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If you live in Ohio, you’re in very real danger of losing your public libraries. You need to contact your legislators now to save them or else Governor Strickland’s proposed budget cuts are going to end up shutting them down.
Save Ohio’s Libraries
Save Our Library (Columbus Library)
When I picked up my new Palm Pre smartphone last week, one of the store employees said, “You must have been waiting for this phone for a long time.” He could tell I was excited about it. I told him I’d been waiting for this phone for nine years, six of them on Palm Treos and a Centro, waiting for the next leap.
And now that I finally have it, I can say that while it’s quite clearly a first generation device, I love it. This post will explain why, but it won’t be a comparison of the iPhone versus the Pre. I’ve only played with an iPhone a couple of times, so it wouldn’t be fair, plus everyone knows I’m not a fan of Apple, so I can’t really be objective about this. So instead, this will be a review of the Pre from the perspective of a Treo/Centro owner wondering if she should upgrade, because that’s the question I’m getting asked the most. Back in 2003, I started a popular page called What’s on My Treo 600 that listed all of the apps I used and as a result, I heard from Palm owners for years (and occasionally still do), so this is an area I know well.
In fact, a lot of my issues with the Pre come from features the Treos/Centros did better, but I’ll also describe what’s new, both the good and the bad. As a result, this will be a long review, so skip this post if you’re not interested in smartphones or the Pre.
Let’s start with the Pre’s problems, because there are quite a few of them. There are a lot of little details that are just annoying and even worse, time-consuming, as well as some bigger issues.
Boooo
1. My biggest gripe with the phone is the lack of an expansion slot, limiting me to 8GB of memory. While early adopters are living more and more in the cloud, it’s not enough yet to rely completely on it for media. It also doesn’t help on airplanes, so Palm really needs to figure out a way to increase memory, either internally or via a MicroSD slot like the Centro had.
2. LED notifications are my second biggest issue with the phone. On my Centro, there was an LED that lit up orange when I had voicemail waiting, red when the phone was charging, and green when it was fully charged. Years ago, I downloaded an app called “Butler” that turned the LED green when new email or text messages came in. However, on the Pre, there seems to be no LED indicator whatsoever, which is a huge issue for someone who doesn’t want to be staring at her phone every minute. I want the phone to do the work, and the lack of LED notifications on the Pre, even acknowledging a full charge, bugs the heck out of me. The lack of an LED light means an app can’t fix this for me, either.
There are also other inexplicable quirks that are frustrating for former Treo/Centro owners. Like the fact that there’s no way to forward a text message, and there’s no character count when I’m typing one. That’s not a bad thing when I’m texting a single person, as Sprint now automatically divides the text into multiple messages, but it doesn’t work well at all if I’m sending texts to Twitter or Facebook. Hopefully these kinds of things are just oversights that will get fixed in software updates pretty quickly.
3. The keyboard is about the same as the Centro, so it’s not an issue for me, but the lack of the Keycaps program and the ability to add it is a problem. I realize this is purely my behavior based on how I had customized the Centro, but the ability to tap a key twice to get the symbol or hold down the key for a capital letter cannot be overestimated in terms of efficiency. And the Pre’s predictive text dictionary isn’t strong enough to overcome this deficit yet, so I have to hold out hope that we can get KeyCaps back someday.
4. The multitasking feature is fantastic (more about that in the “plus” list), but sometimes it hits the wall at the weirdest times. Usually, I can keep email, text messages, and the web up in individual cards and not have a problem. I can even open Pandora or the App catalog or a couple of other websites and be fine. But every once in a while I’ll get messages that I can’t open a new card, even when I’ve closed most apps. In fact, at one point, the Pre told me I couldn’t open the App catalog even when nothing else was open. I rebooted to clear out the memory and then it was fine, but I haven’t been able to find a pattern to it, other than to know I can’t have too much else open when I want to play Sudoku.
5. While I would never call “swipes” and “gestures” intuitive, I’ve gotten used to them pretty quickly. I do miss the navigation pad on the Centro, but I’m sure I’ll get used to the new ways of doing things. I mention it only so Treo/Centro owners know what they’re getting into. I still press the pearl button to take a picture, even though that takes me out of the camera app. I’m still learning to tap on the screen to do a lot of things, but I’m sure that will get better in time the more I use the Pre.
6. The email program is really great and really annoying. I’ll mention the good stuff below, but the fact that I can’t do multiple deletes in one task from the inbox or delete a message and go directly to the next one is truly frustrating. I really dislike things that waste my time, and this is one of them, so I hope Palm fixes it pretty quickly or someone comes up with a better email app. At least it’s easy (and even fun!) to swipe spam off the screen to delete it.
7. There are some quirks in the web browser, although overall it works very well. One of the sites I use the most, Google Reader, has an annoying tic on the Pre where when I tap on “mark all of these read,” it reloads the page with the next items but remains at the bottom of the page. I then have to scroll up to see the top of the page. This doesn’t happen on all sites, but when it’s one I use a lot, it’s a frustrating time-waster.
8. The lack of a public SDK that lets anyone develop an app is truly becoming a problem, which is surprising coming from the company that invented cellphone apps. In fact, the ability to completely customize a Palm phone was always one of its best features, so it’s troubling that Palm is frustrating its users in this way.
In addition to the fact that developers could fix some of the problems I’ve noted above, waiting for the big name partners to come through is proving a trial. For example, in the photos app, I can set up an account for uploading pictures, but only for Facebook and PhotoBucket. Huh? Yep, no Flickr. That’s just bizarre, and while I can continue to upload pictures to Flickr via email, the Pre is supposed to make things easier and it’s not doing that in all of the areas where it should be. If Flickr isn’t going to create the app or pay to be listed in the native one, a developer will have to create it to make up for this shortcoming. But no one can until that SDK is released.
I fully believe that the Pre’s app catalog has the potential to rival and even exceed that of every other phone, but the longer Palm waits, the more catch-up there will be. Things have changed since Palm phones were the only ones that used apps, and offering new ones is now a standard, not an option. With the rumor that iPhone apps can easily be ported to the Pre and a community that traditionally loves to hack, Palm is losing credibility on this one every day we go without the SDK.
I also want to address battery life as both good and bad. For as long as I’ve had a smartphone, I’ve used up the battery like crazy, first pulling in email and surfing the web, later gobbling up unlimited text messaging plans for lunch. If you’re a power user, you have to expect that you’ll need to power up at least once in the middle of the day if you expect to make it all the way through the evening. I think that’s just a fact of life now.
My friends who have a Pre and don’t use it as much as I do seem fine on battery life. If I watch a couple of videos, stream music, surf the web, and use the push email, I’ll need to recharge a couple of times a day. I’m not a good barometer, because I’d need to recharge a couple of times a day no matter which phone I use. With chargers at work and at home, though, I haven’t felt a need to buy a second swappable battery, at least not yet. We’ll see what happens when I start traveling again. This issue is a wash for me, but it might vary for others. If the Pre’s features make you use it more, expect to power up more.
So those are the major things that have been bugging me, and luckily they’re mostly fixable through software updates and won’t require hardware upgrades (although more storage might be worth it). So let’s jump in to the good things about the Pre, because the good is *really* good.
Hooray!
1. The multitasking is by far the best feature about the Pre, and this alone makes it worth it for me. I can have email (for both of my major accounts) running in one card, text messages in another, a web search in another, and a Twitter client in another, all at the same time. Depending on the Pre’s temperament at that moment, I may also be able to listen to music, check the weather, or find movie times for a show near me. And if a website or Tweet (for Twitter) is slow loading, I can just flip to a different card while it finishes. I expect to be radically more productive at conferences and in meetings just because of this feature.
When multitasking is working properly (which is probably 90% of the time), my phone acts the way I expect to it, like my laptop. I don’t have to close one app to open another one, and I don’t spend any time during the day waiting for my standard apps to load. I can tap on a URL in an email or text message, and it will open a web browser while leaving the message open so that I can refer back to it. If I reply to a message, it comes up in a new card so that I can easily refer back to the text in the original message. I can also go look something up and come back to the message I’m working on. I think at one point I had ten different cards running at once. I can’t stress enough how useful this is, and in many ways, it makes up for a lot of the time-wasting annoyances I listed above.
2. The Touchstone charger is beyond cool - it’s incredibly practical and convenient. It’s one of those things that permeates your expectations once you start to use it. While it’s an expensive add-on for the Pre, almost everyone I know who has the phone bought one because it’s so convenient. In fact, I just bought a second one for work, because this is one of those moments where I’ve gotten to taste the future, and I want it all, now.
Think for a minute about how much time you waste plugging in and unplugging your phone. It’s something we try to make as painless as possible by putting the charger in a convenient spot, but we take for granted that every day or two, we’ll have to actually stop what we’re doing, look at the phone, and work the cable into it. It sounds like a small thing and it is, but you don’t even realize what a time waster that is until you don’t have to do it anymore. Being able to walk in the door when I get home and just set the Pre down and not hassle with cables is pretty phenomenal. It’s just as great at work, too, where the slant of the Touchstone makes it easier for me to check messages as they come in. It also serves as a handy desktop clock, and when I head out to a meeting, I just pick my phone up.
I know it doesn’t sound like much, and it’s certainly not a big enough feature to pull someone away from a different phone to the Pre, but this is the future, my friends. I wrote about a couple of products that promised this technology several years ago in a “Product Pipeline” column, and now it’s finally starting to happen. All this really does is make me impatient for this to become available for my laptop, but if you want a glimpse into how technology will make life better, this is one of those things. The way it just works is completely full of win.
As a side note, I haven’t experienced the resetting problem a few people have reported with the Touchstone, and I don’t think the back gets all that warm. In fact, I think it gets warmer when I use it as an actual phone and talk on it, but then I don’t actually talk much on my cellphone.
Palm Pre resting on the Touchstone wireless charger
In addition, I prefer the conductive back cover that comes with the Touchstone. It makes the Pre less slippery, and it makes it easier to slide the phone open with one hand. For me, the Touchstone is a win all the way around and back.
3. Along those same lines, I very rarely use a cable with my Pre at all thanks to the wireless, push Exchange synching. This would work with Gmail and other email providers, as well, but it’s particularly impressive to a past Treo/Centro owner like me who’s had to manually synchronize bits and pieces over the years. When I first set up the phone, I just put in my Exchange info once in the email client, and it magically started syncing my email, calendar, contacts, and tasks. Unfortunately, it’s not grabbing my memos for some reason, but everything else is there, and it all happens in real-time without me ever plugging into my laptop. For business level users, this is indispensable stuff, and it shows how Palm pays attention to that market. You don’t have to install apps via the Palm Desktop anymore either, as it all happens “over the air.” In fact, there is no Palm Desktop anymore, and the Pre doesn’t even come with an installation disc.
4. The keyboard is a subjective measure, but I’m one of those people who wants a physical, tactical keyboard for typing, so the Pre is perfect for me. I got used to the smaller version on the Centro, so the size isn’t an issue for me, although I could see where it might be for people with larger fingers. That said, the Pre fits in my hand very well, and I can still type with one hand if I need to. In fact, I can completely operate the Pre with one hand, which was always one of my favorite features of the Treo/Centro. I especially like the curve of the phone, which doesn’t feel like a square brick, and it fits easily in my pocket even more comfortably than the Centro did.
5. Despite the things I dislike about the email program, the way it combines my inboxes into one is pretty cool, and it mimics how I think about my email. I can still view each inbox separately but I’m finding the combined view very useful, and when I reply to a message, the Pre automatically knows which account to use. The attachments are seamless, with plain text files appearing in the email itself. Plus, with the multitasking, I can open the attachment and still read the email at the same time. The integration is really stellar. In fact, sometimes the push is so great that I get messages on my phone before they appear on my computer.
Email on the Pre - combined inbox or view each one individually
6. The toolbar/notification area is very useful, and it’s a huge improvement over the way past phones have handled interruptions. When a new email or text message comes in, it doesn’t fill the whole screen. This is as useful as some of the tics are annoying. You can deal with the incoming notice by tapping on it to open it in a new card, and thanks to the multitasking feature, you won’t lose what you were working on or have to re-open it. Or, you can ignore the notice and just keep doing what you were doing. Making these notices less of an interruption makes me more efficient, which I appreciate. It’s clearly one of the benefits of starting over and creating an operating system designed for this type of device.
The same thing is true with the app integration into the toolbar. When I listen to music, whether in the native app or via Pandora, the Pre puts the controls right in the toolbar so they’re always available. I can envision a day when that toolbar gets too crowded, but right now, this is another example of the Pre working the way I do on my laptop. It’s a killer feature for me, because I don’t even have to switch cards to control the music.
Conclusion
There are lots of other small quirks or cool things, but these are my overall impressions after a week with the Pre. Major enhancements to the Palm line include the 3-megapixel camera (with flash), much better Google Maps integration, WiFi, GPS turn-by-turn directions, YouTube videos, and they’re all well done on the Pre. The backup feature is a huge improvement, as I found out when my first Pre died and I had to replace it with a new one. I was able to just enter my profile name on the new device and almost everything synchronized down to it from Palm’s server. There were some app preferences that I had to re-enter, but I don’t know if that’s standard or if the first Pre just hadn’t fully synchronized yet. Either way, it’s nice to not have to worry about backing things up, although it does raise some privacy concerns for me.
As do the location-aware services, which I turned on in exchange for the convenience of finding restaurants and movies around me, along with the customized weather and navigation services. That’s another post, though, so suffice it to say that while I don’t plan to ever broadcast my location in real-time, I still struggle with this issue. It’s not unique to the Pre, though, so it’s a wash in the plus/minus equation.
So should you consider getting a Pre? If you can get the rebate that makes it $199, I think it’s well worth it, especially if you’re one of those people who likes the cutting edge. I’m really looking forward to seeing what the hackers and app developers do with it, and the success of the phone will depend quite a bit on what happens in that arena.
On our computers, we’re living more and more in a web browser, and on our phones, the early adopters are spending more and more time in these tunnels (apps) that customize the experience and make it more convenient. Convergence was always going to happen, but I’m not sure we realized the road that would get us there would start with apps. It won’t stay that way forever, but it’s the transition bandaid of the moment, and if the Pre can compete on apps, it will bury the bar with multitasking.
It’ll need a stronger processor and more storage to get there, but it’s a very solid first generation device, especially for one that’s been completely rewritten from the ground up. It’s not for everyone (no phone is), but if it can deliver on the promise of its potential, the future will arrive that much faster. I’d give the Pre two thumbs up if I didn’t think it would make it easier for someone to pry it out of my hands. I’ll raise that to four thumbs when that SDK is released and we get to see what the phone can really do.
Come on, Palm - let’s get moving!
If you want a glimpse into one possible future for LIS education, look no further than Scott Nicholson’s free Gaming in Libraries course, running now on a computer near you. It makes use of a fascinating mix of tools that together let anyone participate at whatever level works for them, even after this iteration ends.
Dr. Scott Nicholson is an associate professor at the Syracuse iSchool. In fact, he’s the program director for the Masters of Science in Library and Information Science program there, and if you’ve followed gaming in libraries at all, his name is already familiar to you because of his video series, the monthly podcast he runs, the annual census he started in 2007, the Library Game Lab he runs, and more.
Now he’s one-upping himself and running a 30-day, introductory course about gaming in libraries. Syracuse and WISE consortium students can take the course for credit, but anyone, anywhere can watch the daily video lectures he’s posting on YouTube and discuss them in the class community on ALA Connect (you have to join the community to see the discussions, but anyone, including non-ALA members, can do that). The syllabus is available as a Google doc, and you can even download the videos from the Internet Archive to take them on the go. So far, the videos have ranged between about 5-17 minutes, so they’re easy to watch and digest.
He’s already up to video lecture #10 (I’ve been remiss in not posting about this before now), and you can join the other 66 participants in the Connect community to discuss your thoughts about the content, including some videos by guest lecturers. In fact, this is one of the most active communities on Connect right now since it’s such a hot topic.
In fact, now is a good time to jump in, because starting with lecture #9 (posted yesterday), Scott is breaking new ground by offering new insight and specific strategies for planning gaming programs in libraries.
“This is a new conceptual model I’ve developed over the last few months on how to look at the library gaming experience, and then I use that model to create five gaming archetypes, into which you can classify all (I hope) library gaming experiences. The archetypes then form a bridge between library goals and specific game choices.
Lecture #10, Gaming in Libraries Class Session 10 - Five Gaming Experience Archetypes
Watch for yourself and see what you think. Whether you’re new to the topic or an expert advising others, the new model alone is worth it (I love that it’s called SNAKS). With a total cost of $0, you’ve got nothing to lose, and if your library’s gaming program is relatively young, the content from the course will be invaluable for you. I hope other LIS professors begin teaching Scott’s model when they talk about gaming, and libraries that use it should report back about how it works so that we can begin building resources around it. Luckily, Scott is writing a book that will include information about the model, but I’m sure he’ll be reporting further research around it via the Library Game Lab.
For the past two years, Dr. Scott Nicholson at the Syracuse iSchool has conducted an annual census to help us learn more about libraries offering gaming services. I can’t tell you how valuable that data has been when I get calls from reporters, so I’m hoping you’ll help us continue to build this archive of information.
