Atom Feed Available: Liblog: A Library Weblog
Welcome to Liblog 1 - a weblog of current web sites and stories dealing with the interface between technology and libraries. Sometimes the connection to the sphere of the library is tenuous... but in today's world, everything has an impact on libraries, on librarians... and on library users. If you find this weblog of interest, you may enjoy these other library weblogs as well.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
NYTimes: Web Playgrounds of the Very Young"Forget Second Life. The real virtual world gold rush centers on the grammar-school set.... Media conglomerates in particular think these sites — part online role-playing game and part social scene — can deliver quick growth, help keep movie franchises alive and instill brand loyalty in a generation of new customers."
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Pew Internet & American Life Project: Information Searches That Solve ProblemsAmong the findings in this report: People who have faced one of several common government-related problems in the past two years are more likely to consult the internet than other sources, including experts and family members.
Of more interest to this audience, however, are several interesting results of the survey in terms of libraries:
- 13% of those surveyed said they went to the public library to try and deal with these problems. This compares to the 1% figure from an earlier survey conducted by OCLC. Why the difference? Maybe it has to do with the specific problems asked about here, rather than the more general questions asked by OCLC....
- Libraries drew visits by more than half of Americans (53%) in the past year for all kinds of purposes, not just the problems mentioned in this survey.
- Compared to their elders, Gen Y members were the most likely to use libraries for problem-solving information and in general patronage for any purpose. Furthermore, it is young adults who are the most likely to say they will use libraries in the future when they encounter problems: 40% of Gen Y said they would do that, compared with 20% of those above age 30 who say they would go to a library.
- Internet users were much more likely to patronize libraries than non-users (61% vs. 28%).
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Monday, December 24, 2007
NYTimes: The Afterlife Is Expensive for Digital MoviesAs digital films become increasingly more common, Hollywood is running up against the problems of how to preserve them: media that lasts much less long than film and file formats that rapidly become obsolete are proving to be both vexing and costly.
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Thursday, December 20, 2007
Gamers With Jobs: Best Buy Bodhisattva"Guitar Hero 3. 'Through the Fire and the Flames.' Expert." And some people question the recent interest of libraries in gaming...
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Wednesday, December 19, 2007
First Monday: The Looming Infrastructure Plateau? Space, Funding, Connection Speed, and the Ability of Public Libraries to meet the Demand for Free Internet Access"Neither governments, nor communities, nor the library community can resolve the plateau issue alone; working together, however, can yield a range of policy, strategic, and tactical solutions that benefit libraries, communities, governments, and most importantly, the individuals who rely on library public access services and resources."
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Wednesday, December 05, 2007
AVING.net: BTC to launch its 15-inch dual monitor '150DS' adopting transform stand"Launching it's what?," you may ask. Essentially, it's a monitor stand to which two monitors are attached, which can then be positioned in numerous different ways: atop one another, side-by-side, at right angles, back-to-back - take a look at the photos to see it in action. Looks great for customer service settings, such as libraries!
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Monday, December 03, 2007
PC World: The Most Anti-Tech Organizations in AmericaInteresting list from PC World's Marc Sullivan - at the top, the RIAA and MPAA (representing the recording and motion picture industries, respectively.)
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Friday, November 30, 2007
World Economic Forum: Accepted Technology Pioneers 2008Congratulations to Redwood City-based Nanostellar (nano-engineered catalyst materials that reduce exhaust emissions) and Silver Spring Networks ("last mile" utility networks) on being named to the World Economic Forum's list of 2008 Technology Pioneers (2 of only 39 companies on the list!)
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Thursday, November 29, 2007
some random thoughts: A Day in the Life of a Networked Designer's Smart Things or A Day in a Designer's Networked Smart Things, 2030Irene Pereyra is a designer in New York who, working with Tom Klinkowstein, has created an incredible look at what might be coming down the pike someday (if not by 2030.) Be sure and take a look at the .pdf of their piece!
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Thank you for taking a look.
We're interested in other people's ideas about the future (as research for the next project on the future!).
Tom KlinkowsteinBy
Create a Linkklinkows, at 11/30/2007 2:06 PM
two decades laterAn interesting post over at futureofthebook comparing screen reading and print reading.
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Smashing Magazine's Monday Inspiration: User Experience Of The FutureA nice look at some of the designs in the works to change the way that we interact with PCs.
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Monday, November 26, 2007
A Special "Shout-Out" To San Jose Public Library's Senior Librarian for Digital FuturesWe pause for a brief break from our irregularly scheduled content to congratulate the Librarian In Black, Sarah Houghton-Jan, on her first day at her new job. Now she not only has the best Librarian Trading Card, but also the coolest job title. Knock 'em dead at SJPL, Sarah!
Labels: Librarian In Black, San Jose Public Library, Sarah Houghton-Jan
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PLS's loss is definitely San Jose's gain!
