Final Cam23 Round-up

Back in May when I excitedly began the 23 Things Programme, I could not imagine the hot day in August when I would round-up my thoughts to write the final blog post. Although the hot long summer day did not really materialize, my experiences during this programme have far outstripped my expectations.

Although I was quite familiar with most of the Things from personal experience, it has been really worthwhile to consider their application to the library setting from the user's perspective, not just from the perspective of my own professional development.

The sense of community and shared aims that has emerged from the Programme has been a constant source of reassurance and support. The growing army of Cam23-ers on Twitter allows us to grow into a social movement positively and yet critically embracing emerging technologies.

I have learnt a lot about technologies with which I am familiar as well as learning about totally new ones. Delicious is a tool that I have heard a lot about without ever getting round to using; it is fascinating and the potential for organisation of knowledge is something that I shall be exploring further on both a personal and a professional level. I am an avid Twitter fan for professional awareness but now I am hoping to use the tool to keep in contact with our readers.

Google worries me in that it is taking over our online space and yet I still use it daily. However I am not a fan of Google calendars; I would rather use a paper diary and as I work in a small team, we have a shared physical diary to alleviate the problems of double bookings.

Cloud computing is something that I envisage changing the way that people work in the future. Remote working might become easier. However, unless we all install library management systems on our home pcs, there is a limit to what we can do in the electronic ether. Collaborative documents via wikis are the most useful form of cloud computing as far I as I can see, closely followed by technologies which allow documents to be stored 'in the cloud,' so to speak. As an aside, I do hate the phrase 'cloud computing'; it is unavoidably techy with the implicit pseudo-humour of techy people. Perhaps, 'remote storing' would be better. The 'library in the sky'? More work is needed.

Overall then, the Cam23 Programme has been a success; it has allowed Cambridge library staff to form different types of connections both physically and within the social media space. I hope that other such bottom-up intitiatives for professional development will occur.

One final thing:

Podcasts

Well we're almost at the finish line for the Cambridge 23 Things programme The experience has been an enjoyable learning curve of a ride through various emerging technologies and their application to the library environment.

I have been looking forward to podcasting's showcase as a Thing as I am such huge fan of audio-generated content. In our image obsessed culture, it is important to remember that audio is a useful way of generating content to which the consumer can multi-task. With the advent of portable listening devices, onto which it is simple to download podcasts and other audio content, listening to podcasts could not be easier.

On a personal level, I am a commuter. And as such, I have a lot of time in my day when I have to use my eyes for their primary purpose of seeing what is in front of me. I did briefly try to read whilst walking; it did not go well. Audio content is the perfect way to fill the time - podcasts of radio shows and comedy items are very easy to use.

I really like the concept of using podcasts to reach our users within the library environment. Audio help guides and general introductions to collections and services could be mounted on the library website as podcasts to enable maximum usage. Every time a new podcasts is released, Twitter and Facebook come into play as a communications channel to tell our users about our new podcasts. This is definitely an avenue worth exploring.

Thing 20: Google Docs

Several months ago, my computer contracted a virus and I faced the terrible prospect of losing my documents. As I was advised not to use USB sticks in case they carried the virus to the new computer, when my wide-screen Windows 7 machine arrived, I had my documents all lined up in files in Google Docs.

Yes, it took a fair amount of time to load the files and put them into the relevant files. Yet the ability to create a file structure on Google Docs was much appreciated and fairly simple to work through.

I was and still am a little concerned about leaving documents on Google Docs for any considerable length of time. Issues surrounding copyright and ownership have yet to convince me that everything is totally uncomplicated. But for collaborative projects and short term storage issues, storing documents in the ‘cloud’ via a service like Google Docs seems like the best solution.

On a different note yet one related to file structures, I have finally found out how to add a structure to my Google reader rss feeds in order to group my feeds together: just go into 'manage subscriptions' and select into which file group each rss feed should go. Simples!

