WML Tech Updates

If you haven’t heard the news, is now being intergrated in a library’s catalog!

“We’re happy to announce that the Danbury Library in Danbury, Connecticut has become the first library in the world to put LibraryThing for Libraries on its live catalog. The Danbury Library—already breaking ground with an active blog and a MySpace page—continues to innovate and experiment. And we finally have something to show people!”

For more information on this amazing project (and for some nifty screen shots), view the whole article on Thingology, LibraryThing’s Ideas Blog.

I also want to encourage you to go straight to their catalog and play with it yourself! It’s very cool!

Congrats to Tim Spalding and his LibraryThing Team and to Kate Sheehan, Danbury’s Coordinator of Library Automation, for making this happen and being a role model for all the libraries who know their OPAC sucks and are positive that things can only improve.

Holy smokes! I read my feeds pretty regularly.  And each day I learn something new, and some days, I learn a whole heck of a lot!   I’m amazed at how fast many web technologies are radically growing, evolving, and improving the way we interact with the web and with one another. But this post (rather, the technology itself) just got my mind racing about the possibilities. Read on.

On the Library Garden blog, there was a post about a new widget called YackPack that works like a walkie-talkie. You can talk to individuals or groups of people.

This fun widget allows you to very easily put voice on any type of Web page, with no configuration or registration to do, no software to download, no money to spend—just one “push-to-talk” button widget embedded on your site and you have a web walkie-talkie for live voice chat from any Web page.

The folks at Library Garden also talked about other technologies too, but the potential for having a talk button on a library website (and maybe on every research guide, database details page, help page, etc.) is amazing!  Users could be using Meebo where they can just IM a librarian without having to download, install, or have an IM client at all.   But with YackPack, they could just talk to a librarian.  Here’s a little video that they had linked off their page.  The video shows you how to add the little widget to a wiki.  They use PBwiki in this example, but you can plop it on any type of webpage.  How cool is that?

Voice chat… the next big thing?

They do talk about other technologies in this post, and overall, this is an excellent blog to be reading regularly if you aren’t already doing so.  They always have engaging, fun content that will keep you coming back for more.

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.

Not sure you have seen this, but it’s been the talk of a lot of major blogs I read. I shared this with Paul and Flo, and I think it’s important enough to share with everyone in WML.

It’s an essay called Changing Roles of Academic and Research Libraries that derives from a discussion from the Roundtable on Technology and Change in Academic Libraries that took place last November. It discusses transformation, leadership, the risks of undertaking the tenets proposed in the essay, the role of library professionals, and more. I was really impressed with the depth and insight provided in the essay, but in particular, this section that tries to make sense of the “messy future” ahead:

There are three essential actions libraries must take to achieve the necessary transformation and remain vital forces on campus in the years ahead:

• First, libraries must evolve from institutions perceived primarily as the domain of the book to institutions that users clearly perceive as providing pathways to high-quality information in a variety of media and information sources.
• Second, the culture of libraries and their staff must proceed beyond a mindset primarily of ownership and control to one that seeks to provide service and guidance in more useful ways, helping users find and use information that may be available through a range of providers, including libraries themselves, in electronic format.
• Third, libraries must assert their evolving roles in more active ways, both in the context of their institutions and in the increasingly competitive markets for information dissemination and retrieval. Libraries must descend from what many have regarded as an increasingly isolated perch of presumed privilege and enter the contentious race to advance in the market for information services—what one participant in our roundtable termed “taking it to the streets.”

There are several other statements that really caught my eye within this essay. But I still encourage you to read it in its entirety. Here are some examples:

“The changes that are occurring—in technology, in research, teaching and learning—have created a very different context for the missions of academic and research libraries. This evolving context can afford a moment of opportunity if libraries and librarians can respond to change in proactive and visionary ways. There are diverse and unmet needs now arising within the academy—many of which closely align with the traditional self-definitions of academic and research libraries. “

“The transitions occurring in the production, dissemination, and retrieval of information provide important opportunities for academic libraries to lead their institutions in pursuing new modes of academic research and productivity, much as they did in helping their institutions adopt digital technology in its earlier stages. The evolutions that continue to occur—changing paradigms of knowledge production, expanding sources and modes of dissemination, faster and broader accessibility to a growing range of information – all have the ring of opportunity from the standpoint of an entrepreneur. Changes in technology and modes of academic work create new kinds of needs that libraries can help fulfill. In this sense the challenges libraries now face are the same ones that confront any contender in the expanding market for information: there is a continuing need to adapt to rapid change, to keep pace with new developments in technology and new competition in the industry. “

“The challenge for libraries, their leadership and staff, is to recast their identities in relation to the changing modes of knowledge creation and dissemination, and in relation to the academic communities they serve.”

And finally, “Today’s library staff must include people who see themselves as active contenders in a race for relevance, regard, and resources. Some of its members must have strong technical skills and an ability to identify specific areas in which technology can advance the institution in fulfilling its academic mission. Library staff must be capable of working effectively in partnership with faculty members to enhance the strength of teaching and research. To be certain, there are many staff members of this kind in academic libraries today.”

This information presented in this video is somewhat mind-blowing.