Library Voice

Newsweek has an article on the new web:

The massive success of MySpace and the exemplary strategy of Flickr are milestones in a new high-tech wave reminiscent of the craziness of the early dot-com days. This rebooting owes everything to the enhanced power and pervasiveness of the Web, which has finally matured to the point where it can fulfill some of the outlandish promises that we heard in the ’90s. The generic term for this movement, especially among the hundreds of new companies jamming the waiting rooms of venture-capital offices, is Web 2.0.

Journalists to Debate Ethics of Blogging, Online News at Ohio University

ATHENS, Ohio – Bloggers and online journalists have grabbed the spotlight for reporting on breaking news – including political scandal – ahead of traditional journalism outlets such as newspapers and television stations. But what are the ethical issues at stake in this new reporting environment?

That’s the question dozens of journalists and scholars will discuss at the first conference focused exclusively on the ethics of blogging and online journalism. The conference, to be held April 7 – 8 at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, will jumpstart a dialog about the issue among professional reporters, college students and academics who study journalism trends and ethics.

For more information, see the news article or the conference website.

After speaking about wikis at Computers in Libraries, I’ve had the opportunity to talk with a number of people about potential uses for wikis. One idea that came out of those conversations really struck me as potentially an excellent use of a wiki. On two separate occassions, two different public librarians asked me if I thought a wiki would be good application to replace a database of local contact information. I think this is a great idea! Imagine if librarians or community members add content for county officials, doctors, libraries, schools, etc, for the community. Each wiki article for the contact or name could contain a great deal more information than just name, phone, and address. Perhaps pictures of the location of a business, or a link to Mapquest, or an in-depth description of services rendered could be included. With many wiki software clients, it is very easy to generate an A to Z list of the articles (in this case, names and contacts), and you could search this virtual roladex wiki by keyword. Contacts and names could also be placed into various categories for easy browsing, sort of like using the yellow pages. Just think of the opportunities for community outreach and community building that this type of wiki could create.

Technorati Tag: CIL 2006

Meredith’s cybertour on wikis was just what the doctor ordered. Meredith covered the basics of wikis in a short period of time, including various uses of wikis and the multiple software options. Her slides area available here, and if you’re looking for more, take a look at an earlier presentation that she gave for OPAL.

Technorati Tag: CIL2006

I would like to say a big “thank you” to all the folks who came to the Wikis in Action session this morning. I thoroughly enjoyed talking with you about wikis. You’ll find my presentation slides at the link below.

Wikis In Action: A Wiki as a Research Guide

If anyone would like to continue the discussion, feel free to shoot me an email or IM. I’d be happy to answer any questions, and I would definitely welcome any opportunity to learn from others who are using wikis. My contact information is:

Technorati Tag: CIL2006

As I mentioned during my presentation this morning, our library completing our website overhaul this week.  The change happened this evening some time, and it appears that the Biz Wiki is temporarily out of commission.  So, if you’re trying to get to the Biz Wiki, you may get a message that says, ” Sorry for the inconvenience, the page http://www.library.ohiou.edu/subjects/bizwiki was not found. Due to revisions of our web site the page may have moved or renamed.”

I’ll look into this further in the morning, but in the meantime, you can get to the Biz Wiki via the IP address of the old library server by following this link.  I may have to work off of the old server if things don’t get fixed by tomorrow afternoon.

Scott Rice, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Giz Womack, Wake Forest University

—————————
Scott

FYI—I went to library school with Scott.

Scott created a Firefox toolbar for his library. He had orginally worked with bookmarklets. User has to find bookmarklets and tweak them. Not very user friendly.

Toolbar
good for distance education
have links to library searches, blackboard, campus directories,

Why firefox? It’s easier to implement. Firefox toolbar has more flexibility

What do you need to make a toolbar?
Javascript
XUL (very much like XML)
Text editor (Notepad or Notetab light)
Zip (Winzip)
Image editor (GIMP)

Firefox toolbar tutorial
www.borngeek.com/firefox/tutorial
Mozillazine

Look at other library toolbars

Future Improvements
Work with Ezproxy
Rewrite URLs
Notify when not proxied
Allow user configuration

Impact
Who’s using it? not sure
Gotten any feedback? no not really
scott says he’s working on publicity. Will try to get it installed on local public machines

How to make a toolbar?
Create files
Zip
Install
Test

Toolbar is awesome. Imagine having this on all of the public workstations in your library.

——————————-
Giz Womack
The How and Why of Game Nights in Libraries

Get Game@GSR
An idea from the library director, who had learned about the idea at a conference.
Have done a September and February event.
Primarily Xbox

How they did it?
Staff–
Library Information Technical Staff
Resident Technology Advisors
RTA’s were very excited

Equipment
LCD projectors (got surplus projectors from other departments on campus)
Screens (rented at first then bought six screens)
equipment gives them competitive advantage

Supplies
Food
Long extension cords and surge protectors are a must
Painters tape and pens to put names on the equipment that participants bring
Tournaments need a trophy!