If your library offered any type of gaming program last year (board games, video games, computer games, etc.), please fill out the survey before it closes on May 31. It’s open to all types of libraries, and Scott will publish the results for everyone, just as he’s done for the last two years.
Thanks!
Of course it’s the Aarhus Public Libraries in Denmark. Pretty cool stuff. I especially like the line about making the library about what the youth need from libraries, rather than what libraries need from youth. [Thanks, Heather!]
Mindspot the Movie: The Library as Universe
Sometimes we tell people that things live forever on the internet and that anyone can find them (so don’t post that picture of yourself drinking alcohol, young man), but I want to highlight how some important things from just a couple of months ago are becoming impossible to find. If we’re not careful, the haystack is going to disappear, never mind the needle.
For example, take the discussion that happened on Twitter during ALA’s Midwinter Meeting just under two months ago. The Meeting had a hashtag for tracking content (#alamw09), and almost everyone used it most of the time. There was a lot going on in that tag, so much so that I thought it was a tipping point for the Association in terms of communication tools. I even debriefed what happened on Twitter for ALA staff afterwards so that they’d be able to see the patterns.
But try to find that discussion now, and it’s almost impossible. Most people (including me) rely on Twitter’s search engine (which was formerly called “Summize” and run by a different company until Twitter bought it). If you search Twitter now for the #alamw09 hashtag, you get exactly one page of results (yesterday there were two), and only a couple of those tweets were actually posted during the event itself. If you look up #alamw09 at hashtags.org, you’ll get more results from the Meeting itself, but there’s still only one page, and you had to have manually followed the hashtags.org Twitter account for them to have tracked your tweets, so even if you could see older results than what shows, it would be an incomplete archive at best. Search Technorati for #alamw09 and you get eight blog posts. Ironically, you can get most of the public tweets from Midwinter by searching FriendFeedlooking for anything from #ala2008 on Twitter, although there again FriendFeed saves the day, but for how long?
So for all of our aggregation attempts of that Twitter content, they may only work in the moment for the moment. It turns out they’re miscellaneous *and* searchable in only one place (for now), a pretty bad combination in hindsight. Thank heavens I favorited in Twitter so many of the alamw09 tweets, although that’s still not ideal. I have to manually page through them to find the ones I want, and I already have 35 pages of favorites.
After Midwinter, I tried to start moving my #alamw09 favorites into Evernote so that I’d be able to search and group them, but I haven’t had time to complete that process, and I just can’t seem to train myself to add new tweets there as I favorite them. The ratio of effort between clicking on a star and filling out a few words of metadata is just too much in the middle of my day, so this looms as a project in my future if I really want to save this stuff. Even then, there’s no guarantee Evernote will stick around, but at least I can export from it.
So if you were using a hashtag to aggregate content, thinking it would be easier to find it all again in the future, think again. You’re going to have to do something more proactive and manual than relying on Twitter’s search engine or Google. You’ll have to decide what level of ephemeraliness you’re comfortable with for that conversation, because you may not be able to get back to it if you let someone else manage access to the archive. In this context, it’s a shame so much of the conversation has moved away from blog comments (where individuals can openly archive it) to Twitter and FriendFeed. And if you’re a government or archive organization looking to preserve this kind of digital content, the stakes are getting raised on you.
Am I missing any other options for finding past hashtag conversations? Please tell me yes in the comments.
Addendum: Potential ideas for archiving - you could subscribe to the RSS feed of a hashtag in an RSS reader and export them, right? Or subscribe to the RSS feed via email? Other ideas?
Often. But I had a great time playing Library Mini Golf at the Downers Grove Public Library on March 8, as did hundreds of other people on LMG’s biggest course yet (a full 18 holes across two floors). Check out the pictures from the day in my Flickr set to see just how much fun we all had. I’ll be including the event as a case study in my next issue of Library Technology Reports on gaming in libraries, which I’m currently writing.
The DGPL staff, Friends group, and the Library Mini Golf crew (Rick, John, and Bob) all did an amazing job on this totally amazing event!
This is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while. Check out Aaron Schmidt’s new project - Creating (the) Future (for) Libraries. Get yours now while you can - they’re a limited edition run, and they’re beyond awesome.
I’ve written before about Rick Bolton and his Library Mini Golf nonprofit that creates 18-hole mini golf courses for libraries to use as fundraisers. This time I’m particularly excited to note that Rick has partnered with the Downers Grove Public Library Foundation in Chicago’s western suburbs to hold the first such event in this area, because DGPL is my home library.
If you’re in the Chicagoland area, I hope you’ll make some time to come play mini golf at Downers Grove PL this Sunday, March 8, from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. It’s a fundraiser, so adults can play the whole course for just $5, while kids age 15 and younger can play for $3. Putt your best and if you do well, you might find yourself in a playoff round at 4:15 p.m. Experience the stacks in a whole new way!
I can’t wait to finally see this in action for myself, so I’ll definitely be there. Give me a heads up if you’re coming, and we can tee off together. If you live in the area, consider thanking the local sponsors by doing business with them.
Today I was part of a panel session about Web 2.0 tools for the GMC/PCMA
Greg Fine - Association Forum
showed some of their Association Professionals throughout History video
showed the map of online communities from 2007 (”gulf of youtube”)
social media is about building community, and Greg likes this visual because it shows there are actual places and you can’t just aimlessly wander around
- it lets you leverage existing networks
- it allows us to easily create and share information with one another (as associations, we’re about associating)
- allows this to happen in an instantaneous way
- on a platform that people are comfortable with
so if we as organizations leverage these platforms, we make it easier for our members to find us and interact with us
- it allows you to evangelize your members and your customers
there are generational distinctions - generally accepted distinctions
uses acceptable footwear for men on day one of their new job as way to distinguish between them
greatest generation - wingtips
Xers - black lace-up, but moved to the boat shoe
Millennials/GenY - tennis shoes
Gamers - flip-flops
can’t talk to a flip-flop from a wingtip perspective
even the tennis show crowd may not totally get the flip-flop one
also have the 80-20-1 rule
80% of people who are on the internet only look/lurk and don’t engage
20% of the 80% actively engage (read RSS, have a Facebook page)
1% of that 20% are active users of social media online (blog, post to Wikipedia, etc.)
EXCEPT for the gamers, where the numbers are reversed
only 1% are not active online, etc.
the #1 rule is that the organization totally loses control in this environment
if someone wants to say something bad about you, they don’t need your site/platform to do it
so embrace it
do you use free or proprietary and build your own?
Greg is a big believer in free
- free
- proprietary usually means separate authentication scheme and people have password fatigue now
- do you have an open or closed system (can anyone be a member or is it a member benefit)
Association Forum makes everything open because if you care enough to join, maybe you’ll eventually become a member
there’s no right or wrong, but you need to be deliberate about what you’re going to do
set reasonable expectations
mentioned a case where a group thought they’d failed because they only had 1,200 people on their Facebook page
but they only had 10,000 members total!
you cannot think like you - you have to think like your audience
just because you don’t use it doesn’t mean others shouldn’t
others may create these sites (like a Facebook page) for you if you don’t do it
you have to integrate it with traditional methods
you don’t just do one thing in isolation - f2f, email newsletters, etc. are still valid
taken all together, it makes it all more valuable
it’s like a football experience - it’s the future of the association experience
the audience in the stadium are the members, who paid admission
within that audience are different levels (box seats versus bleachers)
over time, our experiences inside the stadium may be more valuable than just being a member
some tools:
- Facebook
- Forum Effect (blogging)
Flickr - an online picture sharing site that lets you tag images
showed pictures tagged with ASAE
user-generated content (pictures from attendees)
everybody has a cell phone these days, and these phones have cameras
35,000 pictures were posted from a conference when they asked people to take a few and then they had a download station
YouTube - videos
when someone comes in to present now, they do a “5 questions with xxxx speaker” video
total time investment per video is one hour, including the interview
they also allow the person to use the video, too
LinkedIn and Facebook
don’t upload your member list to a third-party site to require people who join are members, because this is a violation of your members’ privacy
let anyone become a member on your page
takes five minutes to set this stuff up
strategy is important!
when you’re thinking about all of this
Association Forum uses these sites as guideposts to help people get to the Forum website
Brad Lewis - Professional Convention Management Association
“luxury expenditures” - travel
is in the media countering these negative perceptions and the distinctions between legitimate travel and these types of excesses
PCMA uses:
- Facebook
- Flickr
- LinkedIn
- blog on TypePad
- YouTube
goals for PCMA:
- want to be where their members are
- need to participate in the current technologies
- facilitate connections
- create member engagement, retention
- brand experience; how can your members interact with you?
- enhanced exposure for events, programs, products, and services
- create added value
- learn something new every day
their most successful site is LinkedIn
recommend to their chapters that they create sites, too
you do lose some control
PCMA has 6,000 members and more than 1,000 have joined the LinkedIn group
PCMA posts new content there and posts event news
no hard sells there
eases people into participation in the organization
present jobs, speaker info
most of the room was already on LinkedIn
from an association standpoint, your members can already do a multitude of things there (and on these other sites)
one sign-on
try to make your name the sign across platforms
want the full name and the acronym because you don’t know what people will search on
monitoring and control:
- wild west; just need to accept that because you can’t prevent it
- PCMA does delete some stuff like direct sales solicitations
- does take a staff commitment, regardless of which department is assigned to monitor
- think about how you’re fostering and feeding the community, too; that’s why you want to choose which sites are best for you and your members
PCMA doesn’t mind when people say a session was horrible, because it gives them feedback
take action:
- work with marketing to create a group, work with membership to update it
- if you’re not monitoring what’s happening, your competition probably is
- monitor for referral requests (”who knows of a good xxxx company?”), even if you don’t answer back
Brad encourages third party responses
what it’s for:
- networking with colleagues
- get updates
- ask questions
- gain insights
- share ideas
what it’s not for:
- soliciting (it’s like using the wrong fork at dinner)
- direct promotion
average age of a PCMA member is 47
one of the young kids at a table didn’t know what LinkedIn was - “facebook for old people”
Facebook
- target market segmentation
- students (announce scholarships, internships, communication with PCMA student staff)
- create event
- discussion boards (students were voluntarily making recommendations to others about joining PCMA)
Flickr
- annual meeting (linked from communications, photos for dailies, member engagement even if they can’t attend)
- social networking centered around photos
- share photos within groups and tags
TypePad blog
- new PCMA Chairman John Folks’ blog
- puts face on leadership
- way for leadership to connect with members and get feedback
- start conversations among colleagues
YouTube
- PCMA has a YouTube channel
- some leadership hasn’t wanted to be on YouTube
- only have a few select videos but it’s a good way to put a face on the organization and tell stories
proprietary systems
- PCMA did purchase an expensive product for “PCMA Connect”
- can trial on free before you try proprietary
- had bells and whistles but was a separate destination
Learnings
- conversation happens organically
- hot topics are anonymity, reluctance to speak your mind, general best has been more social (New Year’s resolutions)
be relevant to the people who connect with you
philosophies and conclusions
- your member profile will determine which platform works best for you
- leadership acceptance, need some buy-in
- certainly trial this stuff
these are just new assets in the arsenal, and they’re even free
- important to engage in relevant business of today
Jenny Levine (me)
here are my slides (12MB, PDF)
Going into ALA’s Midwinter Meeting last month, I knew Twitter was going to play a much more prominent role than it had in the past. It’s been used heavily at other librarian conferences, but usually in a more social way or as commentary on content during the event. However, Midwinter is a different beast, as it’s primarily a business meeting for the Association, so I wondered how much of that work would happen on Twitter this time around.
Most of the people on ALA’s staff, like most people anywhere, have never heard of Twitter, let alone used it, so I wanted to give them a heads up in case it came up in meetings or in conversations. A couple of years ago, the IT department at ALA implemented monthly update meetings open to all staff, and since we had one scheduled right before Midwinter, I took advantage of the opportunity to highlight Twitter, what it is, and how a few units are using it.
And then we all headed to Denver.
And wow did Twitter play a big part. Kenley Neufeld sums it up pretty well, and even notes how fun the experience was. If you had asked me, I wouldn’t have predicted that four councilors would tweet from the floor during council sessions, thereby providing an effective, real-time transcript of what was happening. Even beyond that, though, I got to participate in meetings I wasn’t physically at (from within other meetings), as did people who weren’t even in Denver. And good things came from all of it (including a helpful guide for what *not* to do).
So when we got back, I decided to do a presentation at the February ITTS Update meeting about Twitter on ALA. Not ALA on Twitter, but Twitter’s effect on the Association and the story of Midwinter that Twitter produced. Luckily, many of the people who tweet about us have a sense of humor, so there were some good laughs in the screenshots, especially about our content management system (Collage). So thank you to everyone who publicly tweeted about us in January, especially at Midwinter, because you helped me illustrate a moment in time when something changed for ALA. I definitely think communication and conferences will never be the same for our organization, and I’m fascinated to see where this all leads.
The only problem with doing these two talks for staff is that I’m so buried in work on launching ALA Connect that I don’t have time to do any training right now. Earlier this month, Timothy Vollmer, an ALA employee at our Washington Office tweeted, “in horrible ironic moment, U.S. Congress is moving faster than ALA.”
For the last month, that’s how I’ve felt at ALA. Units are moving faster than I can, and several have started new Twitter accounts. On the one hand, huzzah! On the other hand, they’re flying a little blind (so please cut them a little slack while they get their Twitter sea legs).
Since I really don’t have time to do training right now, I wanted to pull together a few resources to point my co-workers to until we can do something more formal. I’m also including some explanations for how I track ALA on Twitter in case others want to try these strategies, too.
Since I think it could be useful to others, I’m posting the list here, rather than just sending the information out in an email to staff. If you have additional suggestions, please include them in the comments.
As I was getting ready to hit the “publish” button, I saw Phil Bradley’s post about CILIP and Twitter (or lack thereof). It made me realize how far ALA has come, and how lucky I am to work in an environment where I’m allowed to experiment in these spaces and help integrate them into the Association. I live in a really special place right now, both professionally and personally, and I don’t take that for granted.
There are days when it’s really tough living on the front end of the bell curve, and clearly Dave Lankes had one of those last week. But instead of letting it get him down, it caused him to redouble his efforts and even write an inspirational post for the rest of us. (Emphasis below is mine.)
“We live in Shakespearian Times”
“…I won’t get into the details of the meeting, but suffice to say I had a choice to make - be silent or speak.
You may imagine the choice would be easy for me, but it was not. I too face decisions between easy discontent and uncomfortable action. To stand up invites more work, or derision, and in either case courts conflict. It is just easier sometimes to let things pass.
I know I am not alone in having these choices to make. As I go around the country I encounter too many librarians who see the vision, who embrace change, but have grown too tired and discouraged to hope again. They are quieted by the scars of past optimism. These are the conversations that I have the hardest time with. I want to ‘go all inspirational’ and call them to action, but I too have those scars, and have plenty of times when I tried and failed. It is not a good feeling. I would like to avoid it too. So I never want to fault others for their decisions….
It may sound simplistic, but for me it comes down to needing some encouragement. We need to know that we are not alone. We are not. There is a whole pool of fellow librarians that ‘get it.’ We also need to realize that those who get it aren’t just new librarians, but directors, managers, and policy makers. We have a lot of good examples to show the way as well. When I have those bad days, the first thing I have to do is decide to speak up. Then I have to do something. Even if whatever I decide to do is wrong, it is something. Finally, I listen to Shakespeare. Seriously.
For some people when they need to get a pick me up it is music, for others a movie, for still others it is ‘the story’ I’ve talked about before (that time that you as a librarian changed someone’s life for the better). But for me, Shakespeare … Henry V’s St. Crispen’s Day Speech. I have to thank George Needham for introducing me to it….
How do I stay optimistic? I realize first the issues I face are miniscule to the good I can do. How do I get inspired to face intransigence, or laziness, or ineptitude? I look right past them at the real goal, and those who really need me.
Block me, and I will go around you. Build a wall, and I will build a door. Lock the door and I will break a window. And if I don’t have have a leader to inspire me, I will lead. If I don’t have a team that will support me, I will recruit a team from beyond the organizational boundaries - every policy has a loophole, every system has a hidden reward.” [The Participatory Librarianship Starter Kit]
I think I’m going to print this out and post it above my desk, so thanks for writing this, Dave. And along these same lines, I want to note one other thing about librarians. We don’t get the credit we deserve for leading in the 2.0 world, but more importantly, we don’t give ourselves enough credit. While I always think there’s more we can do, experiment with, and improve, it’s also important to take a step back and survey just how much we’ve done in this sphere as a profession.
Librarians were one of the first professions blogging, and by a pretty wide margin. In fact, I’ll even go out on a limb to say that behind the techies, I think we had the largest critical mass first - ahead of the journalists, marketers, lawyers, and other trades that have a large presence in the blogosphere. And in terms of trying out new tools and integrating them into our services, I’d be hard-pressed to find more early adopters in a profession other than librarianship in the areas of instant messaging, wikis, Facebook, and Twitter. We swarm on a new tool and play with it faster than 90%+ of the folks out there, and we’re constantly trying new things.
