On April 4, I attended The Yale Internet and Society Project's Library 2.0 Symposium. (Side note: it was ridiculously exciting, as a recent escapee from south Florida, to go to an event in another state and be able to drive there in less than six hours.)

Aside from transcription, formatting, and adding some links, these notes are presented as I took them - i.e., uncleaned up, sometimes random or unclear, and I've probably gotten a few things wrong or otherwise misrepresented them. My personal comments and observations are in brackets.

It was quite a good conference overall, but I felt some professional frustration in that the presenters with the more traditional library careers tended to be the ones who felt least current and relevant to me, while the non- (and wannabe) librarians seemed to "get it" much more--that fear of technology is so old hat it doesn't need to be restated in detail, that we need to embrace change, stand up for ourselves and our institutions, and get involved in our communities. There were definitely some exceptions, but that was my general impression.

Welcome

Conference materials will appear on these websites:

• http://isp.law.yale.edu
• http://yaleispblog.net
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/37029140@N05/
• hashtag: #lib20
• Videos will be posted after the conference

Since it’s a digital conference, they created a video to open the day in lieu of formal opening remarks:

Panel 1

Josh Greenberg, Director of Digital Strategy and Scholarship, New York Public Library

• How do we digitize librarians and their experiences?
• Example of Jessica Pigza’s craft blog – started virally with no public link, worked with Design Sponge. Craft book exhibit eventually brought 400 ppl to NYPL exhibit, Flickr group created.
• Important themes: IP, changing role of libs, third-party sites
• Red tape involved to get out and do lib work where ppl are
• No lit yet on personal/professional blogging and tweeting and public’s perception of this fuzzy line

John Palfrey, Professor of Law and Vice Dean, Library and Information Resources, Harvard Law School

• 3 criteria of DNs: age, access, skills
• 100% of DNs start with Google then Wikipedia. Some cut and paste; others savvy skeptics.
• News currency: first step grazing; second step going to deeper to blogs; third step smaller group here re-blogs, creates own content
• We need to experiment; pick out what works
• Faculty: some sad about changes; others think we’re not changing fast enough
• Empirical research support
• What materials do we all just provide access to for everyone
• What about unique things?
• Collaborative collecting
• Need to share info about coll. stuff
• Services: moving from cathedral to bazaar model
• Young ppl and fac work in bazaar model – we need to be bazaar guides instead of high priests

Questions

• Q for JP: HLSL in ten years? A: Multi-faceted issue. Unique materials, BD materials, open access, Cohen fellowship – but we can’t do it all
• JG: tension between individual and institutional voices
• Q for JP: hurdles that need to be overcome? A: Local and IP hurdles, fac find OA procedures annoying, implementation is hard, publishing cycle needs to be broken, must be sure about preservation and commitment to archives, collective action opportunity rather than collective action problem. Crucial to push fair use boundaries: use it or lose it. [last sentence echoes in Twitter]

Ann Wolpert, Director of Libraries, MIT

• Books are mature tech; JP’s students aren’t reading books/extended arguments [Twittering law libs don’t think this is a problem]
• MIT fac discussion – committee formed after HU’s OA decision
• Fac view lib as what’s in front of them – each fac sure other disciplines work same way as theirs
• “so sue me” model of using fac’s own work – until they discovered open courseware site was gutted of copyrighted materials.
• Death Star of vendor consolidation [this reference was popular throughout the day]

Charles Cronin, Visiting Fellow, Yale Information Society Project

• An optimist, not a futurist
• Woolf quote about two types of readers
• 40 year crisis in pub libs; popular materials – piano rolls, films
• Problem: ppl not using libs for info [again, some Twittering law libs don’t think this is the problem]
• We need digital Carnegies

More Questions

• JG: paradigm shift needed – model of licensing to higher ed/businesses must be broken
• Questioner notes JP was the only person to mention special collections
• Question for JP: libraries in sky with bazaar at each individual school – how do ABA accreditation stds affect ability to change/re-org? A: JP worried no one will follow us in OA; hubris keeps us from collaborating – we need to stop competing on size of collections and start competing on how well we collaborate [good response to this on Twitter]

