Future Panic

So, I'm using part of the weekend to catch up on my backlog of unread articles on Bloglines and I came across this article that I had saved from the New York Times called "Paper Cuts Blog: Skimming the Sunday Reviews." It's a compilation of reviews from sources other than the NYT that were condensed by Times writer Dwight Garner. I'm not sure why I had saved it, although the preliminary text in Bloglines might have caught my eye since the first review was about a book called "Print is dead : books in our digital age" by Jeff Gomez. Now normally that link for the previous title would take you to the entry in the public library catalog. Unfortunately, this particular book is one we don't carry at our library, at least not at the time of this writing. Probably just an oversight. Right?

Anyway, one snippet of the review by Scarlett Thomas of The Independent caught my eye:

The argument set out in this book is quite simple. Times have changed, and while old folk like me persist in buying CDs before putting them on our iPods, and using the Internet to buy, rather than experience, “content,” there is something out there called “Generation Download” that does, like, everything on a computer, and will “ditch the hardback and head over to Facebook” because books are, like, not interactive enough, and too long, and have, like, “boring bits.” … As Gomez says, “Generation Download has no need to go to record stores. Software and websites bring the record stores to them."

Hmm. Ignore, if you can, the dismissive tone in Thomas' summation. That phrase "old folk like me" sort of gives me pause, but filling my iPod via CDs rather than downloading the music directly certainly sounds like me. (Full disclosure, I work in a library and didn't "pay" anything for the music on my iPod-- with the possible exception of the sixty or so titles I can see gathering dust on my shelf.) I remember making a similar argument to my nephews when downloading music via file-sharing was booming and being decried by the music industry as a threat to music itself. Why couldn't those recording industry executives see that electronic distribution would be cheaper and easier than manufacturing and distributing discs? Why not lower prices and dispense with the physical manifestation altogether? Admittedly, part of me likes having the physical backup, in case something happens to my hard drive. And my backup hard drive. But I don't need the discs anymore to enjoy the music. Think about it. You don't listen to the discs, you listen to the music.

Enter the Kindle. The latest device that lets you avoid the printed page. At $399.00 I think it's too expensive. (Remember, I work in a library-- cost to read a new book = $0.00) But it's the same concept as the iPod. You want to read stories, poems, histories, biographies, textbooks, whatever. You want access to the words. Books are our primary means of access. They're the carriers of the words. And words are what we read (and hear). But those words can be carried in a new way. One that requires less storage (and gathers less dust) and can be filled without a trip to the bookstore, mall, or library. Or library.

Which got me thinking about another article I read recently. Called "Time travel," this one was by Niki Denison in the winter 2007 issue of On Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Alumni Association magazine, and touched on some similar issues when talking about alumni who are working at envisioning the future and technological change. She started off by mentioning the singularity and how that near-future scenario of smarter-than-human intelligence has some futurists almost giddy with excitement. There was a sidebar by Bill Draves in the print version of the article (which I can't spot anywhere in the online version) that suggests there are nine societal changes in the near future that will have profound impacts. I'll list them all, but there are some that may have more than a little impact on our present conception of libraries.

1. Most people will work at home.
2. Virtual offices, or Intranets, will replace physical offices.
3. Networks will replace the organizational chart.
4. Trains will replace cars.
5. Suburbs will decline.
6. New social infrastructure will evolve.
7. Values and work ethics will change.
8. Half of all learning will be online.
9. Technology will replace buildings.

That last one, technology will replace buildings, is the one that caught my eye. His context was centered mostly on education (and isn't that part of what libraries are trying to sell?) but Draves goes on to explain:

Higher education has this "edifice complex" -- we're still spending too much money on buildings. In this century, technology expenses have to exceed building expenses, or individual institutions will be in real danger, because buildings are simply obsolete-- they're just a cost.

Given that world-view, it's kind of hard to justify a new library building. Especially when more information is being digitized and made available online. And our library is deep into planning for a new central library building as well as a couple of new branch libraries. How do we justify this, when these new buildings may be obsolete within a generation?

