IM (and podcasts): Darien Public Library

This post looks at instant messaging at the Darien Public Library. Instant messaging is a quick way to ask questions of library staff. On the homepage, a sidebar has the option to “Talk to a Librarian”. Clicking on this link brings you to a page that has different ways of contacting staff. There is an email address, a telephone number, as well as a Meebo instant message widget. Users are instructed to “Ask us a question by typing a message in the box to the right. If we are online, we will respond as quickly as we can. Sometimes you will have to wait for us to finish helping another library user” (see this page). Here is part of the contact us page, with the Meebo widget on the right hand side. As you might be able to see, the library is online.

The Meebo IM widget is on the right

It was easy to find the IM from the library’s homepage. Even for users that have never used Meebo before, it is very simple to use. There is no login required; the widget automatically assigns a guest username, so if you want to quickly ask a question and are not an IM user, it isn’t a problem. I will look at the downside to this later. If you do use IM, or wanted the library to know who you were for some reason, logging in to Meebo is also possible. Either way, anyone can use the IM widget quickly and easily.

I IM’d the library to ask about how to download their podcasts, which I thought was very library 2.0 of me. They responded within seconds, although my question was apparently tricky as the librarian had to go and find out how to do it. Here is a transcript of my interaction:

[10:37] meeboguest629321: Question: Is it possible to download your podcasts, or do you have to listen online? If you can download them, how do you do it? It seems to only be letting me listen online. Thanks
[10:37] DarienLibrary: Hi there
[10:38] meeboguest629321: hi
[10:38] DarienLibrary: I’m not sure of the answer to your question, but I’ll find out.
[10:38] DarienLibrary: It may take a minute…
[10:38] meeboguest629321: no problem

[10:42] DarienLibrary: Sorry, podcasts can only be listened to online.  However, we hope they will be downloadable in the near future.  Keep checking back!

[10:42] meeboguest629321: Thanks
[10:42] DarienLibrary: Anything else we can help you with today?
[10:43] meeboguest629321: Nope, that’s it. Thank you for your help
[10:43] DarienLibrary: You’re welcome!

The whole interaction took 6 minutes, which is not bad, considering that for most of it I just left the library page open and continued my work. I didn’t even have to get dressed or anything. I had never used Meebo before, and I was able to contact a librarian using IM and get an answer to a question I had about their podcasts. Now, let’s look at whether they got the answer right.

Looking at their website, it looks like the only way to listen to podcasts is in-browser, which is not convenient for me, as I can’t walk my dog in my living-room because my living-room is quite small. The only time I listen to podcasts is when I am walking her in the park. If I was thinking about checking out the Darien library podcasts, I would definitely want to be able to download them. In an earlier posting I looked at podcasts at the Orange County Library. Here, users can download multiple formats of the podcasts  either from the library website or through iTunes. The Darien Library page didn’t seem to have any information about podcasts; the podcasting page was just a list of podcasts, with no clear way to download them. My IM encounter seemed to back up the idea that downloading was not an option.

A podcast at the Darien library...but how do I download it?

After being unsuccessful in my attempts to download the podcast directly from the library website, I opened my iTunes, just to check whether or not there was any way of getting the podcasts that way. Here is what I found when I entered “Darien Library” in the iTunes store search bar:

Darien library is on my iTunes

I was able to download a video podcast of Lily Koppel that appeared as a videocast on the Darien Library Site . While I could get a video podcast, I couldn’t access audio podcasts, which are only online. The video podcasts and audio podcasts appear to be different content; the video podcast of Koppel was taken at a live event in the library, whereas the audio podcast for Koppel was done over the telephone. It is strange that you can download the library’s videocasts, but not their podcasts from iTunes. Even though I was able to download the videocasts on iTunes, there was no way to download them from the library site, and it didn’t link me to iTunes. Either way, it would have been nice if the librarian had known that the videocasts, which seem to overlap with the podcasts, at least in terms of subjects, are available for download via iTunes.  This whole encounter  highlights a few problems with both the IM and the podcasting.

In terms of podcasting, the staff should figure out how podcasts and videocasts work, and the website should explain podcasting and how to download the podcasts using iTunes (perhaps they could take a podcasting class). The utility of podcasts, for many users, is being able to put a podcast on an iPod, or another portable device. While I enjoyed the anonymity of the IM as a user, the fact that there is no way for a librarian to clarify an answer later is annoying. If I had used email, the librarian could send me further information later, if it occurred to him/her that i might want to know about downloading videocasts, for instance. With IM, there is no way to get back to me once I have closed the window.

