LibraryTechNZ

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-07-10T11:25:00.000+12:00

Introducing The Source

Arts content for the digital era

From the Australia Council for the Arts website

Developed in response to the current and anticipated future impact of digital technologies on the arts sector, artists and arts audiences, this is the Australia Council’s blueprint for supporting arts content and its creators in the digital era. The strategy addresses:
•How digital infrastructure will affect where and when artists engage with their audiences
•How traditional artforms - from Indigenous music to literature and the performing arts can use digital technology to push their creativity into new domains and construct engaging audience experiences
•The new business capabilities required to navigate the emerging business models of the 21st century, to ensure a sustainable future for Australian arts and culture
•How our arts heritage will be preserved in a digital environment and how it can be made more accessible for future ‘digital native’ generations

The Cloud, the Crowd, and Public Policy

From the Issues in Science and Technology Online website

A new age of more flexible, less expensive, and more secure computing will emerge soon if governments act wisely.

The digital melting pot: bridging the digital native-immigrant divide

From the First Monday website

Educational technology advocates claim today’s students are technologically savvy content creators and consumers whose mindset differs from previous generations. The digital native-digital immigrant metaphor has been used to make a distinction between those with technology skills and those without. Metaphors such as this one are useful when having initial conversations about an emerging phenomenon, but over time, they become inaccurate and dangerous. Thus, this paper proposes a new metaphor, the digital melting pot, which supports the idea of integrating rather than segregating the natives and the immigrants.

The role of digital identity management in the internet economy: a primer for policy makers

From the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) website

This report aims to provide policy makers with a broad-brush understanding of the various dimensions of digital identity management. It introduces, in non-technical terms, the basic concepts and issues raised by IdM and points to additional sources where policy makers may gain a deeper understanding of the topic. Consistent with the OECD’s Seoul Ministerial Declaration, it also aims to support efforts to address public policy issues for securely managing and protecting digital identities, with a view to strengthening confidence in the online activities crucial to the growth of the Internet Economy.

International collaboration steers future of mass digitisation

From the British Library website

Feeding into the EU's i2010 vision to significantly improve access to Europe's cultural heritage, the British Library and the University of Salford have teamed up with a group of 15 institutions from across the continent as part of the four-year IMPACT project - IMProving ACcess to Text - to remove the barriers that stand in the way of the mass digitisation of the European cultural heritage. Led by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the IMPACT project aims to share expertise from across Europe and establish international best practice guidelines with a view to speeding up, standardising and enhancing the quality of mass digitisation through establishing a Centre of Competence for text-based digitisation. As one of the main participants, the British Library has taken the lead on one of IMPACT's four sub-projects, establishing the operational context of the work carried out by contributors to the project.

Public library revitalization in India: Hopes, challenges, and new visions

From the First Monday website

With India’s growing economy and status as an emerging world power, a new consciousness is developing in the country about the need to reinvest in public services. The National Knowledge Commission (NKC) is an advisory body constituted by the Prime Minister to provide recommendations for improving India’s knowledge infrastructure. As part of this Commission, a set of recommendations has been developed to improve India’s long neglected library system. This article explores the implications of these recommendations, with a specific focus on India’s public library system and the social development gains that are often associated with public libraries. The potential of India’s public libraries to serve as community information centres (CICs) is highlighted, as well as the challenges that lie ahead in implementing a new vision for public library revitalisation. The article serves as an invitation for concerted action, reflection, and dialogue with regard to this important and pressing issue.

Virtual Competence Is Vital in the Workplace: Online Communication Tools, Such as Facebook, Develop Important Work Skills
[Scroll down to the entries for Thursday July 2]

From the Ascribe website

When the Ontario government banned thousands of its employees from using the social networking site Facebook during work a couple of years ago, opponents of the move argued the workers were deprived of a powerful tool. Recent research from Nicole Haggerty, an assistant professor of information systems at the Richard Ivey School of Business, now shows that online activities, such as communicating on Facebook, result in skills that are valuable in the workplace.

The edgeless university

From the Demos website

British universities have world-class reputations and they are vital to the country’s social and economic future, yet they are under siege. This report argues that this can be a moment of rebirth.
The huge public investment that sustained much of the sector is in jeopardy and the current way of working is not sustainable. Some are predicting the end of the university as we have known it. Technology is changing universities as they become just one source among many for ideas, knowledge and innovation. But online tools and open access also offer the means for their survival. Their expertise and value is needed more than ever to validate and support learning and research. Through their institutional capital, universities can use technology to offer more flexible provision and open more equal routes to higher education and learning. We need the learning and research that higher education provides. This will take strategic leadership from within, new connections with a growing world of informal learning and a commitment to openness and collaboration. By exploiting this role, universities can harness technology as a solution and an indispensable tool for shaping their vital role in the future.

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-07-03T12:29:00.000+12:00

Introducing The Source

Global financial crisis and recession: Impact on the arts (Note: PDF)

From the International Federation of Arts Councils and Cultural Agencies (IFACCA) website

Arts councils and ministries of culture have a key role in working to minimise the negative impacts of the downturn on the arts and in helping artists and arts organisations navigate such uncertain times. They also have a key role in advising on and coordinating the arts and cultural aspects of the much-publicised central government responses to the downturn. The aim of the report is to consolidate the collective expertise of IFACCA members as quickly as possible in order to help members respond to the downturn in a timely and informed way. This report presents the results of a survey of members of IFACCA on the likely impacts on the arts of the global downturn, and on how arts councils and ministries of culture around the world are helping arts sectors meet the challenges of the downturn.

Copyright: 2008 Country Reports Now Available from IFLA

From the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) website

Read about changes in national copyright legislation, lobby & educational activities, law cases, and strategic plans for the future from various countries, including.
*Australia
*Canada
*Denmark
*Finland
*Germany
*Netherlands
*Norway
*Sweden
*United States

Oxford Internet survey 2009 report: the Internet in Britain (Note: PDF)

From the Oxford Internet Institute website

A new survey into how British people are using the Internet in 2009 suggests that the proportion of people reading online newspapers has doubled since 2007. The Oxford Internet Survey 2009 (OxIS), carried out by the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, shows that nearly six out of ten (58%) Internet users said they read a newspaper or news online, compared to three out of ten (30%) two years ago. The survey also shows, however, that most users are continuing to read print versions of newspapers as well as reading online news.
One of the main challenges in creating a Digital Britain will be to change the perceptions of the third of the British population who choose not to use the Internet, according to the latest in a series of Oxford University surveys. The Oxford Internet Survey shows that while most British Internet users (84%) are extremely confident about using new technology and see the Internet as central to many activities, over half of non-users of the Internet (57%) now distrust new technology more than they did before.

Libraries to the Rescue

From the Institute of Museum and Library Services website

“Libraries have emerged as one of the go-to places for people looking for work or filing for unemployment, starting new businesses, or learning how to use computers for the first time,” said Anne-Imelda Radice, IMLS Director. “Libraries are proving just how important they are to their communities. In these episodes, library leaders share their expertise so others don’t have to reinvent the wheel.”
Libraries to the Rescue provides valuable insights from:
*Mary Boone, State Librarian of North Carolina
*Bernard Margolis, State Librarian of New York
*Sheryl Mase, Michigan Library’s Director of Statewide Services
*Jan Walsh, State Librarian of Washington, and Randall Simmons, Program Manager for Library Development in Washington
*Kendall Wiggin, State Librarian of Connecticut
The five episodes cover a range of topics, including how libraries are increasing access to key information through virtual libraries, the importance of broadband access, and new partnerships between libraries and state and federal agencies to help citizens access all types of assistance. The Libraries to the Rescue episodes are short (12-15 minute), digestible audio episodes designed to educate IMLS’s library audience.

U.S. Public Libraries and E-Government Services (Note: PDF)

From the American Library Association (ALA) website

In the fourth of a series of reports regarding technology access in U.S. public libraries, the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Research & Statistics (ORS) is highlighting how public library technology supports public access and use of e-government information and resources. The issues brief draws from national data published in the Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study. “U.S. Public Libraries and E-Government Services” describes the increased use of online government information and services, the critical role of public libraries in helping provide access and assistance using these resources and the challenges that must be addressed to improve e-government at the local, state and federal level.
Among the findings from the national study are:
*71 percent of libraries report they are the only source of free access to computers and the Internet in their community
*80 percent of libraries report providing as-needed assistance with e-government services
*61 percent of libraries report providing access to government information is one of the most critical Internet services they provide
*Public libraries offer a number of training classes and/or as-needed assistance on a range of topics, particularly Internet use (92.8 percent), general computer skills (91.3 percent) and online Web searching (76.9 percent)

How Teens Use Media (Note: PDF)

From the Nielsen website

At the annual 'What Teens Want' conference in New York, The Nielsen Company presented 'How Teens Use Media', which argues once you look past the hype - American teens are not as alien in their media usage as you might expect. Sure, it might sound hip and trendy to suggest they’re too busy texting, Twittering or LOL-ing to be engaged with traditional media, but ultimately, the research proves otherwise.
Key points:
*Teens are NOT abandoning TV for new media: In fact, they watch more TV than ever, up 6% over the past five years in the U.S
*Teens love the Internet … but spend far less time browsing than adults: Teens spend 11 hours and 32 minutes per month online. Far below the average of 29 hours and 15 minutes
*Teens watch less online video than most adults, but the ads are highly engaging to them: Teens spend 35% less time watching online video than adults 25-34, but recall ads better when watching TV shows online than they do on television
*Teens read newspapers, listen to the radio and even like advertising more than most: Teens who recall TV ads are 44% more likely to say they liked the ad
*Teens play video games, but their tastes aren’t all for the blood-and-guts style games: Just two of their top five most-anticipated games since 2005 have been rated “Mature”
*Teens’ favourite TV shows, top websites and genre preferences across media are mostly the same as their parents: For U.S. teens, American Idol was the top show in 2008, Google the top website and general dramas are a preferred TV genre for teens around the world

Find, Out.

2009-07-01T14:00:00.001+12:00

Part of the National Library's purpose may best be summed up in three words: Collect, Preserve, Access. Seems fairly straightforward - any items the Library collects, we have to preserve them and provide access to them. The problem occurs when you consider access, and how many collections (and items in those collections) we have here. Published, unpublished, digital, physical, different media types, on-site, off-site, collaborative…if you drew a diagram, you could title it 'Everything, and Then Some'.

We've been fairly heads-down for the past few months with work on the latest National Library discovery service, and it's now available to the public, in beta form:

http://find.natlib.govt.nz/

Why?
There are a lot of drivers for this – one of which is some of our discovery tools are on older technologies that provide results at sub-optimal speeds. The planned move from the Wellington building is another one, where simpler access to Library and collaborative resources online will make things easier for our customers.

I think the biggest driver comes in the form of a lack of a unified way to find things at the National Library. Yes, we have several other sites that can provide our customers information, but it is a bit of a divided approach, and it certainly caused me confusion when I arrived. Where is the ideal place to search for the information I want? How do I get there? How are these sources of information connected? What is their context?