Indeed, how do we justify much of anything we do when such breath-taking change is imminent? Despite our visionary ideals about our mission and relevance, we have to wonder if libraries are destined to become a dead-horse that we're feverishly trying to whip into the future with concepts like Library 2.0, while seeking a niche in Facebook, MySpace or Second Life, and offering video games while serving an aging population and coping with a shrinking budget? Will we be relegated to helping our generation (and older ones) experience just a small amount of what their children and grandchildren will be immersing themselves in daily, while insisting (ever more stridently) that the printed page is still superior to anything the modern age has to offer?

I don't know the answer. I don't know what the future holds. But it will be different. And if it's very different, it may not hold a place for me. Or maybe just not a place where I feel I belong. That's why it scares me.

Your comments, as always, are welcome.

Playing Less, Still Fearing Mistakes

So, since we're nearing the end of the (first) semester for Project Players, I'm wondering how we all did. Do we get grades? (prizes don't count) Perhaps more to the point, do any of us get incompletes? (And I have to wonder who, if any, of my co-workers will see this post.) I'd say I've gained some really valuable experiences from the course. Bloglines and del.icio.us are part of my daily routine now. Blogging has become something of a habit as well, but the lack of feedback is a bit of a deterrent. Flickr won't be getting too much use from me. LibraryThing doesn't do it for me either, although I may experiment more later. Ditto with Wikis.

But if you're seeking nominations for praiseworthy blogs, I happen to like Pinky's (excellent organizational style and layout) and Retiring Guy (great writing quality). Belated nominee: RDmpl for the absolute best use of a blog to promote an underused library resource-- government documents. He's got me trying something similar here and here. (About my nominees, well, I haven't ventured too far afield from the South Central Library System blogs. Who has the time?)

And speaking of fearing less, here's a link to a recent article in the New York Times (gotta admit, that Bloglines feed is still paying dividends) about the value in making mistakes and learning from them. It talks about the schizophrenic way we look at mistakes ("Mistakes are how we learn" vs. "Failing publicly can be a crushing blow to a fragile ego") and how when it comes to decision-making, at least in business, we increasingly emphasize the outcome rather than the process.

The article goes on to cite a June, 2006 Harvard Business Review article by Paul J. H. Schoemaker and Robert E. Gunther (available at your local library or online via EBSCOhost) that explores areas where deliberately making mistakes (such as testing false assumptions) can be fairly low-cost and hugely profitable. One of the keys was finding areas where decisions are made repeatedly ("environments where core assumptions drive large numbers of routine decisions") rather than rare decisions an individual or company would make only once.

So, how can we, as libraries, "profit" by making deliberate mistakes? We could start by examining where we make the majority of our decisions: Buying materials/selection? Cataloging? Shelving? Checkout? Internet sign-up? Reference? Answering phones? What are the core assumptions that underlie our current decisions? Where can we make changes? Who can make those changes? How do we measure results? How do we interpret those results?

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Could we apply the deliberate mistakes philosophy to our Project Play course? What were the assumptions going in about who would sign up? Would the results be different if, instead of targeting the permanent/professional staff, we were to allow shelvers and checkout desk staffers, maintenance/custodial workers, Friends of the library, volunteers, etc. to sign up instead?

And what are the results for the current group? How are we being measured? What assumptions were made at the start of this learning experiment? What adjustments (mistakes) can be made?

Too many questions perhaps. Naturally I don't have the answers.

Comments are, as always, welcome.

Wikis

Well, I'm rushing to get this finished since Beth is leaving town and Nichole is quitting her job, but I doubt either of them will feel badly about missing this particular post.

