Also ideas for future programs and publication were explored with members.

LITA Camp was briefly discussed. It will tentatively take place in Dublin, OH and is set for May 4-5 2009.

If so, please take a few moments to tell us what you thought of LITA’s programming by completing an evaluation; your honest, candid answers will assist us in providing quality programs in the future. Click on the link below or copy and paste it into your browser:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=oLUvesvZzmXutA3DhGEUKQ_3d_3d

Please note, if you attended more than one LITA program, you will need to submit an evaluation separately for each program.

SUSHI- Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) update: http://www.niso.org/workrooms/sushi

Adam Chandler presented an overview of what was happening with SUSHI – it’s available at http://www.niso.org/workrooms/sushi/info/SUSHI_ALA_Annual_2008-nisoupdate.ppt.

First he gave some background on SUSHI itself. SUSHI uses the COUNTER schema – it’s a protocol for moving statistics between two systems. Just the exchange – COUNTER actually codifies what’s in the reports. He presented conceptual diagrams of how the information is exchanged.

Then he talked about a survey of content providers and consolidators done in May 2008. Most consolidators plan to have support for SUSHI 1.5 by late 2008 or one in early 2009. Content providers were mostly going to implement in 2009, although some would be early, and some are still deciding.

Adam also called for volunteers for the NISO steering group, especially those with access to data such as those who work for a consortium. He also called for “Sushi Shokunin” – those who are willing to monitor the developers’ listservs to help people get up and running.

Finally, he mentioned that version 3 of the COUNTER Journals and Databases code of practice will require SUSHI support.

Discussion centered around whether there’s pushback from vendors as the reports get more complicated. It isn’t that it’s technically too difficult, but that there are lots of competing requests for limited resources. The schemas are problematic, but the protocol itself is not changing. It’s possible that it’s because there’s a lack of SOAP knowledge – it’s not hard, but it takes time to develop.

After Adam, group business was conducted. A new vice chair was elected. There was a suggestion to create a sandbox (Drupal server? etc) for between the meetings. Many people implementing ERMs are learning the same lessons, so a social space might be useful. There was some interest, and someone from the Electronic Resources & Libraries conference said that there were two groups that wanted something similar from them as well. Also, it was noted that the chairs are always looking for program ideas, so please send them.

CORE-Cost of Resources Exchange: http://www.niso.org/workrooms/core

Ted Koppel presented some background on how CORE developed. A group of people recognized that libraries should be able to send acquisition information from the ILS to the ERM. They started with ExLibris and Sirsi-Dynix, and decided to create a protocol for the sharing of pieces of acquisition information. The payload is the first part, the delivery is the second part. They did a survey of what data should be shared. Around the beginning of the year, they approached NISO, and about 1 month before Annual were given permission to assemble a working group.

The data is a subset of acquisition data elements, just over a dozen to begin with (out of the 50-60 that are typical) – fund number, order number, paid date, etc. This is just what’s in the payload – completely separate from the delivery method, as they want to keep it simple.

So, they’re looking for working group members.

One of the chairs of the ERM IG is doing something similar with III based on these elements, and recommends looking at your data now if you are interested in this, as inconsistencies cause major headaches later.

KBART-Knowledge Base and Related Tools Working Group – http://www.niso.org/workrooms/kbart

Nettie Lagace presented on this UKSG- and NISO-sponsored group that developed out of the UKSG report “Link Resolvers and the Serials Supply Chain.” It aims to create guidelines, educate all of the stakeholders, and act as an information hub. In the process, they’ll create a list of terminology, define the problems, look for solutions, and engage in advocacy. They meet monthly on a conference call, and will wrap up work in a report to UKSG next April.

Someone asked if this will only succeed if publishers buy in. Nettie suggested that part of the group’s mission was advocacy, and that they don’t yet know if they have publisher buy in because the report is not yet published. Also, they’ll need to educate the community, and librarians will need to bring pressure on the publishers.

ONIX News: http://www.editeur.org/

Brian Green presented an update on ONIX-related initiatives. ONIX is a set of metadata formats (for books, serials, etc) that can be for description, transaction, or licensing. ONIX for books is a trade standard for publishers that has recently gained interest from librarians as well. There is an international steering group in 15 countries. Version 3.0 will soon be able to handle digital objects, deal better with multiple item products, but is still in a period of input. Serials Online Holdings (SOH) provides information on e-serials holdings to libraries. There is a release notification, e.g. Finally, ONIX-PL is used for licensing terms. There are US and European pilots ongoing. Version 1.0 should be ready by July, and the ONIX-PL editing tools should be available in summer 2008. There is no ERM implementation yet.

NISO Update: http://www.niso.org

Todd Carpenter gave a short presentation on the different initiatives that NISO is involved with. The License Expression Working Group is working with EDItEUR to map the Electronic Resources Management Initiative (ERMI) data dictionary to ONIX-PL terms. This will split into two areas: one will have responsibility for ONIX-PL and one will look at issues of maintenance of ERMI.

Tim Jewell is conducting a survey on the ERMI – it was composed four years ago, but should someone maintain it, and who? He will conduct 1-on-1 interviews with vendors about whether it can be incorporated into products, and interviews with libraries to see if they use all of the 300+ data elements. This will be fed into a strategic plan, and there should be a report by the fall.

Things to keep an eye out for:

International DOI standard is moving forward. There shouldn’t be too many end-user changes.

NISO released recommended practice of journal articles publication.

NISO held thought leader meetings about digital libraries and digital collections. Should work with publishers to improve data streams.