The idea of having a cross-collection discovery tool has been in the planning for some time, but it's just been recently that we've had the technology to accomplish it. A lot of thinking went on in those early days as to how best we could do this, and the team used that work as a basis for what's called the 'Discover, Deliver, Interact' programme, mainly because that's its name.

The 'Find'* site is really the first piece of the foundation in the DDI programme. We knew that without some sort of overarching discovery technology, there would be nothing to build on, and we would wind up with the same issues. It makes logical sense, really – if you can't find things, how can you expect to do anything with them?

How?
The underlying software - Ex Libris' Primo - provides us with a few other things we were after as well. The ability for customers to tag and comment on items, thus providing conversation (one-to-one, many-to-many) rather than just broadcasting (one-to-many) is something we're looking forward to leveraging in the future.

We also get the benefit of an application programming interface (API) from the software. This allows us to have flexibility in how we can create and support new digital services. It also means we will be able to extend and adapt the finding of our collections into other places, beyond just a web site. I'm thinking of things like mobile applications, Firefox plug-ins, or Google Gadgets, but there are heaps more things we're now able to do. After we figure out some details around how to implement it, we want to release the API from behind our walls, so that those of you so inclined may use them, perhaps even linking them up with the Digital New Zealand API.

What?
There's quite a bit of our information in Find now, and the plan is to keep adding to it. For now, we've got:

National Library of New Zealand catalogue
TAPHUI
Timeframes
Publications New Zealand
Index New Zealand
Te Puna Web Directory

Also, some collaborative project information is there as well:

Matapihi
findNZArticles

We also have the metasearch capability over other National Library digital services and subscription databases.

What Next?
That's the real high-level view of things. As mentioned, this is a beta release. We're aware of several issues that we're working to resolve right now, and I'm know we'll encounter more as we move forward. But, to quote someone in a very different line of work, this is the business we've chosen. I encourage you to give it a try, and let us know what you think. What works? What doesn't? What would you like to see, and where do you want it to go? This is the first step in a continuing journey, and you're invited along. You can use the feedback form on http://find.natlib.govt.nz/, use the comments here, or email find-feedback@natlib.govt.nz.

* 'Find' is very deliberate usage – and name - here. There are those that feel people don't like searching, they like finding. I'm one of them. For instance, which do you prefer – searching for your lost car keys, or finding your lost car keys?

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-06-26T08:55:00.013+12:00

Introducing The Source

Copyfights and literary rights

From the Australian Policy Online website

Presenter: Ramona Koval Presenter: Lynne Spender Presenter: Morris Gleitzman
Listen to this presentation

The biggest recent copyright case is Google's book digitisation project. Authors and publishers wanted a slice of the pie that they thought Google was getting for free. In the US, they were successful in their demands and Google is now paying out millions to these parties and has set up a Book Rights Registry to administer the process.But what are the broader implications for intellectual property and the cultural heritage of ideas?

2009 Digital Future Report - Summary (Note: PDF)
The full report - 191 pages of charts, narrative and great detail - is available for purchase.

From the Center for the Digital Future website

The Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School is pleased to present the results of the eighth year of our project, “Surveying the Digital Future.” The eight years of longitudinal research comprise an absolutely unique database that completely captures broadband at home, the wireless Internet, on-line media, user-generated content and social networking. As usual, the report continues to track off-line media use, purchasing both off-line and through e-commerce, social and political activity and a wealth of other data. After eight years, we have an unparalleled view of the non-users who do not go on-line. We carefully examine why they are not users and whether they are likely to ever go on-line.

Home Broadband Adoption 2009 (U.S) (Note: PDF)

From the Pew Internet website

An April 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project shows 63% of adult Americans now have broadband internet connections at home, a 15% increase from a year earlier. April’s level of high-speed adoption represents a significant jump from figures gathered by the Project since the end of 2007 (54%). The growth in home broadband adoption occurred even though survey respondents reported paying more for broadband compared to May 2008. Last year, the average monthly bill for broadband internet service at home was $34.50, a figure that stands at $39.00 in April 2009.

Libraries of the Future
See also What is the library of the future?

From the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) website

‘Libraries of the Future’ attempts to explore the issues around the enormous impact of ICT on the academic library and to look forward to ensure that libraries - however they may continue to evolve - remain at the heart of academic life. This public question and answer debate held on 2 April 2009 discussed what information and library provision mean in these changing times. Watch videos of the speakers, see blog posts and comments.

Digital Natives and Virtual Libraries: What Does the Future Hold for Libraries? (Note: PDF)

From the E-prints in Library and Information Science (E-LIS) website

Social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn are among the most heavily visited web sites. They are used not only for social networking and entertainment but also for access to information, for learning and for carrying out professional work. Social networks commonly have Web 2.0 features, offer personalised services and allow users to incorporate their own content easily and describe, organise and share it with others, thereby enriching users’ experience. Some users tend to “live” on those social networks and expect information providing organisations to offer similar services. They want libraries to be as accessible, flexible, open to collaboration and sharing as that of social networks and heighten the expectations from such institutions. The future of libraries is closely associated with how successfully they meet the demands of digital users. Otherwise, the “net generation” or the “digital natives” grown up with the Web, Google and Facebook would see libraries as outdated institutions and “take their business elsewhere” to satisfy their information needs. In this paper, the impact of the technological convergence on information providing organisations are reviewed.

NLNZ outages 25 June

2009-06-25T11:59:00.006+12:00

good morning readers

The National Library is having server problems today and as a result access to some of our websites and services is unpredictable this morning, including www.natlib.govt.nz

We´re very sorry about the inconvenience and the tech guys are going hell for leather trying to fix thing.

UPDATE (3.25pm)

I typed too soon.

We're still experiencing problems with

-- Manuscripts and Pictorial (aka Sir Donald McLean papers)
-- Te Ao Hou
-- www.natlib.govt.nz

As ever - more updates as they come to hand.

UPDATE (3.10pm)

Most National Library services are now up and running. Access may still be a bit iffy over the next 24 hours.

UPDATE (1.50pm)

The server malfunction will take us a few more hours to fix.

The services affected are:

Te Puna Search
Te Puna Webcat & Cataloguing Client
Te Puna Interloan
Transactions of the Royal Society
Te Ao Hou
Directory of NZ libraries
Kris
www.natlib.govt.nz

We'll be updating again around 3pm

-- Courtney

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-06-19T10:46:00.000+12:00

Introducing The Source

In from the Cold: An assessment of the scope of Orphan Works report (Note: PDF)

From the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) website

Organisations across the UK’s public sector are responsible for the management and provision of access to a huge range of content in many formats. These are likely to range from works with high commercial value, such as fine art and commercial films with attributable artists and/or rights holders and collecting societies, to works of low commercial value but high academic, cultural and historic worth, such as documentary photographs, letters and sound recordings, where a recognised rights holder is unlikely. The report shows that millions of so-called ‘orphan works’ - photographs, recordings, texts and other ephemera from the last 100 years - risk becoming invisible because rights holders are not known or easy to trace.

Australia in the digital economy
Report 1 - Trust and Confidence Report
Report 2 - Online Participation

From the Australian Communications and Media Authority website

These reports cover Australians' attitudes and behaviours to online security and privacy; issues of digital confidence and skills; take-up and use of the internet; and factors which influence people’s decisions to participate or not participate online.

Archives, libraries and museums as communicators of memory in European Union projects

From the Information Research: an international electronic journal website

This paper explores the approach to communication of memory in archives, libraries and museums in European Union research projects in 2000-2005. The main objectives were: to identify predominant aspects of heritage communication; to determine whether and how heritage communication was related to memory; to establish patterns of participation in projects by determining types of institutions and their country of origin. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were carried out to identify the most visible aspects of heritage communication, interrelationship of memory and heritage and impact of certain institutions and countries on the development of project ideas. The analysis revealed that the definitive features of archives, libraries and museums were collections and information management processes. Meeting social needs of present communities and developing meaningful stories of the past were almost not considered. The domination of libraries and museums in information and cultural projects respectively was identified, while archives were the least visible.

The Metadata is the Interface: Better Description for Better Discovery of Archives and Special Collections, Synthesized from User Studies (Note: PDF)

From the OCLC website

Structured metadata can be useful internally for collection management and public services, but is not always what users need most to discover primary sources, especially minimally-described collections and “hidden collections.” Studies show that users often do not want to search for collections by provenance, for example, as important as this principle is for archival collections. One of several core competencies that special collections metadata librarians must have is “a keen understanding of users’ needs and preferences.” This is especially important now that discovery happens in multiple environments. Librarians and archivists need to manage archival collections by provenance, but also must describe what is in the collections for their users.

Booking the future

From the openDemocracy website

Is the book dead? Can the six huge publishing conglomerates, a.k.a., the Six Sisters, rescue books? Will publishers find a new profit model? Can bookstores survive the internet? Can writers make a living? What about e-books? Is Kindle the beginning and end of the revolution? Will Google Books be literature's savior or executioner?

Reading Dickens Four Ways

From the Chronicle of Higher Education website

How 'Little Dorrit' fares in multiple text formats.

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-06-12T10:28:00.000+12:00

Introducing The Source

Creating catalogues: bibliographic records in a networked world

From the Research Information Network website

Bibliographic records play a central role in enabling users to find, locate and gain access to books and journals. The records are created and enhanced at different stages in a supply chain from publishers, through a range of intermediaries, to libraries and then to end-users. This report looks at how bibliographic records for content held by UK academic and research libraries are created and distributed, for printed and electronic books, and for scholarly journals and journal articles; and at how they are utilised by all involved in the supply chain, from the publisher to the final end user.

KnowPrivacy Report

From the KnowPrivacy website

The goal of this project was to examine both the data handling practices of popular websites and the concerns of consumers in an effort to identify practices which may be deceptive or potentially harmful to users‘ privacy and, based on our findings, offer potential solutions that policymakers should consider when discussing any new Internet privacy regulations or that website operators could implement to potentially avert or soften regulation.

Net Neutrality and what it means for libraries (Note: PDF)

From the E-prints in Library and Information Science (E-LIS) website

Net Neutrality, the idea that the Internet should be provided to all without discrimination based on content or applications, has been an important policy issue in the last few years. The focus of the presentation is on key concepts, historical perspectives, legislative issues, and the impact of Net Neutrality on libraries and their users.

Spinning a Semantic Web for Metadata: Developments in the IEMSR

From the Ariadne website

The authors reflect on the experience of developing components for the Information Environment Metadata Schema Registry, which exists to support the development and use of metadata standards.

This revolution will be digitised: online tools for radical collaboration (Note: PDF)

From the Disease Models and Mechanisms (DMM) website

What if everyone in the world were in your lab - a ‘hive mind’ of sorts, but composed of countless creative intellects rather than mindless worker ants, and one in which resources, reagents and effort could be shared, along with ideas, in a manner not dictated by institutional and geographical constraints?

