Brother Rick of the Librarian Order

Brother Rick Looks Right
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

Brother Rick of the Librarian Order visited the Thomas Ford Memorial Library on October 31, bringing his message of scholarship, research, and free wifi to the villagers of Western Springs.

For twenty-five years Brother Rick has made his appearance on this hallowed day, wearing his hand-sewn woolen robe and leather sandals. Humble, pious, gentle, and pledged to poverty, Rick offered books and information service to the digital and physical.

Blessings to all who follow the library way.

LISZEN: Library Blog Search Engine

Just yesterday I thought someone should make a customized search engine with library blogs using the new service from Google Co-op. Well, today (reading my LISNews email from two days ago) I find someone already has. Garrett Hungerford of Library Zen has created LISZEN.

LISZEN already includes over 500 library blogs. Garrett tells his sources in his post about the engine. I ran several searches. Being self-center, I first checked what happens when I put in "ricklibrarian" to see if I was included and I found that I was. The result was a mixture of my main page, specific ricklibrarian posts, and other blog posts linking to ricklibrarian.

I then searched to see if I could find LibrarianinBlack's post about search.yahoo.com. I found it. The info was in a post about Search Engine Watch and not as the separate post as I remember. I might not have found it scanning through the posts I have saved in Bloglines.

Then I tried to find Aaron Schmidt's post about libraries and trust. When I searched "trust aaron schmidt" I found just a link to Walking Paper in general, links from other blogs, and the RSS of comments to the post. I did not find the post itself. The I tried "trust walking paper" and it was the first item. (I hope the lesson here is not that you can't "trust aaron schmidt.")

It might still be interesting to build more limited search engines with the Google Co-op service, taking just segments of the library blog world. It should be easy to do.

Genealogy Blog Search: A Customized Google Search Engine

I just learned from Jack Simpson's genealogy blog at the Newberry Library in Chicago about Genealogy Blog Search. Christopher Dunham of the Genealogue created a custom Google search engine that draws from 150 genealogy blogs that he has identified. I tried several family names before I found one that returned results, but I got good results on state searches in my trial. As Dunham adds more sources to search, the handmade tool will become more useful to genealogists searching for what other genealogists are doing and reporting.

The Google Custom Search Engine looks pretty easy to use if you have an idea. I might make an engine to search book reviewing blogs, or one to search regional bird watching websites. A customized search engine using my favorite gardening websites could be handy. Of course, I could make one with the blogs that I read regularly to make refinding a post I remember easier.
Google has a webpage showing some sample customized search engines. It looks like the possibilities are endless.

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

"Now that I'm dead I know everything," is Penelope's first line in Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad, a retelling of the tales of Homer from the viewpoint of Odysseus' wife. Not only does Penelope know everything, she is telling. She dishes out dirt on the Greek gods, the heroes who fought at Troy, and Helen, her cousin. She really dislikes Helen, who continues to be a royal pain in the afterlife. She still has high regard for Odysseus, but she lists his faults and misdeeds. He left her in a bind for twenty years, and she is not forgiving and forgetting.

Penelope's purpose in The Penelopiad is to counter the Homeric tradition that portrays her as innocent, obedient, and dutiful. She would like everyone to know that she recognized her husband right away when he returned; his legs were a dead give away. She had to be smart and resourceful to keep the suitors at bay so long and protect her son.

Penelope also wants the world to know how shabbily the twelve maids were treated. In a modern court of law, they would be found innocent of crimes against Oydsseus, who with his son Telemachus hung them after forcing them to clean the blood of the suitors from the palace. Penelope tells their story and includes them as the Chorus in this book.

Many readers will enjoy this alternate account of the Greek myths.

Atwood, Margaret. The Penelopiad. New York: Canongate, 2005. ISBN 1841957178

Last View from the Hotel in Monterey

Last View from the Hotel
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

I had a great view from my room in the Marriott in Monterey during the Internet Librarian 2006 conference. Every morning around dawn the fog would roll in and then burn off, until my last day. On Thursday there was no fog, so I had clear driving as I left.

I was up early. Around three o'clock the sea lions in the bay were making quite a racket. Arr-arr-arr-arr-arr-arr. I wonder what was going on. Maybe they were saying goodbye to everyone.

No Pastrami

This happened at a sandwich shop in the San Jose International Airport as I returned from the Internet Librarian 2006 conference.

The sandwich chef asked, "What would you like?"

I replied, "I would like the vegetarian sandwich."

"What kind of bread?

"I'd like the rye."

"Everything on that?"

"Hold the onions, please."

"No onions. Mustard and mayo?"