The book industry study group is looking at ways to encourage community on the investment of time and energy in data streams.

There will be an xISSN demonstration from OCLC at Annual.

Distinguished science fiction and fantasy authors discussed their ideas about old and new technologies, how technology impacts humanity and future implications for privacy rights. Authors were Cory Doctorow, Eric Flint, Vernor Vinge, and Brandon Sanderson.

Vernor Vinge was first to address the audience. Vernor Vinge, who argued back in 1993 that “we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence” (“The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era“) began the session with a warning of a possible coming “Informational Dark Age.” He mentioned that Digital Rights Management proponents who favor proprietary formats can hinder technological progress, which he believes is crucial for human progress. He mentioned Charles Stross’s Glasshouse as a useful analogy.

Brandon Sanderson spoke about the appeal of uchronias or alternate histories, where one looks at a time period “through rose colored lenses” in places where modern people and concepts exist. He mentioned that fantasy fans love uchronias, noting steampunk, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Burroughs, Robert Jordan, and J.K. Rowling. He said scientific uchronias were popular in the early 1900s, involving warrior-heroes, and now the trend is toward wizard-heroes, where physical strength is not as important as mental acuity, where information is power and “the person who gives information is one who wins in the end” adding, “what librarians have always known.”

Sanderson shared that he was initially a reluctant reader because he was given only “classics,” which only taught him that reading was boring and that he wasn’t a “good enough” reader. The book that made him a reader was Dragon’s Bane. This story, though fantasy, was familiar to him because the struggles within it paralleled his own family’s struggles. He said librarians should teach people to love information first and focus on getting readers books they will love because that will make them readers.

Eric Flint argued strongly against current copyright laws. He said the Berne Convention was badly structured and that author copyright protections encompassing 75 years are ridiculous. He believes 40 years is enough to support an author, that anything longer actually hinders authors and other creators. Flint states that copyright law works in favor of corporations and that corporations want to define fair use out of existence.

Flint also talked about the advantages to e-publishing, noting that one format does not rule out another. He mentioned that although his first book is still in print it still sells well even though it is available online for free through the Baen Free Library (which offers 40 authors and 100 different works with no encryption- the only restriction is that you do not make money off of it).

Cory Doctrow said that copying isn’t what the Internet is good at; the Internet is best at making it cheaper to take collective action, which he says is another name for family, library, school, academic disciplines, government, and culture. The Internet is about “storming, forming, and norming.” It is communicating and creating communities of practice.

Doctrow says we are in an era of universal access to all human knowledge. He says that humanity has progressed from the days of hoarding information to sharing all knowledge. He said this is true about developing nations as well and cited his findings from his work with ALA-IFLA in Africa. He said that no matter where you were people accessed technology, whether it be regularly in real time on the Internet or every quarter year by latent links from a CD-ROM.

Doctrow said information architecture is political. He sent a rallying cry to everyone to “fight for the future of civilization. Fight over whether devices will control you or obey you.”

Sharon M. Shafer, Vice Chair, welcomed everyone to the 3^rd meeting of the Next Generation Catalog Interest Group.

The program panelists included Karen G. Schneider, Equinox Software, Sara Davidson, University of California, Merced, and Amy Kautzman, University of California, Davis,

“Running a Free and Open Source Software ILS does Not Equate to a Tightrope Act with No Net”

Karen G. Schneider began her talk with a definition of open source software from Wikipedia. Karen explained that open source software is free to use, free to download, and free to modify. Support is also available from the open source community or from a vendor. Karen further stated that “development” happens out in the “wild,” occurring on IRC, listservs, etc. It is important that development no longer take place in silos. With open source software problems can be quickly resolved. There is no need to wait for the next release. Software code develops rapidly. She also points to the FUD factor as a potential impediment to use of open source software. She recommends reading The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

Karen also discussed the PINES library consortium’s implementation of the Evergreen open source library catalog software. As a support service of Evergreen, Equinox provides migration and support training for implementation, as well as hosting and consulting services. Karen also recommends that libraries considering the use of Evergreen talk with other libraries that have implemented the software and also download the software for evaluation.

“Launching a Next-Generation Consortial Catalog”

Sara Davidson and Amy Kautzman (Members of UC/OCLC Pilot Implementation Team)

“What can you produce when you bring together 10 University of California campuses, the California Digital Library (CDL), an existing union catalog, Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), multiple task groups and the efforts of numerous individuals? In our case, the result is the Next-Generation Melvyl pilot which draws together content from UC’s existing union catalog and provides it on OCLC’s WorldCat Local Platform.”

The presentation included an overview and vision for the project, implementation procedures, the challenges encountered, and the features of the new Melvyl catalog. The project design included ten separate local views/scopes for the catalog and one union catalog view/scope. The goals of the project were to improve search and retrieval results, revise the architecture of the OPAC, adopt new cataloging practices, and a move to a support module based on continuous improvements. Also discussed was the organization of executive and implementation teams, task forces, joint work groups, and the partnership with OCLC. The various groups met challenges on several issues including: communications, working in new ways to handle technical hurdles, working through existing structures, creating new structures when necessary, data issues, managing expectations, and going live.

The most pressing issue being worked on now is how to bring up ten campuses all at once. The data issues include: reclamation projects, lack of OCLC numbers on some records, and the lack of OCLC records from some vendor sets. A recurring issue is the process of keeping the project from expanding beyond the stated goals. Additional features will continue to be developed in partnership with OCLC WorldCat Local.

