Archive for the ‘Library Services’ Category

A new report on mobile technology adoption and libraries was published by University of Cambridge, authored by Keren Mills of the Arcadia Programme.

“The majority of respondents primarily use their phones to make calls, send text messages and take photographs, although they like to know that the other functionality is potentially available. respondents’ use of different forms of media on their mobile phones was mostly limited to viewing photographs. Some used their phones to listen to music or watch videos, but very few used them to listen to podcasts or audio books and only a small number read ebooks or journal articles. Some respondents commented that they prefer to use their iPod or other media player to access these other forms of media.”

Daniel Hooker at Sociallibrarian writes about 10 ways library schools should be teaching social media. This interesting post discusses the benefits of incorporating social media instruction into library school curriculum. Here are the first five ways that LIS programs could be teaching new media, be sure to check out the full post for more.

1. Promoting Content
2. Interviewing
3. News Gathering and Research
4. Crowdsourcing
5. Publishing with Social Tools

The Duke University Libraries is now offering the most comprehensive university digital image collection specifically formatted for an iPhone. Through DukeMobile 1.1, the University’s suite of iPhone applications, the libraries are sharing digital materials from 20 collections - nearly 32,000 images in all.

From their press release:

“It includes thousands of photos and other artifacts that range from early beer advertisements to materials on San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury scene in the 1960s. Although a growing number of scholarly institutions offer images and other material online, Duke is the first to offer collections that take advantage of the iPhone’s design, navigation and other features.”

A recent post on the Netvibes blog titled Using public pages as virtual libraries! contains a list of 11 libraries that are using a Netvibes start page as a public portal or virtual resource center.

via Novus

Karen Klapperstuck at Library Garden addresses the question of whether libraries should start charging for their services in her recent post titled Freemium.

“How does the freemium model apply to libraries? I’m not entirely certain of the long-term implications but it does seem to me that libraries that are implementing additional fees for services that go beyond the normal scope are taking advantage of this freemium business model (free for some services, pay for value-added services). Libraries are facing tightening budgets and I understand the need to generate revenue other than fines and regular fees. People talk about the public library as being “free” and in a way, it is free because library users pay for those services through their tax dollars.But as Nancy Dowd of The ‘M’ Word - Marketing for Libraries blog stated back in February, why not create a line of premium services for which to charge?”

Kaite Stover of the Kansas City Public Library writes for Booklist about using the Book Clubs application in Facebook to extend the library’s face-to-face book club.

The Book Clubs application let’s users set up their own clubs - such as the Book Lovers club which has over 6,500 members - and provides a message board, Wall, and other tools to discuss spotlighted books. From the press release:

“In Book Clubs you can post comments about a book or author, rate or review books, build or search a library of titles, entirely at your convenience. If you choose, you can arrange meetings in person, too, and use book clubs as a place to chat or post club news between meetings.”

Barbara Fister, Librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN, and the author of In the Wind writes about Publishers & Librarians for the latest issue of Library Journal.

“Libraries are far more than a market, however. Libraries create readers. They are the test bed, the petri dish for books, a place where people can discover a passion for reading as children and indulge it as adults and where passionate readers can sample new authors. Librarians are the ultimate handsellers of books (though they call it readers’ advisory), and increasingly they put their considerable technical skills into making library web sites rich interactive social networks for book lovers.”

Amazon announced the Kindle DX today, a large-screen edition of their e-paper device which is available for pre-order at a price point of $489. Due to be available this summer, the new Kindle DX sports 2.5 times the surface area of the latest-generation Kindle, has native PDF support, and an impressive auto-rotate feature which changes the display from portrait to landscape as the user adjusts the device. Here are some other differences between the new Kindle DX and the Kindle.

• Bigger screen - 9.7″ diagonal e-ink screen (as opposed to the 6″ Kindle)
• Larger storage capacity - 4GB or room for 3,500 books, (double the 2GB of the Kindle which holds over 1,500 books)
• Native PDF support
• Auto-rotate display
• also…
  Heavier 18.9 ounces (vs. 10.2 ounces of the Kindle)

Higher ed textbook publishers will begin to offer their titles through the Kindle store, and several universities have partnered with Amazon to make the DX devices available to students this fall.