Sure, there’s a wide range of skills and adoption among librarians and only a small percentage are on the front of the bell curve, but the next time you hear someone berate libraries for staying stuck in the past, don’t let them make a generalization. We all need to keep moving forward, but there are a lot of good things happening in the profession, making it an exciting time to be a librarian. Make a wall into a door and keep trying. It’s worth it, and you can make a difference.
I’ve been thinking a lot more about online privacy for the last couple of years, so I was already prepared for the current controversy over Facebook’s change in its Terms of Service, and it wasn’t much of a shock to me. I’ve never really posted pictures there, imported my own blog posts, or posted links to anything that wasn’t already public somewhere else, because their Terms of Service always said they owned it and could do whatever they wanted with it. Even though they seem to be backing off and reverting to the previous TOS, I hope everyone realizes that nothing has really changed because they can implement the same thing in the future at the drop of a hat.
One of the biggest questions that should come out of this is do you want Facebook (and other social networks) to manage your online identity for you and your children? Just as you should be taking responsibility to shred your credit card receipts, checking on your credit reports, etc. to manage your “real world” identity, you should also think through how you manage your online identity, because ignoring the problem and just not having an online identity can actually backfire on you. Does everyone have to blog? Heck no, but there are smaller steps you can take.
I first started taking my online identity more seriously after reading an article titled Say Anything in New York magazine three years ago. I still find it fascinating, and I’ve come to appreciate it even more after having a couple of privacy incidents occur in my own life.
The first incident caused me to backtrack on privacy and limit access to many of my accounts to just friends and family, taking a more traditional approach to the issue. I felt like I needed to shut down open access to my life in order to preserve my identity, so I also cut back on the number of people I friended and became a lot more selective. I became like the father in the New York article, wondering why I would ever make those things public.
During the second incident, however, it turned out to be very fortunate for me that I already had a well-known identity online. In that respect I’m especially lucky I started early because I don’t have a very unique name, “Jenny Levine,” made worse by the fact that I now share that online namespace with an actress.
Now I completely understand the view of the teenager in the article, that it’s better to control your own identity than to let someone else create one for you. I still keep Facebook separate and limited to friends, and I still post most personal pictures for friends and family only, but everything else I share is available publicly because it helps maintain my identity online. It also means I don’t have to struggle as much with who can see what, and how much, and should I friend them back, and all of the other questions that come with participating in social networks.
I think the issue of having some sort of public, online identity will become even more important in the future as kids grow up with digital dossiers that – in many cases - their parents have created for them since birth. In fact, I think we’re going to see a trend in which savvy, educated parents give their children strange(r), unique names so that they can easily register a domain name for them. That way, even a minor presence like a blog or lifestream will always come up as the first result when someone searches for the kid, either to combat false information or provide a positive image (eg, to a potential employer).
As the child grows up, s/he can take over the online presence and populate it him/herself, but at least it’s already established so that someone else can’t fake one. Who knows how long we’ll use domain names, but I think this will be an issue for at least the next decade, whatever form it takes, and I fully expect to see a rise in identity bullying.
Iris Jastram has written a great post titled Facebook’s Devilish Contract, explaining her internal debate over what to do about her presence on social networks. I particularly love her use of the term the “social time out chair,” which is where you put yourself if you don’t maintain a presence on these sites.
As she notes, it’s not really an option for many people to opt out of social networks altogether. Better to post things to your own site and participate at a level you’re comfortable with, because I can tell you from experience that it could actually hurt your identity and reputation if your response to these issues is to just ignore them or take your ball and go home. Even if you quit Facebook, you have to be vigilant elsewhere. On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog, but they also don’t know that you’re you, and at this stage of the game, anyone can be you.
I’ve been thinking a lot more about online privacy for the last couple of years, so I was already prepared for the current controversy over Facebook’s change in its Terms of Service, and it wasn’t much of a shock to me. I’ve never really posted pictures there, imported my own blog posts, or posted links to anything that wasn’t already public somewhere else, because their Terms of Service always said they owned it and could do whatever they wanted with it. Even though they seem to be backing off and reverting to the previous TOS, I hope everyone realizes that nothing has really changed because they can implement the same thing in the future at the drop of a hat.
One of the biggest questions that should come out of this is do you want Facebook (and other social networks) to manage your online identity for you and your children? Just as you should be taking responsibility to shred your credit card receipts, checking on your credit reports, etc. to manage your “real world” identity, you should also think through how you manage your online identity, because ignoring the problem and just not having an online identity can actually backfire on you. Does everyone have to blog? Heck no, but there are smaller steps you can take.
I first started taking my online identity more seriously after reading an article titled Say Anything in New York magazine three years ago. I still find it fascinating, and I’ve come to appreciate it even more after having a couple of privacy incidents occur in my own life.
The first incident caused me to backtrack on privacy and limit access to many of my accounts to just friends and family, taking a more traditional approach to the issue. I felt like I needed to shut down open access to my life in order to preserve my identity, so I also cut back on the number of people I friended and became a lot more selective. I became like the father in the New York article, wondering why I would ever make those things public.
During the second incident, however, it turned out to be very fortunate for me that I already had a well-known identity online. In that respect I’m especially lucky I started early because I don’t have a very unique name, “Jenny Levine,” made worse by the fact that I now share that online namespace with an actress.
Now I completely understand the view of the teenager in the article, that it’s better to control your own identity than to let someone else create one for you. I still keep Facebook separate and limited to friends, and I still post most personal pictures for friends and family only, but everything else I share is available publicly because it helps maintain my identity online. It also means I don’t have to struggle as much with who can see what, and how much, and should I friend them back, and all of the other questions that come with participating in social networks.
I think the issue of having some sort of public, online identity will become even more important in the future as kids grow up with digital dossiers that – in many cases - their parents have created for them since birth. In fact, I think we’re going to see a trend in which savvy, educated parents give their children strange(r), unique names so that they can easily register a domain name for them. That way, even a minor presence like a blog or lifestream will always come up as the first result when someone searches for the kid, either to combat false information or provide a positive image (eg, to a potential employer).
As the child grows up, s/he can take over the online presence and populate it him/herself, but at least it’s already established so that someone else can’t fake one. Who knows how long we’ll use domain names, but I think this will be an issue for at least the next decade, whatever form it takes, and I fully expect to see a rise in identity bullying.
Iris Jastram has written a great post titled Facebook’s Devilish Contract, explaining her internal debate over what to do about her presence on social networks. I particularly love her use of the term the “social time out chair,” which is where you put yourself if you don’t maintain a presence on these sites.
As she notes, it’s not really an option for many people to opt out of social networks altogether. Better to post things to your own site and participate at a level you’re comfortable with, because I can tell you from experience that it could actually hurt your identity and reputation if your response to these issues is to just ignore them or take your ball and go home. Even if you quit Facebook, you have to be vigilant elsewhere. On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog, but they also don’t know that you’re you, and at this stage of the game, anyone can be you.
The radical cleric Abu Qatada is to appeal against the law lords' ruling today that he can be deported from the UK in spite of fears that he may be tortured abroad, his legal team said.
Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, has signed a deportation order to be served on Qatada immediately.
The cleric's lawyer, Gareth Peirce, said she had lodged an appeal at the European court of human rights, which could take as long as two years to decide on the matter.
She described the ruling as a "bad message to send out to the world" and said that under its terms her client would be returned to Jordan "where it is completely accepted that the chosen methodology of interrogation for 'security' suspects is torture".
By deporting Qatada, Peirce said, the UK was "undermining our international treaty committment to use our best efforts to bring about the eradication of torture worldwide".
The law lords backed the Home Office's challenge against a court of appeal ruling that Qatada could not be deported because he might not receive fair treatment in Jordan, where he claimed evidence against him had been extracted by torture.
They ruled in favour of the government in its attempts to deport two other men, named only as RB and U, to Algeria. They might now also take their case to the European court of human rights.
The ruling represents a victory for the Home Office in its long-running attempts to remove Qatada from the UK and could open the way for other Jordanian and Algerian suspects to be deported to their home countries.
Smith said: "I'm delighted with the lords' decision today in the cases of Abu Qatada, 48, and the two Algerians. It highlights the threat these individuals pose to our nation's security and vindicates our efforts to remove them. My top priority is to protect public safety and ensure national security and I have signed Abu Qatada's deportation order which will be served on him today. I am keen to deport this dangerous individual as soon as I can."
Jordan is one of a number of countries with which the UK has signed a "memorandum of understanding" that the Home Office insists will ensure any deported suspects do not face torture or ill-treatment.
In a 105-page written ruling, Lord Phillips, sitting with Lords Hoffmann, Hope, Brown and Mance, said there were no reasonable grounds for believing that Qatada would be denied a fair trial in Jordan, which has banned the use in its courts of evidence extracted by torture.
Hoffmann said in the judgment: "There is in my opinion no authority for a rule that ... the risk of the use of evidence obtained by torture necessarily amounts to a flagrant denial of justice."
Lord Hope said "care, time and trouble" had been devoted to assessing whether the suspects could be returned to their home countries. "No one, however dangerous, however disgusting, however despicable, is excluded (from the European convention on human rights). Those who have no respect for the rule of law – even those who would seek to destroy it – are in the same position as everyone else."
Human Rights Watch's senior counterterrorism counsel, Julia Hall, said Jordan did use evidence extracted by torture. "Jordanian military courts are not independent and evidence is obtained by the use of torture," she said. "It defies logic to think that trial under such circumstance could mete out justice.
"By treating as acceptable the risk of the use of evidence obtained under torture, the law lords have struck another blow against the global ban on the use of torture." Hall said the Algerians would most likely be detained by their country's notorious department for information and security, whose operatives had been accused of abuses such as beatings, electric shock torture, suspending prisoners from the ceiling and forcing them to ingest chemicals.
Eric Metcalfe, the director of human rights policy at Justice, said agreements that Jordan and other countries had signed with the UK promising that terror suspects would not be tortured were worthless.
"A promise not to torture from a regime that tortures its own people is worth nothing," he said. "It is shameful that the government negotiated these deals in the first place, and saddening that the courts have refused to intervene to stop them. At a time when the Obama administration is cleaning house and renouncing torture, today's ruling shows the UK still clinging to paper promises from torturers."
Amnesty International urged ministers not to take the judgment as a "green light" to hand more people over to regimes where they risked unfair trial and torture. Nicola Duckworth, the group's Europe and central Asia programme director, said: "Diplomatic assurances are completely unenforceable and as such cannot be relied upon. No one should be deported to face a risk of torture, whatever they might be alleged or suspected to have done. If these individuals in question are reasonably suspected of having committed a criminal offence relating to terrorism, it is always open to the UK authorities to charge them and give them a fair trial."
Qatada was once dubbed Osama bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe. The father of five was released on bail after winning his case at an appeal court last year, but was returned to Belmarsh high-security prison in December for breaching his bail conditions. The authorities suspected he was planning to flee to the Middle East, possibly to Lebanon.
Qatada, who was born in Bethlehem as Omar Mahmoud Mohammed Othman, has said he wants to renounce his Jordanian citizenship and return to the land of his birth. He arrived in Britain from Jordan in September 1993 using a forged passport and claimed asylum for himself, his wife and children.
Qatada has been convicted in his absence by Jordan's courts of conspiracy to carry out bomb attacks on two hotels in Amman in 1998, and providing finance and advice for another planned series of bombings.
Library of the Future:Nerve Center of the Community - Thomas Frey, Senior Futurist at The DaVinci Institute, presented at the Topeka Shawnee County Public Library
we spend most of our time thinking about the past
- we know about it and have experienced it
but we’re going to spend the rest of our lives in the future
it’s like we’re walking backwards into the future
epiphanies are one of the things that separate humans from animals
every great new business is an epiphany
Frey had “a full category 5 epiphany”
“the life of an idea junkie”
Frey described a time he and his wife were sitting in a sidewalk cafe when he heard a song and used “Shazam” on his phone to find out the name of a song, which he then immediately downloaded
realized that his phone has a camera, too
the future of retail - when you see someone wearing a jacket you like, just take a picture of it to purchase it (just point and click at it)
in the future, all of our body info will be scanned in so that clothes fit the first time
no longer restricted to just what’s in stores
instead of owning a store, owners could hire models to walk up and down the street (not just clothing, but small appliances, too)
any product, anywhere, anytime
showed a slideshow of modern libraries
what form of payment will you put in a vending machine in 2059?
Frey thinks the vending machine of the future will be mobile and will come to you
will know what you want
might even fly
what music that we listen to today, will people still be listening to 100 years from now in 2109?
more importantly, how will we be listening to music 100 years from now?
will it just appear in our heads? will it still come from speakers?
the ultimate music player will have the ability to assess our reaction to the music and will only serve up music tha we react positively to
ultimate drink dispenser will have the ability to assess what kind of liquids our body needs and will only serve up a liquid that we react positively to
knows exactly how much sugar or cream should go in your coffee
the idea of “perfect water”
we all know polluted water is bad for us
if we take everything out of it, it’s less than optimal
somewhere in between is perfect water for each person in the world (6 billion different combinations)
somewhere in this line of thinking is the interface of the future
system thinking
no famous Roman mathemticians - they weren’t famous because they used Roman Numerals, which was a stupid number system
every number was an equation, which prevented them from doing any higher math with numerals
- no placeholder numbers
–> what systems are we employing today that are the equivalent of Roman Numberals?
- Dewey Decimal System, income tax code, “quart of oil”
is there a better system we could be using? invariably there is
Rick Wakeman video, keyboard player for the rock band Yes
he writes music with 64th and 128th notes
the piece he played in the video could never have been played on a traditional piano - needed a modern keyboard
Frey took a class about how to use a slide rule because he was told he had to
end of the slide rule era, beginning of the calculator era
he named the space between the bottom intersection the “Maximum Freud”
a time of lots of chaos but also of lots of opportunity
what technologies are at Maximum Freud anymore?
- fax machines
- checks
- keyboards
- computer monitors and hardware
- traditional television
- sign language
- invasive surgery
- AM/FM radio
- drill & fill dentistry
- the end of wires (telephone lines, cable TV lines, internet lines, and even power lines - within our lifetime)
the evolution of books
in what year will the last printed book be published?
Gutenberg Press - by 1500, there were more than 5,000 books in print across Europe
through the Espresso Book Machine
something like the Kindle may be as cheap as $5 in 5 years
at what point, is it too expensive for libraries to circulate print books?
when do ebook readers become so ubiquitous that it no longer makes sense to print ink on paper?
when does publishing become downloading titles
small projectors built into devices
information displays built into things
what does a book look like in the future?
every forum now is akin to an online forum, with authors, experts and other readers available to discuss and answer questions on almost every important book ever written
books are now conversations?
10 Global Trends
—————-
1. more people live in urban areas than rural areas (200,000 people a day migrate)
2. 840 million people crossed national borders, more mobile society (as opposed to 50 million in 1950)
3. number of new product launches (300 per day)
4. 550,000 new businesses were launched every month in 2007
5. more than 50% of all women reported being single in 2005
- more than 50% increase in the number of people living alone in the last 20 years
- counter trend of parents living with adult children - grew 67%
6. the number of people working through retirement has doubled
7. minorities will become the majority in 2042 (30% Latinos, 15% Blacks, 9% Asian)
- interracial families, 1000% increase in the past 30 years
- will stop talking about races in the future because they’ll be so undefined
- rises in the percentage of populations that are foreign-born
8. smaller families, bigger houses (700 sq. ft. in 1900)
9. coming boom in data centers (will consume 3% of global electricity supply by 2010; sometime before 2020 power consumption will double)
10. only 14% of all college graduates live in the U.S.
how long will it be before people can get a Ph.D without being literate?
the first time Frey listened to an audiobook, he thought he was cheating
reading is the process of translating the characters (text) on the page
still do it with sound when listening to books
method doesn’t really matter - it still counts
Socrates was not literate - never wrote anything
wouldn’t know anything about him if Plato hadn’t written about him
is reading the ultimate information experience?
are books a technology equivalent to roman numerals?
future of education
——————
did an 18-month study on this topic
organically generated content (courses) going to a global distributed system
an iTunes-like approach to education
teaching requires experts
we can’t train experts fast enough as information expands exponentially
teachers become a chokepoint
overlay a trend line of courses over YouTube, Wikipedia, and Google, it’s flat versus the amount of information being generated - courseware vacuum
MIT OpenCourseWare (1,400 courses) trying to fill that gap
- 12 universities have joined the OpenCourseWare Consotrium (1,800 courses total available)
what is the most important thing I should be learning today?
kids today aren’t being taught what they want to learn
what’s the primary inflection point for change?