Thing 19: Marketing

Effective marketing is an extremely difficult thing to do well. The four Ps - product, price, place and promotion – used to guide services towards the best mechanisms for reaching out to users. However, as the Cam 23 Things programme has shown, we all have the power to become creators of our own products now as well as consumers. As information professionals, we need to be able to find connections and context for our content, to engage in conversations with each other and with our users, if we are to succeed in advocating our services and raising the profile of our institutions.

Branding can play a large part in service marketing but essentially our users need to be able to do two things for our marketing campaigns to be effective: they need to be able to identify a definite and unified signifier for our service and what we do, and they need to know how to communicate with us. Emerging technologies give us many more channels through which to communicate and a diverse array of platforms in which to engage the user: Facebook, Twitter, library websites, blogs, virtual pin boards, VLEs. It is even more crucial now that we present a unified image for our service which signifies what we do and what we offer within this diverse plethora of communication platforms.

It is more important than ever that we engage in conversation with our users, something made possible by new technologies in the sense that conversations now become public and debates may emerge from within the heart of the library’s technological space. These conversations in context are to be encouraged and promoted. We hope to implement a library Twitter and Facebook presence as soon as practically convenient.

Yet in the midst of these new possibilities brought forth by emerging technologies, it is important to remember that older ways of marketing are perhaps not yet dead. Front-line staff recommendations, physical pin boards, recommendation boxes where requests are responded to and pinned up for all to view, leaflets and signage – these are important marketing and communication mechanisms that push out to our users all the added value services which we can provide for them from within the library and beyond.

We need to push a presence out into the virtual space, for example by including links to podcasts of information skills tutorials on our homepage or by pointing our users via a Twitter feed to a Youtube video introducing library staff and our diverse range of services, without forgetting that effective marketing often takes place directly in the physical library in user conversations with physical staff.

Oh, Oh, Oh - Zotero

My, my, my, Zotero. Anyone can see, this bibliographical management tool is really good for me, I’m no longer lost in a citation mire that no one can see.

On a serious note, Zotero is an imaginative and useful tool for capturing, storing and retrieving bibliographic references. It is visually appealing and highly useful to share references with others.

I am glad to have had the opportunity to find out more about this tool. Whilst I personally prefer the ease and simplicity of end note's web based reference management tool, Zotero’s advantage of collaborative sharing could make it more attractive to our users (or perhaps not!)

My end note web now also has a ‘cite whilst you write’ plug-in to rival the paid version of the software. The ease with which references are captured from various electronic databases and manual entries to produce a bibliography is extremely useful.

A knowledge of Zotero is useful knowledge gained and which will inform my answers to future queries regarding reference management methods. (At break of day when that reference went astray, I opened end note - bah bah baah...)

Linkedin

I feel a bit of a cheat with this Thing really, as I already have a Linkedin profile and use it regularly. The benefits are immense; it provides a strong professional network, an alternative to the more social networks. I particularly like the function to join groups and I have learnt a lot from the CILIP discussions.

Sometimes one gets the feeling that, once the network of professionals has been created, no one is really sure what is supposed to happen next. Some people share news articles with their network and others have linked their Twitter feed. As I have mentioned before, I quite like having some things in different places and feel no urge to group everything together.

I think the long term benefits of this tool are more useful than the short term gains; in the current climate, being part of a strong network of professionals with a visible online presence could well make a real difference.

Facebook

Facebook has become such a part of our culture that it is now used as a verb: 'I'll Facebook you about it', a friend recently said to me when organising a barbeque. 'Are you on Facebook?' is one of the first questions I am asked when meeting friends of friends. Facebook has even been shortened to make it quicker to say and more embedded in our culture - 'I'll FB you' is a standard short hand way of saying 'I will contact you about this.'

Of course, we all know people who have completely turned away from the monster social networking site in distain and disgust. And whilst we acknowledge this as a good thing amongst our peers, secretly this annoys us beyond belief. Why can't I see what [insert dissenter's name here]'s had for breakfast? Why can I never invite that person to events via FB? Why does s/he have to be so obstinate in refusing to move with the current of the vast majority of people? People have many reasons for not joining Facebook; indeed, I myself deactivated my account. I lasted a day. This need, this addiction, to know what our friends are doing and thinking in real time despite their geographical location, has made us into a people of intensity. We no longer give ourselves time to formulate communication. And there are the dangers, the horror stories: people made redundant, people divorcing their spouse. People forget that what they put online is at some level accessible by other people.