While my IM encounter gave me an answer that wasn’t as complete as I would have liked, I was pleased with the way that the service functioned. Since I prefer anonymity, I wouldn’t have made use of a login feature to use the IM, so the answer has to be correct the first time. Providing the option of either remaining anonymous or logging in helps to make the IM friendlier and easier to use, but it also eliminates the possibility of correcting mistakes, or clarifying answers.

Myspace: Denver Public Library Teens

A while back I posted a review of Myspace at the Kentucky University Library. I wanted to look at a library Myspace that didn’t make me feel sad, settling on the Denver Public Library Teens Myspace page. The Denver Public Library Myspace has 951 friends, and seems to actually be providing a valuable service to teen library patrons.

From the teen section of the main library website, there is a link to the Myspace. Anyone that managed to make it to the teen section of the website should be able to make it to the Myspace. This should be easy, because the link to the teen section of the main library website is bright orange, whereas the rest of the page is blue and white. In other words, you can’t miss it.

Teen section of main library website -with link to myspace

Many of my blog postings focus on how easy it would be for patrons to use various web 2.o applications if they had never used them before. In the case of Myspace, one of the reasons that it is successful is that so many people, particularly  teens, are already well versed in Myspace. Libraries are offering content on Myspace because it is a site that younger patrons frequent already. As we will see, adapting library services onto Myspace, particularly through the use of widgets, has made the Denver Library Myspace a useful page for accessing library content.

The main page of the Myspace features several widgets that can be used without logging in. There is a Shelfari widget that shows books that the library Myspace has been, or plans on reading. You can see the covers of the books on a shelf; clicking on the cover will bring you to the Shelfari page for that book, that features reviews of the book by other Shelfari members.

Denver Teens Myspace Shelfari widget

The Myspace also features a blog that can be accessed without logging in, with postings that are, at the time of writing, up to date. There is a twitter widget, a Flickr widget, embedded video of Teen Tech Week Video Reviews, as well as links to Student Resource Databases, Ask-A-Librarian, and the Learning Express Library. Far from just being a place to leave comments and look at pictures, the Myspace is a hub for many of the services featured by the library, a place to go to access actual library resources. Whereas the Kentucky Library Myspace had 9 comments, the Denver Library Myspace has 199 comments.

If I was a teen patron of the library I could see myself actually using the Myspace page for a variety of purposes. The Shelfari widget is pretty useful for finding books that might be of interest, and quickly seeing what others have thought of the books stored on the Shelfari shelf. It is a more visual way of selecting reading material, allowing patrons to literally pick a book based on its cover, retrieving in part the experience of browsing in the actual library.

Loading the Myspace makes a song by the Flobots play. Who are the Flobots? They are a Colorado hip hop band that has played at the library with David Amram (who has worked with everyone from Thelonious Monk to Jack Kerouac) at an event called “I Speak Out”, a review of which can be found here on a Denver Post blog by Erin Barnes. The Myspace page is a good place to be introduced to music, as you can stream songs directly from it, link to the Flobots Myspace, and find Amram’s music on his Myspace page.

One area of concern that I have with Myspace is the potential the site has for allowing access to teens for online predators. Myspace has apparently recently blocked over 90 000 Myspace accounts held by convicted sex offenders (whereupon they migrated to Facebook). While there aren’t any pictures of teens directly on the library Myspace, the Flickr widget brings you to pages of photos of teens, identified by first name, which is enough to make me a little wary. Could making this content available from the Myspace possibly put these kids in danger? What is the responsibility of the library with regards to posting images of teens online?

On the other hand, the library could be the perfect place to teach kids and parents about potential dangers of online virtual communities such as Myspace and Facebook. The library Myspace could be a valuable tool for teaching and increasing technological literacy if complemented by programming that made people aware of how to protect themselves online, with information, for instance, about how to make Myspace profiles private (viewable only by the user’s friends). A quick look at some of the Denver Library Myspace’s underage friends revealed that several of them are not making use of the privacy settings; anyone can access their profiles directly from the Denver Library Myspace. It is a delicate balancing act. It is understandable that the library and teen patrons would want to share photos online using Flickr. At the same time, making images of teen patrons so easily accessible to anyone from a Myspace is a little troubling. I think it is important to keep in mind that Myspace is not by nature a private and safe environment, although steps can be taken to make it more private and somewhat safer. While the Denver Library Myspace is really functional, perhaps some additional steps could be taken to ensure that user information is kept more private.

Social Bookmarking: Delicious at MIT Libraries

Here is the MIT libraries Delicious page. Delicious is a social bookmarking site that allows users to save bookmarks online, and share them with others. It also tracks how many people have bookmarked a particular site. For instance, on MIT’s Delicious page, we can see that 187 other people have bookmarked this Time travel cheat sheet.