Panel 2

Mary Alice Baish, American Association of Law Libraries

• She’s not as cynical as she was a few years ago. Everyone seems to figure out answer to this before she says Obama
• Transparency pledge [do we need one from libraries?]
• Open govt directive: it should be transparent, participatory, collaborative (core principles of democracy [and maybe libraries?])
• Govt responsibility for e-lifecycle mgmt of docs: creation, metadata, version control, official status, citation, authentication, permanent accessibility
• EPA example – digitization without standards = bad
• Change of culture after re-opening of EPA libraries – all about community [this should be underlined three times]

Michael Zimmer, Assistant Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

• Postman on Faustian bargain with technology
• Long tail
• [can libs really see FB data from those who fan their pages as opposed to friend them personally? I think not.]
• Proposes best practices for Library 2.0
• [Faustian bargain with tech can't be as bad as the deal we've got with vendors, can it?]

Ted Striphas, Assistant Professor of Media & Cultural Studies; Director of Film & Media, Indiana University Department of Communication and Culture

• Focus on booklike aspects of Kindle obscure the ways it attempts to go beyond books
• Why is Kindle always marketed displayed with books/paper materials?
• Book recommendation: Gary Hull, Digitize This Book
• Commodification of audience labor - Kindle users are a mass, unsuspecting focus group

Jessamyn West, Community Technologist, Librarian, and Blogger

• Her slides at http://librarian.net/talks/yale2009
• Ppl who need egovt have the least access
• 2.0 can feel like the anti-local
• Michael Pollan variation: “Use the Internet. Not too much. Mostly _____.” What’s the _____? [I propose Twitter in jest; Tom Bruce proposes lolcats; Stephanie Davidson proposes "read information. Not too much. Mostly non-commercial" which I really like.]
• [Everyone laughed at the picture of Jessamyn’s library building, which I thought was no more laughable than Langdell. Small cottage, big stone temple: both very traditional.]

Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

• Was at 1999 ARL and OCLC joint meeting in Colorado – sensed fear
• Library definitions, noun - pooling arrangement to deal with scarcity, first sale doctrine, organized piracy
• Notes JP’s use of lib as verb [my notes unclear here]
• Talks abt “consumption of knowledge.” Is knowledge gone when you consume it? What comes out the other end? A: We call that scholarship
• Project Gutenberg – what a crazy idea to just start typing in books
• Mentions .sig of Michael Hart (of PG)
• Boldness of Google Books – why aren’t libraries doing this??
• Perfect is the enemy of the good [this echoes through Twitter] [why does JZ get what many librarians don’t?]
• Makes fun of WAX [Harvard's web archiving system]
  

Panel 3

Laura Gassaway, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law

• History of copyright act

Jonathan Band, Technology and Law Consultant

• Proposes Fair Use Legal Defense Fund and notes EFF and other orgs already do some of this work

Denise Troll Covey, Principal Librarian for Special Projects, Carnegie Mellon University Libraries

• Book recommendation: Corynne McSherry, Who Owns Academic Work?
• Libraries should exercise and foster civil disobedience and moral courage

Kenneth Crews, Director of Copyright Advisory Office, Columbia University

• Balance is impossible so throw it out and do good stuff
• Copyright is a social interface – law is abt ppl
• Awkward social relationship with copyright
• Private responses and structural responses
• Creative commons – Google Books
• Remember that Google Books settlement is only about books
• Fragmentation in the future of books, readers, publishers, libraries
• New libraries: [need to get text of this slide in full] Expanding universe of… Supernova… Ecology… Gatekeeper… Appeasers… Apologists…

Panel 4

Jeff Cunard, Partner, Debovoise & Plimpton

• Overview of Google Books settlement

Guy Pessach, Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• Digital archives in Europe

