WML Tech Updates

I was catching up on reading my feeds tonight and I came across David Lee King’s notes from the opening session at Computers in Libraries (which is a cool conference that I would LOVE to go to - maybe next year). Anyway, the opening session was presented by Lee Rainie from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. I’ve heard him speak before about Pew surveys results, and the results are always so interesting. But this opening session had a library focus, which was nice. Apparently, Rainie talked about six hallmarks of the web 2.0 world that matter to libraries.

1. the internet has become the computer
2. content creation
3. even more internet users are accessing the content created by others
4. many are sharing what they know and feel online and that is building conversations
5. tens of thousands are contributing in online … ???
6. customizing their online experiences thanks to web 2.0 tools

See all the details and explanations on David’s blog, which always has insightful information.

Well, I’m back from Seattle. I was sick the whole time, but that didn’t stop me from having a wonderful time. I’ve been to many conferences so far since being a librarian now for almost 5 years, and I have to say that this was one of the most positive, uplifting conferences I have attended. Here are some notes, pictures, and more than you could probably ever want to know about my Midwinter experience.

Friday, January 19

1) Emerging Leaders Program @ the Seattle Public Library.

The program was a full day packed with speakers, small and large group discussions, and several receptions. We met with:

• Leslie Burger, ALA President
• Connie Paul, Executive Director of the Central Jersey Regional Library Cooperative. She’s the one pretty much running this whole thing.
• Pat Tumulty, Executive Director of the New Jersey Library Association. She spoke about getting involved in local chapters.
• Emily Sheketoff, ALA Washington Office Director. She provided us wtih an overview of the ALA Governance Sturcture and Organization
• Maureen Sullivan, Leadership Consultant. She’s working with all the teams and providing support.
• Jenny Levine, The Shifted Librarian and in ALA’s Office of IT Policy (OITP). Jenny set up the Emerging Leaders’ wiki and is providing technical support as needed.
• Our own teams. I am on Project M. Most of our work will be done within some online project management software called BaseCamp. Updates will get posted from time to time on the wiki for anyone to follow. We will be doing a poster session at ALA Annual in Washington DC, and will be working on our project through fruition.

Michelle Boule, a friend of mine and one of the Emerging Leaders, wrote an article about the program for the ALA Tech Source blog.

2) LITA Happy Hour - This was a fun event as usual. It took place at the Six Arms on 300 E. Pike Street. I saw lots of folks I knew and met new people. Networking with LITA folks is always great.

Saturday, January 20

1) “Stay Ahead of the Curve: Keeping the Job You Love”, sponsored by the ALA HRDR Placement Center. This session discussed how we all spend time and energy trying to land the perfect job, but we don’t always focus on keeping the job we worked so hard to get. We were presented with a road map for staying on track and given information on

• Being a team player
• Learning how to keep track of your learning, contributions and accomplishments
• Marketing yourself
• Handling performance reviews
• Learning when to ask questions and when to just listen to others
• Learning how to ask for feedback
• Surviving the politics
• Making yourself a valuable asset to the organization, and becoming indispensable!

One piece of valuable information in particular that I took away from this session was to try and look at things differently. For example, in WML, we have had LOTS of staff turnover. Instead of worrying about all the extra work I am going to have to pick up while we try to fill that person’s position, look at it as I am learning some new skills that will make me more marketable. I also won a book as a door prize: Sink or Swim.

2) “The Social Library 2.0 in Action” - I saw Stephen Abram, Vice President Innovation at SirsiDynix, speak at the mini “SirsiDynix Institute” booth in the vendors area. I’ve heard him speak before, and it’s always engaging and motivating. His talk was podcasted and is available online. There are supplemental materials as well.

3) Ebsco Academic Librarian Luncheon - The food was great and I learned a few things about Business Source Premier vs. Complete. They talked about many new features coming soon.

4) Advocacy Institute Followup: Creating Advocacy Leaders - This session was one that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to attend, but am glad that I did. I learned about a variety of ways to promote the library, library services, and more. The focus did seem to be on public libraries, but I had a great opportunity to meet with some other academic librarians and hear what they were doing. I have tons of notes in this huge advocacy folder they gave us. I hope to share them with Celia Walker at some point.

5) David Pogue on Windows Vista - This was probably one of the things that made the trip and conference so special. David Pogue, a technology columnist for the New York Times, spoke about Windows Vista, the new OS that will be available at the end of January for home use. I have been reading Circuits for many years and have more recently been enjoying David Pogue’s blog postings and hilarious and informative podcasts.