Delicious bookmark for "Time Travel Cheat Sheet"

Let’s take a look at how difficult it would be to locate and use the service for those who haven’t used it before. From the library’s main page, there is no link to Delicious. Patrons have to go into the

“Help Yourself” section of the site. From here, they find the “Tips and Guides” box, and click on “Virtual Reference Collection”.

First go to "HELP YOURSELF"

in the "Tips and Guides" section, find "Virtual Reference Collection"

From here there is a sidebar that has a link to a page that has the MIT Delicious page tag cloud. This page links to the MIT Delicious page. If you didn’t already know that MIT had a delicious page, you might never come across it from using their library website. Furthermore, if you didn’t know what social bookmarking was, or that Delicious is a social bookmarking site, you probably wouldn’t click on the link to their Delicious tags in the first place. In other words, the MIT library page is not the best place to learn about social bookmarking. Also, a nitpick; the link that brings you to their main Delicious page is above a tag cloud, and it says “My Delicious Tags”. The link brings you to their Delicious bookmarks, not their Delicious tags. Tags are terms used to describe the bookmarks that are chosen to help users navigate through the mass of bookmarks. Since the MIT Delicious page has a section that features their tags, the link “My Delicious Tags” should link there, instead of their main Delicious page. Otherwise, the link should read, “My Delicious Bookmarks”. Come on, MIT.

MIT has 368 bookmarked links. They can be navigated alphabetically, or by order of most recent to oldest (and vice versa). There isn’t any other way of further organizing links on a Delicious page, other than by the tags that the links are tagged with. This makes tagging very important for locating links, especially for those patrons that don’t want to browse through 40 pages of links.

The content of the links is very diverse. The top tags are “Travel” and “Diversions”. The diversions tags point users to pages about the Grammy awards, for some reason, as well as IMDB, and “How Stuff Works”. There are also tags for reference tools, such as directories, dictionaries, and encyclopedias, and links to government websites, style guides, and weather websites. It is interesting that the top 2 categories are Travel and Diversions, given that this is an academic library, which most people wouldn’t associate with these types of links.

That being said, tagging allows users to sort out more traditional academic links from diversionary ones, so the Delicious page can host a wide variety of links and still be useful.

Using Delicious, I found that 31 people have bookmarked MIT’s Delicious virtual reference page. 71 people have bookmarked the library’s website page about virtual reference.

That means that of the people that are Delicious users, only 31 of them thought MIT’s Delicious page was interesting enough to bookmark themselves. That doesn’t mean that people don’t stumble across the site and find it useful, but it isn’t particularly encouraging.I may be wrong, but I would imagine that if people were both MIT Delicious page fans, and Delicious users, they would bookmark the MIT Delicious page.

I would use the MIT Delicious page to quickly find links to web pages. It is a fairly quick way at getting at a wide number of categories of information, all in website form. For users that want to avoid physical sources of information, Delicious could be a useful gateway to online resources.

The first thing I would change about the Delicious page, is the visibility of the page on the MIT Libraries Homepage. It was very difficult to locate, which means that many people that might actually use it will never even realize that it exists. In terms of the page itself, a few of the links are annotated, but it would be more helpful if each link had a brief explanation of the content on the linked page. The more links that are added, the more overwhelming the content becomes; tags alone are not enough to explain the content of links since, in many cases, a multitude of links share the same tags. A tag like “Libraries” needs to feature links that are annotated in order to increase the usefulness of the bookmarks. The bigger the Delicious page gets, the less useful it becomes if the bookmarks are not explained. It should be a clearly annotated shortcut to resources, not just a list of links.

WIKI: Bull Run Library, Manassas, Prince William County, VA

It is difficult to tell what exactly is going on with library websites in Prince William County, Virginia. The Prince William Public Library System, which serves the 383, 644 residents of the county, doesn’t appear to have a distinct website. It has a subsection of the Prince William County government website. It is the kind of website that residents are expected to go to to find information about controlling bats, or building codes appeal processes.  To find the library section of the website from here, you have to find the “Government” tab, and find “Library” under an extensive list of government services.

Find Library

Clicking on the “Library” link brings you to one of the uglier library websites I have seen.  If you head to the “Locations and Hours” section, you come across the Bull Run Regional Library page, which gives you some basic information about the library, with directions on how to get there. For some strange reason it doesn’t give you a link to the Bull Run Library wiki. According to a disclaimer on the Bull Run Library wiki itself, the “website is not sponsored by, nor associated with the Prince William County Library system, or Prince William County.” I found it somewhat odd that the library site had nothing to do with the library system that the library belonged to, and the wiki didn’t really clear anything up with regards to what was happening. The disclaimer carries on, in a somewhat puzzling fashion:

“Bull Run Library Wiki is created by and for the patrons of Bull Run Library. It is neither sponsored by nor associated with the Prince William County Library System nor Prince William County. This website is not funded by any Government funds. The views expressed on this website do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Prince William Public Library or of Prince William County Government.

