(by 5 people)
This lens is meant to augment presentations I've been giving about the latest and greatest web tools for libraries. The lens is supposed to be a one-stop shop for bringing yourself up to speed on Library 2.0. Just click away on the links lists and have fun! If you think it could be better, click on the "contact the lensmaster" link on the right and tell me how.
Relevant Books
Just a sampling to encourage exploration.
Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers
Amazon Price: $16.47 (as of 07/25/2008)
The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More
Amazon Price: $16.47 (as of 07/25/2008)
Blog Marketing
Amazon Price: $18.45 (as of 07/25/2008)
Flickr Hacks: Tips & Tools for Sharing Photos Online (Hacks)
Amazon Price: $18.24 (as of 07/25/2008)
Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms
Amazon Price: $26.06 (as of 07/25/2008)
Step 1 - Listen To The Customer!
To me, this is the backbone of Library 2.0, and the gadgets are just facilitators.
Step 2 - Feedreader Links
Grab one of these to grab your feeds
Just pick one. There are tons available, these are just those with which I have experience.
- Feedreader
- Recommended RSS reader.
- Bloglines
- A web-based RSS reader.
- SharpReader
- I used this one before I found Feedreader. It's similar.
- Google Reader
- You have to have a Google account to use this one, and I didn't really like the interface when I used it, but if you're already using G-mail, you might like it.
Step 3 - Subscribe to These Blogs
These are the best Library 2.0 blogs.
There are tons of library or librarian blogs out there, more are created every day. I've tried to keep this list focused on those that have the most and best quality content about Library 2.0. I encourage you to explore the "biblioblogospere" at your leisure, as there are some really good blogs out there that just don't focus on Library 2.0.
- Tame The Web
- Michael Stephens' blog. He used to be Special Projects Librarian at SJCPL but he's moved on to the LIS faculty at Dominican. If I only read one blog, this would be it.
- ALS TechSource blog
- With an all-star panel of contributors and official sanctioning, this one is always good.
- Stephen's Lighthouse
- Stephen Abrams, The Vice President of Innovation at SirsiDynix holds forth.
- LibraryCrunch
- A very Library 2.0 focused blog by a practicing public librarian.
- Information Wants To Be Free
- An academic librarian, Meredith Farkas also created the Library Success Wiki.
- It's All Good
- A thought-provoking blog from some OCLC folks.
- Blyberg.net
- John Blyberg is Network Administrator and Lead Developer at the Ann Arbor District Library. He's done some cool stuff with their catalog and is a strong advocate for ILS improvement, especially OPACS.
- TechEssence
- This is supposed to be an "executive summary" blog for library technology. It's relatively new, but the contributor list looks fabulous.
- The Shifted Librarian
- This is the blog of Jenny Levine, Strategy Guide at the Metropolitan Library System in Illinois. She sometimes doesn't blog regularly, but when she does, watch out.
Step 4 - Explore, Play, Innovate, Implement!
Remember, it's three easy steps.
Although exploring and playing ought definitely to be easy, innovating can be a little more difficult. Most difficult of all, though is implementing. This is where you really have to study up, buckle down, and make some noise, and that's why the title of this lens is "...Three Easy Steps," good luck!
What Does "Exponentially Behind" Mean?
This is a brief explanation of one of the terms I employed in my presentations.
After explaining what library 2.0 is, I went on to give the reasons why I think librarians should be interested in these developments. One of the best reasons I gave was to avoid falling "exponentially behind." I used this term to describe the dangerous situation we create when we fail to maintain our technological aptitude and awareness of developments in the wider technolgy world. I used the example of the bissfully unaware librarian who is one day asked to create the library's MySpace page. For someone without at least a strong familiarity with blogging, photosharing, instant messenging, social networking on the web, and other concepts and techniques, this task may be overwhelming.
MySpace, like many other web 2.0 sites and services, integrates several new concepts and technologies in one package. How likely is one to succeed in an advanced physics course without mastery of calculus?
We can definitely say right now that some librarians are better prepared to exploit web 2.0 and a customer-centered philosophy than others. Are you in danger of falling exponentially behind? Are you doing everything you can to prevent that state? Is your organization getting the best from you in this regard?
MySpace, like many other web 2.0 sites and services, integrates several new concepts and technologies in one package. How likely is one to succeed in an advanced physics course without mastery of calculus?
