to discuss books—for example, on a forum—without worrying that they were only talking to people who had the same edition they did.

Furthermore:

...it will allow ordinary people to participate in the sacred act of cataloging, combining and splitting books from works as they see fit. This has never before been done before. It's Wikipedia for book cataloging.

More on authorities & LibraryThing

The LibraryThing blog reports that LCCNs are now parsed, a godsend if your books tend to be older, and don't have the ISBNs that make it easy to find a record that matches exactly.

In the comments, another discussion of authority control crops up (here's the first such one I read all the way through), and Tim, the developer, opines:

When you're at a dinner party, and someone announces that Thomas Wolfe is their favorite author, do you ask "Oh, Thomas Wolfe 1900-1938 or Thomas Wolfe 1931 to present?" No, you say "Do you mean Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe?"

Which is true. Would that life were more like a dinner party.

Field trip

Last week I took a field trip to a library I'd never been to before. I was afraid I might get lost, but around the Dells I saw a reassuring sight.

I got there and back OK. Plus I got to see this clever use of costume jewelry, donated to the library/community center:

View larger

Two library-ish cards this week at PostSecret

Not exactly worksafe but oh so funny and/or vaguely creepy.

Doug Moe: End of chapter for library chief

In the December 30 Cap Times:

Today marks the end of a great run for Peter Hamon, who is retiring as director of the South Central Library System after a distinguished quarter century in the job.

Tell your best library anecdote

to the Valve and get a lifetime membership to LibraryThing.

David Byrne segues from Google Book Search

to bigger things in his Nov. 20, 2005 (un-permalinked) post:

Our universe became what we could catalogue.

A lot got left out.

Wiki-style authority control comes to LibraryThing

From the LibraryThing blog: Author pages—you control 'em.

In fact, the computer guesses pretty well, presenting a list of likely aliases for in the "Also known as…" section. You can check these authors out by clicking on their names. If they're really the same, and you're feeling generous, go ahead and click "combine." The authors will be smoothed together, with the more common name winning. I've gone through some of the better-known authors—the rest are up to you.

Be bold! The system is self-correcting. If you screw up and combine two authors who aren't really the same—eg., Thomas Wolfe and Tom Wolfe—someone will notice. Clicking "separate" will break them apart again.

Not only does this show that authority control (under "smoothing together," "disambiguation" or any other name) does matter to users, and is easy to understand, but more importantly, that they are willing and able to contribute the work. At least in this little sample. And Wikipedia, like it or not. And IMDB.

What other "exclusively" librarian-like pursuits will emerge next?

The reins, they are slipping, and I for one welcome our new ...well, you get the picture.

ReStore conference

This week I did a show-and-tell about the little Access database some SLISters, JM and I made for the Habitat ReStore, which hosted a national ReStore conference that was over capacity and a great success.

Another ReStore's web-based volunteer management tool inspired me to put learning php on my professional development list. It was awesome: volunteers could sign up for a shift from anywhere, view a pictorial directory and calendar, clock in and out, all that good stuff. Managers could gather stats on hours worked and send messages as well. The only trouble they mentioned is that now that their volunteer developer has a "real" job it's hard to find someone to tweak the system.

Caveat Lector on the book brand

Dorothea cuts to the chase:

If books are important, and the library is where the books are, then libraries are indeed golden. If books aren’t so much these days, and libraries are just where the books are… we’re waving buggy whips around and we’d better stop it.

Conference week

Our annual state library association conference is this week. Not sure whether that means I'll have more or less time for blogging. (Hard to imagine it could be even less.)

One morning I'll be on a panel talking about JLG, and there's a knit night planned. The rest of my agenda is TBA en route.

My first conference as a "real" librarian. Feels pretty good.

Branding the library: tech, books, both?

Alane of It's All Good writes "books" is the brand of The Library. Yet, according to (a very small study by) Research and Markets, as reported by Government Technology, the key to winning greater support for public libraries is educating the public in the use of these [new] technologies.

Ah, cognitive dissonance: the bread and butter of the aware librarian.

Reader poll: messing with librarians

Don't.* (Go read the story of the librarian vs. the nuisance faxers, if you haven't already. I'll