I am glad that I took the time to complete this program. I would like to think of myself as a technophile. As a techie, exploring new technologies is fun and unlike others I have no reservations about killing a few minutes or hours "playing".
Specifically, I had lots of fun with Facebook and Flickr. I was able to develop a new collection of sites that I can reference to search for and borrow code/scripts/widgets. I know that I definitely will be able to reuse the widgets I created for the TLC 2.0 Challenge. That fact alone is worth the price of admission.
I truly believe this program and Library 2.0 is much more than just exposing library staff to new technologies and encouraging them to play. This program has been a vehicle for change. Technologies will continue to change, that is the nature of the beast. In my opinion, people are lessly like to embrace change. This program was instrumental in establishing an environment where changed was not feared, but welcomed.
Ryan Deschamp states in his post titled We Asked for 2.0 Libraries and We Got 2.0 Librarians, "The largest benefit of Library 2.0 has been a radical change in the core service that libraries offer — namely, librarians (and by “librarians,” I mean anyone who works in a library). In that realm, the largest success of library 2.0 has been projects like Helene Blowers Learning 2.0 programme."
I would have to agree with Deschamp on this point. The NSU Libraries TLC 2.0 Challenge has been a great success!
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Thinking about 2.0
This discovery exercise was one of the least technical yet most thought-provoking. I just started on the "23 Things" this Monday, so I was able to skip some things, backtrack, and finish some of the "earlier" exercises out of sequence. This exercise happens to be the second to the last thing I am attempting to complete in the "23 Things".
As suggested, I read the OCLC Next Space Newsletter – Web 2.0: Where will the next generation of the web it take libraries? When I read Rick Anderson's section, Away from the "icebergs," it reminded me of an engaging argument I took part in over a decade ago. The place was a graduate lib sci classroom and the point of contention was the question of "access vs. ownership". Anderson's term "just in case" collection immediately transported me to a place where my hair was dark and I was extremely passionate about the direction of my newly chosen profession.
In the early 90's, Lynx browsers were giving way to graphical Mosaic browsers. Paper and character-based indices were being eschewed and the fancy new full-text databases were in demand. I fondly remember the very first time I printed out a full-text article to a dot matrix printer. I guess we probably all remember our first time.
Always on the "access" side of the aisle, I argued that it would be ludicrous to continue to grow huge and largely duplicated collections when quality reproductions of materials within shared collections could be delivered through the Ethernet. I was convinced that collection development dollars would be more judiciously spent on resource sharing networks, digitization projects, online resources, and most of all, more publicly accessible terminals.
At that time, I viewed my classmates that supported "ownership" and the continued building of research collections as dinosaurs that were ultimately impeding the inevitable technological progression of the profession. More importantly these "ownership" fossils were building collections that would only be used by the faculty and a few doctoral-level students. True, these "serious" researchers were our "regulars"and their patronage was valued. I wondered out aloud, how could, how would, we be able to reach our "infrequents"? Specifically, I wanted to reach the freshmen, the Greeks, the newly-termed "returning non-traditional" students, and many other emerging new groups of campus. The closing argument, that I always espoused with great conviction, was "why would anyone want to even come to the library if they could access an article at 3:00 am from their dorm room?"
Anderson's term "just in case" collection made me think about a nearly fifteen year old "access vs. ownership" debate. I was now motivated to look for a similar arguments currently brewing in the Library 2.0 movement. It took about three minutes to find an interesting thread in this vein. I found it in an engaging post on the blog Library 2.0 and Academic Perspective. The post was titled 2.0 Librarians in 1.0 Libraries. This post references Ryan Deschamps' We Asked for 2.0 Libraries and We Got 2.0 Librarians and Michelle Boule's response We Got 2.0 Librarians, Not 2.0 Libraries.
My take is that Deschamps argues that the shelf life of the term Library 2.0 is about to expire and it is now time take an inventory of where we are as a profession.
