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What Can We Stop Doing by Merilee Profit in Hanging Together – This is fairly old, but is something I’ve wanted to blog about for a long time and have realized that it’s never going to happen. Unless you have an influx of new money and people, in order to undertake new initiatives, you have to give up something. I really loved the quote in it from the President of the Getty Museum “‘If no programs are allowed to ever die, in the end you become captive to decisions from the past… Every now and then . . . you’ve got to step back and say, ‘Certain things have been very successful, but we should sunset them now.’” I think that the unwillingness to stop doing things is largely behind the failure of a lot of Web 2.0 initiatives, as people simply aren’t given dedicated time to make them successful.

Introduction to Online Pedagogy – This is a self-paced course designed by the WISE Consortium (a consortium of library schools that teach online and allow students to take classes at the other universities — SJSU is a member). It’s designed to prepare LIS faculty to design and teach effective online courses. Useful for anyone designing online instruction.

Customizable Library Portal Pages by Aaron Tay in Musings about Librarianship – Again, not a brand-new blog post, but Aaron showcases some libraries that are WAY ahead of the curve in developing customizable library home pages. I strongly feel that this is the future of the library website — users should be able to design their own library website experience based on what they actually need/want to use. After talking with our Systems Librarian about this idea, he started playing with Drupal to see how he could create a customizable library homepage. He’s still in the very early stages, but it’s already looking promising. Thanks for the nudge, Aaron!

So You Want to do Anthropology at Your Library? or A Practical Guide to Ethnographic Research in Academic Libraries by Andrew Asher and Susan Miller. Asher and Miller were the anthropologists involved in the ERIAL ethnographic study conducted jointly by five Illinois universities. They created this amazing PDF guide for libraries (like mine) that want to undertake similar research. Such great practical advice in here!!!

Patron Driven eBook Acquisition: Crab Legs vs. Spinach by Eric Hellman at Go To Hellman – A thoughtful post about patron-driven electronic acquisition, a topic near and dear to my heart these days as we prepare to go live with eBook Library in a few weeks. The post also contains some really useful links at the end if you’re interested in the topic. As we are a teaching university and our focus is on building a collection out students and faculty WILL USE, I am looking forward to seeing how we can make patron-driven acquisition a larger part of our overall book purchasing.

Making the case for a fully mobile library web site: from floor maps to the catalog by Laurie Bridges, Hannah Gascho Rempel, and Kimberly Griggs in Reference Services Review. This issue of Reference Services Review is all about mobile library services (with lots of awesome, awesome, awesome articles!), so if you are interested in the topic, I’d highly suggest reading the whole shebang. This article from librarians at Oregon State is a perfect read if you are looking to make the case to the powers-that-be that you absolutely should be mobilizing your library website.

Does Where You Work Define Who You Are As An Academic Librarian by Steven Bell at ACRLog – while I actually liked the title and the comments more than the post itself (not that the post was bad by any stretch!), it asks a very interesting question: Does where you work define who you are as a librarian? My answer? YES!!! To me, it’s less about prestige and more about the size and structure of the library. I think where you work early in your career can have a tremendous impact on your career path and on your work personality. I have gotten so accustomed to working in a small place with a very risk-tolerant and change-oriented director where we can move quickly on just about any project, that when I was offered a position at a pretigious ARL library, I turned it down because I knew I’d be miserable dealing with bureaucracy and moving SO SLOWLY on things (not that all ARLs are like that, but I knew this particular position would have sapped my passion and energy). After working at a small place, I really like to wear a lot of hats and work on a lot of different projects. This place really does suit my personality, but I often wonder how different I would be had I first worked at a large ARL with a lot of bureaucracy and a tenure track for librarians. I’ve had so much FREEDOM and CHOICE here and now I feel spoiled by it.

e-texts and (library) accessibility by Char Booth at info-mational – accessibility is a topic that I think most librarians and educators would rather not think about because it ’s just another thing we have to assess when considering new technologies and services. But try to imagine the person who can’t watch your screencast, can’t use your Meebo widget, and can’t use the Kindle you’re lending out. I’d much rather make text transcripts of my video lectures than potentially marginalize one of my students. This thoughtful post provides great insight into accessible (an inaccessible) design in the digital world and I can’t wait to see the e-text usability/accessibility rubric for librarians that Lucy and Char are going to create. Char is truly a force of nature, churning out one useful article, book, guide (PDF), report, etc. at a dizzying pace. She totally inspires me!

On the other hand, there are companies that are only paying lip service to social media. They think that if they have an account on Twitter or Facebook it makes up for their crappy products or service. Some will delete Facebook wall posts from critics or won’t allow wall posts from customers at all. Many will only selectively respond to customer complaints on Twitter or will only respond to positive customer responses (to make it look as if people on Twitter are only saying glowing things about them). When they do respond to criticism or problems, it’s not in any way that leads to satisfaction. For these companies, Facebook and Twitter are simply window dressing, thinly disguising the closed, soulless, profit-centered corporate culture within.