From the Business Wire press release:

“Kindle DX’s large display offers an enhanced reading experience with another category of graphic-rich content—textbooks. With complex images, tables, charts, graphs, and equations, textbooks look best on a large display. Leading textbook publishers Cengage Learning, Pearson, and Wiley, together representing more than 60 percent of the U.S. higher education textbook market, will begin offering textbooks through the Kindle Store beginning this summer. Textbooks under the following brands will be available: Addison-Wesley, Allyn & Bacon, Benjamin Cummings, Longman & Prentice Hall (Pearson); Wadsworth, Brooks/Cole, Course Technology, Delmar, Heinle, Schirmer, South-Western (Cengage); and Wiley Higher Education.

Arizona State University, Case Western Reserve University, Princeton University, Reed College, and Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia will launch trial programs to make Kindle DX devices available to students this fall. The schools will distribute hundreds of Kindle DX devices to students spread across a broad range of academic disciplines. In addition to reading on a considerably larger screen, students will be able to take advantage of popular Kindle features such as the ability to take notes and highlight, search across their library, look up words in a built-in dictionary, and carry all of their books in a lightweight device. ”

Several libraries have recently joined the Flickr Commons initiative started by the Library of Congress in early 2008. Among them are:

Swedish National Heritage Board - 201 images

Nantucket Historical Association - 208 images

Chicago’s Field Museum Library - 476 images

District of Columbia Public Library - 154 images

Sarah Milstein, co-author of “Twitter and the Micromessaging Revolution,” a research report from O’Reilly Media, writes about Twitter for Libraries (and Librarians) for the May issue of Computers in Libraries.

“The essence of Twitter is conversation. Libraries, however, tend to use it as a broadcast mechanism. Libraries on Twitter should encourage followers to interact with the library—ask questions, share links, re-Tweet interesting posts from others, and reply when people message you (those are prefaced with @ your account name). For professional development, look for conference coverage on Twitter.”

Marshall Breeding writes about OCLC’s latest initiative for Library Journal’s Academic Newswire in - In Challenge to ILS Industry, OCLC Extends WorldCat Local To Launch New Library System. The article explains the move to expand WorldCat Local’s existing features to include circulation, delivery, and acquisitions functionality. The new service would eventually enable library subscribers to use the system as they would a locally installed ILS.

“While OCLC will offer these services at some level of annual subscription cost, it would displace large expenditures that libraries make in hardware, software, and personnel for their current ILS infrastructure. OCLC’s general approach is consistent with an emerging current IT trend for business automation services offered through diffusely distributed Web-accessible computing environments.”

The American Library Association has published a 40-page report titled The State of America’s Libraries stating that “Library use increases dramatically as economy sags; funding declines”.

“A Harris Poll released in September revealed that 68 percent of Americans have a library card, an increase of 5 percent since 2006. In-person visits increased 10 percent in the same period, and 76 percent of Americans had visited their local public library in the year preceding the survey, compared with 66 percent two years ago. Online-visit data were even more remarkable: 41 percent of library card holders visited their library websites in the year before the poll, compared with 24 percent in 2006.”

Also see the press release and download the print version here.

via Stephen’s Lighthouse

The ACRL has published a new environmental scan of academic libraries in the wake of today’s economic challenges. This 8-page guide “considers three important drivers in the current environment and poses questions to stimulate conversations and action in your libraries and on your campuses.”

• Driver #1: The Economy and Higher Education
• Driver #2: Students
• Driver #3: Technology

via Stephen’s Lighthouse

The Library of Congress has gone public with their YouTube channel, presenting over 70 videos in the following playlists:

• 2008 National Book Festival author presentations
• Books and Beyond author series
• Journeys and Crossings (a series of curator discussions)
• “Westinghouse” industrial films from 1904
• Scholar discussions from the John W. Kluge Center
• The earliest movies made by Thomas Edison, including the first moving image ever made

From their press release:

“But this is just the beginning. We have made a conscious decision that we’re not just going to upload a bunch of videos and then walk away. As with our popular Flickr pilot project, we intend to keep uploading additional content. We’re modifying some of our work-flows in modest ways to make our content more useful and delivered across platforms with built-in audiences of millions.”

According to a recent press release, the Library of Congress will build on its recent success with the Flickr Commons pilot by sharing audio and video content from its collections via YouTube and Apple iTunes. Library of Congress channels on these services will launch over the next few weeks.

“New channels on the video and podcasting services will be devoted to Library content, including 100-year-old films from the Thomas Edison studio, book talks with contemporary authors, early industrial films from Westinghouse factories, first-person audio accounts of life in slavery, and inside looks into the Library’s fascinating holdings, including the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence and the contents of Lincoln’s pockets on the night of his assassination.”