Part of the Transformation Track, Transforming Your Library, and Your Library’s Future, with Technology, program coordinators Alan Gray and John Blyberg (both of Darien Public Library) described it like this:

Technology can transform your library and its services, as it is transforming the lives of your patrons. From do-it-now technology improvements to next-generation implementations, from software to SOPACs, from in-your-face competition to over-the-horizon transformations, three accomplished experts will instruct, enlighten and challenge you to use technology to make your library more relevant to your patrons — today and tomorrow.

I was among Lori Ayre, who showed how automation solutions can transform your physical library, and Roy Tennant, who addressed issues of technology leadership. My own presentation (slides available in QuickTime and PDF) focused on how we can leverage web technologies to build valuable online libraries that serve our communities.

Your library is more than books…your website should be too

Recent attention to our catalogs is leading to much needed improvements in their usability, findability, and remixability, but a catalog does not reflect the full breadth of programs, services, and answers our users value. We need to look carefully at our entire web presence and leave nothing behind.

Your website is not a marketing tool…it’s a service point.

Our users don’t care about us, they care about what we can do for them. We need to go beyond describing the resources available in our brick and mortar branches and deliver easy to use, self service resources online. Every search is a question, we need to deliver answers.

Culture is local…so are our libraries.

Libraries face stiff competition from publishers, online and local retailers, and even other libraries in delivering mass culture materials to users, but each library stands alone in its efforts to preserve and disseminate locally unique resources. Local history is a good place to start, but libraries that become experts in helping local businesses or community groups become finable and usable online will be well valued.

Examples

• A catalog mockup that gives more than just a list of matching books.
• A live beta of Plymouth State University’s new website and catalog that tries to answer questions asked in the search. Search for “reserves” (or “course reserves” or a variety of other forms) and it directs you to the course reserves form or to the reserves request forms for instructors. Search for “anthropology” and it directs users to our subject guide and to our Ask a Librarian service.
• Tamworth Library is posting (anonymized) answers on their website to questions that come in from patrons, such as this one about what gardening materials are in the collection. Posting like that helps answer questions for users who might ask a search engine but haven’t asked their librarians about. And because the library’s events are such an important feature of their services, the events calendar is posted in the sidebar to every page and available as RSS.
• Tamworth’s website has also become an important feature of the community (take a look at these comments), and their hoping to put online the unique pieces of local history in their collection. Thomas Ford Memorial Library in Western Springs has shown how much patrons near and far appreciate libraries for exposing local materials with their obituary index.
• And the engagement of the community in a local history collection can enrich our knowledge of events and places that official historians didn’t record. The comments at Beyond Brown Paper, a collection of photos from a paper manufacturer in northern New Hampshire, reveal the rich history of the mill, the town, and its people.

library, libraries, transformation, lib20, library 2.0, ALA, presentation

I’m not going to ALA/NO so I’m hoping those who are will blog it. Two events I’m especially interested in:

On Sunday, June 25:

Catalog Transformed: From Traditional to Emerging Models of Use

This program, co-sponsored by the MARS User Access to Services Committee and RUSA’s Reference Services Section (RSS, formerly MOUSS), deals with changes in library catalogs in response to the increasing Googlization of electronic resources. Speakers include: Cindy Levine (Reference Librarian for the Humanities, North Carolina State University), Jill Newby (English Language Literature and Writing Librarian, University of Arizona), Andrew K. Pace (Head of Systems, North Carolina State University), Jina Wakimoto (Librarian, Head of Cataloging, University of Colorado at Boulder), and John Blyberg (Network Administrator and Lead Developer, Ann Arbor District Library).

And an ACRL debate on Monday, June 26:

The Emperor Has No Clothes: Be It Resolved That Information Literacy is a Fad and Waste of Librarian Time and Talent.

