Unconference Goodness

Sitting outside, blogging. I love summer. Summer also means conferences but I attended my first unconference. The One Big Library Unconference, hosted by York University Library’s Emerging Technologies group, discussed exactly that - how can we create the One Big Library. I really loved that the unconference idea means that there are more round table discussions rather than presentations. It was all done sans powerpoint, which is something I’ve been leaning more and more to in recent days, although I find it hard to actual achieve. The unconference was great - a lot of great minds got together and had some great discussions (did I mention is was great?). Here are some of the highlights and my thoughts. As with all sessions, there were too many great topics all at the same time.

The first session was on Zotero. I have used Zotero for quite some time now and think there is a lot of potential. The most exciting news is that syncing is coming in the very near future and there are other neat features common soon. I recently talked about Zotero and its possible uses for gov pubs 2.0. It can take a snap shot of the top page which would be a great way for libraries to save ever changing gov pubs pages(or at least prove they have changed). I’d love to know if any one else is considering Zotero for this kind of use.

The second session was on educating for the one big library. This topic was a little too huge for the time slot - it might have been best to identify a group (staff, library students, all others). We started by trying to define one big library only to discover there is no one way at this moment - is it one big library, one big virtual library, is it sharing collections, is it using technology, is it more than a set of trends, is it even possible to do, is there even a library in one big library? Needless to say, there were no definitive answers but there was some interesting discussions, including how new tools and technologies are changing the definition of librarians.

Other sessions I attended included a discussion on open access and copyright rights; cataloguing, the semantic web and folksonomies, and one big library on one little device. When talked turned to institutional repositories in the open access talk, it was raised that there has to be  need in order for people to want to participate in such movements. It also has to be seductive - flickr is seductive and it fills a need. Institutional repositories on the other hand, are not seductive and while we think they fill a need, many faculty have not recognized this yet. The cataloguing discussion raised some interesting points about tagging and the possibility of using tagging on Library of Congress Subject Headings. This also got me thinking about other ways tagging can help students find their info needs. Wordle is hot right now and cloud tags have been around for a while. I’d love to see cloud tags at the side of search results - showing words searched, related and relevant subject headings, and if you’re already doing it, tags that other users have contributed to your records. Most relevant hits would show in bigger text. I’ve mentioned this to our systems librarian and will be bugging him about it again in the future. If you’re using cloud tags in your library catalogue, let me know!

All in all, a great unconference. The only thing I would have liked a little more of was more discussion on what one big library would be - how are people envisioning it? How can we achieve it? The topics we discussed all have the possibility of contributing to the one big library but we didn’t define what one big library would be as a group. I can’t wait for the next unconference!

Research leave and Learning 2.0

Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve posted - as with most people I know, I’ve been incredibly busy. Luckily, I can now say that I’m on research leave! Unfortunately (or not, depending on how you view it) it will not be a slow, easy going research leave. I have tons to do - I am preparing for 4 conferences (presenting at CiL in a week, and preparing for presentations at CLA and WILU, as well as writing a paper which will be presented at IFLA). Busy, busy, busy!

It does mean that I get to catch up on some reading and do some much needed thinking (it’s also annual performance review time, which means goal setting and general planning). Once I have all of my presentations done, I hope to start spending some more time on exploring the role of technology in teaching - something that has certainly become a growing interest since I started Second Life.

In the reading department, I finally got to read Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail and Learning 2.0 (it’s only been sitting on my desk for the past couple of months). I quite enjoyed the article and it fits in to my new interest in teaching and technology. It notes that there is a change towards social learning, focusing on not what we learn but how we learn. The culture is changing from “I think therefore I am” to “We participate therefore we are”. Students are moving from learning about subject matter to learning to be a full participant in the field, and this is being aided by the internet and the social web.

While this has some interesting educational applications, it got me wondering what it means for academic libraries. If we are becoming a culture of participation, are libraries adjusting to meet this? We have always been the keepers and houses of information - how can we be key players in the culture of participation. Learning commons are one way to  help this culture - providing the space for students to work in groups, become teachers to their peers - but is there more we can do? We see some libraries leading the way in the use of new technologies, such as Second Life. What else can we do to engage our students in a new culture of Learning 2.0?