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-06-05T12:00:00.007+12:00

Introducing The Source

ISO 28500:2009, Information and documentation -- WARC file format

From the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) website

For many years, heritage organisations have tried to find the most appropriate ways to collect and keep track of World Wide Web material using web-scale tools such as web crawlers. At the same time, these organisations were concerned with the requirement to archive very large numbers of born-digital and digitised files. A need was for a container format that permits one file simply and safely to carry a very large number of constituent data objects (of unrestricted type, including many binary types) for the purpose of storage, management, and exchange. Another requirement was that the container need only minimal knowledge of the nature of the objects.
The WARC format is expected to be a standard way to structure, manage and store billions of resources collected from the web and elsewhere. It is an extension of the ARC format, which has been used since 1996 to store files harvested on the web.

Public Libraries, Archives and Museums: Trends in Collaboration and Cooperation (Note: PDF)

From the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) website

This report examines the recent trends in collaboration and cooperation between public libraries, archives and museums. In many cases, the shared or similar missions of the institutions reviewed make them ideal partners in collaborative ventures. Different types of collaborative projects are examined, including exhibits, community programmes, digital resources and joint-use facilities. Examples come from Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom (UK), as well as from Russia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Spain, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. The report concludes with a guide to collaborations, including examples of best practices in the field, a guide to a successful collaboration, a discussion of the benefit and risks of collaboration, and a list of resources consulted.

2009 WebWise Conference on Libraries and Museums in the Digital World

From the WebWise Conference website

Each year, the WebWise Conference brings together some 300 museum and library professionals to address the development of technological and digital resources and their impact on museums, libraries, and other cultural organisations. The theme of the 2009 WebWise was ‘Digital Debates’ - issues faced by museums, libraries, archives and other cultural institutions in terms of emerging technologies.
Presentations include:
* Rights and Responsibilities
* Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives
* Identity and Collaboration
* Chasing the Edge and Maintaining the Core

Local objects Telling Global Stories

From the Collections Australia Network (CAN) website

How do collections and objects “speak” to audiences? How can museums present their collections online in ways that can be resourced and sustained at a local level? Collections Australia Network national project manager, Ingrid Mason presented this paper at the 2009 Museums Australia conference to discuss how galleries, libraries, archives and libraries (GLAMs) can bring their collections to life online and engage new audiences.

M-Libraries: Information use on the move (Note: PDF)

From the University of Cambridge Arcadia Programme website

When people talk about mobile libraries, they tend to mean a bus or truck that has been kitted out as a roving branch library. However, with a growing number of people accessing the internet from their pocket PCs and mobile phones, libraries are investigating ways to deliver their services to mobile phones and other small-screen devices so their customers can access them any time anywhere. This can be as simple as sending text message alerts about reservations becoming available or overdue books, or as complex as the Athabasca University Library’s Digital Reading room, which allows readers to access full eBooks and journal articles through their library’s subscriptions on any mobile device.

Explore Australian collections and worldwide online sources

From the National Library of Australia website

The National Library of Australia has just released the first prototype of its new ‘Single Business Discovery Service’ for comment by key stakeholders. The service provides integrated access to over 42 million metadata and text resources from a range of the National Library's collaborative services and from elsewhere. For this initial version there are a range of data sources including: the Australian National Bibliographic Database, Australian Newspapers, Picture Australia, the ARROW Discovery Service and Pandora. The new service will also provide the discovery interface for the People Australia initiative. Additionally we have included some external sources of data such as OAIster, Open Library, the Hathi Trust, the Internet Archive and the Library of Congress tables of contents, publishers' descriptions and sample book chapters.
In leveraging off the collaborative approach the National Library takes with its discovery services, and in integrating results from across collections and formats, this new service will have distinct benefits for users. For example a researcher searching for images relating to "George Woodroffe Goyder" will also be presented with results for people, books, manuscripts, maps and full text newspapers articles. This new approach presents major benefits to the researcher who, in the past, would have had to visit each discovery service in turn and conduct separate searches for the material they sought.

Running code as part of an open standards policy

From the First Monday website

Governments around the world are considering implementing or even mandating open standards policies. They believe these policies will provide economic, socio–political, and technical benefits. In this article, we analyse the failure of the Massachusetts’s open standards policy as applied to document formats. We argue it failed due to the lack of running code. Running code refers to multiple independent, interoperable implementations of an open standard. With running code, users have choice in their adoption of a software product and consequently economic and technological benefits. We urge governments to incorporate a “running code” requirement when adopting an open standards policy.

Wikidentities: Young people collaborating on virtual identities in social network sites

From the First Monday website

Wikis and social networking sites (SNS) are arguably two of the most popular tools used by young people as part of their everyday social interactions. We propose that the concept of the wiki may be useful for understanding the kinds of virtual identities that are constructed, visually presented, and narrated in online contexts, such as MySpace. The term wikidentities is used in this paper to encapsulate the kinds of identity work, which may occur through SNS. We argue that wiki-like behaviour has consequences for reconceptualising identity as something that is mediated by (rather than at odds with) technology. Our research opens up ways for considering new forms of agency for young people appropriate to a high–tech era that encourages collaboration, negotiation, and risk.

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-05-29T12:05:00.000+12:00

Introducing The Source

Statement of Principles on Copyright Exceptions and Limitations for Libraries and Archives (Note: PDF)

From the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) website

In many countries, copyright law, through exceptions and limitations, has long supported the essential functions of libraries through statutes that permit functions such as preservation. But these laws have not adequately kept pace for uses of digital information. The international library community believes that there is an immediate need for Member States to include provisions in their national laws to address the realities of access to digital information. We have developed a set of 12 Principles for Copyright Exceptions and Limitations for Libraries and Archives that address many of the issues, including provisions for persons with disabilities , within the context of the work of this Committee.

Digital Cultural Heritage: Concepts, Projects, and Emerging Constructions of Heritage (Note: PDF)

From the Digital Library of Information Science and Technology (dLIST) website

This paper examines a heritage practice by which memory institutions extend their role as repositories to becoming participants in a broader discourse about heritage with the consuming public. This practice is considered by focusing on two periods - the first wave of digital library development, and a most recent trend characterized by engagement of online audiences through social networking platforms.

Federal Agencies Digitisation Guidelines Initiative

From the Federal Agencies Digitisation Guidelines Initiative website

Saving the nation’s cultural heritage is an increasingly important matter for government agencies that hold large amounts of material documenting the national record. Individual government agencies are digitising different content, yet they share many of the same technical issues and concerns so the sharing of information and tools is an idea whose time has come. To that end, the Library of Congress is participating in a new government collaboration, the results of which can be followed on the newly released “Federal Agencies Digitisation Guidelines Initiative” website.
Twelve agencies have come together to develop a common set of digitisation practices and guidelines and two working groups have been formed. A still-image working group will establish appropriate guidelines for the scanning of text, maps, photographic prints and negatives. An audiovisual working group will set standards for digitising audiovisual materials - sound recordings, videos and film.

The UK's Digital Road to Recovery (Note: PDF)

From the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) website

In this report, ITIF & LSE Enterprise estimate the impact on employment in the United Kingdom of additional investment in three important technologies: broadband Internet, intelligent transportation systems, and the smart grid.

Ten ideas for policymakers to drive digital progress (Note: PDF)

From the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) website

This US article offers 10 guiding principals for creating technology policy that spurs and sustains digital progress. Innovators continue to find new ways to use information technology (IT) to make our lives better. Looking forward, IT will continue to be a critical component of solutions to many social challenges. But policymakers must create the right environment for technological progress.

Powering ideas: an innovation agenda for the 21st century (Note: PDF)

From the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research website

This report outlines a policy framework to guide the development of Australia’s innovation system over the next ten years. According to the report, innovation will make Australia more productive and increase our capacity to build new industries, attract new investment, and create new jobs – both now and in the decades to come. It also promises us happier lives – with better health, more time for friends and family, more security, and more opportunities for all Australians to reach their full potential. Most importantly of all, it will give us the tools we need to heal and protect the environment.

The need for speed: the importance of next-generation broadband networks (Note: PDF)

From the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) website

This report from US think-tank ITIF argues that supporting the deployment of faster broadband networks will be crucial to enabling next-generation Web-based applications and services that will play important roles in improving quality of life and boosting economic growth. While getting broadband service to the Americans who lack it is an important policy target, next-generation broadband will deliver a wave of new benefits to consumers, society, businesses, and the economy.

Guidelines for Children’s Libraries Services (Note: PDF)

From the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) website

The global community and the demands of the information age have re-shaped librarianship and the use of technologies to acknowledge and enhance the economic, cultural and communication revolution in today’s world. These Guidelines, in an outline format, were written by the Standing Committee members of the Libraries for Children and Young Adults Section as an implementation tool for libraries of all sizes and economic levels.

Joint IFLA/IPA statement: Enhancing the Debate on Open Access

From the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) website

A joint statement has been released by the International Publishers Association, the International Association of Scientific Technical and Medical (STM) Publishers, and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) calling for a more rational, evidence based debate on open access. It encourages experimentation and piloting of new concepts and ideas, whilst acknowledging that the differences in the different academic disciplines and publishing traditions may lead to differentiated approaches and business models in support of authors. The joint statement is intended to move the oftentimes heated and polarised debate about open access as a model for scholarly communication towards a more measured and nuanced discourse.

Safeguarding Collections at the Dawn of the 21st Century: Describing Roles & Measuring Contemporary Preservation Activities in ARL Libraries (Note: PDF)

From the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) website

Preservation has long been considered a fundamental responsibility of research libraries. Data on preservation activities by its members has been collected by the Association of Research Libraries since 1987, but changing digital technologies and the research, teaching, and learning environments in which research libraries are engaged created a need to review and examine assumptions about the types of qualitative and quantitative data needed to characterize current and emerging preservation programs. The report is organized around three themes: Preservation functions; Networked digital environment; Collaboration. Within each section, background and analysis are provided and recommendations for consideration by ARL are posed.

Call for feedback: The Delete Generation

2009-05-26T12:58:00.006+12:00

Kia ora koutou

I am giving a presentation to the IFLA conference in August and I'd really appreciate your help with it.

In March this year I gave a presentation called "The Delete Generation: Citizen-created content, digital equity and the preservation of community memory".

I'm looking to build on that presentation, to get wider views across the New Zealand Library sector on the areas I cover around the preservation and protection of digital assets, particularly in relation to communities and citizen-created content.

I'd love your help, so please have a look at the video or download the transcript, and post your ideas, comments or views in the comments. My advisor Karin Kos and I will be reading and responding to your feedback as it comes in, and it will all go towards my final presentation for IFLA.

To get you started, here's the abstract for the talk:

A quiet, web-roots-led, revolution is challenging the way librarians have traditionally viewed the protection and preservation of knowledge. While the complex issues concerning the protection and preservation of digital assets are better understood by the information professions, there is still much thinking required about the preservation and protection of the new wave of citizen-created content.