He states "The success of library 2.0, as is to be expected, has been mixed. That was kind of the point anyway. Library 2.0 was, in part, a way of seeing success in failure — we had to learn to play, take risks, fail, and learn from the process. In short, the library 2.0 movement was not really about changing libraries, but changing librarians. Librarians needed our time in the sun, and now that we are getting our time. Now that we are popular, hopefully we will see that we need to clean our houses before we invite people in.
It appears that Boule believes that the Library 2.0 movement is stalling because most library organizations are stuck "1.0." organization structures and are generally slow to embrace change.
She states, "Library 2.0 has succeeded in nothing as well as creating a group of frustrated 2.0 Librarians. L2 has done a wonderful job of educating, enlightening, and invigorating librarians to be better, to do better, and to involve our patrons. We are reaching a critical mass of librarians who are excited about what is possible. The problem is that many of those librarians are stuck in 1.0 libraries."
and later, "2.0 Librarians usually end up leaving for somewhere better, more innovative. This is a great option if you are mobile and able to move. Not everyone can. This “brain drain” has resulted in a hand full of libraries doing really great stuff, a few more libraries sticking toes in the water, and the majority of libraries looking around in befuddlement. I would not be afraid to guess that in many 1.0 libraries, there are 2.0 librarians working behind the scenes and those librarians are tired."
I guess I want to relate my "access vs, ownership" debate to this 2.0 discussion in that I once believed that those crusty "ownership" dinosaurs were impeding the progress I was attempting to champion. I think the ownership folks were concerned that the people supporting the access position were impulsive radicals who very willing to discard baby junior with the bathwater. With a 10 year professional cushion, I would like to think that I have a more balanced approach to the old debate. I think the institution's population should dictate which side of the equation the library decides to pursue. In my opinion, a large ACRL library with a huge campus population is incumbent to build large print and electronic collections. Libraries that support scattered satellite campuses and a large distance populations may be wise to spend their dollars on the access that electronic resources can offer.
The access vs. ownership debate allowed people to initiate a dialog and begin forming opinions. I believe the technology matured to a point where it was no longer necessary for libraries/librarians to adopt on extreme position but decide on somewhere in the middle. Somewhere that supports the needs of their users. I think Boule and Deschamps discussion is similar. Technologies will continue to morph and change entirely, and I believe the Library 2.0 "change movement" focus really should not be so closely associated to the technologies that are used within libraries or what we label these technologies. I would like to think the 2.0 movement is bigger, it represents a change in thought. The 2.0 movement has allowed us as a profession to refocus and concentrate on the expressed needs of our populations and reduce institutional barriers when possible.
Web Browser Time Line
As suggested, I read the OCLC Next Space Newsletter – Web 2.0: Where will the next generation of the web it take libraries? When I read Rick Anderson's section, Away from the "icebergs," it reminded me of an engaging argument I took part in over a decade ago. The place was a graduate lib sci classroom and the point of contention was the question of "access vs. ownership". Anderson's term "just in case" collection immediately transported me to a place where my hair was dark and I was extremely passionate about the direction of my newly chosen profession.
In the early 90's, Lynx browsers were giving way to graphical Mosaic browsers. Paper and character-based indices were being eschewed and the fancy new full-text databases were in demand. I fondly remember the very first time I printed out a full-text article to a dot matrix printer. I guess we probably all remember our first time.
Always on the "access" side of the aisle, I argued that it would be ludicrous to continue to grow huge and largely duplicated collections when quality reproductions of materials within shared collections could be delivered through the Ethernet. I was convinced that collection development dollars would be more judiciously spent on resource sharing networks, digitization projects, online resources, and most of all, more publicly accessible terminals.
At that time, I viewed my classmates that supported "ownership" and the continued building of research collections as dinosaurs that were ultimately impeding the inevitable technological progression of the profession. More importantly these "ownership" fossils were building collections that would only be used by the faculty and a few doctoral-level students. True, these "serious" researchers were our "regulars"and their patronage was valued. I wondered out aloud, how could, how would, we be able to reach our "infrequents"? Specifically, I wanted to reach the freshmen, the Greeks, the newly-termed "returning non-traditional" students, and many other emerging new groups of campus. The closing argument, that I always espoused with great conviction, was "why would anyone want to even come to the library if they could access an article at 3:00 am from their dorm room?"