One research leave just started and I’m already brewing up ideas for next year’s leave!

SL Presentations Gallore

I was invited to speak at York University by the Emerging Technologies group about SL and libraries (I threw in some education too). It was a great turn out - I was impressed by the interest and questions. Perhaps we’ll see them in SL sometime soon. In case you’d like to see what I talked about, you can check out my York Presentation.

I’ve got a bunch of other presentations coming up (the next one at Computers in Libraries) and a research leave. Lots of work ahead. I’ll share when they’re done.

Super Roundup

I’ve just returned from presenting and attending the Ontario Library Association’s SuperConference (despite a wicked snowstorm on Friday). As per usual, there were too many sessions and not enough time and I had some great conversations and attended some good sessions. Below is a brief roundup and highlight reel.

Coming Up to their Level - Sophia Apostol

This session looked at using technologies/terms that students are familiar with to introduce library instruction. A great example is making parallels between searching iTunes for a particular song to searching for a journal in an article database. I think using such examples makes tons of sense. It helps students realize that the library isn’t as foreign as they might think and puts them at ease by talking about the familiar first. Another good example is talking about tagging in Facebook and then introducing the idea of keywords or subjects.

What to do now and why? - Joseph Janes

A great speaker and thoroughly enjoyable session. A lot of what he spoke of made sense and wasn’t too shocking. He began by showing a picture of a reference desk and asking if it looked familiar - it was a photo taken in 1910. In many instances, little has changed. The fact that we could picture ourselves at this desk should be unsettling (and it was). We need to evolve. We need to do what we’re good at but do it better. It is key to become central to people’s information lives, ignorance, be relevant to what they do, be both physical and virtual. The virtual aspect needs particular investment since there isn’t the same level of committment as there is when one walks in a building, it is too easy to leave a website.

He didn’t seem to be a fan of Second Life (he’s not alone in that it seems) but he did make some interesting comments. He stressed that the process of SL (creating, building, interacting, etc) is more important than the product. I think this is true - something will replace SL but it is the ability to create a virtual world that’s important. He found importance in providing for the information needs for people’s multiple lives. He also noted that Second Life is about creation and noted that, for libraries, it’s really not about existing services. The question he raised was how can libraries be part of this creation process - what is our role in this? I’m not sure what the answer is at this point but I think it’s a question I will be pondering more in the next while, especially as I am reviewing our pilot service in Second Life.

Carole Honore, the author of In Praise of Slow, gave a plenary session. I started reading his book (which I read too slow and had to return to the library) and I am a firm believer that we do all need to slow down, take a step back. I must admit, I do find it hard to put to practice but it’s a good New Year’s resolution for us all (and not the resolutions we find so easy to break)

The Kids are Alright - Or Are They? - Jenn Horwath and Cynthia Williams

This session looked at some of the major works on today’s students (ie. Prensky). The literature seems to suggests students are tech savvy and up on all the web 2.0 applications, despite a lack of data to back up these claims. A look at the data suggests that students aren’t as savvy as we may have thought and this has implications for the types of services we’re starting to create. I can’t say I was terribly surprised by the data they pulled. I’ve asked students at the research help desk if they’re familiar with some of the more popular web 2.0 applications and the answer is no. As in my previous post, it may be that it is our role to highlight the useful applications.

I would have liked to have heard Andrew Keen speak, but it was scheduled during the time I was to present on Second Life, so here’s a great post on his session if you’re interested. My talk seemed to go well, so thanks to my co-presenter Donna and all who attended!

Access 2008 CFP

I’m not sure if you know, but McMaster will be co-hosting the Access Conference with the Hamilton Public Library and Mohawk College this year! This is exciting news! I’ve heard great things about the conference but have never been able to attend. It’s on the techy side of things and lately, I’ve been a techy-type wanna be, so I can’t wait to go - it should be great. They’ve put a call for proposals out, so here it is:

Call for Proposals for Access 2008
Location: Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Date: October 1-3, 2008 (Hackfest: Oct 1; Conference: Oct 2-4)
CFP Deadline: Friday, February 22, 2008
URL: http://access2008.mcmaster.ca

Access is Canada’s premier library technology conference, featuring a single stream of sessions that deal with technology planning, development, challenges and solutions. We are now accepting proposals for prepared talks on the following topics (other ideas are more than welcome):