Traditionally information professionals in all types of memory institutions have clearly met the need for and nature of the preservation activities around formal and authoritative knowledge services and systems. However informal, citizen-created, knowledge activities are far less straightforward in terms of preservation. These activities arise and evolve as individual citizens develop as authors, content creators, thought leaders, film-makers, blog diarists, etc. There is at present an extraordinary unleashing of content creation by individual citizens.

This development challenges established organisational systems and professional practice in an unprecedented way. This paper outlines some of the issues involved in the preservation of digital assets in this environment. It explores how all memory institutions including archives, galleries, museums and libraries in particular, can value and protect a country’s digital assets in both formal and informal arenas.

This paper explores the challenges and unlimited potential of Web 2.0, in reshaping thinking about what digital assets to collect and protect over time.

Many thanks,

Penny Carnaby

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-05-22T13:52:00.000+12:00

Introducing The Source

Informing Innovation: Tracking Student Interest in Emerging Library Technologies at Ohio University (Note: PDF)

From the American Library Association (ALA) website

This publication examines one institution’s efforts to move away from technolust and towards a “culture of assessment." It presents findings from an environmental scan conducted at Ohio University, which investigated the convergence of students, libraries, and emerging information, communication, and academic tools.
The identification of student behaviours related to emerging and social technologies and the implications indicated by those behaviours are central to this study. The need for local user assessment is a fundamental message in this volume, which shares practical research strategies and methods with the reader. University and college libraries can use this case study and its appended survey instrument template to conduct similar investigations on their campuses.

Digital collections summit 2006: final report (Note: PDF)

From the Collections Council of Australia website

This is the Final Report arising from the Digital Collections Summit convened by the Collections Council of Australia in 2006. It brings together information shared by people working in archives, galleries, libraries and museums at the Summit. It also incorporates feedback received in respect of the Australian Framework and Action Plan for Digital Heritage Collections arising from the Summit and released as an Exposure Draft in 2007. This Report also identifies the next steps in advancing the vision and objectives identified at the Summit.

Australia in the Digital Economy: research report series

From the Australian Communications and Media Authority website

The internet has become increasingly prevalent in Australian homes and businesses and its effect has been far-reaching; transforming economic and social interactions, traditional services such as voice telephony, the distribution of content as well as underpinning the development of the digital economy.
This report series aims to contribute to a greater understanding of the digital economy and will cover issues such as: attitudes and behaviours to online security and privacy; digital confidence and skills; take-up and use of the internet; and factors which influence people’s decisions to participate or not participate online.

Unlocking Audio: Towards an Online Repository of Spoken Word Collections in Flanders

From the D-Lib Magazine website

Currently, Flanders lags behind many other European regions with regard to disclosing its oral history collections. Despite recent attempts undertaken by cultural heritage institutions to make Flemish audio collections more accessible over the Internet, the widespread distribution of these historical sound materials has yet to be realized. Based on discussions with stakeholders, the authors of this article map the current situation in Flanders regarding the preservation and dissemination of spoken word collections. Furthermore, we critically assess the technological and, in particular, the organisational feasibility of an innovative disclosure application by means of a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis. With our findings, we hope to inspire cultural heritage and archive institutions to digitise and open up their audio-visual collections. We hope as well to provide food for thought about possible opportunities and pitfalls for similar archiving projects.

Review of the European Data Protection Directive (Note: PDF)

From the Rand Corporation website

The Directive can be regarded as a unique legal instrument in how it supports the exercise of a right to privacy and rules for personal data protection. Its principles are regarded in many quarters as a gold standard or reference model for personal data protection in Europe and beyond. However, the Directive must remain valid in the face of new challenges, including globalisation, the ongoing march of technological capability and the changing ways that personal data is used. Although the flexibility of the Directive helps it to remain current, its effectiveness is undermined by the complexity of the cultural and national differences across which it must operate. In order to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the Directive and to suggest ways in which European data protection arrangements may remain fit for purpose, the study team reviewed the relevant literature, conducted 50 interviews with privacy practitioners and regulators, experts and academics, and ran a scenario-based workshop to explore and evaluate potential avenues for improvement.

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-05-15T11:30:00.001+12:00

Introducing The Source

Embracing the future, preserving our past (Note: PDF)

From the National Archives website

'Embracing the future, preserving our past' is a new publication explaining what The National Archives is and what we do.

It describes our strategic priorities for this year, shows why they are important to us, and demonstrates how they are relevant to the work that we do now and our plans for the coming months. It also shows the breadth of the services we provide for members of the public, for government and for the archive sector across the UK.

Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World (Note: PDF)

From the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) website

The genesis of this report was a discussion between colleagues in the Higher Education Academy and the Joint Information Systems Committee. It arose from the observation of exponentially increasing use of Web 2.0 technologies, particularly – but not exclusively – by those of school age. Alongside this was the perception that this use was not only changing behaviour – for example the crossover of the typical time watching TV in favour of time spent online – but was also changing attitudes. By 2007 such changes were, anecdotally, beginning to be noticed in students who had recently entered higher education, and not just in the way they spent their time and accessed the web, but also in their views of their place in the institution and their expectation of participation and influence. Our hope is that this report provides a coherent and accessible account of the potential for Web 2.0 technologies in higher education and that our recommendations will enable higher education institutions (HEIs) and the agencies which support them to navigate their own paths in such interesting times.

University Scholarly Knowledge Inventory System: A Workflow System for Institutional Repositories (Note: PDF)

From the E-prints in Library and Information Science (E-LIS) website

This report provides workspace for institutional repository staff. U-SKIS tracks files, communications, and publishers’ archiving policies to determine what may be added to a repository. A team at the University of Utah developed the system as part of a strategy to gather previously published peer-reviewed articles. As campus outreach programs developed, coordinators quickly amassed thousands of journal articles requiring copyright research and permission. This article describes the creation of U-SKIS, addresses the educational role U-SKIS plays in the scholarly communication arena, and explores the implications of implementing scalable workflow systems for other digital collections.

Moving into multiple business models: Outlook for Newspaper Publishing in the Digital Age (Note: PDF)

From the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) website

The global publishing industry is going through a period of turmoil, as broadband penetration rises and new devices for delivering digital content arrive on the scene. Consumers are increasingly switching from traditional print media to digital media, although the manner in which they are making the transition varies with age, gender and nationality. In this study, we have examined the outlook for newspaper publishers, advertisers and media buyers, as they adapt to the digital revolution and deal with a global economic slowdown.

The Next Age of Discovery

From the Wall Street Journal website

In a 21st-century version of the age of discovery, teams of computer scientists, conservationists and scholars are fanning out across the globe in a race to digitize crumbling literary treasures.

Some manuscripts are in poor condition, like this worm-eaten, 17th-century Christian Arabic Book of Hours from Balamand Monastery, Lebanon.
In the process, they're uncovering unexpected troves of new finds, including never-before-seen versions of the Christian Gospels, fragments of Greek poetry and commentaries on Aristotle. Improved technology is allowing researchers to scan ancient texts that were once unreadable -- blackened in fires or by chemical erosion, painted over or simply too fragile to unroll. Now, scholars are studying these works with X-ray fluorescence, multispectral imaging used by NASA to photograph Mars and CAT scans used by medical technicians.

IdeaPaint

From Stephen's Lighthouse blog (Stephan Abram)

IdeaPaint is a single coat roller applied paint that turns any smooth surface into a dry-erase writing surface. It can be used to transform office walls, desks, and hallways into collaborative spaces. With IdeaPaint, work environments become areas of increased functionality that evoke creativity and impromptu teamwork and cultivate innovation by providing a dry-erase writing surface without seams, borders, or restrictions. IdeaPaint can be used in a myriad of ways including in open work areas, conference rooms, offices, hallways, and even on columns."

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-05-08T11:32:00.000+12:00

Introducing The Source

Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want (Note: PDF)

From the OCLC website

An end user’s expectations and work practices on the Web influence his or her decision to use a library online catalog. Catalog interfaces matter, but catalog data quality is also a driving factor of the catalog’s perceived utility — and not only for end users, but also for librarians and library staff. To gain a rounded, evidence-based understanding of what constitutes “quality” in catalog data, OCLC formed a research team to:
• Identify and compare the data quality expectations of catalog end users and librarians
• Compare the catalog data quality expectations of types of librarians
• Recommend catalog data quality priorities, taking into account the perspectives of both end users and librarians
The findings suggest two traditions of information organization at work — one from librarianship and the other from the Web. Librarians’ perspectives about data quality remain highly influenced by their profession’s classical principles of information organization, while end users’ expectations of data quality arise largely from their experiences of how information is organized on popular Web sites. What is needed now is to integrate the best of both worlds in new, expanded definitions of what “quality” means in library online catalogs.

Preservation of Art in the Digital Realm (Note: PDF)

From the British Library website

This paper discusses the challenges of preserving art in the digital context. It provides an overview of the broader digital preservation challenge, and then considers new media art within that context. Through several case studies, it illustrates and discusses problems, issues and proposed solutions to digital art preservation. We will see that while work has been done towards digital preservation, significant issues remain.

Long-term Preservation of Electronic Literature (Note: PDF)

From the British Library website

This paper, given at iPRES 2008 (British Library Conference Centre, 29-30 Sept. 2008), discusses the threats to electronic literature and efforts in Germany by the German Literature Archive, German National Library and nestor to address the challenges of developing preservation strategies for this material.

Looking to Big-Screen E-Readers to Help Save the Daily Press

From the New York Times website

The iPod stemmed losses in the music industry. The Kindle gave beleaguered book publishers a reason for optimism. Now the recession-ravaged newspaper and magazine industries are hoping for their own knight in shining digital armor, in the form of portable reading devices with big screens.

The Mobile Difference

From the Pew Internet & American Life Project website

Mobile connectivity is now a powerful differentiator among technology users. Those who plug into the information and communications world while on-the-go are notably more active in many facets of digital life than those who use wires to jack into the internet and the 14% of Americans who are off the grid entirely.
* Some 39% of Americans have positive and improving attitudes about their mobile communication devices, which in turn draws them further into engagement with digital resources – on both wireless and wireline platforms
* 8% of adults use mobile devices and broadband platforms for continual information exchange to collaborate with their social networks
* 7% of adults actively use mobile devices and social networking tool, yet are ambivalent about all the connectivity
* 8% of Americans find mobility lighting their information pathways, but have comparatively few tech assets at home
* 16% of adults are active conduits of content and information for
* 61% are anchored to stationary media; though many have broadband and cell phones, coping with access is often too much for them

Semantic Web Awareness 2009: A Comparative Study on Approaches to Social Software and the Semantic Web (Note: PDF)

From the Semantic Web Company (SWC) website

The Semantic Web Awareness Barometer 2009 aims at providing the reader with a brief overview over current trends and possible future topics in the fast evolving and dynamic field of web semantics. It also addresses Social Software, since these two areas are expected to condition each other. The data analysed in this survey was primarily collected among Semantic Web specialists from science and industry.