I’ve been having major problems with the screencasting software Adobe Captivate. When I converted some instructional screencasts from Captivate 3 to 4, they looked fine on preview, but when I published them as an .avi file, the audio became unsynched 2/3 of the way through and got way behind the video (to the point where the audio was cut off at the end of the video). This happened with multiple videos in the exact same way. So, as Adobe suggests, I posted to their forums. That was on June 11th. To date, I have not received a response from anyone regarding my issue. I also submitted a bug report, since I couldn’t find any other way to email my issue to anyone. Never received a response to that either.

After waiting almost two weeks for a response, I tried to contact Adobe Support. First, I spent a significant amount of time trying to figure out how to contact support and actually considered creating a Captivate screencast on how horribly designed Adobe’s support site is (I ultimately decided that drinking a glass of wine would be a better use of my time). Finally, I called the only number I could find and discovered that none of the options matched with what I needed, so I tried to get an operator. I got put through to four different people, each of whom needed me to repeat my phone number, email address, Captivate serial number and what my issue is. Do you people have any sort of tracking system???? Finally, I get a Captivate support guy and I tell him what my issue is. He looks up my serial number and says that he can’t work with me unless I purchase a support plan. My response was “I have to pay you to fix a bug in your software?” His response was that it probably wasn’t a bug because he hadn’t heard many reports of anything like this and it might just be user error. My response “so there’s no way for me to get help for my issue?” His response was “not unless you get a support plan.” I was beyond livid. Basically they’re saying that 1) it’s probably my fault that it’s not working and 2) they won’t stand behind their product.

By now I’d now wasted at least 3-day’s-worth of my time, which cost way more than if I just gave in and bought their competitor product, Camtasia. I’d vented on Twitter about my experiences with Adobe and someone suggested that I contact @Adobe_Care on Twitter. My husband’s response to that was that “Adobe only cares about turning you upside down and shaking the money out of your pockets.” That person apparently let @Adobe_Care know that I was having issues and the next day I got a tweet from them asking if I still needed help. I let them know that I was told I couldn’t get support without purchasing a support plan. They told me they’d get someone to contact me the next day. Huh?

After telling them that I was available until 3:30 pm ET, someone from support called me at 4:00 pm (right as I was about to leave to pick my son up from daycare). They co-browsed with me and saw the issue I was having with Captivate. They had me send them the file and told me they’d work on it and get back to me. The support person was still rather unfriendly and impatient with me, but at least she listened.

Do I think they’re going to find a solution? Doubtful. But what really bothers me is the idea that I got special treatment because I complained about the company on Twitter. I go through the recommended support channels and am not only told I can’t get help but am insulted. Then I use Twitter and get treated like a human being (or as well as anyone can hope for when dealing with Adobe). So basically what they’re saying is that Twitter is the best way to get help with Adobe issues and if you’re not on Twitter basically you’re screwed. This creates a situation where the digerati — who are likely more savvy with software already — are given better service than the people who don’t use social media and probably need support the most.

Social media can put a human face on a company and help them build more direct relationships with their customers. Look at companies like Zappos and Newegg. But, too often, social media only gives a soulless corporation that doesn’t give a damn about the customer the opportunity to put up window dressing that makes them look like they actually care. And, sadly, some people don’t look beyond the window dressing.

Just because a company is on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. doesn’t mean they’re 2.0. It doesn’t mean they care. The real test of a company is how they treat the average customer, not how they treat the loud, whiny geek with the Twitter account (and by that, I mean me).

And yet, here I am, the owner of a Kindle. No, I didn’t have a total change of heart and buy one for myself. I actually won it in a raffle at a conference I was speaking at. Even if you don’t necessarily want to buy a Kindle, it’s pretty exciting to win one! From my hotel that evening, I registered my Kindle and downloaded a couple of books. I read stories from Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness on the way home the next day and found it to be a pretty good reading experience. It’s nothing like reading on a computer screen — no glare, no backlight. To my surprise, I actually found it to be just as pleasant as reading a print book. A few weeks later I read a 320-page book, Orange is the New Black, on the Kindle (by the pool, in the bathtub, and in bed) and, other than having to plug it in at night, I never thought about the fact that I was reading on an electronic device. The reading experience was just as absorbing. I even fell asleep reading on it! I’ve been pleasantly surprised by it and am actually reading more now that I have it than in the entire year since my son was born.