Positive and thoughtful comments to this wiki are encouraged. The purpose of this wiki is to provide information about Bull Run Library and to provide a platform for suggestions.

Specifically, this site is maintained by one person who has devoted much love, money and time to create a valuable place for people to visit who also love libraries, books, and web 2.0 technology. Motivation to create this resource developed from a presentation from PW County Executive Craig Gerhart and his stated desire to make this county the best that it can be.”

As far as I can tell, a librarian at the Bull Run Library got tired of having a really terrible website, and decided to make her own wiki that would better serve library patrons. The wiki links back to the government site, but there is no way of getting to the wiki from the government site. This highlights one potential use of wikis in the library; they make it easy to build and update web content without the need to resort to outside internet development. In this case, it looks as if the majority of the site has been built and is maintained by a single person. Despite the fact that the wiki isn’t linked to from the government site, it can be found easily using google. Once at the wiki, users will find that it is a more user-friendly library site than the county library government site. For people who have never seen a wiki before, it looks very much like any other website. The front page features links to local library information, a WorldCat widget, links to library databases, ILL, downloadable audio books, and the library catalogue.  Part of what makes wikis wikis is that they are designed to be editable by a number of people, in the case of this wiki, users can apparently request access to the wiki, which would allow them to edit some of the content of the wiki, and leave comments. From looking at the recent wiki activity page, it looks as if all the work has been done by one user, and I couldn’t find any comments on any of the pages that came from other members of the wiki. In this case, the wiki is being used as a stand-in for a more traditional library website, as opposed to a collaborate web-space for multiple users.

As a website designed and maintained by one person it is pretty impressive. It features a sidebar with links to pages featuring a calendar of upcoming events, seperate pages for adult, young adult, and children’s programming,  and a page about RELIC, which is the library’s special collection devoted to genealogy and local history. Upcoming adult programming includes workshops such as “Car leasing- Is it right for You?”, and “Food allergy awareness”. Without the wiki, how would patrons know that the library is the place to learn about car leasing and allergies? The calendar widget is particularly useful, as it allows patrons to transfer information into their own calendars, with support for iCal, gCal, as well as RSS.

Calendar widget, with support for iCal, gCal, RSS.

As a whole, the wiki is tremendously useful for library patrons because it means that they don’t have to rely on the awful government website for anything. By using the wiki they can link to relevant sections of the government website, such as the OPAC, without having to wade through the government site. The wiki allows patrons to access important library information, specific to the library (not county-wide), all on a website that can be maintained and updated by a single person working at the library. It isn’t quite as visually slick as some library websites, but it certainly gets the job done. Since the alternative is using the government site, that isn’t specific to the Bull Run Library, it is a valuable tool for patrons of the library.

RSS: Orange County Public Library

In a previous post, I looked at podcasting in the Orange County Public Library. Today, I am going back to their site to look at RSS feeds. As that post mentioned, it is easy to navigate to the Podcasts and RSS section of their website directly from their main page. The introductory paragraph for the RSS section of the page claims that the Orange County Public Library was the first public library to offer RSS (Really Simple Syndication) to patrons. RSS is a news distribution tool, that lets users receive news updates from the library. From the main page, there is an online RSS tutorial. The tutorial requires that the user have flash running on their computer. I took the tutorial, and it was fairly simple to understand. The only problem was that the tutorial made use of screenshots of both the Yahoo site and the Orange County Library site in order to guide users step-by-step through the process of setting up the feed, and both the sites have been slightly redesigned since the tutorial was made. That being said, it was easy enough to add the OCL RSS feed to my “My Yahoo” page. The first time you subscribe to one of their RSS feeds, it gives you the option of a variety of RSS readers.

RSS options at the OCL

Once you have subscribed using one of these methods, then each time you subscribe to an additional RSS feed, it will auto-suggest the reader that you last used. It supports a number of different RSS readers; I was able to successfully subscribe to their RSS feeds using Newswire, which was listed under the “…with other readers” section. All in all, it would be easy for someone unfamiliar with RSS to find a way to access the RSS content, as many ways of getting at the content are supported. If you had never used RSS, chances are that you might have a Google, Yahoo, or AOL account in your name.

RSS fits in with other services offered by the library as it keeps patrons informed about upcoming events at the library. It is essentially another way to explore content that is available on the library website, without having to find it all. RSS collects all the news that appears in different places on the site, which allows patrons to quickly see any new information that the library wishes to transmit, in one convenient place. From the two RSS feeds that I checked out, it appears that news items make their way onto the feed on a daily basis. The most recent items in both feeds were posted just hours ago, as of this writing. It is worth mentioning that RSS isn’t a service that expands in any way the content from the website, rather it culls news from the library website in a way that makes it easier for patrons to access. In other words, RSS doesn’t offer anything new, it justs makes the information that the library publishes easier to see all at once.