He showed us his Windows Vista podacst (and I have to mention that he was running Vista on his Mac). Very funny stuff! It was great to hear him speak - he could have spoken on almost any topic and I would have showed up. And then he sang for us. That’s right. He sang for us many of his spoof songs. There was wine and cheese and fruit, and then we got free autographed copies of his latest book, Windows Vista: The Missing Manual by O’Reilly Press. Here is a great interview between Tom Peters and David Pogue, on ALA TechSource.

Things I learned about Vista:

• It took 15 million lines of code and 5 years to build.
• Security is much improved, and there is a thing called Windows Defender, a built-in spyware protector. It’s a bit annoying, but it does protect your computer from being taken over by evil spyware. For example, anytime you try to change the settings to your computer, the screen grays out and a window pops up asking you if you really want to do this (that is, it’s making sure you are a real person and not some spyware).
• David talked a bit about spam and hackers, and how they find out what the vulnerabilities are, and that 87% of all email today is spam.
• Address space randomization (ASR)
• He commented often on its beauty and elegance, and how he felt it ripped off Mac OSX. (Daivd is an avid Mac user so he might be just a tad biased. ;-)
• There are 9 editions of Vista, 5 of which are in the US: Basic, Premium, Home, Business, and Ultimate. The other 4 versions are being sold overseas.
• Aero
• Vista has huge horsepower - it’s not for the computers weak of heart. Requires 2GB of memory, and users will need a state of the art graphics card (I need this stuff for World of Warcraft already, otherwise game play lags bigtime.)
• He estimates that only 5% of users will upgrade. And after January 31, 2007, all new computers will come with Vista already installed on it.
• He talked about how Sleepmode will have priority over all other functions - it’s sort of a hybrid of standby and hibernate, but won’t leave you with a dead laptop if you close the lid before it actually goes to sleep. That will be a nice improvement!
• David also talked about the differencs between the various US versions - why someone would want to purchase one over another. The Ultimate version has all the features.
• He showed many nefty keystrokes on how to do things much quicker than with a mouse. It’s as if we are going back to command line. But for the less savvy users, they will still be able to navigate and do almost everything without knowing the special keystrokes.
• Vista has a speech recognition package built-in.
• It looks very cool!

6) Thomson Scientific Reception @ Space Needle - I hooked up with Amia Baker (whom I was rooming with), Marshall and Zora Breeding, Chris and Yuh-Fen Benda, Don Jones, Peg Earheart, and others at the reception at the top of the Space Needle. The food was wonderful, the view was amazing, and it was fun talking about how the conference was going so far.

Sunday, January 21

1) LITA’s Top Tech Trends - This was LITA’s usual panel of experts in the library field, with our own Marshall Breeding included. I took copious notes, but there were lots of people who reported on what people said on the LITA blog, so why reinvent the wheel? I have put direct links to what the experts had to say here for your convenience. Also, the session was podcasted in several easy to digest sections. Only 4 of the 8 experts were present, hence only 4 podcasts. Besides Marshall, I also saw Dale Poulter at this session.

• Sarah Houghton-Jan’s Top Tech Trend (not present, but posted trends on blog)
• Thomas Dowling’s Top Tech Trends (not present, but posted trends on blog)
• Eric Lease Morgan’s Top Tech Trends (not present, but posted trends on blog)
• Roy Tennant’s Top Tech Trends (not present, but posted trends on blog)
• Marshall Breeding’s Top Tech Trends (mp3)
• Clifford Lynch’s Top Tech Trends (mp3)
• Karen Schneider’s Top Tech Trends (mp3)
• Andrew Pace’s Top Tech Trends (mp3)

2) LITA Program Planning Committee Meeting (3 hours). In this group, we evaluate and help to improve programs proposed by the LITA interest groups and committees as well as other groups looking for co-sponsorship for ALA annual conferences and preconference institutes. It’s a lot of work, but I really enjoy it. I am a liaison to the LITA Open Source Systems Interest Group who typically do about 4-6 programs and preconferences each year at Anuual.

3) I did have a few opportunites to walk around and visit with vendors, primarily the business resources that we either subscribe to or are interested in for the Walker Management Library. I stopped the Elsevier booth just as they were getting ready to do a brief 30 minute session on getting published. The audience had an opportunity to talk with the editors about submitting, coming up with ideas, and other helpful tips on making it in the publishing world.

4) ALA President’s Program, “Learn to FISH!” - This was a wonderful program! Deena Ebbert was an enthusiastic speaker and very positive. The session was so uplifting (and not only because I got tossed a purple fish.) She reminded us that we are more than a job description. We are more than a piece of paper. We are unique and talented people, and sometimes we forget to let ourselves come out. “You got it. What’s ya going to do with it?”