"Yes, please."

"What kind of pastrami would you like?"

"I want the vegetarian sandwich."

"Which kind?"

"May I have the vegetarian sandwich?"

"Oh, sure. You get three kinds of cheese. No charge for the cheese."

"Thanks."

A few minutes later I took the paper-wrapped sandwich to the cashier.

She asked, "What kind of sandwich?"

"It's the vegetarian."

"What kind of pastrami on that?"

"No, it's vegetarian."

"Oh, okay. Vegetarian."

So, is there a different definition of "vegetarian" in San Jose?

Internet Librarian Conference Traditions

I believe I have discovered why some librarians make a habit of returning to annual Internet Librarian conferences in Monterey. Of course, they come for practical information relevant to their profession and to collect new ideas, but that is not reason enough to come when they could be attending other conferences, studying the literature, reading profession/industrial news, and communicating with other professional via the Internet. They come because they know they will be engaged and entertained. They know there will be presentations that include audience participation and a chance to win prizes. In other words, games (one of the themes of the conference) are actually incorporated into presentations. Also, they know the presenters who return each year to act as game masters. Attendees learn while they laugh.

Barbara Fullerton, Sabrina Pacifici, and Aaron Schmidt drew a big crowd on Monday afternoon for their traditional program Gadgets, Gadgets, Gadgets. Each took a turn showing a slide of a serious or silly new technological product and telling why it would be popular. Portable MP3 players, translation devices, and handheld computers were shown with digital rubber ducks, haircutting machines, and Japanese robots. Many of the products were only available in Japan, Korea, or the European Union. During the program the presenters asked questions and gave prizes for the quickest correct answers. There was lots of laughing.

On Wednesday afternoon Steven M. Cohen led his annual What's Hot and New with Social Software. The tradition is that he has an A to Z list of names that the audience tries to guess before he reveals his answer. Many of the answers are websites but some are categories of websites or names of people in the profession. Some audience members win Starbuck's cards when they guess Steven's answers first. After he finished with his list, librarians in the audience called out websites they thought everyone should see and Steven would project them. Of all the websites shown in the session, I was most interested in the online image editors (snipshot.com, pxn8.com, resizr.lord-lance.com) which allow photos to be cropped or resized without downloading software. Steven also showed the Zoho website, which has a word processor, spread sheet, slideshow, and other online products. Steven ended the presentation with video of his three year old daughter, which might be another tradition.

For more details on these programs, read the Librarian in Black's reports Gadgets, Gadgets, Gadgets and What's Hot & New with Social Software.

The Conference Goer's Guide to Seating

Several speakers during Internet Librarian 2006 said that context is as important or more important than content, meaning library users are seeking good experiences, and content is just a means to an end. With that in mind, it seems logical to say that sitting in a good seat is a very important factor in having a good conference presentation experience.

Rule 1. If you can, sit with someone you know and like. This may be the best advice for enjoying a presentation. You can chat before and after the speaker speaks. If the presentation starts to drag, you can play tic tac toe. Of course, at Internet Librarian, you play tic tac toe on a laptop or a pocket PC.

Rule 2. When the presentation is in a shallow but wide room with two screens, do not position yourself an equal distance between the screens. You will be uncertain which screen is best and keep turning from one to the other. If you are in rows one to four, you will have a difficult viewing angle and find neither screen satisfactory. Take a warm shower afterwards to relax your neck muscles.

Rule 3. Do not let your whim to photograph the speaker lead you to sit in front of a podium that is toward the front of a stage. When the presentation begins, you will find the speaker and the podium are standing between you and the slide show.

Rule 4. If you want some room, sit toward the middle of a long row. Most of the attendees tend to take seats at the ends of the row.

Rule 5. Remember Rule 1. Do not arrive early. Wait until many people are already in the room so you have a better chance of finding a friend.

Rule 6. If you can not satisfy Rule 1, make a new friend. It will make satisfying Rule 1 easier in the future.

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Cafe in Bay Books

If you are traveling to Monterey, California, perhaps to attend Internet Librarian 2007, I recommend you frequent the cafe in Bay Books. It was the first place that I ate in the city, having a delicious sun-dried tomato and basil quiche after a day of eating only airport food. I followed that with a tasty raspberry bar. I dashed in for a quick lunch on the first day of the conference, having a thick and cheesy piece of ham and cheese quiche and an oatmeal cranberry cookie. On my last evening after a bit of blogging, I went down to the cafe and got a wonderful slice of Reese's peanut butter cup and chocolate cake. Directly across the street from the conference center, it is the place to go for a quick bite to eat in Monterey.