We can definitely say right now that some librarians are better prepared to exploit web 2.0 and a customer-centered philosophy than others. Are you in danger of falling exponentially behind? Are you doing everything you can to prevent that state? Is your organization getting the best from you in this regard?
What is "Service Sphere Refinement?"
This is an explanation of another key concept from my presentations.
"Service sphere refinement" means tayloring our service offerings to the desires of our customers. A good example of our failure to conduct service sphere refinment is the continued widespread sponshorship of "ask a librarian" services. Many librarians suspected for a long time that there was something wrong with this method of electronic reference because usage seemed low. Then OCLC issued issued its Perceptions Report and we found out those librarians were on to something. While 51% of respondents indicated they had used instant messenger, only 6% indicated they had used an "online librarian question service." When we refine our sphere of service, we stop trying to promote an unsuccessful endeavour and start trying to reach our customers where they are. It should take, literally, five minutes to implement instant messenger reference, once the decision to do so has been made. We need to stop taking six months or more to understand and respond to simple trends in the information arena and start honing our "service sphere refinement" skills.
Further Reading
Library 2.0 Resources for Your Perusal
- CIL On The Cheap
- This is a link to the presentations from the most recent Computers In Libraries conference. Some of them are fantastic.
- The Library Success Wiki
- This resource is good, but only gets better as we build it. Do something cool and tell people how you did it, contribute!
- The Library 2.0 Wiki
- A young but promising resource, again, only as good as we make it.
- ALA Library 2.0 Innovation Boot Camp Reading List
- A list of resources which accompanies an ALA course of the same name.
- Library 2.0 in Three Easy Steps
- I don't know yet how often I'll be updating this lens, but feel free to subscribe. It's the little orange and white radio wave-looking button at the top next to "digg this."
- Cluetrain Manifesto
- I've read the book. It's short, so read it if you want, but you can get the idea from the "95 Theses" at this link. Summary: "markets are conversations." See step 1.
- The Long Tail
- This is all about supply and demand aggregation, in a statistical sort of way, which can get pretty arcane if you think about it too much. The idea gets a lot of press in the L2 community, though, so it won't hurt you to read the article.
- Libraries and the Long Tail
- A Lorcan Dempsey article from D-Lib Magazine which explores long tail implications for libraries.
- Grand Unified Theory of YouTube and MySpace
- This is an excellent article about why some web 2.0 services are more successful than others. Think about "ask-a-librarian" vs. IM reference. In many cases, library services are offered with technology and features comparable to more successful services, they just aren't easy enough to use!
Library 2.0 In Action
Examples of the L2 paradigm and technology at work.
I think the best way to get the Library 2.0 message across is to show examples of the paradigm and the technolgy at work, right now, in real libraries. These links are meant to do just that.
- SJCPL Wiki Subject Guides
- I actually think the wiki format may be most valuable for the productivity gains it might offer. Say you have 200 librarians in your system. You have fifty subject guides. Four librarians each continually monitor their assigned guide. The quality of the product is exponentially better due to the synergy of their expertise, but think of the time and effort you save. What process for creating these types of materials is even remotely as efficient? It's as if all 200 hundred librarians had a meeting every day and re-wrote every pathfinder in the library and then printed 10,000 of them for immediate release. Large library managers ought to be looking at this technology in an urgent manner.
- Hennepin County Library RSS Feeds
- This is the most exhaustive, useful, well- displayed library RSS page I've come across. I think it really shows the potential for the myriad deployments of this particular technology.
- AADL Marginalia
- Not only is this OPAC feature super slick, it allows customers to contribute content, which I think is the essence of Library 2.0.
- North Carolina State University Catalog
- The really big news here is that the catalog offers you a "sort by relevance" results ranking option. In this case, the "relevance" is the number of times the item has been circulated. One could easily imagine a more Googleish relevance, though, if we can let customers rate our materials. Something like combining ratings with circ stats.
- Library Dominoes
- What a great introduction to YouTube! Imagine taping a brief instructional session on databases or whatever and embedding it in your library's MySpace page, or a thirty second spot on some upcoming program. Now we're cookin' with gas!
- Hennepin County Library Catalog Comments
- This is more like it! This service offers customers a chance to contribute content, network with each other through that activity, and, I believe, may make the library catalog more of a destination.
- Library Garden "Innovative Library Sites" Post
- This blog posting includes a list of library websites which integrate many of the tools encapsulated in the L2 rubric.
