The Librarian's Lounge

What's your library cutting? and other odds and ends

I saw this article posted over at Library Stuff about British libraries having lost 13 million books over the past 6 years. It ties the loss to budget cuts and the credit crunch that's affecting everyone across the world. This brought to mind two things. One is that my area libraries have been featured in local newspaper articles about their budget losses and how that's going to affect staffing and building hours, but I have yet to see any that explicitly list what materials and databases are being cut. In times like this when more people are using the library than average, you'd think patrons would be interested in knowing exactly how they are losing access to information. It seems like this would be a good time to rouse patron interest and call on them, not just librarians, to contact their local lawmakers about these losses. The other thing this article brought to my mind was a trend in some of the libraries in my area away from library collections that have depth in terms of lots of books on all kinds of things and towards what's often called a "browsing" collection. If your local library looks more like a bookstore than it used to with lots of pretty books on popular topics instead of a meaty often ratty-looking collection full of more items than anyone would ever want to read, it's probably a victim of this trend. The idea is to "give the customer what they want" and the bottom line is to increase circulation statistics. Why? Because people who control library budgets often want hard numbers to justify the funds that go to the public library, and how many times a book is checked out per year is one way to get such numbers. So that often means books that do not get checked out, no matter how much they are used by the community within the building or in ways that aren't measured, are likely to lose their place in the collection to make way for another copy of the latest bestseller. In summary, I'd advise anyone who is worried about the state of their local library collection to dig deeper - are budget cuts really the reason there aren't as many books on the shelf or has there been a change in philosophy about what should be on the shelf at all?

I found this article about how long various email sites keep inactive accounts a good one to take note of. This happened to me when I switched from a Yahoo account to a gmail account as my primary a few years ago. After not visiting my Yahoo account for a few months, I went back and found everything had been deleted. It was not fun.

The last few weekends have been an adventure in trying to put together Ikea furniture, which I've been assured time and again is the simplest thing ever. Their product instructions don't even contain words - who needs words when you have cartoon drawings, right? Ever since I saw this, I've been re-living it again and again:

It's funny because it's true. I'm in the process of trying to find out why I've been given the wrong 4 metal brackets for my new dining room table twice now. Even their customer service department couldn't look up details on how far apart the holes on the brackets were supposed to be - those details were not available to the woman I spoke with. Which is why I still have brackets that are for holes spaced 4 inches apart instead of 2.5 inches apart, like the holes that were pre-drilled into my table top. Oh well, at least the chairs were easy to put together. And I suppose I should take some comfort in knowing that the guy who sold us his Malm bed didn't understand the directions either - we found that out while trying to re-assemble it. 

This story about an iPhone application that allows people to browse for the best bookstore price is interesting.

I love reading about all the latest uses and tools that come up for Twitter. Here's one for twittering your books with LibraryThing. And my other new favorite Twitter site: Retweetradar. It uses a tag cloud to show you what people have been tweeting about during the past day.

I guess that's all for now. There's much out there I want to be blogging about, but time is just getting away from me. I was listening to a podcast the other day - I think it was TWiT - and the hosts were discussing how blogs seem to be falling away as more people are moving to microblogging tools like Twitter and aggregators like FriendFeed. This is starting to be my personal experience as well.

Event planning

I recently volunteered to post events for a local organization across various event websites. In the process, I started thinking about how no particular event site really seems to be standing out at this point in time. You can find events listings everywhere: MySpace, Facebook, your local newspaper sites, Eventful, Upcoming, Meetup, Google Calendars, etc. But you either have to check them all frequently to stay on top of what's posted on each, or subscribe to rss feeds for your interests at all of them and wade through them in your reader, which may speed up the process but doesn't lend itself to spontaneous browsing. To make it easier on those looking for events, most of these events sites have ways for the user to export the event to a calendar, email, and/or social networking site. As an event creator, though, what I really need is a tool that will allow me to create an event once and then post it to all these other sites without having to re-create it on each.

I've spent the last 3 days looking for such a tool and can't find one. I did find a good summary of my problem posted on Microformats, so at least I know I'm not the only one noticing a lack of options for this situation. If I knew more programming, it seems like it'd be easy for me to create something that would do this for me. After all, if users can push information to their many online profiles and accounts, how can there not be an event aggregator publishing tool? Plus, it looks like most of the sites use the hcalendar markup standard. Maybe I'm just missing something.