- specially architected rapid courseware building, which doesn’t exist yet
12 dimensions of the future courseware architecture
————————————————–
60-minute learning units
modality and language agnostic (not just computer-based, get credit for experience); courses from everywhere but managed online
smart profiler & recommendation engine (what person is most interested in and what they should take next)
truth & accuracy - a high percentage of what’s being taught in classroom today is theoretical; every aspect of society has its own version of the truth
- need a truth authority? won’t work
- need a checks & balances system where any group could put their stamp of approval or disapproval on these courses
certification inputs - early adopters for this will be professional associations (what constitutes sufficient learning); home schoolers will also adopt this
official record-keeping system
global distribution system
available on demand 24/7, anytime, anywhere
less dependent on teachers and schools, more individual control
general study courses will be priced at $1/course
many schools will use these courses to plan their curricula
teachers will go freelance to create their own courses
students who graduate from the equivalent of high school in the future will be 10 times smarter than students today
the idea of taking K-12 education in one year, which will give rise to celebrity teachers
we’ll know when we get the right system put in place because a million new courses will be created
libraries will become the working laboratories for the creation of innovative new courses
libraries are central to his vision
commodity level - Starbucks
product level - a cup of coffee
experience level is what they concentrate on, though
how do we create the ultimate information experience in libraries?
people are using their own PageRank testing to figure out how relevant the library is to them individually
library as place, as opposed to library as service
———————————————-
building is a gathering place
8 reccs for libraries of the future
——————————–
to improve relevance in the minds of the community
1. create a search command center in your library; make it easy to people find information
- can look like a lot of different things, but have to help them conduct searches
- really only doing text searching right now, but need to prepare for other search attributes beyond just audio and video (taste, smell, texture, reflectivity, etc.)
when everyone records what their glasses see, we’re spidering the physical world
2. remote office space
- for every 100 people who get laid off, 7 will start a new business (not that they’ll succeed), so will see a new era of entrepreneurship
- “empire of one”
- cloud computing trend = consumer-driven innovation, rise of the power collaborator, economics of IT are changing, barriers to entry are falling (connectivity, reliability, a quality user experience, and security can now all be assumed)
- business colonies - groupings of “project people” working together as projects form, complete, and disappear
—> at the heart of every business colony will be a library
- people who work from home suffer from either isolation or distractions
—> they need another place to go (proverbial “third place”)
if you were to design a library for these people, what would it look like? what features would it include?
remote office space? a telepresence room?
3. production studios
“when the tools of production are available to everyone, everyone becomes a producer” - The Long Tail
transition from consumers to producers
they want to take ownership of what they create
- blogging stations in the library, podcast studios, one-way mirror glass so that others can watch the production of content
—> passive learning to active producing centers
4. band practice studios
there are 2.2 million bands on MySpace right now, and everyone needs a space to practice
if you put in soundproof rooms, they’ll get used non-stop, all the time
5. entertainment studios
gaming now touches 75% of all US households
Second Life and virtual world stations (creating different communication vehicles)
mini-theaters, mini-planetariums that people can use to create content and post it
art studios to make a cultural hub
exercise studios that combine learning and recreation
6. expert series
so many people are uncomfortable with technology, so once a month, could put some tech experts at the front of the room and let the audience ask questions; let the conversation go where it may
social learning
figure out what’s of interest to the community while raising the tech IQ of the community
7. time capsule room
archiving the history of the community
what did it sound like to drive down Main Street? what did it smell like?
create the room but let the public decide what it turns into
many local companies will probably want their organizations archived there
8. poetry park
public placing inscriptions on large rocks set out around a park
electronic outposts/branches
—————————-
- magazines & periodicals
- reading area
- search command center
- studios
- no books
- efficient operation 1-2 people staffing it
extending influence
——————-
very few library haters out there
very little outbound communication - need to change that; weekly online newsletter?
how do we capitalize on epiphanies?
make your library an epiphany center where people can have ideas and then have the tools to act on them
There was a time when the terms "British", "snowboarder" and "best in the world" would have drawn laughs if uttered in the same sentence. But then, last month, Jenny Jones, a slight 28-year-old from Bristol, won gold in the Winter X Games, a freesports version of the Olympics. Jones made history as the first Briton to stand atop an X Games podium, but it wasn't a medal won easily. While most of us spend our summers working on our tans, Jenny has spent hers honing her freestyle skills at training camps on the eternal snows of Europe's glaciers or in the southern hemisphere during their winter.
Now a growing number of summer camps are being run for amateurs, too. Many are just for women and some even feature instruction from Jones herself.
"It's a great experience teaching girls how to push their own riding and showing them that it's not only guys who can play around on the hill," says Jenny. "Camps are great because they bring together like-minded girls who help one another step out of their comfort zones."
Here are Jenny's pick of the best spring and summer camps for women.
Kommunity Camp: Les Deux Alpes, France
"I have been teaching at the Kommunity Camp for eight years now and it's a great experience. The camp is specially designed for people wanting to learn freestyle or progress their freestyle further, so there's something for everyone. Staff are either pro riders or snowboard instructors, but all are aiming to improve your riding and have a laugh at the same time - there is always classic banter going down.
"We ride from early morning to 1pm, then the afternoon is all volleyball, bungee jumping, football or just the pub. It's hectic, with great coaching and no one takes themselves too seriously."
• 18-25 July, from £510. There are also women-only freeriding clinics throughout the winter; mcnabsnowsports.com
Snowgirls Snowpark, New Zealand
"Snowpark, on New Zealand's South Island, is one of the most beautiful locations I can think of for a girls' snowboard camp. The park is very well maintained and the camp attracts a real bunch of go-getters. Last summer [their winter] I taught on the weekend camps and saw great progression from the girls - their enthusiasm was so high. You find a real range of ages, from 16 to 35, but everyone fits in just fine. We work on all areas of freestyle and had lots of first-timers in the pipe, but they all came out grinning.
These camps seem to attract girls from the UK who are travelling around New Zealand and they must come away from the camp with some brilliant experiences to add to their travelling years."
• Camps run throughout summer, from July to September. Prices are yet to be announced for 2009, but last year a two-day course cost $NZ340 (£123); snowparknz.com/park-school
More Good Times: Mt Hood, Oregon, USA/San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina
"Run by the super-talented Leanne Pelosi, whose snowboard films have taken female riding onto a whole new level, the MGT camps in Argentina and the USA are all about strong role models. The coach-to-rider ratio is about one to five and lessons focus on park and pipe, with some of the biggest stars in snowboarding on board to lead coaching sessions. You can really step up your riding at MGT, with past campers including Olympians, X Games winners and FIS World Cup champions. But it is fun and not all hard work!"
• The first Oregon camp starts on 15 June with an all-inclusive package costing $2,075. The Argentina camps run from July to September, kicking off on 17 July, with an all-inclusive price of $3,200; mgtsnowboardcamp.com
Our Camp: Morzine, France
"Our Camp is run by Gilly Seagrave and her girls-only camps are based out of Morzine in France. It's a great location for a camp, with mellow off-piste through to more challenging freeriding. There are three parks: one really small, one that's ideal for first-timers and two more progressive parks as well as a half-pipe.
"The atmosphere is all about fun and Gilly likes to make it as unintimidating as possible. She has had girls who have never been in a freestyle park before landing 360-degree spins by the end of the week, but if you prefer to just work on piste riding skills this is catered for too. In the evening we cue up video analysis, enjoy yoga sessions and indulge in general girlie hang-out time."
• 5-12 April, from €920; ourcamp.co.uk
Best last minute dealsDeparting 21 February
Self-catering at the Chamois Blanc apartment in Chamonix, France, costs £189 per person, based on four sharing, from Gatwick, a saving of £300, including flights (Manchester departures £199) with Direct Ski (0800 587 0945; directski.com)
Departing 22 February
A week at the luxury chalet Artemis in St Anton, Austria, including private cinema, chef and champagne on six nights, business-class flights and transfers for £1,772, saving £313, with Scott Dunn (020 8682 5050; scottdunn.com)
Departing 28 February
Half-board at the Hotel Belvedere in Wengen, Switzerland, for £569, saving £106, including flights from Gatwick and transfers with Thomson Ski (0871 971 0578; thomsonski.co.uk)
Departing 1 March
Half-board at the Hotel Montane in Arinsal, Andorra, for £345, saving £210, including flights and transfers with First Choice (0871 664 0130; firstchoice-ski.co.uk)
Departing 7 March
B&B accommodation at the Country Inn and Suites in Tremblant, Canada, from £719, saving £192, including flights with Air Canada to Montreal (transfers extra) with Virgin Holidays (0844 5573 860; virginholidays.co.uk)
Departing 8 March
Half-board at the Hotel del Viale in Courmayeur, Italy, from £345, saving £230, including flights from Gatwick and transfers with Thomson Ski (0871 971 0578; thomsonski.co.uk
Departing 11 March
Room only at the three-star Lobstick Lodge in Jasper, Canada, including flights from Gatwick to Calgary and transfers, from £479, saving £100, with Crystal Ski (0871 231 2256; crystalski.co.uk)
Departing 15 March
Fully catered at the Chalet Ysopes in Les Gets, France, for £370, saving £369, including flights, transfers and ski hosting with Ski Total (01252 618 333; skitotal.com)
Departing 22 March
A family of four at Chalet Hotel Mariandre in Alpe d'Huez, France, costs £1,095, saving £1,262, including flights from Stansted and two days' ski hosting with Esprit Ski (01252 618300; espritski.com)
Departing 28 March
Fully catered chalet holiday in Meribel, France, at the four-star Le Pied de Voûte for £731, saving £135, including flights from Gatwick and transfers with Inghams (020 8780 4447; inghams.co.uk)
• Unless stated, all prices are for seven nights
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I’ve really been feeling my Gen Xness the last few months. I dislike framing Web 2.0 or Library 2.0 as generational issues (I think it has far more to do with whether you’re used to creating and sharing content overall), but the rise of Twitter and FriendFeed in particular have made me feel like even more of a bridge because I get stretched thin trying to explain both sides of an issue to two groups who aren’t really talking to each other about these things. Like Johnny Cash, I walk the line.
As a GenX bridge, one side of me understands the Boomer confusion at these public posts and wonders why these folks can’t just call, email, or text a person who could actually do something about the problem they’re encountering. Recently, I felt this most acutely when Jason Griffey took the time to write a blog post disagreeing with two rules for submitting questions to ALA presidential candidates on YouTube. I’m close enough to the traditional, Boomer norms of communication that when I first read Jason’s post, my immediate reaction was to sigh and wonder why he couldn’t have just contacted someone at MPOW to request that the rules be changed. The “direct” approach seems like the logical one for affecting change and having your voice heard.
And then the Millennial side of the bridge kicked in and I chided myself, because Jason actually cared enough to take the time to write that post instead of just a 140-character rant. He explained his reasoning in what has (surprisingly) become a long-form medium online (blogging). In hindsight, his post helped change one of the rules he disagreed with, so it was better that he posted publicly where everyone could read it and comment, including us. And honestly, some of the comments on microblogging sites are complaints that someone did try to call or email a human being and didn’t get a good response, so it’s not that these generational preferences are exclusive. Writing a blog post these days is a pretty high level of engagement, and caring enough to post a tweet or FriendFeed comment is right behind that in terms of trying to get our attention (hey, at least MPOW isn’t mediocre).
My personal lesson from these recent experiences is that it’s important for associations (and libraries) to understand that every blog post, every tweet, every FF comment is like a letter to the editor or someone standing up in a membership meeting and voicing a complaint. They’re the 21st century equivalent of a phone call or a conversation in the hallway at a conference, and we have to take them just as seriously and respond to them the same way we would those 20th century methods of communication. It’s not that Boomers want to help any less, but I think they’re used to helping people one-on-one, even online. For many members who likely trend younger, the new channels are their preferred ones for these types of comments, and not just for complaints. There isn’t anything wrong with either approach, but they’re ships crossing in the night, and they don’t lead to conversations between the two sides that would improve communication.
Sometimes I think attacking MPOW is a national sport, so it can be depressing being the person constantly relaying what’s being said about us online. But it’s important for those of us in the middle to be that bridge and find compromises that work for everyone. So I especially appreciate those folks who take the time to comment online in a constructive way (regardless of the channel), because it helps me build that bridge.
This strain isn’t new, but I’m curious to know if other Gen Xers are feeling an increase in this area due to microblogging sites? Have you found successful strategies for improving communication around these new channels? I have some ideas that I’m going to try to implement at work, and I’ll report back here over time, but I’d love to hear how others are handling being at this intersection.
My first job out of library school was as a reference librarian at the Calumet City Public Library in Chicago’s south suburbs. I was a total noob, and I look back now and laugh at how green I was. But I was lucky enough to have a great mentor and boss who taught me a number of things - customer service, patience, and how reference worked in the real world. In fact, she’s pretty much responsible for my customer service ethic.
And that fateful day in what I think must have been 1993, when I discovered the Library had a CompuServe account that no one ever used, she said, “Sure, go ahead and play with it - see what you can find.” Yes, that fateful day, I found a recipe for Irish soda bread online for a patron, and I’ve been hooked ever since. She encouraged me as I expanded my knowledge into email, gopher, archie, telnet, and then the web, and she indulged my crazy ideas about how we could use all of these tools in our work.
Truly, I wouldn’t have accomplished everything I have in my career if Karen Bala hadn’t been the best first boss a baby librarian could have. So thank you, Karen - you made a big difference in my life, and I wish I’d had another opportunity to tell you that.
Donations to an emergency fund for Gaza have doubled despite the refusal of the BBC and Sky News to broadcast an appeal that was shown on three other channels last night.
The number of complaints to the BBC also rose overnight and now stands at more than 21,000, with just 380 writing in support of the corporation's stance. At the same time, a parliamentary motion criticising the BBC's decision has grown in popularity and has attracted the signatures of MPs from all parties.
The BBC is also being threatened with a lawsuit alleging its decision to ban the charity appeal for Gaza from its airwaves was discriminatory, the Guardian has learned. The case is being brought on behalf of 42 people who say they were offended by the corporation's decision.
They will argue that the ban discriminated against the Palestinian people because the BBC refused to allow a charity appeal for them to be broadcast, but did allow appeals for other ethnic or national groups, such as those affected by the conflicts that plagued Darfur and Kosovo. Solicitor Lawrence Davies said: "The decision not to broadcast it is tainted by racism, it is anti-Palestinian."
Davies said British race relations laws covered such acts, although they had never been used in this way before. He said the claim against the BBC could run into millions of pounds. Mark Thompson, the BBC director general, has been sent a letter giving the corporation several days to reverse the ban before legal action starts.
Meanwhile, the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), an umbrella group of 13 aid agencies, said this afternoon that the public had pledged more than £1m to help provide food, shelter and medical supplies to people affected by the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The terrestrial broadcasters ITV, Channel 4 and Five broadcast the DEC's three-minute appeal last night, attracting an audience of 4.5 million viewers. The BBC and Sky said showing it could compromise their neutrality.
ITV1 broadcast the appeal at 6.25pm, between its early evening regional and national news bulletins. It was watched by 3.7m viewers and attracted a 20% audience share. The DEC appeal next aired at 7.26pm on Five, when 334,000 viewers tuned in at the end of Five News. A further 527,000 watched on Channel 4 at 7.50pm, a 2% share, at the end of Channel 4 News.
The DEC relies on the free airtime offered by televised appeals to boost funds, and critics have complained that the BBC and Sky could be denying it of millions of pounds in donations, but the committee said it was "delighted" that the Gaza fund had doubled overnight. The DEC chief executive, Brendan Gormley, said: "We really do appreciate the support of the British public, who have shown their generosity when confronted with scenes of a dire humanitarian emergency. Their donations will improve the lives of so many civilians caught up in a conflict that was not of their making."
The BBC says its decision not to broadcast the appeal is in line with the corporation's commitment to impartiality. This stance was backed by John Ryley, head of Sky News, who said "absolute impartiality" was fundamental to the channel's approach.
But Richard Burden, the Labour MP who tabled the parliamentary motion, criticised the arguments put forward by Sky and the BBC as "unconvincing and contradictory". "Viewers and listeners can see the difference between a humanitarian appeal and politics – even if the BBC and Sky management cannot," he said.
The DEC insists its motives are humanitarian rather than political. It says 1 million people in Gaza are now dependent on aid, more than 300,000 of whom have no running water and 100,000 of whom are homeless. Water and sanitation services and facilities are on the brink of collapse in some areas, according to the DEC.
Although there is said to be "widespread disgust" among some BBC journalists over the decision, a meeting of the corporation's National Union of Journalists (NUJ) London branch today rejected a motion condemning the move. Instead, the meeting, attended by just 25 of the branch's 1,000 members, passed a resolution "supporting the right of the BBC to remain editorially independent". The national NUJ and fellow broadcasting union Bectu both passed motions over the weekend condemning the BBC's decision.
Demonstrators protested outside the BBC's Broadcasting House, in central London, last night, burning their television licences and occupying the building's reception until they were removed by police.
In a separate protest today, campaigner Maria Gallastegui, 50, promised to continue a 16-day hunger strike indefinitely as she delivered a petition to Downing Street. She said she was disappointed at the BBC and Sky News's refusal to broadcast the appeal. "Impartiality is a nice cop-out. How can we be impartial when people are suffering and dying? It's a luxury we can't afford," she said.
Gallastegui, a former coach driver who lives in a tent in Parliament Square, said she was feeling weak from her hunger strike, but said she felt it was the only effective way to make her views known.
Sky News today joined the BBC in refusing to broadcast an emergency appeal for Gaza as the corporation faced renewed pressure from the public and MPs to show the film.
