two levels of remove

Via Sarah Houghton (the librarian in black), Via Bill Drew (the baby boomer librarian): "Bill Drew (Baby Boomer Librarian) has created a simple Google search box for the FindInALibrary books. Nice work!"

I've reproduced the code here:

Here is a better form for the Google libraries search I am working on:

Search WWW Search in Libraries

Tags:

• Google
• Libraries

Lyra at 1 stone

1 stone girl
Originally uploaded by you're schmoopie!.

My niece Lyra Tuulikki Severine Wagner. She drools.

Using blogs like a content management system

Someone suggested that we create a blog for every library faculty member. That way we can replace the static staff directory with blogs that allow the owner to update regularly and syndicate subject-specific announcements to a targeted audience. The idea makes me think about incorporating applications like blogs, which have the mystique of being frequently updated and up-to-the-minute-current, for uses that are generally thought of as static, like a directory. Is it "wasteful" to utilize blog technology this way? Is it analog to using a home theater stereo system to listen to AM radio on headphones? What does "wasteful" mean when talking about software or disc space?

RSS reader vs. a bloglines account

The presentation went relatively well. I discovered that of the fifty percent of reference librarians at my institution who use RSS either to read or to post, they all have a bloglines account, rather than using a stand alone reader. Strange, I never would have thought to use bloglines, although it seems very useful for checking feeds on the go...

a new training blog

I made a new blog , brantles-train.blogspot.com specifically to post step by step training modules. My first post is a quick and dirty guide to readng, subscribing and creating an RSS feed which I will present to my colleagues this morning.

Social Networking, Steve Jones, VOA radio

The Radio Service, Voice of America featured Communications Professor Steve Jones on their program "Talk To America" yesterday. Web 2.0 social networking is the topic of conversation and the 50 minute program is available as real media or an mp3 download here: http://www.voanews.com/english/NewsAnalysis/TTA-New-Past-Shows.cfm
Steve Jones has published a number of studies on young people Internet activities in conjunction with Pew Internet & American Life project

short hiatus

I haven't posted in a week because my wife and I arew negotiating for a house. Cross your fingers for us!
brantles

Ajaxwrite and other ajax apps.

Check out "AJAXLAUNCH ajax applications for everyone". AjaxWrite is the first major launch, but as ajax applications are developed, ajaxLaunch will publicize and provide them. Ajax or "asynchronous javascript and xml" is a web application development script incorporating javasvcript, CSS, and xml to allow a great deal of manipulation of content and layout by the user.
From the Website: "ajaxWrite is a powerful word processor that can read and write Microsoft Word formatted documents. Anytime you need a word processor, need to open a .doc file or edit a .doc file, simply point your Firefox browser at ajaxWrite.com and in seconds a full-featured program will be loaded. For 90 percent of the people in the world, the need to buy Microsoft Word just vanished. This won't make Microsoft happy, but software users should be very excited that software just got cheaper, immediate and modern."
As has been stated so often before, the commercial model for software development and distribution is changing rapidly. No longer will companies be able to charge expensive porices for software products when people can use opensource products or simply point their browsers to a Web service that provides most if not all the same functions for free.

Happy Birthday Eric!

Sunshine Week

One of UIC's incredibly well informed and dynamic librarians, Aimee Quinn, hosted a forum on secrecy in government as part of Sunshine Week: Your Right To Know!. Sunshine Week, March 12-18 2006. The first Sunshine Week was March 13, 2005. It was initiated by a group of jounalists, publishers, librarians and academics to promote the idea of open government for a healthy democracy. A brief clip from their 'about' page is pasted below:
-snip-
During Sunshine Week, participating daily and weekly newspapers, magazines, online sites, and radio and television broadcasters run editorials, op-ed columns, editorial cartoons, public forums, and news and feature stories that drive public discussion about why open government is important to everyone, not just to journalists.
Backed by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in Miami, Sunshine Week's success was due in large part to the many journalism groups, media companies, state press associations, open-government and First Amendment advocates, librarians, civic groups, educators and student journalists who participated. Sunshine Week 2005 exceeded expectations, with more than 730 participants producing thousands of articles.
Sunshine Week is an offshoot of Sunshine Sunday, which began in Florida in 2002. Led by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors, Sunshine Sunday was developed in direct response to moves by the state legislature to severely restrict public information after the terrorist attacks against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.
-/snip-
pasted from http://sunshineweek.org/sunshineweek/about accessed March 14, 2006.