This whole presentation was based on the FISH! Philosophy which goes back to the Pike Place Fish Market where the fish monglers worked long, hard, smelly grueling days and didn’t get much reward. They tried to make it more fun and were successful in doing so. Someone else came along, saw what they were doing, and called this the FISH Philosophy and wrote a very popular book about it.

What is this philosphy that has been embraced by Amazon, Microsoft, and many other corporations? According to the FISH! site,

FISH! is a skill that provides the process, tools and language to generate the skills necessary to design a workplace full of inspiration, creativity and innovation. FISH! creates a common language. A language that will help improve your culture by using four simple practices – Be There, Play, Make Their Day and Choose Your Attitude. FISH! is a wisdom that everyone can embrace. It is an invitation that enables people to care about each other and their commitments. FISH! is an ongoing journey that spawns all industries and communities around the world. It is not a fad. It is a practice and a skill that evolves over time creating a positive workplace and a vibrant culture each time it is embraced.

I thought that these 4 basic principles - Be there, play, make their day, and choose your attitude - are wonderful and left me envigorated. I don’t think that “play” is encouraged enough in libraries, especially academic ones. I personally believe that people learn best when it’s hands-on, when they are engaged and involved in the learning process. You have to take time to play. For me, it’s playing with emerging technologies. I’m not an expert at these things. I don’t know all there is to know. I just take the time to play with things, see what they do, what they don’t do, and look at what I can take from it to help me improve my work environment or assist my colleagues. Playing leads to innovation and creativity, two things I value and need in my life in order to contribute to my happiness.

Deena also reminded us to bring our uniqueness with us everywhere we go. Lean into our fears, don’t be afraid of them. It will make us stronger. Remember that it’s often the little things that make a difference.

She said we shouldn’t be afraid to admit this: “I take pride in the work I do, and when someone appreciates it, it makes me feel worthwhile.”

Monday, January 22

1) LITA Town Hall - This was a lively session after a wonderful breakfast with LITA colleagues. There was a huge turnout, and we got together in groups to talk about what we like about LITA, what we would like to see more of, and where we think LITA should focus its attention for the future. Listen to Vice President of LITA Mark Beatty and LITA Emerging Leader Michelle Boule give a post-Town Hall breakdown (mp3) of what happened during the meeting, why LITA members Have More Fun, and what LITA members can look forward to in the coming year.

2) LITA Program Planning Committee Meeting (3 hours)

3) LAMA Dialog with the Directors Discussion Group: Mind the Generational Gap in Staff - There were about 70 people who attended this lively but moderated discussion on generational differences in current library staff, and the newer librarians entering the workforce. Flo Wilson also attended this session. =)

On October 26-29, 2006, I attended the 2006 LITA National Forum in Nashville, TN. The theme was NetVille in Nashville: Web services as library services. It was a wonderful conference this year! Dale Poulter in LITS here at Vanderbilt was the Chair of the Forum Planning Committee, and I think he and the rest of that committee did a great job! (Even the food was awesome!)

I went to a preconference on Developing Best Project Management Practices for IT Projects and you can read my summary and comments from Day 1 and Day 2 on the LITA blog. After the preconference, I attended a variety of sessions and heard lots of great speakers! Below are the sessions I attended.

General Sessions (with links going to summaries on LITA blog)

Save America’s Treasures: Preservation of Rare Acetate and Vinyl Recording Transcriptions
Alan Stoker, Recorded Sound and Moving Image Curator, and Steve Maer, Recorded Sound Archivist, Country Music Hall of Fame

Libraries and Public Interest Entertainment
Thom Gillespie, Indiana University

Web 2.0 and the Library 2.0 in Our Future
Stephen Abram, VP Innovation, SirsiDynix

Concurrent Sessions (with links going to summaries on LITA blog)

Adding Bells and Whistles to the Web: The Blog and the Pod

Improving Library Services with Ajax and RSS

Archiving & Preserving the Web

Unbundling the ILS @ NCSU

Multimedia Tutorials for Remote Users

Low Threshold Strategies for Libraries to Support “Other” Types of Digital Publishing

Also on Saturday evening, I walked with a bunch of LITA bloggers to the Flying Saucer for some dinner and liquid refreshments. They took pictures and blogged it, naturally.

Overall, the conference left me energized and eager to get back to work and play with the new technologies I was introduced to, and to implement some of the strategies and project management tools I learned.

Next year, the LITA National Forum will be in Colorado! Woo hoo!

