ALA Techsource

Death by Powerpoint.  You’ve seen it; we’ve all been there. You saunter into a conference session, drawn in by the succinct abstract, the scintillating topic.  It only takes a scant few minutes to decide you’ve made a terrible mistake, that it does not matter what words come out of the speaker’s mouth: if you don’t leave immediately, snoozing will ensue.

Here are some tips to transform your slides from a crutch into what they’re supposed to be: a visual aid.

1. Prepare on paper. Starting with a PowerPoint outline is an easy way to create slides that look like... well, a PowerPoint outline.  With audience and topic in mind, brainstorm what you want to say, then organize related ideas into three or four categories.  Chances are that your audience will remember only a few things from your presentation: what should those things be?

2. Parse out your allotted time.  How much introduction does your topic need?  How much time should be left for questions?  Are you sharing the time with another presenter?  These two things can bookend your major points.  Breaking your allotted time down this way will help you plan how much time to devote to each of your points.

3. Only after you know what you’ll say is it time to sit down in front of PowerPoint.  Create a blank slideset of 5-10 slides, one for your introduction, each of your points, and a final slide inviting questions or for displaying contact information.  Add slides as necessary, to help illustrate the topic.  There is no magic number or formula here; do what feels right.

4. Keep in mind that slides should illustrate your point, not state it.  Using text sparingly and illustrating with a pleasing image (licensed for reuse through Creative Commons, of course) is a good way to accomplish this.  Once you find an image, use a tool like Color Hunter to identify a complementary palette.

5. If creating a presentation in PowerPoint outline form is just the way you roll, go for it.  But use this as a handout for your audience rather than as the visual accompaniment to your talk. 

6.  While the audience is reading the words on the slide, they are not listening to you.  If text is essential to making a point, pause to let the audience read.  It’s ok!

What other tips for preparing and delivering a presentation do you use?

Illustration “Death by Presentation” courtesy Frits Ahlefeldt-Laurvig.

Subscribe to ALA TechSource Online now and save 46 percent off the full subscription price. Hosted on Metapress, an online subscription gives you access to a growing nine-year archive of Library Technology Reports and Smart Libraries Newsletter.

• Read full issues online or a downloadable PDFs.
• Share unlimited access across your institution
• Personalize with RSS alerts, saved items, and emailed favorites

Offer is available only to new ALA TechSource online subscribers and must be purchased using the subscription form at http://www.alatechsource.org/subscribeonly199. Offer is good through September 30, 2010.

Anyone who has spent time with small children knows that "why?" is one of the best and most vexing questions people can ask. "Why?" probes for motivations, explanations, understanding. It demands reflection and clear communication, and I think it's safe to say that most people have a complex relationship with this tiny word.

Library techies can leverage "why?" to change how their organizations operate by questioning a ibrary procedure. Discussing workflow with coworkers and asking "why?" a lot, while offering ways to automate procedures, can offer value to your colleagues and your organization (and maybe wreak a little havoc). But "why?" is also a question library techs sometimes dread. "Why did it work before but not this time?" "Why is it broken?" "Why am I getting this error message?" Often the answer is straightforward: a setting has been changed, or a network problem is creating the error. But sometimes, getting to why would require an electrical engineering background and a path of inquiry beyond simply fixing the problem. Nothing is quite so frustrating as resolving a persistent error only to have your techjoy smashed to bits by a coworker disappointed because you're not quite sure why the computer stopped recognizing the printer, you only know that they're now friends again.

Before you all send me angry email: yes, most of the time, knowing why something isn't working is the key to fixing it. Computer not connecting to the Internet? Well, that frayed Ethernet cable might be the culprit. This is the third time in a year that's happened? Well, maybe we should move the cable out of the path of the vacuum. Why did your computer's Ethernet port stop working? No idea. It's dead, I installed a network card, now you're online again. If it dies again, that's a different story. A lot of troubleshooting is looking for patterns, waiting until cause and effect can be established reliably. A one-time problem doesn't always merit a full-out investigation into what runtime error number 37 means. Most IT folk seem to have a stock phrase or two: "Let's assume that it's just a hiccup, but call me if it happens again."

We can be, however, a teeny bit hypocritical about this. We get annoyed with the "why" we can't answer, but grouse that our less technical colleagues don't understand why their actions can cause problems or why their ILS doesn't work when the internet is down, or why email that's already downloaded to their computer won't show up in webmail. We want them to take our fixes on faith and also posses a clear understanding of how their network is set up.

The people who ask "why" could be the most likely to end up understanding the library's technology and the most willing to be advocates when everyone's wondering why you haven't yet fixed a big problem.

I am loathe to use a car metaphor, but it is apt. My favorite mechanics have been those who happily explain what was wrong with my car despite my rudimentary understanding of the problem. My most favorite mechanic once handed me the broken down part that was making that noise and showed me the healthy replacement (my car was up on the lift). Honestly, they looked the same to me, but I so appreciated the time he took to show me what he had done. He wasn't trying to prove anything to me, only explaining. He also clearly loved what he did and was excited both to have tracked down the problem and saved me from a horrible car accident. (It was a "you're lucky you didn't go on the highway last week" repair.) Other times when he told me he didn't know the cause of a  problem, I didn't mind because he had explained when he did know.

Most of us have had a mechanic or a doctor or someone with greater technical knowledge make us feel small and stupid and dense for even asking for an explanation. The people we return to are those who draw a quick sketch or use an analogy or simply take the time to tell us what's going on.

The chilling fact is,  most training—around 85 percent—is wasted; it leaves learners doing exactly what they were doing before they completed a training session. Which, of course, is an incredible waste of time, money, and people for everyone involved. And the tragedy is that it doesn’t have to be this way.

So how do we beat the odds? Can technology help? In two 90-minute ALA TechSource Workshops next month, we’ll explore ways to inexpensively and effectively use technology in face-to-face and online learning. The gist of what we’re going to do together is look at ways to put the learners at the center of the process and keep technology in its place as a tool that helps us work more effectively while saving money for the organizations we serve—both by holding down expenditures and by producing better results.

We will attempt to create and nurture communities of learning, comprising well-educated staff who understand and enthusiastically embrace meaningful change.

Our first session, on September 16, will explore ways to creatively use familiar tools including Word and PowerPoint in conjunction with online resources such as YouTube, Google Docs, and SlideShare to creatively inspire learning that produces positive results. Our second session, on September 23, will take us on a major leap forward: we’ll discuss ways to apply what we do face-to-face to online settings through Skype, Google Chat, LinkedIn discussion groups, and other tools.

We’ll emphasize  low- or no-cost tools. The goal is to inspire participants to seek innovative ways to serve their colleagues, their organizations, and those they ultimately serve. And if we leave with smiles on our faces and with less stressful reactions to the words “technology” and “change,” we will have taken step toward making our world feel a little less daunting and a lot more like home.

For more information on the themes to be explored, please visit “Building Creative Bridges.”

You can register for each workshop separately for only $50, or save 15% by registering for both events for only $85.