Perhpas there is a for-fee service somewhere. Mashable's list of 35 tools for events had a few for businesses that hinted at being able to do such a thing, for a fee.

I'm investigating Microsoft/Windows Live to see if there's anything there that might help. I will continue to do more research to see if there's already a freely available tool for this out there. In the meantime, maybe the best I can do is customize a startup page for myself that includes all the sites where I will post events listings.

More on the Elections

This campaign has made me wonder what the "do not call" registry really means. I am pretty sure I'm on it. And I've been getting an average of 6 messages a day over the past week from politicians asking for my vote. I wouldn't be as annoyed if half of them were coming from people I'd actually vote for. At least there'd be equal coverage that way. Instead, I'm being phone-spammed by one of the two major parties. And they're talking to the wrong answering machine. I've already voted and their phone calls wouldn't have swayed me one bit. The reason I have an unlisted number, which I pay for monthly, is to avoid calls like this. It's enough to make me get rid of my land line altogether. But I've found out that the regular "do not call" registry pretty much only covers for-profit telemarketing calls. If you want to stop receiving campaign calls, you can add your phone number to the Stop Political Phone Calls Now registry. There's no guarantee that it'll work, but it's worth a shot.

I read another great, timely, article about how citizens are using social media to monitor the elections tomorrow. Written by Simon Owens for PBS, it covers the background of the "Video Your Vote" movement and provides further insight into the Twitter Your Vote movement. It also talks about the Voter Suppression Wiki, a site that is dedicated to educating the public about voter suppression and providing a space for voters to tell their stories. The Incident Tracker page conveniently lists problems encountered by state so you can see what's happening near you. So now, everyone can tweet, video, blog, and wikify their voting experience. This is documentation on a scale that has never been seen before in an American election.

I don't know how anyone is going to be able to work tomorrow. Which is why it makes even more sense for the United States, in my opinion, to follow all the other countries who vote on the weekends or holidays. The entire nation is distracted by what's going on; we might as well just take the day off and focus on what is most important.

Rachel Maddow calls these long lines the new poll tax:

Check out Why Tuesday?'s candidate challenge to see what they have to say about about current voting practices and whether they need to be updated. And stop by Current to find out about all the free stuff you can get tomorrow just for voting.

According to the Arizona Republic, the votes in Maricopa County may take days to count up because of all the early ballots that will be walked in on election day. 

And the first report is in for this election, from New Hampshire- in favor of Obama.

More elections resources

I've been thinking about writing another post full of resources all week. I just hope I don't forget any here.

I saw this video today and found it very moving:

This election is so important. Please encourage all your friends, family, and neighbors to get out and vote.

First on the list today is Election Protection, an organization that's here to help you with any problems you may encounter at the polls on November 4th. You can call them for help on any trouble you have voting at 1-866-OUR-VOTE. You can also tweet what you're experiencing at the polls through your cell phone and have your message immediately appear in their feed at the Twitter Vote Report website (and their twitter feed) by adding the hashtag #votereport to your message. Instructions can be found here on how to participate. You don't even need to sign up for a Twitter account to send a tweet - here are instructions on how to do it without an account. The standard number to dial in the US to send a tweet is 40404, but they have a special section called "How do I submit a report?" on the Twitter Vote Report website. Election Protection has their own tweet feed as well. If you don't use Twitter, you can still view all the messages that come in by bookmarking these sites and checking in periodically, or by subscribing to their rss feeds (if you use an rss reader like Google Reader) using the button on the bottom left of each page.

Then there's Video the Vote, an organization encouraging people to record their voting experience - particularly any problems that arise - and upload them to the web for people everywhere to view. You can subscribe to their feed through YouTube. They also have a twitter feed. You can add the hashtag #vtv to show up in their coverage feed. They are looking for volunteers to video voting problems in their communities, to help get videos uploaded as quickly as possible to the web, to serve as a dispatcher who connects up videographers to voters experiencing a problem, to drive videographers to the places they need to get to, and to blog about the reports as they come in.

There's also, on YouTube, a channel called Video Your Vote, which is partnered with PBS and tons of other organizations. What's cool about this group is that they have a Google Map you can add your video to. One of their playlists currently has 117 videos in it, although you have to dig into their subscription page to find it.

