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Thursday, March 1st, 2012
After looking at Gartner’s Top 10 Strategic Technologies predictions for the past couple of years, I wondered what librarians thought were going to be significant technologies for our field over the next 2-5 years. So I created a poll! Please choose as many as you think are relevant:
Tuesday, February 21st, 2012
Charles Hamaker, Associate University Librarian for Collections and Technical Services at Atkins Library, University of North Carolina–Charlotte writes for Searcher Magazine about Ebooks on Fire: Controversies Surrounding Ebooks in Libraries. This is a thought-provoking article on the pressing issue of e-books in the library realm:
“Ubiquitous web and print ads tell individuals and libraries to “buy” ebooks. But long-term preservation and retention rights to stable content are not the norm, because many resellers and vendors don’t possess those rights from the publisher or author. Instead of true ownership, most ebook “purchases” are more like leases, and leases with few residual rights at that. The only way to assure continuing access and storage for an ebook is a permanent download to a device with rights not governed by strict DRM (Digital Rights Management) systems. With content delivered from a hosted service on the web (aka the cloud), the “purchaser” has no control over the content. Even Google Books bears the disclaimer:
[I]f Google or the applicable copyright holder loses the rights to provide you any Digital Content, Google will cease serving such Digital Content to you and you may lose the ability to use such Digital Content.”
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
It’s Social Media Week here in NYC and I’ve been lucky enough to attend several sessions that are a part of this cutting-edge conference. On Monday the New York Public Library hosted a session titled Making Collections Possible Through Collaboration during which they discussed 3 exciting digital projects undertaken by NYPL Labs, each involving collaboration with users.
GIF made with the NYPL Labs Stereogranimator
The NYPL’s Stereogranimator lets users create and share animated GIFs and 3D anaglyphs using more than 40,000 stereographs. Users can browse through the NYPL’s collection of dual photos and then combine them to make a 3D image. This project was inspired by Joshua Heineman’s project that he started four years ago. The San Francisco-based artist was using the NYPL’s collection of stereographs to create animated gif images for his Cursive Buildings site. His project went viral and the Library took notice and began collaborating with him to create the Stereogranimator.
The NYPL’s menu collection includes over 40,000 menus dating from the 1840s to the present. In order to be able to search the menus by dish, price, etc., they are transcribing the menus, dish by dish with the help of their users. The What’s on the Menu project has had over 782,059 dishes transcribed from 12,426 menus. Users can share menus via Facebook, Twitter, and other popular social media website. All of the data is openly available in zipped format for export, and the NYPL plans an API for release shortly. They are considering incorporating their historic playbill collection, and plan on mashing this application up with their Map Warper.
The NYPL’s Map Warper is an application for digitally aligning (“rectifying”) historical maps from their collections with today’s maps to create a brand new version. This allows for comparative, spatial history. Users can view the maps which have been rectified or warped already, or they can help the NYPL align other maps. The NYPL map collection consists of over 433,000 maps and 24,000 books and atlases. They have been digitizing this collection over the past 12 years and have digitized 15,000 maps, 10,000 of which are NYC maps. They will be making the software package openly available for other libraries to use. To date, they have 1600 collaborators who are helping rectify maps on NYPL’s site.
Saturday, February 11th, 2012
Bobbi Newman at Librarian by Day offers advice about How to Talk to Your Patrons About Penguin & Other Publishers Not Loaning eBooks to Libraries. This helpful post provides a suggested script for discussing ebooks with patrons, contact info for publishers, and plenty of resources on the topic.
Friday, February 10th, 2012
This post is a follow-up to an earlier post titled 5 Ways to Use Pinterest in Your Library. Since it was so popular I decided to continue with 5 more suggestions for using this hot new social site for your library.
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Since Pinterest supports sharing YouTube videos, the library could create boards highlighting tutorials, webcasts, and instructional videos for researching different subject areas, using specialized databases, or navigating the library website.