Cary Gordon of the Cherry Hill Company, a vendor specializing in support of open source software, gave an extremely detailed introduction to Drupal 6.2, the latest version of the open source content management system. The attendees came from a variety of library types, including academic, public, and special, and with a variety of experience levels with the system.

Flash drives with the XAMPP server/database combination pre-installed were distributed along with the components for a Drupal installation.

The morning focused on setting up Apache, the MySQL database, some PHP settings, and a basic install of Drupal. The afternoon covered modules (the building blocks of a Drupal site), user permissions, basic content creation, and an introduction to Drupal’s specialized vocabulary: nodes, taxonomies, menus, blocks. The program concluded with an excellent list of Drupal-related resources available on the web.

The location, the computer lab in the Children’s section of the Anaheim Public Library, added a nice light-hearted touch. Library staff, particularly Thomas Edelblute, were unfailingly cheerful and helpful. ALA’s catering arrangements, among other things handled personally by Melissa Prentice of the LITA office, were excellent and welcome.

Powerpoint slides for Gordon’s workshop, with configuration instructions and lots of screenshots. Watch that site (and this one) for updates and more information.

Saturday, 8 am-noon, Paradise Pier Hotel in Anaheim, CA (Disneyland)

Presenters:
Kim Duckett, Librarian for Digital Technologies and Learning, North Carolina State University Libraries, Chad Haefele, Reference Librarian, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Samantha Hines, Assistant Professor, Distance Education Coordinator and Social Sciences Librarian, University of Montana, Howard Carter, Associate Professor and Manager, Instructional Support Services, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and Harvey R. Gover, 2008 ACRL/Haworth Press National Distance Learning Librarian, Acting Chair and Consultant to the Distance Learning Section Guidelines Committee, and Assistant Campus Librarian, Max E. Benitz Memorial Library, Washington State University Tri-Cities.

Kim Duckett believes librarians should adopt a philosophy of blended librarianship. Duckett says a focus on distance learners will lead to better library experiences for all because traditional learners are becoming more like distance learners as more and more students receive their education online.

Duckett says as libraries offer more digital resources for both synchronous and asynchronous learning, offering everything from virtual reference to e-reserves,  a seamless integration of library resources into Web-based course-management systems should be a top priority for librarians everywhere. She asks librarians to increase their presence online and go where their users are. She asks librarians to think about their most difficult patrons, those who do not come into the library, surmising that virtual users, having had a satisfactory online library experience, will actually visit the library.

Chad Haefele’s presented his experiences while the interim head of distance learning services at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.  Before his arrival the distance learning department was isolated, offered limited service, was staffed by non-MLS professionals, lacked formalized procedures, and relied on a paper based system.

Haefele moved the distance learning services to the library and physically relocated it to the circulation desk. This move expanded the distance learning hours of service (7 am to midnight instead of 9 am- 5 pm). He also employed local students  who could relate student and curriculum needs to library resources. Daily tasks were formalized and computerized, allowing for formal procedures to take hold. The end result was a highy efficient service with better communication between departments, faculty, students, and staff.
 
The growing demand for online education, what Haefele calls an “assembly line approach to education,” will result in a greater need for librarian specialists and ultimately, all librarians will become distance learning librarians. Above all, he believes that the distance learning department should not be walled off because it will suffer from stagnation, lack accountability and lack overall effectiveness.

His advice to distance leaning librarians is to assume you will not be there tomorrow and that you are the only point of contact. He says education is becoming a commodity and recommends partnering with others, knowing copyright law, automating the mundane, focusing on students, opening up data sources, and using full APIs otherwise, “students will leave you in the dust…. Isolation doesn’t work.”

Samantha Schmel Hines opened her talk with a quote from Anne Lipow:

Rather than thinking of our users as remote we should recognize that we are remote from our users.

Hines asked us to move from thinking of the library as place to the library as service.  She traced the growth and pervasiveness of the Internet, the rise of digital education, and the challenges we face from the digital divide.

Howard Carter discussed the long history of correspondence education and distance education. He believes the greatest challenge to distance education came with the advent of the Internet and argues that best practices for Internet accessibility results in better experiences for everyone since most library users are online and distance is a disability which needs to be accommodated. He believes that the ACRL Standards for Distance Learning needs to address libraries in general since “technology is a subscription that needs to be renewed.”

Carter laments the lack of library funding overall (he noted that the 2010 book budget at Southern Illinois University Carbondale given the current level of funding will equate to zero) and highlighted the increase in adjunct virtual faculty members and the rise in for-profit universities. New degree models, he believes, should result in more library funding and more opportunities for librarians.
Harvey R. Gover’s role was “bringing some order our of the chaos.” He summarized the findings of earlier presenters and asked librarians to refer to the Blueprint for Success: The National Agricultural Library 2008-2012 and the soon to be updated ACRL Guidelines for Distance Learning Library Services.

Enjoy!

One would expect for something that old (in Google time) such as Ferber (FRBR), which has been around since 1998, to have spawned some kin. Meet Fred, er, FRAD (Functional Requirements for Authority Data). And they didn’t tell you that in this program, you also will meet Farsar (FRSAR – Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Records).

Actually, the first hour and a half of this program dealt with updates on activities at the Library of Congress (by Dave Reser) and at OCLC (by Robert Bremer). The next hour and a half was devoted to the main program topic and the last hour was for a meeting of the LITA/ALCTS Authority Control Interest Group. The cataloging and metadata crowd must have been conferenced out by this time because attendance was low compared to the sessions Getting Ready with RDA and FRBR: What You Need to Know and Creating the Future of Catalogs and Cataloging. Too bad since three rooms at the Convention Center were reserved (210 A-C) for this low-attendance event compared to the use of only 204B for the two overflowing sessions.