I am still not a big believer in the power of Facebook for libraries; Facebook is a social place of social interaction. I am wary of 'dad at the disco syndrome' where we try to impress the Youff with our Kool FB pages. I do however like the way that some libraries have a page and people can become a fan if they wish. I think Twitter is a better tool for communication with students, however, perhaps that is because I use Twitter for professional purposes and Facebook for social reasons. Am I bringing my own preconceptions to the virtual table? This is an interesting area to watch closely.

Librarything

It's a library thing, or perhaps a librarian thing, but I'm coming out of the closet - I am a fully addicted Librarythinger. Librarything.com is a revolution. I started using it in 2007 in order to have an online list of all the books that I'd ever owned or read. Whilst I'm no longer adding to my catalogue, I still use Librarything a lot for a variety of different purposes.

If someone recommends a book to me, I don't go to amazon.com to read a synopsis; I go straight to Librarything.com. I can read member reviews and look at the user generated tags for the book to gain an idea of both the content of the book and the general reaction to it. For example, if the tag 'tbr' (to be read) is heavily used on a book title, I want to know why. It would make me question things further. The groups on Librarything are also of interest and the grouping of all current information onto a homepage is a fantastic and relatively new feature.

I like the recommendations. I also like the concept of reconstructing the libraries of dead authors. I like that some libraries are using the technology to further the reach of the traditonal catalogue. However, this relies on student engagement, which is often the hardest thing to generate. Tags only become really relevant when a great majority of people join in, but they are also often personal to that individual and have little meaning in the wider community. I love Librarything.com. I spent an age cataloguing all my books, tagging them, reviewing them; but even I duplicated tags, confused terms, ran out of steam with the reviewing. I really like this tool but I am unsure as to its usefulness within the library setting.

Reflection

Whew, almost back up to date with the blogging! This week is a reflection week for the Cambridge 23 Things programme. As such, I have reflected on the whole experience so far and have judged it to be a positive experience in several ways.

Firstly, I am more confident in using the technologies now that I know that other people use them in similar and different ways. This has confirmed my suspicion that there is no 'right way' to either follow or avoid. This is good.

Secondly, I have learnt new things about the technologies that I was already using. For example, I did not know about the creative commons search option in Flickr and the ability in iGoogle to have several tabs each with their own page designs.

Thirdly, it has encouraged me to become an active blogger and to engage with the wider community online.

Fourthly, it has generated lots and lots of Cambridge library-based blogs which have been fascinating to read and comment on; a real sense of community has developed. I just wish I had more time to fully read everything for every Thing!

Finally, and crucially, it has helped me to start thinking about how these tools could be used within the library setting. I already used the majority of these tools before starting the programme, but mainly for personal and professional developmental reasons. Take Twitter as an example. I've used Twitter now for a while for professional development. Now I can see the application for library users. Raising the profile of the library and connecting us to our users are important aspects of the modern profession; both can be realised through social media tools. I have started to become more creative in my approch to tools and their use. The Cam23 programme has really helped me to develop in this direction.

I can't wait for the next ten things!

Thing 12: Delicious

Whilst I completely see the point of this tool for storing bookmarks within the 'cloud' itself (who hasn't had a computer die on them and all their bookmarks gone with it), I think it would take me less time to reassemble my bookmarks in their file hierarchy on a new machine than it would to store them all on Delicious. Whilst I acknowledge that the problem would eventually happen again, it is a question of time management. If there were 40 hours in each day, I would gladly spend more of them playing with Delicious. I think it is a very interesting and useful tool. Yet, once I start exploring it, I find so many aspects of it so interesting that I find myself getting so lost in exploring other people's bookmarks that Ihave no time left for anything else!

Perhaps when I next have a block of free time, I will come back and explore this Thing further. For now, let me say that I am in awe of the libraries using Delicious so efficiently and do definitely see the potential for this tool. The sheer vastness of information and the potential for organisation will need to be delved into at some future point.