Perhaps as valuable as the OCL RSS feeds themselves is the fact that the library is a place that can teach patrons how RSS works. Their online tutorials, help sections, and library staff, can help people who otherwise might not feel confident about getting RSS working. The library is a producer of RSS information, but it is also the place where patrons can learn how to use the service. In the end, patrons who didn’t know how to use RSS might benefit from their new-found ability to access RSS content from other sites as much as the OCL RSS content itself. By offering both RSS feeds and the tutorials and services that ensure that patrons will be able to successfully use RSS, the library serves patrons at a technological and informational levels.

Fahrenheit 451: Freedom to Read Blog, Pelham Public Library, Fonthill, Ontario.

Fahrenheit 451: Freedom to Read is a blog based out of the Pelham Public Library, in Fonthill, Ontario. It is a forum for discussions about a variety of censorship issues, with links to banned book resources, as well as resources about the Ray Bradbury book, Fahrenheit 451. The blog can be found from the library’s main website.

This is the top section of the library’s main page. The blog is one of the links on the right hand side of the page. It is fairly easy to locate, if you are looking for it, but it would be just as easy to miss, if you didn’t know that it was there. The blog is easy to use; clicking on the link from the main page brings patrons to the blog, where the most recent postings appear first. The blog entries are not overly long, and are typically illustrated, making them easy to read and somewhat pleasurable to view. As of this writing, the most recent post was April 09, 2009. It is extensive and varied, with postings ranging from discussions of intellectual freedom issues for kids, to international censorship issues, George Carlin, and local library initiatives to read banned books (see the Banned Book Challenge). The blog is interesting because it gives patrons a taste of the breadth of censorship issues within the library. As an MLIS student, the blog was useful to me in terms of getting a clearer understanding of current censorship issues. The Banned Book Challenge is an interesting event. Between February 22nd, and June 30thm the library wants people to read as many of the books that have been banned or challenged in the past. Patrons can link to a Library Thing page that lists 200 books that have been banned or challenged somewhere for some reason. The page gives some background on where the books have been banned or challenged (it’s usually Texas), and on what grounds. A scroll through the 200 titles gives patrons a pretty good idea of why it is important to think about censorship, as the list is full of books many regard as classics, widely read and treasured titles. It is easy to become complacent about censorship when you don’t see how it has played out in different settings, and the number of books that you value that have been banned somewhere because they have offended someone.

An ironic choice

James and the Giant Peach?

Challenged for being “lewd, dangerous, and offensive to women”.

For those wanting an in-depth examination of the variety of reasons that James and the Giant Peach has been banned or challenged, check out Chris Zammarelli’s blog posting, Parents and Teachers are the Enemy,  on the Bookslut blog.

The blog is a valuable resource for patrons interested in censorship issues, either locally, or at a national and international level. It appeals to a wide variety of patrons, in different locations. Their banned book challenge has had entries from people in many different countries, including Canada, the US, Pakistan, England, Belgium, and Australia. Not suprisingly, after looking at the Library Thing list of banned books (specifically the number of books banned in American schools), many of the participants in the challenge come from the US, despite the fact that the library and blog are Canadian. The blog, because of the content, clearly appeals to a broader audience that the patrons of the local library.

Second Life: McGill University Library

Second Life, other than being a ubiquitous university discussion point, is a online virtual world that some libraries have begun to use as a content delivery platform. The most interesting thing about Second Life is that, for all the talking about it, I have yet to meet somebody who uses it, let alone uses it to access library content. The few that bother to actually download and install the program so that they can have something to say about it for these classes typically log in, look around, get stuck in a few buildings, and never return.

I should be the ideal user for an online virtual world. I have played computer and video games since I was a kid, and I have been fascinated by the promise of virtual worlds ever since reading Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash back when I was a teenager. When I first heard about Second Life (hereafter referred to as SL), I read that the developers had been heavily influenced by the ideas in Snow Crash, which made me particularly interested in trying it out. Needless to say, I was bitterly disappointed.

Now, months after my second attempt (which was years after my first attempt), I re-entered SL, to check out McGill University’s Second Life home.