John Ryley, head of Sky News, said screening the appeal, by the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), would compromise the network's impartiality.
"The absolute impartiality of our output is fundamental to Sky News and its journalism," he said.
"That is why, after very careful consideration, we have concluded that broadcasting an appeal for Gaza at this time is incompatible with our role in providing balanced and objective reporting of this continuing situation to our audiences in the UK and around the world."
Mark Thompson, the BBC director general, ruled out a change of policy from the corporation, which he said had a duty to cover the issue in a "balanced, objective way".
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Thompson said there would be no change of heart from the BBC because it had a journalistic duty to examine the issues.
"Of course, everyone is struck by the human consequences of what has happened," he said. "And we will, I promise you, continue to report that as fully and as compassionately as we can. But we are going to do it in a way where we can hold it up to scrutiny. It's our job as journalists."
He conceded that one of the BBC's initial objections to the DEC appeal – that delivering aid to victims would be difficult – had "diminished" as a barrier.
But pressure on the corporation will intensify today when more than 50 MPs back an early day motion in the Commons urging the BBC to reverse its decision. Douglas Alexander, the international development secretary, Ben Bradshaw, the health minister, and Hazel Blears, the communities secretary, all criticised the BBC; Shahid Malik, the justice minister, said he had not met anyone who supported the BBC's stance.
Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said the BBC should broadcast the appeal by DEC, an umbrella group of humanitarian charities including Oxfam, Save the Children and the Red Cross.
The Golden Globe-winning actor Samantha Morton joined the protests against the BBC's decision, which has prompted more than 10,000 complaints, saying she would never work for the corporation again if it failed to change its decision. The advert was not a political message but "about raising money for children who are dying", she said.
The appeal will be shown tonight on ITV, Channel 4 and Five.
The Guardian understands that Brendan Gormley, DEC's chief executive, assured senior BBC executives that the money raised was "for all those affected by the recent conflict", including people in southern Israel.
But the BBC said last night: "Whilst our records show that DEC stated in principle the aid could be applied to a wider area, they clearly indicated that the situation with Israel was unlikely to need the help of the appeal, and in practice the request was solely for Gaza."
A DEC spokesman said yesterday: "The DEC appeal is for those suffering as a result of the Gaza conflict. The greatest unmet need is in Gaza itself.
"But DEC members are working in Gaza and Israel, and the Red Cross movement have helped to evacuate people living in southern Israel. We believe that the availability of aid to both Gaza and Israel was understood by the BBC."
The two-minute appeal will be shown on ITV tonight before the main news at about 6.25pm before being broadcast on the other channels.
About 50 protesters last night staged a noisy but peaceful demonstration in the reception area of BBC Scotland's headquarters, in Glasgow. "This is not about taking sides in the conflict," said the Labour MP Richard Burden, who has tabled today's parliamentary motion.
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Three men killed in an avalanche on one of Scotland's most dangerous mountains were named last night as warnings were given to climbers that the risk of further slides will remain high over the next few days.
Eamonn Murphy, 61, from Carrickfergus, Co Antrim, and his brother John Murphy, 63, from Portrush, Co Antrim, died along with Brian Murray, 46, from Monifieth, Tayside, when they were engulfed by thousands of tonnes of snow on Buachaille Etive Mor, near Glencoe.
Eamonn Murphy was a well-known artist and former teacher who had exhibited his work at shows in Northern Ireland, including at the Royal Ulster Academy. He was married with children and grandchildren.
The men were among several separate groups of experienced climbers who were taking the "easy" way up Coire na Tulaich, a gully about 10 metres wide by 20 metres deep, when the avalanche struck at about midday on Saturday. The snow could have been moving at up to 75mph.
John Grieve, Glencoe Mountain Rescue's team leader, said a climber who had just reached the top of a ridge dislodged a slab of snow which brought down another nine people coming up behind him, carrying them about 200 metres down the mountain. The climber who inadvertently caused the avalanche managed to avoid being swept away by digging in with his ice axe and used his mobile phone to call 999.
A climber, Tom Richardson, 54, from Sheffield, said: "As I got to the top of the pass, the edge of the slope – it wasn't corniced – broke away and we were taken down an avalanche. Some of us rode out the top of it and others got buried."
Anyone buried in the snow has about 15 minutes before their chances of survival drop rapidly. Grieve praised the swift actions of the climbers who searched for missing colleagues. "They didn't have shovels, they only had their hands and ice axes to dig with. They located one man very quickly because his boot was sticking out of the snow. They dragged him out and tried to resuscitate him. They carried on digging and managed to find another man," said Grieve. The men were taken by an RAF Lossiemouth helicopter to Belford hospital in Fort William, where they were pronounced dead.
A helicopter from HMS Gannet managed to drop Grieve and three other rescuers near the scene. Grieve said: "We started probing and within about 20 minutes we found a third person." He also died.
The Murphy family said in a statement last night: "Eamonn and John were both very experienced and lived for the outdoors. They were regular visitors to Scotland and this was a trip they did every year … They were not the sort of people to take unnecessary risks."
Experts said last night that although the climbers had not been reckless, the deaths were a reminder of the dangers of the mountain. Hamish MacInnes, 78, a founder of the Avalanche Board, which assesses the risks of avalanches in Scotland, said: "There are a lot of avalanches on this particular mountain."
Three other triple fatalities have happened in the area in the past 15 years.
The avalanche risk at the time was "considerable", a category 3 out of 5, according to Scotland's official Avalanche Information Service. It rose to 4today .
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“Everything has been leading to this”
Introducing “Summon” to do the things Joan Lippincott talked about
with your collections today being predominantly digital (look at your statistics), it’s more difficult than ever to connect students to your resources
PQ looked very closely at how students are trying to discover information and content
did “extreme ethnographic research” where the kids were searching, including into their dorm rooms
did in-person observational research in the dorm, in the coffee shop, etc.
recorded sessions in-person with users and saw their rates of success
surveyed more than 10,000 users
did online focus groups
the good news about these kids is that they believe we offer the most credible, superior source (by a wide margin)
also believe we have the most efficient search engine for them, although their behavior doesn’t support this
and they say that, too - that they go to Google first
they’re realistic about how they actual go about finding information
the library is increasingly disintermediated from the search for information, which is causing the belief that the library is not the center of campus
why?
- no clear and compelling starting place (library’s pages say a lot about the library - literally says a lot - but difficult for end-users to find appropriate starting point for research)
- difficulty identifying appropriate resources (they can’t find a specific resource even when they know what they’re looking for; we have more digital resources than ever & it’s difficult to distinguish between them)
- general lack of awareness of resources (the OPAC, built on the print model, has only a small portion of the library’s resources; they get discouraged trying to find things & their unwillingness to go through long lists of resources is increasing)
underlying technical issues prevent easy searches
compare that to “simple, easy, fast” of Google and web searching
if only there was a Google-like search for libraries
welcome to Summon
a compelling place for your end users to start their research to discover the wealth of your resources available to them
enables quick discovery of all of your library’s digital and physical resources (repositories, databases, OPAC, books, ejournal articles, etc.)
does it in a Google-like single search, very fast, very coordinated, takes them into the discovery phase very, very quickly
what is a unified discovery service?
NOT federated search - doesn’t use connectors or translators
it pre-harvests massive amounts of data to bring them together in a single search through a single search box
pre-built, pre-coordinated
urge libraries to bring to Summon everything Joan described in her talk
because they know what your library subscribes to, they can make sure your end user doesn’t get into dead ends
end users only see the things they actually have access to (unlike Google Scholar)
it’s an open system with APIs - put the search box wherever you want
not a nextgen catalog, although you could use the API in one
“I’ll believe it when I see it” (when pigs fly)
more than 40 publishers are providing metadata today
more than 50,000 journals are already represented
300+ million items indexed so far (as of today)
update service weekly with new publishers
Gale and ProQuest are leading the way with SerialsSolutions
also have the support of Springer, SAGE, CrossRef, Taylor & Francis, HighWire (helping with harvesting), Nature Publishing Group, Oxford University Press, Houghton Mifflin, Academy of Sciences, society publishers, open access content, EconList, Sociological Abstracts, GPO, Medline, ERIC, Agricola, and more
through their use of the A&I resrouces, can still lead users to content even if they don’t have a partnership with them
85% of EBSCO Academic SearchPremier is available via Summon
64% of JSTOR
87% of Ovid
Summon is in beta at Dartmouth and Oklahoma State (since November)
DEMO!
did two quick searches
the opening screen is just a search box and nothing else
let a branded search box be your digital presence
- keep it clean and focused
can filter by full text online items only
can filter by peer-reviewed or scholarly resources
will be a subscription service that is fully hosted
stop by their booth (#1904) to see it in action
sign up on their website for news about the service
Q - how is this related to AquaBrowser?
A - AB is a nextgen catalog so you can bring Summon content into it through the Summon API
Q - don’t you have 2 federated search tools that you were combining, and what has happened to them?
A - we do, and we are, but different libraries have different needs; still need to offer a good federated search product for those libraries that want one; but they believe the compelling starting point is Summon
Q - we’re talking about tons and tons of data, how do you show current status?
A - pre-harvest with metadata but click through in real-time
Q - is there a potential to aggregate all of the collections among libraries?
A - we’ll have to wait and see; right now, the focus is to provide this Google-like, compelling presence
Q - for those things that aren’t in Summon, is there a way to lead them to further resources?
A - yes, the screens are all very customizable; want to keep the opening screen clean, though
Q - one of the advantages of pre-harvesting is finding relationships between things - will you be doing that instead of just providing facts?
A - yes, but right now it’s still just in beta; will take time
Q - ??
A - have already brought into Summon the contents of one partner’s OPAC (didn’t say which one), so they know these protocols work
Q - is the pricing going to be in the “dream come true” range, too?
A - pricing has not yet been determined, but they are aware of the issues around cost
Joan Lippincott started out by speaking about net gens - “If we were creating academic libraries today, what would they look like?”
Oxford, San Jose State University?
would they only have print collections, special collections?
or would we create learning commons?
would they look like Google Book Search or iTunes University where the librarian mostly deals with licensing, totally online?
can we create libraries with content, tools, and services for today’s students?
looked up “what’s in my bag” pool on Flickr to see what today’s students carry (not books)
net gens - born between 1982-1991 who grew up with computers and other media at home and in school from earliest ages
Joan has two NetGen daughters, although their friends are better informants
also calls them millennials, digital natives, gen y, next gen, DotNets
when asked what comes next, she uses the term “screenagers” :-p
- the generation that will have had computers and mobile devices since birth
characteristics of NetGens (a population, not a generation)
using “Born Digital” definition, a highly educated subgroup has the following characteristics
- always connected, multi-tasking
- oriented to working in groups (doesn’t mean they love “groupwork,” but they like hanging out with their friends and socializing while working; you used to go to the library, do your work, & go back to the dorm to socialize. now they socialize at the library with friends who are there and who aren’t there)
- experiential learners (like the shift to hands-on learning from lecture)
- visual (oriented towards visual cues, although they do still read; when they’re doing a history paper, they may embed a map or create a video - they don’t just use text)
- producers as well as consumers (they create something of their own)
even if you have 50% adult learners at your campus, many of these characteristics still apply
(kids today call them “cameras,” not “digital cameras”)
anyone working in digital humanities is working in groups
adults are active learners - they want hands-on
think of any profession - they are all producing websites, word documents, or producing some form of digital information
so our tools need to be oriented towards these characteristics because they’ll need the skills using them going forward
characteristics of “deeper learning” (educause)
- social
- active
- contextual
- engaging
- student-owned
libraries are perfectly positioned to take advantage of this
it’s the projects they do outside of class that gives them the skills in class
- gives them context, they own their product, and engages them
it’s not just hype and it has relevance to learning
have to think about how we do this in our own institutions
are all students really tech-savvy?
students are connected
98.5% of respondents own a computer, 82.2% own a laptop (doesn’t mean they are new computers or that they bring them to class)
spend 19.6 hours a week doing work online (Joan thinks that’s low)
almost all are using social networks
harvard medical school survey of students in 2007 found 52% own a PDA
app with most use is reference!
have to think about the next generation of professionals and how we serve them
they love the internet and would give up TV & radio before internet (because they’re doing those things on the web)
college kids increasingly live in the online and offline worlds at the same time
has important implications for how we structure services
JISC study found that learners who are effective in online environment also create content, seek peer support using informal networks & social tools - an underground world of networking that is invisible to institutions
they may know how to build a website, but “we’re more interested in the art and flow of argument”
have to teach them how to use these tools in their disciplines, not their personal lives
we want students to connect better to library collections and services
Henry Jenkins’ “selected core skills”
- collective intelligence
- judgment - the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information resources
- networking - the ability to search for, synthesize information
- simulation - ability to interpret & *constuct& dynamic models of real world processes
- appropriation
- multtasking - a positive thing when can shift focus to salient details
MIT Photo Diary study
there will be an increasing emphasis on data for visualization (how do we represent this in our finding aids)
content optimized for mobile devices
Cornell has put images from their digital collections on their computers as screensavers so that when students ask where the images came from, the librarians can tell them
Seattle PL visualization of books being checked out
need to think about embedded content and transforming text data into more visual formats
- adopt and adapt
- assess
- hiring new types of staff
- train existing staff
- let go of things you don’t need to do
these students are our future and it’s our role to recreate academic libraries
The BBC has refused to broadcast a national humanitarian appeal for Gaza, leaving aid agencies with a potential shortfall of millions of pounds in donations.
The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), an umbrella organisation for 13 aid charities, launched its appealtoday saying the devastation in Gaza was "so huge that British aid agencies were compelled to act".
But the BBC made a rare breach of an agreement dating back to 1963 when it announced it would not give free airtime to the appeal. Other broadcasters then followed suit. Previously, broadcasters have agreed on the video and script to be used with the DEC, with each station choosing a presenter to front the appeal, shown after primetime news bulletins.
The BBC said it was not the first time broadcasters had refused to show a DEC appeal.
The corporation said it had been concerned about the difficulties of getting aid through to victims in a volatile situation. The BBC, which has faced criticism in the past over alleged bias in its coverage of the Middle East, said it did not want to risk public confidence in its impartiality.
The DEC's chief executive, Brendan Gormley, said the decision could have a big impact on its appeal. "We are used to our appeal getting into every household and offering a safe and necessary way for people to respond. This time we will have to work a lot harder because we won't have the free airtime or the powerful impact of appearing on every TV and radio station."
DEC appeals have recently raised £10m for the Congo and £18m for Burma.
Gormley rejected the BBC's claim that it was difficult for aid to reach those in need, saying 100 lorries a day were entering Gaza. He challenged the corporation's concerns about impartiality. "We are totally apolitical and are driven by the principles of the Geneva conventions in terms of impartiality and neutrality. This appeal is a response to those humanitarian principles. The BBC seems to be confusing impartiality with equal airtime."
A BBC spokesperson said: "Along with other broadcasters, the BBC has decided not to broadcast the DEC's public appeal to raise funds for Gaza. The BBC decision was made because of question marks about the delivery of aid in a volatile situation and also to avoid any risk of compromising public confidence in the BBC's impartiality in the context of an ongoing news story. However, the BBC will of course continue to report the humanitarian story in Gaza."
ITV said: "The DEC asked all broadcasters if they could support the appeal. We (the broadcasters) assessed the DEC's requirements carefully against the agreed criteria and we were unable to reach the consensus necessary for an appeal."
Sky said: "We were considering this request internally when the DEC contacted us to let us know that the BBC had decided not to broadcast the appeal at this time. As, by convention, if all broadcasters do not carry the appeal then none do, the decision was effectively made for us."
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Dear Palm,
Please consider this my Pre-order for the Palm Pre, the first phone designed specifically for the internet from the bottom up.
“Under the hood is a speedy new microprocessor from Texas Instruments that runs videos quickly and smoothly, with less of the herky-jerkiness that mobile devices are known for. The phone has 8 gigabytes of storage, which is decent but not great; it can run Adobe Flash, and can cut, copy and paste, which iPhone can’t; it supports multimedia messaging service (MMS) so you can send text messages with photos attached, which iPhone can’t do; it has a 3 megapixel camera and a flash, which iPhone lacks. There’s a button that lets you buy music from Amazon’s download store. Then there’s the multitasking. Want to talk on the speakerphone while browsing the Web and entering stuff in your calendar? No problem. Palm expects people will keep 15 to 20 applications open at the same time.
Palm’s engineers have done some really slick things with applications themselves, especially contacts and calendars. You can pull together multiple calendars and view them all at once—say, your work calendar, your home calendar, even calendars from other people, like your spouse’s Google calendar (your spouse needs to give you the log-on info). The contact manager pulls contact information from multiple sources—Yahoo contacts, Google contacts, Facebook contacts. A listing in your address book can contain every way of reaching that person—via work mail, Gmail, or Facebook mail, for example—and lets you send a message to a friend using any one of these. Also, the applications talk to one another. When the calendar application prompts you for a reminder about a meeting, it also pulls up a list of the people who will be attending, with their contact info. So if you’re running late, you can let everyone know.” [Newsweek]
Here’s more on the way the various applications are integrated to create a better user experience, hopefully one that is seamless and blur-ry, the way my online/offline is.