VOTERSTHINKdotORG is another resource on YouTube for news coverage about the election, with lots of clips from different news shows. It's pretty liberal in tone.

Of course, Twitter also has a whole section devoted to tweets about the election, which I've found to be my best source of late-breaking news. You can even follow what people are saying in your area by using the advanced search page and filling in the city you're in and some keywords.

Here's an article on Alternet called "Voting Watch: Twelve States to Follow on Election Day." You may also want to check out their article, "Colorado Sued to Reverse Voter Purges." Here's a video of the long lines voters were experiencing in Colorado Springs on Friday. 

Over on Voters Unite, I'm keeping a close eye on their elections problem log, where you will find daily updates about what some voters have been experiencing, including both a summary of the problem, the state it happened in, the date, and links to how it was reported in the news.

From TechDirt is this story: Surprise, Surprise: E-Voting Glitches Found in Early Voting.

From Rolling Stone magazine is Greg Palast's article: Block the Vote - Will the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president?

Here's an interactive Google Map that show which newspapers across the nation have endorsed a particular candidate.

From the Representative Press comes this video commenting on a fraudulent flyer aimed at voting Democrats, as reported by AP News.

This video campaign that you can send to your friends and family to spur them into voting is cracking me up. But I like its message and think it's an important one - every vote makes a difference.

A look at early voting statistics from Dr. Michael McDonald at George Mason University. This is what he had to say about the trends he's seeing in this data about a week ago. You may want to check out Pollster for some graphics on how this is mapping out across the nation.

According to the Pew Report, the Internet is now the 2nd place people turn to for campaign news, after television. 

More thoughts on the conference

My first day at IL2008 was my favorite in terms of speakers. My favorite presentations that day were the keynote speech by Howard Reingold, Mary Ellen Bates' on 20 tools in 40 minutes, and Steven Cohen's that showcased many of his favorite online tools. Reingold's spoke to me because he's approaching the topic of how web 2.0 technology is changing people's behavior as an anthropologist would. I was sucked into his presentation with his many examples of how people around the world have used things like text messaging to collaborate and create social change. Mary Ellen Bates' presentation was very practical in nature, as was Steven Cohen's - I still need to sit down and explore all that I learned from them. From Bates, I learned about Spokeo, Yahoo's Glue search engine, and Silobreaker. Cohen brought to my attention Watch That Page, ScreenGrab, Cooliris, and Invisible Auctions.

I am so glad that many of the presentation slides have been posted online. There were a lot I wished I could have seen live, like the Pecha Kucha program. 

I gained much from using Twitter both before and during this conference. Before I got there, I was able to find some of the people online who would be attending and do some networking. During the conference itself, I could see what they were doing and what was being discussed in other programs. I used it to meet up with people and as a way of introducing myself. It made the whole experience feel like I was surrounded by friends. In one instance, I was able to say hello in person to one of my tweeps' colleagues who wasn't even on twitter - although the 3 of us had never met physically, this small act was an instant bond. Other uses that came up unexpectedly were being able to ask my tweeps for information I couldn't hear right after it happened, and providing information to the conference's tech support team about the room's internet connectivity in the middle of a presentation without having to disturb anyone. I really didn't understand what the big deal was about Twitter before I started using it. I was convinced it would just be a big time sucker. By the time I left IL2008, I was wishing I had a cell phone plan that could keep me connected to my tweeps all the time. I met some great people with this social networking tool that I probably wouldn't have otherwise.

I also left wanting more gadgets, feeling that most of my own are somewhat outdated. I fell in love with the iPhone, although I fear I can't afford to buy one. I loved many of the things shown to us by Liz Lawley's closing keynote speech, particularly the Nabaztag bunny. I could definitely use a new less-obtrusive camera to snap pictures with during the conference. And I'd like to pick up a digital camera now too, and take a stab at producing some of my own videos.

I was extremely happy to have my ASUS eeepc while I was there. It's so lightweight - it was easy to take it with me everywhere to take notes and connect when the wifi was available and working. It attracted a lot of attention, too, and it was fun to show it to people.

