User-supplied data

Following a reference trail in preparation for writing my assignment I came across an article by Michael Koenig - Linking library users: A culture change in librarianship. It is about user-supplied data. He believes that encouraging users to add information to the catalogue about titles they have read will cut down on information overload. The reasoning is that the more information people have about a resource the easier it is to tell if the resource will meet their needs. It seems to me that there are a couple of problems with this. Firstly, the added information could just add to the overload and secondly, will patrons add comments and, if so, will they be useful or just along the lines of "I loved this book"?
After reading this article I remembered a recent thread on NZ-Libs about a patron wanting more information on titles, similar to that on Amazon, and that one NZ library has recently linked their catalogue with LibraryThing. I fished out the reference and had a look at Nelson's catalogue. It's great, I love it and I think many people would find it useful. Using LibraryThing means there isn't a lag while you are waiting for patrons to add information and it draws on a much larger population than just a single library's membership. I wonder if there are any plans to add this to our new catalogue? My only minor quibble is that I think the location information should come before the tags and "similar books" so people can more easily ignore this information if they want to.

Website

I re-read reading 3.2 - Addressing the Digital Divide - in preparation for writing my assignment and this time the section about making websites accessible for disabled people jumped out at me. As part of the focus group testing our new library website I will try to ensure that our new website is disabled-enabled.

Library website

Management were impressed with the website I sent them and I am to be part of the focus panel when they test new website designs in about 6 months time.

Plainfield Public Library

A posting on the LIS News blog caught my eye. It was about Plainfield Library offering its users the ability to IM and text librarians with their questions. I followed the link to the newspaper article and then a link to their new website I was very impressed with the website and the services they offered and said as much in an email I sent to our library managers -

I don't know if any changes to our website are planned but I happened across a library website that I think is really great - http://www.plainfield.lib.il.us/index.asp. It has a nice clean look, uncluttered but with lots of information on it and it seems very user-friendly. I am also impressed by the range of services they offer - IM and text reference queries, library blogs, Book-a-Librarian (http://www.plainfield.lib.il.us/library-info/services.htm), book discussion kits . . And this in a town with a population of 23,532 whereas we have 103,632. Food for thought?

Libraries and social networking

There seem to have been lots of posts recently about social networking - especially Twitter. The Shifted Librarian talked about the difficulty of finding tweets later, on librarian. net the subject was library vendors using Twitter whilst the Swiss Army Librarian found a good use for Twitter . I must admit Twitter is not one the web 2.0 technologies I have got into and, like the Swiss Army Librarian, had trouble seeing how it could be used. I'm still not convinced - our library doesn't get closed by snow! I will follow up some of the links in these posts to see if I can find a reason for our library to twitter.

American Idealism

The amazingly global, idealistic thinking demonstrated by the ALA statement on access to information also shows up in the recent Darien Statements on the Librarian and Librarians. It is good to have inspirational statements but this one didn't quite do it for me - it was just too idealistic and grandiose although, judging by the coments, I'm in a minority. There has been some discussion on this on the NZ Libs listserv with links to relevant pages and I particularly like the Annoyed Librarian's take on the whole thing.

Small task - ALA statement

The ALA position, as outlined in their statement, is not feasible or even desirable. There is plenty of information that should not be available to everyone. People's private information should be able to remain private, children should be able to be protected from information that could damage them and we certainly don't want terrorists to have access to information that can assist them.
If there is a legitimate need for information to be available in a different format, e.g. talking books for the blind, then it should be provided, but making different formats available just for the sake of it, is a waste of money and resources. It is also sometimes a futile exercise. Imagine converting an art book to an audio format or a CD of bird calls to a printed format.
It is impossible to deliver all information at all levels of comprehension. Imagine a board book on Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Once again, if there is a genuine need, it should be provided but what toddler needs to know about relativity? If someone from Mongolia want to read Pickwick Papers every effort should be made to ensure she can do that but that doesn't mean that all Dicken's works should be translated into every language in the world.
I am very wary of statements using 'all' as you can usually find at least one exception and this statement from ALA is no exception.

Small task - Information as a Commodity

My direct costs for information are reasonably minimal. I read books from the library at no cost and only really buy books for presents (there is no room left on my bookshelves). We subscribe to the local newspaper and the NZ Listener and but any other magazines I read are from the library. We also pay for a basic Sky subscription and occasionally rent DVDs.
Indirect costs include the cost of my laptop (less than 1 year old) and the cost of the electricity to run it, the cost of the TV, Freeview box, external hard drive, wireless router, phone line, Internet . . . I also pay half the cost of enrolment in Polytechnic papers which gives me access to course material, library books and online databases. According to my rough calculations, this all costs me about $3,500/year. But where do you stop? What about movies, plays, concerts, photos? Do these count as information. What about the portion of my rates that goes towards the cost of the library? What about the cost of the petrol to access some of these information sources?
The cost to access information could increase in the future according to this article in the Los Angeles Times. Kodak is starting to charge for its photo-storage service and there is a possibility that previously free web services may also start to charge having discovered that ad revenue is not enough to keep businesses running. Imagine if you had to pay for on-line banking, your web mail account, your Delicious bookmarks or your Google searches.

Library cards

I emailed one of the library managers about my assessment of our library cards.

Thanks for this site - I found it very interesting. Did you read the section on library cards? http://besser.tsoa.nyu.edu/impact/f01/Papers/Nemitz/dnpaper.htm After reading this I looked again at our own card and decided it left something to be desired.

• It isn't distinctive - I have had lots of patrons search through all their cards several times truing to find it. I can't even give them some clues to help them as I don't know which particular design they have.
• It doesn't have much information on it. Until I really looked at it, I didn't even realise that the phone number and website were on the back! Before I worked here I used to keep one of the library business cards with my library card so I could check opening times etc. Wouldn't it be better to have this information on the card itself?
• The pictures are lovely but they don't say 'Library"

Just some ideas to consider when it is time for a change.

He is going to bring it up at the Library Managers meeting. Watch this space.