I've been thinking about using Wikis in Technical Services lately, since we do seem to be trading information back and forth. I've got a lot of notes to myself about various procedures that I keep as Microsoft Word documents that I can pop open and look at and some of those have been shared with the other catalogers here. One of them, for world language shelf location prefixes, is one that occasionally gets added to (usually when Jan gets a DVD in a language that's not already included on the list). I haven't been keeping up with her additions so when I got a few new children's items that were in Tamil, I sent out a message to the other catalogers asking if they had any objections to me using "Tam" as a prefix. Naturally, it turned out that Jan had created one already, different from mine, and it just hadn't gotten added to my list. (Oops. Doesn't exactly make me shine, now does it?) And there are other lists like shortened Dewey numbers for our music sound recordings, cutter numbers for classical composers, cutters for makes and models of automobiles, cutters for books about Microsoft software, as well as notes we routinely give to new catalogers, that could probably live on a web site/wiki.

But I have concerns. I'm just not sure how secure something like that would be, having all that fuss about changes to Wikipedia made by people with an agenda certainly gives one pause. And I'm not sure whether it would be more convenient for me to use a web site than just a document file already on my computer. Or whether the formatting that I can use in a Word document could be cut and pasted into a Wiki (I haven't taken the time to really look at/play with the features-- maybe later this week). Etc.

Minor concerns? Not so much to me. Easily addressed? I'll have to take more time to poke around before I'll know.

I certainly agree that it can be useful for shorter term projects. The camping list video was very short term (but, frankly, not that important). We've had some projects (for lack of a better term) which were written as Word documents that were sent via email and I used the "track changes" feature to make comments before I sent them back and that's the sort of collaboration where I think a Wiki could be used. But my changes probably shouldn't replace the originals without there being some discussion, right? I'm not sure I trust my power/judgment to that extent. Trust someone else? That's even riskier.

My feeling is that lots of the kind of work-related materials I'm thinking could fit on a wiki need to be fairly permanent. I think we'd need to have limitations on access and passwords. And backups/history. So I'm a little more cautious about using Wikis for that type of work. Maybe I'll change my mind after I've had more time to explore/play with them this weekend.

Thanks for reading.

Del.icio.us

I stumbled onto del.icio.us a while back while looking for ways to create lists of titles and started linking from some articles in Bloglines that I wanted to read at my leisure. So it's been a pretty nice addition to my wired world. I'll still need to add my account to my blog page (later). Here's a link to it. (I tagged and added a couple of my own blogs just to see if anyone else would stumble across them. If anyone has, they don't seem to think they're worth linking to. Sigh)

But, since I'm a cataloger, I am a little bit threatened by the concept of tagging. One of my co-workers emailed me today and sent a link to the Danbury Public Library catalog, which uses tags, and asked what I thought of the concept. (She was excited about it.) I spent some time trying to undermine the concept. I did take the opportunity to link to my blog about LibraryThing, where I took a few cheap shots at the overlapping tags they used on the novel Ulysses and the problems I had with the lack of controlled headings for the Beatles.

But I did have to admit that the sheer number of tags that could be added to a record gives them a bit of an advantage. Not using a controlled vocabulary has the downside of not being able to narrow your search to a specific topic, but it seems to be very patron friendly and very usable. Comparing tagging to our "related-works" feature in our OPAC shows the difference-- when you click on a controlled heading you get all the items which use that exact heading. Good for when you want specificity (like when searching the author heading for "Beatles"). But you lose variant links that would catch different items where the term "Beatles" is a subject keyword rather than an author. Tags don't need to fit into one or the other pigeon-hole. That might be a huge benefit. Or not.

I also noted in my search of the Danbury catalog that some items didn't seem to get tags (none were on the sound recordings I looked at here, here, here or any under this performer), nor did a serial record with several editions of Fodor's Las Vegas. And there was one book about mushrooms that didn't even use the word mushrooms in any of the three tags used on it! So in this instance, a title or subject keyword search would be more effective than the current tags! And lest I forget, keyword searching capabilities currently available might be a better standard of comparison than subject headings. Where summaries and contents notes are available, they could prove to be the equal of tagging. We just don't have the time/resources to get this kind of information into all of our catalog records. But someday we might.