Sign up for both sessions

Register for Session 1: Using Technology to Enhance In-Person Training
Thursday, September 16th, 2:30pm Eastern

Register for Session 2: Using Technology for Remote Training Sessions
Thursday, September 23rd, 2:30pm Eastern

In the August/September issue of Library Technology Reports (vol. 46; no. 6), Rachel Fleming-May and Jill Grogg cover state of the art of electronic resources use measurement, offering guidance on presenting clear and meaningful measurement in research, assessment, and standards creation.

Topics Covered Include:

• Assessing Use and Usage
• Standards, Tools, and Other Products
• Improving Understanding of Electronic Resources Usage
• Practitioner Responses on the Collection and Use of Usage Statistics

An excerpt follows.

With the explosion of digital resources over the past two decades, standards, tools, and other products have emerged to normalize statistics and improve protocols for transfer and management of such data. Some of these initiatives and products emerged as librarians and content providers alike worked together to paint a more accurate picture of use and usage, even if only at the most basic level. It was not so long ago that reasonably common definitions for actions such as a “session” or a “download” did not exist. Inconsistencies such as these made comparing the usage statistics available from one vendor against the statistics available from another akin to comparing apples and oranges—meaningful cross-comparison was not possible. Item elements, such as session, search, and download, were inconsistent from vendor to vendor and delivered to the librarian in any number of ways in any number of formats.

In addition to the inconsistencies in definition, delivery method, and format, at issue is the amount of time it takes for librarians to collect, collate, and archive usage statistics, particularly for libraries with large digital collections. Initially, some libraries chose to create homegrown solutions to address this issue, and later, commercial vendors emerged with products such as Scholarly Stats, Serials Solutions' 360 Counter, and modules within integrated library systems (ILS). The addition of a module to an ILS a third-party product that is interoperable with an ILS with an ILS is particularly appealing because the librarian can then merge the ILS cost data with the use data to produce another valuable metric: cost-per-use.

This chapter will be a broad introduction to the types of available standards, tools, and products. It is impossible to delve too deeply into the specifics of the standards and protocols as well as compare and contrast the effectiveness of each commercial or homegrown product. For greater analysis and technical information, visit the sites and articles in the end of chapter notes. From Chapter 2 "Standards, Tools, and Other Products"

Rachel A. Fleming-May is an assistant professor at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee. She received her PhD from the University of Alabama in 2008, and she has published and presented about use and usage, including in Portal: Libraries and the Academy.C

Jill E. Grogg is the e-resources librarian at the University of Alabama Libraries. Grogg has widely published on topics such as reference linking, e-resource management, and digital libraries. She was named a 2007 Mover & Shaker by Library Journal. V Chapter 1 "Assessing Use and Usage" is accessible on our MetaPress platform.

Buy a single copy in print at the ALA Store or as a PDF at MetaPress.

Meeting Michael Edson and presenting on the same docket with him was one of the highlights of my time at the U Game U Learn Conference this past April in The Netherlands. Michael Edson is Director of Web and New Media Strategy for the Smithsonian Institution and was in Delft to talk about the Smithsonian Commons project that recently debuted as a prototype here: http://www.si.edu/commons/prototype/.  The day after the  UGUL conference, we turned a serendipitous meeting at the Delft train station into a late afternoon walk around the town and dinner filled with conversation about our work, views of organizations and the future of library/museum services. It was one of those perfect “on the road speaking” travel experiences I most enjoy.

The commons project prototype is a multi-faceted, well-planned and researched virtual community that seeks to engage and inspire visitors. Explore the site for more - including videos of the various personas of visitors: museum visitor, teacher, millennial, and enthusiast. Howard Rheingold, someone I consider to be one of the best authorities of the power of virtual community and interaction, recently said:
“The Smithsonian Commons is not just about using contemporary technology to further an enterprise that was founded with deep respect for American technological innovation, but about expanding the idea of the institution itself. Every click on a website, every video viewed, every exhibition shared via mobile device, every citizen scientist project, every teacher and student interaction with the Smithsonian via social media expands the idea of what the Smithsonian Institution is, who it reaches, what it can do.” (http://www.si.edu/commons/prototype/comments.html)

Sadly, my travel schedule prevented me from hearing Michael at ALA Annual in Washington DC, but I gladly followed mention of his talk via Twitter and blog posts. I also made sure that he’d spend some time chatting with me for Techsource as part of our coverage of Annual.

Michael Stephens: Michael - Thank you for your expertise and for sharing so much of what you’re doing via conferences and online communities. I’ve spent a lot of time reading your work, exploring your slides and viewing the videos at the Commons prototype. I’ll be including this in my LIS768 class this fall as an example of emerging social technologies meeting the mission of an institution perfectly. Tell me a bit about the planning process for the Commons.

Micheal Edson: The process to date has been more about internal education—persuasion—and preparing leadership to plan and execute the Web and New Media Strategy than about planning to do the Smithsonian Commons per se. Our Web and New Media Strategy makes a small number of very specific, achievable tactical recommendations, one of which is to develop the Smithsonian Commons, but there are a lot of other important pieces in there that need doing too, such as bringing a higher degree of focus on governance, mobile platforms, usability, measurement and analysis, and findability across all the Smithsonian's digital properties.

It only occurred to me recently that it will be a long time until we're organized and resourced to properly attack these tasks in a comprehensive way, and the Smithsonian Commons concept could be the alluring goal that gets us to do the difficult and less glamorous things that we need to have overall success.

The ideas of the Smithsonian Commons have not come easily to everyone. People are busy and not everyone is as immersed in new media culture as our digital practitioners. It reminds me of William Gibson's famous quip that the future has arrived, it's just not evenly distributed yet. We produced the Smithsonian Commons Prototype as a way to help focus discussion about the Big Ideas of the Web and New Media Strategy and it's been a very successful campaign. The Institution is now beginning to see how this all might work, and now we're starting activities that a good project manager might recognize as project planning.

MS: Where did the Smithsonian Commons idea come from?

ME: The idea of the Smithsonian Commons emerged from discussions among Smithsonian Web and New Media practitioners in the Fall of 2008. We knew we needed a model—a platform—that supported the independent work of Web teams and innovators throughout the Institution, but that also made the independent work of Web teams easier and gave us network effects so the sum of all our individual projects would add up to more than the whole. I'd been thinking about intellectual property and "future of work" issues and studying the work of Lawrence Lessig, James Boyle, Tim O'Reilly, Clay Shirky, Chris Anderson, and Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams (who wrote Wikinomics) for a while—and also reflecting on the mission and history of the Smithsonian—the concept of a commons just made sense. The Smithsonian was founded on the idea that everyone should have access to the raw materials of discovery and knowledge creation, and the concept of a knowledge commons or learning commons seemed to be completely harmonious with those ideas. The commons also provides a compelling collaboration model that allows disparate groups of people to collaborate and work together without having to sacrifice their autonomy to a central authority: this aspect of the commons is soothing in an organization that has unresolved issues around departmental autonomy and central control.