“Thanks to Synergy, all your conversations with the same person are grouped together in one chat-style view. (Even if it started in IM, for example, and you want to reply with text.) You can also see who’s online right from contacts, and start a new conversation with just one touch.” [Palm Pre site]
Throw in a removable battery, WiFi, GPS, wireless charging, and the ability to use the phone with one hand, and I’m SO there.
I’m also looking forward to using DCPL’s second phone app for searching its catalog. Coming soon to a Pre near you me, right, Aaron? After all, it is just a flavor of Linux, and “all apps are just CSS, HTML and JavaScript. ALL OF THEM..” 
Renewed concerns about the health of Fidel Castro have been raised due to his recent absence from public events and the disappearance of his regular newspaper column.
The Cuban government is making no comment about the condition of the 82-year-old former president but speculation has been mounting over recent weeks that his health is declining. His brother Raúl took over as president last year.
The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, a close Castro ally, appeared to suggest that Castro had become more frail when he spoke about him on Sunday in his weekly radio and television show. He said the Castro who "walked the streets and towns in his uniform and hugging the people, will not return. That will remain in memory."
Castro has been rarely seen, and largely only in videos and photographs, since July 2006 when he had surgery for an intestinal complaint. Video footage in June and two photographs of Castro in November showed him standing but looking frail.
Castro has kept up his public profile by writing newspaper columns; he produced about nine a month over most of 2008, but none have appeared since 15 December.
The former president was expected to appear live or on television on 1 January to mark the 50 years since he brought communism to Cuba but he failed to materialise, prompting speculation about his condition.
Several US-based Spanish language websites have quoted Andy Gomez, a US adviser to the Brookings Institution taskforce on Cuba, as saying: "High-level sources in Washington have said that Castro is gravely ill."
Spain's El País newspaper has reported that there were security and military movements after Castro suffered a "possible heart attack", while a Spanish website, Cubaecuentro.com, reported that his condition was "irreversible".
Castro and his advisers may be concerned about the impact of images showing his frailty, but a western diplomat in Havana told Reuters it would not explain why his steady stream of columns, or "reflections", suddenly came to a halt two weeks before the 1 January anniversary. "Why didn't he write a reflection about it? This was his moment and he said nothing. You have to wonder," the diplomat said.
The Ecuadorean president, Rafael Correa, and the Panamanian president, Martin Torrijos, did not meet Castro when they visited Cuba last week.
Dan Erikson of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, warned against writing off Castro. "I think the less visible he is indicates declining health, with the caveat that there is no straight-line trajectory," he said. "If Fidel is out of sight for a couple of months, it doesn't mean that he won't be on his feet greeting some foreign dignitary in the future."
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Michael Stephens has a great post describing his Ten Trends & Technologies for 2009, and normally I wouldn’t even point to it because it’s getting a lot of link love elsewhere. If by some miracle you haven’t seen it yet, go read the whole thing, but I want to expand on one particular piece, cloud computing, because librarians need to also discuss the flip side of the benefits that Michael describes. As he notes, Michael isn’t the first librarian to talk about cloud computing, but I haven’t seen as much discussion of the potential consequences of it, especially during the transition we’re in right now where we can’t totally trust the cloud.
Here’s the part of Michael’s post that jumped out at me.
“As regular folks store more data and rely more and more on the cloud, librarians would be well-served to spend some time pondering what this means for services and access. As movies and music become downloads from the great jukebox in the sky, what happens to the AV department? As documents and data find their way to the ether, how can we provide a means to use them? Some implications from the “Cloud” post:
* Understand converged devices are everywhere.
* Allow unfettered access to the cloud.
* Understand that the cloud may also be a valuable information resource.
* Utilize the cloud to save time and money.That last one is important to me. Why can’t we use Google Docs with our users for productivity instead of paying for bloated software suites? Why can’t we show our users how to save to the cloud so they can access their stuff from anywhere?”
I agree with Michael’s points, but I think we have a critical role in helping users with those third and fourth implications. One of the keys to cloud computing right now is synchronization. Very few people I know completely trust their data to the cloud, and they have backups at home or they synchronize across multiple devices so that if one service fails, they haven’t lost everything.
The problem with this approach at this stage is that early adopters know how to do this, but that’s a pretty small percentage of the population. So while we can definitely work with patrons using Google Docs, I think the more important role for libraries right now is to teach users about these types of services, in no small part so that we can help them understand the potential consequences. Because if you teach a patron to use an online documents site and she puts her resume there and something goes wrong with it, that’s a very real data loss for that person.
So we need to teach people a few different things, besides just how to use these tools.
Last year I had a discussion with Eli Neiburger during which he made the interesting point that kids today experience their first data loss at a much younger age than we ever did. That really made me stop and think for a minute about just how much we aren’t teaching our children about technology, and this is an area where we can help both kids and adults, if we recognize this and incorporate it into our media fluency role.
This is important stuff, because these companies change their policies at the drop of a hat, and users have no say. For example, if you’re an iTunes customer who paid to upgrade your DRM-restricted music to “unrestricted” MP3s last week, this week we found out that those “unrestricted” and “open” files from Apple contain personal information about you. You can now be easily identified by that file, so if it lives in the cloud and something happens to it (like someone steals a copy and puts it on the open web), are you liable for that copyright violation? Granted, the chances of that happening are pretty slim, but how many users are even thinking about this? What does it mean to have personally-identifiable information embedded in data files and living in the cloud? We tend to think this stuff is just secure out there and that these kinds of things won’t happen to us, but it’s only hindsight that is 20/20. What if other companies started embedding personal information about you in files - what would your recourse be? And when it’s a free service, you don’t have a contract or service agreement to fall back on when problems arise.
I don’t consider myself a conspiracy theorist or even particularly paranoid, but this is one reason I don’t use Gmail very much. If you’re reading this, you likely already know all of this is an issue, and you have the capacity to make that decision for yourself. But a large percentage of your users probably don’t.
Teaching critical skills about the cloud will become just as essential as teaching how to evaluate a website, even more so as products continue the march to becoming services. The ease and convenience of accessing this stuff via any computer, including a cellphone, is pushing people to do things they would never do in the “physical” world. Imagine trusting someone you don’t know knocking on your door and saying they’ll take good care of your private data and access to your computer. “Trust me.” Seriously?
I take advantage of some of these services, too, so I’m just as guilty, but I’ve become far less trusting of synchronizing whole folders to the cloud, and I’m more careful about what lives there. I’ll probably start password-protecting more files, too. It’s not a perfect solution, but I’m starting to think more about this stuff and wonder how I can install my own synchronization service, rather than relying on a third party. I’m in the minority, though, and it’s time we recognize as a profession that when we identify these types of trends, it’s not just for our own benefit. We should see this for what it is - an expansion of our traditional role to teach people how to use information well, and we should lead, not just with good models, but with help understanding and dealing with the ramifications of all of this.
Michael Stephens has a great post describing his Ten Trends & Technologies for 2009, and normally I wouldn’t even point to it because it’s getting a lot of link love elsewhere. If by some miracle you haven’t seen it yet, go read the whole thing, but I want to expand on one particular piece, cloud computing, because librarians need to also discuss the flip side of the benefits that Michael describes. As he notes, Michael isn’t the first librarian to talk about cloud computing, but I haven’t seen as much discussion of the potential consequences of it, especially during the transition we’re in right now where we can’t totally trust the cloud.
Here’s the part of Michael’s post that jumped out at me.
“As regular folks store more data and rely more and more on the cloud, librarians would be well-served to spend some time pondering what this means for services and access. As movies and music become downloads from the great jukebox in the sky, what happens to the AV department? As documents and data find their way to the ether, how can we provide a means to use them? Some implications from the “Cloud” post:
* Understand converged devices are everywhere.
* Allow unfettered access to the cloud.
* Understand that the cloud may also be a valuable information resource.
* Utilize the cloud to save time and money.That last one is important to me. Why can’t we use Google Docs with our users for productivity instead of paying for bloated software suites? Why can’t we show our users how to save to the cloud so they can access their stuff from anywhere?”
I agree with Michael’s points, but I think we have a critical role in helping users with those third and fourth implications. One of the keys to cloud computing right now is synchronization. Very few people I know completely trust their data to the cloud, and they have backups at home or they synchronize across multiple devices so that if one service fails, they haven’t lost everything.
The problem with this approach at this stage is that early adopters know how to do this, but that’s a pretty small percentage of the population. So while we can definitely work with patrons using Google Docs, I think the more important role for libraries right now is to teach users about these types of services, in no small part so that we can help them understand the potential consequences. Because if you teach a patron to use an online documents site and she puts her resume there and something goes wrong with it, that’s a very real data loss for that person.
So we need to teach people a few different things, besides just how to use these tools.
Last year I had a discussion with Eli Neiburger during which he made the interesting point that kids today experience their first data loss at a much younger age than we ever did. That really made me stop and think for a minute about just how much we aren’t teaching our children about technology, and this is an area where we can help both kids and adults, if we recognize this and incorporate it into our media fluency role.
This is important stuff, because these companies change their policies at the drop of a hat, and users have no say. For example, if you’re an iTunes customer who paid to upgrade your DRM-restricted music to “unrestricted” MP3s last week, this week we found out that those “unrestricted” and “open” files from Apple contain personal information about you. You can now be easily identified by that file, so if it lives in the cloud and something happens to it (like someone steals a copy and puts it on the open web), are you liable for that copyright violation? Granted, the chances of that happening are pretty slim, but how many users are even thinking about this? What does it mean to have personally-identifiable information embedded in data files and living in the cloud? We tend to think this stuff is just secure out there and that these kinds of things won’t happen to us, but it’s only hindsight that is 20/20. What if other companies started embedding personal information about you in files - what would your recourse be? And when it’s a free service, you don’t have a contract or service agreement to fall back on when problems arise.
I don’t consider myself a conspiracy theorist or even particularly paranoid, but this is one reason I don’t use Gmail very much. If you’re reading this, you likely already know all of this is an issue, and you have the capacity to make that decision for yourself. But a large percentage of your users probably don’t.
Teaching critical skills about the cloud will become just as essential as teaching how to evaluate a website, even more so as products continue the march to becoming services. The ease and convenience of accessing this stuff via any computer, including a cellphone, is pushing people to do things they would never do in the “physical” world. Imagine trusting someone you don’t know knocking on your door and saying they’ll take good care of your private data and access to your computer. “Trust me.” Seriously?
I take advantage of some of these services, too, so I’m just as guilty, but I’ve become far less trusting of synchronizing whole folders to the cloud, and I’m more careful about what lives there. I’ll probably start password-protecting more files, too. It’s not a perfect solution, but I’m starting to think more about this stuff and wonder how I can install my own synchronization service, rather than relying on a third party. I’m in the minority, though, and it’s time we recognize as a profession that when we identify these types of trends, it’s not just for our own benefit. We should see this for what it is - an expansion of our traditional role to teach people how to use information well, and we should lead, not just with good models, but with help understanding and dealing with the ramifications of all of this.
cloud computing, data, privacy
Last week I noted that of all of the social media sites, I’m probably most engaged with Facebook right now. Twitter tends to fragment my attention too much, so I started restricting my time on it to about an hour a day. The conversation there is too disjointed for me, and it’s impossible to find and refer back to all the pieces of a conversation even just a few days later. The best I’ve been able to manage is to use TweetDeck to create groups to check in on periodically, as opposed to trying to keep up with everyone all the time. I still don’t let myself sit on Twitter for too long because as Ed Vielmetti says, “If you keep refreshing it will never, ever stop..” In fact, my rule of thumb on any social site is that I never hit the “older” button.
Then FriendFeed came along, which helped unify conversations and brought pictures, audio, and video into the mix. The breadth of services it aggregates is pretty impressive, so when a critical mass of friends hit there, I switched my hour a day to check in there.
Let me preface this next statement by saying that I love the serendipity of FriendFeed, and it definitely restores fun to aggregation. That said, it moves way too fast for me. As a result, I’ve come to the conclusion that FriendFeed is Twitter on speed, while Facebook is Twitter on Ritalin, and for where I’m at right now, Facebook is my primary drug of choice. I need something to help me control the firehose so that I can more easily focus on specific pieces, and the fact that I can separate the links and posts from the status updates on FB does exactly that. I have the status of about three dozen folks texted to my phone, which means I see what I consider to be the most important function of the site for me front and center.
I had been friending people there for a while, watched what libraries were doing, and gone through the “play with various applications” stage of Facebook love, but then I found myself using it less and less. I fell back in love with it, though, when they added the ability to comment on a friend’s status, because that’s the piece I was having trouble tracking and participating in amongst all of the conversations taking place on Twitter. Even better was a change in the way SMS responses are handled so that replies from my phone now appear as comments on statuses, not inbox messages attached to previous emails. That means there’s conversation around updates, and it’s at a manageable pace.
I still check FriendFeed a couple of times a day, but I’m swamped with enough stuff right now that I use my social networks first and foremost for friend updates, and Facebook turns out to be perfect for that, especially for my non-library friends. I can literally see others getting a lot out of Twitter and FriendFeed because they monitor those sites a lot more closely, and more power to them. There are a lot of conversations right now about the ROI of blogging versus Twitter versus FriendFeed, but it’s important to examine what you want to get from these tools in order to evaluate which one(s) are best for you at any given time, remembering that it’s all cyclical and is likely to change just when you get comfortable with your routine. Of course, that can be a good thing.
A French sailor whose yacht capsized in the South Pacific during the Vendée Globe solo round-the-world race was rescued last night by his friend, a fellow competitor, after he was trapped inside the hull of his upturned boat in heavy seas for 16 hours.
Jean Le Cam, 49, was helped to escape by Vincent Riou, who, with a third competitor, Frenchman Armel Le Cléac'h, had diverted to help him after hearing his distress call. Le Cam's 60-foot boat VM Matériaux capsized after losing its keel 200 miles west off Cape Horn.
A rescue operation by the Chilean navy and emergency services, which had dispatched a tug with divers and a helicopter, had been launched but would not have arrived before this morning. A tanker had also been standing by to assist.
Riou, on board his yacht PRB, was able to get alongside the wreck and could hear his friend's shouts, though in heavy seas and with winds at 25 knots it took over three hours for Le Cam to climb out of his vessel, whose emergency hatch was submerged, and get aboard the other boat, which itself sustained damage in the rescue.
A race spokesman said: "Jean Le Cam has been rescued safe and sound. A full-scale rescue operation was in place ... but in the end it was Vincent Riou who recovered [his] fellow skipper and friend. Riou circled repeatedly to retrieve the skipper from the water and on the fourth attempt he successfully rescued Le Cam.
"Le Cam appears to be unhurt as Riou reported that both skippers worked on deck to stabilise PRB's mast."
The yachtsman sent a distress call from his boat at 12.26am yesterday as he prepared to navigate around the southern tip of South America. About nine hours later a Chilean spotter plane said it had found the yacht. Philippe de Villiers, the race president, said Le Cam had been speaking to another sailor by phone when there was a sudden loud noise and he said: "My boat is capsizing."
His phone went dead shortly after midnight and a distress beacon was activated at 1.40am. At the time of his disappearance, Le Cam was third in the 26,000-mile race, which started last November. He came second when the quadrennial race was last run, in 2005.
Thirty competitors started the race, including seven Britons, but more than half have dropped out, with one sailor having to be rescued in the Southern Ocean after breaking his leg. Two competitors have died in previous races.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Over on Museum 2.0, Nina Simon (not Nina Simone - and wouldn’t it be something if this post was sung by her) has a *great* blog post encouraging museums to get human on their Twitter accounts and provide more than just “spammy and dull” tweets. Pretty much everything she exhorts museums to do applies to libraries, as well. Actually, it’s great advice for all types of organizations, including, um, associations and the like.
She provides seven broad suggestions, but here are some specific ideas she proposes for “museum Twitter ‘radio stations’.” Just think “libraries” instead of “museums” to imagine what a great stream your library could offer.
An Open Letter to Museums on Twitter
Do you know of any libraries already doing this type of tweeting? There are some good examples listed on the very helpful Twittering Libraries section of the LIS 5313 wiki, but I need to go through the whole list.
I’m also interested in finding associations doing this well (I’m planning to go through Lindy Dreyer’s list of associations on Twitter).
As 2008 comes to a close (where on earth did it go?), I want to take a moment to reflect on this past year.
When I think about everything I was lucky enough to do this this year, what stands out the most are the people I met during my travels, both online and offline. The best thing about social network sites is the social part, and this year my network expanded to include new friends and rediscovered old ones. In fact, that’s definitely been one of my highlights for the year - reconnecting with folks from my pre-online life, which to me is an indicator that online networks are definitely going mainstream. I’m seeing so many more non-techie friends there, and I really appreciate being able to connect with them in this way. I still don’t have a lot of time to spend on Twitter or FriendFeed, but I’ve gone back to Facebook more and more because that’s where I’m finding a lot of these folks. Plus, it runs at a speed that works well for me right now (something I’m going to write more about it in an upcoming post).