Format
Open game night 60 people, blew three circuits
Tournament fewer people,
Students registered in advance ( have to be students to bring their hardware)

Dates
Open Game Night on Friday in September 7-11 (it’s dark outside)
Tournament on a Friday in February from 3-6 (they like that time just as well)

Planning
Setup for each event about 2 hours

Marketing
email, paper fliers, website announcements

Costs:
Open game night $425 (lots of startup expenses that will not be recurring)
Tournament $172 (most went to food and the trophy)

Why we did it:
Gaming is big business
Many Library users are gamers
To encourage students to visit the library
to generate positive publicity for the library
IT IS FUN!!!

from survey:
100% did not mind bringing their own equipment

Lessons Learned:
External sponsors are hard to find
Very easy to trip a circuit breaker
The students like these events

Technorati Tag: CIL2006

Susan Fingerman, Johns Hopkins University
Christina K. Pikas, Johns Hopkins University
Susan Klopper, Goizueta Business Library, Emory University
Clara Hudson, University of Scranton

—————————

Christina K. Pikas
Christina talks about what ehy have done with blogs at APL.
Process
Current Blog
Internal Blog
Environment at APL: Very centralized IT management, no library servers, no lab-wide support.

Their need at APL:
Need for a newsletter, but intranet portal was inflexible.

Our first try:
Librarian suggested software, but the techie chose something entirely different.  Unfortunately, this did not work.  Their server was taken away when IT centralized.  The blog software they had was not flexible.

Second try:
Head of library new an off-site techie who was willing to host the site.  Purchased Movable Type license, set up on another host.  Can create multiple blogs quickly with one interface.

Current blog
Statistics:  Using Apache/Webalizer (2,000 hist per month)
E-mails received requesting mentioning on the blog.  Almost a race to get mentioned on the internal blog.

Beg, borrow, or steal a host.  Not hosted on the library server.  Unfortunately, a lot of libraries with centralized IT run into this barrier, as those who control the servers don’t see the big picture.

Lots of other internal blogs at APL, but there is no centralized place to find them.

Lessons learned:
Try to get a stable host
Do not assume customers and IT know/get blogs
Back-up your posts in case you need to change hosts, or if the IT environment software is unstable.
Put lots of contact information on the blog.

———————————
Susan Klopper
So you want to start a blog  -or-  If you build it, they may not come
Based on Susan’s personal experience in the library at Emory

Gallup report:  Blog Readership Bogged Down—reported in the Chicago Tribune
9% of Internet users read blogs
66% have never read a blog in their life
Bottom line is more people are doing more of the same thing:  email, shopping, booking travel.  Not blogging.

According to Technorati, a new blog is created every second of every day….About 75,000 a day.

Susan raises the quesiton:  If a blog is not updated regularly, is it really a blog?

Emory has been talking about setting up a blog since 2003.  2004 they created a blog for their academic area.  Hoped to create a dialogue of best practices and lessons learned.

Emory blog questions:
Who is the intended audience?
What does the library hope the users will get out of the blog?

A year later, they still don’t have the answers.  Finally, one question did not have an answer:  Did the community really want a blog?

Queried senior faculty to millenials about what blogs were.  Lots of confusion about what a blog was.  Came to the conclusion that the librarians wanted to create a blog.  Their reasons were primarily based on their own interests (newness, blogs are cool, blogs will make us cutting edge).

Modeling the assement of blogs, by asking what kind of information the patrons currently were not getting.

Have not created a blog?  Still studying the issues.  Still looking at a blog as a knowledge management tool.

———————
Clara Hudson

Slides are available in the preceedings, as she only had five minutes to present.
“Feel like a fraud, because she is not really a blogger.”

Started a blog to communicate with committee members.  Had a mixed reaction.

All of her blogs are internal, closed blogs.  A community of communication.

Has taken blogs into the classroom.  Has taught computer students and other folks about blogs and blogging.  Ethics of blogging is something that she focuses on.  A lot of students already are using things like blogs—Facebook and MySpace.  So blogs are second nature to a lot of them.

Using blogs to teach off of  is a lot easier than handouts.  Notes are on the web.  Take the tool into the classroom as a very effective teaching tool.

Technorati Tag: CIL2006

Binghampton and Stony Brook are both using blogs for internal communication. Both discussed how a wiki can be used to facilitate internal communicaiton. Both groups mentioned the need for getting staff buyin, as well as the need for having a supportive systems staff.

Binghampton talked a good deal about their training model for their staff wiki. They incorporated hands-on training with staff to train users how to use the wiki as well as add and edit content. Both groups talked about the need to create a shell, or add content before turing the wikis over to the general user community. This is good advice, as an empty wiki may be confusing to a new user, perhaps evening discouraging them to add content.

The main thing that I learned, and that I need to implement, is a sandbox on my Biz Wiki. The sandbox enables those not familiar with a wiki to play and become familiar with a wiki without the worry of messing up the content. Perhaps with a sandbox, users would be more willing to learn how to use the wiki, thereby getting others to contribute to the resource.

Technorati Tag: CIL2006

It’s 10:00, and I’m in my hotel room. I’m exhausted, as it was a very full day. Wireless access for bloggers at the conference was not working quite right, so I took notes in NoteTab Light. The posts that follow are the notes that I took. I’m a little too fatigued at the moment to do much cleanup of the notes in the following posts, but I’ll try to go back and clean the posts up (and offer additional commentary) as I have time. Thus far, I’m really enjoying the conference, and am learning quite a bit that I hope to implement in my library.

There are numerous other bloggers at the CIL conference.  Take a look at the list on the CIL website to find other blogs to read.

Technorati Tag: CIL2006