Anderson's term "just in case" collection made me think about a nearly fifteen year old "access vs. ownership" debate. I was now motivated to look for a similar arguments currently brewing in the Library 2.0 movement. It took about three minutes to find an interesting thread in this vein. I found it in an engaging post on the blog Library 2.0 and Academic Perspective. The post was titled 2.0 Librarians in 1.0 Libraries. This post references Ryan Deschamps' We Asked for 2.0 Libraries and We Got 2.0 Librarians and Michelle Boule's response We Got 2.0 Librarians, Not 2.0 Libraries.
My take is that Deschamps argues that the shelf life of the term Library 2.0 is about to expire and it is now time take an inventory of where we are as a profession.
He states "The success of library 2.0, as is to be expected, has been mixed. That was kind of the point anyway. Library 2.0 was, in part, a way of seeing success in failure — we had to learn to play, take risks, fail, and learn from the process. In short, the library 2.0 movement was not really about changing libraries, but changing librarians. Librarians needed our time in the sun, and now that we are getting our time. Now that we are popular, hopefully we will see that we need to clean our houses before we invite people in.
It appears that Boule believes that the Library 2.0 movement is stalling because most library organizations are stuck "1.0." organization structures and are generally slow to embrace change.
She states, "Library 2.0 has succeeded in nothing as well as creating a group of frustrated 2.0 Librarians. L2 has done a wonderful job of educating, enlightening, and invigorating librarians to be better, to do better, and to involve our patrons. We are reaching a critical mass of librarians who are excited about what is possible. The problem is that many of those librarians are stuck in 1.0 libraries."
and later, "2.0 Librarians usually end up leaving for somewhere better, more innovative. This is a great option if you are mobile and able to move. Not everyone can. This “brain drain” has resulted in a hand full of libraries doing really great stuff, a few more libraries sticking toes in the water, and the majority of libraries looking around in befuddlement. I would not be afraid to guess that in many 1.0 libraries, there are 2.0 librarians working behind the scenes and those librarians are tired."
I guess I want to relate my "access vs, ownership" debate to this 2.0 discussion in that I once believed that those crusty "ownership" dinosaurs were impeding the progress I was attempting to champion. I think the ownership folks were concerned that the people supporting the access position were impulsive radicals who very willing to discard baby junior with the bathwater. With a 10 year professional cushion, I would like to think that I have a more balanced approach to the old debate. I think the institution's population should dictate which side of the equation the library decides to pursue. In my opinion, a large ACRL library with a huge campus population is incumbent to build large print and electronic collections. Libraries that support scattered satellite campuses and a large distance populations may be wise to spend their dollars on the access that electronic resources can offer.
The access vs. ownership debate allowed people to initiate a dialog and begin forming opinions. I believe the technology matured to a point where it was no longer necessary for libraries/librarians to adopt on extreme position but decide on somewhere in the middle. Somewhere that supports the needs of their users. I think Boule and Deschamps discussion is similar. Technologies will continue to morph and change entirely, and I believe the Library 2.0 "change movement" focus really should not be so closely associated to the technologies that are used within libraries or what we label these technologies. I would like to think the 2.0 movement is bigger, it represents a change in thought. The 2.0 movement has allowed us as a profession to refocus and concentrate on the expressed needs of our populations and reduce institutional barriers when possible.
Web Browser Time Line
AJAX
I have recently developed an interest in exploring and working with AJAX. I recently created an AJAX widget to use within the upgraded version of the Alvin Sherman Library ILLiad interface. What is AJAX?
Wikipedia describes AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), or Ajax as a "technique used for creating interactive web applications. The intent is to make web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes so that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user requests a change. This is intended to increase the web page's interactivity, speed, functionality, and usability."
