Camping out.
Casey and Jessamyn graciously overlooked my post-high school reunion snoozing in the back seat yesterday afternoon on our way to Darien, CT for Library Camp East. After a delicious dinner and spirited company I turned in early to rest up for lots discussions today. Many thanks to the Darien Public Library for sponsoring us! Part of my interest is the format of an unconference, so I intend to live blog in nauseating detail and continue to update this post, so refresh regularly.
The tasty bits of the intoductions:
“I have a developer’s heart but I don’t have the skills.” (sorry, I missed your name.) - I’m surprised at the number of people here who say their interest is in implementation and remote services without a developer… You know what I’d say to that.
From the dependable Bisson, “How can libraries represent their unique communities online.” (or something like that - corrections welcome)
Big topics:
Only existing agenda is on Mash-ups and OPACs.
Techies vs. non-techies using language, jargon, usability
Metrics and benchmarking -> what users need -> buy-in
Practical application of web 2.0 tools
Vendors
2.0 free-for-all / politics (DOPA, example)
Patron education; teaching the public to use these tools
Mash-ups and Patron-oriented Development John Byberg
Facilitating patrons to create their own library-based tools. Application Program Interface [API] allow for more involvement from the community and get them developing their own applications and moving library resources and services away from the library website. By using these tools, the library becomes more omnipresent, it gets integrated with user everyday life. John’s example is patREST. This morhed into a discussion of why this is valuable and how that can be represented to library decision makers.
To me, this is all about liberating our content from both interface and the library-warehouse, gatekeepers attitude. We’re constantly screaming at our vendors to release our content to us, but we have to practice what we preach and turn around and share it out. Freeing up our content is our responsibility on behalf of our patrons; let them use it however they like.
Dan Chudnov: “People are information sluts… they are always going to jump around and we need a way to always bring them back.” He gave an impromptu presentation on openURL.
The thing I’m not sure I understand is why all this, mash-ups and openURL, has to be so darn complicated. I wonder if this is where we, as evangelist librarians are missing our target audience; committing the same crimes as our predecessors. To me, we simply need to make our urls permanent and bookmarkable so that our patrons can embed them in their existing networks.
The OPAC Discussion Casey Bisson, creator of wpOpac.
“When users are used to this, what do they think when they encounter this? … If we don’t get our content out to Google and other search tools, we are not fulfilling our mission… If you can’t copy the url and email it to someone it can’t be indexed.”
This echoes what I said above about bookmarkable urls - shareable resources.
Techies vs. Non-techies - how can we communicate?
First, the difference is about context - we may be techies relative to some and n00bs to others. Lots of discussion about the static and often toxic relationship between techies, too often bottom of the library food chain, and administration, too often completely unaware of technological advancements and tools.
The conversation leaves me with a feeling that it really really makes a difference in an organization, who initiates any new tools. In my experience online developments only work if they’re initiated by the people who are going to use it. So if it’s IM reference, the techie’s role is to introduce the tools and processes to the reference staff, but an implementation can only work if that staff initiates the service. As a techie, this is painfully slow - but I can’t see it work any other way.