Moderated by James Neal, Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian, Columbia University, two teams composed of Stanley Wilder, Associate Dean in the Library, University of Rochester, Jeff Rutenbeck, Associate Professor and Director Digital Media Studies, University of Denver, Julie B. Todaro, Dean, Library Services, Austin Community College, and Gary P. Radford, Professor of Communication Studies, Fairleigh Dickinson University, will debate the relevance of information literacy as we know it. Is information literacy a concept created by academic librarians to make themselves more relevant to the curriculum or is it one of our most important roles? Is information literacy critical thinking in disguise or is there a real body of knowledge to be communicated? Does civil society’s dependence on life-long learners require the acquisition of information literacy skills? Can libraries justify the expenditures they’ve made on teaching information literacy or do the data suggest otherwise? This debate will test our assumptions and beliefs about a core element of the academic librarians’ role in the educational process.

I’m also sad to be missing the Blogger Bash, but happy to see this blogger-friendly side come out. So please, blog this stuff.

ALA/NO, ALA2006, American Library Association, New Orleans, ala, conference, future libraries , lib20, libraries, library, library 2.0

You won’t get your salad dressing on the side in San Antonio. I don’t know what it says about a place, but in New England it’s so common I never learned to ask for it on the side, it just happens. Not so in San Antonio.

You’ll also have trouble finding a place to eat dinner away from the riverwalk, as all the neighborhood places I found are open only for breakfast and lunch. And I can’t say it with authority, but I don’t think there are any bookstores downtown either.

There’s no criticism in the above, just observations. Praise follows.

The city is clearly the most walkable I’ve ever seen. Cars move leisurely through most streets, allowing pedestrians to amble freely. And though there was little traffic noise, a descent to the riverwalk seemed to put one into a different city. Side note: much of the riverwalk has no guard rails to keep teetering tourists out of the drink; as with the salad dressing thing, I don’t know what this means, but I commend the civic leaders for it.

There’s probably a city ordinance that demands that everybody who visits the city is required to get their picture in front of the Alamo, and I complied, though only on the last day, despite being in a hotel abutting it. Indeed, my hotel, The Crocket, was a surprise pleasure. It wasn’t the free WiFi and continental breakfast, it was the Lady Bird Johnson fountain out front and nice architecture. The rooms were basic business class, but the economy price set my expectations too low and set me up for a nice surprise.

The high point of my stay in town? I had my first-ever old-style shave in the barbershop at the Gunter Hotel, which still has their old telephone switchboard from 1909. My feeling is that guys were plumb stupid to let barbers disappear from our lives.

The photo above actually comes from somewhere nearer Georgia than Texas, but I never did capture an iconic picture of San Antonio, so that’s all I’ve got.

ala, ala midwinter, san antonio, san antonio tx, texas, travel, riverwalk, tourist, leisure

ALA Midwinter IUG SIG Presentation: Designing an OPAC for Web 2.0

update: PDF version with space for notes

Web 2.0 and other “2.0” monikers have become loaded terms recently. But as we look back at the world wide web of 1996, there can be little doubt that today’s web is better and more useful. Indeed, that seems to be the conclusion millions of Americans are making, as current estimates show over 200 million users in the US, including 87% of youth 12-17.

Web 2.0 isn’t driven by technology, it’s driven by that critical mass of users. And while social software and AJAX enabled web applications get most of our attention, people are turning to the internet for some very mundane everyday activities that were little more than science fiction in 1996. The commonality of internet banking, for example, reflects the trust users now have in the security and reliability of online services.

But the web has weathered so much hype and hyperbole that it may be difficult to recognize its arrival as a true cultural force. Computing has become so common that children often learn to type before they learn to write. And the instant, self-service access to worlds of information and services is changing industries — a fact we can see clearly in the decline of the role of travel agents, even while air travel continues to grow.

Kevin Kelly, in a Wired Magazine story described this apparent blindness:

The accretion of tiny marvels can numb us to the arrival of the stupendous. [thanks to Josh Porter for alerting me to this]

So the question of how to design a web OPAC for today is a question of how to design an information service in a world rich with information services and filled with users who make information seeking — though not necessarily at libraries — part of their everyday lives.

ala, ala midwinter, ala midwinter 2006, iii, iug, lib 2.0, libraries, library, library 2.0, library catalog, online catalog, opac, opac 2.0, presentation, web 2.0, web opac

A List Apart, has been revamped and they’re proud of it. They should be, it’s beautiful and functional. It’s one of the few early web development resources that’s still with us, and there’s a reason.

tags: a list apart, ala, redesign, web development, web development resources