The main program consisted of the following:

• Getting to Know FRAD – Glenn Patton, OCLC, Inc., Chair, IFLA FRANAR Working Group
  • Patton apologized to those who have attended the session of Getting Ready for RDA and FRBR: What You Need to Know where he gave the same presentation but noted that a second-go is not necessarily a bad thing. The moderator for the program said that slides from this session will be made available on the ALA Conference Materials Archive. In the meantime, you can access the same slides used in Patton’s presentation here and the diagrams he referred to to explain the FRAD conceptual model can be seen in the draft by the IFLA FRANAR Working Group. Note that FRANAR (Functional Requirements and Numbering of Authority Records) is now FRAD.
• FRAD: A Personal View – Ed Jones, National University Library in San Diego, California
  • Ed Jones’ personal interest in the FRAD model comes from his view that it would help him think about authority data in new ways just as FRBR helped him think of bibliographic data in new ways. He quoted Bernard Shaw to express this view better: “You see things and say ‘Why?’ but I dream things that never were and I say ‘Why not?” His explorations of what the DNB and Wikipedia.de are doing with authority data and control numbers (not to be confused with Identifiers) are especially very interesting.
• An Introduction to FRASAR - Athena Salaba, Kent State U assisted by Lois Mai Chan, University of Kentucky.
  • I believe that the best way that FRAD and FRSAR have been introduced in the program can be seen in one slide (image shown below) from this presentation. [I found basically the same presentation here]. The slide below shows the commonalities and differences between the three models around user tasks. The user tasks in red font shows those that are particular for that conceptual model:

  

I would conclude, as Ed Jones did in his presentation, by noting that conceptual models are growing organisms. They model a certain way that we understand, at a certain point in time, a set of entities that we choose to include in an ontological reality that we agree to exist for certain uses and users. We need to connect our current practices and future goals to these functional requirements so that practice and theory can inform each other as we adapt to changes in how we describe and control bibliographic entities.

John Houser, Senior Technology Consultant for PALINET, and Johsua Ferraro, CEO of Liblime, set out to answer common questions about open-source ILS systems with a focus on Liblime’s support for Koha. The format was an interview, and the resulting questions and answers were recorded. Watch for a link to the podcast version here.

Representative questions and answers follow, but these are only samples of an extremely rich discussion of general and very specific technical details.

Cost
Don’t necessarily plan to save lots of money on an open-source ILS, as planning to contribute to development efforts has many advantages–primarily that you get to set the priorities for new features in the ILS. A representative of a Koha library in the audience pointedly disagreed, stressing that in his case there were significant cost savings.

How does Liblime makes money if the software is free?
By supplying services related to installation, migration, and ongoing support of Koha and Evergreen systems.

How hard is migration?
Migration is hard from any ILS to any other ILS, and Koha is not an exception. But it’s not necessary to have your own staff to do the hard parts.

How does support for an open-source ILS differ from commercial ILS support?
There is no vendor lock-in. Libraries could contract with any vendor to support the system, which is based on widely used web technologies like MySQL and PHP.

How supportive of new users is the Koha community?
Open-source software communities can sometimes be hard for new users to approach, but Koha’s tends to be fairly friendly and helpful, and Liblime staff contribute to it.

The session was lively, and included a lot of audience participation. There were about twenty questions and comments from the audience.

How does custom work for a particularly library get accepted into the project as a whole?
Koha is a smaller project than something like Firefox, and is fairly open to outside input. New code is reviewed and tested.

Will there be support for Vufind?
PALINET will support Vufind from version 1.0

Why should I join the WALDO consortium in migrating to Koha?
Your library peers are setting the specifications and helping to build the system you’ll be using.

What support is there for reporting and statistics?
There are built-in reporting modules, but because the software is built on MySQL almost any report-writing software will work with Koha. And direct access to library data is never a problem.

There were also questions about the cataloging and acquisitions modules, system requirements, API’s for scripting, ERM, digital library software, and many other topics.

Walt Scacchi of UC-Irvine stepped in as a last-minute replacement speaker for Karen Sandler of the Software Freedom Law Center and gave a talk entitled “Research Results for Free/Open Source Software Development: Best Practices for Libraries? (and some legal issues too)” based on his empirical research on open-source project processes, practices, and community development
.
The talk was rich in details on who open-source developers are and what they do. Using the current stats at Sourceforge as a starting point, he estimated approximately 180,000 current open-source software projects, of which approximately 18,000 (10%) are currently being succesfully developed. The largest area of open-source development is in games, in large part driven by the fact that the very successful Sony game systems are built using open-source software.

Open-source developers tend to use the tools they build, which is not necessarily the case for commercial developers. About 1% of open-source software users are developers. Two-thirds of developers contribute to more than one project, 5% to more than ten.

80% of open-source developers say they contribute to projects to learn new tools, new skills, or new software. Most also build because it is fun.

Most open-source developers spend far more time reading online documentation and interacting with other developers than they do writing code. This means the community aspect of open-source software is actually more important than the code, which is contrary to the usual opinion of programmers as anti-social. The social aspect of open-source development, including developing one’s reputation and future job prospects, but also collaborating with other like-minded programmers, is critical to the success of a project.

Open-source developers tend to subsidize their own work by contributing (obviously) time, but also equipment, server space, money, and many other things to their projects. This makes commercial software company comparisons of “total cost of ownership” suspect.