Knowing what I know now, would I have bought it? Probably not. I don’t travel enough (or read enough, with a toddler in the house) to make it really worthwhile. But there are other reasons why I think the Kindle, and eBook readers like it, are not where it’s at. First of all, while you can annotate a book, it’s extremely cumbersome on a Kindle. When I was in college, I highlighted and underlined the hell out of my books and wrote notes in the margins. When I thought about transferring my Immersion readings to the Kindle, I rejected the idea because I knew I’d want to write notes in the margins and underline important passages and it seemed like a hassle to do that on the Kindle and then refer back to those annotations at Immersion.

Most also don’t take advantage of one of the most exciting things that’s happened in computing in the past decade — the growth of the social web. In addition to easily annotating the things I read, I might want to see what annotations others have added to what I’m reading, if they choose to make them public. If I’m working on a group project, I certainly want to share my annotations with my team members. I want to make it easy for friends to see what I’m reading and what I thought about it and to see what people I trust thought about the book I’m considering downloading. I know the upcoming update to the Kindle firmware will have some social features, but it’s still a long way from what could be possible in the future. I can’t even imagine what reading online is going to look like in the future!

I’ll wait to spend my money on a device that offers all this and is more than just an eBook reader (go convergence devices!). The iPad still isn’t exactly what I want, and at that price it’s just not worth it for me (though I must say that I’ve had fun playing with other people’s iPads). I know so little about the market for eBook readers, but I feel like everything is really in its infancy, is so proprietary, and is so tied only to recreating the print reading experience rather than reimagining the reading experience. I definitely enjoy reading on my Kindle, but I’m much more interested in seeing what comes out in the next several years. I have a feeling it’s going to put what’s available right now to shame.

That’s why I find that some of the worst places for comments tend to be old-line media sites. In my opinion, the old-line media is really still stuck on the idea that it’s asymmetrical and that when people respond, it’s in the old “letters to the editor” sense. For a long time, they didn’t get and they still don’t get that instantaneous communication, if left unchecked or unmoderated, will quickly go down to a lowest common denominator of people yelling at each other. If you go to a newspaper site and look at the comments on any kind of article there, it’s usually toxic spew followed by toxic spew.

My experience with newspaper comments totally jives with Scalzi’s, but I think worse than not moderating comments is deleting comments in an effort to silence discussion on a specific topic. We had a big fire downtown on Memorial Day in a 100-year-old building. When I heard that the Mayor (who is also a prominent businessman) had recently bought the building, I jokingly said “must be arson!” Turns out, I was right. My local paper, the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus reported the story (and here) and, as always, had comments open on it. Discussions in the comments section of Times Argus articles tend to be very polarized and full of vitriol. I honestly don’t know why most of the people bother to comment at all, since it’s not like they’re dealing with reasonable individuals. Not surprisingly, a few people commented on the story and suggested that the Mayor had the building burned down. Others defended him.

All of a sudden, the comments disappeared and there was no space where people could post comments anymore. You could see on the front page that it was one of the most discussed stories, with 19 comments (the other had 17), but those comments had disappeared, replaced by nothing. No note explaining why they did it. The comments were just gone.

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I’ve seen some of the most horrible comments on this newspaper website. People blaming a mother whose three-year-old was hit by a car. People writing offensive things about gays and lesbians. People saying awful stuff about a teenager who’d just died in a car accident. None of those conversations were moderated in the least. In fact, I’ve never seen anything deleted from the comments. But now, instead of moderating a conversation about a fire that destroyed a local landmark, they simply make all of the comments (some completely innocuous) disappear. This is not how you treat your readers, especially your “super users” who probably visit the site many times each day. I can understand moderating comments that suggest that the mayor might have been involved in criminal dealings and lack any proof, but there were plenty of comments that suggested nothing of the kind. Also, if you get rid of any comments, you should be transparent about it — make it clear that you did it and (ideally) explain why. This isn’t moderation for the sake of creating a safe and welcoming community space (which should always be the primary purpose of moderation); this is censorship to stifle conversation about a topic they don’t want conversation on. I ends up looking like they have zero respect for their readers and that they’re simply paying lip service to social media. And I doubt that’s too far off from the reality.

This is a good lesson for anyone who runs an online community. Moderating comments is ok. In fact, it’s critical to moderate comments in order to create the sort of environment where everyone feels comfortable posting comments. But you want to be consistent. You don’t want to let offensive comments go on one post and then delete them from another. And you definitely want to keep comments open on everything, not just those things you’re comfortable having people discuss. When you do delete something, you want to explain why you did so — transparency is critical. While you might be the moderator, you’re not the boss. In fact, you exist to serve the community. You need to make participants feel like it’s their community; you need to show respect for them and keep the lines of communication open. Respect your users and they will respect the community. You might own the site and be paying for the server space, but if you treat it like it’s your community, you will never create the successful community you want.

