TechEssence.info

We are ALL busy. Yesterday for example, I had a plan of what I was going to accomplish at work, but then I came in to an e-mail from a student asking for articles about the Second Anglo-Afghan War (for which we had next to nothing in the databases so I really had to hunt), and after that I found out about some dead links I needed to fix on a Web page, and then I got a call from a professor whom I needed to talk through some database searches, and then I had a reference shift all afternoon. So by the end of the day, I was shocked to find that I'd barely gotten any of the things I'd wanted to accomplish done. Imagine, if this is going on every day, how I, or anyone else in our profession, can actually make time for any sort of continuing education work?

I was at a meeting of librarians and library staff recently in which the topic of how to involve more individuals in technology projects was raised. One individual made a particularly salient point – that librarians and library staff be given opportunities and encouraged to participate in technology projects, rather than being given a timed ultimatum to do so.

Reading the MIRACLE project report on institutional repositories today, I came across a survey question that asked respondents to rate various factors involved in choosing a repository platform. The exact phrasing of one factor: "Adherence to open-access standards."

This betrays a common and sometimes distracting confusion, which I will try to clear up.

It is almost trite to be quoted as saying, "The Internet has fundamentally changed the ways libraries do business", but these changes are still manifesting themselves in ways we still do not fully understand. Thus, consider taking advantage of the "wise crowds with long tails" in your strategic planning. Put another way, this posting is a dual book review and commentary on The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki and The Long Tail by Chris Anderson.

Many libraries may wonder whether on-staff web-design expertise is truly necessary, given the proliferation of content-management systems and WYSIWYG tools such as FrontPage and Dreamweaver.

I'm here to say—maybe.

"On September 5, 2006, over 250 libraries in the Georgia consortium, PINES, began using a next-generation integrated library system (ILS) they wrote from scratch. Within two months they racked up two million checkouts and half-a-million renewals for a collection of eight million items and 1.5 million borrowers." — "Dawn of a New Era," Library Journal, February 15, 2007.

Executive Summary

People have had the ability to put audio content on the Web for over a decade, but not until the term “podcasting” was coined (two years ago) did so many people start taking advantage of this. This can be attributed to both the incredible ease of use of newer recording and syndication tools and the incredible popularity of the iPod and other MP3 players. Go to almost any place where young people congregate and you will see the ubiquitous white iPod earbuds. Podcasting became popular so quickly that, at the end of 2005, podcast was named the Word of the Year by the New Oxford American Dictionary.

In a soon-to-appear Library Journal column, I discuss strategies for an uncertain future. One of those strategies is the topic of this blog posting, since I wanted to both throw this out there for discussion as well as to discuss it more thoroughly than I can in an 800-word column.

This article discusses how Netflix and similar services are shaping expectations about product delivery, which in turn are driving libraries to rethink how items are delivered to their customers. Library Delivery 2.0 refers to the idea of delivering library materials into the user’s hands in a way that is personalized, convenient and fast. Library Delivery 2.0 builds on the concept of Library 2.0, a concept of a very different library service that operates according to the expectations of today’s library users. In this vision, the library makes information available wherever and whenever the user requires it” (Chad and Miller). Similarly, Library Delivery 2.0 is a concept of a very different library delivery service that operates according to the expectations of today’s users. In this vision, the library delivers information wherever and whenever the user requires it and in whatever format the user needs it.

Many libraries employ usability testing to assess new or updated online services, such as database listings, catalogs, and digital collections. A popular model is observing a small number of potential users perform prescribed tasks using the service, and noting where those users encounter problems. This model, when used as the sole method for gaining user data, requires that the service be relatively well-developed before testing is done, increasing the risk that the fundamental design of the service does not meet user needs.