Google Gadgets

Focus on existing users
Gadgets can live in a variety of places: blogs, iGoogle, websites, Gmail, Google Desktop
iGoogle allows external development, unlike some of the other platforms
Google is familiar to staff and users

Can share single gadgets or entire tabs!  It would be interesting for systems to look at recommended tools sent out in a tab.  Emergent tech agenda item!

RSS feeds from library blogs/website
Google Custom Search
Web forms
Library news
Classes & Events

Interactive components can be more difficult and time consuming

Yahoo Pipes lets you append a proxy string to feeds – custom feeds for authentication

Note:  People don’t use dropdown menus.  Yup.

View the source code to find things to repurpose.

Gadget format is not so different from html.  Makes it a lot more friendly than I expected.

Stick with Legacy API for your gadgets.

Libraries with Themes:  Carmichael Library & Richland Community Library

Useful Things: Gadget Editor, Gadget Manager, Gadget Errors Checker, Gadget Resizing Function

Toolbars & Ubiquitous Computing

Conduit.com – build custom toolbars
Can get stats
Can create as many toolbars as you like
Easy to make
Clean and well-structured
Lightweight and ambient – no branding just content
Good for computer labs – can’t be modified
Built-in feed reader – really basic
Can send out messages – probably not very useful

Disadvantages
Must be installed and updated
May be too subtle and not be used

Fitting your website onto a toolbar can be a useful exercise.
Created toolbar to fit with how things are taught on campus

Shift to modules
Cloud computing
Mobile devices
Embeddable code snippets
Internet access at all times

Stuff matters more than pathway to get there.

Everyware and Glut

Control is out of our hands – being at more places is important

Boy, I am not agreeing with this take on the future of our websites.  I think that a great interface, wealth of options for patrons, constantly updated has a big role in libraries.  Our stats show this.  Not sure what our patrons would make of us moving to toolbars and widgets and away from the website.

I think we can mock it as branding and marketing ourselves, but that is a vital part of what public libraries do.  We have to create content, offer options, and be visible in our communities.  And that can certainly include gadgets and toolbars, but they can’t replace the website for us.

But my brain is thinking, so I’m glad to have listened.  What am I being defensive about and what other options are out there that I may be discounting?

Keynote: Seeding Our Own Clouds: Creativity and Open Source – Karen Schneider

Stories take the bits and pieces of our lives and bring a coherence to our lives.  Transformative and change worthy.

Narratives give us life in our profession.  We are more than the day-to-day work.

Fiction question – 2 book rule of libraries – only one could be a novel.

It is not the patron who is remote, but the librarian who is remote from the patrons. – Anne Lipow

Librarian as book pimp!  Let’s embrace the inner pimp and sell those worthy books!

Librarians have done so much that is taken for granted now.  We need to honor that creativity and embrace it ourselves.

In the face of financial distress, we need to reinvent what is not working or what could work better.

Shift in tool creation – librarians used to create their own tools.  Now they are created by vendors and librarians complain about the tools.

If the Internet had been around in the early stages, librarians would have invented open source.  Lovely.

Librarians are creative!

Fingerprint scanner for checkout.  Fascinating idea.

Color-colored each Dewey section by neon colored shelves.

Let people watch the mechanized book return.

Print foreign newspapers on a print-on-demand basis from online.

GNU Manifesto – opposite take on commodity of software – software should be free for use

Linus Torvalds – Linux – cohesive project thanks to Linus

Evergreen – PINES – 175 libraries currently

Size issues – could not add more libraries

Limitation of existing software was driving library practice – never a good thing

Had librarian engagement in building the tools

Decided not to do proprietary software but open source

Cohesive trunk of code that must be adhered to – conserves resources and leadership

Informal leadership is very powerful – get out of their way and let the project be a success

Open source development is a meritocracy – decisions made by most skilled people in the project

Software creation as a barn building – everyone is important, not just the builders

Open Source – Return on Investment is crucial not the price

Open process and transparent

Not hiding – able to do due diligence *echoes of book blogging issues currently being discussed

Interoperability is more effective

Eliminates elements of surprise

Equinox Software started to help with the free kitten factor

Don’t have to buy the whole litter.  LOL.