If you are in SL, the site can be found by searching for it with a location search.
If you are on the McGill library website, you have to go to the “Using the library” page, find the “Computers and Software” page, and find the subsection “Research Tools”. Finally, there is a paragraph that tells you to “Visit the McGill Library’s island in Second Life, where you are now able to chat with a librarian, check when the next library workshop is taking place, and meet fellow students.”
Of course, if you were clever, you would realize that you can chat with a librarian quickly and easily from the site that you are on already, as there is a clear link from the main page of the website. The main page also has a prominent link to upcoming workshops. In other words, just finding the link to the SL application took navigating through 4 screens, whereas all the features offered by SL can be easily found on the library’s main page. At this point, the user still has to install the program (if they are not already a SLer), create an avatar, learn how to navigate the SL world, and find their way to the virtual McGill library. A conservative estimate for the time it takes to do this, based on how long it took me my first time, is about an hour. So, now that they have arrived, what do they have to look forward to? In order to answer that question, I returned, once again, to SL.

McGill University on Second Life

My intrepid Second Life Avatar, Chesterfield Hellershanks, logged back into Second Life for a third time, to once again slog his way through the mire in a brave attempt to learn about virtual worlds and the library. He made his way to the McGill University library. In real life, I spent a year attending McGill, so I figured it was as good a place as any to check out. I know exactly how nice their library is, and how useful the services that they provide are for students.

The most immediate difference I noticed was that the SL McGill library was completely deserted. A lone beach-ball rolled by like some sort of sad, virtual tumbleweed.

Chesterfield ponders the emptiness of space

He called out, “What is the point of a Second Life library?” but nobody answered. A lifeless mannequin gave Chesterfield a McGill t-shirt, which he put on. For some reason, putting on the t-shirt made the rest of his clothes disappear. Since nobody was around, he figured that it didn’t really matter.

Chesterfield Hellershanks, unintentionally pantsless

Eventually, Chesterfield made his way through the various pixelated constructions, finding a page that looked as if it contained valuable information. He read the page. Aha, finally he had found some useful, relevant information that would answer his questions about how to contact library staff and find out about upcoming events! Hooray, he cheered, to nobody in particular. Hooray.

You have found...internet.

Looking more closely at the page, he realized that the tall, virtual document looked suspiciously familiar. He right-clicked the document, and was sent into Firefox, where he found himself staring at the McGill University Library website. Hooray, he cried, I have wasted my time.

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U of A Digital Initiatives Technology Librarian Peter Binkley points out in his blog that “I still can’t find anyone who understands why a Second Life library is such a great idea.”  While the efforts of SL librarians seem earnest enough, Binkley isn’t convinced that SL libraries are the best use of librarian time and resources. Are we really needed or wanted in SL? He wonders if, “in our efforts to insert our services into our users’ webflow, we risk pursuing them into the places where they go to avoid us“. As far as I’m concerned, SL libraries have to figure out how to offer users something that they can’t get more easily from the library’s website. If SL libraries focus on simply routing users back onto the internet, then there is no reason for users to return to the SL library. The most useful feature of SL is as a virtual meeting place; the best possible use of SL library space would be for meetings and lectures that couldn’t necessarily happen outside of this arena, in the case of McGill, meetings that feature speakers or guests that are physically outside of Montreal. SL would be a great place to have a talk that includes more than one university, for instance. If the Mcgill Library is going to offer anything useful or relevant in the virtual setting of SL, it has to play to the strenghts, not the limitations of the system.

I realize that the big difference between Snow Crash and SL is that in the novel the metaverse was the internet. There wasn’t a 2d and a 3d internet, the virtual world was all-encompassing. SL offers us something less compelling in many ways, it relies heavily on pre-existing web content that is more easily acessible in other ways. Instead of recycling web content, SL librarians are going to have to find ways of offering users compelling reasons for returning to their virtual libraries if they want to become relevant in the virtual world. Additionally, in the case of McGill, having no visible mention of the fact that the university library is on SL until deep into the website doesn’t make it visible to patrons. Even if there were things going on in SL, how would patrons know?

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Podcasts: Orange County Library System

The Orange County Library has a section devoted to podcasts, which can be found easily from their home page.

This is the navigation bar for the Orange County Library, and as you can see, the “Podcasts & RSS” section is displayed quite prominently. Clicking on the tab brings you to the Podcasts and RSS page,

which features information about podcasts and RSS. There is an introductory paragraph about podcasting, which points those who might be confused to a page that answers the questions “How do I subscribe to a podcast?”, “What is a podcast?” and “Why are there two different audio formats?” in a step-by-step manner. The library has really made an effort to make podcasting easy to understand, and widely accessible, by way of multiple formats for each podcast.

From the Podcast and RSS page, users can link to pages devoted to mp3 or WMA files of each of the 3 podcasts. In addition, they can subscribe to the podcasts by clicking on a separate “Subscribe to” section of the Podcast and RSS page, in either mp3 or WMA formats. Users can also subscribe to the podcast through iTunes. Clicking on the iTunes button opens up iTunes on the user’s computer, where they can subscribe to the shows, or download back episodes. All in all, the podcasts are very user friendly. Each of the three ways (iTunes, mp3, WMA) to access the content worked fine for me; I was able to listen to the mp3s and WMA files directly in the browser with no problems. For patrons that have never listened to a podcast before and might be  having difficulty accessing the podcasts, the library offers a podcasting class, where users can learn how to subscribe, listen to, and post their own podcasts.