So it seems to me that tagging tends to work with newer, popular/high circulation items. My co-worker stated that she thought tagging would be a huge advantage when doing reader's advisory and that's probably true. I can also see where it might be useful in an area like music, where there are numerous sub-genres to categories like rock and techno and rap that won't be accessible if subject headings are broadly assigned but that could be added with tags.

But I do see some potential problems:

• getting tags on older works. Can we dump the tags from amazon.com or LibraryThing into our database? I'm guessing there's some way to do this, at least with current works. Starting from scratch and adding tags to our catalog would probably just emphasize our bias toward the new. But if tags already exist on amazon and LibraryThing, can't people find related works on those sites before they come to ours to place holds?
  
• monitoring the tags being added for improprieties. I'm sure we could come up with an automated way to prevent f-bombs but how about legitimate subject headings that might cause a reaction in some of our patrons?
• size limitations-- such as we're already facing when dealing with well-worn genre headings like Love stories, Detective and mystery stories, Feature films, Rock music, etc. can be an even bigger problem when searching an uncontrolled vocabulary. Try searching "literature" (100K+ hits) "war" (200K+ hits) or "history" (300K+ hits) on del.icio.us and you'll see what I mean. (And, no disrespect intended, but I don't think the Danbury Public Library is dealing with the same number of resources that the South Central Library System is sharing.)
• do we know how this would affect the system resources? Would a well used tag like one of those I mentioned in the previous bullet slow down the system significantly? And can we add tags without compromising the security of our database?
• do patrons who can't access our database from home add tags from terminals in the library? If some of our patrons don't have the same technology tools others among us take for granted are they being discriminated against somehow?
  

But I still think delicious (screw the punctuation) is a terrific way to save web pages. The tagging feature is also pretty great. Adding tags to our library catalog would be okay. But I don't think tags should replace our controlled headings. I do think they can complement our headings very nicely.

Now on to the gruntwork:

Assignments

1. Write a post in your blog about this week’s lesson and add some tags/labels to the post.
Done. (see above and below)
Some questions to consider: How can libraries harness the “massive amounts of participation” in tools like del.icio.us?
I think the tags on LibraryThing would be more appropriate if we're talking about adding the tags to our bib records. But I could see our reference staff showing patrons how to search delicious for tags that would link to web postings. But wouldn't this just be googling a smaller database?
Where else could libraries use tags?
Well, some of us use them on our blogs and I see them used on our internal websites and our book reviews.
Is the concept of tagging, with its uncontrolled vocabulary, unsettling to you?
Yes and no. I'm a cataloger and anything that undermines cataloging feels a little threatening. I think an uncontrolled vocabulary can co-exist with a controlled one, but this could be one more step along that slippery slope toward what they used to call "outsourcing."

2. Explore del.icio.us: Search for something you’re interested in.
I searched for the term/phrase graphic novels and got 1,647 hits.

Try clicking on different things in an entry to see what happens (What happens when you click on the title of the bookmarked page?
I got taken to the web site where the article lives. (Cool! No, really! I know it's supposed to happen, but it really is cool! Magic, even!)

How about the tags?
I clicked on the tag "manga" under one article and got a new list of articles using that term. (Again, totally cool!)

How about the “saved by xxx people” link?)
What you mean porn stars?! (ha!) (well you brought it up) That seems to take me to the list of notes (not tags) that the people who have tagged the article have written to themselves. (Still pretty cool, but it feels not as useful?)

Optional assignments:

1. Set up your own del.icio.us account and share its URL on your blog.
Yeah, got the account. I'll add the link later.
Del.icio.us has a How do I get started? page to get you started!

2. Choose someone’s account in del.icio.us who is linking to things you particularly like, and subscribe to their RSS feed in your Bloglines account. (HINT: Once you get to their del.icio.us page, look for the orange RSS icon at the bottom of the page!). If you can’t find someone’s account to subscribe to, try Libraryman.
I subscribed to Jessamyn West's del.icio.us account, just cuz I like her blogs. Don't know whether I'll stick with this new side of her though. Just wanted to finish the assignment.

Hey, I think I'm done with this assignment! Now that's cool!