New Inks Cut Costs of Office Color Printing

From the New York Times website

After years of research, Xerox will release the first in a new series of large machines this month that it claims will change the economics of printing large volumes of colour documents at offices. Unlike traditional laser printers that use cartridges of powdery, sometimes messy toner, the revamped products rely on hunks of ink that remain solid at room temperature and then melt when heated.

New Study Examines Technology Generation Gap in the Workplace (Note: PDF)

From the LexisNexis website

A national survey of American white collar workers found that while technology is widely embraced among working professionals, significant gaps exist among generations regarding its use and application in the workplace. The newly released Technology Gap Survey found generational differences in the effect of technology on workplace etiquette, the blurring boundaries between personal and professional tasks, and the impact of technology overload.

Twitter for Libraries (and Librarians)

From the Information Today website

For many people, the word “twitter” brings to mind birds rather than humans. But information professionals know that Twitter is a fast-growing, free messaging service for people, and it’s one that libraries (and librarians) can make good use of—without spending much time or effort.

Ex Libris' URM - the new generation library software platform

2009-05-08T06:17:00.005+12:00

I’m currently in Richmond, Virginia at the Ex Libris User Group of North America (ELUNA) Conference, where on Wednesday afternoon (US time) there was a Plenary Session by Oren Beit-Arie from Ex Libris on their thinking around Service Oriented Librarianship, and in particular, the outlines of their ‘new-generation’ library software platform, URM (Unified Resource Management).

Background links:

Many quotes and ideas came from the paper No Brief Candle: Reconceiving Research Libraries for the 21st Century published by the Council on Library and Information Resources in August 2008
Above the Clouds: A Berkeley view of cloud computing by Michael Armbrust et al, February 2009
Ex Libris’ URM Resource Center (sic)
Ex Libris White Paper on URM, which I haven’t read yet, so much of this may be duplicated information, but read on…

There has definitely been some rethinking and reworking of the idea of URM since it was first aired at ELUNA last year, summarised nicely by Jonathan Rochkind from Johns Hopkins here: http://bibwild.wordpress.com/2007/06/11/exlibris_urm/

So, on to the presentation – I haven’t had time to coalesce my thoughts on this yet, so this is basically a dump from the PowerPoint that I hope you’ll find interesting.

There are 4 current trends in scholarship/research.

Trend 1 more research, more data
Trend 2 more interdisciplinary activity
Trend 3 changes in scholarly communication models
Trend 4 changes in technology models eg cloud computing , Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

Against this background, libraries have 3 areas of working, the Traditional, or what we do now, the Transitional, which involves doing new things in support of the traditional, and the Transformational, which involves doing entirely new and different things.

Hence the development of the URM Framework. Basically it breaks down into 4 parts.

1. Unified Research , Discovery and Delivery (URD2). This is where search occurs – local, remote & deep), also the linking UI, recommendation, and user preferences.
2. URM – this sits under URD2 and comprises selection, acquisition, activation, patron data, fulfilment, cataloguing, access rights, publication and inventory maintenance.
3. Data Services layer. This sits aside the URD2 & URM and comprises metadata management, usage data, the knowledge base, vendor information and user created content such as tags and reviews.
4. And beyond… Sitting alongside the Data Services layer, this comprises institutionasl repositories, preservation, new product bX (a recommender service) http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/category/bXOverview etc.

It was emphasised that across all of these products is an open platform.

So, how is this going to work?

Traditional Services

These are moving to a network level eg SaaS, Cloud computing. The move of software to a centralised, hosted environment will benefit by bringing down Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and enable options for Data as a Service (new acronym alert DaaS?)

So library’s metadata will be sitting in hosted units and on top of this data layer sits the Metadata Management & Central Knowledge Base. The stated goal is to enable libraries to preserve their uniqueness and to move towards a new model of bibliographic control.

The Metadata Management System comprises

Library Zone where a library has control of local versions of their metadata.
Community Zone which allows the creation of & links to shared description. The sharing of metadata will decrease the need for libraries to store and manage locally
Centralised authority control
Collaboration – allowing the potential for peer-to-peer sharing

This model allows balance between the common & the unique, no-one is being forced to share. The aim is to encourage collaboration, and the MMS environment will not impose record use or reuse policies, and rights asserted by the rightful owner will be respected.

Transitional Services

Leveraging the capabilities of SaaS. New infrastructure support will allow:

Integration with vendor systems
Collaborative collection development within consortia or ad-hoc groups
Shared purchasing
Integrated anonymised usage data from similar institutions.

Regarding community support, the aim is to create opportunities for community discussion and decision making, and to leverage new technologies to support the community, the idea being to create collaboration & partnership opportunities without compromising the library’s local needs and uniqueness.

Transformational Services

Will there be a new paradigm for search? Are we moving away from search to an era of ‘discovery’?

Preservation – sustaining the digital investment

e-science, e-scholarship, e-research – libraries are necessary for data curation, management and use brining up the idea of the Librarian as Middleware (from Rick Luce’s paper (http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/ff08luce.pdf) Making a Quantum Leap to eResearch Support: a New World of Opportunities and Challenges for Research Libraries.

The End.

That was it really, and along the way we got to see a few initial screenshots of workflows in what may be the UI .

This is how we do it: @nlnz on Twitter

2009-05-05T10:30:00.003+12:00

Oprah's there. Ashton's there. Cats do it, dogs do it, even transportation infrastructure does it. And so do we; tweet away on Twitter.

It's safe to assume that the LibraryTechNZ readership is au fait with Twitter, but just in case; Twitter http://twitter.com is a microblogging service that lets you post 140-character updates to the web. If you want to know why that's useful, even addicitive, check out Tim O'Reilly's post.

Twitter seems to satisfy two strong human needs: our desire to tell people about ourselves, and our desire to know what's going on with the people around us (physically or virtually). When we’re explaining Twitter, we often point to these Personal Items columns in early 20th century newspapers, where small goings-on in the community were printed for all to read.

Libraries and other cultural institutions have taken to Twitter with huge enthusiasm; some do it incredibly well, others are still finding their feet.

We're pretty happy with how our Twitter works. Sure, we're not rockstars; currently, we're verging on 700 followers. But we get some great feedback

And awesome interaction

So, this is how we do it

Chelsea set up the Twitter account last September, to talk to attendees at the LIANZA 2008 conference. However when the conference was over we were left with a communications channel and not enough to communicate. The Library doesn't run enough events or release enough news to sustain a daily Twitter feed. So we had a bit of a think about it, invoking what have become our three favourite "so, you want to start a [insert social media site name here] account?" questions, and this is what we came up with.

What content do you have to share?

Twitter lends itself so well to a pithy comment and a hyperlink that it rapidly became obvious that posting links to items in digital collections such as Papers Past and Manuscripts & Pictorial was a natural use for the @nlnz account.

An advantage of this approach is that there's no need for any clearances – we're taking people through to collection items in their natural habitat, not reproducing the items elsewhere.

Who's going to run this thing?

Answer: Chelsea and Courtney.

We sit next to each other, which makes it really easy to coordinate. We both twitter ourselves, so we've got a grasp of the mechanism. And we're both really interested in the collections; partly, this activity grew out of the fact we've being passing links and comments between us via IM for ages. Occasionally people send us a recommendation for the stream, but so far no-one has wanted to join in as a regular poster.

It was really important to both of us that we had our names on the account, drawing inspiration from Shelley Bernstein at Brooklyn Museum and from this post & discussion on Nina Simon's Museums 2 blog.

To make it easier for ourselves, we made up some rules:

We post twice a day (that's why they're called #tbreaktweets: we try to time our posts with the Library's traditional morning and afternoon tea times)
We restrict the tweeting to the #tbreaktweets; we don't do events or systems outages or media releases. Hopefully this means we're predictable, in a good way.
We try to make sure we're at our desks for 30 minutes after the tweet goes out, in case anyone writes back. If we're not open to conversation, what's the point of being there?
We follow anyone who follows us (unless they're a bot selling stuff)

Who is your audience community?

We knew that the kind of people we already hung out with on Twitter were happy to be momentarily distracted with a worthwhile link. We're those kinds of people ourselves. But honestly, we couldn't have predicted the kind of audience we attracted. Our followers include cultural institutions, friends and acquaintances, art lovers, history lovers, library lovers, information lovers, New Zealand lovers, humour lovers. It's an eclectic mix.

What has evolved over the past 4 months is nothing short of awesome. It was a pleasant surprise to see that our interest in the National Library's digital collections was shared among so many other people. And our sense of humour wasn't lost on them either!

What's great about Twitter, among other social networking sites, is that what appears on the surface to be a cacophony of disparate voices is sometimes just a simple conversation among friends.

Sharing the love

For us, #tbreaktweets is about sharing the love. In that spirit, here are some of our fav NZ culture tweeters:

http://twitter.com/auckland_museum

http://twitter.com/TePapaColOnline

http://twitter.com/nzlive

http://twitter.com/NZHistorydotnet

http://twitter.com/ChchArtGallery

http://twitter.com/te_ara

A joint post by Chelsea Hughes & Courtney Johnston, tbreaktweeters

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-05-01T11:12:00.000+12:00

Introducing The Source

E-journals: their use, value and impact

From the Research Information Network website

This article takes an in-depth look at how researchers in the UK use electronic journals, the value they bring to universities and research institutions and the contribution they make to research productivity, quality and outcomes.

Collaborative Librarianship: New Light on a Brilliant Concept

From the Collaborative Librarianship website

Libraries around the world have enjoyed a remarkable history of working together. The present contexts of collaboration in other sectors of society, of a growing literature on collaborative management theory and practice, of the Colorado experience in library collaboration, constitute fertile soil that nurtures new initiatives in collaboration. No Brief Candle provides perspectives on the importance of collaboration for libraries of the 21st century.

Library of the Future Debate

From the JISC website

What is the library of the future? This public question and answer debate discussed what information and library provision mean in these changing times; technology has had a huge effect on the behaviour of both information consumers and service providers. We asked what the library currently is and what do libraries need to do to support knowledge, innovation and society for the future? These issues were examined from several different perspectives through a range of high profile speakers who presented their vision for the library of the future.

We Need Publishing Standards for Datasets and Data Tables

From the OECD (The World Economy) website

This paper details the problems with user ability to locate and reference online data. Datasets are a significant part of the scholarly record and being published much more frequently but with widely inconsistent metadata, links and citations. The paper proposes bibliographic metadata standards that could be implemented to provide users and librarians with data that is as accessible and as easy to find and catalogue as written works like journal articles and book chapters. By following existing scholarly metadata standards, datasets can easily utilise the existing discovery channels that are used by e-journals and e-books, including library systems, cross reference linking, publishing platforms, and search engines.

