TechEssence.info

Rachel Singer Gordon has launched a site, The Tech Static to "assist librarians with technology-related collection development." A press release about the launch says that the site contains:

* Reviews of current computer books
* Reviews of technology-related titles targeted at librarians
* Collection development articles (weeding, “must-haves,” balancing a computer book collection)
* Prepublication alerts
* Publisher press releases
* DVD and ebook reviews
* Announcements
* … and more!

There are already a number of book reviews of technology books available.

Should you focus your efforts on a smaller number of really big technology projects, or a larger number of smaller projects? Of course there is no one right answer for all institutions, and it’s likely no institution would rely on one approach to the exclusion of the other. But it can be difficult to find the right balance between the large-scale, high-impact initiatives and those that are more nimble and quick to appear.

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.

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.

Grants offer attractive opportunities for carrying out technology initiatives that might not otherwise be possible for libraries. But grant money isn’t truly free money. The additional opportunities for libraries afforded by grants require time, effort, and commitment. In most respects, planning and implementing technology grants are no different than any other type of grant a library may seek and receive.

Concerns about online privacy have recently surfaced again in the news, fueled this type by the meteoric rise of social networking sites like MySpace and disclosure (intentionally or unintentionally) of potentially sensitive information such as that recently by AOL. Libraries have historically been strong advocates of their patrons' right to privacy, as evidenced by the following text appearing as #3 in the ALA Code of Ethics:

I was working on developing a Service Level Agreement (SLA) for a client recently and ended up finding some useful information on the topic in general. There is a lot of good information available about SLAs as it fits into the ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) model. ITIL is a British creation and much more popular on the other side of the ocean. Microsoft has a similar model called the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF). I found the ITIL model more flexible so I'm focusing on that model. However in both ITIL and MOF, the Service Level Agreement is an important component of IT service management and I believe librareis would benefit from developing SLAs between their IT (information technology) service provider and the various departments that rely on that service. Thus this entry....

It is time to rethink the role of the library catalog.

Introduction

The library catalog is not sacred. At its root it just an index -- a list of the things found in a library. Is is and was important to maintain an inventory list because the things -- mostly books -- found in libraries are valuable, and one wants to control one's valuable assets. The provision of such a list to the public makes it easier for larger numbers of people to see what is available from a library. Hence, the shelf-list made its way out of back room into the public area, but from the beginning the catalog was (and to a great degree still is) a librarian's tool.

A colleague forwarded an announcement to me in which an open web-based reference management service announced it now supports OpenURLs as if that were the end of it. Unfortunately, it's only the beginning, and a rough one at that.