Mobile + Ability = Mobility

Kristen Yarmey-Tyluutki, University of Scranton, says of students: only 11% of students with web-capable devices use them for course-related activity. Here’s what students do, and what we need to provide:
1. students explore for background info: dictionary.com; iphones do it fine; but which sources will be used? We need to know what apps are available and recommend them to students. We need to find a way to subsidize the cost of some apps, just as we pay for databases.  We need to identify authoritative ones and recommend them. (world factbook)
2. know what you need, construct effective searches. These tools (QR, photo, locations, sounds) enable us to create specialized searches for students; taking notes (Margins – book id, comments, quotes; delicious, facebook apps) – we need to let students know about these tools.
3. extracting information: will students be capable of deep reading, and not be interrupted/distracted by incoming textx, calls, etc.?  Web sites need to be optimized for mobile; especially the small print (contact us). Synthesize ideas into new concepts; small screens chunk info – some concern that students may not see the big picture, and come away with only a superficial understanding. Course management software needs to be optimized for mobile (blackboard)
4. Students need to manipulate info and move it from one platform to another.  Dropbox can sync between phone and computer.
5. etiquette, ethics, integrity, plagiarism – we need to teach students to manage their online identities. Students are constantly communicating with others, not just students and faculty. It’s so easy to manipulate info -makes it harder to identify what’s yours.

New themes in info lit: Collaborative work – standards focus on individuals, but students work in groups.
Integrated literacies: original standards separated techlit from infolit; we need to integrate them with soclit, and medialit into multi literacies. Include IT staff and student services staff into our work.
Continuous partial attention: we need to acknowlegde it and look for ways to deal with it: how technology affects us.

Some things we can do with an idea, a plan, and a smartphone:

Greg Cunningham, CEO and Technical Lead, Boopsie: Don’t think just about putting your catalog on a mobile platform; think about what people want to do and program for that. They don’t have a lot of time, you don’t want to lose them.  85% say they’ll try 2 times or less, and if unsuccessful, will never come back. This is a “native” phone application, not a dumbed-down web application.  It’s faster and finds books in WorldCat using a mobile interface. http://worldcat.boopsie.com/phone/

Nancy Dowd Director of Marketing , NJ State Library, says of mobile marketing vis SMS: By registering a shortcode, developing a list of keywords and crafting autoresponses, library patrons can text the library for information on a variety of topics: calls to action, publicizing programs, hours and locations, and more. There are some obstacles:  sign-up resistance, parental filters that prevent teens from signing up, need for constant reminders and incentives. NJ uses Gold-Mobile for its text marketing service, and responses can be exported for reports.

IL2009 – Wednesday Keynote: Teen Panel Interview

This keynote was the pivotal moment for me at Internet Librarian. Stephen Abram interviewed three Monterey teens and Ben, Montery Public’s Teen Services Libarian. He asked standard questions from an Information Futures Institute survey, but the kids didn’t know ahead of time what the questions would be.  He mentioned that the State of Idaho has a video of similar panel with 10 Millennials.

I thought this was an important meeting because it brought home the points that generalizations are both useful and useless, that there are as many similarities between “boomers” and “millennials” as differences, and that acknowledging the similarities will help bridge the age gap and allow more honest communication between generations that are traditionally defined by their differences.

Here are the questions and the combined responses, as well as a summary by Abram at the end.

Q. What’s in your backpack?
A. phone, ipod, camera, usb, textbooks

Q. How important is brand? (ex. designer clothing)
A. Quality and price are more important, especially if you’re buying your own.

Q. How do you use your cellphone?
A. Call friends, not parents; text; check in with parents; text, keep in touch with family members who live elsewhere; use as camera, take funny videos.

Q. How do you know what time it is?
A. (only one wears a watch)

Q. What do you do on Saturdays?
A. Music, homework, tennis lessons, sometimes movies/beach
connect with texting – twitter was never alive
sleep in, check email, play it by ear
start planning Wednesday – dress up in themes, go out to  open mic at East Village (poetry, songs,)

Q. Do you create things?
A. Compose and record music; compose poetry; play sports

Q. Do you expect to achieve the same standard of living as your parents?
A. Potentially – everything is much easier now; everything has to do with education, which makes more options available; there’s lots of good info online for career information; school counselors are connected. There are more opportunities now; but technology is a distraction, need to use it correctly.

Q. For homework – how do you start your research?
A. Voice recognition on computer to write essays; research online, go to the library for older texts, Google and Bing and interning at the library; Homework Help Now service at the library.
Textbooks – stay far away from the computer to avoid distractions – school has a database: type question and it adds info from colleges across the states – a professor who is online will answer, share books via ILL.