Rick at Fisherman's Wharf, Monterey

Rick at Fisherman's Wharf Monterey
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

Internet Librarian 2006 in Monterey, California has now ended. After the final session, Aaron Schmidt and I ate tacos and then walked around the wharf until I took him to the airport.

There is a funny story about the drive to the airport. I took US Highway 1 in the wrong direction when taking Aaron out to catch his plane. We had lots of time, so it was no problem, but we kept looking for an exit that was not there. We timed this well, as we turned around just in time to see a beautiful sunset over the dunes. Once the sun set, it got dark quickly, so we also got to see the lights of Monterey sparkling over the bay.

Monterey is a really nice city for a conference. The climate is pleasant, there are lots of small restaurants, and you can walk around town and along the bay. Internet Librarian is a good conference, and it is usually in Monterey. I hope to come again some day.

A Wiki as a Research Guide by Chad Boeninger

You would think that I would have heard enough about wikis already at Internet Librarian 2006. I attended the preconference presented by Meredith Farkas, which was quite good. I was trying some other tracks this morning, and found myself wanting to hear more about wikis instead. So, I snuck in to Wikis for Libraries in time to hear Chad Boeninger give the final presentation.

Chad's title was A Wiki as a Research Guide. He told about how he turned three subject guides that he uses with business students at Ohio University into wikis. He used to update them annually and the students would lose their copies, often before they left the classroom. Now they are wikis, which he can update easily, are readily available anywhere there is a web connection, and link to many of the tools cited.

His wiki does not fit the stereotype. He is basically the only person adding to it, but that is okay with him. It works because his students and his fellow librarians can turn to it, saving him many questions. It is also searchable.

I was struck by the idea of a wiki working where other software has failed. We used to have rolodexes at the reference desk. When we got rid of them in the 1990s, I started a simple database of stray information for ready reference in Microsoft Works. It worked pretty well. When we replaced our computers with Works with computers that had Office, I tried to move the data to the Access database software. It did not work. I started a new Access database, but I found it more trouble than I liked. The ready reference database faded away.

I still find bits of information that I wish I could just put in an easy database. I have stuck some tidbits in blog posts, both on my own blog and on the staff intranet, but I have handed the information inconsistently.

Voila! Chad said the wiki was easily searchable. A wiki might make a nice place to build a new ready reference database. I have to try it!

Aaron Schmidt Moderates the Social Computing Track at Internet Librarian

Aaron Schmidt Moderates
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

There is actually nothing very moderate about Aaron Schmidt. Look at the wild eyes and the caveman stubble. Oh, that is just shadow from the strange stage lighting. Some footlights would have softened his look.

Aaron was a very busy man at Internet Librarian on Tuesday as master of ceremonies on the Steinbeck Stage, a presenter on that stage, and a discussion leader in the exhibit hall. As a future candidate for U. S. President, he still found time to shake hands and talk with all the attendees.

Aaron, please forgive the less than stellar photography. This was the best of the lot. Rick

Challenges of Cyberinfrastructure & Choices for Libraries

Clifford Lynch of the Coalition for Networked Information started the second full day of Internet Librarian with his keynote address Challenges of Cyberinfrastructure & Choices for Libraries. Anyone who has heard Lynch before knows that he mixes philosophy, science, and future studies into his presentations, bringing in many concepts unfamiliar to most of humanity, and he can at times be hard to follow. Perhaps I have heard him at enough conferences. I think I understood him this year.

Teaching, learning, and scholarship are rapidly changing, according to Lynch. The explosive increase and retention of digital documents alters the missions of scientists, scholars, and librarians. So much scientific data is available that scientists no longer have to do actual experiments or field work; many people are needed to mine and analyze the data coming from the big projects, such as the Hubbell telescope. Biographers studying important individuals can no longer read all their subjects' published or archived writings and communications, as digital capturing has caught much too much. Academic libraries can no longer afford to comprehensively collect research literature.

Lynch calls on libraries to help manage the data. There will have to be more collaboration and agreeing by academic libraries to specialize and then share their collections more readily with other institutions. They will have to get beyond just having published materials. Researchers who are not part of large, richly funded projects are the people who most need library help with managing and storing their data.

Lynch spoke at length about the predicted growth of the field of data science, which he says is ill-defined and unplanned. Who will be training these new scientists? Where will they work? He foresees that they will be decentralized, spread to academic departments, funding agencies, and small research institutions.

Lynch ended by pointing out how democratization of data has led to the amateurization of research. Non-funded individuals are doing great thinking. How can their work be synthesized. The future is full of opportunities.