AJAX has become very popular. Here are few examples of well-know apps that make extensive use of Ajax: AJAX is commonly used for form validation within complex web forms. The Alvin Sherman Library is currently using AJAX to validate the text input in its Broward County online card application forms.
AJAX, like many of the Web 2.0 technologies, is allowing us to develop rich user interfaces but the use of AJAX can also introduce some security concerns. Developers have to recognized how their AJAX applications can be used to launch a cross-scripting attack.
Our ILLiad AJAX application is allowing us to send a secure asynchronous query of one of the tables in our ILLiad database. The requested data from the query is then returned to user in a manner that is not natively supported by the ILLiad software.
Below are some other ideas I have on using AJAX within our setting.
Circulation information: I’d like to use AJAX to update the circulation pages so that it’s easier for patrons to see all borrowing related info, including renewals, fees etc. AJAX can pull that data from a div in the corresponding page. That way we wouldn’t have to maintain the data in more than one place. Add floor maps to NovaCat: Use AJAX to call library floor plans on the fly.
Wikipedia describes AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), or Ajax as a "technique used for creating interactive web applications. The intent is to make web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes so that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user requests a change. This is intended to increase the web page's interactivity, speed, functionality, and usability."
AJAX has become very popular. Here are few examples of well-know apps that make extensive use of Ajax: AJAX is commonly used for form validation within complex web forms. The Alvin Sherman Library is currently using AJAX to validate the text input in its Broward County online card application forms.
AJAX, like many of the Web 2.0 technologies, is allowing us to develop rich user interfaces but the use of AJAX can also introduce some security concerns. Developers have to recognized how their AJAX applications can be used to launch a cross-scripting attack.
Our ILLiad AJAX application is allowing us to send a secure asynchronous query of one of the tables in our ILLiad database. The requested data from the query is then returned to user in a manner that is not natively supported by the ILLiad software.
Below are some other ideas I have on using AJAX within our setting.
Circulation information: I’d like to use AJAX to update the circulation pages so that it’s easier for patrons to see all borrowing related info, including renewals, fees etc. AJAX can pull that data from a div in the corresponding page. That way we wouldn’t have to maintain the data in more than one place. Add floor maps to NovaCat: Use AJAX to call library floor plans on the fly.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
This "thing" was really fun. I jumped right into it. I was immediately "poked" by my colleague and friend Piya. I joined three groups within about five minutes. I joined the group No, I don’t look like a librarian. I have definitely heard that comment a time or two over the last decade. One of my friends that I played football with in college thought I could be "pound for pound the baddest librarian on the planet." Whatever that means.
PodcastBlaster
I used the podcast directory PodcastBlaster for this discovery exercise. And once again, I now have another "favorite." PodcastBlaster is a great site; I have had lots of fun here. Through this site I stumbled upon some podcasts that describe how some of my favorite television shows ended. I conducted a search on the term "shatner" and PodcastBlaster linked me out to a site called TVSeriesFinale.com. This site contains information on cancellation news, cast reunions, and a variety of other things. To my horror, I have found that one of my favorite shows appears to have been cancelled :(.
Wikis
Wiki and blogs are excellent tools for working groups. I have experience working with wikis as an end user as well as working with the "backend" management of the software. Most of the wiki software that I have evaluated can be configured to allow differing degrees of edit/management functionality. Some wikis are built on top of databases such as MySQL where others are built around flat text files. I have found the installation and use of Mediawiki and PMWiki to be very simple. Some front-end users have indicated that learning the specific syntax of these wiki packages can be cumbersome. These users have preferred to use a hosted solution such as PBWiki which offers a true WYZWIG interface. The library applications for wikis are innumerable. Wikis can be used to develop online documentation and even as an enterprise CMS solution.
Technorati
Technorati will be very useful in that it will allow me to focus my searches on the blogosphere when necessary. I found a few posts that will allow me to pursue some avenues that I have an interest in. I add Technorati tags to two of my Pittsburgh-related posts on this blog.
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