Category: ‘puters

“web services” doesn’t mean just getting a better website

Posted on by jessamyn

Karen Coombs explains why web services isn’t just about a better website and also explains what some of the sacred cows are that keep library websites from being better.

[M]eeting your users where they are isn’t about making them come to the library website. In considering our long term virtual presence plans, the library website is a given. People who come to the site know we exist and want to use our services. To truly be successful we have to get our content into the path of the people who wouldn’t walk through our door (physical or virtual).

I like Karen’s talks about her work website specifically because she’s part of a larger team that all needs to work together to roll out new services to their faculty, student and staff population. I feel lucky because I often have carte blanche in the tiny sites for tiny libraries that I design. I also have very little reach with those sites. That’s okay for what I’m trying to do, but if I had to bring together multiple different stakeholders and make them happy with a website — including those designing, for example, for 800 x 600 resolution screens — I’m sure I’d find it very challenging indeed.

I’m en route to Nova Scotia today, speaking at NSLA and at a Learning 2.0 program with Ryan Deschamps, but when I get back I hope to show off my own collaborative project, turning the Vermont Library Association site into a bloggish group-maintained site from a static single-admin site. It’s gotten so that I have enough WordPress admin login pages to keep track of that I’ve shunted them into their own folder on my bookmarks toolbar. Exciting times!

ALA study: public library funding & technology access

Posted on by jessamyn

Libraries Connect Communities: Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study 2006-2007 Report is out today. I haven’t looked at it yet and was waiting for it to hit the website. The URL for the actual 6MB file is here

http://www.ala.org/ala/ors/publiclibraryfundingtechnologyaccessstudy/finalreport.pdf

If you bookmark the page the document is linked to it will appear as “ALA | 2006-2007 Report” on your bookmark list. While I continue to make the point that tech/web savviness is going to be an important part of being useful relevant libraries in the 21st century, we still put out documents intended to be widely disseminated in PDF format, not HTML This assures that it will be shallowly linked and quoted, if at all, and those links will be hard to track and learn from.

The one news article that I’ve read referring to this report — an AP wire article that I read in the Las Vegas Sun — “Despite Demand, Libraries Won’t Add PCs” is a weird mess of statistics and odd conclusions (won’t add PCs? how about can’t add PCs. Who did this study again? Oh right The Gates Foundation… gee I wonder what their solution to this involves, it better not be Vista. update: the geeky artist librarian agrees). It discusses how popular technology in libraries has become, but also what the limitations are that libraries are facing. The whole article is tailor-made to support a roll-out of the Gates Foundation’s next round of funding which I’m sure will nicely sew up all the loose ends that this article pinpoints.

Except for the fact that more computers means, or should mean, more staff and more space, neither of which get a lot of lip service from technology grantors who would rather give away last year’s software for a hefty tax writeoff. You’ll note that this article says that libraries are cutting staffing so they can afford more computers. I assume then that this is supposed to imply that getting more computers means more freed up money to hire staff. However, we all know, at least out here in rural noplace, that funding remains fixed as does space and what we could really use is an operating system that doesn’t need a 20MB security update every few weeks and a browser that isn’t out-of-the-box vulnerable to a huge range of exploits that leave our computers barely working. The good news is that we can get both of those things through no denial installment loans direct lenders only and we don’t have to wait for someone to loan us money to do it. Sorry for the slightly bitter tone, I’ll chime in with some more facts from this study once I’ve gotten a chance to read it.

overdrive/netlibrary meeting – a dramatic reenactment

Posted on by jessamyn

I went to a great meeting today. It was a collection of Vermont librarians interested in possibly purchasing digital audiobooks for use in their libraries. It was an informal no vendor meeting to discuss and compare options, look at what did and didn’t work in New Hampshire with Overdrive and get everyone on the same page regarding what has and hasn’t already been done and how the systems work. It was fun, I met some new people and I learned some things. I IMed with a friend from the meeting (yay for library wifi – thanks Brown Public Library) and told him I was talking about downloadable audiobooks and he thought I was in a vendor meeting. He transcribed my likely scenario thusly.

Vendor: DRM DRM DRM DRM
Library: FREE AND OPERABLE
Vendor: DRM DRM DRM DRM
Library: F*ck you.
Vendor: Whatever.. good luck finding another vendor
Library: Grawr. DRM :(

So true. We had maybe two viable options for a library-grade downloadable audiobook service. The weird part is that patrons can more easily buy their own content, but to get the “checkoutability” it requires DRM and that puts this into the arena of the heavy hitters vendorwise.

how to make a “we’ve got ubuntu” announcement

Posted on by jessamyn

Doug Lord from the Connecticut State Library passed along a neat little post from the Conntech listserv from the Cheshire Public Library announcing their new Ubuntu computer. Notice how psyched they sound, how easy the install is, how familiar the applications sound. Got some old hardware? Try it yourself.

Overdrive and audiobooks and the pervasive ipod

Posted on by jessamyn

New Orleans Public Library is offering audiobooks for their patrons via Overdrive which I read on Shannon’s blog and also on the NOLA blog. New Hampshire public libraries also offer downloadable audiobooks via Overdrive. Well, they’re downloadable to anything but an iPod, the most popular make and model of MP3 player. This is because, generally speaking, iPods don’t play DRM-ed Windows Media files which are the types of files Overdrive makes available. Overdrive makes audiobooks available in this file format because you can program things like “expiration date” into the digital rights management of the file. This allows Overdrive to sell “checkoutable” books to libraries. Some libraries in Vermont are considering going with Overdrive also. I personally think that this is great. However, I also think that it’s just part of what we should be doing to bring digital content and digital content awareness to patrons.

Every time a patron checks out a book via Overdrive, you as the library have an educational opportunity. You can say “Here is this service we are providing you. Yes it won’t work on an/your iPod. Yes there are other ways to get audiobooks for your iPod and some of them are even free. We have provided links to other ways to get audiobooks on our website right next to the Overdrive link.” What do we usually say? Well if my anecdotal experience is any indication — take with a grain of salt of course — we say “Yes you can check out an audiobook via Overdrive. No it won’t work on your iPod. This is the fault of [insert suspected faultmaker — whether it’s Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Overdrive].” and then the story ends there. We can do better.

If you’re using Overdrive — and good on them for getting to the market first with digital content that provides library patrons with the Real Library Experience — why don’t you also consider encouraging and assisting patrons with finding free audiobooks as well? It’s sort of a weird thing to do since both types of books are “free” as far as the patrons are concerned, but one type is free for everyone and one type is paid for, actually subscribed to, by the library. There’s another whole post sometime down the road about whether it’s our business as libraries to help the patrons save us money, but for now, please enjoy these providers of quality FREE audiobook content. Librivox for public domain books, the classic poetry podcast , podiobooks for serialized scifi, and many more listed on this page at Openculture.