MS: The connection between libraries and museums gets clearer and clearer to me, especially after my speaking trip to Germany. At our Stammtisch evening, I spent a long time chatting with a museum employee. Her take was this: “We have 30 seconds to grab a visitor’s attention. We can’t use a blog. We can’t create a social experience in that time...”  Then at UGUL, you said to the audience “We have competition from EVERYONE.” What can museums - and libraries - do in this time of great competition to meet the needs of users and non-users alike? How do we “grab” them?

ME: The "We're competing with everyone" line I used at UGUL is from my "Imagining a Smithsonian Commons" paper [http://www.slideshare.net/edsonm/cil-2009-michael-edson-text-version starting around p 21]. I'm trying to build a case for greater Institutional focus on Web and new media by showing that many of our beloved Institutions just aren't as relevant and useful as we think they are.

I think the issue of "how we grab them" is both practical and a philosophical. The degree to which we do and don't need to "grab" our audiences is contingent on the individual missions of our organizations—the work we need to do in society.
I recall that there are something like 18,000 museums in the U.S., and I don't know how many libraries, archives, history centers, and the like—each one of which has a different mission, audience, collection, staff, and board of directors. Some of these missions can be accomplished by sitting back and guarding vaults, while others require us to compete with Lady Ga Ga [? Gaga?]. I am content, as a U.S. taxpayer (who subsidizes the operations of many of many libraries, museums, and archives) and global citizen, with a spectrum of approaches as long as organizations pursue their missions with urgency and verve. I am not content when our public institutions posture about their own importance but neglect to use the tools, logic, and culture of digital technology when those tools could be profoundly helpful. No director should allow this: no board of directors should tolerate it.

Once, through strategy and mission and executive focus, we've established a need and a willingness to "grab" people, how to grab them becomes a process of fitting the puzzle pieces together. I always start with three questions: Who is it for? What do they want? How do you know? And the answers are always surprising and refreshing. We did some person-on-the-street interviews for our digital strategy effort last year where we asked people what they wanted from the digital Smithsonian,  [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTJ8u2HGtrs] and they weren't so interested in our social networks but they really want images and videos of everything in the collections. That surprised me, and it had a big influence on the work we're doing. Chris Anderson's The Long Tail gives us all permission to find a route to success by cultivating engagement with niche audiences around niche content—and museums, libraries, and archives have nothing if not niche content!


MS: Finally, I’ll urge readers to check out all the links below, but I thought we’d end on this. For small libraries that might not have a lot of financial resources or libraries facing funding issues, how do the ideas built in to Commons project scale? What can they do to compete in their markets?

ME: Map collector and entrepreneur David Rumsey [http://www.davidrumsey.com/] (who has spoken at IMLS and many museum and library conferences) advised me that the ethos of this era in digital technology is "do what you can, but DO it!" It has never been easier to publish and connect digital content and there is nothing but opportunity for those willing to place a bet and get their feet wet.

I know there's always resource pressure (believe me, we have it here!), but as Harry Houdini said "there's always a little slack somewhere." At the ALA conference I invoked the presence of an Extra Terrestrial Auditor to bring this into focus: if an auditor from outer space flew her spaceship down to your library and tried to match your mission with the way you spend your time and money, would the two things match? Digital initiatives take time and money, but so does everything else you do. How can your director justify *not* finding resources to start connecting with the 4+ billion people who use the Internet or the thousands of people in your local community who are online too?

I constantly marvel at how grateful the public is when a small collection just publishes a few images to Flickr. I follow the Nova Scotia Archives on Twitter [http://twitter.com/ns_archives] and every once in a while they publish a cool photograph of cod-drying racks or old ships or some fact from Nova Scotia history. It's joyous and playful and it expands my understanding of the universe a little.

At higher levels of effort you need some strategic thinking to help you figure out what to do and what not to do, but just getting started and starting the organizational learning process is the most important step, and at some level it doesn’t really matter what that first step is as long as you're engaged. I have yet to hear of a collection area, a topic, or even a single idea that doesn't already have an active online audience surrounding it. Even modest contributions from museums, libraries, and archives can make a difference in people's lives.

Links:

Smithsonian Commons Prototype: http://www.si.edu/commons/prototype (Michel urges all ALA TechSource readers to their input, votes, and comments!)
 
About the Commons Blog Post:  http://smithsonian20.typepad.com/blog/2010/06/smithsonian-commons-prototype.html
 
Michael Edson: http://smithsonian-webstrategy.wikispaces.com/michael+edson
 

Our goal in producing ALA TechSource Workshops is to provide a source of cost-effective, interactive, hands-on training. When it comes to using technology save your library money and increase its efficiency, you want to learn from someone who is part of your profession and has faced the same problems you face. In that spirit, we’re happy to announce our newest TechSource workshop, Using Technology in Library Training with Paul Signorelli.
Librarians face the challenge of cross-training their often down-sized staff with lean budgets, as wells as training students and patrons to use library software. Training can be difficult and time-consuming, especially when it must be balanced with the effort to maintain day-to-day library services.

Paul Signorelli will explain how to streamline your process with  free and low-cost tools like Skype, instant messaging, online discussion groups, or video in this two-part series:

    Session 1: Using Technology to Enhance In-Person Training
    Thursday, September 16th, 2:30pm Eastern
   
    Session 2: Using Technology for Remote Training Sessions
    Thursday, September 23rd, 2:30pm Eastern

With 14 years of experience as  director of staff training and volunteer services at San Francisco Public Library,  Paul speaks not only as a technologist but as a teacher. He blogs for ALA’s Learning Round Table and you can read his posts here.

You can register for each workshop separately for only $50, or save 15% by registering for both events for only $85.

Sign up for both sessions

Register for Session 1: Using Technology to Enhance In-Person Training
Thursday, September 16th, 2:30pm Eastern

Register for Session 2: Using Technology for Remote Training Sessions
Thursday, September 23rd, 2:30pm Eastern

Like the old saying goes, “If you watch the tech gadget world long enough, eventually the Q’s will line up.”  Yesterday the Q’s of the portable eReading gadget world mysteriously aligned.
First, the “Bits” blog (say that 5 times fast) over at the NY Times reported that Amazon’s Lab 126, the surely subterranean location that developed the Kindle, is hiring in a big way.  Reliable unnamed sources (always reliable, always unnamed) stated that Amazon is working on other portable electronic devices.  

Perhaps Lab 126 will hire Q back from the grave to oversee development.  Desmond Llewelyn, the actor who played Q in the Bond films, died in an automobile accident in 1999.  Or so we’ve been led to believe.  Amazon was 5 years old when Q allegedly died.  Perhaps he already had become a double agent. 

Second, the much-anticipated Que portable eReading device being developed by Plastic Logic – surely in subterranean Lab 237 – was put to rest.  Although a prototype was spotted at CES in Vegas last January (Is that employee from Plastic Logic of Russian descent?), evidently the real Que will never see the light of day.  What’s spotted in Vegas, stays in Vegas, I guess… 

…Or so we’re being led to believe.  Plastic Logic, after all is a British technology firm, founded a decade ago – perhaps on the same day of Desmond Llewelyn’s alleged death – by two Cambridge scientists, Sir Richard Friend and Henning Sirringhaus.  I couldn’t make up those names if I tried. 