The library has 3 podcasts to choose from, including a teen podcast, an events podcast, and a children’s podstory. They fit nicely with other services offered by the library. The events podcast lets patrons know what the library offers in terms of upcoming events, and the children’s podcast complements existing in-library storytelling events. The teen podcast includes podcasts created by teen patrons, discussing upcoming and past library events. In this case, users learn how to create content and then use this knowledge to increase awareness about events at the library. I was able to view a video podcast on iTunes that showed a library event; I saw Lt. Col. John Lynn, director of Aerospace Education for Florida,  teaching kids how to build and launch paper rockets.

(this is the YouTube version of the video)

I also listened to a teen podcast, where a couple of teens discussed an upcoming video game creation course happening at the library.

I checked out one of the children’s podcasts, which was about pirate jokes. Every punchline had “AAARRR” in it. What is the pirate’s favorite month? MAAARRRRCH. Why didn’t the pirate have jam on his PB&J sandwich? He couldn’t open the JAAAARRR. Why did the pirate fail his test? It was too HAAAARRRRD. I thought it was pretty funny.  Besides pirate jokes, the children’s podcasts also features storytelling, with an emphasis on folktales and fairy tales.

The most useful feature of the OCLS’s use of podcasting is that they attempt to reach a wide variety of potential users. Existing library users who participate in library events might want to access the podcasts to see events they have taken part in, and might continue subscribing to get news about upcoming events. Teen participate as both creators and listeners of podcasts. The children’s podcast complements existing in-library storytelling events. Finally, for those who have heard about podcasts, and want to learn more, the podcasting courses can open up podcasting to anyone with access to a computer. At every level, the podcasts are designed to complement existing programming, and as such are a valuable tool for the library.

Myspace at the University of Kentucky library

93 years old, last login December 5, 2008.

The library’s role in social networking is somewhat unclear. Academic libraries typically have library websites that give students access to all the information they might require to make use of library services. What then, is the role of social networking space, in the university library context? Meredith Farkas asks the same question in one of her Information wants to be free blog postings. “When you decide to put up a library profile on MySpace or Facebook, what is your goal?”, she asks, in a posting entitled Libraries in Social Networking Software. “If it’s to look cool or to make students more aware of the library, don’t bother. A profile that offers nothing but a picture of the library, a blog post or two and a cutesy thing about how we won’t shush you just looks cheesy.” She argues that there is a difference between being in social networking space, and having something to offer in such a space.  A majority of students responding to a  University of Michigan survey (76%) answered that they would not respond to a library presence on Facebook or Myspace because they were adequately served by the existing methods of contact with the library. Many felt that the library just didn’t belong in this context, that Myspace was a social networking site for individuals, not institutions (the survey is available here for PDF download).

This being said, how does the University of Kentucky’s Myspace page fare?

The page is not accesible from the University of Kentucky libraries homepage. Awesome. A search for the word “myspace” from the search bar  on the homepage brought up 4 results. These results were typically strategic planning word documents or PDFs with references to the library’s plan, for example,  to “explore, enhance or establish a library presence in social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Second Life, and other sites” (see this document), but I couldn’t find a way to the actual Myspace page from the library website itself. A Google search for University of Kentucky libraries myspace got me to their Myspace page.

Myspace, for those who have not used it before, is relatively easy to use. A new user can sign up and create a profile by supplying basic information and a working email address. At this point, they can ask the University of Kentucky Libraries to be their “friend”. If they are accepted as a “friend”, then they will show up on the University of Kentucky Libraries friend list, and vice versa. Of course, none of this matters for those that somehow found the page after December 15th, 2008, which is the last time that someone from the university logged in. My friend request with the University is still pending, and I have a feeling that it might be some times before I am officially “friends” with the university library, whatever that means.

Those lucky enough to have befriended the university library prior to December 15th, 2008 are listed on the friends page of their Myspace. The library has 127 friends. Some of their friends include the school basketball team, Lexington, which is apparently the horse capital of the world, and Second Life library 2.0. I cannot speak to what it means for a library to be friends with a town, or a myspace page for a Second Life library application, but I can look at the features of the library Myspace itself.

The page features a whopping 2 blog postings. The most recent is a blog of library tips for students, from November, 2006. The first blog posting is titled “Need Help?” and it essentially refers people to the library for help and gives them the phone number for the reference desk. There are 9 comments on their page, 7 of which come from people who work at the library. The two genuine comments are from a University of Western Ontario residence, Elgin Hall (“Elgin loves Kentucky”), and the rally squad for the basketball team (“HELLO THERE, THANKS FOR THE ADD…GO CATS”)

The site also features 5 pictures of the inside of the library, for those that might be interested in pictures of empty chairs and computers. Finally, it links people back to the library website and catalog.