• customized web applications and search interfaces
• open source software
• national and provincial/state-wide consortia technology initiatives
• information policy
• digital and social media
• library catalogue innovations
• digitization projects
• institutional repositories
• end-user searching behaviours
• protocols and metadata

…or anything else suitably geeky, innovative and/or awe-inspiring! Sessions are usually 45 minutes or 1 hour in length. Proposals should include:

• your name, title, institutional affiliation, contact information, blog/website URL
• 100 word (max) abstract describing your proposed presentation
• co-presenters you will (or hope to) present with

Submission Procedures:

• deadline for submission is February 22, 2008.
• send your proposal to Amanda Etches-Johnson, Program Chair, at etchesa AT mcmaster.ca
• each submission will be acknowledged and all presenters will be notified of the status of their proposal by April 15, 2008.
• if you’d simply like to recommend topics and/or speakers (other than yourself), feel free to get in touch!

Depending on the number of submissions, we can’t promise that every proposal will be accepted. However, we will have sessions set aside for Lightning/Thunder talks, which provide an informal opportunity to share your ideas with your peers.

For more information about Access, see the Access 2007 website. Alternatively, feel free to get in touch with the members of the Program Planning Committee:

Amanda Etches-Johnson
User Experience Librarian, McMaster University
etchesa AT mcmaster.ca

Jenn Horwath
Virtual Branch Manager, Hamilton Public Library
jhorwath AT hpl.ca

Conference Round Up

Back from the WNY/O ACRL Conference: No Chalk Dust: Teaching and Learning in an Online Environment.

The keynote speaker was Harry E. Pence - aka John2 Kepler. It turns out that this ended up being another case of SL meets RL, as I’ve chatted with him in SL. I’m still not used to meeting SL people in RL, but it was a nice encounter nonetheless. His talk changed a bit from the conference program - he concentrated on innovation in libraries and innovation with little support. I felt rather lucky, as my library has been quite supportive of my foray into virtual worlds but it is often not the case. These are just a few of the points I took from his session.

• He stressed selling the sizzle, not the steak - most people don’t understand SL right away, we need to stress how SL can support the mission and goals of the university overall.
• Innovation requires success from 3 levels - self, the department and the university. It is rare to have the skill set to be successful in all 3 levels, so noted that it is important to have a champion from the department and/or administration.
• SL attracts risk takers, those willing to try without support
• Innovators burn out without support
• Fear often stands in the way of innovation and this fear of change can be more destructive than change itself.

The second session was a panel discussing some of the experiences and challenges of using SL in an academic institution.

The final session shared a class on Designed Play. They’ve been doing some interesting activities. The class involves students noting cool sites-of-the-day, reading responses, creating an sl avatar, 3 in-class projects (product, derive, sl retail space), a personal blog and a final project. Unfortunately, I was too busy watching the videos to take very good notes for this session.

My slides will be linked here soon.

The conference was a nice small conference - great for meeting people and sharing ideas. It was great going home after the conference feeling refreshed rather than tired from the constant flow of information that happens after a multi-day conference. I’d recommend the conference to others in the area.

Immersive Worlds Conference

I was quite excited when I heard this conference was being held at Brock and it turned out I had reason to be - it was a great conference and I’m still digesting it. One of the exciting things for me was that the conference was diverse - there were gamers, non-gamers, game designers, professors, teachers and librarians, all thinking about the same types of things in slightly different ways. The conference was a great start at collaboration from different spheres and I loved hearing from so many different points of view. As with most conferences, there were too many sessions to choose from for an one time slot. The keynote speakers (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Chris Csikszentmihalyi, James Paul Gee, Denis Dyack) were thought provoking (I’ve left my notes at work and will post details of sessions later). As usual, conversation was great - this is where I find I often get the most from the conference. I was lucky enough to sit with Sarah Robbins (aka Intellagirl), Mark Bell, James Paul Gee and a number of other interesting, well-thought attendees for supper. Needless to say, I went to bed with lots to think about. I hope to attend this conference again.