The report of the demise of the Que in the Guardian (Guardian of what? Inquiring minds want to know) noted at the very end, “The Financial Times reported earlier this week that Plastic Logic was in negotiations with Rusnano, a Russian state-owned nanotechnology corporation, about a significant injection of capital.”  This confirms my suspicion that the Russkies are involved in this convoluted plot for world domination. 

Third, reports (you know the drill) from reliable unnamed sources continue to circulate that production of the next generation of Kindle readers already cannot keep up with orders.  There is, in other words, a queue. 

Q, Que, Queue.  M6, A9, Lab 126, Lab 237.  It all adds up.  Ask Miss Moneypenny.   

For years and years, content producers knew that High Definition video was coming, and entire studios revamped their workflows to accomodate HD. Not that long ago, HD started rolling out to the public, in two sizes: 720 and 1080. For those who haven’t yet upgraded to HD video in their living room, those numbers basically are a count of the number of horizontal lines being projected on the screen. Standard Definition television is 480 lines in the US, 570 in the UK, and 720 and 1080 produce much higher quality pictures...if you watch something in true 1080 HD like a Blu-Ray movie, the picture is really mindblowingly detailed, better than double the vertical resolution of the SD video we watched for all these years.

Well, forget 1080. Web video is about to blow that out of the water.

YouTube recently added the ability to upload so-called 4K video to the web. 4K video is only capable of being shot by very, very specialized cameras such as the Red One, and there is very, very little chance that your computer will even play it properly. It takes a massive amount of computing power to handle decompressing and displaying 4K video, and even if your computer can handle it, your display can’t. You would need a monitor that could display 4096 x 2304 pixels, roughly 4 times the size of most desktop monitors.  Take a look at the relative difference between the size of a 1080 display and a 4K display:



Even Google, in their announcement of YouTube going live with 4K, couldn’t keep from trying to put it into perspective:
 

To give some perspective on the size of 4K, the ideal screen size for a 4K video is 25 feet; IMAX movies are projected through two 2k resolution projectors.

Check out a demo page of YouTube videos shot in 4K. When you start one playing, on the control bar across the bottom of the video, switch the video resolution from 360 (one of the default resolutions for YouTube) to "Original", which will be the 4K version. See if your system can play them with anything like good results.

It is hard to describe the sheer audacity of 4K video, but its here, and in the style of most other technologies, it will only get cheaper, easier to deploy, and more accessible. So if you thought the 720 HD video capture on your iPhone 4 was awesome, just wait a few years. 4K will make your HD camera look like your grandpa’s Super 8.

Most professional challenges encompass both a problem to be solved and an opportunity to be seized.  One of the current central challenges of our profession, it seems to me, involves ensuring that libraries become viable and valuable in the burgeoning portable eReading field.  How can libraries compete with the likes of Amazon, Google, Apple, Sony, and Barnes & Noble? 

COSLA, the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies, recently released a report that addresses this crucial challenge.  Our mission, should we choose to accept it, can be stated bluntly:  If convenient, enriching portable eReading becomes about half of all reading for pleasure within the next few years, as most experts now are predicting, how can public libraries become integral to the portable eReading experience? 

The report, “COSLA: eBook Feasibility Study for Public Libraries,” involved a working team of several state library directors, including Stacey Aldrich from California, Jo Budler from Kansas, Rob Maier from Massachusetts, and Jim Scheppke from Oregon, and staff members from Pinpoint Logic, a design strategy and research firm based in Portland, Oregon.  (Full Disclosure: I did a little bit of work on this study and was remunerated for doing so.)   Eva Miller from PinPoint Logic conducted most of the interviews with library, publishing, and information technology leaders and wrote most of the final report.  Way to go, Eva. 

The work of the task force always focused on worthwhile action, noting that “COSLA members wanted to arm themselves for action, instead of waiting to see how commercial forces would impact popular reading materials and the public library's central role in providing them.”  In the beginning, the task force seriously considered having a portable reading device manufactured specifically for public library users utilizing the library lending model.  This strategy eventually was tabled, because the portable eReading device marketplace is so fast-paced and volatile. 

The report consists of two sections.  The first summarizes a series of interviews with library directors and other librarians, thus helping to define the scope of the challenge.  Several themes emerged from this series of interviews:

• Find a low-cost, rugged, expandable way to allow public library users to use portable eReading devices.
• Improve the discoverability and usability of eBook content provided by public libraries.
• Create larger eBook collections, pure and simple.  Users have come to expect large online collections with lots of current content as well as a long tail. 
• Collaborate nationally to achieve better pricing and usage models, including reasonable copyright and DRM models as well as standards and best practices that acknowledge the vital role of public libraries in the national culture of reading.
• Explore how libraries can create spaces that foster social interaction as part of the avocational reading experience, especially locally, around lifelong learning and living literature. 

The second section, a series of interviews with industry leaders, builds on the first by articulating seven possible avenues of action. 

1. Consolidate and leverage our purchasing power.
2. Create one point of access for many libraries
3. Develop an eBook reader certification process
4. Research and document how libraries and library use contribute to a culture of reading, by showing, for example, how library use correlates with book buying
5. Help local authors and support self-publishing
6. Provide more leadership around civic discourse and public policy debates regarding reading
7. Redesign libraries as labs for new reading experiences

During this process at least two pressing larger needs became evident.  The first is for a level of national collaboration between and beyond public libraries heretofore unknown.  Libraries have a rich, proud heritage of cooperation and collaboration, but the challenges of the portable eReading revolution will require us to take collaboration to a higher level. 

The second is the need to collectively become more agile and forceful in the portable eReading market.  For the next several years, the portable eReading experience will develop rapidly, and user expectations and behavior patterns will clarify.  If we wait for things to settle down, it may be too late for public libraries.  To quote Muhammed Ali, we need to “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” 

While portable eReading seems poised to really take off in a lasting, meaningful way, the current craze for portable eReading could fizzle and die again, as it did about 10 years ago.  However, this time around seems real, not hyped.  The upcoming holiday gift-giving season probably will provide the definitive answer. 

COSLA is to be commended for taking a leadership role regarding this crucial challenge facing public libraries.  It is amazing how much the portable eReading market has grown and changed in the eight months the COSLA task force worked on this report.  The challenge for public libraries and, by extension, public library users, became clearer and more pressing, too.  This informative, provocative COSLA report, along with other recent documents, such as the OverDrive white paper about how library catalogs spur book sales (http://www.overdrive.com/files/PubWhitePaper.pdf), should be read and discussed widely within our profession.  Then we must act, before it is too late. 

COSLA Report available at: http://www.cosla.org/documents/COSLA2270_Report_Final1.pdf

This summer, I was fortunate enough to attend a leadership institute led by Maureen Sullivan. First and foremost: if you get a chance to attend a workshop with her, do not pass go, just sign up.