Developers look like Luxembourg – high quality but low population

Evergreen has healthy diversity right now

Superconsortia

Build your own cloud, fight the cloud, seed your own cloud.

Vast amount of resource sharing

Returns us to the very earliest world of librarianship

You lose a lot when you stop building your own tools

There is a big shift comiing, we know it.  Who do we want to work with when it comes?  800 lb gorilla or nimble, engaged tool builders?

We love information so much, too much.  But that is good and bad.  It is our magic.

Karen Schneider speaking at WiLSWorld about Evergreen.

300 library systems are running Evergreen.  Every type of library runs Evergreen. Community is growing – 12 countries.  Now have more non-PINES libraries than PINES.

Largest shared catalog = 35 member libraries in Indiana.

Specially designed for large shared catalogs and consortia settings.

Strong in holds. Holds at PINES increased by something like 400%.  Not sure we need that sort of increase since we are struggling along with the amount right now.  But great that patrons want to use it so much.

Browse in Google Book Search support.

Customizable My Account section where you can select on each hold how you would like to be notified.

Wherever limits have been hit before, they removed all limits so that it is very scalable.

Can create geographic holding regions to limit hold pulling to specific areas.  Someone is now writing code to do geographic limiters!  Now that we could use!

Can suspend and reactivate holds, set expiration date, etc.  We would have loved that expiration date in Green Lake with the summer people!

Throughout OPAC can limit to available.  Nice.

You can place a hold on a metarecord – you will receive the edition/format that is first available. 

Can create BookBags – lists of resources, books out to deposit collections, URL can be shared with patrons. Sweet! Plus RSS feed.

Saving own circulation history is coming!

Acquisitions still in development.  EDI comes this fall.

Very intriguing to see this.  While I know we won’t be even looking at something like this, it is great to see open source models that are successful and pushing the other systems to move ahead. 

When the Tide Goes Out – Everyone Can See Who’s Naked – William Buffet quote

Need to move to serious strategic statements rather than visioning.

Don’t hunker down.  Can’t see the opportunities and you will be left behind.

There is no right answer – take action – move forward even if it’s the wrong direction.  Hurrah!

Darwin – survival of the most adaptable – not strongest, not most intelligent.

Some of what we learned in library school and earlier positions is no longer valid.  No longer true. No longer useful.  It used to be.  Just is no longer.  Reassess!  Re-evaluate!  This is not an insult to your previous work/knowledge.  Respectfully retire expired ideas.  Your contribution made all of this possible.  Nice.

Beloit College Mindset List: http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2012.php

Library community has a hard time with average.  Accustomed to culture about getting it right.  “Civilians” don’t care the same way we do.  In the real world information is applied.  The library community doesn’t trust regular people.  Librarians tend to apply either training or marketing to this “problem”.  Because they don’t fit with our view. 

We are not facing reality.  We want to fix it.  Make them different.

Are we providing what civilians want or what we think they should want?  We are doing missionary work.  Say yes-and not no-but. 

Are we the arbiters of what is appropriate for people to do in libraries?  Are we micromanaging our users?  Let patrons feel smart for a change, help them when they are stuck.

More blended service manual.  How many of your services have boundaries to convenience?  Why do we place barriers in place?  Do you believe unmediated service can be good service?   How much is about your personal reward system and how much is about your user?

Information is moving towards the free model.  Should libraries be in the information business anymore?  We need to be adding value that people understand and appreciate if we are dealing in information.  Places change how people behave, perceive value and make decisions. Information has escaped our libraries.  We need to make places valuable in their own right. 

Librarians want everything open and everything entirely secure.  We treat security as if it were a one time event.  We need to treat it as routine.  Assume with each activity we are going to clean and go fresh not have continual access.  Our uptime expectations are 100% and flawless.  We need security to be preventative and not reactionary. 

Our expertise is around the stuff.  We need to change to expertise around the people.  Don’t just know about children’s literature but about children.  Very good point! 

