The library as conversation

Are you going to get a Kindle? Have one already? I don’t get it because I prefer to hold the book in my hands. So what’s the future of libraries, stuffed full of wonderfully musty smelling tomes? Does the library have a future at all? Will it be full of Kindles that can be loaned out? If they eventually come in hot pink, I might be tempted

I came across this fantastic presentation and audio from R. David Lankes, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University, which provides insights into the future of libraries and librarianship. He starts off with a fairly confronting statement:

“(Librarians) have become so busy and adept at keeping the library efficient and well-managed that we have lacked the space to step back and observe it from a high level”.

And then goes on to say that: “The mission of librarians is to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities“.  So it’s not about books and collections. I remember when I first started my career in knowledge management there was a lot of angst over whether librarians were information managers whilst knowledge managers were some sort of more evolved species dealing with knowledge (and some dudes even call themselves “wisdom architects”, which if you believe the twaffle of the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom pyramid, is the most evolved of all species).

But now I think we’ve reached the point in the debate where we can say that we are all doing the same thing, albeit concentrating on different aspects. So records managers, information managers, knowledge managers – we’re all attempting to facilitate knowledge creation, transfer and continuity. The fact that records managers concentrate on retention and compliance whilst knowledge managers may focus on collaboration and decision-making are simply different lenses looking at the same thing. In fact, my KM colleague, Baoman, has a well-crafted reflection piece on his blog in which he ponders this very subject, inspired by gentleman and scholar, Patrick Lambe.

So I very much liked Lankes’ vision for the mission of librarians (not libraries note) and that knowledge and learning is created through conversation and conversation theory. Conversation theory consisting of:

• language
• memory
• conversants – exchanging language
• agreements – between conversants (even if it’s agreeing not to agree)

So he’s suggesting that librarians are in the conversation business and need to be facilitators of conversations. Lankes uses the term “participatory librarianship” and says that participatory librarians “seek to enrich, capture, store and disseminate the conversations of their communities”. Further, he queries the rigidity of catalogues when users are now familiar with tagging and folksonomies and asks – how do we build systems that all users can use and he looks at social networking sites (where users build the system around themselves and their own language). Users now construct an open discovery space.

Lankes also emphasises that skills change eg cataloguing skills and that library education should equip a librarian for change. And this means librarians as activists, lobbying for change, innovating and proactively serving the community. He believes the best days of librarianship are ahead of us not behind us. To get maximum benefit out of the presentation, listen to the audio. Almost makes me want to go back into librarianship.

Also, check out Lankes’ website, which basically provides you with a Participatory Librarianship Starter Kit (articles, presentations and webcasts). Great stuff!

Twittering away

A few months back, I took the plunge and started Twittering. You can follow me on Twitter – see right hand panel of this blog for TS tweets. I like it far better than Facebook (which leaves me cold) because it’s more about having the global conversation that The Cluetrain Manifesto talked about back in 1999 (has it really been 10 years since this great book was published?).

I don’t think I’m using Twitter to its full advantage. I dabble in it, carrying on about something, have a conversation with Twitter friends about MasterChef, that sort of thing. But as I’m about to take on a consulting gig that will require me to know more about Twitter, I have been researching.

And I came across this great site that offers up 100 ways to use Twitter in the library. It’s mind-boggling really what you can do with Twitter. I’ve now discovered tweetparty, which helps to create Twitter groups; TweetScan, where you type in keywords and get tweets that match your keyword emailed to you (how cool is that!); and you should check out all the libraries and publishers on Twitter.

The story of American women

Photos and history – can’t get any better for me (well, possibly the perfect lipgloss would do it).  And now I can read all about the fabulous history of American women online. Discovering American Women’s History Online is a digital collection of primary sources (photos, letters, diaries, artifacts, etc.) that document the history of women in the United States. You can search by subject, time periods, States and primary source type.

I checked out some of the oral history collections. Fascinating to read oral history transcripts of disaster victims from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, particularly this one. Showing the creativity of librarians and what they can do, check out the online exhibit, which is arranged into five rooms containing digitized copies of original historical artifacts.

And there’s a great collection of photographs. Loved the Alaska Digital Archive and the first-person accounts of slavery along with black and white photos of former slaves. Really you can get lost for hours browsing through the digital collections, reading oral histories and looking at photos.

I have shamelessly ganked the image from the website.

