In their latest podcast of Thinking Out Loud, George Needham & Joan Frye Williams take a look at the Public Library Association's 2008 conference (it was paperless, so as G&J point out, it is a very rich website!). Some highlights: the exhibit hall (ChiliFresh.com, STImaging.com, MusicPump) and the Minneapolis Public Library's Game Center. They cover a lot of ground, so be sure to tune in!
A big event at the Computers in Libraries conference announced the 2008 InfoTubey award winners. The production values vary (some are pretty high-end), but the messages are all good - libraries are great places! Check them out - then think how easy it would be with a Flip video camera to create a great marketing tool for your library, too!
Here are more of the pithy prognostications from fortune-teller/library consultant Joan Frye Williams made at CLA 2007. (In case you missed it, here's a link to part 1).
In the future…
*A subscription audio book channel will be added to satellite radio.
*Public libraries will offer summer “reading camp” programs in collaboration with the YMCA.
*The federal Library Services and Technology Act will be reoriented and renewed as the Library Services and Communities Act.
*Effective auto-translation software will truly globalize information access, leading to serious challenges to existing copyright laws.
*Legislation will require that literacy and ESOL services become part of the curriculum in state-funded library schools.
*Interlibrary loan will be replaced by scan-on-demand service.
*OCLC will offer access to WorldCat via LibraryThing, the social cataloging website.
*More than two thirds of library school education will be conducted online.
*Programmable touch screens/touch keyboards will replace traditional keyboards.
*VISA will add a universal library card privilege to its credit cards, effectively preauthorizing users to borrow materials from any participating library.
*Libraries will receive health agency funding to support their role in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease.
*Infopeople will train its millionth workshop attendee.
*At the 2032 summer Olympics in Dublin, Ohio, book cart drill team competition will debut as a demonstration sport.
Can't wait for that book cart drill team!
In this podcast, George Needham and Joan Frye Williams discuss George's trip to South Africa for the 2007 IFLA Conference, and the global library community in general.
If you weren’t able to visit the Infopeople booth at CLA, you missed the chance to hear a costumed fortune-teller (library consultant Joan Frye Williams, in a cameo appearance) render predictions about the future of libraries. Here’s a sampling of her pithy prognostications. More to come next week. She did a lot of prognosticating.
In the future…
*Library users will choose from a variety of convenient borrowing plans – enabling them to check out more items for a shorter loan period, or fewer items for a longer loan period, or have all materials due on the same day each month, etc.
*Library card information and barcode/RFID identifiers will be downloadable to – and directly readable from - cell phones and PDAs.
*Library users will schedule personalized reader’s advisory sessions with a "reading coach."
*Integrated system software will be open source; the library will contract for maintenance on a year-to-year or multi-year basis from competing suppliers.
*Retiring baby boomers will demand elaborate summer reading programs for adults.
*The library will become a primary destination for consumer health information and services such as flu shots, well baby clinics, etc.
*The majority of new library construction will be "green" – and LEED certified.
*Libraries will broaden – and improve - their pool of applicants for customer service jobs by omitting the word "library" from recruitment ads.
*Demand-based dynamic shelving algorithms will replace the Dewey Decimal System.
*Library conferences will be modeled on events like PopTech.
*Libraries will take steps to become carbon neutral.
Here at Peep Central we have been busy, busy, busy making preparations for the CLA conference that starts Oct 26 at the Long Beach Convention Center. The joint California State Library booth theme this year is CollaBOOration (get it? Halloween?) and among other things there will be a haunted house, and a tree of dead technology. Here is a YouTube video tour of the model (which is mostly still accurate).
Due to popular demand there will be another Technology Petting Zoo (only this year it's called the Maze of Technology). Here is a video of the items. I created it using a Flip Video camera (one of the items).
If you come to the Maze and try out an item, you'll get a ticket that's good for a t-shirt. The t-shirts can be picked up at the Infopeople booth, where you can also enter the raffle to win an iPod touch (one will also be available for you to play with and drool over, and it is really worth drooling over, IMHO). There will be other swag available as well, including a nifty desktop night light (well, that's what it looks like to me, anyway), and squishy maniacal pumpkins which can be squeezed or thrown, based on your frustration levels. You can see what they look like in the pic accompanying this posting.
We will also have, for the first time at CLA as far as I know, a gaming booth where you can try out a Nintendo Wii sport like golf, bowling, boxing, or tennis or Dance Dance Revolution on a Playstation 2. Cheryl Gould is threatening to start a tournament, so come prepared to boogie.
Since Infopeople is all about Web 2.0, we will also be podcasting from the Maze. I've created a Gabcast channel just for the event, and we hope to be adding content pretty regularly once the conference setup starts on Thursday. I've added a link to the blog's sidebar to the Gabcast content, so you can keep up that way as well.
And last but certainly not least, on Friday afternoon at 5:15 there will be a very special event. Ray Bradbury, the world-famous writer, will be speaking in the Exhibit Hall, and there will be signed copies of The Halloween Tree available for purchase. If you miss Ray at CLA he will also be doing book signings at Vroman's in Pasadena on Halloween.
Are you still on the fence about social networking at the library?
A year ago the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) division of the American Library Association launched the 30 days of positive uses of social networking project. Every day throughout October three YALSA bloggers posted ideas and information about using social networking in the school and public library.
You can download the compilation as a PDF.