This semester I got a lot of comments from students about their engagement level in this class versus other online classes they’ve taken. I thought I’d share some of them here for those who might be trying to figure out how the can better design their own online class/program:

“I wouldn’t have believed I could connect as well as I have with my online classmates as I did for this class… I feel that we all had the encouragement and opportunity to think critically and in depth about these technologies and their implementation in and ramifications for libraries.”

“The blog format feels less stilted than a traditional threaded conversation, and the comments list and the tweet list were wonderful additions that made the task of finding recent contributions very easy. ”

“Perhaps the most surprising thing about this class is how much of a personal feel it had. I felt familiar with everyone in a way that I don’t usually feel in online classes. A number of things contributed to this: subject matter, clear and organized Drupal classroom, engaged instructor, and awesome people who jumped right in to the discussions.”

“I loved using Drupal because it feels more personal, especially since everyone has a picture next to their posts. I felt like I was able to show more of my personality through and I feel closer to my classmates than I ever have in an Angel class. It’s closer to a real classroom experience, with the added bonus that we can all say as much as we want without running out of class time. I also thought it was really cool that a few people we mentioned in blogs dropped by our classroom site to see what was going on and to make comments. It felt like we were part of something bigger than just an ordinary class.”

“I have had a great time in this class, and I attribute a great deal of that to the interactive activity encouraged by the class blog, an active and engaged instructor, and the ability to learn from the experiences and insights of my classmates. Since I have been lucky enough to have had similar experiences in SLIS classes where we did use Angel or Blackboard, I’m a firm believer that it is not so much which technology the class uses, but how that techology is used, which makes for a good class experience.”

“It is amazing how just having an image attached to someone’s words makes them more identifiable and fosters a feeling of connectedness that I find mostly lost on Angel. The blog format makes it so easy to follow specific class members and review new posts in threads.”

“Holding class with Drupal instead of Angel had the feel of getting out of the classroom, like holding class out on the lawn during nice weather. It gave posting a little more of an informal feel… I think the biggest difference was the use of avatars. I think it’s easier to associate a poster’s voice with an avatar picture than with just a name. I found that I got to know the voices of more of my classmates and know them faster in this class than in my class that used Angel.”

“Our instructor was more involved in class discussions than any I have had so far. My classmates were more engaged, and everyone’s writing was thoughtful and thought-provoking. I loved the resource-sharing requirement, because I got just as much from that (our “hive mind”) as from our assigned readings. And, of course, the “classroom” itself was very well-designed. I think the designers of learning management systems like ANGEL and Blackboard could really learn a lot from instructors designing their own class sites on platforms like Drupal.”

“Drupal rocks, if every teacher used Drupal the program would be 1000X better. First and foremost I felt like I actually had an idea of who my classmates where. Second the blog format was a lot easy to track than the pain of Angel. Also the class material was organized really well, though that might be more Meredith than Drupal.”

It’s really flattering to hear that students got a lot out of the class, but also troubling that they’ve have had such lukewarm experiences in other online classes. So many stated that they’d never had the level of interaction with their peers or with their professor in other classes. That makes me sad, because I’d had the same experience myself in library school (with one class being the exception), and my main impetus for teaching was to design the sort of course I’d have wanted to take. I don’t feel like what I’ve done as an instructor was particularly extraordinary, and while I did probably do more work on the front-end to create the Drupal classroom and organize the content, I feel like this is something most people could replicate (even in some traditional course management systems). It’s not just about the technology. It’s about organizing the classroom in a way that’s inviting for students, where content is easy to find, and where conversations are easy to follow. It’s also about taking a constructivist approach to learning — playing the role of facilitator and supporter in the classroom rather than the sage on the stage. It’s about taking part in online conversations; not as “the authority,” but as a fellow learner. It’s about providing real constructive comments on students’ work in order to help them do better next time. It’s about having a passion for the subject matter and trying to instill that same passion in your students. It’s about making students feel like they’re part of a professional dialogue through reading current literature and taking part in conversations going on in the profession right now. Yes, it’s more work to make all this happen, but that’s our job. If we aren’t making students excited about being a part of the profession, we shouldn’t be teaching.

It’s frustrating to know that the tools and teaching techniques are out there to make the online education experience a positive one for students and so many faculty simply aren’t taking advantage. I know some faculty feel too busy to learn new tech or rethink how they teach and others just aren’t that tech-savvy. Still, I think a lot of faculty have simply come to accept that distance learning can’t come close to providing the sort of engagement and interaction you find in many face to face classes. One of my students put it so well in a comment:

It seems like the root of the problem lies not in the technology (ANGEL isn’t that great, but can still be used effectively) but in the assumption (however subconscious) that the online classroom is somehow subpar in comparison to face-to-face learning. And because of that, sometimes instructors and students bring less to the table, just assuming from the beginning that it can’t be as engaging. It’s just not true! This class was among the best classes I’ve taken, both on- and offline, so obviously online classes can be engaging and successful. It’s just a matter of understanding not only the limitations but also the opportunities.