This was especially true this year when I had so many projects going on at work. I haven’t written about my job at ALA here very much, mainly because I’ve been too busy to blog much at all. However, this was such a productive and progressive year at my job that I want to highlight a few of the things we accomplished. While this is by no means an exhaustive list (and it’s certainly not reflective of the work done across the organization as a whole), these are just a few of the things that were personally gratifying for me in 2008, because I played a role in helping them happen. In chronological order:
This was also an amazing year of travel for me, including special trips to the Netherlands (and the wonderful DOK), southeast Asia, and London. I know how lucky I am to be invited to speak in these places, and I’m thankful for the people I’ve met and the experiences I’ve had along the way. It’s easy to get tunnel vision about location, region, type of library, or the profession in general, and my travels reminded me of the bigger picture and dedication we all share.
I also traveled a lot domestically this year, and while I know times aren’t easy, I hope we never lose the face-to-face connections that are so valuable to our professional and personal development. Long live the conference, unconference, regional meeting, or whatever type of event brings us together. I hope that we as a profession can find the right combination of online and offline to feed our professional connections and growth.
Before this turns into one long verse of Kumbaya, though, there were hiccups in the year, and there are some things I hope to change in 2009. I’ve gotten much better about not spending too many hours just working or working only on the computer, but those changes came at the expense of reading my RSS aggregator and blogging here. I’m again examining how I spend my time to try and figure out a way to do more of both of those things. While I won’t go back to working more or give up the time I’ve gained for family and friends, I do hope to redistribute some of that time to get back to blogging more.
So hopefully you’ll see more action here in the coming year. In the meantime, I hope 2008 was a good year for you, and that 2009 is even better!
No Tags
Israel launched a fresh wave of air strikes on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip today, as one of the deadliest assaults on Palestinian militants continued for a second day.
Palestinian officials said 280 people had been killed and more than 600 wounded since Israel's campaign to stop rocket barrages from Gaza began at midday yesterday.
Israeli military spokesman Avi Benayahu said some 250 attacks had been carried out since the offensive began and infantry and armoured units were already heading to the Gaza border for a possible ground invasion.
Witnesses said the latest attacks struck one of Hamas's main security compounds in Gaza City, a mosque, the Hamas-run Al Aqsa television station, a prison and dozens of other targets.
Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said the campaign could last longer than initially anticipated, and the Israeli cabinet approved the call-up of thousands of reservists at its weekly meeting today.
Olmert warned that the offensive against Gaza militants was "liable to take longer than we can foresee at this moment" and said the operation was intended to restore tranquility to Israel's south, where lives have been disrupted by militant rocket and mortar attacks.
The streets were empty in Gaza City today as most residents stayed home, fearing more air strikes. A few lined up to buy bread outside two bakeries. Schools were shut for the three-day mourning period the Gaza government declared for the campaign's dead. Hamas police kept a low profile, wearing jackets over their dark blue uniforms and walking close to walls, hoping to evade the detection.
Meanwhile, the militants kept up the pressure on Israel, firing dozens more rockets and mortars at Israeli border communities early today. One rocket struck close to the largest city in southern Israel, Ashdod, 23 miles from Gaza. It reached almost twice as deep into Israeli territory as ever before and confirmed security officials' concerns that militants are capable of putting major cities within rocket range.
In New York, the United Nations security council expressed serious concern about the escalating situation in Gaza and called on Israel and the Palestinians to immediately halt all violence and military activities. The UN's most powerful body called for a new ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and for the opening of border crossings into Gaza to enable humanitarian supplies to reach the territory.
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, called on his rivals in Hamas to renew a truce with Israel to avoid further bloodshed in Gaza. Speaking after a meeting with the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, Abbas appealed to leaders in the militant Hamas group "to stop the bloodshed".
Many of Israel's western allies have also urged restraint on both sides, although the US blamed Hamas for the fighting.
As world leaders called for an immediate end to the biggest air assault on Gaza since 1967, Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, refused yesterday to rule out a ground invasion in the next few days, saying that the retaliation against Hamas rocket attacks had only just begun. "It won't be easy and it won't be short," said Barak. "There is a time for calm and a time for fighting, and now the time has come to fight."
Asked if a ground invasion would be the next move, as bomb attacks continued into the night, Barak said: "I do not exclude anything as long as the result has not been achieved."
Yesterday a flight of Israeli F-16 fighters fired at least 30 missiles in strikes against Hamas positions in Gaza.
Gordon Brown last night expressed "deep concern" and urged both sides to exercise restraint, amid signs that tit-for-tat clashes were spiralling out of control. He said the only way to reach a lasting solution was through peaceful means. "I understand the Israeli government's sense of obligation to its population. Israel needs to meet its humanitarian obligations, act in a way to further the long-term vision of a two-state solution, and do everything in its power to avoid civilian casualties," he said.
A White House spokesman said the United States "urges Israel to avoid civilian casualties as it targets Hamas in Gaza", adding: "Hamas's continued rocket attacks into Israel must cease if the violence is to stop."
Hamas remained defiant. "Today we are stronger then we've ever been," said its spokesman Taher Nounou. "We won't raise the white flag, we won't give anything up, we won't retreat. We call on the Arab states in the region to take a stance against this massacre and not to be satisfied with just condemnations." Fawzi Barhoum, another spokesman, called the air strikes a "holocaust" and "an act of war".
The attacks, which came days after a ceasefire expired, prompted speculation that Israel might be preparing a full-scale military invasion of Gaza. Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, said: "Israel wishes to make clear that it will continue to act against terrorist operations and missile fire from the strip which is intended to harm civilians." Public support for an attack has been growing in Israel, where a recent opinion poll showed that 20% of voters supported reoccupying Gaza, 27% wanted a return to assassinations and 18% wanted a short military strike.
The Arab League is convening an emergency meeting on Wednesday. Egypt announced it would open its border with Gaza to allow the injured to be treated.
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The global economic downturn has wiped at least £250m from the leading British universities' endowment funds, a Guardian survey has revealed.
The universities of Cambridge and Oxford, whose endowments were valued at £907m and £680m respectively in July, are understood to be the biggest losers.
Cambridge's fund plummeted £84m in the year up to July - before the credit crunch began to really bite - prompting fears that the worst is yet to come.
Endowments are funds built up over a long period of time through donations - often from former students - made on the condition they are invested to generate the recipient an income. They are increasingly important to UK universities: Oxford and Cambridge have launched campaigns to raise £1.25bn and £1bn respectively to boost their endowments.
The plunging value of the funds comes as universities face unprecedented hikes in their wage and fuel bills alongside squeezed public funding. One senior vice-chancellor warned that the cutback in government spending on universities would be the worst in 25 years.
The survey of the 20 members of the Russell group of research-intensive universities showed nearly all have already lost millions in the downturn. All but three gave a measure of the performance of their funds. The losses declared so far add up to £190m with most institutions acknowledging there are more to come.
Phil Harding, chair of the British Universities Finance Directors Group, said: "It has undoubtedly got worse as the last six months have progressed. Finance directors are getting more and more concerned about how deep the impact is going to be and how prolonged."
Universities are separately predicting severe funding cuts next year as the government shifts spending to deal with the fallout of the recession. A pay deal for lecturers promised to meet the retail price index for this year, which is unexpectedly high and adding to their woes.
Alan Gilbert, the president of the University of Manchester - which had lost £16m from its endowment by July - says in a letter to members of the university: "We must now anticipate an era of extraordinary stringency in public outlays on higher education; an environment tougher, certainly, than anything universities have faced for the last quarter century."
The University of Glasgow's fund lost around a third of its value, plunging £41.9m to £92.5m in the year to November. University College London's fund dropped £16m to £50m in July. Birmingham lost £11m in the year to October and Newcastle's £6.7m up until July.
The University of Leeds' endowment dropped to £49m in July, from £57m a year ago. It is considering a 5% "efficiency saving" next year "in order to remain in control and manage the financial difficulties ahead", a spokeswoman said.
The endowments of UK universities are small compared with the American Ivy League giants. Harvard last week said it was making cuts to account for a £8bn loss in its investments, 22% of its total.
Steve Large, King's College London's finance director, said: "In the UK, endowments are the icing on the cake and now we're almost down to the sponge." King's' fund was valued at £119.4m in July. Large said overall UK university endowment values could have dropped by up to 15% since then. "The situation has certainly got worse ... but universities hold endowments for the long term and can manage short-term volatility," he insisted.
A 15% reduction in Oxford's £680m fund, which excludes the college's separate endowments, would be £102m. A spokesman for Oxford said it would not give a "running commentary" on its fund during the current "volatile" climate but pointed out that only 4.5% of its income was generated by its endowment.
Oxford is still waiting to find out if it will recover the £30m it had invested in Icelandic banks. Cambridge also had £11m in Iceland. Many universities said they had moved to protect their funds by changing their investments before the downturn. However, some are still heavily invested in the stockmarket. About 96% of Sheffield's fund is invested in the stockmarket, Leeds has nearly 80% in "stockmarket assets" and Glasgow 100%.
The Russell group's director general, Wendy Piatt, said: "Russell Group universities are less reliant on endowments than US institutions and we derive our income from a variety of sources. Nevertheless, we will be subject to some extremely difficult economic conditions with income streams under threat, costs increasing and international competition escalating ... our research-led institutions have a crucial role to play in helping the UK survive the economic downturn and stimulate a recovery."
Setting Up a Tool for Knowledge Sharing in a Public Library
December 2, 2008
works on knowledge management at the Public Library of Vlissingen in the Netherlands
the Library also provide service for the local hospital and have opened services in elementary schools
they want to be a two-way library where their users are, adapted to the needs and wishes of their users
digital library is becoming more important because fewer people are coming in for books
have to share knowledge efficiently, making use of hidden staff talent
did a “knowledge scan”
found that the intranet wasn’t meeting staff needs
their wiki is internal only because they want to excel internally before they might open it up for users
six steps to implementing a wiki
1 - planning the wiki
actually the most important phase of all
many important questions need to be answered, including is your internal culture ready for something like this
are people stimulated to share their knowledge or are they prevented from sharing it?
what do you want to get out of it?
which users do you want to contribute to it? what will the scope be?
they decided to involve all of their users because sharing knowledge is important to everyone
early involvement of future users is important - involve them as soon as possible
also gets you feedback
use wikitmatrix.com to find appropriate software for your project
decide hosted vs on your own server
they started out on their own server but went to a hosted service when they realized they didn’t have the in-house technical knowledge they needed
2 - designing the wiki
used an external visual designer to make the wiki use their current brand (he happened to be the son of a staff member)
created the initial structure of the wiki but let it grow organically
seeded it with initial content (no “empty box”)
created documentation and policy rules for the wiki (”wikiquette”) but don’t focus on the rules
created a sandbox area where people could experiment and play without feeling like they could mess things up
3 - Testing the wiki
used early adopters who were already familiar with wikis
test basic functions, proofreading initial content, test links and wiki usability
let future users test the wiki
4 - Launching the wiki and training users
found it important to do this officially so need to communicate it to everyone in an official way
have lots of “communication moments”
tell people what the wiki can do for them and integrate it into daily work practices
pay more attention to “slow adopters”
create a good handbook
5 - Managing & maintaining the wiki
appointed a “wiki gardener” to be responsible for moderating discussions, reviewing content, reviewing wiki structure to makke content easily accessible by everyone
important distinction that she has no effect on actual content - she isn’t a “wiki dictator”
technical support is maintained by the hosting company in their case
6 - Wiki evaluation
they’re in this stage now
using statistics and user surveys
showed a screenshot - it’s simple because it’s focused on the content
“teams & clusters”
“information”
they are now developing new software that will complement the wiki by handling reference inquiries from the public
answering questions will become based on team expertise, not individuals
this is a revolutionary new way of working in a Dutch public library
they will see the first demo of the system next week, so just in the initial phase
wiki lessons learned (practical tips)
- the success of a wiki depends on user contribution and enthusiasm
- involve your end-users from the beginning
- reward people for contributing to the wiki, acknowledge experts who share
- a wiki complements, but does not replace, face-to-face sharing; it’s not about the technology or the tool, but the people
- seed the wiki
- integrate the wiki in daily working practices
q: which software did you use?
a: moin moin was their first choice, but installing and configuring it required more technical skills than they had, so they moved to Plone; users don’t need any technical knowledge
q: was the goal to replace or complement the intranet? and can you give examples of making the wiki practical for staff when explaining it?
a: the Library has different geographical locations, so it can be difficult for teams to meet physically, so they are also implementing a chat function within the wiki
Every Piece of Information Is a Latent Community
December 2, 2008
Clay Shirky’s keynote talk to open the 2008 Online Information Conference
“group action just got easier” = 5-word summary of his book Here Comes Everybody
the ways the media environment is being transformed now that consumers are first-class participants
the overlap of all of the patterns in one environment is the big transition we’re all living through and trying to figure out
showed a picture of a truck in a parking lot at sunset on Flickr - HDR photography (technique, not just software)
don’t need to see what’s going on in the comments to understand what’s going on there
people start inserting photographs into the comments, which turn to a technical discussion
a user group is assembled on the fly
used to be gather then share - used to have to identify the people who would be interested first and then organize/share
Flickr reversed the pattern - share and then gather
they didn’t identify themselves before they saw this page
Flickr had the infrastructure to let these people create a community on the fly
once the users created this, it wasn’t evanescent anymore - it was permanent now
shows that every URL is a latent community - potential value that people looking at it might find value in it
not all will see community grow, but the potential is there
can have many more communities of practice at much lower cost because the old distinction between conversation and publication is no longer true
why pick? Flickr gets more value out of not having to decide in advance what a piece of information might be used for
even on the Flickr picture, other conversations can take place in parallel
Flickr gives users the tools to add value
there are large patterns we see (not every service on the internet has these, but some large ones do)
- share
- collaboration
- collective action
in this order, because how much does the individual have to give up to get value?
takes more effort the higher you go on the ladder
showed Bronze Beta - the Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan club site
back when WB sold the rights to Buffy to UPN, UPN didn’t want the community group online, so they shut down the server (UPN: we don’t want it because we’re in the television business)
the users, however, wanted the community to continue, so they raised money and commissioned a new service to move to
they explicitly decided they didn’t want any “features” - no ratings, rankings, etc.
they just wanted to type in text, and now it’s just a giant scroll of conversation
the community is still going
these new social technologies are the first time where later generations of technology have fewer features than older versions
the simplicity in the tools has to do with a mindshift of the computer as a box to a door
for individually-oriented software, a long list of features is good (Photoshop, Word, etc.)
but when we want to collaborate, fewer features is better; we need the same mental model of what’s going on
the complexity is in the user, not the software
in Bronze Beta, the complexity is in the very long list of rules created by the users (”no colored fonts”)
showed the Wikipedia entry for Doctor Who - it’s been edited almost 9,000 times by more than 3,000 people
the breadth and depth of participation is quite extraordinary
“hive mind” - people that use this term almost always don’t understand what’s happening
these folks aren’t part of a community in any sense because most have only edited it once or twice
someone, though, has edited it thousands of times; every article he’s touched on Wikipedia is about Doctor Who
there is no coherent average behavior, although the commonest behavior is one edit, one user
we’re used to counting noses - how many people watched my TV show, read my book, etc.
but here, there is no one common user behavior; instead, there’s this tiny group of fantastically engaged users
imagine going to your boss and trying to convince them to plan this
it’s not everybody pitching in like a barn-raising; it’s not collaboration
it’s like a small, self-appointed editorial board
collaboration involves real synchronization
it’s not just you share and I share
collective action is the most difficult pattern to get going because the whole group has to commit to it and either stand or fall together
two examples - HSBC
they recruited college students with penalty-free checking accounts
proved to be popular, but then they changed their minds and added a penalty
gave users 30 days to get their money out
thought they had the information and coordination advantage
in the summer, the students should have been outclassed by HSBC’s tools
but they didn’t count on Facebook
a user starts a page, which goes viral
for the first time, college students are dispersed but active
they started sharing documentation - good banks to move to and how
once one person solved the problem, the information was available to everyone
goodbye to HSBC’s information advantage
then they organized a real-world protest, but it never happened because by then HSBC had caved in
HSBC backed down because the students were upset AND coordinated
“thinking is for doing”
there is an analagous transformation that publishing for acting
the newspaper could only report HSBC had changed the deal, while Facebook could actually encourage users to do something
publishing and action is no longer a choice - can do both
now have a response without managerial control
example two - flash mobs
they were promoted in “emails by bill”
wanted to prove that hipsters would do anything you told them to
hits belarus - eating ice cream in Minsk Square
the police showed up - the group became a problem (not the group eating ice cream)
it had been made illegal to act in concert - to be a group
when they entered the square, they weren’t a group
the livejournal page led to action - it’s a full cycle; they didn’t just bring their ice cream - they also brought their cameras because they wanted to document the state’s response
in less than 3 years, flash mobs went from being something to mock a certain class to political protest
we tend to underestimate the potential of these tools because they tend to look frivolous
we don’t understand their potential
anything that allows group formation is political
so much of the meaning of the tool is in what the user does with it once it becomes social
what is all of this doing to the media landscape as a whole?