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Friday, November 23, 2007
Wired: E-Book Readers At A GlanceNice rundown of the current generation of e-book devices. If only the iRex Iliad was lighter, a bit smaller, and a lot cheaper... :-)
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Monday, November 19, 2007
National Endowment for the Arts: To Read or Not To Read - A Question of National ConsequenceMaybe Amazon's Kindle isn't a moment too soon. The National Endowment for the Arts has released a new report, To Read or Not To Read that gathers statistics from more than 40 studies on the reading habits and skills of children, teenagers, and adults. The compendium reveals recent declines in voluntary reading and test scores alike, exposing trends that have severe consequences for American society.
Among the key findings:
- Americans are reading less - teens and young adults read less often and for shorter amounts of time compared with other age groups and with Americans of previous years.
- Americans are reading less well - reading scores for American adults of almost all education levels have deteriorated, notably among the best-educated groups.
- The declines in reading have civic, social, and economic implications – advanced readers accrue personal, professional, and social advantages. Deficient readers run higher risks of failure in all three areas.
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Newsweek: Amazon - Reinventing the BookThis week, Amazon is releasing the Amazon Kindle, an electronic device they hope will leapfrog over previous attempts at e-book readers. The kindle a form factor similar to a paperback, weighing just over 10-ounces, a screen using lectronic paper, and wireless access to Amazon's store with thousands of titles, including most bestsellers available. The relatively high price - $399 - might be the only thing that may keep this from becoming Book 2.0.
Update: Larry Magid has a review of the Kindle. And the professors at Knowledge@Wharton find the Kindle reader less interesting than the service it connects with.
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Sunday, November 18, 2007
NYTimes: English, Algebra, Phys Ed ... and BiotechLincoln High School in San Francisco has five biotech classes. The students write annual reports, correspond with company officials and learn about products in the pipeline. Students also learn the latest lab techniques. They cut DNA. And recombine it. They transfer jellyfish genes into bacteria. They purify proteins. They even sequence their own cheek-cell DNA.
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NYTimes: In Korea, a Boot Camp Cure for Web ObsessionJump Up Internet Rescue School tries to cure the students sent there of what many in Korea believe is a new and potentially deadly addiction: cyberspace. (In the United States, Dr. Jerald J. Block, a psychiatrist at Oregon Health and Science University, estimates that up to nine million Americans may be at risk from what he calls "pathological computer use".)
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Saturday, November 03, 2007
NYTimes: Why Google Turned Into a Social ButterflyIf Google's OpenSocial initiative clicks, social networking features could be easily added to almost any website. Maybe even library catalogs.
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Friday, November 02, 2007
Liblog @ IL2007 - Day 3
Closing Keynote: Gaming, Learning & the Information World
Elizabeth Lane Lawley, Rochester Institute of Technology
First off, she's my pick for the costume contest winner - she's dressed as her World of Warcraft character!
The boundaries between virtual worlds and the real world are blurring. "Gaming" is becoming a venue for networking, for learning, for many of the things that used to be confined to "professional" lives.
Why has gaming become so popular? Because gaming makes things fun! One of the things we can learn from games is how to make things fun for people:
- Collecting things - people like to get stuff, particularly if they can show it off to others
- Points - people like to "know the score"
- Feedback - people want to know that they are doing the right thing
- Communication exchanges - people like to be able to share with each other
- Customization - people like to have some control, to be able to add their own touches to the game
She plays World of Warcraft, and believes that ones of the reasons for its success is that it is did a live demonstration of the first five minutes (or so) of WoW, and compared that to the first five minutes of Second Life (by creating a new character in each). She likes WoW better, in part because SL doesn't give you the same ways to succeed that a game does.
In a game we happily do repetitive tasks, because doing so builds expertise, which in turn will make us more successful playing the game. Perhaps by adapting gaming techniques, we can make learning equally fun? Notes some ways that this is already happening:
- Tupperware parties, where people get rewards for selling to others
- Super Sleuth: solve a weekly puzzle at a school, student gets a reward of some type
- Summer Reading programs: after reading so many words/books, you get a reward
- Ebay feedback can be viewed as like collecting points. So too can collecting friends on social networking sites like Friendster or MySpace
Showed a slide of Nick Yee’s MMU Player Stages:
- Entry: newcomer euphoria, playing with someone
- Practice: ramping up, progression, solo to group
- Mastery: staying for friends, casual guilds, high end content, social/community leadership, competition
- Burnout: grind burnout (where the gap between levels becomes so great that it seems like you have to do things thousands of times to move to the next level), social/raiding burnout, restarts, nothing left to do
- Recovery: end-game casual, some do come back
How can we make the library a game, and make it so people want to come back? What can we streamline, or what can we add to have our customers avoid burnout? Recommends looking at Raph Koster's A Theory of Fun for Game Designers for some ways that we might be able to improve the Library experience, and make it fun for people to use.