Q. When you find information, how do you judge its quality?
A. Wikipedia is accurate for some kinds of information; some teachers are stricter than others.
I’ve never had a teacher say “go ahead and use wikipedia,” but you can use the article footnotes to judge quality.
Teachers are familiar with web cheats and recognize copied work.

Q. Have you gone online to find info about uncomfortable topics?
A. We prefer to talk to someone we know – friends, or if that’s not enough, would look it up online or use local resources: library, safe places, AA meetings, like to talk to a “face.”

Q. What’s the last book  you read?
Physics of the impossible; Catcher in the rye; Phantom tollbooth

Q. What videogames do you play?
A. Videogames? No computer games; friends do WOW, Halo, and they’re dressing as game characters for Halloween.
My last gaming device: Nintendo 64; I’ve played Guitar hero; my friends have LAN parties sometimes.

Q. When was the last time you were in a bookstore?
A. A long time ago. My friend collects antique books – I go with my friends to shop second-hand bookstores often.

Q. Do you read online?
A. No – I like to highlight and annotate, so I prefer print.  I’m  looking into e-book readers, may be using them soon.
For online e-books, sites that require passwords are more valid; I still use sites from my old school; I try to back up what I find online with a book, or find multiple sites with similar information.  Blogs are opinions, I don’t use them for research, but go through to the original site.  I don’t use pages that anyone can edit; I prefer print references for research, or to use the school’s databases.  To check authority, I look at the reference pages to see where they are getting their information from; from database; I use facets to filter for peer reviewed articles, opposing opinions.

Q. What do your teachers tell you you can and can’t use?
A. It varies, depending on the class and the purpose of the assignment.

Q. Would you consider yourself Republican, Democrat or Independent?
A. I don’t know enough to choose; my opinions overlap with all; I’d need to review the issues.

Q. What worries you about the world today?
A. The environment; the unequal distribution of wealth around the world; I find it bothersome that some would rather keep all their money than give some of it back.

Q. Have you been bullied online?
A. It happens with IM, but  not as much as on Facebook and Myspace.  There’ss a lot of “he said … she said,” and  even though you can delete the comments, they stay with you.

Q. Where do you volunteer?
A. Ecuador – doctors volunteer to do surgery in poor areas, and I went with  my father to help; intern at the library – I like to see community involvement, youth services, and a place that welcomes everyone; I help at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, at marathons, and my friends and I knit for charities.

Q. Ben, do you have any insights to share?

A. Monterey Public has a strong  focus on high school – we’re a couple of blocks from Monterey HS, and we need to make that group feel comfortable. We also do a lot with middle school students.  All the students have diverse interests and talents. Some of our more successful programs were technology fairs, but there are always going to be too many groups to find something that will grab everyone.  We try to provide opportunities for people of all ages to interact with each other.  You’ve seen that each teen on the panel has at least one thing in common with people in the audience. Monterey County is trying to help its teens become culturally aware, and supports ethnic programming and festivals.

Steve: The PEW reports  there is a 70% overlap between millennials and boomers in their ideas and values.
Millennials are smarter than boomers, articulate, volunteer at 4x rate of boomers; they are engaged in issues, not politics.

I feel better, knowing these young adults are thoughtful and practical.  And fun-loving – they were not above delivering a few pokes to the audience!

IL2009 – Tuesday Keynote: Libraries of the Future

Paul Holdengraber, Director, Public Programs, NYPL, interviewed by Erik Boekesteijn (ShanachieTour)

Quotable statements I saved to clarify my thinking, grow ideas from, and trot out later as needed:

The library is a place where ideas are exchanged.

I believe in the friction of dialogue.

Schools are overrated; teachers don’t get to the button of curiosity, otherwise they might turn it off. Most of what I learned, I learned outside of school.

Cognitive theatre – inspire others to read more.

I want to make the library irresistible.

Live from the NYPL – Previously, average age of program attendees was 63; wanted to attract younger people – “I want to do …”  “At the library we dont … ” – Just do it! (and get forgiveness later.)

Flash Rosenberg (artist in residence at NYPL) – conversation portraits -

Q. (Erik) How can  you make something surprising and entertaining?

A. (Paul) Why would you want to make an event people don’t go to? It’s hard to get the great authors, politicians, artists, etc. to come to the library; it’s a struggle to do what i do every day – to make it all happen at the library; the resistance can be tremendous. Get to know your audience, what they want, and then give them something that surprises them and, if your’re lucky, surprises you! Make it an event; and less desperate than the other things the library has been doing.

Q. (Erik) Should the users rule? or the library dictate?

A. (Paul) A dialogue. It may not be wise to try to get a younger audience at all costs – gaming – does it lead to anything else?

I love the privacy a book affords you in the company of no one else but yourself and the pages – you and the work, not just the entertainment factor.