Thing 8 (or should that be #Thing8): Tagging.

The concept of tagging provokes two responses in librarians, often simultaneously: excited joy and abject fear. Joy at the concept of user participation encouraging the semantic relevance of data and fear that allowing users to control the process of subject analysis via uncontrolled keywords is the quickest route to information anarchy in history. I gave a paper on this very topic at the Cataloguing and Indexing group's annual conference 2008.

The conclusion to which I came was that there is a place for both types of information organisation: controlled vocabularies to promote sturctured subject analysis and keyword tagging. The problems with tags are numerous and have already been discussed at length: they use natural language with no cross references, homonyms lead to misguided searching (try searching for Turkey - bird or country?) and differences in spelling within a language across countries is not cross referenced with each variant. No one tells people whether to use china or China when talking about the country, even though in the physical world the initial letter should be capitalised. This leads to vast amounts of relevant information potentially not being retrieved. The worst problem of all concerns the motivation behind tagging: a great majority of web users tag primarily for their own information organisational needs and not to provide subject analysis for others. A cursory glance at a book on Librarything.com tells us that tags are used for the reader/owner's benefit as well as to analyse the subject of the book.

I personally use 'read 2009' and 'tbr' as tags to track my own reading habits. Other users can ignore this but it does provide another dimension to tagging. People also rely on the cconsistency of taggers; often this doesn't happen and the same concept ends up being represented in multiple ways.

Does this matter? Isn't there an interest there for researchers to look at how different people semantically translate a book's concepts? One woman's comedy might be another's tragedy. It is interesting to search on tags across the whole librarything catalogue. Which books are mostly 'unread'? Which books are in everyone's 'to be read' pile? Isn't it fascinating to see the size of the tag words change depending on how many people have used them? The wisdom of the crowd is a phenomena that can and does often work. The trick is to get as many people as possible tagging. Although this might sound like I am encouraging the data anarchy, somehow it seems to be that from the uncontrolled comes forth a consensus. Not a controlled vocabulary per se, but some form of organisation. If a book or a blog mostly uses certain tags, others are often encouraged to use tags that are already there. Whether or not this actually destroys the concept of tagging as an uncontrolled force is another debate!

I am interested in the use of tagging within the library catalogue. Don't recoil in horror! I have been a cataloguer and am very aware of the need for a controlled backbone of structured vocabulary with inbuilt semantic meaning and cross references. LCSH should not be replaced. I am proposing another type of subject analysis running parallel with the catalogue records. This library's catalogue is an inspired model whereby user's tags run parallel to catalogue records. The tags do not come into contact at all with the actual MARC21 coding. The tags are stored separately and are dynamically loaded together. It is a radical step to take, to be sure, but the possibilities are endless. The name of the paper could be added as a tag to books on current reading lists. Finding information would become that bit more flexible for our users without losing any of the important work done behind the scenes by LCSH. It is certainly something to ponder. Anyway, back to Librarians who Librarything...

Thing 6

I admit, I have never been a big fan of electronic calendars. I find that, by the time I've written all my appointments onto it, I'm late for wherever I'm going! However, in the spirit of Cam 23 I added my shiny new (and rather empty) google calendar onto my igoogle page.
I then diligently added my appointments for that week. And promptly forgot about looking at the calendar again until today's new 'thing' reminded me to blog about it. The truth is that I like my physical diary. I carry it with me, it sits in my office. It's always there if I need to pop something in quickly. It's hard enough to keep up to date with one calendar, I really can't manage an electronic one as well.

A few years ago, I worked in a place that utilised shared outlook calendars for booking meetings and arranging the use of various rooms by multiple sets of people. The electronic setup of the calendars were ideal for this sort of use. It was easy to use and avoided double bookings. It also allowed other people to see when colleagues were busy.

Whilst I can see potential for this tool, I won't be embracing this particular Thing after this programme. I find it hard enough to manage one calendar!

Thing 5: Doodle

This week’s cam23 things are all about time management and event scheduling using new technologies. I have used doodle a fair amount in the past and have always found it very straightforward and user friendly.  Doodle allows us to prevent the horrible inertia of those stalemate situations when attempting to schedule a meeting or an event between a group of people.