CLA in St.John’s

This was my first visit to Newfoundland, a visit that was far overdue. The city itself was great. I didn’t attend much of the conference but I did present, run a couple of meetings and attend others. As you may remember from my shameless plug, I presented at CLA on Second Life. I was part of a talented panel (Donna Bourne-Tyson, Denyse Rodrigues, and Nancy Collins) and my portion was on virtual reference. I spoke on my experiences in the Info Island virtual reference project and touched lightly on our recently launched McMaster virtual reference pilot project from our building on Cybrary City. I will likely post some more complete thoughts on the project when it’s done. The session went well (kudos to all presenters) and we had a much bigger crowd than expected (always a pleasant surprise). I’m hoping our powerpoint and handout will be online soon.

Shameless Plug

I spent my recent research leave concentrating on some Second Life projects I have on the go. With only a couple of weeks before one of them is due, I thought I would put out a shameless plug. I will presenting at the CLA conference in St. John’s this year. I am part of a panel session entitled “Second Life: Virtual Reference & IL Librarians with Wings” and I will be sharing my virtual reference experiences in the virtual world. So, if you’re planning on going to CLA, please say hello.

Also, as AGIIG convenor, we will be having our annual meeting at CLA, so check out the AGIIG blog for more details.

Strategy for Academic Libraries in the Next Quarter Century

This was probably the most controversial session I attended, but forecasting is often controversial. David Lewis outlined what he thought would occur over the next 25 years.

• we need to finish the migration from print to electronic, particularly reference collections and journals and start planning for move to ebooks
• retire legacy collections (ie. put jstor journals in storage)
•  create diversity of user study spaces
• reposition information tools, resources, and expertise - be where the students are (google), embed librarians - less routine interaction and more technology and personal relationships, provide new services for research and scholarship
• move from purchasing material to curating content - this will be the result of open access scholarship, partons will be less reliant on local collections. Lewis predicts that while we spend 80/20 on material purchase and content curating, this will change to 40/60.

While this may seem difficult to achieve, Lewis believes it can be accomplished. He stresses repositioning oursevles and change our service model. He sees a hybrid model of librarian/technologist/instructional design with skills including teaching new information skills, develop and manage information support systems and building collections of curated content. This transformation will take some time to achieve.

Other thoughts included meeting the needs of the undemanding before addressing those of the demanding. I’m not sure this is possible, as the demanding are often the impatient ones who will make life difficult. Another point was to watch what patrons are doing rather than asking them. This makes more sense, as patrons often don’t realize what they want and asking puts them on the spot.

Horizon Report

Alan Levine, Bryan Alexander and Cyprien Lomas summarized 6 of the trends noted in the annual Horizon report. The report examines technology trends and hypothesizes which will affect libraries and education in the near horizon (adoption in the next year, 2-3 years, 4-5 years) . The process to narrow down to technologies is difficult at best but the trends include:

• user-created content
• social networking
• mobile phones
• virtual worlds
• new scholarship and emerging forms of publication
• massively multiplayer educational gaming

It was a great candid discussion and we were asked if we felt the trends were “out there” or not. While many libraries are starting to look into these technologies I think they were right that these will be the major ones that will be adopted in the next few years. Adoption is the key term - there are a number of other technologies that may be examined in the near horizon but adoption will likely go to those we are already getting comfortable with. The question will be whether we adopt them in time or whether our patrons will have moved on to the next big thing as we adopt them on their way out. I think it was a good thing to note the type of technology (social networking) rather than a particular product (we’re already seeing MySpace use decline). What do you think?

Let the Blogging Begin!

We are in week two of our Learning 2.0 and participants are being introduced to and creating their own blogs. People are really quite excited by this program and it will be interesting to read their blogs.

On another note, I’m frantically trying to put the final touches on a presentation I’m giving tomorrow - Learning in a New World: Social Networks and Second Life (I’ll link to the slides once they’re up). The presentation is for the McMaster Learning Commons Partners’ Learning on Learning Forum. It’s been interesting research and I’m hoping all goes well. Then, in an attempt to pretend to be a jet-setter, almost as soon as I’m done the presentation, I jump on a plane and head out to Edmonton for the Winter Institute on Statistical Literacy. More on that when I return!