IL2009 – 23 Things in the Community

Last month, Sacramento Public completed what we felt was a successful “27 Things” program for our staff, and will soon be planning something similar for our public. So I was surprised to learn that only a handful of libraries have tried it, and with only limited success.

The four presenters, Jennifer Koerper (Boston Public Library), Bobbi Newman (Chattahoochee Valley Libraries), Rebecca Ranallo (Cuyahoga County Public Library) and Sean Robinson (Allen County Public Library) all had similar comments.

The major issues they mentioned included:

• Consider scalability (if you have huge participation, will you have the means to provide a prize for every finisher?) Experience shows, no prize, no participation. Will you have the available staff to spend the time needed to comment on blogs and keep track of progress? Time required is significant.
• Screen for previous skills. The public will have a  w-i-d-e  range of abilities, and the program seems to work better in one-on-one or very small group settings. Group people of similar abilities together.
• Target the “things” to specific audiences, for example, grandparents and Flickr; businesses and Twitter; moms and Facebook.  People are more apt to succeed if the “thing” meets their specific needs.
• Some libraries are exploring other venues, such as wikis, in-person class sessions and screencasts to ease the load for library staff.
• Unlike staff who are around during the day, it’s harder to nudge and motivate the public if individual momentum begins to flag.

Recommendations for libraries who still want to try it:

• Seriously limit the number of “things” you offer to the most essential: e-mail, blog, facebook/linked-in, etc.
• Consider a series of weekly in-person classes, one for each “thing”, and targeting a specific audience.
• Consider using a wiki instead of a blog, where each participant has a page instead of a personal blog – only one place for staff to check.
• Find out who else in the community is helping people, and partner with them. Move outside your library and into the community.

Based on these recommendations, we will need to re-think our public program, and we could also use some of these considerations to shape the requested continuation of the staff program – several wanted to continue learning about new things, but at a slower pace -  maybe one new one per month.

Digital Photography Preconference Session

Since we’re working more and more with images and video, I wanted to get some guidelines for taking good photos and also some information about legal issues such as copyright and photo releases.

The most important thing to remember about taking visually interesting and balanced photos is the “rule of thirds”, which basically states that the most important elements in the photo should be placed on lines that divide the picture into thirds, or at the intersection of those horizontal and vertical lines.

Secondly, learn to use the histogram feature of your digital camera.  (Mine is so old, there is no histogram function – I have to open the photos in an editing program to see the histogram, which provides information about lightness/darkness and proper exposure.) The histogram will give you clues about how to edit the photo for the best effect.

And third, it makes sense to store your photos online at a site like Flickr, where you can set the kind of Creative Commons licence that works for you. With a Creative Commons license rather than a copyright statement, you can set the level of permission other people can have to re-use your photos.

Generally, if you are taking the pictures in your library, because it is a public space, people can have no reasonable expectation of privacy, and releases are generally not needed. People are on camera daily everywhere they go (ATM, retail stores, library security systems), so photos showing people enjoying their libraries should be ok.  It’s courteous to ask, though, “do you mind if I take your picture while you [enjoy the storytime, practice knitting, ...] for our [blog, web page, press release]? And a verbal answer should be fine.

Bibliothetic

In my opinion, this was one of the best presentations during Internet Librarian 2009. Short, sweet, no jargon, and simple enough for even non-techies to understand.

Julio Anjos, from Portugal, summarized his entire presentation in one slide:

Basics
Create a Google account (not necessarily a Gmail account)
Login
Go to Google Books
Go to My library
Import ISBN’s
You now have a “library” searchable by google!

Julio said that this makes the text of any titles you own that are in the Google books database searchable.  The link can be embedded in Moodle, iGoogle, Facebook, etc; and the search results will often give the specific page your search term appears on.

I can see applications for subject collections or for bibs we might prepare for programs or outreach. Imaging having a cross-searchable collection of your own books! Think this would appeal to students more than learning about tracings?

Anjos also mentions the flaws of this application, in particular, the Advanced search loses the filter for My Library. But it is an exciting tool, and I’ve already started my Google Books library. There are only two books in it at the moment, but my library id is 296491293341912157. If you plug it into the search box at BiblioThetic.com, you can search my library.

i-Googling With the Library

Jason Clark, Head of Digital Access and Web Services, and Timothy Donahue, Instruction Librarian at Montana State University, demonstrated how MSU has created customized omnipresent home pages using iGoogle gadgets.

Building on the fact that most students have gmail accounts, they built or customized about 15 gadgets that deliver bits of library services to students’ iGoogle pages. The gadgets deliver an interactive library map, street view of the library’s location, flickr images, chat, library catalog, and a media hub with videos and tutorials.