This was my first time in Monterey and I totally loved it. I chose some of the recommended restaurants to try while I was there from the IL2008 wiki. N and I had the best pancake (wheatberry strawberry with whipped cream) and omelette ever at First Awakenings, near the aquarium. We also had a delicious dinner at Passionfish. 

The best part was being surrounded by people who have the same passion for technology as I do and getting to meet some of my virtual colleagues in person. It was exciting to hear about all the projects people are involved in and where they are headed. I even had a chance to meet Puglet Dancer from Second Life, which was great because I've taken an online class from her and learned a lot about SL with her guidance.

I hope very much to attend this conference in the years to come. Next time, though, I'm going to take a few extra days to explore Monterey- there's so much to see and enjoy there!

IL2008 - Day Two

Today has been another interesting adventure at Internet Librarian 2008. The keynote presentation was given by Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land. He spoke about various specialized search engines that are better than Google for certain kinds of information. Although most of the ones he mentioned were ones I am already tuned into, there were still many I hadn't heard of, such as Trulia for real estate information, Kayak for travel info, Yahoo's Built-Your-Own-Search Engine-Service, or BOSS for short. Sullivan also gave his predictions about where search engines are headed in the future. He believes Google is going to stay the most popular engine for at least another 5 years but said it doesn't seem like the organization has any kind of “master plan” on how to continue its unparalleled success. He expects to see Microsoft continuing to be aggressive in the search engine market, but that the company has many hurdles it still needs to get over, such as its brand name and its tendency to be focused on ads (making money) first, and search quality second. Not a great strategy if you want to have a fantastic search engine.

One thing Sullivan and Stephen Abrams both touched on today was search customization. Sullivan said Google is advertising that it's been doing this now more than ever, although the search engine has actually been doing it for years. Search customization is when a search results page is tailored to the individual user by pulling whatever information is possible (such as one's IP address to signify geographical location, and past searching history) about the person doing the search and giving back results that they deem to be the best fit based on that information. I've always found search customization – when I don't specifically request it – to be rather presumptive, annoying, and a violation of my privacy. But Abrams brought something entirely different to light about this technology today – how search customization changes the type of information voters are receiving around the nation based on where they live. I personally find that detail upsetting. It's like the search engine is coloring the world for us, based on what it thinks it knows about us. I don't appreciate that in a search engine except for very specific things like finding a local restaurant, a local gas station, or others things you used to use the white/yellow pages for. These revelations and a few others along the way about how our privacy is intruded upon online makes me wish IL2008 had given a presentation on how information professionals can work around these tactics to make us more invisible online, so that we can obtain information that isn't skewed by other factors when we need it. I would have loved a session on how to use proxies to mask one's location, how to surf anonymously with recommendations for the best tools, and how to use the built-in privacy options of Google Chrome and the very latest version of Firefox.

Deb Hunt gave an interesting presentation that included 3 case studies of different businesses she has consulted with about getting a more efficient Intranet set up for their staff. It was practical, useful information for information professionals in all kinds of trouble-shooting situations and she is obviously very knowledgeable on the subject. Although her focus was on business libraries, the topic is relevant to all types of libraries that have Intranets needing to progress from a static state to one that allows for easier communication and collaboration between staff. She stressed to the audience that every situation is different and no knowledge management software is going to be a perfect fit, no matter what the vendors say. The most useful resource she mentioned is Capterra's Software Finder. They have a section set aside specifically for Library Automation software. The site has a ton of useful information about the many products out there for different industries, platforms, and functions . I had no idea that there was such a range of products available.

The afternoon session about video-casting has inspired me to think more seriously about getting a video camera and explore the ways videos could be useful in my library system. It was presented by Heidi Schroeder, Emily Alford, and David Lee King. This is one area of the social web that I really haven't delved into from the production side and I think I should get up to speed with it. They were all great speakers and made the process of creating videos look easy and accessible.

It was another beautiful day in Monterey. At lunch, N and I went down to Fisherman's Wharf for seafood. We saw some beautiful sea lions hanging out by the boats there. I admit I've had a crush on sea lions since Syd Hoff's Sammy the Seal was read to me as a kid. I just wanted to pack them up and take them home with me. If only “home” was a place that included an ocean in the backyard. I wish I had given myself a few extra days to just be here on vacation. There is so much to see and do right around here. Hopefully, I'll be able to attend Internet Librarian again soon so I can plan for more downtime to see the area.

