Off on vacation this week.  Not planning to post anything, but several posts are tickling around in my brain for when I return.

Write Rhymes is a very cool but simple site that has a space for you to write poems.  When you hit a word you want to rhyme, you hold the alt key and click on the word you want a rhyme for.  You will get a list of rhyming words to choose from.

OK, so none of the poetry I write actually has rhymes and please, please do not use this to write a rhyming picture book for children (that curse has been shared far too much already).  But on a Friday, it’s a neat little page to check out.

Worldcat Search API

Currently in beta pilot testing

Will be released to Worldcat cataloging subscribers in August

OpenSearch or SRU

Get responses in standard formats: Atom, RSS, Dublin Core, MARC XML

Format citations (CiteMe on Facebook)

Query parameters are part of URL

URI Evaluator helps you learn how queries are built

SRU Explain: gives you available search/limit fields

Can include book links from Worldcat on library website sidebars

xISBN – allows searching by various ISBN numbers for items

xISSN – serial title history

SRU Record Update: allows updating via web service with records immediately available

Worldcat Registry – free directory of libraries with locations, contacts, etc.  Pre-populated with data, but if you share an OCLC symbol then only one entry is allowed.  So ours is the Winnefox Library System and out of our hands.

EZProxy will be integrated seamlessly

Developers Network

Two service levels (full & default).  Full is for library users and library staff

Terminology Services – controlled vocabularies (FAST subject headings, LOC subject headings, MeSH, TGM I &II.

New data services will be coming out

Darien Public Library has a Technology Foundation!  Great idea!

Great photos on his slides!  I gotta do that for my next presentation.

Trust is a reliance upon that which is unknown

It is far easier for a patron to trust the library than for a library to trust a patron

Our responsibility is to try not to say no whenever we can

Trust Online

Site to User

User to Site

User to User

Site to Site

Trust and Classification

Tagging – folksonomy – free form descriptive metadata

Trust and Content

Wikipedia; Marvel Universe; Wookiepedia

Trust and Opinions

People go online to find opinions and solve problems via feedback from others

Amazon; Rotten Tomatoes

Help people find their way along the Long Tail

Trust and Control

Most Popular button; Staff Picks

CNN; Digg; Fark; Dell Ideastorm;

Trust and Identity

How do you verify who someone actually is

OpenID – Drupal supports!! 

ClaimID – place to manage your OpenID

Trust and Abuse

Community is self-correcting

Trust and Reputation

Angie’s List; RapLeaf

Trust and the Geek

APIs; WeatherBonk

Trust and Branding

Seth Godin – power of story in branding

Brand is permanent – no do-overs – every transaction reflects on your brand

Trust and Staff

Staff energy, buy-in and commitment is necessary – implicit trust

Org charts can create silos; senior level management with input into all departments!  Hurrah!

Trust and the Future

Libraries are viewed as trustworthy

Using remote services for data –

Get service level agreement when possible

Need an API for machine to machine interface

There are no clear answers and this is evolving

Discussion about Google and personal data

Possible issues with response time

Do libraries have critical data or is it peripheral data?

Open source is a-changing.  Mission critical functions already depend on OS.

Standardization, redundancy, peer-to-peer networking

How to bring silos together – searching across various databases/catalogs/links

Aggregate what you can – Meta-search the rest

Will not be Google-like

Primo; Encore – additional costs

No good solution right now

Librarians should be proficient in any format required to do our work

Need tools to take existing records and depict them in various ways

Also ones that will normalize dates; suite of tools to analyze, enhance and transform data for use in other environments

What is the future?  Where does MARC fit?

Discussion of helping children learn to search

Libraries serve the "wills" and the "will-nots"

Our search engines still rely on old library assumptions of card catalogs – definitely!

Libraries need to work on their ranking – to help people really find what they want

Next few years

Open source is becoming the known trusted solution with full support and hosting

SirsiDynix  issues lead people to look for new solutions

OCLC investigating network-level solutions

Libraries in a Networked World

Libraries are islands in a sea of connectivity – we must use the power of the Net to gain efficiencies

Discovery is happening but not in libraries – Google Scholar

No one wants to use a library catalog – but they are forced to.

