Woot! Woot!

December 4, 2006 – 2:00 pm

The press release:
Making Libraries Relevant in an Internet-Based Society
PSU?s Casey Bisson wins Mellon Award for innovative search software for libraries
PLYMOUTH, N.H. ? You can?t trip over what?s not there. Every day millions of Internet users search online for information about millions of topics. And none of their search results include resources from the countless libraries [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information | Comments (36)



Library Camp East 2006

September 26, 2006 – 1:17 pm

LCE2006 was a success. Let me quickly join with the other participants to offer my appreciation to John Blyberg and Alan Grey for all their work planning the event, as well as Darien Public Library director Louise Berry and the rest of the library for hosting the event.
Side note: Darien is a beautiful town, but [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information | Comments (3)

The ALA/NO Events I’d Like To See

June 15, 2006 – 12:35 pm

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 [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information | Comments (0)

The ILS Brick Wall

June 13, 2006 – 12:57 pm

Nicole Engard last month posted about The State of our ILS, describing the systems as:
I?d say it?s a like the crazy cousin you have to deal with because he?s family! It doesn?t fit, we are a very open IT environment, we have applications all over that need to talk to each other nicely and the [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Technology | Comments (3)

The URLs From My Portland Talk

June 6, 2006 – 11:53 am

Following Edward Tufte’s advice, I’ve been wanting to offer a presentation without slides for a long time now; I finally got my chance in Portland. The downside is that now I don’t have anything to offer as a takeaway memory aid for my talk. My speaking notes are too abstract to offer for public consumption, [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information | Comments (0)



Q: Why Do Some Things Suck?

May 4, 2006 – 4:54 pm

A: Because we compare them to the wrong things.
I’m in training today for a piece of software used in libraries. It’s the second of three days of training and things aren’t going well. Some stuff doesn’t work, some things don’t work the first (second, third…ninth) time, and other things just don’t make sense. At [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information | Comments (14)

Shifting Borders

April 24, 2006 – 12:01 pm

My first reaction to the notion of librarians running reading groups in Second Life was a question of whether this was akin to putting a reference desk in a bar.
My second reaction was a question of how our systems will support these extra-library interactions. Can people quickly and easily trade URLs to access the library [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information | Comments (0)

Don’t Think You Use Web 2.0? Think Again

April 4, 2006 – 11:59 pm

It can be hard for library folk to imagine that the web development world might be as divided about the meaning and value of ?Web 2.0? as the library world is about ?Library 2.0,? but we/they are. Take Jeffrey Zeldman’s anti-Web 2.0, anti-AJAX post, for instance. Zeldman’s a smart guy, and he’s not entirely off-base, [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Technology | Comments (1)

Questions Are All Around Us

March 25, 2006 – 4:58 pm

These pictures are mostly foolish, but here’s a small point: none of us had ever seen a cop pull over a cab — certainly not a cab with passengers — before this, so we were all rather curious about why. In front of us stood a question, an example of the many questions we all encounter every day, and it’s the kind of question that few of us would ever suggest going to the library to answer.

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Photoblog, Questionable...funny. Pointless. | Comments (0)

Speaking My Language

March 21, 2006 – 9:28 pm

I loved this quote from Dave Young when I first found it, and I love it more now:

Talk to the customer in the language of the customer about what matters to the customer. Bad advertising is about you, your company, your product or your service. Good advertising is about the customer, and how your product or service will change their world.

Read that again, but replace the relevant bits with ?user? or ?patron? and ?your library? or ?your databases.?

The point of all this in a post from Jessamyn about understanding what users understand.

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information | Comments (7)

Talking ‘Bout Library 2.0

March 7, 2006 – 12:36 pm

Users want a rich pool from which to search, simplicity, and satisfaction. One does not have to take a 50-minute instruction session to order from Amazon. Why should libraries continue to be so difficult for our users to master?
— from page 8 of the The University of California Libraries Bibliographic Services [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information | Comments (13)

Standards Cage Match

February 23, 2006 – 10:14 am

I prefaced my point about how the standards we choose in libraries isolate us from the larger stream of progress driving development outside libraries with the note that I was sure to get hanged for it.
It’s true.
I commented that there were over 140,00 registered Amazon API developers and 365 public OpenSearch targets (hey look, there’s [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Politics & Controversy | Comments (5)

About My code4lib Presentation

February 22, 2006 – 10:21 am

As with all my other presentations, the my slides tell less than half the story, but I’ve posted them anyway. I’m told the audio was recorded, and there’s a chance that will help explain all this, but until then you’ll have to piece this all together from my previous writings, what little I’m about to [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information | Comments (2)

Instant Messenger Or Virtual Reference?

February 14, 2006 – 12:15 pm

I noted Aaron Schmidt’s points on IM in libraries previously, but what I didn’t say then was how certain I was that popular instant messaging clients like AOL Instant Messenger or Yahoo!’s or Google’s are far superior to the so-called virtual reference products. Why? They’re free, our patrons are comfortable with them, and they [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information | Comments (4)

WPopac: An OPAC 2.0 Testbed

February 9, 2006 – 11:54 pm

First things first, this thing probably needs a better name, but I’m not up to the task. Got ideas? Post in the comments. For the rest of this, let’s just pretend it’s an interview.
What is WPopac? It’s an OPAC — a library catalog, for my readers outside libraries — inside the framework of WordPress, the [...]

By Casey | Posted in Libraries & Networked Information, Technology | Comments (90)