Scacchi described software as literature, and referred to the many thousands of developers as readers of it. Then pointedly asked whether libraries are building collections of it. There was silence in the room, but iBiblio, hosted by the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, is actually doing this and hosts one of the largest open-source software libraries.

He also described the confusing array of open-source licensing arrangements and the problems conflicting licenses can cause. A good source of basic advice on these issues can be found in the Software Freedom Law Center’s Legal Issues Primer for Open Source and Free Software Projects.

Small projects tend to fail unless they can forge alliances with other, similar projects. A large project, or a cooperating cluster of projects, can generate the critical mass necessary for success. The question to ask about a project is whether it could or would continue if its current main developer left. He pointed to the example of the Linux kernel, the heart of the operating system, to which the original creator, Linus Torvalds, contributes less than 1% of the code. A sustainable project generates code and a community.

Powerpoint slides for Scacchi’s talk.

Darrell Gunter began by discussing Collexis research projects and applications for libraries. Fascinating work is being undertaken on computationally derived ontology, what Collexis refers to as Fingerprinting. [Bibliographic ontology (like FRBR or FRAD not getting any play in the semantic portion of the presentation). ] Screenshots of tools (presentation slides to be posted to the LITA wiki) included the Knowledge Dashboard, which is being used for Hypothesis Generation by scientists. Biomedexperts.com discussed as a Collexis partner with tools for researchers including expert visualization, social network graphs of who is publishing with whom. Asklepios Group discussed as a user of collexis tools which utilizes mobile technology for patient-side consultation and comparison of relevant treatments.

I would characterize Collexis methodology as relying on computationally derived indexing for data visualization (btw-the intellectual foundations of LIS exist (partly) in the aforementioned FRBR ontology). To some extent one has to question the use of the term semantics here, in that behind their derived “meaning” are sets of algorithms, which don’t actually answer the question “what exists” but rather “what exists in the databases we compute from” – in my opinion. I think of Karl Jaspers and his idea on the limitations of certain kinds of empiricism.

Neeru Khosla of CK12 introduced the Flexbook, a collaboratively authored and produced textbook. Neeru modeled the assembler interface which allows the user to select chapters for their desired book. Flexbook is pitched as a low cost way to create textbooks. CK12 is looking for librarians to provide indices, meta information, keywords to this interface to help organize the chapter content. I would characterize this work as sort of a Textbook2.0 in that the user can easily piece together the book they want and suit it to their exact student needs and not pay an exceedingly high cost. Regarding quality: Neeru informs us that chapters can come from wikis such as Wikipedia and from donated textbook content. If you are interested in learning more contact neeru@ck12.org

If you are interested in semantic type stuff see the w3c.org page.

We got a great crowd of around 20 people for our Drupal ‘Birds of a Feather’. The above is a shot of everybody in the BIGWIG Bloggers’ room — just before we got kicked out by some group from YALSA (bums, we’ll get even)!

(We then proceeded to the next available empty room and had our get-together there.)

First up on the agenda was setting up the Drupal IG, making sure we have enough signatures and asking for volunteers to serve as Chair and Co-Chair. For the first year, Leo Klein (i.e. me) graciously volunteered to serve as chair and Ian Chan as co-chair.

The name for the IG is ‘Drupal4Lib’ and our purpose is “to promote the use and understanding of the content management system, Drupal, by libraries and librarians”.

Next on the agenda was the true meat-and-potatoes of the BoF: shooting the breeze about Drupal and demonstrating a few sites we were working on.

The group consisted of librarians at all levels of experience from expert to beginner. Some were shopping around for a CMS and hadn’t yet decided which one to choose. Some had already deployed Drupal in one way or another — if only locally on their laptop — and wanted to learn more about it.

Jon Blackburn showed us the FSU Library site, Tracy Sutherland gave us a taste of the soon-to-be launched Amherst Library site (public mockups here…) , and finally, Co-Chair volunteer Ian Chen gave us a taste of his wonderful work from his portfolio site.

Unfortunately my nifty little projector was suffering relocation fits and kept on shutting down. [Note to attendees: if you weren't able to show us a site because of projector problems, please post them here].

All in all the surprising thing was how quickly the time went. I personally found the BoF extremely rewarding. There aren’t many opportunities to meet face-to-face with colleagues united by an interest or curiosity in Drupal.

I really look forward to our next get-together — in Chicago?

I have 5 Trends I’d like to throw out there. I was able to cover three of them (#s 1-3) in the live presentation, but apparently the echo in the room made parts of what I said difficult to hear. So, here’s what I said verbatim, near as I can remember (plus the bonuses of #s 4 and 5). Let’s hit it.

#1: Bandwidth
Every library complains about bandwidth. Many people have faster access at home than at the library, which is a reversal of what we used to see when people came into the library to use our connections. The problem is multimedia, which is wonderful, but it is huge. And when you put 40 people downloading audio and video files, playing live online games with people in Singapore, and streaming radio stations , you get bandwidth clogged-up-ed-ness. And if you’re not set up so your staff network is separated from your public network (which you should be), your staff find that their work is slowed down to a snail’s pace too. There are a number of solutions out there like paying to up your subscription with your ISP to the next level or switching from copper to fiber. But this faces all organizations, not just libraries, so until a global solution is found, I think that we will see more of libraries’ IT budgets going to bandwidth every year…which means other projects may be put off.