Nutter of the year nomination

I am nominating someone for the ThinkingShift 2009 idiot of the year award. And this person has an apt name  – Mayor Michael Nutter. And a nutter this dude appears to be. He is the Mayor of Philadelphia and wants to contribute to the dumbing-down of contemporary society. He (wait for it) wants to close libraries in Philadelphia to save money.

He wants to close 11 of the city’s 54 branch libraries at an estimated savings of $8 million a year. Nutter is also planning to deactivate seven fire department engine and ladder companies and close scores of city swimming pools. Tough luck if the city suffers a major fire!

Now, I’m not familiar with this city although I visited it once to deliver a workshop. But seems to me that any city that shuts libraries (and swimming pools) is closing off educational and social opportunities for children and adults. Don’t know about your local library but mine is used by young kids to improve their reading skills; older people as a recreational place to meet and borrow resources they can ill-afford; young mothers who participate in a book club whilst their young children listen to stories being read to them. Libraries contribute to the social fabric and provide a sense of community. Particularly in poorer areas, libraries provide a safe haven for at-risk kids. I could provide a very long list to this Nutter dude of what libraries do. But I won’t reinvent the wheel – Nutter can go here and find out all the ways libraries contribute to society, education and ciitizenship.

And swimming pools? Well, not everyone can afford a sparkling backyard pool and having one is not environmentally responsible anyway. So if you close community swimming pools, where do the kids and parents go on hot summer days? I guess Nutter will be happy when he finds kids scrawling graffiti on public buildings or participating in petty crime because the libraries and swimming pools have been slammed shut in their faces.

Thankfully, this ridiculous proposal of Nutter’s is turning into a fur fight that I will be watching with interest. A group of private citizens and some City Council members have filed a suit to stop this nutter. And a sensible judge has ruled in the plaintiff’s favour. But in an astonishing display of hubris, Nutter responded that the ruling hampers his Executive power to run the city, which apparently includes some scheme to “re-purpose” the libraries into “knowledge centers” by turning over public libraries to private sources. And we all know what that could mean: fewer services, reduced hours, less staff – all in the name of profit seeking.

I’m no Mayor but wouldn’t it be a smarter move to examine let’s say the number of motor cars clogging up the city’s roadways and perhaps tax those who bring their cars into the city. London hits its citizens with a congestion charge so why not consider this?  Or what about conducting an energy audit of city buildings and schools and implementing energy saving techniques such as occupancy sensors, energy efficient fluorescent lighting and so on.  Nutter could also have a look at highly paid city officials’ salaries, including his own, and perhaps give them all a haircut. And he could check out all the contractors the city is hiring and terminate those for non-essential services. He could also ask all city departments to examine their own spending and nominate three ways they could cut back. Heck, Philadelphia ask me to be your Mayor – I could come up with dozens of ways to prune the city budget without slashing libraries and swimming pools!

People lending

This is just great. The Living Library. You borrow people not books. Yep, really. It’s an idea out of Scandinavia. Instead of borrowing a book, you can borrow a person for a 30 minute chat. An east London library has 26 “human books” available. The aim is to confront and breakdown stereotypes. You can “borrow” a Muslim; a police officer; a person suffering mental health issues; a gay guy; or a young person expelled from school.

So the stereotypes might be religious fanatic; corrupt; unstable; promiscuous; rebellious and so on. It’s about having frank and rich conversations with people and learning about different cultures or ways of living. It’s about the “borrower” offering up what misgivings or fears they might have of a stereotype and the “human book” responding.

Violence, hatred and racial issues often occur when there is misunderstanding, ignorance and cultural insensitivity. Listening to the narrative of another person who is entirely different from you is a powerful experience. The Living Library challenges preconceptions through promoting dialogue.

The Living Library was started by a Danish anti-violence campaigner, Ronni Abergel, who has taken the concept to 12 countries, including Australia where the Richmond-Tweed library seems to have embraced it with the slogan “Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover”.

I wonder how the “human books” feel. I’d be worried I’d be left on the shelf with no-one interested in speaking to me!

If you’re interested in learning more about this concept, check out the Living Library Organizer’s Guide on Amazon.

Source: TimesOnline. Photo credit: The Christian Science Monitor.

Take that, Google!