Some of the highlights of the posts were ways that social networking can be used to:
• Empower teens
• Give teens the chance to meaningfully serve the community
• Support teen reading and writing/text-based literacy needs and skills
• Give teens opportunities to create and collaborate
• Make sure teens are able to plan and manage projects
• Communicate with community members
• Provide teens with opportunities to choose how to be smart and safe when using technology.
Here's positive use #1 to give you a flavor of the quality of the compilation:
del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/) is a great tool for collecting and publishing resource lists. In a public and school library teens can use del.icio.us to collect reviews of materials that should be purchased for the library, bookmark and annotate resources that support classroom projects, and collaborate on collecting resources on topics of interest from music to web design and from favorite authors to craft how-to tips.
If teens are interested in using del.icio.us as an information/resource gathering tool they could setup a joint account. (This would allow the teens to collect resources together in one del.icio.us area.) Then, wherever the teens are, if they find a resource that fits their del.icio.us focus they can quickly and easily login to their joint account, add the link, annotate the link, and off they go. del.icio.us even has RSS feeds so that others who are collecting resources on the same topic in the same del.icio.us space will know something new has been added.
If you still want more information, don't miss these Infopeople master speakers at the California Library Association Conference:
Saturday, October 27 - 3:45 – 5:00 pm
Shawn Gold, MySpace head of marketing and content development
Social Networks as Marketing Tools?
Do you think social software is just for getting a date for Saturday night or a whole new style of communication that will be shaping the way libraries reach customers in the future? Is MySpace just a fad or a key tool for reaching younger audiences? Learn why and how MySpace, with over 200 million registered profiles, has become an Internet phenomenon and get a sense of what social networks are accomplishing and where they’re going in the future.
Sunday, October 28 - 3:15 – 4:30 pm
Craig Newmark, Craigslist founder
Insights into Connecting People and Information
If you think that non-library information is all in the hands of money-grubbing moguls, think again. Come to this session and meet Craig Newmark, customer service rep and founder of craigslist, a non-commercial community bulletin board with classifieds and discussion forums.
Sunday, October 28 - 4:45 – 6:00 pm
Shel Israel, co-author of Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk With Customers
Libraries: Staying relevant in the Online Age
Blogging and the related social media are having a transformative impact on every aspect of society. There are now 70 million bloggers. By year end there will be more than 200 million registered members of MySpace, making it more populace than all but five countries on Earth. For every New York Times reader, there are 125 people who download YouTube everyday. A majority of these people are under 25 and the social media have become essential to their everyday lives.
What does this mean to your library? How can and should it adapt to this change? How can libraries use social media to remain relevant to young people and connected to their communities? Can blogs be used to educate communities on what libraries have to offer? Most important, how do libraries relate to a new generation who is more accustomed to getting information online than from bookshelves? How does the modern library adapt to this phenomenon? As the new conversational medium becomes part of people’s everyday lives, what will the library of 5, 10 or 15 years look like?
Michael Cart continues his report of the 2007 ALA conference in this podcast, recapping YALSA’s celebration of its fiftieth anniversary and reporting on the explosion of events related to young adult literature.
ALA's annual conference is starting later this week (June 21-27) in Washington, DC. If you can't make the real deal, there are a number of ways you can virtually tune in:
It's almost like being there!
Bit One: I have been at LMS 2007 for the past couple of days getting lots of exposure to the ins and outs of issues like changing your learning management system, how to deal with vendors, and what to look for in a Learning Content Management System. Today I attended a session on Web 2.0 and Learning Management Systems, and they talked about a very cool new LMS, the first of its kind, actually: Sloodle.com. Sloodle is a mashup of Moodle (an open source LMS) and Second Life. The basic idea: students' avatars can take online learning courses via Sloodle in Second Life. Read more about it at the SJSU Sloodle wiki. What an awesome idea!
Bit Two: Next week (Apr 15-21) is National Library Week. This year's theme is Come together @ your library. Check out this page for ways to celebrate and promote your library!
The TED Conference mixes Technology, Entertainment and Design. The 2007 event was March 7-10 in Monterey and its focus was Icons, Geniuses and Mavericks.
As the San Francisco Chronicle put it, "Imagine going to school and learning how to tie your shoe correctly one moment and studying the rise of obesity the next. Then you might hear a 14-year-old piano virtuoso perform and improvise a piece on the spot, followed by a talk on global warming. They are just some of the presentations that the 1,000 or so invitation-only attendees have been treated to each year at the four-day Ted Conference."
You can listen to the fascinating talks, both audio and video, online or on your iPod FREE through iTunes. Examples of those featured are plyaright/actor Anne Deavere-Smith, Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, and rock star/activist Bono.
If you found TED 2007 intriguing, be sure to check out The Big Questions to be answered at TED 2008, February 27 - March 1, 2008 at the Monterey Conference Center.
During the American Library Association (ALA) 2007 Midwinter meeting in Seattle, I was looking for ideas for the 2007 Infopeople Technology Petting Zoo and had a great opportunity to try my fancy foot work out on Dance Dance Revolution dance pads with Jenny Levine. Jenny is an Internet Development Specialist and Strategy Guide for ALA; she also has her own blog titled, The Shifted Librarian.
You may have read that libraries are using these pads in creative ways such as challenging teen library customers to a contest. If the teens win, their overdue fines are wiped out!
See a movie of us taken with my Canon digital camera at my website.
A nice little video tour of the CLA 2006 conference has been posted to Google Video. Check it out here! Our technology petting zoo & booth area is featured, along with special appearances by assorted Peeps. Thanks to Bernadette Swanson from UC Davis for the link! Check out more info from the conference on the CLA Blog.