IL2008 Day One

My first day at Internet Librarian 2008 has been a great one. I'm afraid I may have to put off the bulk of my blogging  until I get home, due to internet connectivity problems here at the Monterey Marriott. Ironic, huh? If you followed the tweets using "#il2008" today, you likely saw a lot of people complaining about the lack of free wifi here in the hotel and the problems connecting at the conference center next door. I don't quite understand why they can't fix it at the CC, and it kills me to spend $10 a day at a very expensive hotel for an internet connection that is too slow to be usable. I finally called the front desk and asked them to reimburse me. Why is it that expensive hotels charge for internet when cheap hotels, cafes, libraries, and various other places give it away for free? There's something fundamentally wrong with that.

Anyway, it's been really interesting here so far. I've met a bunch of fellow tweeps whom I've become familiar with online, and sat through some very interesting presentations. I have a ton of resources I want to investigate further, and it's only the first day! I attended the opening reception for the exhibit hall, which was fun. I stopped by InMagic - they may be able to help my place of work with our intranet communication issues.

Here's hoping I can at least get this posted...

US Elections and the Economic Crisis - a media digest

I want to take a minute to post some of the resources I've been following over the past couple weeks.

First and most recent is Greg Palast, an independent journalist who was featured on a BBC program last night about voter fraud in America and how it could effect the outcome of this year's election. Here are the clips:

Part One:

Part Two:

You can learn more about this at Steal Back Your Vote. You can read more about the voter purges here:

The Dirty Details of Voter Purges
Voter Database Glitches Could Disenfranchise Thousands

Then there's this article interviewing one of the people who asked a question at the 2nd presidential debate .

Here's NPR's page covering the election. They even have an rss feed available.

Sarah Silverman is cracking me up with her Great Schlep video:

Here she is being interviewed about it by Keith Olbermann:

I was heartened to see this piece about how McCain was somewhat forced into backing down from the hate campaign the Republican party has been operating against Obama:

On the economic crisis, I've been listening to two excellent recordings at This American Life. They explain what's been happening in a way that makes it understandable by a laywoman like me.

1. The Giant Pool of Money
2. Another Frightening Show About the Economy

NPR's new podcast, Planet Money, continues to offer daily coverage about the economic crisis along with explanations of terminology and background information for listeners like me who are feeling a little lost by the regular news coverage. I've also been following the Becker-Posner Blog, Seeking Alpha, and The Baseline Scenario. 

What did Sarah Palin have to say about the Bailout Package?

There are several interesting clips over at the American News Project.

Another video of interest is this one on McCain and the Keating 5:

I've also found the Sourcewatch wiki to be helpful in getting more background information on issues and people in the news.

I'm still waiting for my Obama bumper sticker/magnet to show up in the mail. In the meantime, I stopped by the local Obama headquarters and picked up a tshirt today. The place of a hive of activity - tons of posters were being made, phone calls were being placed, people were signing up to canvas neighborhoods - it was an inspiring site to behold.

Phil Zimbardo on TED

I was watching this TED talk earlier in which Phil Zimbardo talks about the "Lucifer effect":

What strikes me is his list of the "7 social processes that grease the slippery slope of evil" which are as follows:

1. Mindlessly taking the first small step
2. Dehumanization of others
3. De-individuation of self (anonymity)
4. Diffusion of personal responsibility
5. Blind obedience to authority
6. Uncritical conformity to group norms
7. Passive tolerance of evil through inaction or indifference

This is my food for thought for today.

In other news, my Dell support contact has managed to successfully figure out the problem I was having with corrupted files on my laptop and has helped me get it back into perfect working order. I'm so thankful I was put in touch with him. This experience, which was handled by the Global Escalation Management Team, was entirely different from the first support experience I had with Dell. This tech was extremely knowledgeable, patient, and determined to help me out. And I didn't even have to reformat my drive.

My new booklight

I bought one of these from Barnes and Noble a couple months ago and just got a chance to try it out. I really like it. The clip is quite stable, the neck of the light is flexible and long enough to adjust it exactly as needed, and the LED lights are plenty bright. Having used battery operated booklights in the past, I prefer this one because there's no flickering from a dying battery. I like the design, too - it curls up in a way that gives you a built-in handle for carrying it. All around, this has been a good buy for the price.