I’ve become accustomed to my Uni students handing in assignments liberally peppered with references to Google and/or Wikipedia, as though they’ve lost the ability to undertake research in journals or primary resources. I rant and rave at them regularly about how to conduct research and their eyes glaze over.

So we were discussing social media. I have a Facebook presence but I’m a bit cold on the whole thing. I decided I should get into it more as my Uni students (a whole class of Gen Y) were carrying on about how great Facebook is and talking like major authorities on the pros and cons of Facebook over MySpace. And one of the international students mentioned LibGuides on Facebook. So I checked it out (can’t have Gen Y knowing more than me!!)

And I found LibGuides. I was momentarily stunned – libraries on Facebook? This is what the Facebook page says:

“LibGuides enables you to access the content from your library inside of facebook. Read your course-related library Guides, get research help, chat with reference librarians, or search the library catalog using LibGuides”.

It seems that the LibGuide application was developed by Springshare – so I found them to suss out more information and this is what they say:

“LibGuides is the first library application available within Facebook. Your users simply need to select LibGuides from the list of applications in Facebook in order to access your LibGuides content. LibGuides will recognize the user’s school affiliation and present them with their “home” LibGuides system.

Distributing library content across the web, and “meeting” the customers wherever they are (a lot of them are on Facebook these days) is one of the hallmarks of library 2.0. Now your customers can access LibGuides content, chat online with reference librarians, and even search your library catalog from Facebook.”

And:

LibGuides enables libraries to share information with users in a web 2.0 world. Using LibGuides, librarians can effortlessly create content-rich guides, share knowledge and information, and promote library resources to the community. The system is integrated with Facebook, and LibGuides widgets distribute library content to other websites, blogs, and courseware systems. LibGuides connects you with patrons, wherever they are.

Any type of content (including web 2.0 media) can be put into LibGuides. Your LibGuides can be subject guides, information portals, class handouts, community guides, research tips, or any type of useful information you wish to share with users. The possibilities are endless. Really!

Stunning!! Who knows better how to conduct effective research – a librarian or Google? I’m betting on the librarian. And so LibGuides can help the librarian to deliver modules or pathfinders that will lead patrons off to reliable resources. Users can even “ask a librarian”. And how smart to integrate with Facebook since most of the world these days seems to be on Facebook!

I’ll be checking this out more but seems that every library can have a profile page listing all the guides available. All of this is available via Facebook. So far 160+ libraries worldwide and 3000+ librarians are sharing content and ideas. I haven’t ferreted around enough to know if Australian libraries are part of this.

Flickr and Library of Congress

I’ve only recently started putting my photos on Flickr as I’ve been using another photo sharing site. Seems the Library of Congress is the same as me: a late starter on Flickr. Whilst rummaging around on Flickr, I found the Library of Congress is making copyright-free images and photos of historical and cultural interest available so that the public can tag content. It’s a pilot project but there’s already some amazing stuff:

• the 1930s and 1940s in colour collection
• 1500 photos from 1900-1920 New York depicting disasters, sports events, strikes and celebrities (yep, even way back then, we were celebrity-obsessed apparently)

And what is really exciting is that a trio of photos had been incorrectly labelled by the Library of Congress as images from the administration of Ulysses S. Grant in 1869. A user was browsing through the online collection of photos and alerted the Library to the high probability that the photos were from 1865 and therefore from the Lincoln administration. The Library checked the negatives and confirmed that the podium shown in the photos was that of Lincoln and not Grant.

According to the Library of Congress blog, there are more than 14 million photos and other visual materials but the project is starting off modestly with the two collections mentioned above. The Library is hoping that key information sometimes missing from photos, such as who took the photo or where the photo was taken, will be provided by the public tagging items.

Flickr has created a new publication model for publicly held photographic collections called “The Commons”. If you want to participate, here’s the FAQ site.

I spent hours on the Library of Congress Flickr site. Here are just some of the images that caught my eye and I’m tempted to answer the question “How would you tag this photo?”:

There’s something about the power and drama of an old black and white photo that (IMHO) modern DSLRs can’t quite match. Have a browse through the collection – you’ll wonder what people’s lives were like and you’ll become caught up in the history and stories.