Blood, Tin, Straw by Sharon Olds

Do we really know what we have on our library shelves? There are so many books, compact discs, videos, and DVDs chosen by a series of librarians. Our collections are wonderful collaborations through time, of which we can only read, hear, and view a few items each week. If a librarian stays in a library for decades, perhaps she can read, hear, and view thousands of items. She will still wonder what else is there.

Before my conference trip, I browsed the poetry section in my library, looking for something unfamiliar. I found Blood, Tin, Straw by Sharon Olds. I remembered the poet’s name from Poetry 180, and the seven year old item looked shiny and clean, hardly touched by readers. Now I wonder why so many readers passed it unnoticing. It should call out to be read. I imagine it shakes on the shelf, wanting to get off.

The title Blood, Tin, Straw does indicate the content, especially blood. Olds paints very physical images of daily living, including death, childbirth, pregnancy, menstruation, and sex. These concerns permeate the poems, many of which deal with marriage and family. Olds is also quite aware of the planet and the universe and their physical natures. She begins “What Is the Earth?” by comparing the planet to the unfortunate of its dominant species.

“The earth is a homeless person. Or
the earth’s home is the atmosphere.
Or the atmosphere is the earth’s clothing,
layers of it, the earth wears all of it,
the earth is a homeless person.”

One of my favorite poems in the collection is “Elopement” in which a spur-of-the moment wedding takes place in a rural general store. The bride counts the Dutch Girl on the cocoa tin, the Campbell Soup twins, the Gerber baby, Aunt Jemima, Betty Crocker, and the Sun Maid raisin girl among the witnesses.

Blood, Tin, Straw appears to serve as a memoir in verse. Should we believe the incidents are true? In “1954” Olds remembers the story of a local murder, and in “Fire Escape” she remembers youthful disobedience. Most troubling is “The Day They Tied Me Up.” Would parents go to such extremes to punish a child for a spill?

Some readers may be disturbed by the level of sensuality in the book. I was surprised to see the author thank the Lila Wallace – Reader’s Digest Fund for support. I doubt any of these poems ever appeared in the mainstream magazine.

Sharon Olds has won many prizes and more libraries should have her collections.

Olds, Sharon. Blood, Tin, Straw. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. ISBN 0375707352

Reaching Patrons: Online Outreach for Public Libraries by Sarah Houghton-Jan

Sarah Houghton-Jan is one of several people at Internet Librarian with multiple presentations. She had a quick Jamba Juice for lunch on Monday and took the stage a second time with her presentation Reaching Patrons: Online Outreach for Public Libraries.

With many library users (and nonusers), especially teens, on the web gathering information, Sarah says that it is important for the public library to go where they go and be where they look. To this end she has created a 20-item checklist for library cyberoutreach.

I am glad to see that my library does some of the things that she suggests. Still there are some opportunities we have not taken. I plan to address items #5 (List your library events and services in local community websites and calendars) and #11 (Check reviews of your library on social review sites) when I get home.

One of the points Sarah makes is that once a library goes onto the web with its services it adopts everyone on the planet as possible library users. We have no choice. We have to get past geographically-limiting thinking. We serve everyone or no one at all. If we serve no one, then our purpose disappears.

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Cultivating Tech-Savvy Library Staff by Sarah Houghton-Jan and David Lee King

Cultivating Tech-Savvy Library Staff was one of the most useful programs I have attended at Internet Librarian. Sarah Houghton-Jan of San Mateo County Library said one of the most important things that I have heard said. It expresses a goal that all libraries that I know have trouble achieving. It is that all public service staff in libraries should meet technical competencies so all library users get the same high level of service. It should not matter who is on duty.

What libraries live up to this goal? Few, I suspect. Sarah's message is somewhat tough, but it is not unreasonable. She is currently writing a book on the topic and has much advice for libraries trying to meet a high standard for user services.

Central to Sarah's message is conducting a competencies evaluation, which can be done for an entire library or by department. The idea is for the staff to determine what skills are needed by all the staff for everyday service, list the skills, and then address bringing all the members of the staff up to standard. This does not mean that every member of the staff has to have every technical skill known to librarianship. The challenge is to have every staff member competent in the skill necessary to serving the everyday needs of library users.

Sarah said much more. In her own post on the program, she links to all of her slides and to a post by Chad Boeninger that outlines most of what she said in the program.

David Lee King presented the second part of the program. He listed 10 ways to keep techies happy.