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Are you trying to spread the word about your new e-books program? Create a Pinterest board highlighting new and popular e-books. You can even specify which devices each e-book is compatible with and pin video tutorials for uploading to patrons’ eReaders.
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Create a Pinterest board with an annotated photo tour of your library. Show off your new renovation, computer lab, or children’s area through pins. If you’re feeling adventurous, download the mobile app and take the photos with your iPhone and add location information to them.
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Use Pinterest to let patrons know about exciting upcoming events, workshops, and classes at your library. You might even create boards with photos of past events as well.
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The visual display of Pinterest’s boards offers an excellent opportunity for libraries to showcase their special collections. Create boards of interesting manuscripts, exhibits, and image collections.
Bonus Suggestion:
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Pinterest can be used to save ideas for later use, like other social bookmarking applications. Create a space where librarians can pin fun and interesting ideas for library programs, events, and services.
Wednesday, February 8th, 2012
Kim Westad at the Times Colonist reports that Publishers Put the Squeeze on Library eBook Lending. This excellent article discusses the current state of e-books and libraries in Canada and provides a great list of 13 websites for free e-books. Here’s a short sample:
“In the Greater Victoria Public Library system alone, there has been an eightfold increase in the use of ebooks. In 2010, total ebook circulation at the GVPL’s 10 libraries was 3,699. That jumped to 29,741 in 2011. And that interest isn’t expected to dwindle…
…library users can’t download Steve Jobs’s biography. It’s published by Simon and Schuster, and they will not sell ebooks to libraries. You can download the Stieg Larsson trilogy at the library, but not the new Stephen King – different publishers, different rules.
Five of the titles on last week’s Globe and Mail fiction bestseller list were not available in ebooks, although they are in print. They are published by companies that are still struggling to find a way to deal with a way to sell ebooks to libraries.”
Friday, February 3rd, 2012
In her latest “Technology in Practice” column titled Providing the Tools, Meredith Farkas writes about “bringing digital creation technologies to libraries”. I love the idea of libraries providing patrons with access to expensive video editing software like Final Cut Pro. Not only would this enable people to be creative and produce videos, but this is a valuable skill to have for people who are in the job market!! Here’s the first paragraph of the article, be sure and click in for more.
“In the 1990s, libraries were pioneers in providing access to the internet in their communities. Even today, libraries are the only place some community members can get online. Over the past few years, libraries have begun positioning themselves as the go-to place for digital creation technologies, providing hardware and software that most people wouldn’t have at home. By providing these creative tools to their patrons, libraries fill a valuable niche in the community, a niche consistent with their historical commitment to bridging gaps in technology access.”
Tuesday, January 31st, 2012
I attended the LegalTech conference yesterday here in NYC and went to this inspirational panel sponsored by ILTA. David Neeson, CIO at Greenberg Glusker Fields Claman & Machtinger, LLP kicked off the session with some eye opening stats such as:
-There were 25 million iPads sold by June 2011
- the iPad holds 83% of the tablet market
His 80 attorney firm just finished an iPad rollout to all their associates. He shared that while he thinks that the iPad is an outstanding device for the consumption of information, it’s not so outstanding for the production of it. These are some areas where he thinks the iPads really shine:
Reading and Reviewing – great for reading deposition transcripts, reading ebooks, using GoodReader for reading documents.
Notetaking - iPads are excellent for typing notes, using Evernote, Draftpad, Notability, and OneNote. They’re also great when you need a handwritten signature for a pdf.
Research - the iPad is great for conducting searches on Fastcase, researching on Lexis and West apps.
Presentations - while not as strong in this area, iPads can be used to create presentations using Keynote and TrialPad.
The challenges for IT that Neeson identified have to do with device management and what happens when the user takes the iPad home and syncs it with their desktop’s iTunes. Also, app deployment, the update process, and deploying them en masse have all been challenges for his team. However, he mentioned that there are third-party utilities available for mobile device management which can help with deployment and configuration, policy enforcement, app management, remote control, tracking lost devices, and selective wipes of devices.