#2: Sustainability
We talk a lot about the new and the beautiful. But answer me this: how many abandoned and dead library blogs are on the web? How many no-longer-updated library MySpace profiles are there? Few libraries thought about how much it would take to sustain these presences. Taking a holistic view of how much staff time it takes to maintain the library’s existing web presence, and allowing for additional time for new projects, is something that all libraries should begin. The smart ones do it now, but as our web presence grows and takes up more of our overall resources, we need to pay the same kind of attention to staffing it as we do for a physical library.

#3: Looking away from the bright shiny things and at ourselves instead
Tell me which of the following sounds familiar to you:

• “We wanted to do it, but our administration didn’t see the value in the technology and didn’t want to devote staff time or funds to it.” -OR-
• “We had to go through 6 committees and rewrite 4 library policies to get approval to start a blog, so it took a year to get it going.” -OR-
• “Our web and IT staff have a project back-log of more than a year so any new ideas have to wait.”

Libraries, as organizations, are not nimble. We desperately need to look at how we make decision and how we encourage innovation in our libraries. Nearly all of the libraries I have visited or worked in do not encourage innovation.

In fact, innovation is discouraged through the structure and practices of our organizations. A huge barrier is the generations-old librarian “fear of failure” that is so great that no one is allowed to try anything unless is has been planned to death and has already been implemented in 80% or more of other libraries. Staff are also hesitant to innovate because of the multi-level bureaucracy that libraries seem to love. These bureaucracies are seemingly insurmountable to us regular ol’ staff because of three things:

1. the natural frustration we all have with complex bureaucracies that make us want to cry
2. the reality that “the little guy,” which many of our new librarian staff are, probably isn’t on the committee that makes the big decisions
3. and third, people don’t have the extra time in their workdays for the hours required to organize a project to make its way through the bureaucracy. The staff are already over-burdened by their other duties and few people want to work an extra 5 hours every week just so they can be the ones trying new things in their workplaces.

We create walls between us and innovation and then put down on paper that we want to innovate, that we have a strategic plan to move us forward. “Huzzah!” we say to ourselves. And yet, our plan falls woefully short of what we really need to get us to where our customers expect us to be.

Here’s what I want to see for a library technology plan—
DOs: Go try new things. The more things the better. The more things that we hear about failing, the better, because that means you’re trying lots of new things. Pilot new things if possible. We’ll fund you when we can, but if we can’t please try getting sponsorships. And, finally, let us know how it goes.
DON’Ts: Don’t dislocate your shoulder playing wii bowling at a gaming night. Please.

Until we break down the walls that stand between libraries and innovation, all this talk of shiny new things doesn’t mean a thing. The libraries that have broken down those walls, or at least found secret passageways through them here and there, are the ones who we see innovating, the ones we see featured in Library Journal or Computers in Libraries. It ain’t the ones with a committee structure that looks more complicated than my family tree. The advent of the rush of new technologies in libraries is almost forcing the issue, making us reconsider how we make decisions and manage projects. I think this is a wonderful thing, and am watching what libraries do as they move through this change.

#4: Catalogs
I want to build on something that Eric Lease Morgan wrote in his Trends on the LITA Blog. He was writing about the next-gen library catalog and emphasized the importance of helping customers to use the content they find in the catalog by tagging, reviewing, sharing, syndicating, etc. I wish to second that sentiment with one addition. These activities need to be global. They should not be limited to the content created by your library’s users or users of other library catalogs from the same vendor, as is the case with some of today’s products. In other words, tags and reviews should be shared across libraries, platforms, and across all boundaries. Syndication and sharing should work with common and popular existing websites and services like Yelp, Facebook, and Amazon. We are no longer individual community libraries folks…at least not online. We’re all one, and acting like it will help us stay relevant in our users’ online experiences.

#5: Open Access Content
Libraries are going to soon start getting off of our pricey pedestals and only featuring digital content that we pay for. Yes, we all pay thousands of dollars for some excellent downloadable audio books, encyclopedias, journals, and a lot more. But all of that lovely open access (read: free) digital content that exists out there through sites like the Directory of Open Access Journals, Project Gutenberg, and more are credible and respected, and we owe it to our users to let them know about this content.

Questions from the Audience
InfoCommons – what’s the right set-up, hardware, software?
In addition, there was a question from someone in the audience, directed to me, about what software and hardware would make a good InfoCommons. I’m still confused about why that was addressed to me, but that’s OK. I will admit that this is not an area of expertise for me. My library is currently in the very early stages of beginning planning for an InfoCommons in our main location and perhaps at a few key branches. My best recommendation would be to ask the users. See what they tell you they want. So, instead of answers, I’ll leave you with questions. Do they need video editing software? Furniture that can move? Laptops they can check out instead of standing desktop computers? Do they want audio mixing software? Which types of device ports? Do they want specific animation software? Do they need to be able to download stuff (if your library currently doesn’t allow that)? Do they want special printers? Talk about that. See what they tell you. Research what other libraries have done, and use that as a possible starting point. Much has been written on the subject by people a lot more involved in this area than I am. Trust them, not me

The group also discussed plans for Midwinter. Instead of hosting a managed discussion as we have done in the past, we decided simply to hold a business meeting. We’ll work further on the 2009 program at Midwinter as well as begin the process of planning for Annual 2010.

As part of the Midwinter discussion, we also touched on the perennial topic of “what’s the purpose of this IG?” We concluded that our purpose was to provide programming on technology topics of interest to persons in public libraries and that we’d do well to market ourselves to new members this way. We’re hoping that a narrower focus that’s more easy to get a handle on will help us attract new members.

So if your interested in technology in public libraries and want to get involved in programming at annual conferences, be sure to look us up at Midwinter.