Frank Pasquale, Visiting Professor of Law, Yale Law School

• Similarity between private health insurers and Google. Google as middleman
• Mentions Darnton’s On the Media appearance last week discussing “cocaine pricing” of info
• Book recommendation: Jessica Lipman, Digital Copyright
• [try to find his slides – a unique and interesting take, but my brain was full]

Brewster Kahle, Digital librarian and co-founder of the Internet Archive

• Discusses problems in MIT’s making available digital copy of 1964 book Libraries of the Future by J. Licklider – which had been published by MIT.
• Orphaned works
• We’re very close to universal access to knowledge – let’s not stumble now.
• Book recommendation: Terry Fisher, Promises to Keep</li>
• Google gets libraries to work against each other with non-disclosure [sounds like Westlaw]

Concluding remarks

Yale’s Librarians on Parade movie was played

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_eGdSp47Uw&hl=en&fs=1]

Where are we moving books and libraries to now?

A few days ago, Kathryn Greenhill blogged about LibX, a Firefox plugin created by Virginia Tech Libraries that customizes a wonderful library toolbar to add to your browser. Here's an illustration pointing out some of its features:


I've been wanting to figure out how to customize a Firefox search bar for our catalog for ages. This is even better. And the best part? It was easy. I found the interface of the LibX edition builder a little confusing at first, but once I figured out that it was saving what I input and signed up so I could come back and edit my creation, it was so simple that it didn't take much longer than Photoshopping the above illustration of the finished project.

LibX is set up to automatically detect settings for several major OPAC systems, so all I had to do was confirm them. The only feature I haven't got working is the authentication for articles/databases, because I need to get some info from a librarian at our main library.

There is also an Internet Explorer version that is automatically set up along with the Firefox version, though it is missing a couple features. I haven't gotten it to install on my computer, but one of our other librarians did.

LibX NSU Law has only been around for a day or so, and I want to play with it more before sharing the link or otherwise publicizing it at the library. But did I mention how wonderful and simple it is? I should also add amazing, cool, and just what I was looking for. I'm not in general a fan of browser toolbars, but so far I completely love LibX.

To learn more and see it in action, check out Kathryn's screencast, What Does LibX Do?.

No political snarking in this post. Seriously. Thanks to Library Stuff for pointing out this interesting Dallas News article about how George Bush the elder took notes on his experiences at other museums during the past decade, leading to a more interactive and technology driven experience at his presidential library:

"Even though he's 83 years old, he's embraced technology, and he wanted to see more interactivity in his museum," says Warren Finch, director of the recently renovated and reopened library on the Texas A&M campus.

When it was built a decade ago, the museum offered 12 audio and visual exhibits. When it reopened Nov. 10, it had 90. Instead of just seeing a letter Mr. Bush wrote to his sons during the height of the Watergate scandal, visitors can press a button and hear him read it.

The improvements to the museum range from the very high-tech (a situation room with computer terminals where visitors can revisit some of Mr. Bush's key crisis decisions) to the very hands-on. Shelves in the family-history area contain framed photos that visitors are encouraged to pick up and handle.

Shelf Check has been cracking me up lately. Today's strip provides some pre-holiday cheer.

Does this man look like he has an MLIS? Hmmm...

SR Harris linked to this video in the Alliance Second Life Google group yesterday. Rather than a machinima, it's a selection of still snapshots taken in Second Life. It's a nice montage of libraries in Second Life and shows the variety of librarians working in the virtual world.

Some suggestions for teaching live Second Life workshops (different from teaching IN Second Life) based on my recent experiences teaching Second Life to librarians.