I completely agree with his sentiment. It’s quite possible to make an online course an amazing experience, but too many faculty simply try to create an online version of a physical class. And what they usually end up with is a sterile, boring environment because they’re not taking advantage of what online tools can offer that you can’t get in a face-to-face environment. It reminds me of eBooks. The eBook market has been so focused on putting print books online and creating a good reading experience. When I first saw interactive books on the iPad I thought, this is what it’s all about. It’s just not about recreating the reading experience online, but about taking advantage of what’s possible in the online medium (interactivity, social reading and commenting, etc.) and transforming the reading experience. Reading an eBook is not going to be the same as reading a physical book, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a great experience. The same goes for online learning. We need to stop trying to recreate the face-to-face classroom and start rethinking what the learning experience should be like online. What would online learning look like if there never was face-to-face learning?

I know there are a lot of educators out there who are doing amazing things online, and it gives me hope. But there are too many instructors who aren’t willing to put in the time and effort necessary to do anything more than put their content and expertise into their classroom. Distance learning is not just a fad or something for a small portion of the population who can’t or won’t attend face-to-face classes. This is a major trend in education and the number of people taking advantage of online learning is growing exponentially. We absolutely need to be putting time, money and effort towards rethinking education in an online context and building our courses based on best practices for teaching online. Doing anything less is an insult to your students and a disservice to the profession, since we should be doing everything we can to help develop passionate and engaged librarians.

Ok, I’ll get off my soapbox now.

I try to never miss a talk that Rebecca Jones gives, and, as usual, I was not disappointed by the talk that she and Deb Wallace of Harvard Business School’s Baker Library gave on Critical Thinking: Getting to the Right Decision. Rebecca started with the seemingly obvious point that if you’re not willing or ready to change, don’t bother doing strategic planning. While I’d like to believe this is obvious, I know of libraries that have done strategic planning with no intention of changing in any meaningful way. Rebecca stated that critical thinking is not about being critical; it’s about decision-making. You have to challenge base assumptions. When people have to make decisions, they tend to do one of two things – they oversimplify the issue or they get overwhelmed by the decision and are like a deer in the headlights. To employ critical thinking, people must demonstrate clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, use sound evidence, have good reasons behind our decisions, be fair, and open-minded.

We need to be clear on the fact that when we are challenging assumptions we are challenging a situation, not people, but people may feel challenged by it. When making decisions, we need to look at our assumptions and how our views of things are colored by time/perspective/others. We need to look at statistics and trends with clarity and try to think about what they’re really telling us, rather than looking at them through the colored lens we usually employ to examine such things. I really like what Rebecca said about sunk costs and how people often stick with something that’s not working because they already invested so much in it. “When you find yourself in a hole, the worst thing you could do is keep digging.”

Deb works at the Baker Library of Harvard Business School, which is an iconic structure, but they’re trying hard not to be identified only as a building. They have an important role in educating leaders who make a difference in the world. Over the past few years, they have worked hard to connect all staff to the bigger picture of the library and how it can move forward, which was difficult with some staff who had rote tasks and were not really in the habit of thinking that way. They wanted people to look at the library with new eyes and ask themselves if they’re anchored in stuff that was done a specific way 35 years ago. When you erase the status quo, people actually have to exercise judgment, which can be scary for some.

Deb said a lot of profound things, but there was one thing that really stuck with me as the Head of Instruction. She talked about making clear the distinct capabilities we bring to the table that the faculty don’t have. The different roles should be clear to avoid butting heads when we collaborate. This has been a big issue at our library as we try to ensure that every freshman gets basic information literacy instruction. While we’d like to standardize this and do it through the library, some English faculty are really against this, arguing that it’s their role to teach information literacy (though some don’t do it or at least don’t do it well). So I’m really struggling to define what we offer that’s unique in this realm, when faculty can (and in some cases do) teach information literacy as well.

In the afternoon, I gave a talk with Joan Petit on Virtual Learning & Training: From Classrooms to Communities. I talked about how I use Drupal for my online class in SJSU’s SLIS program to make class more engaging, encourage reflective learning, and create a more constructivist learning environment. Joan talked about how she used blogs in a face-to-face information literacy class to extend learning and make the class more engaging. Joan was a last minute addition to the lineup as my original co-presenter realized on Friday that she couldn’t make it to the conference. In light of that, it was even more amazing what a great job she did. It was such an interesting session and we got a lot of good questions from the attendees. My slides are below and links to my classes also can be found on my presentation wiki.