The workshop began in earnest with everyone listing challenges and opportunities facing their libraries. “Keeping up with technology” cropped up early on. It always does. In my inside inside voice (the one that stays in my head), I wondered why we haven’t figured that one out yet. Shortly after the workshop ended, I came across the WebJunction report on library staff’s use of online tools. Roy Tennant has crunched the oh-so-depressing stats in a couple of different ways. Several good questions have been asked about the methodology, but I would not be surprised if more tightly worded questions yielded a similarly unplugged set of answers.

Of course, use of social networking does not a good librarian make. However, keeping up is pretty darn important. Many of us have had the experience of starting a search at Google, only to be told by our patron that “I already tried that, and there isn’t anything on Google.” Of course, we happily pull up the website needed on our first search. Personally, I have seen patrons react with everything from unadulterated joy at my Google prowess to something approaching rage that I had used some kind of secret Google trick. It is our job to be good searchers. It is unrealistic to expect that we will know how to use every single website out there and no, a personal Facebook page is not a job requirement. However, considering that many (most?) of our patrons are using Facebook, we should be able to show them how to adjust their privacy settings or use the search interface on the site.

Amongst the super plugged-in, there is a hierarchy of kept-upedness. A select few really do seem to know everything that’s happening in libraries. The rest of us do the best we can. Power bloggers and Twitter users discuss strategies for keeping up within their particular areas of interest (hint: areas of interest are a big part of keeping up). The plugged-in see it as part of their jobs to keep up with technology and how their patrons are using it. It helps that they’re passionate enough to pursue these topics in their off-hours as well. But I think the biggest difference in those who feel that they keep up and those who don’t is a small shift in attitude (and to be clear, I am talking about people who feel that they're not keeping up, but want to, not people who eschew staying up on technology).

Whenever I get a chance to talk to people about why they don’t feel like they can keep up, they always site their busy-ness, both on the job and off. Depending on their inclination, they either marvel at the ability of other people to consume and process information or they grouse about the “real” work of libraries and slackers on Facebook with fake people.  Let’s assume if you’re reading this, you belong in the former group (sorry, haters).

By and large, the very well kept up do not necessarily have some magic ability to read the internet and then blog about it (some do, but we can’t bottle it yet). What they don’t do is beat themselves up over their ability to keep up and they don't think that they have to know everything. At my first full-time library job, I was half reference and half IT. Keeping up was part of my job description. I read a lot of blogs and tried out every social networking site I saw just so I’d have a sense of how they worked. But I always felt like I wasn’t keeping up enough. Coworkers and patrons alike liked to try to stump me, “hey, Kate, have you seen socialnetworkingsiteusedmainlybypeopleinanothercountry.com yet?” It all felt a little relentless.

Eventually, I developed more of a personal learning network and realized that keeping up with technology is very much like keeping up with books. We don’t read everything we buy and we don’t only recommend books we’ve read. “I haven’t read this one, but the reviews have been good and I think it will be right up your ally” is the paper equivalent to “I don’t use this site myself, but I know people have found it useful for what you’re looking for.”

“Keeping up with technology” seems overwhelming and huge and ridiculously hard if it’s presented as a monolith that must be scaled. Keeping up doesn’t mean knowing every single tech trend that’s out there. It means being engaged with your community and knowing what your patrons are using. You don’t have to spend your evenings on Facebook to know that there’s some controversy about the privacy settings and that Read Write Web is a good place to look for a detailed explanation of how to manage the new options. Just like the rest of librarianship – it isn’t about being an expert; it’s about knowing where to look.

Everyone at the workshop I attended seemed to me to be keeping up. They just defined “kept up” as something impossible to achieve. Using and staying abreast of technology is tremendously important to remaining relevant. Letting a fear of imperfection get in the way is a mistake we can’t afford to make. If you don’t feel like you’re keeping up, pick an area of technology you’re interested in (ebooks is a good place to start) and go learn more about it. Looking at the Webjunction data again, I’m uncertain of the utility of this post. Maybe I should send it to a listserv.

The rescheduled TechTrends: Annual 2010 Webinar took place yesterday, and was a smashing success. Thanks to all of our participants and panelists, who helped make it such a great event. We also want to thank Michael Stephens and Jason Griffey, who were both unable to participate in the rescheduled event, but contributed by posting their slides and a rundown of their TechTrends on the blog (Jason's Trends are here and Michael's are here).

Below you'll find the following, in this order:

• Video and Audio of the Event
• Jason Griffey's Slides
• Michael Stephens' Slides
• Marshall Breeding's Slides
• Kate Sheehan's Slides
• Tom Peters' Slides

Enjoy the archive! We'll see you at the next TechSource Webinar.

ALA TechSource Webinar - TechTrends: Annual 2010 from ALA Publishing on Vimeo.

Like Jason, I can’t participate today but I am happy to share my slides and a few words about the trend I was going to explore in my portion of the Webinar. I was only at ALA for 24 hours but the conversations I had with colleagues and people who inspire me pointed to the over-arching idea of “Teaching & Learning in Flux.” Under that trend, I pulled out three sub-categories:

Organizational Immersive Learning

This subcategory addresses the outstanding success of the Learning 2.0 model of staff training: free, open, and inclusive. I was going to highlight my Australian research project sponsored by CAVAL. The foundation for this multi-dimensional study comes from the global replication of the program (1000 institutions and counting) and the words of Stephen Abram: ““I believe that this has been one of the most transformational and viral activities to happen globally to libraries in decades.”

Here’s a bit from a draft article my co-investigator Warren Cheetham and I just submitted to the New Review of Academic Librarianship that features a content analysis of focus groups with academic librarians:

What has been the lasting impact on your library after Learning 2.0?

These statements sum up the majority of responses to this question:

I am more confident with new technologies now.
I am more inclined to explore new technologies now.
I am more in the know about these technologies now.

Respondents shared statements concerning their comfort level trying out new sites and tools. One noted:  “It’s nice that it’s encouraged – like the learning through play idea and then get on and poke it and see what it does, hopefully that's encouraged that behaviour a bit more with everyone so that if you do get stuck in that situation where you follow the instructions and it doesn't work, you feel a bit more confident to go ‘I wonder what happens if I click this or poke this’…”

Another addressed confidence levels and dealing with change as well: “Yeah, just being receptive to new stuff because change is always a scary thing for a lot of people, it’s scary I know so yeah, that’s why this has been really good.”

Take a look at the slides for three word clouds of the content analysis from the questions examining the lasting impact and results of Learning 2.0 in libraries. The third is a synthesis of our overall findings so far. I have long suggested that libraries and other organizations adapt this model of continuous, immersive learning and believe our study results will support this view. I hope to expand the research to Europe and the US in the coming months.

Personal Learning Networks in the Cloud

The second subcategory addresses the power of participating in the thriving online communities of librarians and library staff available to all in the “cloud.” The slides detail just one example of benefiting from participating in Twitter - subscribe to folks who inspire you or make you think, follow along, chime in, share. The examples are from a talk I gave where I asked my own PLN what I advice they’d share with the LIS students.