• Do NOT schedule on a Wednesday, as Second Life is frequently down for scheduled updates on Wednesdays
• Schedule at least three hours
  
• In the days leading up to the workshop, check the Second Life blog frequently for downtime notices
  
• Require users to sign up for Second Life and walk through Orientation Island independently
• Get participants' Second Life names in advance of the workshop
  
• Add all participants to your friends list before the workshop
  
• Create a group for the workshop, and invite participants to join it and other relevant groups before the workshop
  
• Prepare a goodie box of items for participants to explore during and after the workshop. I include: a custom t-shirt; notecards about Info Island, volunteer oppportunities, and education places in SL; "Customizing Your Avatar" notecard; facelamp; flight feather; height detector; Hypatia Dejavu's Griefing 101 lecture notes; and Jack-in-a-Box and Jill-in-a-Box freebies.
• Prepare any real life handouts
• Have at least two alt avatars of your own in case a participant has problems logging in
• Invite participants to log in as soon as they begin arriving, then teleport them to your location
• Work from a list of tasks rather than a specific outline (my working list of Second Life Competencies is here.)
• During the workshops, time your administrative tasks (inviting late comers to groups, checking off the competencies, etc.) for moments when you want to give the participants a few minutes to play and experiment
• Ideally, a workshop would have a second facilitator who could circulate among the participants, get a view on whether they're grasping the concepts, and provide individual attention where needed

What am I missing? Comments welcome!

I've now taught two (technically three, since the second was offered twice on the same day) workshops about Second Life, and I want to record my thoughts about teaching Second Life. Both workshops were for librarian audiences, but my plans and expectations for them were quite different.

The first workshop was for a consortium continuing education course. It was three hours long, and I intended to walk the participants through Orientation Island, give them a tour of Info Island and possibly Cybrary City, and spend a little time at the end going through a virtual goodie box I'd put together. I had to change my expectations almost immediately. Not everyone had followed the suggestion to sign up for their accounts in advance, and some had trouble signing up as a result--a few ultimately had to just watch my screen. Others had previously logged in, but depending on what they had explored, they were on different versions of Orientation Island. Several participants had completed Orientation Island already and were well ahead of the learning curve. I felt I let that group down in particular, because they could have benefited most from going beyond the basics.

Although I was disappointed, the workshop attendees were all positive on the consortium evaluation forms and all but one said they would recommend the workshop to others. The exception noted "not in its current format" and made some suggestions that were exactly in line with what I already knew I had learned from the experience.

For the second set of workshops, I required the participants to both sign up for Second Life and do Orientation Island on their own. Two reasons for this: first, it helps prevent running into Linden Lab's limit of ten new accounts per IP address per day and let's me know if there are any account/password problems to resolve. (And there were a few: I had one person in each session who had to borrow my alternate avatars.) Second, it gives prospective participants a taste of what they're getting into. Some may decide it's not their cup of tea, and others have a chance to think of questions. Quite a few of this workshop's participants told me even before the workshop that they were stuck on one of the orientation tasks. That was fine, because at least they'd tried it--and frankly, I find some of the Orientation Island directions confusing!

While I was preparing for the workshop, I tried making a fresh outline of things to cover. This proved frustrating, because I knew between questions and my own tangents, I'd be constantly off-track. Instead, I wrote up a list of Second Life competencies--things I wanted the participants to learn or be exposed to during the course of the workshop. It worked brilliantly, and I worked in all the little details I needed to mention. It gave me some solid goals and something to work from, but no stress about doing it strictly in order. Without strictly timing things, I managed to keep on track too. This led to saying things like "now let's pretend you've all got your avatars looking just how you want them..." because we could do a whole separate workshop on appearance! When I got to the section where I gave them their goodie boxes and asked them to take them out of their inventory, then pulled my camera angle back to see all their avatars standing next to boxes, I was so proud.

The only major change I would make to the second workshop format is to add an additional hour and take more time to explain the elements of objects (prims, textures, scripts) as I did the elements of avatars. We didn't have time to tour Info Island in the morning session, but we squeezed a tour into the last ten minutes of the afternoon session. I have a Pied Piper HUD for using with group tours, but it was laggy. Perhaps if we all had faster machines and were on different Internet connections it would have been less problematic. At that point, everyone seemed comfortable just following me, so it was unnecessary anyway.

I used a rearranged version of my slides from the first workshop to introduce the participants to Second Life and some of the tasks. I have, alas, broken my new personal rule about minimal text (five words or less) on slides for this, but my excuse is that the text is intended for the handout version. Anyway, here they are. If there's a next time, I'll be taking out more of the ones I didn't use and adding some new ones about objects.