I was so energized by the ladies from UNC Greensboro (Beth Filar Williams, Lynda Kellam, Amy Harris, Hannah Winkler) who presented on Instructional Technology: It’s a Team Thing (a much more detailed blog post on this session can be found on Heather Braum’s blog). Before the four women came together, instructional technologies at the library were not used systematically, and it was dependent on the individual instructor. One of them was tasked by her supervisor with trying to standardize the use of instructional tech to a greater extent. To that end, she asked interested members of the library staff to meet with her about instructional tech, and from that group, she assembled a team of four librarians to be the instructional technology team. They each have different skills/strengths and really complement each other. They brainstormed ideas for tech to implement, and broke them down into high impact/low effort, high effort/high impact, etc. to figure out what would net the most impact with the least effort. Those were the things they decided to try first. I was really impressed by how organized their meetings were, with very detailed agendas (with what/who, details, and time allotted for each topic). It’s something we really don’t do at my library and as a result, we often end up with overlong rambly meetings that veer off on various tangents. At the meetings I run, I think I’m going to start organizing meetings the way they do.

In April 2009, UNCG had a big budget freeze and had no money for anything, so they had to reprioritize what they wanted to do. They created tutorials, an assignment calculator, and several other things that they could do for free. Later on, when they had money, they could get things like clickers and a video camera and boom mic. These are all things I’d really like for my library too. The women also started a team blog to communicate amongst themselves and with the other staff members about what they’re working on.

In addition to their internal group, they also started an instructional technology group with librarians from other local academic institutions. This is something I’d really like to do in Vermont (or at least central VT). It’s so easy to develop tunnel vision or groupthink when you’re talking to the same people everyday. It’s really nice to get out of your little box and talk to other librarians on a semi-regular basis.

Stay tuned for Day 3!

I did not take my computer with me to sessions and did not use my iPhone to Tweet much. I instead took a notepad and pen and wrote down things that I found particularly interesting. My notes are not a play-by-play, but are the things I got out of the conference or the thoughts I had about a session that really meant something to me. I’m happy I was less connected during the sessions, since I feel like people can get really distracted when they’re tweeting and following tweets. I wanted to get as much out of this conference as I could, especially since I’m not traveling as much as I used to. It’s funny how most people have become more and more connected to social technologies at conferences and I am trying to be less connected. I wasn’t sure how it would go, but I think I found a perfect balance for me at conferences.

Like all ITI conferences, Computers in Libraries started with Lee Rainie’s keynote where he shared lots of statistics on how people use the Web today. While I love the work that Lee Rainie and the Pew Internet and American Life Project do, I have become a little cynical about the statistics he offers us in his keynotes, because I think a lot of librarians use statistics like these and from other think-tanks and organizations in place of actual research on their own user population. That’s great that so many people are using social tech, but how many of those people are library users? And how many of them are MY library users? Every library really needs to determine the technology use and behaviors of their own patrons, because your patron population is unique, and assuming that what is the case in one place is the case in your community is a huge mistake.

One thing I really enjoyed in Rainie’s keynote was the story he told about a vodcast created by a teenager and her mother where they discussed reality shows they watched together. It ended up becoming a very successful video series, with thousands of subscribers and even more people watching individual videos. The teenage girl ended up using the video to get accepted to a prestigious media studies program at NYU. I love examples like this, because they illustrate how people can build a brand online (while having fun!) that can help them to further their career. Rainie called it “building reputational capital” and this is truly an important currency these days.

I went to Chad Mairn’s talk on Information Fluency Strategies and Practices and got a lot of little insights and some technology ideas I’d not thought of before. I totally agree with him that students will not learn something well unless you have them do it yourself (rather than just demonstrating it to them). I had not heard before of TRAILS (Tool for Real-Time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills), which is an assessment for 9th grade students, but apparently also works well for college Freshman. I also loved the activity that he did where he had students use Diigo to bookmark articles and then highlight and annotate parts of the article to determine the main ideas of the article. The ability to distill meaning from an article/book/website is a critical information literacy skill that is too often ignored in IL instruction.

Chad also creates course pages in Facebook and uses static FBML to customize them. I really like this idea. He also uses an app called Vivox in Facebook to actually have audio conferencing with his students. I wonder if any other librarians are using Facebook for course-specific (or even program-specific) outreach. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to creating a Facebook page for myself as liaison to the social sciences, so this is something I’m really interested in.

Chad also suggests that instructors can use Yuuguu or LogMeIn Express to have students demo things through screensharing/screen control, or the librarian can take control of a student’s screen to demonstrate something. This would be fantastic when working with distance learners, but it could also be useful in the class to get students to demonstrate something you just showed them how to do from their own computer.

Next, I gave a talk on Achieving Organization 2.0. It had been almost a year since I’d given a talk in person, and I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed speaking in front of an audience and engaging in discussions. This talk focused on why so many Web 2.0 initiatives at libraries fail and how libraries can be better structured and can operate better to effectively implement 2.0 tools and services. My slides are available below, with slides and links available on my presentation wiki.