When it comes to infrastructure – You are not special.  We can generalize workflows.  How much should we spend on something no one cares about?

Library software should be a commodity, don’t pay for the software – pay for service.

In 2 years, ILS will be completely different – open source vendors

Then: Users built workflow around libraries (when they exhausted other resources)

Now: Libraries must build their services around user workflow (many other resources for them to turn to first)

Then: Massively centralized did not exist

Now: They may be our salvation!

Benefits of concentration – better search result rankings; holdings data; usage data; recommendations of related books; sharing user-contributed content; improved user-contributed content; attention can be attracted and redirected

Check out WorldCat Identities and Steve Museum for examples.

Bad news: our data is worse than we think.  Outdated information & errors.

Benefits of diffusion: syndicate library holdings where people are; small libraries can play too; the more paths the better

Get your information on places like Wikipedia. Library data is often in a silo, undiscovered and uncrawled.

Use sitemaps to get information out there.  Just one technique.

Recommended Fast Company Magazine.

I’m inspired to once again start pushing to get more KidsLit bloggers using Worldcat to post their titles.  Why are so many avoiding the power of it and turning to Amazon, especially the librarians.  I feel a rant coming on.

I also will continue pushing with my local ILS system to look at new options.

A search engine for video games?  Yup! 

GameSkoot is just that.  You can do a general search or limit it to only news items, game tests, cheats or items in forums.  This is a great site to recommend to kids and teens into gaming and searching for cheats and walkthroughs.

GameSkoot has one other feature that is way cool.  Their Hot Stuff area leads you to the latest postings in 9 of the top gaming blogs.  So it’s a handy way to stay up-to-date on gaming news and views.

I seem to find music sites more often than almost anything else.  Jogli is yet another music site that I simply have to show you!  The site opens with a very simple search box where you can enter any term you like. 

Find an artist you are interested in, and you will get a biography, a list of albums, video clips to view, images, and a list of similar artists to explore.  Click on any album, and you get to listen to it in its entirety.  Jogli automatically links to YouTube so you will also get to watch the video if there is one.  You can also click on the lyrics button for any song to see the lyrics while you listen.

Sign up for a free account and you can create your own playlists of favorite songs. 

Someone has finally taken all of the myriad of music offerings online and brought them together in one handy place.  This is now my music site of choice.

Sweet!  StumbleAudio gives you access to 2 million songs to listen to.  You can take your chances and stumble through all of the songs, or click on a channel that contains a specific musical style like jazz or new age or pop. 

To get something even more individualized, you can type in a band you enjoy and find matches that way.  Unlike Pandora, you can pick and choose the ones that intrigue you most from the entire list of matches.  You can also rate thumbs up or thumbs down for any given song. 

Definitely worth a listen.

Last night our library held a green art show opening reception, complete with vendors of green items and a rock band.  It was an amazing success, bringing in teens, young families, artists from our community and neighboring communities, seniors, people interested in sustainability, and government officials.  It was an energetic mix of loud music, lots of discussion, and a mingling of a unique blend of people.  The vibe in the room was incredible.

The most important component to the success of the evening (beyond our incredible staff and the volunteers who put the event together) was that we did it in the main part of the library.  This was not relegated to the meeting rooms where sound would be muffled if not unheard.  It was right in the center of our library.  The band played in the main area, the art is hung throughout the library.  In order to enjoy the art, people had to walk through our entire library, often finding books along the way. 

By doing this, we shattered the typical library stereotype, inventing a new library for our community.  The teens who attended will not see the library as the same place they always thought it was.  One young man was so disturbed by this that he only attended at the very end after the band was done playing.  It was his favorite local band, but this teen could not handle the juxtaposition of the quiet library and loud music.  It’s great when the library can unsettle a teen, isn’t it?

We look forward to doing more events like this.  Events that make people understand that our library is about books yes, but we are also about community and are welcoming to all ages.  Heck, we will even welcome back teens who were once disturbed by loud music at a library.  You know he’s going to come around when they play a back-to-school concert in the library parking lot!