Hilton convention center, Carmel Room. The Carmel room is up 2 escalators from the lobby.

See you there!

http://www.ustream.tv/griffey

Because of the vagaries of internet access at the various convention hotels, it remains to be seen exactly what I will be able to do…but I’m going to give it a try! Even if you miss the live stream, all of the videos will be at the above URL to peruse at your leisure. If you are interested in trying to catch me live, I’ll be announcing it over on Twitter.

When: Friday, June 27th 6:30-8:00pm
Where: Anaheim Convention Center Room 203 A

Agenda:

1. IG Business (5 Minutes)

2. SUSHI- Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) Open Forum – Adam Chandler and friends. Adam will be presenting the results of a SUSHI survey he is conducting of COUNTER
members and then using that as a lead-off for a discussion about what the challenges and opportunities related to SUSHI implementation are. (30 minutes)
http://www.niso.org/workrooms/sushi

3. CORE-Cost of Resources Exchange update – Ted Koppel and/or Jeff Aipperspach (15-20 minutes)
http://www.niso.org/workrooms/core

4. KBART-Knowledge Base and Related Tools Working Group – Nettie Lagace (15-20 minutes)
http://www.niso.org/workrooms/kbart

5. Update report on the ONIX family (Licensing Terms, Books and Serials) – Brian Green (5-10 minutes)
http://www.editeur.org/onix_licensing.html

6. NISO Update – Todd Carpenter (10-15 minutes)
http://www.niso.org

We look forward to seeing you in Anaheim.

Zoe and Clara

• “Bling” in your website – I hate to admit it, but it seems increasingly necessary to make sure your institution’s website be aesthetically appealing. This might seem obvious to you, but considering the fact we all think “content is king” we might have to reconsider. Whether we like it or not, people do judge a book by its cover, and people do judge other’s on their appearance. Websites aren’t very much different. While librarians are great at organizing information bibliographically, we stink when it comes to organizing things visually. Think graphic design. Break down and hire a graphic designer, and temper their output with usability tests. We all have our various strengths and weaknesses. Graphic designers have something to offer that, in general, librarians lack.
• Data sets – Increasingly it is not enough for the scholar or researcher to evaluate old texts or do experiments and then write an article accordingly. Instead it is becoming increasingly important to distribute the data and information the scholar or researcher used to come to their conclusions. This data and information needs to be just as accessible as the resulting article. How will this access be sustained? How will it be described and made available? To what degree will it be important to preserve this data and/or migrate it forward in time? These sorts of questions require some thought. Libraries have experience in these regards. Get your foot in the door, and help the authors address these issues.
• Institutional repositories – I don’t hear as much noise about institutional repositories as I used to hear. I think their lack of popularity is directly related to the problems they are designed to solve, namely, long-term access. Don’t get me wrong, long-term access is definitely a good thing, but that is a library value. In order to be compelling, institutional repositories need to solve the problems of depositors, not the librarians. What do authors get by putting their content in an institutional repository that they don’t get elsewhere? If they supported version control, collaboration, commenting, tagging, better syndication and possibilities for content reuse — in other words, services against the content — then institutional repositories might prove to be more popular.
• Mobile devices – The iPhone represents a trend in mobile computing. It is both cool and “kewl” for three reasons: 1) its physical interface complete with pinch and drag touch screen options make it easy to use; you don’t need to learn how to write in its language, 2) its always-on and endlessly-accessible connectivity to the Internet make it trivial to keep in touch, read mail, and “surf the Web”, 3) its software interface is implemented in the form of full-blown applications, not dummied down text interfaces with lot’s of scrolling lists. Apple Computer got it right. Other companies will follow suit. Sooner or later we will all by walking around like people from the Starship Enterprise. “Beam me up, Scotty!” Consider integrating into your services the ability to text the content of library research to a telephone.
• Net Neutrality – The Internet, by design, is intended to be neutral, but increasingly Internet Service Providers (ISP) are twisting the term “neutrality” to mean, “If you pay a premium, then we won’t throttle your network connection.” Things like BitTorrent is a good example. This technique exploits the Internet making file transfers more efficient, but ISPs want to inhibit it and/or charge more for its use. Yet again, the values and morals of a larger, more established community, in this case capitalism, are influencing the Internet. Similar value changes manifested themselves when email became commonplace. Other values, such as not wasting Internet bandwidth by transferring unnecessarily large files over the ‘Net, have changed as both the technology and the numbers of people using the Internet have changed. Take a stand for “Net Neutrality”.
• “Next generation” library catalogs – The profession has finally figured it out. Our integrated library systems don’t solve the problems of our users. Consequently, the idea of the “next generation” library catalog is all the rage, but don’t get too caught up in features such as Did You Mean?, faceted browse, cover art, or the ability of include a wide variety of content into a single interface. Such things are really characteristics and functions of underlying index. They are all things designed to make it easier to accomplish the problem of find, but this is not the problem to be solved. Google make it easy to find. Really easy. We are unable to compete in that arena. Everybody can find, and we are still “drinking” from the proverbial “fire hose”. Instead, think about ways to enable the patron to use the content they find. Put the content into context. Like the institutional repositories, above, and the open access content, below, figure out way to make the content useful. Empower the patron. Enable them to apply actions against the content, not just the index. Such things are exemplified by action verbs. Tag. Share. Review. Add. Read. Save. Delete. Annotate. Index. Syndicate. Cite. Compare forward and backward in time. Compare and contrast with other documents. Transform into other formats. Distill. Purchase. Sell. Recommend. Rate. Create flip book. Create tag cloud. Find email address of author. Discuss with colleagues. Etc. The types of services implementable by “next generation” library catalogs is as long as the list of things people do with the content they find in libraries. This is one of the greatest opportunities facing our profession.
• Open Access Publishing – Like its sister, institutional repositories, I don’t hear as much about open access publishing as I used to hear. We all know it is a “good thing” but like so many things that are “free” its value is only calculated by the amount of money paid for it. “The journals from this publisher are very expensive. We had better promote them and make them readily visible on our website in order for us to get our money’s worth.” In a library setting, the value of material is not based on dollars but rather on things such as but limited to usefulness, applicability, keen insight, scholarship, and timeliness. Open access publishing content manifests these characteristics as much a traditionally published materials. Open access content can be made even more valuable if its open nature were exploited. Like the content found in institutional repositories, and like the functions of “next generation” library catalogs outlined above, the ability to provide services against open access content are almost limitless. More than any other content, open access content combined with content from things like the Open Content Alliance and Project Gutenburg can be freely collected, indexed, searched, and then put into the context of the patron. Create bibliography. Trace citation. Find similar words and phrases between articles and books. Take an active role in making open access publishing more of a reality. Don’t wait for the other guy. You are a part of the solution.
• Social networking – Social networking is beyond a trend. It is all but a fact of the Internet. Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn as well as Wikipedia, YouTube, Flickr, and Delicious are probably the archetypical social networking sites. They have very little content of their own. Instead, they provide a platform for others to provide content — and then services against that content. (“Does anybody see a trend in these trends, yet?”) What these social networking sites are exploiting is a new form of the numbers game. Given a wide enough audience it is possible to find and create sets of others interested in just about any topic under the sun. These people will be passionate about their particular topic. They will be sincere, adamant, and arduous about making sure the content is up-date, accurate, and thoroughly described and accessible. Put your content into these sorts of platforms in the same way the Library of Congress as well as the Smithsonian Institution has put some of their content into Flickr. A rising tide floats all boats. Put your boat into the water. Participate in this numbers game. It is not really about people using your library, but rather about people using the content you have made available.
• Web Services-based APIs – xISBN and thingISBN. The Open Library API. The DLF ILS-DI Technical Recommendation. SRU and OpenSearch. OAI-PMH and now OAI-ORE. RSS and ATOM. All of these things are computing techniques called Web Services Application Programmer Interfaces (API). They are computer-to-computer interfaces akin to things like Z39.50 of Library Land. They enable computers to unambiguously share data between themselves. A number of years ago implementing Web Services meant learning things like SOAP, WSDL, and UDDL. These things were (are) robust, well-documented, and full-featured. They are also non-trivial to learn. (OCLC’s Terminology Service embedded within Internet Explorer uses these techniques.) After that REST become more popular. Simpler, and exploits the features of HTTP. The idea was (is) send a URL to a remote computer. Get a response back as XML. Transform the response and put it to use — usually display things on a Web page. This is the way most of the services work (“There’s that word again!”) The latest paradigm and increasingly popular technique uses a data structure called JSON as opposed to XML as the form of the server’s response because JSON is easier to process with Javascript. This is very much akin to AJAX. Despite the subtle differences between each of these Web Services computing techniques, there is a fundamental commonality. Make a request. Wait. Get a response. Do something with the content — make it useful. Moreover, the returned content is devoid of display characteristics. It is just data. It is your responsibility to turn it into information. Learn to: 1) make your content accessible via Web Services, and 2) learn how to aggregate content through Web Services in order to enhance your patron’s experience.