Source: Los Angeles Times

Secrecy and surveillance: twin evils

Told you this week would be all about surveillance. Two ThinkingShift readers have alerted me to articles about declining freedoms and librarians up in arms over surveillance. Firstly, Andrew M sent a link to an article from ABC News about press freedom declining. Apparently, there’s a “subtle shift” towards secrecy in Australia. I would say it’s pretty overt actually. Irene Moss, former NSW Ombudsman, has conducted an independent audit. She reviewed legislation and practices related to free speech issues affecting the media in Australia.

And guess what? The state of free speech and media freedom is “being whittled away by gradual and sometimes almost imperceptible degrees”. The report points the finger at general access to information where governments should be more open and accountable; the growing use of spin and the raising of barriers to mask information rather than reveal it – suggesting that the free flow of information is not just an issue of law, but one of a “growing culture of secrecy and mutual mistrust”. Scarily, the audit uncovered about 500 pieces of legislation that contain “secrecy” provisions or restrict the freedom of the media to publish certain information. And up to 1000 suppression orders control court matters. It seems the public’s right to know is being increasingly eroded. Go here to read about the key findings of the report. Scary.

And then Stephanie B sent me an article from The Washington Post, which reports on university and public librarians in the US fighting against pending domestic surveillance laws that could allow federal intelligence-gathering on library patrons without sufficient court oversight. Apparently, libraries are considered communications service providers (CSP) and the proposed draft House and Senate bills would allow the US Government to compel CSPs to cough up information about the activity of users who are non-US citizens (of course only foreigners hanging out in US libraries are a suspicious bunch). This surveillance can be conducted without a warrant or showing of probable cause. The proposed legislation would include being able to monitor a non-US citizen overseas participating in an online research project through a US university library (ergo US territory).

More privacy rights being violated if you ask me. Thanks to Andrew and Stephanie for the links.

Playing games in libraries

How cool! Over at Carnegie Mellon University, there are library games that centre around helping students development information literacy skills particularly in identifying and evaluating sources of digital information . Called “Library Arcade”, there are two games: Within Range and I’ll Get It.

Within Range is simple enough for me! In this game you are putting books back on the shelf in the correct Library of Congress order. It’s a race against the clock as you move to more complex levels. I’ll Get It is based on the game Diner Dash (have to confess I’m not familiar with it) and the main character is Max, who is a student helping other students answer reference questions. You search at a computer terminal, finding results from a variety of different sources, and the challenge is to answer the reference question with the appropriate resource.

Go check the games out here at Carnegie Mellon University’s Library Arcade. Screen shots from the games are shown below:

Source: Research Quest

The beauty of libraries

Maybe only librarians can appreciate today’s post. Or maybe only people who appreciate grand design and history. On my travels, I’ve wandered into many a dusty old library in search of that awe-inspiring experience. As a librarian (first career), I’ve always been on the prowl for a library straight out of the medieval era – sweeping, arched ceilings covered with colourful Biblical scenes or portraits of Greek philosophers; rich oak-panelled shelves scaling up the walls, groaning with the weight of priceless manuscripts or woodcuts; shards of light piercing through stained glass windows and softly illuminating a bookstand in the middle of the library, displaying one of Gutenberg’s Bibles. I came across such a library in Portugal in 2004 – Biblioteca do Palacio e Convento de Mafra – with marble floors and elaborately carved mezzanine balconies. Very grand. Very Portuguese.

I was looking for a photo of this library the other day (duh, didn’t have my camera with me on that 2004 trip). And I stumbled onto a curious blog with an array of stunning photos of libraries around the world. The curious blog? It’s called Curious Expeditions: Travelling and Exhuming the Extraordinary Past. A welcome addition to my RSS feeds.

But check out some of the breathtaking photos of libraries – click on them to see fuller detail. Here’s the elegant Portuguese library I mentioned:

And here’s a stunner – the Abbey Library St.Gallen, Switzerland:

Not to mention the simply glorious Melk Monastery Library, Melk, Austria – gleaming with gold!

Go here to see all the wonderful photos on the Curious Expeditions blog – I’ve never seen so many beautiful spaces. It’s enough to make me consider going on a Grand Tour of Libraries in 2008!

Update: ThinkingShift good friend, Patrick Lambe, over at Green Chameleon has reflected on the Library of the Abbey of St Gallen image and posted a thoughtful piece on the sustainability of our digital knowledge world. Indeed, the image of this library (above) almost contains two worlds – the figures seem to be rushing through the library, fleeting, blurred images in the moment; the books are solid, static, preserved in time.