Libraries have screened out opinion for generations.  Personalized information and subjective information is a useful ingredient in the process of information gathering.  Create processes that inject opinion into the process in your library.

Social networking – everyone has an opinion and others find it useful.  Blogging fits here too.

Customize loan periods for different types of users.  10 books for 3 weeks plus 3 books for 10 weeks.  Fascinating idea.  Give the patron a choice right off the bat – don’t set a barrier to have them ask.  Opt into what works for you.  Does there have to be one right answer? 

If you’re not fooling around at work, you’re doing it wrong.  We need to let ideas be more playful and less linear.  Some of the best ideas have to do with laughter.  YES! 

We view self-service as no service.  We need self-directed service.  Make it so they can succeed on their own and then unstick them when they need help.  Don’t have separate line for those who need help.  If you pull them away, you are showing them that success is not possible on their own.  Treat exceptions as exceptions.

We can preserve the important stuff while we innovate.  If it’s a principle we keep it, if it’s a technique we examine it.  Dewey is great example.

Difficulty with planning is that we aren’t psychic.  But plans must be open to improv.  Remember that data about what is actually happening is important.  Importance of being in the moment.

Did quick-dirty survey of civilians.  Asked whether they would like to be called patrons or customers.  Neither.  MEMBERS! About the relationship.  We should be doing predictive modeling. 

Don’t assume it is harder than what we know.

We are in the business of meaning, not inventory, not facilities, but connection, meaning.

As I prep for a presentation next week, I realized that I have become entirely dependent on Last Pass, a Firefox and IE plug in that remembers my passwords for me.  Before trying Last Pass, I had run many password programs that were supposed to remind me of my passwords, keep lists of my passwords and be handy but never quite worked for me.

Last Pass really works.  First, let me make clear that I don’t use it to store my financial passwords or passwords that would be horrific to lose.  I don’t trust any program that far.  But for your daily passwords to get into Twitter, Google, Facebook, FriendFeed, etc. etc. etc. it is the best thing I have found.

You do need to create an account for LastPass, and yes, you will have to remember the password for that all on your own.  You can do it!  LastPass then goes through your stored passwords in your browsers and loads the information in.  This alone makes it far more functional than other programs which require you to type in each password for each site.

When browsing LastPass quietly rides along, inactive until you enter a site that needs a password.  If it is the first time you are visiting a site, LastPass offers to create a unique and complex password for you, and remember it.  If you have been there before LastPass highlights the username and password area in red and offers to either enter them or automatically log you in.  All with one click.

If you have multiple accounts on a website (for instance I have a personal Amazon account and a library Amazon account), Last Pass will remember both for you and offer you a choice of accounts when you log in at that site.  No hassle.  No worries.

I’d highly recommend this to anyone who has their own computer.  I’m not sure how it will scale with people sharing computers and having multiple LastPass accounts.  If it does work, please comment and let me know!

Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod

I admit, I’m a library director who doesn’t have a passion for management books.  In fact, I find myself unable to finish them despite my best intentions.  I also don’t particularly enjoy management sessions at conferences, but that’s another post entirely.

I really enjoyed Ignore Everybody, and I think that it has some great insights to offer library managers and library leaders.  The book is all about how to explore your own creativity, how to buck the trend, and how to do what it is that makes you happy on your own terms.  Turn that into library speak, and it’s about how to allow your staff to be creative, how to become the library you know you can be, and how to buck the trend.

The book is broken into 40 chapters, each focusing on one approach to the overall goal.  There are some that work for libraries better than others.  One is Chapter 3, “Put the hours in.”  I relate to this one personally.  I am often asked how I can find time to blog, time to Tweet, time to write, time to do the many things I do.  My new response is that I put the hours in.  I put the hours in years ago when I had the time.  Now I have perfected the art of the quick post, thinking about things in off minutes, and basically writing on the fly.  I put those hours in.  For managers, this means you have to allow staff time to put hours into building expertise.  We all know that, but do we allow it?