Developing your own PLN can come from subscribing to blogs and news sites, Twitter, Facebook and participating in any number of online learning opportunities. A broad PLN might also include the people you learn from in physical space, your reading in and outside of the profession AND everything you encounter in your day to day. I have some serious “aha!” moments when I encounter cool things are doing with service and information delivery out in the world.


Learning in Flux

Finally, the most important part of the trend is the fact that teaching and learning are also changing - models for delivering education are rapidly adapted to the power of the Web, social technologies and mobile devices. The model of sitting in a lecture hall or classroom once or twice a week is becoming less and less important as devices and delivery methods allow us to engage in learning practically anytime and anywhere.

The slides detail some of the goals I have for my students in our LIS program - the world of libraries and educational institutions will be very different in the coming years for our recent grads. They have great work to do -  I call on new librarians and seasoned professionals to do three things: Support these new models with all of the foundational aspects of what we do, but also be present inside these new virtual learning spaces right along with the professors and students, ever ready to guide them. And - look toward creating flexible and vibrant learning spaces in both the physical and virtual world.

I was asked to describe my future vision of education and library support for an upcoming book on the topic o be published in Australia. Here’s a bit of those iudeas that’ve adapted into recent talks:

The ecology of information created within our own learning networks knows no boundaries. It’s not just the cyber world but also our physical spaces that are adapting and evolving. How will classrooms look in ten years? What will school libraries be then? I envision learning spaces and collaborative hubs with spokes that stretch out across communities. Engaged learning will play out along these spokes - at home, at cafes, in the park, community centers and at libraries and of course in educational institutions. For this to come to fruition, barriers must be thrown down, new methods introduced and constantly improved and old paradigms tossed out. We should, however, always stand firm on the foundations of our missions: for educators and for librarians. Ground yourself there but spread the proverbial wings as wide as you can.

I’m not able to participate synchronously with the rescheduled TechSource Trends webinar about ALA Annual, but I wanted to chime in and explain a bit about my somewhat vague set of slides that I put up just after the technical issues from the originally scheduled one. So here are my thoughts, and the talking points that I had for the slides if I were able to participate. So sorry that I won’t be there, but I’m sure it’s going to be awesome.

Digital-as-physical
One of the things that I’ve been harping on for the last few months is that libraries need to start thinking about how we handle digital devices becoming commodities rather than luxuries. Right now, Playaway is the only company really taking advantage of the discrepancy between content and container in a library context. The cost of the hardware to play MP3’s is so low that they include the container when you buy the content. One can imagine a time in the not-so-distant future where eInk readers like the Kindle or the Nook are cheap enough that eBooks might be treated in a similar way--buy the content, and the container is just a convenient way to circulate said content.

Ebooks
While there were a few companies at ALA selling the content half of eBooks, I couldn’t find any of the major eReader manufacturers. No Amazon and Kindle, no B&N and Nook, no Kobo, none of the half-dozen other manufacturers with products on the market. And, despite their announcement of a Reader Library Program, no Sony on the exhibition floor. It’s pretty clear that these companies are just missing an enormous marketI I don't undersrand why, but it’s something I plan to keep watching, and hopefully get an answer to as CES2011 rolls around.

iPad, iPad, iPad
If there was a major gadget that won ALA2010, it was the Apple iPad. Not only could you not throw a rock without hitting a vendor that was giving one away in the exhibit hall, but nearly every presentation that touched technology was talking about it. I’m guilty of that as well, mentioning it in my discussion of what I see as a major tech trend, that of touch-based interfaces for information retrieval and interaction. It’s clear that Apple has a commercial hit on their hands, but I think it’s actually more important than just being a market leader. I think the iPad illustrates the importance of user interface and user interaction with information, and merges interface with content in a way that other digital devices simply do not. We would be well advised to pay close attention to the way that touch-based interfaces change the metaphors of information management and consumption if we want to try and stay ahead of the curve in presenting our users with the content we have.

Where’s Google?
I saw exactly one major web company (for a reasonable value of “major”) in the exhibit hall, and that was Microsoft, in the person of their search engine, Bing. There was a Bing booth, where two Microsoft employees would show you around the interface, explain how it works, and give you some Bing stickers to take back home with you. But they weren’t selling anything, and they weren’t asking libraries to let them scan their entire collections (a la Google)...they were just there to gain some mindshare, and, I assume, to try and get librarians using Bing. I thought it was odd, at first...until I remembered that it’s estimated that just 1% of the online search market is worth almost a billion dollars. If Bing can steal any market share away from Google at all (and in some areas they are), Microsoft stands to make big money.

Conclusion
I really was most interested in what I didn’t see at the exhibit hall at ALA 2010. I didn’t see Google, I didn’t see eReader manufacturers, and I am continually disappointed with the degree to which libraries are not seen as a major market for personal electronics. Don’t get me wrong, in all my years attending ALA Annual, the exhibit hall is one of my favorite things. I love seeing all the new things for libraries. But I would love to see more and more of the digital world at ALA, because as I’ve argued in both an issue of Library Technology Reports and a book, personal electronic devices are going to be the containers for our content moving forward. We need to understand them, and we won’t understand them as a profession until they are a part of our professional conferences.

Creative Commons 101

Where U.S. Copyright law dictates how creative work cannot be used, Creative Commons licensing makes it clear how a work may or may not be used.  Creative Commons licensing has several attributes, or conditions, each of which can be assigned independently:  Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives, and Sharealike.  Attribution is just that: if you use a work, its creator must be credited.  Works that use the Non-Commercial stipulation may not be used for any commercial purpose.  No Derivatives means that the work must be used exactly as it's provided.  Sharealike requires users to license any derivative works the same way that the original was licensed.

These are the only things that are stipulated in a Creative Commons license; if the photographer does not like how a Creative Commons image is used, there is nothing that he or she can do about it if the license terms are being followed.  Although licenses can be changed, if a particular use adhered to stated terms at the time of the use in question, then the creator has no recourse.  It's also important to note that licensing a work with Creative Commons does not obviate the creator's copyright.  The owner still has the right to decide how the work is used, but with a Creative Commons license, the owner is publicly stating what some of those acceptable uses are.

A new type of CC license is CC:Zero (CC:0), which differs from public domain.  Works created and declared to have a CC:Zero license may be used by anyone, in any way, and do not even require attribution of the creator.

Finding Images to Use

Libraries and librarians can make use of Creative Commons licensed works but must be careful to adhere to the terms of the licenses.  Finding photos that have been licensed CC is the easy part: CC search is now a part of flickr, Compfight and even Google Images search. 

Flickr's Advanced Search screen lets users specify a CC search near the bottom of the very long set of options:

and reminds the searcher that it has returned CC results:

The flickr search tool Compfight also provides Creative Commons searching:

Google Images' Advanced Search screen does not mention Creative Commons by name in the Usage Rights drop box because it includes Creative Commons, public domain and GNU Free Documentation Licensed items as well:

Where to Add Images to Add Pizazz

I have used photos found on flickr in many presentations.  I'll share tips on how best to do that in my next post.