Semantic publishing: the coming revolution in scientific journal publishing (Note: PDF)

From the ImageWeb website

Recent developments in Web technology can be used for semantic enhancement of scholarly journal articles, by aiding publication of data and metadata and providing 'lively' interactive access to content. Such semantic enhancements are already being undertaken by leading STM publishers, and automated text processing will help these enhancements become affordable and routine. Publisher, editor, and author all have primary roles in that process; an incremental approach is needed. Publication of data and metadata to the Web make possible added-value 'ecosystem services'; semantic publishing will bring substantial benefits to scholarly communication.

Adventures In Semantic Publishing: Exemplar Semantic Enhancements Of A Research Article

From the PLoS Computational Biology website

Scientific innovation depends on finding, integrating, and re-using the products of previous research. Here we explore how recent developments in Web technology, particularly those related to the publication of data and metadata, might assist that process by providing semantic enhancements to journal articles within the mainstream process of scholarly journal publishing.

All together now! Anzac collaboration on The Commons

2009-04-24T16:46:00.006+12:00

On 25 April New Zealanders and Australians mark Anzac Day, the anniversary of the 1915 landing of Allied troops at Gallipoli / Gelibolu Yarımadası in Turkey, and the beginning of the 9-month Gallipoli campaign of World War I.

This year Australian and New Zealand members of The Commons have worked together to share photographs of the campaign in Gallipoli and later Anzac Day events on Flickr. Sets have been loaded by

The idea was sparked by Ellen at the State Library of New South Wales and warmly supported by the Flickr Commons group. The Indicommons crew also got behind the idea, and zyrcster wrote a fabulous post pulling all the upload together.

For me, it's been really interesting watching how making this extra effort to coordinate a joint upload and work with the community to promote it has resulted in a much higher level of tagging than usual on the images we've shared. The four collaborators tried to use AnzacDay as a shared tag, and I'm already seeing 1915, Gallipoli, destroyer and anzac appearing in our top 150 tags:

Not to mention some great info about periscope rifles

If I could ask for one thing, it'd be to see people making connections between the images, either with tags or comments - I've dipped my toe in the water by connecting these two views of Anzac Cove.

That for me would really exploit the true power of The Commons to join up all this like content held in unlike institutions.

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-04-24T11:53:00.000+12:00

Introducing The Source

Madison Researchers Use Brain Interface to Post to Twitter

From the AScribe website

In early April, Adam Wilson posted a status update on the social networking Web site Twitter - just by thinking about it. Just 23 characters long, his message, "using EEG to send tweet," demonstrates a natural, manageable way in which "locked-in" patients can couple brain-computer interface technologies with modern communication tools. A University of Wisconsin-Madison biomedical engineering doctoral student, Wilson is among a growing group of researchers worldwide who aim to perfect a communication system for users whose bodies do not work, but whose brains function normally. Among those are people who have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), brain-stem stroke or high spinal cord injury.

Introducing Copyright: a plain language guide to copyright in the 21st century (Note: PDF)

From the Commonwealth of Learning website

This book is a map, not a guidebook. It introduces the reader to copyright and its important features and explains how they fit together. Chapters include: Copyright History; International Copyright Agreements; Copyright Works; Holders’ Rights; Users’ Rights; Copyright Licences; Open Licences; Digital Rights Management; Software Protection; Traditional Knowledge; Copyright Reform

Creative Economy Report 2008 (Note: PDF)

From the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development website

In the contemporary world, a new development paradigm is emerging that links the economy and culture, embracing economic, cultural, technological and social aspects of development at both the macro and micro levels. Central to the new paradigm is the fact that creativity, knowledge and access to information are increasingly recognised as powerful engines driving economic growth and promoting development in a globalising world. “Creativity” in this context refers to the formulation of new ideas and to the application of these ideas to produce original works of art and cultural products, functional creations, scientific inventions and technological innovations. There is thus an economic aspect to creativity, observable in the way it contributes to entrepreneurship, fosters innovation, enhances productivity and promotes economic growth.

Impacts of a national high-speed broadband network (Note: PDF)

From the nowwearetalking website

This report explores and quantifies the economic importance of expanding the coverage of high-speed broadband (HSBB) to the Australian economy under a range of different scenarios. Using the latest literature, economic data, coverage maps and subscriber numbers, the current and future impact of broadband has been modelled for the period from 2009 to 2020. The rapid evolution in information and communications technologies (ICTs) over the recent decades has transformed societies and economies throughout the globe. The latest and perhaps most far-reaching phase in this transformation is underway with the rollout of HSBB in most developed and many developing economies.

Report on the World Summit on the Information Society Stocktaking (Note: PDF)

From the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) website

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) set out a clear vision to harness the vast potential of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to achieve the development aspirations of all the world’s inhabitants. Recognising the importance of ICT as valuable assets for economic growth, world leaders expressed their strong political commitment towards building an inclusive, people-centred and development-oriented information society.
The Summit was an important landmark in the global effort to eradicate poverty and achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) by 2015. Since the Tunis Phase of WSIS, much progress has been made and many initiatives have been announced, as reflected in this report.
However, we need to keep in mind that there is much more to be done and there are only seven years remaining to 2015.

Reality Bites: Periodicals Price Survey 2009

From the Library Journal website

In the face of the downturn, libraries and publishers brace for big cuts.

The State of America's Libraries Report 2009 (Note: PDF)

From the American Library Association website

The value of libraries in communities across the country continued to grow in 2008 - and accelerated dramatically as the national economy sank and people looked for cost effective resources in a time of crisis. U.S. libraries experienced a dramatic increase in library card registration as the public continues to turn to their local library for free services. More than 68 percent of Americans have a library card. This is the greatest number of Americans with library cards since the American Library Association started to measure library card usage in 1990, according to a 2008 Web poll conducted by Harris Interactive. The report also says library usage soared as Americans visited their libraries nearly 1.4 billion times and checked out more than 2 billion items in the past year, an increase of more than 10 percent in both checked out items and library visits, compared to data from the last economic downturn in 2001.

Signs of epistemic disruption: Transformations in the knowledge system of the academic journal

From the First Monday website

This article is an overview of the current state of scholarly journals, not (just) as an activity to be described in terms of its changing processes, but more fundamentally as a pivot point in a broader knowledge system. After locating journals in what we term the process of knowledge design, the article goes on to discuss some of the deeply disruptive aspects of the contemporary moment. These not only portend potential transformations in the form of the journal, but possibly also in the knowledge systems that the journal in its heritage form has supported. These disruptive forces are represented by changing technological, economic, distributional, geographic, interdisciplinary and social relations to knowledge. The article goes on to examine three specific breaking points.

NDF conference 2009 - call for contributors

2009-04-08T09:26:00.003+12:00

The call for contributors at the 2009 National Digital Forum conference has opened. The 2009 conference is being held in Wellington at Te Papa on 23-24 November.

The conference organising committee is seeking:

people to give short kick-off presentations for forum sessions
facilitators for forum sessions
presenters for demonstrations

Forum sessions

These 90 minute sessions are designed to get attendees talking. Each forum session will start with two or three short presentations related to a particular topic, and then move into a facilitated group discussion.

Topics likely to be of interest include (but aren't limited to):

Where do we stand now on issues of intellectual property, Creative Commons and copyright? How does licensing impact on commercial imperatives?
How do we preserve and encourage the appropriate sharing of indigenous knowledge and Mātauranga Māori in digitisation and online activities?
What are the issues and opportunities surrounding digital repatriation?
Should we prioritise access or preservation when planning digitisation projects?
What does the education sector want from us, and how can we get it to them?
How can we balance privacy and access in the online world?
What do we need to be doing to face the geo-future (geo-tagging, geo-caching, geo-data)?

You might like to work with other people to submit a proposal for an entire forum session, or submit an individual proposal and work with the conference committee to build a session.

Expressions of interest are also invited from people keen to help out by facilitating a session. Alternatively, if you know someone who'd make an awesome facilitator, why not nominate them?

Demonstrations

These 30 minute sessions are designed for more relaxed presentations about projects, products, websites or applications. They are an opportunity for presenters to describe what they've have been up to, what they've have achieved, and share lessons they've learned.

More information

The call for contributors closes on 11 May 2009. You can get more information about the conference theme and presentation formats, and download the Presentation Submission form, on the NDF website.

I'm on the 2009 conference committee, so if you have questions or want to bounce some ideas around before submitting a proposal, please feel free to get in touch: courtney DOT johnston AT natlib.govt.nz

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-04-03T15:30:00.000+13:00

Introducing The Source

The myths and fallacies of digital photographs and their preservation (Note: PDF)

From the DigitalPreservationEurope(DPE) website

Digital photographs offer fascinating new possibilities and seem to be easier to store and preserve for the future than their analog counterpart, promising incredibly valuable, massive photo archives available at your fingertips. However, securely storing massive amounts of data, as well as ensuring that the file formats produced by professional cameras can be read in the near and longterm future, is a significant endeavour. This briefing paper reviews some of the core challenges in preserving digital photographs to make sure that the value of a digital photo archive remains and grows for the benefit of the photographer.

Will E-Book Anti-Piracy Technology Hurt Readers?

From the National Public Radio (NPR) website

As the book industry attempts to move from hardbacks to downloads, booksellers and publishers are struggling to prevent readers from pirating eBooks the way some music fans pirate music.
On the front line of that effort is digital rights management technology, or DRM, that is embedded into eBook files. DRM lets the companies control how copies can be made of eBooks and which devices can display them. But some users say DRM also prevents them from reading the eBooks they’ve bought.

Internet Typology: The Mobile Difference

From the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project website

Cast a glance at any coffee shop, train station or airport boarding gate, and it is easy to see that mobile access to the internet is taking root in our society. Open laptops or furrowed brows staring at palm-sized screens are evidence of how routinely information is exchanged on wireless networks. But the incidence of such activity is only one dimension of this phenomenon. Not everyone has the wherewithal to engage with “always present” connectivity and, while some may love it, others may only dip their toes in the wireless water and not go deeper. Until now, it has not been clear how mobile access interacts with traditional wireline online behaviour. Does availability of mobile access crowd out desktop access? Does it draw some users further into digital lifestyles?

How People Read Books Online: Mining and Visualizing Web Logs for Use Information (Note: PDF)

From the Human-Computer Interaction Lab website

This paper explores how people read books online. Instead of observing individuals, we analyse usage of an online digital library of children’s books (the International Children’s Digital Library). We go beyond typical webpage-centric analysis to focus on book reading in an attempt to understand how people read books from websites. We propose a definition of reading a book (in comparison to others who visit the website), and report a number of observations about the use of the library in question.

Friending Libraries: Why libraries can become nodes in people’s social networks

From the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project website

Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, recently discussed Pew Internet’s latest findings and why they suggest that libraries can play a role in people’s social networks in the future. He described the reasons that people rely more and more on their social networks as they share ideas, learn, solve problems, and seek social support. And he explored how libraries can act as “nodes” in people’s networks.