 We’ve all been there. Emails bounding back and forth between all potential participants. Mrs X can make Tuesday morning but Mr P is out of the office that day. Ms B can do Wednesday afternoon but Mrs X is on a training day in Basingstoke. Doodle eliminates the administrative side of this problem (if not the actual timing clashes themselves) by letting an application see when everyone could attend or could not attend or could-but-would-rather-not-right-then attend. Gone are the days of paper and pencils. We no longer have to make tally marks under each possible time and date combination. As a way to schedule meetings and arrange events, doodle is an extremely useful tool.

So I shall wait to see what happens with the cam23 doodle and hope to catch up with others following the programme during this week.  Happy doodling everyone!

FRBR

Functional requirements for bibliographic records; the conceptual model which is about to redefine the bibliographic universe. Group one entities finally give us a more precise terminology to use when dealing with reference questions; after all, 'I want to read this book' is a substantially different statement to 'I left this book on the desk a second ago but now it's disappeared.' Thus we now have a work, an expression, a manifestation and an item. We are able to draw together and cluster all results about a work. Take for example Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. In accordance with the new database structures that are growing up around FRBR principles, we could have one record for the work, and then attach multiple manifestation records to that to include original text, different editions, film adaptations and even Baz Luhrman's soundtrack.
FRBR is starting to have an impact on standards, evident in RDA. RDA, designed as the next step from AACR2, is structured very closely around the principles of FRBR. FRBR looks at user tasks, namely: to find, to identify, to select and to obtain. The bibliographic record is then checked for these elements to determine the extent to which the catalogue is meeting the needs of users. Which is great. But one of the main problems, and not to sound condescending, is that quite often our users are not sure what they want until they browse the catalogue. Currently the OPAC may bring up books about Romeo and Juliet as well as the text itself. For FRBR, this is a problem. However, in the interests of serendipity, perhaps this is not such a bad thing.
With a modicum of search training, a user is able to use the OPAC sufficiently. And dates of editions are always displayed. It worries me that the FRBR model would lead us to provide new 'manifestation' link records for each reprint of a book; technically it is a new entity although the intellectual content remains identical. I can see how useful FRBR would be to literary and musical works, but the impact seems reduced within the sciences.
The other major issue concerns the impact upon MARC21. If AACR2 is seen as predating computerised cataloguing, then MARC21 can be viewed as a means of creating nothing more than a computerised catalogue card. However, despite the format's limitations in terms of data extraction, we currently have several million records in this format worldwide. Quite what will happen to them is unclear. Perhaps it is time for a new encoding set to be introduced, one with more flexibility and functionality. And yet somehow the idea of converting all those records from one format to another seems like an awfully big adventure.

RFID in libraries

I've been thinking recently about RFID in libraries and have had some interesting ideas. Radio frequency chips inserted into books would make life so much easier for library staff charged with the task of yearly summer stock-taking. Inventory would be accomplished more efficiently and effectively.
And yet, as I delved deeper into this mystery, things began to take a more sinister turn. It turns out that anyone can get hold of an RFID scanner, so when you leave the library with all your books in your bag anyone with said scanner can pull up details of your reading habits in seconds. If they felt so inclined. Airports too could use the same method when you travel. The answer is simple according to some: make sure that the RFID chip contains no bibliographic data. Easier said than done when a library catalogue is on open access and is, quite rightly, available to check against scanned barcodes. On their own they would be meaningless, but it is fairly easy to find the bibliographic detail with a little detective work.
So Sherlock, what's the answer? Encryption would be a good start. Perhaps another idea would be to forego the convenience RFID brings in terms of inventory control in order to fully safeguard the privacy rights of our readers.
When one looks at the new technology in the light of passports and even human ingestion of chips, a new picture emerges of people viewed as things and the monitoring and tracking of humans themselves. The old adage goes, if you have nothing to hide then why are you worried?
I would answer that, as I have not acted out of turn, please leave me my thoughts and let me keep my movements to myself. Perhaps 2007 is the new 1984. Let's hope not.