A Caution

I am not a lawyer; I don't even play one on the Internet.  It is always a good idea to doublecheck policies at your institution that govern the licensing of intellectual property created by its employees, as well as employees' use of others' intellectual property.  It's also wise to have your institution's legal counsel endorse those policies.  For a conservative interpretation on the use of images, consult Bryan Carson's review of The Legal Handbook for Photographers: The Rights and Liabilities of Making Images.  Better yet, read the book yourself; it's short and accessible.  But please, don't let legal concerns or Carson's conservative interpretation scare you into not using images at all.

About the Series

Last summer, I had the pleasure and privilege of participating in a LITA Preconference session with Michael Porter and Helene Blowers titled, "A Thousand Words: Taking Better Photos for Telling Stories in Your Library." Michael and Helene shared great tips for using and reusing photos to record and relate the stories of our libraries and our communities, and I explained and illustrated the basic principles of photography, and that pictures can be improved by understanding how these principles work together to produce a properly exposed image. There was a ton of content shared over the day; over the next few months, the “Take Pictures, Tell Stories @ Our Libraries” series will share some of this and other photo-related content with TechSource readers.

An opinion piece by David Brooks, which ran in the July 9th edition of the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/opinion/09brooks.html?_r=1&ref=davidbrooks), articulates a key challenge facing libraries in America today.  Of course, like many an utterance from beyond librarianship that touch on key library issues, this one doesn't actually mention libraries.    

Brooks focuses on the underlying assumptions of two cultures that currently are “at war” in America: Internet culture and Literary culture.  The overt bone of contention is how participation in these two cultures affects students during their formative formal educational years. 

Literary culture has reason to crow.  A recent study (http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-06-01-summerreading01_st_N.htm) suggests that sending twelve books home with lower-income students over the summer months significantly improves their reading scores.  This and other studies suggest that having books in homes helps students not only with reading but also with other aspects of formal education.  I wonder if having a Kindle on the proverbial coffee table would have a similar impact. 

The link between Internet culture and the things we normally measure during the formal educational process is less clear.  Brooks cites a recent study (http://www.nber.org/papers/w16078) that found that the spread of home computers and broadband access resulted in “…modest but statistically significant and persistent negative impacts on student math and reading test scores.”  Maybe broadband access will become the new television -- the thing we fear will turn our kids' minds to mush.  TV, rock and roll, drugs, and broadband access may form some weird continuum in the history of our collective fears.
  
While the effect of these two cultures on student performance is one public battle in this cultural war, Brooks points out – using a broad brush – some of the underlying cultural assumptions.  People who become literary readers enter a vast literary world which is essentially hierarchical.  There are classics, middle-brow lit, and beach reads.  When a student first awakens in the Literary culture, he or she quickly becomes cognizant of a sense of self as novice.  Perhaps with years of reading and study they too may become literate.  

Libraries always have been supportive of Literary culture, complementing the formal educational process.  Our respect for authority extends far beyond authority files.  Libraries are the dark side of this cultural moon.  Everyone knows we're here, even if we're rarely mentioned or studied.  Let's face it:  most students spend more time in classrooms and in homes than in libraries. 

Internet culture has no classics and precious little deference to authority.  It is egalitarian, youthful, and free-wheeling.  Internet culture tends to forget everything but the here and now.  When Charlie Hitt showed me an early web page, I remember commenting, “Wow, that's the best Gopher interface I've ever seen.”  Then we all quickly abandoned and forgot Gopher.  In contrast, when some new literary author comes to our collective attention, we don't promptly forget all the great and good authors who have come before.  It's a Powerball culture, where one good idea can lead to fifteen seconds of fame and a supersized check. 

Actually, I think three cultures are struggling for the respect and affections of librarians and library users:  Literary culture, Internet culture, and Gaming culture.  Gaming culture, the miniature dark horse in this race, seems to be situated between the other two cultures.  There are classic games, respect for rules, and a type of meritocracy.  If you play a game well, you achieve a certain recognition and respect among other players of the game.  But there's also a free-wheeling inventiveness to Gaming culture that intimates Internet culture. 

Sir Rodney, do librarians get any respect in these three cultures?  Publishers, the salon hosts of Literary culture, seem to see us as slightly daft, down-at-the-heels cousins with wild notions about freely lending materials with no out-of-pocket expense to anyone.  In this salon culture we librarians tend to gravitate to the hors d’oeuvres.  We harbor the crazy idea that information wants to be free (an idea that aligns us with Internet culture), and we couldn't monetize money if we formed a special task force to study all the costs and underlying policies and procedures of doing so.  In the past few decades, the publishers may whisper, librarians have allowed their literary tastes to slip, pandering to the need for increased circulation stats.  (Publishers, on the other hand, pander to sales, the true form.)
 
The movers and shakers of Internet culture probably either don't know about librarians or don't care.  If they give us a thought, they probably think of us as essentially not getting “it” – whatever it may be at the moment, Web 2.0, cloud computing, or the mobile revolution.
 
I have no idea how gamers see librarians, but the first image that comes to mind is of Sal's aunt in Jack Kerouac's novel, On the Road.  She's mildly suspicious and critical of Sal's friends and lifestyle, but generally patient and supportive.  Better yet, she gives them money, food, and a place to crash before and after their manic cross-country trips.  I bet she wore sensible shoes. 

Perhaps libraries will emerge from this current three-way cultural war as a welcoming, multicultural (in this sense), level playing field, where students and shamans of all three cultures feel comfortable. 

P.S.  There's a trace of snow (Snow) in this blog post, but soon it will leave us (Leavis).  

Texting. The cloud. E-books. Location-based services. Mobile devices, virtual worlds, microblogging, wikis, social media, and so on. What do these things have in common? They have all taken their turn as “the next big thing.” There’s never a been a shortage of up-and-coming library technologies, but while some prove to be revolutionary, others flame out just as quickly. Confusing matters even more, the next big thing might pan out great for Library A, but crash and burn for Library B. We all work with limited resources, so when we invest in a new tool or service, we want confidence our time and funds go towards something lasting and useful (rather than a lot of hype).

In the July 2010 issue of Library Technology Reports, Char Booth turns the next big thing on its head. By examining the “hype cycle” trajectory of a well established technology, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Booth offers more substantial insight into the rise-and-fall library innovation process over the long haul. In addition to providing a wealth of guidance on how librarians can use VoIP tools such as Skype to provide services and cut costs in everything from professional collaboration to video consultations and distance instruction, Booth explores how the same tools have been adopted, adapted and rejected throughout the field. “Hope, Hype and VoIP: Riding the Library Technology Cycle” provides guidelines for how librarians can evaluate emerging technologies critically, creatively and with an eye toward sustainability.