Not For The Timid

Thanks to my Bloglines subscriptions, I got sucked into another huge article. This one was about younger people who really, really embrace the web as a social tool. If you have the time, read through this article, about these young people (in their teens and twenties) who seem to post anything/everything on the Web.

I'm definitely turning into my parents. And not in a good way.

Feel free to comment.

New Classical Recordings 2007-11-06

(just testing here. Thanks to RDmpl for the idea!)

Diabelli variations [sound recording] ; Wranitzky variations /Beethoven.

Piano variations performed by Vladimir Ashkenazy. On Decca.

Music of four centuries [sound recording] /Peter Fletcher.

Guitar music performed by Peter Fletcher.

Motetten [sound recording] / Johann Sebastian Bach.

Bach motets performed by the Hilliard Ensemble. Sung in German. On ECM.

Two-part inventions [sound recording] ; Partita no. 2 ; Three-p
art inventions / Bach.

Violin, viola, and Cello music performed by Janine Jansen, violin ; Maxim Rysanov, viola ; Torleif Thedeen, cello. On Decca.

Asturiana [sound recording] / Kim Kashkashian, Robert Levin. (Subtitle on front: Songs from Spain and Argentina).

Viola and piano music performed by Kim Kashkashian, viola ; Robert Levin, piano. On ECM.

Survey Results Are In!

So for those of you keeping score at home, the survey that I posted on October 11 of this year, (you remember, the one asking for suggestions of banned books that you think should be added to your (our?) library's holdings), has finally been tabulated. And the results are ... (drumroll please)

Well, there was only one response. Someone identifying him/herself as "yeah, right :)" suggested The book of the Subgenius by J.R. "Bob" Dobbs. The grounds "yeah, right :)" cited in the survey as reasons that this particular book might be deemed objectionable included: It's an attack upon organized religious beliefs ; It's immoral ; It's inappropriate for children ; It's sexually explicit ; It portrays alternate lifestyles in a positive light ; It's an attack on the American way of life or government.

Sounds like a winner. And so, given the results of the poll, The book of the Subgenius triumphs in an inundating landslide, garnering a stupifying 100% of the votes cast! You don't normally see that kind of a plurality outside of Chicago.

And, so, another election season comes to a close. The voters have spoken and, well, as the saying goes, "you won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore." I'll be leaving that survey up for a while longer if anyone wants to take a look.

Generic Clever Blog Title About LibraryThing

Sorry about the title. Anyway, LibraryThing (hee!) was simplicity itself when it came time to set up an account and add books. Thinking of books worth adding was a bit more of a challenge. I own more than my share, probably, but not that much that I really want to start inviting comparisons, and I've got enough that I want to read, that I'm really not searching for recommendations at the moment. But, since it was assigned, I did enter seven titles (so far) in my LibraryThing library.

Six of those titles I actually own, and one I recently borrowed from the library. But I entered it here just for no good reason other than I could. Truth be told, I've recently run into a problem at work--too many books on hold so now I can't place any more on hold. And all these great graphic novels are coming through that I want to read (or at least place holds on) and I'm out of room on my holds list. So I was wondering if LibraryThing might be a convenient way for me to start building another list. And it does seem to have possibilities. And I'll have to try scanning some ISBNs at work sometime.

Anyway, at first I thought I searched for works by the Beatles and the DVD Dr. Strangelove and couldn't find anything and thought that was a major stumbling block. LibraryThing only deals with books? Pretty limited view of the concept of libraries. So I blogged about that. Then I read another posting by one of my Project Play classmates who mentioned entering some videos into his library and figured I might have missed something. So I went back and looked some more. Well, turns out I didn't do enough poking around. My bad. So now I'm revising my original post. (I wonder if anyone will notice...)

So I searched the Beatles again and I did notice some problems with authority control. When I searched on the term "Beatles" as an "authors" I came up with six hits: Beatles, The Beatles, The Beatles, Beatles Cdmsim218481 ; Richard (introduction) The Beatles; Brautigan ; and, McCartney, Starr, Harrison. Beatles. Lennon.