I recorded the class I taught today.

I want the real thing!

I want the real thing!
Originally uploaded by MFinChina.

One of the oldest jokes around, but still funny! Found in the Yunnan University Guesthouse. - from MF Capiello, she do rock.

Preaching Gaming to Academic Audiences

Yesterday at our all-staff meeting I gave a presentation summarizing the "Gaming in Libraries" symposium from Chicago in December.

I work at a large academic library and many people were confused about how understanding videogame culyture and videogamers could be instructive in our setting.

I think they liked it because we had a long dicussion afterward about ways to make our web presence better more interactive and ways to appeal to native gamers. Many closeted gamers spoke up and we had a sort of "AA" type confessional. "Hi I'm J. and I'm a Gamer."

Libraries are the places one goes to get "correct" information, as my colleague Francis Kayiwa stated. If we can appeal to a gamer generation mindset wherein shared information is valuable, and correct information is the best, then we can communicate more easily with gamers as a "clan leader" as opposed to an authoritarian defender of the secrets.

Users expectations are changing

Will library users in five years expect to search our visual media collections and retrieve specific clips? Will I be able to search google video or yahoo video and find the "You talkin to me" scene from Taxi Driver? Will I be able to do that in my Library catalog? Truly a can 'o' worms, but I think the fluid transition from text and image based content to high resolution audi and visual media on the Internet is charging fullsteam ahead, and tomorrows sophisticated searchers will expect a much more granular searhc capacity to the Library's content. Here is a current result set for the search "you talkin to me" from regular google: http://tinyurl.com/kck4g
google video: http://tinyurl.com/hrns9
and yahoo video: http://tinyurl.com/z7g3s

Library Webmasters vs. Library Web developers

Chris Stearns replied to my posts with an interesting take on this subject:

Steve
I know exactly what you mean. That describes a lot of places. I've been
at Auburn since July and was very lucky to get in at a time when our
systems department got its first official Director of Library
Technology, who recognized the need to broaden the dept's skill set, and
he hired several new full-time people to fill in some gaps he
identified as deficiencies, so I was hired as the
programmer/developer/database guy, even though I'm not a "real"
programmer, though like you I'm trying to learn and improve in that
area. I've been using Ruby/Rails almost exclusively since I got here
and that's forced me to get really deep
into Ruby, which has forced me to try and learn the kind of stuff most
real programmers could do without blinking. I had been a staunch PHP guy
previously, and looked into Python and Java, but couldn't get real
enthused about them. Mainly I'm just trying to do a good job and not
make my boss regret dedicating one of his positions to programming!

Steve Brantley wrote:

Chris, thank you, an astute observation. My institution falls right into
this category:

"So libraries tend to have people who can configure and maintain
third-party systems, and people who can manage websites with FrontPage
and Dreamweaver, but have tended to have trouble getting people who can
provide advanced scripting/programming and database skills to do
everything from generate custom RSS feeds to build solid database apps
from scratch."
It would be great if we could somehow manage a way to hire "Any smart,
capable coder with a decent professional attitude" but even better would
be if I was supported to learn to be an adept coder. There never is
quite enough time to teach myself. ;)
Steve

Chris Stearns wrote:
Libraries tend to see themselves as "libraries" but not as large
organizations with a broader set of technological needs.
It seems to me that part of the problem is that, traditionally, many
libraries have employed a "systems librarian" and a "webmaster".
Typically, the systems librarian configured and maintained the ILS
machines in conjunction with their vendor, and also probably dealt
with other third-party databases as they came into the picture. This
person, or another server person, probably knew a little perl or
something similar and did a little scripting from time to time.
Additionally, the webmaster was often a current or former librarian
(in bigger libraries/systems) who used FrontPage, Dreamweaver, etc. to
publish web pages. This person may or may not have become a coder in
the process. So libraries tend to have people who can configure and
maintain third-party systems, and people who can manage websites with
FrontPage
and Dreamweaver, but have tended to have trouble getting people who can
provide advanced scripting/programming and database skills to do
everything from generate custom RSS feeds to build solid database apps
from scratch.
This need didn't exist ten or even five years ago in the way it does
now. I can remember back in the 90s how nobody really trusted
web-based apps because they tended to be slow and difficult to use. Back
then we wanted something to load locally and serve over the LAN.
Now that's flipped to some degree, and people expect to be able to do
some sophisticated things online. As Steve has pointed out, so much more
is expected from an online
presence these days, and rightly so. The rub is that the career goals
and personalities of librarians and programmers/coders tend to focus
their interests in different directions. Sure, you can find some
hybrids, but coders tend to want to write code, not go to library school.
Any smart, capable coder with a decent professional attitude can learn
the ropes in his industry, whether that's online catalog sales,
insurance applications, or libraries. Just the view from here.
--
Chris Stearns
Software/Programming
Auburn University Libraries
http://www.lib.auburn.edu