The first chapter of this report is available to the public for free:

var docstoc_docid="47089324";var docstoc_title="Hope, Hype and VoIP: Riding the Library Technology Cycle";Hope, Hype and VoIP: Riding the Library Technology Cycle -

You can access (and purchase the full issue digitally) here:

You can also purchase the issue in print through the ALA Store: You can read a brief summary article of this issue in

In 2009 she published Informing Innovation: Tracking Student Interest in Emerging Library Technologies at Ohio University (ACRL Digital Publications) and has a book on teaching and technology effectiveness forthcoming in Fall 2010, Reflective Teaching, Effective Learning; Instructional Literacy for Library Educators(ALA Editions).

You can access (and purchase the full issue digitally) here:http://alatechsource.metapress.com/content/W41833/

You can also purchase the issue in print through the ALA Store: http://www.alastore.ala.org/detail.aspx?ID=3037

You can read a brief summary article of this issue in American Libraries.

Char Booth is E-Learning Librarian at the University of California, Berkeley. A 2007 ALA Emerging Leader and 2008 Library Journal Mover and Shaker, Char blogs about library futures, instructional design, and technology literacy at informational (www.infomational.com), and tweets @charbooth.

In 2009 she published Informing Innovation: Tracking Student Interest in Emerging Library Technologies at Ohio University (ACRL Digital Publications) and has a book on teaching and technology effectiveness forthcoming in Fall 2010, Reflective Teaching, Effective Learning; Instructional Literacy for Library Educators (ALA Editions).

To Anyone who Registered for Today's Webinar,

Due to unanticipated technical problems, we have been forced to pull the plug on today's webinar, TechTrends: Annual 2010. Though we were very excited to bring you this event, it appears that the number of attendees led to a severe server crash.

We are tremendously sorry for the inconvenience, and will work to resurrect this event as quickly as we can. We will keep you updated as we work to make this up to all who registered for this event.

Thank you, and again, we offer our sincerest apologies to everyone who wanted to participate.

Does your library charge fines? For everything? I've been chatting with a couple of libraries that don't charge fines for books, but do charge them for DVDs and videos. One library finds that their books often don't come back. Or that they come back months late. Not so with the DVDs and videos. Fines, they conclude, are the way to get materials back.

That's not an unreasonable assumption. However, the day care study cited in Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational suggests that the real problem is the disparity in fine structure. I understand why some libraries charge fines for media. At some point, it costs more to obtain a DVD than it did a book. Now, DVDs are much cheaper than books. But keeping that structure tells the public that we value our DVDs more than our books. 

The day care study followed a day care struggling with the issue of late pickup. Parents who picked their children up late were originally subjected to a minor guilt trip. The study authors called it a "social norm" - a situation where people try to do the right thing because they feel obligated to the organization. Frustrated by ongoing problems with tardy parents, the day care started charging for late pickup. Rather than stopping late pick ups, the number of parents arriving late to retrieve their children skyrocketed. The day care had put a value on the time of the workers at the center and the parents were willing to pay it. They had transformed the social contract into an economic one. The study cautions that once you've made that transition, there is no going back. The day care can no longer return to the social contract.

Libraries that charge fines for one type of item, but not another one, are trying to operate with both a social and an economic contract. A staffer at one library I spoke to said that it worked for them, but they felt that was because the DVD borrowing population and the book borrowing population didn't really overlap. Both of the libraries I spoke to used a conscience box to great effect.

The collision of social with economic norms plagues libraries in other ways, especially around technology. There are times when the social contract extends to allow for some filthy lucre to come into play. A library that loans materials freely, but requires a credit card number or a check as a deposit for a laptop or museum pass is just showing reasonable caution with an expensive item. But what about our other resources?

In the ecosystem of the public library, things we charge for or things we restrict are things we are assigning higher value to. We may not actually value these things more, but that's the message we send to our patrons. When a patron asks why they need a library card from this library to access electronic resources, the explanation is generally that databases are expensive and the companies that provide them restrict them to residents of the town that ponied up the cash. But that same logic applied to ebooks is baffling to our patrons.

I can hear you all now saying "but the tax dollars!" Yes, the tax dollars, I know. In Connecticut, this argument gets a little difficult. We have statewide reciprocal borrowing. Most libraries don't send new books or DVDs (because they're fragile, the argument goes) to other libraries, which protects the interests of their tax payers. Your average book is fair game, though. Except for libraries with ebooks. When ebooks were still novel (pardon the pun) and unusual, a subscription to NetLibrary or Overdrive was more like a database and the logic of databases made sense here. But it's starting to get creaky.

What we're telling our patrons, essentially, is that we value ebooks more than paper books. We'll send you a paper book, or let you come in and borrow them, but ebooks can't circulate to you unless your home town library buys them. Recently, Library Journal's Heather McCormack asked on Twitter if there is such a thing as ILL for ebooks. The short answer is no. We all may understand the licensing and technical restrictions, but they're an increasingly hard sell when we’re talking with the public. As one very frustrated patron asked my coworker a few weeks ago "if I can borrow books from other libraries, why can't I use their ebooks, too?" 

This is not an unreasonable question. Sadly, the answer seems to be “because libraries are totally powerless when it comes to ebooks.” The arguments we’re making to our civic leaders when they cut our funding are the same arguments we can make to the publishing industry and ebook providers. Libraries are community hubs with knowledgeable staff members who have close contact with and direct access to citizens/readers/people who buy your stuff/voters.

This is where I have to stop to make a true confession: I can’t keep up with everything ebook. It’s not really directly part of my job and I often don’t think I’m expert enough to participate in the conversation. I suspect a lot of librarians feel like I do about this – I want to advocate for libraries, but it’s not like I have a hotline to the publishing Justice League in my office. So, where to start?

I’m a longtime, if intermittent, reader of both Earlyword and Galleycat, neither of which are ebook specific, but both of which provide insight into the publishing world and mention ebooks pretty regularly. Heather McCormack tipped me off to the weekly #followreader conversation on twitter, so I asked her what she would recommend to librarians interested in joining the ebook conversation.

In addition to #followreader, she likes Digital Book World and O’Reilly’s Tools of Change. Heather also mentioned LJ events like the Day of Dialog event held at Book Expo America last month and the forthcoming LJ ebook summit. BEA’s day of dialog had a strong twitter presence and I imagine the ebook summit will as well. The barrier to entry is low and the potential benefits are huge. We don’t have to be experts, we just have to care about our patrons and get in there and start talking about what’s important to libraries.

A question, for my own benefit and the benefit of others who want to become more eBook knowledgable without investing too much time: what are your favorite ebook resources?

It's recently come to our attention that there is a glitch in the registration process for our workshop Building the Digital Branch with David Lee King. The ALA Store is incorporating a shipping charge into the fee for this event, despite the fact that there is nothing to ship and thus no such fee.

We are short staffed because of the holiday weekend, and will not be able to fix this problem until Tuesday, July 6th. If you are planning on registering for the event, please wait until after that date. If you have registered for the event and been charged the shipping cost, please contact us at alatechsource@ala.org and we will process a refund for you.

Thank you for your patience.

UPDATE (July 6th): This problem has now been resolved. Registration is open and working properly.