Labels: Elizabeth Lane Lawley, Games, IL2007, Libraries, WoW
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Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Tech Tools For Library Outreach: Creating Community, Enabling Research, Promoting Learning (For Free!)
Chad F. Boeninger (Ohio University); Paul R. Pival, Univ. of Calgary [blog at: http://distlib.blogs.com/]
Outreach: The activity of an organization in making contact and fostering relations with people unconnected with it. To reach or extend beyond, to exceed reach.
Shifting gears: Getting Up To Get Into The Flow report: 'We need to stop thinking of our lovingly crafted sites designed specifically for our contect as the only way that people are finding our content.'
Blog to help promote presence - for example, of subject expertise. Can also be used for communicating with students. Showed Word Press plug-in that allowed for quick quizes (polls) that was used with class.
Chad has transitioned some content from his Business Blog into a wiki ("Biz Wiki") - finds it better for managing information. But also uses the wiki as part of outreach to his students - course outlines there, assignments (with links to help complete the assignments), etc.
Facebook - puts basic information into profile, helps give context to who is putting up the materials in Blog, Wiki, etc.
Paul - switched from proprietary software to using Meebo for reference. One of the best things they have done. One challenge with Meebo is keeping it updates while you are using other clients, or while you are away. One nice plug-in is "pigeon" which allows you to monitor multiple IM accounts from different sources, update theb status on all of them, and answer questions from any ofn them in the Meebo widget. http://pidgin.com.
Calgary has embedded a Meebo widget in the catalog - on every page, including those of search results pages. Help available all over.
Experimenting with video chat via Skype - Ohio doing this to staff a 4th floor desk from their main desk on the 2nd floor - has webcam so that librarian can monitor that desk remotely and interact with users.
Screencasting - Jing (http://www.jingproject.com). Works on Macs and PCs. Allows you to share stuff in real time if you want. Allows for either still images or video (5 minute limit). Provides annotation tools. Can embed result on web sites, or can share the result with others. Simple, great for quick-and-dirty demo stuff (but no editing.)
Screencast-o-matic site (http://screencastomatic.com). Can capture anything in your browser.
Ohio using special software to manage their FAQs. Can create new articles, assign them to categories and assign them meta keywords, include images, etc. They are added to a database, which a search engine queries. Most viewed and recent articles are displayed in the public-facing interface. Automatically time-stamps updates, allows for simple user feedback - was this helpful? Also allows for questions to be submitted - these can be quickly added to the database with the answers provided, so that users are helping to add content to the database. Software uses php and MySQL.
Labels: Chad F. Boeninger, Free Tools, IL2007, Outreach, Paul R. Pival
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Other web logs with links to library issues:
- Lori Bowen Ayre's Library Technology Musings provides "Hopes, dreams, wild ideas and practical solutions for libraries."
- Marylaine Block's Neat New Stuff I Found This Week (and her Ex Libris E-Zine for librarians.)
- Tara Calishain's Research Buzz, "news about search engines, databases, and other information collections."
- Blake Carver and Steve Galbraith's LISNews.com, focuses on (as the subtitle puts it), "news for information professionals."
- Steven M. Cohen's Library Stuff, provides readers with information on the wonderful and exciting world of librarianship.
- Gary Frost's Future of the Book, looks at "preservation and persistence of the changing book."
- Michael Gartenberg (an analyst with Jupiter Research, a market research and advisory firm focused on emerging technologies and the Internet) is one of several Jupiter researchers producing an Analyst Weblog.
- Brend Hough and Liz Rea's NEKLS Technology Weblog, "50 Feet From the Cutting Edge in the Northeast Kansas Library System."
- Sarah Houghton's Librarian In Black, has "resources and discussions for the 'tech-librarians-by-default' among us..."
- Jenny Levine, the original bloggin' librarian, is back with the Shifted Librarian, working to make libraries more "portable... to serve our remote patrons."
- Alex Soojung-Kim Pang (one of the Institute for the Future's research team) is producing Future Now, which looks at emerging technologies and their social implications.
- Gary Price and Shirl Kennedy's ResourceShelf has "resources and news for information professionals" (including the latest scoops on what's what with the invisible web).
- Michael Stephens' Tame the Web includes, "current technology uses in libraries, training tips and various other interests concerning library settings."
- Sandra Stewart at San Jose Public Library is producing a Library Tourguide to Blogs and Technology.
- Jessamyn West's librarian.net, keeping track of the nifty reference sites - and library references - she finds.
- Stephanie Wright's TechnoBiblio, where librarians and technogeeks speak the same language.
Not a weblog, but a very funny look at libraries:
- Unshelved - Bill Barnes' and Gene Ambaum's library comic strip (formerly known as Overdue.)
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Liblog is produced by staff of the Redwood City Public Library. We welcome your comments.