Wow!! Where did all of that come from?

Plus, the Google Calendar is available in a myriad of forms…you can Embed it in a webpage (as we did over at YourBIGWIG), you can look it up on your mobile phone, you can sync it with a number of other calendar applications. It’s a really flexible way of displaying the data, which is something we can all get behind, right?

The calendar is public, so if you search for BIGWIG you’ll find it, but you can link directly to it in the following ways: HTML :: XML :: iCal

The one problem is that Google Calendar only allows a calendar to be in one timezone…so the entries for the gCal are East Coast time…not Pacific. It displays the times depending on the timezone of your computer, so there can definitely be weirdness. Pay attention, though, and you should be fine.

We will have presentations and discussion about two examples of recent next generation catalog endeavors.

Karen Schneider (Evangelist for Equinox’s Evergreen support) will share what she does as an Evangelist by giving some real world, grounded information on how “Running a Free and Open Source Software ILS does Not Equate to a Tightrope Act with No Net”.

Sara Davidson and Amy Kautzman (Members of UC/OCLC Pilot Implementation Team) will present “Launching a Next-Generation Consortial Catalog”.
What can you produce when you bring together 10 University of California campuses, the California Digital Library (CDL), an existing union catalog, Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), multiple task groups and the efforts of numerous individuals? In our case, the result is the Next-Generation Melvyl pilot which draws together content from UC’s existing union catalog and provides it on OCLC’s WorldCat Local Platform. We will review the implementation process, the challenges encountered, beneficial features, and next steps.

A brief IG business meeting will follow the discussion.

Thanks very much in advance!

One day, in a spirit of “too much stuff to do, so I’ll do something completely unrelated instead” I populated this calendar with all the LITA events I could find for ALA Annual in Anaheim.  If you’re frustrated, as many are, with the ALA Event Planner, feel free to save events from this calendar into your own (trust me, this is *much* easier than the Event Planner for LITA events)

Por su servico…