Brett Burney of Burney Consultants spoke about his recommended list of iPad apps, many of which I can’t wait to try out. These are the apps he suggests:
Monday, January 23rd, 2012
Carrie Russell writes for American Libraries about Threats to Digital Lending. This is a great article about e-books, licensing, and ownership.
“When the Kansas Digital Library Consortium’s contract with digital-content distributor OverDrive was up for renewal last year, two issues made Kansas State Librarian Joanne Budler decide it was time to move on and transfer the ebook titles to another vendor who could offer a better deal. First, OverDrive planned to raise license fees by almost 700% by 2014. But even more disturbing was a change to the contract that would have changed the consortium’s ownership of the ebooks to a subscription.”
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012
Pinterest is a digital pinboard application which started just last year but has quickly become one of the top 10 most trafficked social networking websites according to Hitwise. During the second week in December the website had over 11 million visitors. This is pretty impressive considering that the site is still in the invite-only stage.
Pinterest’s inspiration boards have a lot of potential for libraries and other organizations for creating visual displays of resources and services. All of Pinterest’s boards and posts can be shared on Facebook and Twitter. Here are some ideas for how you can make the most of this popular social network for your library:
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Pinterest is a great visual tool which can help you draw in your readers, so why not set up boards of book covers to engage your patrons. Create separate boards for different book categories such as: fiction, non-fiction, young adult fiction, science fiction, horror, travel, most popular, recommended, etc.
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Use Pinterest’s photo boards to spotlight your friendly and helpful library staff. Make your librarians more approachable by putting up a picture of them helping patrons in the library along with a brief bio about them.
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If you’ve got an upcoming author talk you might create a pinboard with information about that author such as the author’s book cover(s), photos of the author, links to interviews, biographical information. Or you may just have a “What’s New” or “Events” page onto which you pin their book cover.
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A great social feature of Pinterest is the ability to allow others to contribute to your boards. I can think of a million boards you may want to ask patrons to contribute to such as; photos of patrons in your library, covers of their favorite books, book covers of titles they recommend – or would like you to purchase, etc.
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Encourage patrons to create their own boards for summer reading programs, pins of books they want to check out, research or homework topics, etc. Have them each “follow” the library’s Pinterest profile in order to enter and award the best board a prize.
Additional Resources
Sunday, January 15th, 2012
Andrea Fleck-Nisbet gives A Publisher’s Perspective on Ebooks in the latest issue of American Libraries. This is an insightful look at the digital revolution from the viewpoint of the publishing business.
“Although the possibilities for producing interactive ebooks and apps are now seemingly endless, resources for most publishers are limited and the market has been slow to keep pace with our enthusiasm for creating these new products. One of our biggest challenges today is deciding where to focus our time and energy as the digital landscape evolves and the consumer’s needs change. At Workman Publishing, we have always made it a priority to produce high-quality book content at retail prices that are friendly to readers. We must now figure out how to remain true to that mission while broadening our scope from creators of books to creators of content in multiple formats. This issue is only exacerbated from an operational perspective by constantly changing file formats and metadata specs, all of which need to be customized to some degree for each vendor.”
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012
I have just finished reading Sue Polanka’s extremely helpful No Shelf Required Guide to E-Book Purchasing. This timely Library Technology Report outlines the various ways to purchase e-books including directly from publishers, through aggregators, and buying through consortia. I was thrilled to see a whole chapter on open access e-books written by E.S. Hellman. If you’re going to be proposing an e-book initiative in your library you’ll want to check out this issue.
Chapters include:
Wednesday, December 28th, 2011
2011 was quite a year here at iLibrarian! As usual, it’s been a great experience. I’ve been taking a look back at what was particularly popular in terms of posts this past year and I’ve rounded up the top 30 which were the most well-received. I’d love to hear suggestions for future content you’d like to see here at iLibrarian, and I also welcome guest posts! So please go ahead and leave some suggestions in the comments section.