Building on the idea that “Discovery happens elsewhere” (Morgan Dempsey), MSU permitted placement of the Google’s familiar logo on the library’s page, which points to the list of available gadgets for students to add to iGoogle. Using the logo adds the cachet of relevance and currenty to the MSU image.

They briefly demonstrated how they created the gadgets by hacking or tweaking existing code, noting that some gadgets can be used as containers into which you can just drop some code (i.e. flash applications), and others need to be customized more heavily.

I found the following ideas interesting, and will take a closer look at how it could be applied at SPL: Databases – one gadget allows students to select from your databases and list only those they want to use; feed aggregator for library blog, new books, new videos, twitter; street views of branches (area around library).

Additional random notes:
Each gadget has a toolbar; if you click on the edit triangle, you can use the options to see the “webmaster” tools. IT can reverse engineer the code. For maps, you need to insert your lat/long.

On iGoogle page, there’s an “add stuff” – to go to the gadget search page – iGoogle for developers.

Google jason clark code – he’s got some code available for others to use. XML, html, javascript.

Google analytics can show which gadgets get the most use (catalog search), if you put a piece of code into each gadget.

Twitter: Enabling Customer Conversations

Michael Sauers, Technology Innovation Librarian, and Christa Burns, Special Projects Librarian from the Nebraska Library Commission joined David Lee King, Digital Branch & Services Manager, Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library, in this presentation about how to use Twitter effectively as a marketing tool and way to connect with library users.

Most attendees already had Twitter accounts, or created them especially for this session. Christa stressed how important it is to know how you intend to use it, and to create your profile including photo and contact information before sending that first tweetl.

David added that if you’re tweeting on behalf of your library, you should designate someone to tweet; follow all your users who follow you, and forget about following other libraries, especially if they.re not in your service area. Use every chance to “be the library” in your twitterverse, and become part of its fabric.

Michael demonstrated some third-party applications that make it easier to keep track of your followers, your “mentions” and your direct (private) messages.

Some web sites mentioned:
Tweet Deck and Hoot Suite for management; Twitter Bar for tweeting; Tweetstats and Twitter Analyzer for analysis.

Promote your library’s account by placing links on the web site, tell people at meetings and in the community, print it on business cards, and teach folks in your computer classes.

Screencasting: Easy Online Tutorials

Paul R. Pival, Public Services Systems Librarian at the University of Calgary gave a relaxed rundown of web-based and client tools for creating online screencasts, which can be used for tutorials on-the-fly (think chat refrerence) or embedded in a web site or blog. The audience was mixed in their  of experience, and that led to some lively questions and answers..

The bottom line: practice the library law that states, “Save the time of your user.” Screencasts are ideal for those situations you need to explain over and over, they are available 24/7 if embedded, and can be put up quickly on YouTube (recommended) or other sharing sites like Blip.tv. They can also be tagged, commented and shared (or borrowed, if you find a good one that works for your library.)

Free tools that impressed me: Jing (can be annotated), Screenr (tweet or delete); Screencast-o-Matic and Screen Jelly (no downloads.) Hulu allows you to save flash videos and do stuff with them.

SnapZ Pro was suggested from the audience, but offers no post-production editing.

Paul recommend we use YouTube as our video host; HD or HQ files are bigger but have better resolution.

Camtasia Studio is the cadillac and comes w/ 30 day free trial.  It can import other videos for editing. Shows when the mic is recording and can recognize your webcam so you can introduce yourself before recording the demo. Can record audio afterwards, and the latest version can separate audio and video and edit one or the other separately.

It is important to have a good microphone; USB recommended over analog, and Logitech makes a decent one for about $30.

Scripts: do several dry runs, identify  the main points, then record. Don’t worry about perfection, because most students are willing to get the points quickly – you can edit later, if needed. If you read from a script, be careful about extra sounds like page turns.

#IL2009 Countdown

I don’t know what piece of serendipity placed that first Internet Librarian Conference announcement in my inbox so many years ago.  I had just been hired to fill the new position of “Internet Librarian”, and I thought they named the conference after me! Or at least staged it for me to attend.  Boss gave her approval, and with the first opening keynote, I was in love!

I don’t know how many IL conferences I’ve attended to date, but I’ve only missed one since my first one.  It is still my favorite conference, by far. Everyone who attends is interested in all the same things, services and technology that keep me going to work every day, and I always come back completely recharged and ready to try new things for another year. This year, I’ve influenced three colleagues to  attend for the first time – Sacramento Public will be ENERGIZED when we return! Watch us soar! Maybe we could present at next year’s conference … well, no harm in dreaming.

For me, the conference begins when I board Amtrak in Sacramento – the train ride has become part of the conference experience.  I’m picking up my ticket on Friday, shipping out on Saturday morning, and I’m ready to be wowed again!