Go get a cup of coffee and put your feet up. This is a long one.

1. Rachel had a wonderful time at the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) National Forum back on October 8, 9, and 10th in St. Louis. Dale Poulter, Rick and Suellen Stringer-Hye also attended the Forum. She learned a lot more about various technologies and received insight on how to utilize these new and upcoming technologies within a library setting.
2. One topic that Rachel is flirting with is the possibility of creating the Walker Staffweb entirely within a wiki. What is a wiki? A wiki is “a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser.” In other words, a wiki will let you edit the webpage while you are viewing it in Internet Explorer – no code necessary. Hence, anyone would be able to update it, anytime, anywhere. Pretty cool, huh?
3. Rachel will be getting more involved with LITA in the future as well. In 2006, the LITA National Forum will come to Nashville , and Dale Poulter will be the man in charge. But she hope s to help out.
4. Two new 21” Dell monitors have arrived. One is in Rachel’s office for web development and the other is currently in Laura’s office and will be used with the new scanner for document delivery purposes.
5. What’s that? A new scanner? Yes, an HP ScanJet 8250 scanner has been ordered, and arrived this afternoon. It will temporarily go in Laura’s office. Once it is set up, we will begin experimenting with Ariel. Rachel is talking with Deb about getting Ariel training.
6. The new hard drive for the computer that will be going upstairs has arrived and is ready for Danny to install. We need to decide on what type of furniture the computer will be sitting upstairs, and where it should go. Connectivity is an issue that will impact location.
7. Public workstation #4 is ready for Danny to have its image ghosted onto the other public workstations. Then Deep Freeze will be installed and all the computers can be maintained by Rachel’s computer in her office. There will be a background that says Welcome to the Walker Management Library and it will have the Owen logo, too.
8. A new “team” has been established with the Walker Library! It’s the Tech Team, and will consist of: Rachel Vacek, Danny Sulkin, Marie Swearingen, and Rahn Huber.
   • Q: Will there be tons more meetings? A: No. More than likely, this team will meet once a month or less, depending on projects, reports to staff, and implementations.
   • Q: What will this team do? A: What Rachel envisions is that this group will look at the big picture: How has technology influenced the library and the services that we provide? Where are we now technologically? Where should we be? How are other libraries using technology effectively? How do we get to where we think we should be? Etc.
   • Q: Will there be sub-groups? A: From this team, there will be several other small sub-teams that will actually accomplish the goals. Rachel thinks that this group (maybe plus a few other people) will be able to give a lot of valuable input into the strategic planning process.
9. The resource guides are still being updated on the current website. Thanks to all who helped!
10. From the Technology Support Coordinators Meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 12, Rachel wants to support that she volunteered to be a part of the “Workstation Application Software Categorizing Task Force.” What is this? VU Internal Audit recommended that LITS do an audit of library software. This audit was done automatically to all the computers connected to the Heard network, and there were over 1,000 different products found. The Walker Library was not included in this audit. This task force will separate the software into 3 categories:
    • Supported software (e.g.- Sirsi, Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat Reader, etc.)
    • Allowable unsupported software (e.g.- iTunes, Google toolbar, Bible Study software, WS_FTP, etc.)
    • Disallowed and unsupported software (e.g.- Bit torrent, kazaa, weatherbug, etc..
    • You may be wondering why Rachel is involved with this since the audit didn’t include the Walker Library. She thinks that being more aware of what people are using, and what is legal and or dangerous software to have might be helpful in problem solving in her own library, and this is also one way to keep current on software. Anyway, the results of this task force’s work will be presented to the Tech Support and Tech Training Coordinators, and then LITS will submit a final list to LMC for approval, along with recommendation on how to manage future software audits. Rachel hopes to figure out a way to get Walker involved in future audits, too.
11. From the Technology Training Coordinators Meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 26, Rachel wants to report that within the next month, there will be a training session on accessibility and how to best modify the accessibility settings within Windows XP. Someone from the Opportunity Development Center (ODC) might be willing to do a session on this (we are in the process of asking), but it may resort to Rachel and Julie Loder doing a training session on this for the Heard Library System instead.
12. Rachel attended a live webcast on Usability on Thursday, Oct. 28. The blurb: “As libraries and organizations strive to improve their websites to better serve their users, they are finding usability testing to be a valuable part of the redesign process. By focusing on a user-centered design, web developers can learn what works, what doesn’t and what their users want. While the results are sometimes surprising, usability testing is a key ingredient in designing a web site that meets the needs of its users.” Overall, Rachel found it helpful and a refresher on methods she has used in the past. She plans on implementing some of the testing methods discussed for the new site as it comes a little further along.
13. There was a Spiders meeting on Friday, Oct. 29. This is the groups of web designers across campus who meet monthly to discuss various implementations of technology and to share, learn, and network. They discussed the upcoming changes to the Vanderbilt homepage. If interested, you can read the notes.
14. From the Diebold Printing Demonstration Meeting that Rachel, Marie, and Flo attended on Thursday, Nov. 4: As you know, Vanderbilt is moving toward Pay-for-Print. Diebold is just one of the vendors that VU is considering. Here are the options with Diebold:
    • Option 1: CS Print Client, where software is installed on each individual computer and it communicates with the printer server. This option is Windows only. You deal with pop-ups and can use your username/id to authenticate. Authentication is configurable and can be IP based. There is no card swipe or terminal/release station. Money and amount of money remaining is shown to the user via a pop-up window.
    • Option 2: Network Release Station, where the user hits print, puts in a name, and then when standing near the printer, must swipe a card, select his/her print job, and then print it. Money and amount of money remaining is shown to the user on this “release” screen. This option is available on Macs, PCs, and Unix/Linux machines. If the user has multiple print jobs, he/she would have to swipe multiple times (no batch printing)
    • Both of these options are configurable (mostly). Students and faculty can have ## free prints before they get charged for printing if this is what people want. Settings are based per print server and not library or computer lab. So for example, if all the printers for Owen are on ONE print server, then all the printers in Owen would have to have the same settings.
    • Both Option 1 and Option 2 are supposed to be able to work simultaneously, if so desired. If just Option 1 was installed, Mac users couldn’t print at all (unless you had a printer set up just for Mac users, and they’d be printing for free.)
    • There are 6 different authentication options, but username/password is most popular, and it would probably be Owen ID, but this would be a problem for guests and non-Owen Vandy people. Printing is a first come, first serve and could result in lines when using the card swipe. Students may or may not have access to printer queue.Can designate by print server who pays how much for printing (e.g.- Owen vs. Law)
    • Administrator can override a job if necessary, but both options seem limited in what can be done if someone prints someone else’s stuff, or if a refund is needed.
    • Cost: You pay for a license on one print server, and you can install it on as many print servers as you want, but you also pay per client.
    • We aren’t sure when the next presentation is. I’m sure Bill Hook will let us know.
15. New website – content needed. As it is now November, please remember to continue working on your areas of responsibility for the new website.
    • If you are creating fresh content (stuff that isn’t on the current site), please get it to me by Friday, November 19th.
    • If you would like a form (to gather or request info of some sort), please write, type, or draw what you have in mind by Friday, November 19th.
    • If you think you were supposed to do something, but have misplaced your info or it’s still a bit foggy on what you needed to do, please let me know as soon as possible, and I would be HAPPY to talk with you.