The site fits in poorly with the other services offered by the library. It is inaccessible from their main website, there is no useful content on the page, all the comments come from library staff, and the only valuable service it provides is to link users to the library website. Since it seems pretty unlikely that anyone would find the Myspace before they found the library website, the merits of this service are dubious at best. During my time on the Myspace page, only 1 of the 127 “friends” was online.

So, some fun math:

University of Kentucky has 27,209 students.

Of these (if we ignore the fact that many of the friends are actually cities and other libraries), 127 are “friends” of the library on Myspace.

The Myspace is reaching less than 0.46 % of students.

It is difficult to say exactly why the Myspace site fails,  as there are several possible reasons. It offers no new services or information that can’t be easily retrieved from the library website, it is impossible to find from the library website, and it has very little actual content, with the latest entries being several years old. Going back to Farkas’ comments, it looks like the University of Kentucky followed quite precisely her list of things not to do on a library Myspace. The site fails to come up with real justification for its existence. Similar to McGill’s Second Life home, the site was only useful for bouncing users back into the real library site.  As such, I couldn’t recommend it to any library user who is already able to locate the library homepage without assistance from Myspace.

Incidentally, on a personal level,  I found it to be a useful resource, only because it linked me to the university rally squad Myspace page, where I heard the song “Wildkat Hustle“, which made one of my feet tap. Do the Wildkat.

The Robert Goldwater Library: Flickr Pool

The Robert Goldwater Library is the library for the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, NY. From their main page, users can quickly access their FLICKR POOL, which is a collection of photos taken in their galleries by people who have visited the museum. The Flickr page is open to anyone; while the page is administered by library staff, the almost 2000 photo submissions come from the sites 130 photo submitting members.

Flickr Pool

The Flickr page is easy to access from the main page; there is a clear navigation tool at the top of the page which lets users link directly to the library’s page on Flickr. For those that have never used Flickr before, in order to become a member of the Flickr group, you will need a Flickr account. Flickr is owned by Yahoo, which means that you can join Flickr using your Yahoo ID. If you don’t have one, you have to sign up for a Yahoo account. Once you have signed up for a Yahoo account, and logged on to Flickr, you can join the museum’s Flickr pool, which will allow you to submit photos that you have taken of the pieces in the museum’s exhibits. If you are only interested in viewing the pictures, and not contributing pictures, there is not need to sign in, or to have a Flickr account, as the pictures can be viewed by anyone.

Besides user submissions, some of the photos in the photo pool were found on other Flickr pages by library staff, who take advantage of user tagging to find relevant pictures of their exhibits on Flickr by people who aren’t aware of their Flickr pool. At this point they ask the user to add their photo to the Flickr pool. Here is an example of such a photo. The Flickr pool is organized by user, so all the photos submitted by a particular user are grouped together. This makes navigating the pool somewhat more difficult if you are looking for a particular work, instead of a particular user. Many of the individual photos do not feature any sort of text explaining the name or background of the pieces in question. For this, the user could turn to the library’s wiki, which has a geographically organized object guide section with photos for each of the pieces in the collection.

Making use of image sharing in the context of a museum makes a whole lot of sense. On one of the discussion postings on the library’s Flickr page, Joy Garnett explains that they took their cue from the MoMA photo blogging project, which features Flickr photos of works of art within their collection. This allows each piece to be seen from different points of view,  from the eyes of those experiencing the works. We get pictures not only of the pieces, but of the people viewing them, and the people viewing the viewers. It is the difference between this and this. From the Robert Goldwater library blog, “The pool is a sampling of how our visitors ‘see’ the objects, and what they find compelling enough to photograph. Many of our ‘signature’ pieces appear several times, each from a different photographer and each at slightly different angle. It is also instructive to see what less familiar objects nevertheless succeed in capturing the visitor’s attention.”

The Flickr pool gives people the opportunity to share their experiences with the museum, and get multiple viewpoints of the same objects. Thanks to tagging, the library is able to collect together photos relevant to their collection with a minimal amount of trouble. For prospective museum visitors, the Flickr pool can give them a sense of the breadth of the collection; it could also be used by those who have already visited to revisit their favorite pieces. Flickr draws on the collective to the benefit of many different interests. It works hand-in-hand with the wiki object guides to give a broader perspective to the works within the museum. The only possible improvement would be giving users the ability to view the photos in the pool by subject, but since so many of them appear to be lacking specific titles and explanations, this would be a monumental task, involving cataloguing each of the submitted photos.