Digital Game-Based Learning and Information Literacy

I was particularly interested in this session, as I have been doing a lot of reading about gaming and learning in the last while. I will be doing a session on learning in virtual worlds and social networks and gaming has been a side to my research. The presenter is working on creating a game for her library and I’ll be interested to see how it goes.

Top Tech Trends

What an amazing panel of experts! Michael Stephens, Amanda Etches-Johnson, and John Blyberg (all bloggers I regularly read). Amanda Etches-Johnson brought up three trends to watch - RSS, websites, and meaningful online outreach. I think she was right on the money when she mentioned that our websites are in dire need of help. This is where many of our patrons start - they are virtual library branches - and more thought and time needs to be put into them. We need to stop organizing them in ways that our meaningful to us and start thinking about how our patrons use our sites.

John Blyberg was also amazing. I had also gone to hear about the great work he has done on his library’s OPAC, or should I say SOPAC (Social OPAC). He has integrated social software into their OPAC successfully - a great model for other OPACs to strive for. He spoke of the importance of open source.

This was the first session that I got to hear Michael Stephens speak. He had been at my library early that week (while I was conferencing) to launch our library’s Learning Library 2.0 session (which is going to be great! More on that later I hope). Michael rose a number of points for us to consider when thinking of library 2.0:

• conversations
• convergence
• content
• redefining LIS job descriptions
• citizen journalism
• openness and sharing
• participation
• experience and play

Information is Not Enough: Shaping the User Experience

This session highlighted that we need to think more about what our patrons think about when they approach the library. Is it a place for them, will they succeed, does it fit in their busy life, are they trusted to participate? It seems my library is doing well in most areas but there are always areas for improvment. A couple of the important points:

• information is easy to find now - patrons want information rejection not retrieval
• patron success is important - if they can find 2-3 things on their own, they are 2 times more likely to ask for assistance
• think of reference as “World of Search Craft”
• The final slide was on moving foward and had a number of important points, including plan for success. While this is important, I was particularly found of the last point - laugh a lot. This is a good library and life point. We have to remember that this is about people -that we work with and for - if we can’t enjoy them then maybe we should rethink things. Things won’t always go as planned and the ability to laugh will help us get passed them. Enjoy our successes and be happy.

Is Social Software Too Social?

This session was a panel with Rob Hyndman, Matthew Ingram, and Nora Young - a panel of non-librarians who gave an interesting view point for Web 2.0. The panel was more of a discussion, which I really enjoy. Here are some of the important points I took from this session:

•   Web 2.0 still isn’t for everyone - it is largely those who are already technologically inclined - how can we keep a democracy and not let one group (the techies) have too much say?
• It isn’t all techies though - motivation and passion is extremely important - the desire to get the message out
• concerns about connections - allows for global conversations but there is lack of accountability as you don’t have to look someone in the eye when you disagree -can be solitary but may see that virtual connection is made first and then taken into the real world
• truth and trust are now currencies and are no longer given by default - questioning is the norm and shows us we should have questioned “trusted” sources more
• echo chamber phenomenon - how do we keep from becoming too narrow (ie. rss feeds and the loss of serendipity)

Conference Time!

Yes, it’s that time of year again. So many conferences, so little time and money! It’s amazing how energized you can be after a conference and how drained! The OLA (Ontario Library Association) Super Conference has just wrapped up. It was a great conference, so I thought I’d share what I’ve learned. I won’t blog about all of my sessions - I’ll do highlights instead. I hope to mull the sessions over a little more and may have more to post on the sessions later. Here’s a list of the sessions I attended (unfortuantely, I missed a couple due to illness):

• Is Social Software Too Social? - Rob Hyndman, Matthew Ingram, Nora Young
• Information Is Not Enough: Shaping the User Experience - Joan Frye Williams
• Search and the Emerging Social Web - Tomi Poutamen
• Not So Confidential: Exposing Web 2.0 Sites - John Blyberg
• Digital Game-Based Learning and Information Literacy - Christy Branston
• CODOC to LC: The Long and Winding Road - Jim Ford and Cary Daniel
• Solutions for a New Generation - Max Valiquette
• Top Tech Trends - Michael Stephens, Amanda Etches-Johnson, John Blyberg

The next conference scheduled - the Winter Institute for Statistical Literacy for Librarians in Edmonton.