Simon Chamberlain’s library weblog

David Lee King has a great post about adding MeeboMe to the library catalogue, so that when users do a search and receive no hits, a MeeboMe widget pops up and they have the option to chat to a librarian. This is perfect; it’s obvious from looking at search logs  that many failed searches could be improved relatively easily, if only the user could talk to a librarian who understands the idiosyncrasies of the catalogue.

Sarah Houghton-Jan and Michael Stephens comment. Micheal’s post led me back to an earlier article of his from TechSource which is worth a look.

The blogosphere has been buzzing (well, a low hum maybe) about Slate’s article criticizing Yahoo Answers. Tim Lee at Techdirt agrees, while Jessamyn West is more critical of the Slate piece. I responded on librarian.net, so will just point you to my answer there.

Students 2.0: “we are students… but now we have a voice”. Interesting idea (though of course students have long had voices; one could easily argue that students recently have been much less interested in using them than their predecessors from the 1960s-80s.) This looks like an attempt to reverse that process, and is to be welcomed, especially by those of us in academic libraries. I’ve only glanced through the site, but the posts look to be interesting and well-written. Subscribed. (Via Michael Stephens).

Danah Boyd on information access in a networked world. I was going to write something in response to this, but I’m running out of time and it’s kinda old now. But go read.

Jenny Levine on gaming in the library - for senior citizens.

Citizen journalism site sued over user-posted content (Techdirt). An issue for libraries, especially now that more libraries are (rightly) offering users the chance to interact with their content via blogs or the OPAC?

Writing for the web presentation (Courtney Johnston, National Library) (just the slides; some good stuff here).

Meredith Farkas on the health of organisations. Encouragement of workers by management, and an interest in staff professional development, seem to be key.

Michael Stephens reports a student sit-in, filmed on YouTube, against poor library opening hours. Both sad (that the students needed to protest) and inspiring (that they cared enough to do so). A comment on TameTheWeb notes that the library has listened to the protesters.

Sarah Houghton-Jan on the black market in holds. Sarah makes a fair point - only some users know about holds, and they have a huge advantage over the others when it comesto accessing popular materials. Further, it means the most popular books are almost never on the shelves. Like Sarah, I’m not sure what the answer is, though.

Code4Lib now has an open access library science journal.

Another link dump with the odd comment.

First Monday reports a survey by Brent Bumgarner at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, stating that students use Facebook: “as a social activity…. primarily as a tool for the facilitation of gossip”. Although ‘friend functions’ was the most highly-ranked reason for using FB, ‘practical information’ was seen as moderately important, implying that there might be a role for library information in FB, at least for some students. (Practical information was rated as more important than groups or events, interestingly).

Meredith Farkas reflects on how much help is enough (to offer to students, specifically distance learners). She says

“I’m never going to stop trying to make things better, but with some people you have to put up you hands and say “I’ve done enough.” If you’re not willing to look at tutorials, read documentation or contact us, I can’t help you. The student has to take some responsibility for this failure.”

These are interesting comments. I’m struggling with similar issues (having come from a special library where we did absolutely everything possible to support our colleagues). How much should we do to help students? Isn’t part of being at university learning how to do research for yourself? Isn’t there some sort of responsibility to RTFM?

David Isaacson discusses what’s still wrong with reference (Library Journal) and argues that reference librarians should leave basic questions to support staff and instead proactively approach users, with a focus on “[answering] more complicated reference or research question[s] or teach[ing]. This could be done… face to face by appointment, via chat reference or email, or simply by being available, as other teachers are, for drop-in consultations during scheduled office hours.”

Via LibraryStuff, MIT have launched an audio/video search engine for lectures.

Nicole at What I Learned Today has a post on the Kindle, and another on e-books, quoting Roy Tennant “e-books are better for research and quick reference, print books better for cover-to-cover reading,” and “e-books are easier to search,” while “print books are easier to read”. Yes, yes. It’s not an either/or situation - it’s print, or electronic, or both, depending on user need.

Via librarian.net, a funny comparison of Amazon’s shifting statements about books and reading.

