There was a great guest post today on the ALA Techsource blog from the Director of the Orange County Library System in Florida, Mary Anne Hodel. She documents how her library has used a voice communication system called Vocera to allow reference librarians to be more mobile while also saving money. I originally posted about the Orange County Library back in April, when I stumbled upon some of their fantastic videos. I also included a video of their iphone application in my post on SMS texting in libraries. They certainly are a leader in library technology that other libraries could emulate. Check out their video showing off the features of the Vocera system.
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Category Archives: Technology
The best search engine for your needs–maybe not who you think
Do you run to Google every time you have a pressing question and expect that it will return the best results on your subject? Or have you decided to switch over to Bing, the new kid on the block? Perhaps you have a nostalgic place in your heart for the Yahoo search engine? Well, put assumptions about search engine reliability aside and test out which one really works best for your needs through Blind Search, the search engine comparison tool developed by Michael Kordahi. What you find may surprise you. I first read about Blind Search through Techcrunch. The writer of the post, Michael Arrington, was surprised to learn that Yahoo consistently gave him the best results. I found the same thing in my testing. Which works best for you?
Running to e-books? Not me.
I have been trying to gather my thoughts concerning e-books for awhile now, after I heard about possible initiatives by California’s governor to switch out e-books for textbooks and similar initiatives in other states. While e-books were touted as he next big thing years ago, they didn’t seem to really hit the big time until Amazon’s introduction of the Kindle. In some ways, I like the idea of e-books (they are generally more environmentally friendly and highly portable), but I have realized lately that I just am not that big a fan. I have tried checking out e-books from the library, but (possibly because I do not have a Kindle) I have rarely gotten around to reading a large part of them.
I certainly understand the desire by some school systems to substitute e-readers for textbooks. The devices can hold multiple books, some offer the ability to search within a book, etc. But how much money will they really save? Children batter and bruise textbooks daily–can the e-readers stand up to this abuse? It seems the cost to replace broken devices could override any cost benefits that come with replacing textbooks. Finally, if students are not accessing these textbooks via e-reader, but rather via the Internet, what about children that do have ready access to a computer? Isn’t this hurting lower-income students? Some school systems that use e-books have the teacher project the e-book on the screen during class. The teacher then prints handouts for children to take home with them. Is this saving money? Is that really being environmentally friendly?
But aside from the school issue, the biggest problem I have with e-books is the fact that their content is licensed. The problem with this was exemplified last week when the book, 1984, was simply, quickly, and easily deleted from the world’s Kindles. Apparently, the copies of 1984 being sold on Amazon were unauthorized and violated US copyright law (though the book is in the public domain in Canada and some other nations). Amazon did refund each of its customers for the purchase, but seemed to leave most customers feeling somewhat violated. Yet another reason to not stock my digital bookshelf with e-books. Although I am not usually a proponent of treating digital items the same way as physical items, when it comes to licensing, I feel that both libraries and the public are at risk of loosing some of the rights previously given to us by the first sale doctrine. Libraries, of course, have been dealing with this for a long time. The general public seems to be just waking up to the notion.
As you can see, my thoughts are still quite muddy concerning e-books. While the rest of the world is shouting that the time of the e-book is now, I prefer to wait awhile.
Death of The Printed Blog
It appears as though The Printed Blog has met its inevitable end, with its founder pulling the plug earlier this week due to lack of advertising funds and investment capital. I originally wrote about The Printed Blog back in February and questioned its staying power. Though a fairly novel concept, it seemed like yet another way of trying to push new technology back into the confines of older models. The layout and design were fabulous and I did find a couple of bloggers that I now follow regularly, but an actual printed copy never quite found its way into my hands, and I quickly forgot about checking in with the online version–instead preferring to follow individual bloggers via Google Reader. Occasionally these sorts of nostalgia-laced initiatives catch on, but sadly, this one did not. And yes, it pains me to write about printed articles as “nostalgia”, but it seems that is where we are at. More on this later…
Moving beyond Meebo
I came across an interesting post today on David Lee King’s blog discussing the use of LibraryH3lp in the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library website. LibraryH3lp is a chat and instant messaging platform that supports multiple users and message cues. It can also be integrated directly into the library website and/or catalog (as they did at the Topeka library), allowing access from any point where a library user may wish to ask a question. While Meebo widgets have become ubiquitous on library websites, this option appears to be more versatile, allowing live links to be sent to users and conversations to be sent or shared between multiple librarians. There is an excellent overview of the LibraryH3lp service from the Code{4}lib journal.