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-03-27T11:14:00.000+13:00

Introducing The Source

Going Grey? Comparing the OCR Accuracy Levels of Bitonal and Greyscale Images / Tracy Powell and Gordon Paynter

From the D-Lib Magazine website

Newspaper collections are the subject of an increasing number of large-scale digitisation projects. In Papers Past, a collection of over a million newspaper pages, the introduction of full-text search has made a wealth of information findable that was previously hidden. The search feature is dependent on text extracted from the newspaper page images with Optical Character Recognition (OCR), so any improvement in OCR accuracy will add value to the collection by improving our users' chances of finding useful information.
Accepted wisdom is that greyscale digitisation produces higher OCR accuracy than bitonal digitisation. To test this assumption, we digitised three reels of microfilmed historic newspapers in both bitonal and greyscale, had them OCRed, and carried out a hand-count of the OCR accuracy on a random set of text samples. The experiment had a clear and surprising outcome: using our existing business processes, there was no evidence of any improvement in OCR accuracy from greyscale digitisation.

Deep Packet Inspection Puts Open Internet at Risk (Note: PDF)

From the Free Press website

The uncertainty surrounding Net Neutrality has given rise to a technology known as Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) that offers Internet service providers unprecedented control over Internet content. A recently released paper argues that the use of DPI technology by Internet service providers should raise serious concerns for both users and lawmakers. The paper asserts that the emerging DPI business model, marketed for its ability to monitor, control and ultimately charge subscribers for every use of an Internet connection, poses a major threat to the open Internet. In just one of many examples, DPI manufacturer Allot describes how its DPI product “enables service providers to project potential revenues and profits from setting up a tiered service infrastructure” and allows providers to “reduce the performance of applications with negative influence on revenues (e.g. competitive VoIP services).”

Towards Implementation of Library 2.0 and the e-Framework (TILE) (Note: PDF)

From the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) website

A new briefing paper has just been published by JISC, which informs dialogue around the current and future role of the library in a rapidly changing technological landscape. The paper resulted from JISC’s TILE4 project (Towards the Implementation of Library 2.0 and the eFramework); a programme of work with two key aims. Firstly, TILE investigated how libraries have incorporated web 2.0 applications and services into what they already do. Secondly, it sought to develop a draft conceptual framework (Library Domain Model) based on services it has specified for the international e-Framework. The project also makes recommendations on how the library community could the make the best use of web 2.0 approaches.

On trusting your socks to find each other (Note: PDF)

From the Yahoo! Research website

This articles addresses design issues that may arise as a result of the deployment of networks of devices that will constitute the “Internet of Things”. Addresses issues in particular around the trustworthiness of information exchange and transparency in such networks.

Mashing up research and connecting with learners through social media (Note: Podcast)

From the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) website

Ewan McIntosh, Digital Commissioner for 4iP, talks with Rebecca O’Brien from JISC via Skype about mobile gaming, how thinking from the learner’s perspective is key, and how universities have a vital role in mixing logical thinking with inspiring creativity.

Profiling Social Networks: A Social Tagging Perspective

From the D-Lib Magazine website

The web is rapidly becoming both more open and more social through the provision of technologies that make it easier for end users to access resources and join in social networks. Social networks have pioneered online communities, allowing users to contribute to collective knowledge by tagging online resources. Tagging behaviour increased dramatically between 2005 and 2007. This article reports on an investigation of social tagging using data gathered from Delicious, Flickr and YouTube for the years 2005, 2006 and 2007. Preliminary findings indicate both that it is possible to profile a social network through the analysis of tagging data and that Delicious is a more representative venue for analysing the social tagging behaviour of users than either Flickr or YouTube.

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-03-20T11:06:00.013+13:00

Introducing The Source

UC [California]-eLinks Direct Linking Usability Report (Note: PDF)

From the California Digital Library website

In the past, the research process began with two, distinct phases: discovery and access. After determining a topic, a researcher would enter the discovery phase, in which he or she would look through library catalogs and article indices to identify resources that might pertain to his or her research. The goal of the researcher during this access phase was to get a physical copy of the resource. The Internet and advancements in search engine technology and library information systems have made research easier in some ways and more difficult in others. The change that has the greatest implications for UC-eLinks – and for library services in general – is the collapsing of the discovery and access phases into a single workflow.

Measuring the Internet Economy - The ICT Development Index (Note: PDF)

From the International Telecommunication Union website

This report, published in 2009 by the ITU, compares developments in information and communication technologies (ICT) in 154 countries over a five-year period from 2002 to 2007. The Index combines 11 indicators into a single measure that can be used as a benchmarking tool globally, regionally and at the country level. These are related to ICT access, use and skills, such as households with a computer, the number of Internet users and literacy levels.

Australia: Internet access in public libraries survey 2008 (Note: PDF)

From the Australian Library and Information Association website

This report is a follow-up to similar survey reports in 2002 and 2005 and a more specialised report on internet filtering in 2007 and provides current information on how public library internet services are managed, delivered and used in responding libraries. This report of internet services in public libraries in Australia is made possible by the voluntary participation of a significant number of public libraries across Australia.

Economic analysis of literary publishing in Australia (Note: PDF)

From the Australia Council for the Arts website

This Australia Council-commissioned research report is a study of the economics of the Australian literary publishing sector. A priority area for the Australia Council is arts marketing and audience development to create a higher level of demand from arts consumers and to develop new audiences and readership. In turn, it is intended to help authors earn a living wage from their work. While there are reports into the nature of Australian publishing in general and the ABS provides statistics on the Australian publishing industry, there is very little specific data or information relating to literary publishing.

The Swinburne national technology and society monitor 2008 (Note: PDF)

From the Swinburne University of Technology website

The Swinburne National Technology and Society Monitor (SNTSM) provides an annual 'snapshot' of public perceptions of new technologies, science and technological change. The main findings include:
* Australians are comfortable with the rate of technological change in general, but the degree of comfort varies for specific technologies
* Australians trust scientific institutions and the non-commercial media for information about new technologies. They have little trust in government institutions, major companies or the churches. They have the least trust in the commercial media

Notes from Joshua Porter's Webstock workshop on Social Design: from Strategy to Interface

2009-03-19T10:56:00.023+13:00

Joshua Porter is the founder of Bokardo Design, an interface design and strategy shop focusing exclusively on social web applications. He recently wrote the book Designing for the Social Web. I was lucky enough to attend Josh's recent workshop at Webstock 'Social Design: From Strategy to Interface'. Here are my notes (all images grabbed from Josh's slides):

Strategy

Most businesses have strategy:

Corporate Strategy: concerned with the overall purpose and scope of the business to meet stakeholder expectations
Business unit strategy: concerned with how a business competes successfully within a speci!c market
Operational strategy: concerned with how each part of the business is organized to deliver value to the rest of the company

In a nutshell: how to gain competitive advantage and make money easier/faster than others.

So, instead of this (where customers must first sign up before creating their own page):

Aim for this:

Characteristics of design strategy

Long-term thinking: create value for people over time, and they’ll give you their business
User experience first: the user’s experience is the most important thing of all, it drives all other decision making
Optimize for use: instead of planning how to make money, plan for how to increase regular, positive use of design

In a nutshell: how to gain competitive advantage by making software/products that people love to use.

Signs that you have a strategy:

The strategy doesn’t change much (target doesn’t move)
You have a long-term plan for success.
You know what not to do.
You know what to focus on.
You know why your design is different from your competitors.
You know what success looks like.
The strategy is the litmus test for everything you do; every activity supports the strategy.

Problems with strategies:

competing interests
political infighting
short-term thinking
buzzword bingo
no ongoing evaluation
fake strategies

Classic Question: Who are your users?

Better Question: What are your users doing?

Alternatives:
What do people have to do to make you successful?
What are you making people better at?
What are your users passionate about?

Examples:
1. Amazon
Primary Activity: Finding Good Products
Social design strategy: “through accepting preferences of customers and then observing their purchase behavior over time, so that you can get that individualized knowledge of the customer and use that individualized knowledge of the customer to accelerate their discovery process.”

2. Google
Primary Activity: Search
Social design strategy: By analyzing linking and behavioural patterns of web users, Google provides relevant search results (and relevant advertisements to display alongside)

3. Patients Like Me
Primary Activity: Treating disease
Social design strategy: By designing an application for people to catalog, monitor, & share their treatments and symptoms with each other, PatientsLikeMe can make living with and treating a disease easier.

4. Netflix
Primary Activity: Finding great movies
Social design strategy: By designing an application for people to record their movie watching preferences and aggregate them with others, Netflix provides a better way for people to find great movies.

5. Facebook
Primary Activity: Staying up to date/keeping in touch
Social design strategy: By designing an application where people can connect, record their activity, while seeing each other’s activity, Facebook provides an easy way for friends to stay up to date with one another

Define your social strategy - use The Commander's Intent (from Made to Stick: why some ideas survive and others die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath)

“if we do nothing else, we must...”
“the single, most important thing we must do is...”

and, importantly,

“no plan survives contact with the enemy”

Defining primary activity & describing social design strategy:

What is the one thing that people need to do to make you successful?
How are you leveraging the social interaction of your users?
Do people have to change their behaviour much?

The AOF Method
Activities, Objects & Features

What is your primary activity?
What are the objects people use in that activity?
What do people do with the objects? (what are the verbs?)

A social object influences social interaction - it changes the way people behave. Mediates ties between people eg iPhone, flickr for photos, youTube for video – commenting, favouriting etc

The term “social networking” makes little sense if we
leave out the objects that mediate the ties between
people. Think about the object as the reason why people
affiliate with each specific other and not just anyone.

Jyri Engeströ

Research methods

Interviews: good to find out motivations and a general overview of what people do
Usability testing: good for testing existing interfaces with real people
Contextual Inquiry: good for diving deep into the details of activity, much of what you learn is unspoken
Boards, feedback, etc: good for finding the current temperature of things, how your software is being used and liked/disliked
Self observation: good for design in that you know a lot about what the issues are, but can be myopic at times

Find your verbs!

Social websites = Objects + Verbs
Social features = When the verbs involve more than one person eg share, invite, add etc

For example, on Amazon's Product page there are up to 16 social features:
Product ratings, Share Your own product images, Add to wish/registry lists, tell a friend, People who viewed this...buy this, Amazon sales rank (social proof), Submit a product manual, Customers who bought this also bought..., Help others find this item, Tag this item, Rate this item, Customer reviews, Customer discussions, Offsite reviews, Listmania, So you'd like to...

Questions to consider when designing your main application screen:

What activities, objects, and verbs are you dealing with?
What verbs make obvious features?
What are you *not* going to support?
Are there features that you think might be better added later?

Metrics
Optimising your strategy by measuring progress & success

90/9/1 Rule - study by Yahoo found approx 90% of users lurk, 9% participate, 1% are leaders (create groups, invite users etc)

The relevancy of advertising = Holy Grail eg Facebook connect – can use FB login for different sites allowing more targeted advertising

Do not make the assumption that people will use your site every day. What is the reasonable return time to site? How many per month?