The second set of workshops felt much more successful to me, and they were so energizing. I loved doing them, and I hope the participants had half as much fun as I did. I almost regret not proposing a Second Life workshop for AALL (though I will be speaking about it), but I'm still too wary of convention center Internet connections to think that would be a good idea.

Next post: some suggested best practices for teaching Second Life.

No, it's not transcribed baby talk, but a sort-of competitive PowerPoint match. Wired explains:

[Pecha Kucha] applies a simple set of rules to presentations: exactly 20 slides displayed for 20 seconds each. That's it. Say what you need to say in six minutes and 40 seconds of exquisitely matched words and images and then sit the hell down. The result, in the hands of masters of the form, combines business meeting and poetry slam to transform corporate cliché into surprisingly compelling beat-the-clock performance art.

There's an example at the Wired link. (Digression: the example is about emotionally intelligent signs, a great topic for librarians, since we often need to enforce rules that are negatives--don't talk, don't use your cellphone, don't eat. How could we use emotionally intelligent signs to explain the empathetic reasons behind these rules and recast them in a more positive light? I think NSU Law's Dr. Einstein--BE QUIET (people are studying)--is a good example. Not that we still don't have to employ shushing as a reminder.)

Back to Pecha Kucha, for more about it, see Wikipedia on Pecha Kucha or check out the Pecha Kucha Night website for information about Pecha Kucha meets worldwide.

It sounds like fun. I've been trying to focus on images and use no more than five words per slide in my recent PowerPoints (with an ideal of no text at all), but I'm not sure I'd really want to do it competitively with a 20-second per slide rule. 20 seconds is longer than it sounds, and I'm more likely to want to flash through a number of images quickly, then settle on one while I talk. Still, it's an interesting alternative to Toastmasters.

Hala Jin Ashai, one of the TLC 2.0 librarian/bloggers just posted a great analogy I have to share:

Why do we need librarians when we have Google? Why do we need actors when we have reality t.v.?

She also noted something else I completely agree with, and something that gets to the heart of why we're spending time exploring these 2.0 tools:

Also, we need to get away from the model that the customer needs to come to us. There should be an aggressive campaign on what we can provide to the customer. That includes materials and services.

So true. We do ourselves and our patrons a disservice if we fail to explore all the possibilities for delivering services, sharing knowledge, and marketing ourselves. Not every single librarian needs to explore every single possibility, of course, but NO librarian should have his or her head in the sand, because "we've always done it this way" or "it works fine now" or a myriad of other excuses. 2.0 tools are just another way of growing tentacles to reach out to our patrons.

I'm a fan of LibraryThing, nearly all my books are listed there, I think the lifetime membership is a bargain, so why don't I feel enthused about blogging about it?

I guess it's because the site has never felt very "sticky" to me. Since adding my books, I haven't had much impulse to go back, or take advantage of the group features. Frankly, I feel so overloaded on 2.0/networking sites that the thought of getting seriously involved in another is a little scary, but just for the heck of it, I subbed to the feeds for the law librarians group new members and new messages.

For me, the great benefit of LibraryThing is in quickly and easily "cataloging" my personal library and having it accessible wherever I am. I don't foresee using it in the academic law library setting, but I have a librarian friend who coordinates the writing center at another college who used it to inventory the center's book collection.

There's a link to my collection in my sidebar, but I don't need a search box there, nor a random book display, which would likely never show anything but books about things I was obsessed with in high school. :)

I recently dabbled with some other book-ish 2.0 sites and didn't care for them. Good Reads seemed to be all about rating (fun!), but then either attributed me with owning everything I rated or, after I imported my LibraryThing catalog, claiming that I'd read everything in it, which I most definitely haven't. I also tried one of the Facebook apps and had similar issues with the way it tried to display things.

What I'd love is a site that combined the ability to catalog one's own books, link in my Amazon wishlist, plus rate anything else I've ever read. Is that too much to ask?!