we’re living in the middle of the largest increase in the social expression of the human race
1 - printing press/movable type
2 - point-to-point communications (telegraph, telephone)
3 - capturing sound and video
4 - broadcasting spectrum (radio, television)
curious asymmetry to them - the ones that are good at creating conversations are not good at creating groups and vice versa
there was no medium for creating two-way conversation among groups (many-to-many) until now
there is no longer a distinction between consumer and producer
giving someone the ability to receive email means they can send email
the audience grows and becomes varied
the 5GB generated this year will be at the edges
the internet is also the mode of carriage for all previous media as it’s digitized
it’s also adding social dimensions to all existing media
to produce something for a lot of people to watch, read, etc., I have to take on a big burden for production costs
if I’m wrong, I lose a lot of money
in an era of gutenberg economics, I decide which books are good and I publish them
all following media have had the same economics problem
filter and then publish becomes the model - see what’s good and then publish it
now, anyone can publish to anyone with a marginal cost of zero
it’s the first medium we’ve had that works with post-gutenberg economics
anyone can say anything to anybody and they frequently do
it’s too much content to filter in advance, and there’s no economic reason to do so
the question for a 15-year old today is not “why publish” but “why not publish?”
many of the huge businesses built on the back of the internet have at the core of their business model a post-publication filter
get to the good stuff after the fact, not before
the users are now well and truly engaged in the publishing environment
the user as publisher model:
1- Gnarly Kitty
a fashion-obsessed Thai student who posted about a fishing game
why would anyone publish that?
because she’s not talking to us - she’s talking to her friends
we’re not used to seeing things that are public but not in the public
then a coup happens in Thailand, and the government tells the media not to report about it
but Gnarly Kitty publishes the first picture of tanks in front of the parliament house and she is now the go-to source
people are now flooding in and she becomes a global resource
then she posts about a phone she’d like to own
the users get upset and want more about the coup
she responds with a post that it’s *her* blog and it’s about her life
zuckerman: journalism has gone from being a profession to being an activity
she committed acts of journalism; she just did it while she was a concerned citizen
not connected to self-definition
this model is new
she doesn’t need the money to be a global publisher
she gets thousands of new readers and she tells them if you don’t like her content, then leave
2 - Howard Forums
early blog about cell phones
can”t answer people’s questions about their phones, so he says hey, you all talk to each other and he puts up a forum
is up to a billion pages this year because the expert users are solving problems for the new users
tech support reps from phone companies will refer callers to the Forums
they have access to “reality,” which the engineers don’t
the kinds of questions that can only be answered when A has part of the answer and B has the other part and they collaborate
users creating detailed technical documentation
it’s not all tech all the time, because users have gotten to know one another and they hang out here together (they post pictures of their pets)
as a publisher, it’s easy to see that you’d get rid of the pictures of cats
but that misunderstands what is going on here
that both of these things are coming from the same web
they’re not doing one in spite of the other, but rather because of it
it’s the fact that the users care about each other is what gets them to do all of this
communities have to be for the members
the satisfaction comes from membership and recognition from the communnity
hosting that isn’t amenable to crowdsourcing solutions
communities need to get to know each other and share all kinds of things in order to do the technical documentation
3- showed a still shot from Joss Whedon’s new show, Dollhouse
fan experience is that his shows get canceled, so they’ve already created a site to save it from cancellation before it even airs
in the past, they’ve organized protests
they don’t trust the marketing department to explain to people why they should watch it, so they do this themselves
there is no aspect of the information industry that users aren’t crawling into, including the marketing department
users don’t always do this well
the pattern is usually extract the signal after the fact
they do always do it differently, though
grappling with that difference is the big question we have to deal with now
one of the big changes is that anybody in any part of the information business is now part of the entire information business
no longer i work in television and you work movies - it doesn’t matter anymore
no longer that we produce the content and then the users go off and talk about it somewhere else
creating community and arranging action are now part of production
not every organization should get into every part of the business, but publishers can now be conveners of community
can allow amateurs in to extract value - that’s what we’re grappling with
it’s not a move from A to B but from one to many
the landscape itself is expanding
when the printing press came out, it wasn’t that people looked at it and said, oh now we need a printing industry and this is what it will look like
little things turn out to be big deals
making books smaller meant more people could carry them (creation of octavo size)
if it’s hard for a thief to get a book out the door, that’s a feature
that little intuition sparked a revolution
everybody is everywhere and all the walls have fallen
everybody can see each part of the business; it’s all horizen and no barriers
what’s the next good thing to do?
the answer is most certainly to explore
experimenting our way into the future is what will show us what works
there is no roadmap for the period we are entering
q: what is the role of the professional librarian
a: liz lawley says libraries are “happiness engines;” the whole of the world that deals with traditional publishing is now dealing with the split between lovers of the page and lovers of the book; it’s easy to see the role of librarians as hosts of books, but if you see sociable libraries as happiness engines, then the question becomes what set of things done in libraries now would increase the happiness; one of the obvious answers is “collaborative filtering” - helping the user find the next thing to read, watch, etc.; libraries have typically serviced users one-to-one, but there are groups of people coming together and talking with each other in the library; ideas make people happy, so what resources do we have to extend that; one of the big resources we have is that we have “convening power” - it’s unmatched in civil society; the cross-section that goes into a library is quite extraordinary; it doesn’t have to be one-to-one, and there is a great deal of potential in experimenting with many-to-many; even in the corporate world, libraries can join up people who should be talking with each other; IBM example - “DogEar” plus a one-way mirror; allowed researchers to tag URLs, although they’re not sharing the tags back to the world; two geographically-dispersed research groups there discovered each other because they were tagging the same resources, clearly with the same ideas; they actually called each other and then pooled their efforts; this would never have happened from the top-down; “research is a famously upside-down problem” so there’s no way one person at the top could have said these two groups in two different countries will work together; when the users can see what each other think (don’t apply the ontology in advance), people with similar world-views can be connected; connecting users because they’re looking at the same information
q: if we spent our lives organizing information as a community, how do we tackle all of the new information being created?
a: you can’t; you only have 2 chances to actively organize things - moment of creation and moment of use; at creation, can try to add metadata, but at use stage, you can involve the user and have them modify or verify the metadata; the problem becomes a little bit of effort gives you a high degree of leverage, so have to find the right point where this happens; there’s no way to apply the metaphor of the shelf to cyberspace; they have to do with automatic extraction, inviting users to upgrade metadata at the point of use
q: what does this tell us about human nature that we might apply to things we do?
a: that is THE question, in part because it’s the one we need to answer but can’t; used to think that the world was changing because technology was changing, but now thinks we’re just not used to explaining human behavior without being paid or other extrinsic motivation; we used to think the market was the public sphere and the household was the private one, but that’s changing; Wikipedia makes no sense at all; what critics have missed is that human nature contains an enormous amount of Gnarly Kitty motivation;public and private sphere are existing side by side, can’t be explained purely by the market
q: the idea of expertise as opposed to popularity
a: if your skull is going to be cut open, you want it to be done by a trained professional; the reverse is that you don’t need to buy music only in the presence of a record store professional;
the closer things to come to life and death and one-off decisions with no reversability, the more we want expertise; the places where there is an obvious right answer that is independent from the social view; changes here are coming about in the end of the spectrum where what people believe changes what is true; are SUVs a truck or a car? that decision was socialized, which got us to a better answer than letting Washington decide; there’s no general “get ouf jail free” card for experts; very often, the really interesting hybrids are where professionals and amateurs come together; in most but not all cases in the information industry, it’s headed to hybridization because it’s not the critical one-off decision; how many different strategies can we apply to see where the cost versus value curve is
q: should we be worried about efficiency? should we be worried about experts? one of the problems of community is that there are maturity issues that affect newbies (keep learning or does everyone become an “expert”)
a: the social origin of good ideas; putting experts and amateurs together improves both groups because when the expert has to teach, he learns; it’s the conversation between the two turns out to be more powerful than pure amateur aggregation or pure expert knowledge; these systems work not because they’re efficient because they’re effective after many fruitless tries at low cost; resources don’t get tied up in the failures because it’s easier to identify them; we’ve all been in that meeting where we realize we’ve expended more energy talking about the idea than we would have if we’d just implemented it; most Flickr pictures don’t have comments but it doesn’t cost Flickr anything; that’s why these new systems look so strange to us
Every Piece of Information Is a Latent Community
December 2, 2008
Clay Shirky’s keynote talk to open the 2008 Online Information Conference
“group action just got easier” = 5-word summary of his book Here Comes Everybody
the ways the media environment is being transformed now that consumers are first-class participants
the overlap of all of the patterns in one environment is the big transition we’re all living through and trying to figure out
showed a picture of a truck in a parking lot at sunset on Flickr - HDR photography (technique, not just software)
don’t need to see what’s going on in the comments to understand what’s going on there
people start inserting photographs into the comments, which turn to a technical discussion
a user group is assembled on the fly
used to be gather then share - used to have to identify the people who would be interested first and then organize/share
Flickr reversed the pattern - share and then gather
they didn’t identify themselves before they saw this page
Flickr had the infrastructure to let these people create a community on the fly
once the users created this, it wasn’t evanescent anymore - it was permanent now
shows that every URL is a latent community - potential value that people looking at it might find value in it
not all will see community grow, but the potential is there
can have many more communities of practice at much lower cost because the old distinction between conversation and publication is no longer true
why pick? Flickr gets more value out of not having to decide in advance what a piece of information might be used for
even on the Flickr picture, other conversations can take place in parallel
Flickr gives users the tools to add value
there are large patterns we see (not every service on the internet has these, but some large ones do)
- share
- collaboration
- collective action
in this order, because how much does the individual have to give up to get value?
takes more effort the higher you go on the ladder
showed Bronze Beta - the Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan club site
back when WB sold the rights to Buffy to UPN, UPN didn’t want the community group online, so they shut down the server (UPN: we don’t want it because we’re in the television business)
the users, however, wanted the community to continue, so they raised money and commissioned a new service to move to
they explicitly decided they didn’t want any “features” - no ratings, rankings, etc.
they just wanted to type in text, and now it’s just a giant scroll of conversation
the community is still going
these new social technologies are the first time where later generations of technology have fewer features than older versions
the simplicity in the tools has to do with a mindshift of the computer as a box to a door
for individually-oriented software, a long list of features is good (Photoshop, Word, etc.)
but when we want to collaborate, fewer features is better; we need the same mental model of what’s going on
the complexity is in the user, not the software
in Bronze Beta, the complexity is in the very long list of rules created by the users (”no colored fonts”)
showed the Wikipedia entry for Doctor Who - it’s been edited almost 9,000 times by more than 3,000 people
the breadth and depth of participation is quite extraordinary
“hive mind” - people that use this term almost always don’t understand what’s happening
these folks aren’t part of a community in any sense because most have only edited it once or twice
someone, though, has edited it thousands of times; every article he’s touched on Wikipedia is about Doctor Who
there is no coherent average behavior, although the commonest behavior is one edit, one user
we’re used to counting noses - how many people watched my TV show, read my book, etc.
but here, there is no one common user behavior; instead, there’s this tiny group of fantastically engaged users
imagine going to your boss and trying to convince them to plan this
it’s not everybody pitching in like a barn-raising; it’s not collaboration
it’s like a small, self-appointed editorial board
collaboration involves real synchronization
it’s not just you share and I share
collective action is the most difficult pattern to get going because the whole group has to commit to it and either stand or fall together
two examples - HSBC
they recruited college students with penalty-free checking accounts
proved to be popular, but then they changed their minds and added a penalty
gave users 30 days to get their money out
thought they had the information and coordination advantage
in the summer, the students should have been outclassed by HSBC’s tools
but they didn’t count on Facebook
a user starts a page, which goes viral
for the first time, college students are dispersed but active
they started sharing documentation - good banks to move to and how
once one person solved the problem, the information was available to everyone
goodbye to HSBC’s information advantage
then they organized a real-world protest, but it never happened because by then HSBC had caved in
HSBC backed down because the students were upset AND coordinated
“thinking is for doing”
there is an analagous transformation that publishing for acting
the newspaper could only report HSBC had changed the deal, while Facebook could actually encourage users to do something
publishing and action is no longer a choice - can do both
now have a response without managerial control
example two - flash mobs
they were promoted in “emails by bill”
wanted to prove that hipsters would do anything you told them to
hits belarus - eating ice cream in Minsk Square
the police showed up - the group became a problem (not the group eating ice cream)
it had been made illegal to act in concert - to be a group
when they entered the square, they weren’t a group
the livejournal page led to action - it’s a full cycle; they didn’t just bring their ice cream - they also brought their cameras because they wanted to document the state’s response
in less than 3 years, flash mobs went from being something to mock a certain class to political protest
we tend to underestimate the potential of these tools because they tend to look frivolous
we don’t understand their potential
anything that allows group formation is political
so much of the meaning of the tool is in what the user does with it once it becomes social
what is all of this doing to the media landscape as a whole?
we’re living in the middle of the largest increase in the social expression of the human race
1 - printing press/movable type
2 - point-to-point communications (telegraph, telephone)
3 - capturing sound and video
4 - broadcasting spectrum (radio, television)
curious asymmetry to them - the ones that are good at creating conversations are not good at creating groups and vice versa
there was no medium for creating two-way conversation among groups (many-to-many) until now
there is no longer a distinction between consumer and producer
giving someone the ability to receive email means they can send email
the audience grows and becomes varied
the 5GB generated this year will be at the edges
the internet is also the mode of carriage for all previous media as it’s digitized
it’s also adding social dimensions to all existing media
to produce something for a lot of people to watch, read, etc., I have to take on a big burden for production costs
if I’m wrong, I lose a lot of money
in an era of gutenberg economics, I decide which books are good and I publish them
all following media have had the same economics problem
filter and then publish becomes the model - see what’s good and then publish it
now, anyone can publish to anyone with a marginal cost of zero
it’s the first medium we’ve had that works with post-gutenberg economics
anyone can say anything to anybody and they frequently do
it’s too much content to filter in advance, and there’s no economic reason to do so
the question for a 15-year old today is not “why publish” but “why not publish?”
many of the huge businesses built on the back of the internet have at the core of their business model a post-publication filter
get to the good stuff after the fact, not before
the users are now well and truly engaged in the publishing environment
the user as publisher model:
1- Gnarly Kitty
a fashion-obsessed Thai student who posted about a fishing game
why would anyone publish that?
because she’s not talking to us - she’s talking to her friends
we’re not used to seeing things that are public but not in the public
then a coup happens in Thailand, and the government tells the media not to report about it
but Gnarly Kitty publishes the first picture of tanks in front of the parliament house and she is now the go-to source
people are now flooding in and she becomes a global resource
then she posts about a phone she’d like to own
the users get upset and want more about the coup
she responds with a post that it’s *her* blog and it’s about her life
zuckerman: journalism has gone from being a profession to being an activity
she committed acts of journalism; she just did it while she was a concerned citizen
not connected to self-definition
this model is new
she doesn’t need the money to be a global publisher
she gets thousands of new readers and she tells them if you don’t like her content, then leave
2 - Howard Forums
early blog about cell phones
can”t answer people’s questions about their phones, so he says hey, you all talk to each other and he puts up a forum
is up to a billion pages this year because the expert users are solving problems for the new users
tech support reps from phone companies will refer callers to the Forums
they have access to “reality,” which the engineers don’t
the kinds of questions that can only be answered when A has part of the answer and B has the other part and they collaborate
users creating detailed technical documentation
it’s not all tech all the time, because users have gotten to know one another and they hang out here together (they post pictures of their pets)
as a publisher, it’s easy to see that you’d get rid of the pictures of cats
but that misunderstands what is going on here
that both of these things are coming from the same web
they’re not doing one in spite of the other, but rather because of it
it’s the fact that the users care about each other is what gets them to do all of this
communities have to be for the members
the satisfaction comes from membership and recognition from the communnity
hosting that isn’t amenable to crowdsourcing solutions
communities need to get to know each other and share all kinds of things in order to do the technical documentation
3- showed a still shot from Joss Whedon’s new show, Dollhouse
fan experience is that his shows get canceled, so they’ve already created a site to save it from cancellation before it even airs
in the past, they’ve organized protests
they don’t trust the marketing department to explain to people why they should watch it, so they do this themselves
there is no aspect of the information industry that users aren’t crawling into, including the marketing department
users don’t always do this well
the pattern is usually extract the signal after the fact
they do always do it differently, though
grappling with that difference is the big question we have to deal with now
one of the big changes is that anybody in any part of the information business is now part of the entire information business
no longer i work in television and you work movies - it doesn’t matter anymore
no longer that we produce the content and then the users go off and talk about it somewhere else
creating community and arranging action are now part of production
not every organization should get into every part of the business, but publishers can now be conveners of community
can allow amateurs in to extract value - that’s what we’re grappling with
it’s not a move from A to B but from one to many
the landscape itself is expanding
when the printing press came out, it wasn’t that people looked at it and said, oh now we need a printing industry and this is what it will look like
little things turn out to be big deals
making books smaller meant more people could carry them (creation of octavo size)
if it’s hard for a thief to get a book out the door, that’s a feature
that