Do your own metrics – cross-site comparisons can be unreasonable/unhelpful as the niche is different. Create your own baseline and work from there.

Unless we monitor how we are doing, we don’t know how we are doing – makes design decisions difficult – need to design so can get metrics

Metrics for Pirates (Dave McClure) - the AARRR model

Acquisition
How do you get people using your web application?
1. In-linking
2. SEO/SEM
3. Affiliate marketing (referral programs)
4. Mentions on blogs, in news articles
5. Social media/networks
6. Invites from passionate users (referral)
7. Emails to existing customers

Follow user behaviour – how many mentions in blogs/twitter etc, where do users come from?

Activation
What do people do the first time they use your app?
1. Sign-up/Register
2. Click on something!
3. Add/Invite friends
4. Respond to existing member
5. Watch tutorials/getting started content
6. Hopefully create something of value eg http://www.geni.com – signup process initiates family tree creation

Good example = freshbooks.com – signup is called ‘One Time Setup’, phone number visible on page

The drop off in users who register & never come back = HUGE

Retention
How do users come back?
1. Automated emails
2. RSS/news feeds
3. Bookmarklets/bookmarks
4. Desktop app/3rd party app integration

Cohort analysis = good tool ie how many users who sign up return after one month, two months etc

Referral
How do users refer others?

1. Email invite
2. Shared via Delicious/Digg/stumbleupon
3. Widget/embeds
4. Word of mouth

The viral loop - the loop of activity that happens between the time when a person becomes a new user and they invite others to join.
Methods:
· Word of mouth
· Embed a widget
· Mimic an action eg friends see new application added by a contact on facebook & try
· Forced Sign-up eg can’t see my pictures on myspace unless you register
· Direct invite

The final R is for Revenue, which we didn't cover.

Facebook white paper

Facebook have jsut released a white paper (not publicly available yet AFAIK - if you know where it is, please link in the comments) on the engagement of new users. They wanted to track all users who created an account on the same day. Highlighted that certain design elements increase behaviour & interaction.

How do people learn about new software? They came up with 4 hypotheses:

Social learning – observe what someone does & copy the behaviour
When people are singled out by their friends – eg when photos are uploaded – would people be more likely to upload their own photos if they had already been tagged?
Feedback – if feedback is given does it drive more usage?
Distribution – if a picture has wide distribution does it drive more usage?

Study found social learning had a positive effect on the early (those who uploaded photos within the first 2 days) & non-early uploaders

Singling out worked for the non-early uploaders

Feedback was a significant factor for early uploaders

Distribution was a significant factor for early uploaders

The Conversion Funnel

Conversion Funnel is general rate of user movement through a known sequence. These are hypothetical numbers but roughly true! For a free service, only approx 8% of users will become regular users.

Use this when there are discrete steps (eg registration form, landing page conversions, trials, sharing) in a known sequence, preferably within one session.

Tips for Improving the Funnel:

1. Create an engaging experience first!
2. Create a baseline from which to measure
3. Remove any unnecessary levels (screens)
4. Start at the top of the funnel
5. Go down the funnel level by level

Develop a one-page business model - pick a user type. What is that user's Activation, Retention and Revenue?

The problem with metrics is that you get what you optimize for.

Questions to consider when defining metrics & their priorities:

· What activities make you money (keep you in business)?
· Does one metric rest on another, more important one?
· What sources will be valuable for acquiring users?
· Are there different types of users? (lurkers, contributors, passionates?)

Reputation

Your reputation is equal to the sum of your past actions within (a) community.
- Bryce Glass, interaction design lead for Yahoo Reputation Platform

The profile must fit the domain ie different profiles between Amazon, LinkedIn, Facebook etc. Don’t ask for information irrelevant to your community

Have multiple indicators eg friends, reviews, fans, number of people who find reviews useful etc e.g yelp.com

Optimise for value-added behaviour – just sending an invite is NOT adding value to the system. Can promote competition initially but remove it when it gets too much.

Allow for reciprocity eg comment on user reviews at Amazon, x of x people found this review helpful.

Create a community-specific identity e.g. Amazon’s ‘Real Name’ for reviews carries more authority. On ebay – reputation is independent of identity & based on data mining (history of activity)

What can’t you do? i.e. on Amazon you can’t rate as profile from the user profile page , only when in context of the product page. Try & stop the ability to game the system.

Reputation is an evolutionary process. Your site will be somewhere on the competitive spectrum – how competitive will your users be, or is it just helping each other out?

Competitive Spectrum= Caring -> Collaboration -> Cordial ->Competitive -> Combative

Problems with reputation

Social problems don’t have technical solutions (trolling)
Cumulative reputation can annoy
‘Competitive’ cumulative reputation can be good in the beginning stages of a community, though after some time it will be impossible for newbies to reach the heights of original members => dissatisfaction. Often best to just stop e.g. Digg’s removal of Top Diggers, or recalculate e.g. Amazon vs Harriet Klausner

Questions to consider

- What makes for reputation within your community?
- How valuable is knowing the history of someone?
- Are there different levels of reputation?
- How do you accrue reputation?

Finally, an excellent resource for all kinds of design patterns & code is the Yahoo Design Pattern Library It's well worth a look!

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

2009-03-13T11:30:00.000+13:00

Introducing The Source

Industry that pays, and art that doesn't (Note: PDF)

From the Griffith University website

This paper considers how and why we must build a resilient creative society capable of nurturing artists beyond the boundaries of the creative industries.

Cultural and linguistic inclusion? Literature review on social inclusion, cohesion and culture (Note: PDF)

From the National Ethnic Disability Alliance (NEDA) website

This paper explores the definitions and measures of social exclusion, social inclusion and social cohesion through an analysis of literature and indicators from Australia and the United Kingdom. It also explores how measures of cultural diversity can be built into understanding and measuring social inclusion in Australia.

An Awfully Big Adventure: Strathclyde's Digital Library Plan

From the Ariadne website

Derek Law describes how the University of Strathclyde is choosing to give priority to e-content and services instead of a new building.

Time to Change Our Thinking: Dismantling the Silo Model of Digital Scholarship

From the Ariadne website

Stephen G. Nichols argues that humanists need to replace the silo model of digital scholarship with collaborative ventures based on interoperability and critical comparison of content.

Supporting eResearch: The Victorian eResearch strategic initiative

From the Ariadne website

This article reports on VeRSI and its aim to accelerate and coordinate the uptake of eResearch in universities, government departments and research organisations within the State of Victoria.

Innovative learning measures for older workers (Note: PDF)

From the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop) website

Addressing the issue of an ageing European workforce not only requires public socioeconomic measures to promote the employment of people over their life course, but also the commitment of workplaces to ‘age management’. From an organisational perspective, continuous learning and development are necessary for survival in increasing competitive markets but they also have an impact on the quality of working life and its attractiveness from the point of view of workers.

First look at new 'green' library

From the BBC website

Funky furniture, listening hubs, a grass roof and a mini grand piano - no it's not the latest Big Brother house but Cardiff's new library. The six storey building is a world away from the dark, dank and dusty libraries of old and has already been rewarded for its green design credentials. The idea, according to Cardiff council, is to make the library as attractive and welcoming as possible to visitors.

2009 Digital Music Report

From the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) website

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industries has released its latest report on the state of digital technology in the music industry. While the report finds that the industry has succeeded in changing its business models, its biggest challenge is still illegal music downloads

Building Australia’s Research Capacity (Note: PDF)

From the Parliament of Australia website

High quality research training is essential for a sound innovation system in Australia. This inquiry aimed to identify the key flaws in the current research training system and this report suggests measures to remedy those flaws.

Finding Context: What Today's College Students Say about Conducting Research in the Digital Age (Note: PDF)

From the Project Information Literacy website

A report of preliminary findings and analysis from student discussion groups held on 7 U.S. campuses in Fall 2008, as part of Project Information Literacy. Qualitative data from discussions with higher education students across the country suggest that conducting research is particularly challenging. Students’ greatest challenges are related to their perceived inability to find desired materials. Students seek “contexts” as part of the research process. A preliminary typology of the research contexts is developed and introduced. Our findings also suggest that students create effective methods for conducting research by using traditional methods, such as libraries, and self-taught, creative workarounds, such as “presearch” and Wikipedia, in different ways.

The Science Commons

From the Digital Curation Centre website

Many readers will be familiar with Creative Commons, its ethos and the suite of licences it provides. An organisation they may be less familiar with is Science Commons, a branch of Creative Commons that aims to make the Web work for science the way that it currently works for culture. It is a non-profit organisation aimed at accelerating the research cycle which they define as "the continuous production and reuse of knowledge that is at the heart of the scientific method." Its work is of relevance to anyone within the scientific cycle looking to reduce legal and technical barriers to research and discovery.

New Opportunities: fair chances for the future (Note: PDF)

From the Official Documents website, UK House of Commons

The truly global economy of the 21st century brings new opportunities and new risks. The way the financial crisis has swept across every economy in just a few months has underlined how interconnected our world now is. But beyond today’s global slowdown lies a world of new opportunities for which we must prepare. If we put in place the right foundations now, the prize is not just a richer country but also a fairer society. By positioning the UK successfully to grasp these opportunities, we can generate a new surge in social mobility, characterised by more and better jobs being available and everyone having a fair chance to access these jobs and fulfil their talent.

Classifying Tags using Open Content Resources (Note: PDF)

From the Yahoo! Research website

Tagging has emerged as a popular means to annotate on-line objects such as bookmarks, photos and videos. Being able to automatically classify tags into semantic categories allows us to understand better the way users annotate media objects and to build tools for viewing and browsing the media objects. In this paper we present a generic method for classifying tags using third party open content resources, such as Wikipedia and the Open Directory. Our method uses structural patterns that can be extracted from resource meta-data.

Streaming our photos to your screensaver or desktop

2009-03-10T20:03:00.003+13:00

Today is my very sad last day, and while tidying my desk I realised that there was a capability in Manuscripts & Pictorial that had never been explored, and if I didn't blog about it right now it might slip beneath the waving goodbye and be lost forever.

The capability is humble enough:

Every time you do a search in Manuscripts & Pictorial, you can retrieve your results as a Media RSS file by clicking the
Get these results as RSS at the bottom of the search page.

What use is this? I hear you ask. Well it turns out that there are screen savers and desktop backgrounds that will happily take this RSS feed and display the images on your screen, as a montage or in sequence, for your enjoyment and education.

The URL looks like

http://mp.natlib.govt.nz/rss/?numResults=100&f=collection%24Heritage+Images&q=sea

where sea is the query term you would like images from.

You can, of course, put any word or words in place of sea based on your interest. With about 60,000 images, you'll be unlucky not to find any results.

For users of Windows XP and Vista, I recommend the free Google Photos Screensaver which is part of the Google Pack.

If you want a slide show that cycles through your results in the background for a kiosk or presentation, the full screen mode in CoolIris is a good bet. Just do a search in M&P, click the CoolIris icon in the top right corner, double-click an image and click the play button.