I didn’t take great notes on the Developing Specific Fluencies: Case Studies talk I went to, but one of the data librarians there who had spoken about training CRS librarians on GIS said this, which stuck with me, “we don’t teach the tool, we only teach the task.” This is a very simple statement, but one that every teacher and trainer should keep in the forefront of their minds. We get so stuck on teaching specific databases or specific technologies, when that’s not what our users actually want. What they want is to be able to find an article or do some specific task. We need to focus in teaching on giving students/patrons/staff what they need to do the things they want to do, not what we think they should know.

A lot of the stuff discussed in the session on Innovative Applications of Federated Search Technology went over my head, but I really enjoyed Ken Varnum’s discussion of how he “made the wait [in federated search] worthwhile” for students. Ken is the Web Systems Manager at University of Michigan and also won the Deep Web contest that asked applicants to describe the best idea for federated search they could imagine (he even got an oversized check – I’ve always wanted one of those!). Ken described how at University of Michigan they developed a system for customizing the results shown to students when they do a search based on their academic level and major. The University has all sorts of data on what courses a student has taken, and this can be capitalized on by the library’s systems. The subject liaisons selected specific databases or journal sets to be searched based on a user’s major and level (lower-level undergrad, upper-level, etc.). So when a student does a search, the system will figure out what subset of the library’s online collections to search based on the courses the user has taken. I think they also do some personalization based on search history as well, but that was a little less clearly described IMHO. I was totally blown away by this idea, though.

Libraries are really bad at capitalizing on user data – search history, courses taken, borrowing history, etc. – because we’re so obsessed with privacy. But we’re at a point where it would not be so difficult to protect the privacy of our users while still using individual data to make our systems more intelligent.

More to come with Day 2!

For the way I like to get information, life was a lot easier before Twitter came on the scene. For the most part, the Web was asynchronous. I could visit blogs any time I wanted, read the content, and comment on posts. Especially with RSS, once I was subscribed to a blog, I would never miss any content coming from it. I would never miss a good conversation and I could do it in my own time-frame. With the growth of the real-time web, this has changed. It’s so easy to miss an important conversation or a useful link. With Twitter, the conversation is going on 24X7, and if you’re following more than a very small number of people, you can’t easily go back and see what you missed while you were busy doing other things. While I do know people who seem to spend endless hours on Twitter and/or FriendFeed, most of us just try to jump into the conversation (or the stream) when we can and have to accept that there will be things we’ll miss.

Twitter (and FriendFeed, and other microblogging and lifestreaming apps) has been an amazing boon to those looking for connection and conversation. Now, the playing field is so much more level. You don’t have to have your own blog or write long-form posts to make a name for yourself and become a part of a community. You can just follow people, start a conversation with them. I’ve become friendly with people I’ve never met in real life, but connected with online because we had something in common (babies, libraries, etc.). Maybe they commented on some of my tweets/posts or I on theirs, but over time, through those comments and back-and-forths you build connection. You build community. I know people who have created proposals for conference presentations with people they don’t even know in real-life through Twitter. And it’s very different than the blogosphere where each person had their own “home” that they controlled. Even when people can comment on your blog, you own the conversation because it’s your blog, your destination. While I do like having my own space too, I think there is a powerful draw to these real-time web spaces where everyone is welcome and anyone can jump into the conversation.

Many of my students commented — during the week they were required to use Twitter — that they were pleasantly surprised that Twitter was a lot more useful than they thought it would be. Some students had already used it before, and found additional professional uses for it through the week’s activities. Some students who had never tried it before are still using Twitter over a month later. Others tried it and realized that other social networks (mainly Facebook) were a better fit for them. It’s certainly not for everyone, but a lot of my students were pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t just all about what people are eating for lunch that day.

I know I’ve had moments where I’ve hated Twitter and found it pointless and frivolous and there is certainly a lot going on in Twitter that is less than useful. However, even beyond the personal and professional networking and community-building that goes on in these spaces, Twitter has a lot of utility for those who use it. Here are just a few ways that Twitter can be practically useful:

1. It’s great for querying the hive. When I was looking for examples of Facebook pages to share with my class, I asked people on FriendFeed, Facebook and Twitter what Facebook pages they like the best. And I got a lot of great responses from people I knew and people I don’t who follow me in those spaces. I’ve gotten feedback on websites and tutorials I’ve created on Twitter as well.

2. It can be great for sharing knowledge. It’s so easy to post a useful link, tell people about a tool you used that you really liked, etc. in Twitter, and for other people to amplify those messages they find useful through Retweeting them (RT).