Sharing RSS bundles with Google Reader
Google announced a new service today through Google Reader that allows users to bundle and share groups of RSS feeds with others. They make it very easy to create a bundle (the best instructions I found were from Lifehacker), but I’m not quite sold on their sharing options. Right now, users can email the bundle to friends, share the bundle as a link on a blog or website, or share as an OPML file. While I may be able to create a widget for the combined feed through a service like widgetbox or sproutbuilder, it seems Google would have built a simple widget that users could just embed where they needed it. Still, this could be an alternative to creating a Yahoo Pipe to combine various feeds–just right now, not a very versatile one.
Here is a link to the Google Reader bundle I created for library resource, blog, and job feeds.
If Oprah plugs Skype, will America swoon?
Anyone who has been watching Oprah lately may have noticed her increasing use of the synchronous communication tool, Skype, to connect with guests on her show. Yesterday she went a step further and devoted a whole show to the technology. Her “Where the Skype are you?” episode connected a host of people from scientists in Antarctica, to travelers on Virgin Airlines, to shoppers in Harrod’s department store in London.
Is Oprah doing this to save money by not having to fly guests to the show? Or is she possibly making some money through this endorsement? Maybe a little of both, but it appears this is yet another example of Oprah hyping up a new technology. Perhaps it will work. When Oprah exclaimed her love for Amazon’s Kindle, interest and sales spiked, and when Oprah joined Twitter last month, she had one million followers in 28 days with a jump in Twitter traffic by 43% in the period following that episode. Could the same happen for Skype?
I was only able to catch the last 10 minutes of the show, but watching Oprah taste wine with the owner of the Bonny Doon Winery proved less than exciting. When Oprah asked shoppers at Harrod’s if they had previously heard of Skype, all of them had. Will this show make them want to try it out? I also heard a lot of Skype hype before I ever used the service. After using it for the first time, I was very impressed with the clarity (at least with one on one conversations) and ease of the service. What was most interesting to me in watching Oprah on Skype was that none of the participants were using headsets, but the audio was still amazingly clear and free of feedback or echo. Is Oprah really using some sort of SuperSkype? Oprah also started a Skype webcast based around the book, “A New Earth: Get Ready to Be Awakened” by Eckhart Tolle. While there was extreme interest in the webcast, technical difficulties prevented it from getting very far on its first go-round. While any “Oprah effect” Skype serge may only be temporary, perhaps this is the beginning of a stronger interest in VOIP?
Final Project
For those of you who may be interested, here is a link to my final project. In the “About” section you will find my documentation of the highs and lows of the project. I decided to see if I could force the square peg of the San Francisco Public Library website into the round hole of Wordpress. It is certainly possible, but better executed with more time. If I had to do it over again, there would probably be some changes, but for the most part, I am happy with it. Now I just have to force myself to let go, not look at it or touch anything else…. This may be a loosing battle.
Random Thoughts and Questions
So, I’ve already shared my love of the New York Public Library’s technology initiatives. Today, it is the Orange County Library’s turn. Wow. I previously admired the video they produced introducing their new iphone interface, but there is so much more going on in this library that is worth checking out. What most caught my eye this morning is their Steaming Video on demand service. They don’t have a lot of available titles, but they do include a number of movies and television shows as well as instructional videos on a number of topics. Does anyone know of any other libraries that are offering a streaming video service?
Another Video from OCLS that I enjoyed:
Another random question–is anyone else trying out Scriblio for their final project? I have loaded it semi-successfully, but this half-success isn’t working with my desire to overachieve. 100% success might be nice. If you are working with Scriblio, I would love to ask you a few questions to get this working correctly. Many thanks in advance.
UPDATE: Looks like the NYPL is offering streaming video and audio and my own San Francisco Public Library will begin to offer the service starting May 4th. Fantastic!
Library Jobs mashup
Here is my first successful mashup. I combined the LibGib jobs feed from Twitter with the LISjobs feed and some of the listings found on LibWorm jobs and extracted geolocation info to create a map of job locations. Clicking on the title should take you to the job listing.
**UPDATE**–it seems that Wordpress no longer wishes to display this pipe (a 2.8 issue perhaps?), but you can find it here.