U.S. National Archives and Google to digitize historical films

Historical Films Set to Air Online

"The National Archives and Google have announced that they will work together to digitize historically important films from the archive's vaults. The videos -- which include newsreels from World War II and documentaries produced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration -- will soon be available at no cost to scholars and students."

read original blog post here:
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=1045

Sweet huh? Now, we can download DVD qualiy files to burn our own DVD-R's or will we be stuck simply watching low quality google video format on our desktops? If we want high quality reproductions, will be be able to get the for free or will we still have to pay for the discs? Whatever the case may br it is a step forward.

Using a USB drive at the reference desk

I got a free 128 MB usb drive at Office Depot when I bought 100 DVD-R discs. I am donating it to our reference desk since we so often have students who create huge searches with multiple files, but have no way of moving them to their laptops. An unintended technological hindrance to access is the wireless network client. In order to receive ANY network service to their laptops, students must have a client application on their machine which allows them to log in. Unfortunately, the students are missing the mobile media with which to download the client and load it on their machines. The computer center makes it available for download or gives it away on a cd IN ONE LOCATION on a big campus. We can alleviate this problem by using this donated usb drive to store and transport the client software to students who don't have it.

chicago and the library universe

Librarism has a list of Chicago area librarian websites/blogs here.
I hope he'll list meeven though this blog covers far more than the library-verse. Right now I'm totally diggin the itunes radio stream from http://www.hardrockin80s.com Hard rockin tunes from the late 80s and early 90s. OK, so I had already moved on from that phase by the 90s, but dang this stuff feeds a need every now and then.

swimcap model

swimcap model
Originally uploaded by brantles.

There are many fun things one can find in the basement.

snippets from a LITA-L post on technical skills for the librarian (a hobby horse of mine)

Thanks To Karen G. Schneider www.bluehighways.com and Leo Klein for their posts to the LITA-L listserv which prompted this blog post.



K.G. Schneider wrote:
I have experience in the library industry. Terminology, practices, and goals are really what matters for the head of library IT plus the ability to communicate effectively.

That works both ways, as well. One reason some organizations insist on an MLS is that there is the assumption that it will be easier to communicate with an MLS. (This isn't articulated in most cases, but I've definitely heard it implied in rationales for using someone with an MLS.) But this doesn't address the communication skills required by the MLS to communicate with the IT specialist, whether or not that person has an MLS. For that matter, it doesn't address the responsibilities of the MLS to understand how technology fits into the library's mission and goals and to stay abreast of the major... shall I say Top Tech Trends? :)
Karen G. Schneider
kg@bluehighways.com


Let me combine Leo's earlier statement with Karen's:


Leo said: "I'm sure requirements vary but having a 2nd Masters is par for the course in most academic places I've ever worked. I'd say far more horrifying is requiring a knowledge of "Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Javascript, HTML, CSS, Metadata, C++ and Java or Visual Basic". To which I generally reply, why not Greek and Latin as well? --LEO"


Is not this the elephant in the room?


Library education does not USUALLY include database design, scripting languages, or server administration as part of the curriculum, but any
IT employee in a library should have these skills (as a library student in 98, there was only one student who ran a linux server as extra credit. The other techy students were getting Masters of Information Science degrees). Karen's point is well taken. It is terminology, practices and goals which make a successful IT manager not a masters in computer science.


The model of the systems librarian or IT librarian has fundamentally changed. The skills for the front line worker are not taught in the library education, and the managerial skills only come from experience. Public service oriented librarians have gleaned just enough about Web services and Web 2.0 technologies to be hungry, and there is no one staffed in most libraries who has the time to help them. If there is someone who can implement open source or commercial software, it is usually because they just happen to have the skill because they are techy by nature. What libraries need now are skilled Web developers who either have the MLS or equivalent job experience, or librarians who have been properly trained in programming, networking and administration to successfully perform in house library software development.

Steve Brantley
brantles.blogspot.com