Chapter 6 is “You are responsible for your own experience.”  Frankly, I may have this put on a t-shirt and wear it every Monday.  Everyone is responsible for what they respond to, what they cling to, what they set aside, and how they react.  Everyone makes their own decisions.  Not me as a library director, not you, but each of us. 

The book continues with chapters like “Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether” and “The best way to get approval is not to need it.”  The book reads quickly, offers funny business-card sized cartoons, and really gets directly to the heart of creativity and where our fear lives. 

I attended the AASL Literacy Leadership panel which featured Laurie Halse Anderson, Alan Sitomer, and Jacqueline Woodson.  They talked about the power of adults in children’s lives, the worth and wonder of books, and Woodson shared a shatteringly wonderful passage from Behind You. 

One message was clear and that was that children need the power of real books.  They don’t need the insipid, uninspired world of textbooks and excerpts. 

This same theme was repeated at the Summer Reading Online program I attended.  They spoke about why to put your summer reading program online, the benefits, and challenges.  But it was also a celebration of reading and why it is important to modern children to read.  I was inspired to look into online reading programs for our library and perhaps our state.  And I was also inspired by the facts and figures of the power of summer reading and books. 

I attended the Books and Blogs program with several major bloggers, including John Green!  The humor was flowing, the panel had a nice dynamic, and the entire discussion was useful.  The group discussed the new authority of blogs, publishing houses struggling with new media, and quality blogging.  Very nice.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy program was also great fun with Robert Charles Wilson, Margaret Weiss, Eric Flint and others.  Each author took a stab at the overall theme which was so nebulous that I can’t recall it.  Each approached it entirely differently and each was unique and amazing.   I will definitely look for this program at future ALAs.  Great stuff about the power of fantasy in modern life.

The West Bend Public Library came to the IFC meeting and spoke about the challenge at their library.  It was interesting to hear about it all first-hand rather than through newspaper articles and the skewed perspective of a partisan blogger. 

I then attended two sessions on the brain.  Multiple Intelligences made my own brain stretch to understand the new brain theory about intelligence, memory and critical thinking.  The program was so much more than just a litany of the various intelligences and offered insight into the theory itself.  Great stuff that has me looking for more information here at home.

I then went to hear Jill Bolte Taylor speak about her stroke.  It was a wonderful extension of her TED talk.  I learned about brain function, the two hemispheres and her own personal experience with having a stroke.  She is an incandescent speaker, amazing, vital and astonishing.

I only had one program I walked out of.  Not mentioned above.  So it was a super conference.  It had a lot of varied themes but still a sense of overarching viewpoint.  Just what a librarian needs to head back to their library and the future.  Great stuff!

This was my first unconference, so I couldn’t compare it to others.  It was a great format that encouraged even those of us who don’t talk easily in groups to offer our ideas.  We had a series of 6 very short presentations, broke into discussion groups on specific topics, had 4 more presentations, and then ended the day with 2 discussion groups.

The presentations and discussion groups had been voted on a week or so earlier by the group.  The presentations ranged from gaming in the library to patrons as top priority in an academic library.  The discussions were just as varied, including iPhone/Android apps, the future of reference, and middle management.  All those present offered ideas for presentations and/or discussions. 

Just as with any unstructured format, some of the discussions were better than others.  Selfishly, I loved the one I led on Library Director 2.0.  It was quite a small group and we had two directors and two managers.  What capped it off for me was that one of the non-directors expressed interest in being a library director.  Hurrah! 

The day was quite a success for me.  I had gotten the joy of in-depth discussion, the thrill of new ideas, and a group of like-minded librarians to be with. 

I’m off to ALA after taking a couple of days off.  I’ll be at the Unconference on Friday, leading a discussion on Library Director 2.0 and absorbing all sorts of great information.  It’s my first unconference, and I’m really psyched about it!

I have breakfasts planned for Saturday and Sunday that are children’s book related.  I’m going for what I hope will be a fascinating mix of children’s, intellectual freedom, and technology programs.  And of course, I will be at the exhibits with my family in tow, getting books and other loot.

I may have a chance to Tweet or blog, but it will probably be when I find myself back in my hotel room.

Hope to see you at the conference!