Well. That isn't good. That it seems to be acceptable just makes me less likely to treat LibraryThing as a useful tool and more like an amusement. Authority control seems to be important to a lot of our library catalog users. I know, because I get a lot of messages from users asking me to fix headings that are incorrect. So when it comes to one stop searching of the LibraryThing database, well, they don't seem to have that as a feature.

There's also the problem (for us anal-retentive catalogers) of the GMD that some people seem to want to add, and others don't and some who want to use [CD] (with and without brackets) instead. And I couldn't find a list of song titles for the albums. There was talk on the site about how they use library records and I stumbled across the term MARC record, but I didn't see anything that I would recognize as a MARC record, although I did find a pretty extensive list of subject headings when I looked up Ulysses by James Joyce, some of which seemed to be more about the history of the novel than the work itself, (but I nitpickingly digress).

The record for Ulysses that I looked at had a lengthy list of subject headings in one view, in addition to the member tags which, in the absence of a controlled vocabulary, seem to overlap and repeat themselves (Ireland, Irish, irish fiction, Irish literature, Irish writers, Irland, british, British literature, english, English literature, modern, modern library, modern lit, modernism). I'm guessing this helps with keyword searching. Knowing how to spell the word Ireland might be even more helpful. (Again with the nitpicking)

Granted, Library of Congress Subject Headings have their limitations as far as ease of use and lack of ready mapping to the current vernacular, but I'm not sure that we could make the argument that member tags supplied by any user would be an improvement. Lots of fiction and literary works now in our catalog have subject and genre headings and many will have summaries (not necessarily in the MARC record itself unfortunately, and, therefore, not keyword accessible) that users can access remotely. But I think our bibliographical records are pretty good. I think so because a lot of us work pretty hard on them. And we're a little more disciplined about what we'll add to our records than a lot of the users of LibraryThing seem to be.

So, could it be that that's what the LibraryThing is actually "selling?" Giving users a place to do something they can't do in our catalog? Because what our users can't do, among other things, is add tags to our bib records, and review or summarize or comment on the individual works. Or claim any kind of "ownership." Because our library's bibliographic records aren't personal. They're public.

But we assume our patrons want privacy. And we respect our patrons' privacy.

And may I just note that one thing we're not really finding out about patrons who use LibraryThing are the books that are in their libraries that they don't mention in their LibraryThing libraries. I searched the terms "divorce yourself" and got three hits. Only one owner per book. We have books like that in our library. They're sold on amazon.com. But perhaps there are certain works that people don't feel the need to hang onto after a certain point in their lives. Or maybe they own some books that they're not comfortable "sharing."

That's fine, of course. In a sharing milieu like LibraryThing, users are under no obligation to enter every title of every book they own, let alone every book they've ever read. I don''t know if it means anything when people take the time to write about James Joyce's work, but not about the book they used to repair their car or lawnmower. Lots of people claim ownership of The God delusion by Richard Dawkins but not too many find it worth mentions that they own books on bedwetting.

So I have to ask, are LibraryThing users trying to share what they consider to be good works with strangers, or are they trying to paint a flattering picture of themselves--for people they'll probably never have to meet? Or is it a little of both?

Your comments, as always, are welcome.

Nine Books For Every Family

So I'm crawling through my bloglines feed from the New York Times (and aren't the Times folks a prolific bunch!) and this article caught my eye. Nice of the president of Chile to think about giving books to the poor families in her country. (I wonder how poor you have to be to qualify as poor in Chile?) However, the article used it as a convenient jumping off point to get their readers to make their own suggestions of which nine books they think should be given (or received, apparently). 131 respondents, so I stopped reading when Harry Potter came up for the third time and no one had yet mentioned To Kill A Mockingbird. Philistines. (pbbtt!!)

Ah, well, what are you gonna do? Then it kind of snuck up on me-- why isn't the the Chilean president making sure that all of her citizens have access to libraries?

Call me a dreamer...