1. Techies are part of the team. Invite them to important planning discussions that involve technology. They might have important input.
2. Techies need toys and time to play to learn new skills and generate new ideas.
3. Everyone must learn basics. Do not call a techie to replug an electrical cord.
4. Give the techie a time line for your project.
5. If more than one library patron asks for something, it is important to have.
6. Have adequate technical staff.
7. Tell the techie when you do not understand. Don't pretend and then complain about how the techie can't explain the technology.
8. Pay the techie well.
9. Budget appropriately for technology.
10. We are all geeks at something, whether that is with computers, reference books, or cataloguing. Treat the geek respectfully.

Cultivating Tech-Savvy Library Staff was a content packed 45 minutes.

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Waves Hit Beach: Flickr Slideshow Showing Highway 1 from Carmel to Big Sur

Waves Hit Beach
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

I took a late afternoon break from Internet Librarian to drive down to Big Sur. It took me about 1 hour and 45 minutes to get there as I stopped at over a dozen overlooks to take photos and watch the big waves crashing on the rocks. Having grown up in arid west Texas, I find the Pacific Ocean is almost incomprehensible. The irony is that despite all the water over to the right, the hills to the left look just as dry as the western edge of the Edwards Plateau.

Take a look at the rest of my photos at Flickr. The best viewing experience is the slide show.

Three Thoughts on Internet Librarian in Monterey

Here are some stray thoughts about the conference so far:

1. I am not the oldest person here. I had thought that Internet Librarian might be dominated by twenty-something and thirty-something librarians. I was wrong. There are plenty of middle-aged boomers here. The community is not much different from any other library conference agewise.

2. None of the speakers are promoting virtual reference. I have hardly heard it mentioned. Instant messaging is the medium of choice for public service.

3. The quick 45 minute programs allow participants to attend lots of sessions. I see very few people slipping out of sessions, as they are not stuck in one place long by design. The speakers do not have time to get boring. In a few cases a little more time would have been helpful, but for the most part, the topics have been kept to manageable sizes. It works well.

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Increasing the Use of Online Products

It was a challenge, but four speakers were able to tell their stories within 45 minutes at the program Increasing the Use of Online Products, an early program at Internet Librarian 2006.

The first speaker was Peter Simon from NewsBank Inc. In addition to introducing the other speakers, he directed our attention to a best practices page on the NewsBank web site. Most important in the points was having dedicated database introduction pages on a public library website. Having remote access also increases the use greatly.

Leslie Williams of Evanston Public Library in Illinois said increasing paid database use is a marketing problem. Many library users do not even know what a database is, much less think public libraries would have such research tools. Many consider libraries as repositories of books with service to children as their main mission. These people have to be enlightened. One method is to partner with other community organizations. Get the Chamber of commerce to provide a link on its website to your business databases. Likewise, get the local hospital to link to your medical databases on its pages for patients.

On the Evanston Public Library's website, databases are highlighted on its research resources page without ever using the word "databases," which Williams said is meaningless to most library users. Links are also present on the library's subject pages, such as the page for science research. Hennepin County Library also puts database links within subject guides. The nice thing about this library's subject guides is that the librarians responsible for pages are identified, as in this Literature subject guide.

Larry Mischo of Tacoma Public Library showed how his library has used the software Webfeet to categories and organize the databases. The web site has a rotating spotlight that features different databases in turn on the main page.

Jeff Wisniewski of the University of Pittsburgh showed how his library provides access to databases on a variety of web pages, including on an alphabetical list, in a federated search, and in subject guides. He agreed that words other than "database" should be found to use on public websites.

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"Grabbing Attention" by J. A. Jance: An Unlikely Opening to a Technology Conference

In 1982, fresh from a divorce and a move from Phoenix to Seattle with children, J. A. Jance took a Dale Carnegie course including public speaking. She must have learned the lesson well, for she was a terrific keynote speaker to open the regular sessions of the Internet Librarian 2006 conference. The author of 36 books, mostly mysteries, mixed strong emotions with a big serving of humor to tell how she gets her ideas for books.

Jance was invited because she worked a blog into her recent book The Edge of Evil. She told how she came to write the story and also revealed that she was an early user of personal computers. In the mid-1980s she used $5000 of insurance benefits (from her alcoholic first husband's death) to buy an Eagle computer with a 128K memory and two floppy drives. On this she wrote in short chapters (memory limitation per floppy) for her early works. She recently donated both the computer and the collection of floppies with her drafts and unpublished works to the University of Arizona. Those floppies are the only copies of some of the manuscripts, and the computer is needed to access them.

With the timing of a standup comic, Jance kept the audience laughing and listening. I suspect she seeded the sales of some books in her 35 minutes before us. I think I'll place a reserve and see if writes as well as she speaks.

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