I use TweetDeck (an external Twitter client) to manage the people and organizations I follow, and I’ve separated them into the various subject areas I’m interested in keeping up with. I have a feed of library and tech-related people who share useful content, a feed of parenting-related stuff (shopping deals and safety info mainly), and I have a feed for Vermont-related info from news sources, people, and local stores I frequent. So many of the librarians I follow share useful blog posts, articles and studies that I’d probably have never discovered otherwise. One parenting Twitter feed shared with me the fact that several babies had died using a product we had for our son. It’s more than just hearing what people had for lunch or how cool the library is; it’s actually about getting useful news and resources.

While it’s a great medium for sharing knowldge, it’s not great for storing knowledge, since Twitter wasn’t really designed for doing anything with Tweets other than favoriting them (which isn’t exactly an effective way to store thousands of useful ideas you may want to save). Some sites and applications have been developed to help with this, but tweets are still so much more ephemeral than blog posts, which, as a librarian (and in light of some historic events that have unfolded on Twitter) concerns me.

3. It can be great for conferences. When you’re at a big conference, it can be difficult to find people and figure out which are the best sessions to attend. With Twitter, you could be walking around and hear about people who share your interests who are at a session that you realize would be perfect for you to attend. Or you could be in a session, tweet that you’re looking for people to go to lunch with, and have plans by the time you get out of that session.

On the flip side, this makes me worry about Twitter taking our attention away from the sessions and important learning going on at a conference. I think sometimes it does, and it can do worse, creating a distracting and hostile environment for speakers, as you can see in the case of danah boyd’s speech at the Web 2.0 Expo. I’ll be attending Computers in Libraries in just a few days, and I do not plan to use Twitter much, even if it makes me more “out-of-the-loop.” I’d rather be out-of-the-loop and get more out of the sessions I’m attending.

4. It can be a great advocacy tool. Libraries and non-profits are using Twitter to promote their services and get the word out about projects they’re working on, current needs, and the news on issues related to their cause. And people who support them can amplify their messages through retweets. It’s also a great way to join conversations happening among their community of users.

I think it takes time to figure out how best to manage the flow of information from Twitter and how many people you can realistically follow. Before Twitter Lists came out (which I haven’t really used) TweetDeck was a godsend for helping me to manage the stream of information. I could separate the people I follow by the reasons I follow them and also made a list of favorite people (most of whom I’m friends with) which is the list I keep track of the most.

I think how you feel about Twitter is all in how you approach it. I think some people still don’t like it because they feel like they’re always missing something. If you see it as something you can easily pop in and out of (as interest and time allow) without missing a beat, it’s a great platform. It took me a while to realize that it didn’t matter if I missed a big conversation, argument, useful link or clever quip — if it’s important enough, someone will retweet it or blog about it and I’ll see it at some point (can I just tell you how much I love Bobbi Newman’s weekly Top 10 Links on her blog? Awesomely useful!). For people who approach Twitter as I do now, it can be a great tool for learning that requires so little of you and allows you to be as social (or unsocial) as you want at your convenience. It’s an always-on social gathering that you can enter and leave at will. And while it messed with my Type-A personality for a while, I’m now getting a lot out of Twitter.

I made a lot of changes to the topics covered in the class in light of how much Web 2.0 technologies have changed. I’d originally wanted to teach a class on online communities, but I couldn’t find enough good readings (or a textbook) for an entire course (now that Nancy White, et al.’s new book on Digital Habitats is out, it might be easier to do). I decided instead to focus more on online community-building in the course and am spending two weeks on it. I’m also having three guest speakers who run online communities: Frances Roehm of Skokie Net, Jessamyn West of MetaFilter, and my hubby, Adam Farkas, of ODwire. I know there are a lot of other topics I could have covered (cloud computing, mobile technologies, mashups, etc.), but I’m pretty happy with this semester’s lineup and I look forward to read my students reflections and discussions on these topics.

A while back, I’d asked folks on Twitter/FriendFeed/Facebook for suggestions of good Facebook pages to use as examples in my class. I thought I’d share those in case others are interested. You can find the list here. I don’t know that they’re the best Facebook pages, but I think they will give students some interesting food for thought.

As always in my classes, people from outside the class can register in the classroom and post comments on mine and my students’ posts. So feel free to subscribe to our RSS feed and/or join the conversation!

I started corresponding with the creator of Following Featherbottom and he let me know about another project he just started that I thought might be of interest to librarians and user-generated content fans. It’s called Project OpenBook and its goal is to develop a community-generated book of poetry to sell for charity. People can contribute poetry or artwork and/or can rate the poems that others have contributed to help decide what goes into the book and what does not. Proceeds from the book will go to Room to Read to save a child in Nepal from slavery and pay for her education.

Please consider supporting Project OpenBook. Contribute a poem or artwork, rate a poem, donate to the cause, or buy the finished book when it’s out! I think it’s a really cool idea to get people involved in creating something special for children that will benefit a disadvantaged child tremendously.