Have a good weekend, everyone! Thanks for your attention and time!

1. The training session, Giving Presentations & Using Microsoft PowerPoint Effectively, Part 2, is this week. For those who missed it, Rachel put handouts in your mailboxes. Also, check out the little site she put together for the workshop. At the bottom of the page are links to the PowerPoint presentation (Part 1), pdfs of the handouts, and an online survey. If you went (Amia and Leslie), please remember to fill it out. Part 2 will be also linked here, and additional websites for more advanced features of PowerPoint will be added before the Thursday session (10-11 am in Owen Room 204). Peabody librarians have been invited as well.
2. Check out this page in progress and give feedback to either Deb and or Rachel.
3. As soon as Rachel gets a breather (and some sleep), she’ll get back to working on getting DeepFreeze working on the public workstations later this week.
4. Kilimanjaro is still acting funky on occasion. Danny has had to reboot the printer server on several occasions in the past month, and we don’t exactly know what is wrong. Follow the suggestions on the technology flowchart, and if all else fails (and Rachel is not around), feel free to contact Danny, but be sure to let Rachel know (via email or in person) that you did. Be sure to look at the back of the flowchart for directions on what to do on weeknights and weekends.
5. Rachel went to a conference this past weekend in St. Louis. It was the LITA (Library & Information Technology Association) National Forum. There were lots of great sessions, and wonderful speakers. She drove up there with Dale Poulter, and both Suellen and Rick Stringer-Hye were there. Not only did she get to network with other librarian geeks, she got to know some of her colleagues better. It was a wonderful experience, and she is full of ideas for the WML website and Staffweb as well as ideas for collaborations with the other libraries. Very cool stuff.

Have a good weekend, everyone! Thanks for your attention and time!