Kristin Hersh is an American singer-songwriter known for her work with Throwing Muses (the best hope of the 4AD label, until a little group known as the Pixies came along). She’s currently leading the way in exploring new models for making and sharing her music, and for receiving something back from her fans at the same time.

The project is the cleverly titled CASH Music (Coalition of Artists and Stakeholders). It begins with Hersh posting her music to the website - but not just music: MP3 and FLAC audio, sure, but also lyric sheets, cover art, and even the ProTools stems of each song. It’s offered free, with a polite request that downloaders consider making a financial contribution. But she’s not just suggesting a financial contribution - users are also “asked to interact with this output, assess it, be inspired by it, enhancing it’s value. Once that value is perceived you are asked to contribute accordingly — your money, your ideas, your effort, or all of the above.” Already, fan-created remixes are showing up on the site, along with new cover art, or images inspired by the songs.

Enthusiastic fans can also subscribe to the site (getting bonuses such as rare demos on CD, or places on the guest list for a live show), or sponsor Hersh’s recordings, receiving in return a visit to the recording studio or a credit on her CD.

This is great. It’s putting the control of the music in the hands of the artist, and the fans, and letting the fans become involved in the making of the music. Who needs record companies?

Hersh says she intends to open the site up to other artists, with Donita Sparks, formerly of the rather good L7, as the first name mentioned.

I was lucky enough to see Kristin Hersh perform a few months ago in Wellington. It’s great to see someone be able to sustain and develop their art under their own control.

(via BoingBoing)

A number of posts relating to Facebook have caught my eye recently - possibly because Facebook is the first generic social networking site that I actually use regularly myself. Possibly because my library is considering some sort of presence on Facebook.

Libraries in Facebook

Regarding the idea of promoting library services in Facebook, the Guardian reports on a study of student perceptions of academic use of social networking, stating that “Students really do want to keep their lives separate. They don’t want to be always available to their lecturers or bombarded with academic information.” The issue is also discussed on the Open University blog. (The Guardian article also presents the other side of the story, and the OU suggests some ways to use social networking sites in ways that are respectful of student needs and wants).

I’m not sure what the answer is here. Some of us, who work in front-line reference roles and do a lot of teaching, have a reasonably close relationship with our users. So possibly we could build a one-to-one relationship with them using Facebook (etc) - obviously giving them the option to friend us (or not). Possibly giving out our Facebook details at the start of the year, along with our email and phone numbers? Of course, this would mean ignoring the possible benefits of having an institutional profile.

I guess the worst that can happen is that we create and promote Facebook services, and the students ignore them. Which isn’t too bad, really….

General issues with Facebook

Cory Doctorow argues that Facebook will sink under the weight of socially obligated “friendships”. The problem with any social networking service, Doctorow argues, is that it is hard to refuse friendship invitations. Users then end up with too many friends that they don’t really want. This results, I guess, in a signal-noise problem - updates and notices from unwanted friends swamp those from real friends. Too, overlapping social and work worlds can be a recipe for disaster (I have workmates on my friends list, I’d rather they didn’t read the expletive-laden comments that some of my non-work friends post).

I’m not sure what the answer is - maybe I need to make better use of the ‘limited profile’ option within Facebook? (But then there’s the issue of offending people by only offering them access to my limited profile…..).

Cory also discusses privacy problems in Facebook. Tim Lee at Techdirt points out the irritating way in which Facebook applications intrude on a user’s friends. This is my biggest grumble with the site - if I add an application, it automatically tries to invite my friends to install it. Some applications require considerable effort to opt-out. This isn’t user-friendly.

Phil Bradley discusses the British Library in Facebook.

Not just about Facebook, but Michael Stephens explains that the way to get “reluctant adopters” interested in a technology is to show them how it can benefit them in their personal life, and then let them generalise that skill or tool into their professional life. This seems sensible - I’m sure we can all point to a tech-reluctant colleague who discovered the benefits of Skype when a family member moved overseas.

In another post, Michael discusses a proposed ‘Bill of Rights’ for users of the social web, and asks how it might affect librarians building online social spaces. Seems to me that it’s something that would apply more to library/non-profit groups than to Facebook, MySpace etc: I really can’t see sites like FB and MS, which have business models based around a walled-garden approach, letting users export their data outside the site. But I could be wrong.