Apple Mac, Microsoft Windows, and Cloud Computing

Recently a friend in the market for a new laptop told me that all new Macs now have the ability to have a Windows operating system installed on them thanks to a built-in utility program called Boot Camp. So now Mac users don't have to worry about incompatibility with Windows programs. The catch is that you have to buy a separate license for the Microsoft Windows operating system. You also have to restart your laptop if you want to switch between the two operating systems. But for only $80, you can invest in VMware Fusion or Parallels virtual software that lets you run Windows on your Mac Snow Leopard system or whatever cool cat-named OS Mac system you have. Although Macs have always been pricier, they have always trumped IBM-compatibles in the coolness dept of looks and they are the darlings of graphics & video geeks.

Another competitor eating away at Microsoft's world domination is Google. They are busy making the revolutionary Chrome Operating System. The Google operating systems would have no hard drive and all your data will stored on the Internet, otherwise known as cloud computing. Cloud computing has been garnering a lot of attention lately. OCLC is working on creating an integrated library system ILS based mostly on cloud computing. My first impression of cloud computing was negative. The thought of relinquishing control of private data into the Internet is frightening. However, even private local networks can be hacked and OCLC would probably have better security and redundancy than our local IS team could ever provide. In these times of dwindling budgets, cloud computing has some real attractions. I wouldn't have to worry about viruses, hackers, or backups anymore - someone else with more resources and expertise can take care of that. I would just have a hard time with ever putting anything confidential in the cloud.

Looking at CLA 2009 (posted by Lia)

This year's conference seemed to have an increased emphasis on marketing, publicity and outreach. Maybe with scaled back budgets the library community is more focused on defending their existence and getting noticed for the services we provide. Here's a quick rundown of some of the top workshops I attended:

Marketing on a Shoestring: This session was hosted by San Francisco Public Library representatives, one of whom was a very savvy FOTL member with a marketing background. SFPL acknowledged they while they have a great marketing budget, they were going to focus on low-cost solutions for those of us poor folks. They revisited a lot of familiar material, such as writing press releases and media alerts and marketing through social networking tools, but they had several fresh new ideas.

• When planning publicity for library events, do some careful planning to isolate the specific audience for your program and TARGET ONLY THAT AUDIENCE. The mistake we often make is trying to reach everyone. For instance, when planning a highly successful international poetry festival, SFPL decided that this event would reach the 25-40 year old "cultural consumer" who shops organic products, read reviews on YELP, and has ties to the international community. So they targeted advertising with YELP, organic food stores, and some foreign language news stations.
• It is important to reach out to potential funders by sending information about programs and events, even without the anticipation that they will fund your program. This will at least increase awareness and funders may remember you for future endeavors
• A lot of word of mouth marketing can be done by our staff. We are all marketers for our libraries, as we talk to our neighbors, friends, churches etc. Increasing staff awareness of library events and services helps everyone spread the word in our communities.
• Blogs - SFPL is trying to move away from too many blogs, focusing instead on enriching their web site, encouraging staff to update content in other ways. They found that too much information was being repeated from blog to blog, giving customers too many places to visit.
• SFPL talked about the recent success of the One City, One Book program. The book selection was key in this program - they picked an unusual mystery title "Alive in Necropolis" that incorporated ghost stories and local settings. The readership was younger and included more men than previous selections. Fun events included One City, One Book, One Bar - The bar created a signature library cocktail, and brought in about 90 people.

Positive Change: Motivating Staff to Give Great Customer Service. This workshop was hosted by Barbara Flynn from the San Diego Library. It focused on a motivational approach known as Appreciative Inquiry, which acknowledges what the organization is doing well, by catching people doing something right.

• The Appreciative Inquiry method was developed by a student researcher who studied organizational development in the highly rated Cleveland Clinic. He was asked to figure out what the Clinic could do even better. He wondered what would happen if they focused on what the organization was doing right. He personally interviewed staff members, asking them to tell him about a time when they were the most productive, most satisfied, and had provided outstanding customer service, hoping to get them to realize that THEY ALREADY HAD THE EXPERTISE TO SUCCEED. The result was that greater productivity, better customer service ratings, and higher employee satisfaction.
• Flynn provided the audience with a cautionary tale from her own experience of an unsuccessful leader who lead by fear, the leader's own fear of what would happen if the staff made poor decisions. The unempowered staff was scared to make decisions, unable to provide outstanding customer service for fear of reciprocity. By focusing on the negative, the staff was unable to move forward.
• San Diego, along with several other libraries, are experimenting with the idea that staff will focus exclusively on the customer when working at any of the public services desks, not working on side projects or book ordering. This, combined with the roving model, encourages staff to be more customer-focused, as their sole purpose is to be their for the customers, greeting and assisting with finding materials.
• A good way to motivate staff is by using an employee recognition model, interviewing staff and identifying those individuals in your organization who are providing excellent customer service, and use these responses to build a Best Practices policy.

CLA Conference 2009 California Library Association - Pasadena

This year there was a noticeable scaling back on exhibits. There were also fewer technology track workshops so I attended a lot of management classes instead.

The most inspiring workshop I attended was Secrets of the Stars - Top-rated Libraries from the Library Journal's Index share their success stories. The common theme among all the star library speakers was that they put the customer (patron) first.

1. First speaker was Commerce City Library Director. According to Director, the City of Commerce originally established themselves as a separate city because they were unhappy with the library services. So her community historically values the library. They do a lot of outreach programs: an annual college fair (over 800 attendees) with 30-40 colleges, give workshops on applying for student loans & colleges, and get keynote speakers for the event. They partnered with Starbucks where they did a storytime at the store which provided free refreshments. They have good relationships with other City departments: utilize the City's Graphics Dept for professional brochures, Police read books to kids, Fire dept brings out their fire truck for library events. They got a local church to donate school supplies for their Back to School Program. They administer the City's scholarship program which is funded by local businesses (over $80,000). Other libraries can contact the Director if they want to know more.
2. Next speaker was Newport Beach Public Library Director. She admitted that Newport is a wealthy community but the library was highly valued in a public survey of all City Depts. They have an excellent pool of job applicants wanting to work at the library. They even get PH.D holders applying for page positions. She attributes that to their close relationship with San Jose Library School. They have an excellent training program for employees. Every staff member gets 2 weeks of training before they are put out to do their job. They are moved through every branch and assigned a mentor. They do a lot of computer training for the public based on demand. Most popular class is how to sell and buy on Ebay. They limit their class sizes to ensure quality time and offer one-on-one training if desired. Staff fight with each other to teach the classes because it's so fun to teach. They collaborate with the OC Arts council to provide performance arts for children. They collaborate with UC Irvine Performing arts majors and give them a stipend to put on shows. They have an active foundation that brings popular speakers like author Nicholas Sparks. The Foundation also puts on an It's Your Money class. They believe in quality rather than quantity when it comes to their collection. After they weeded, their circ jumped 10%. They have a strong Foreign Film collection. Director believes that they are successful because they carefully plan everything before doing it. She also believes in openess. Every staff meeting that is held in library has its minutes published for all staff to read within 2 hours, nothing is done in secret.
3. Next speaker was Pasadena Public Library Director. Director believes library's success is to due to continually listening to staff and public. She encourages Dangerous Ideas - which is opening themselves to new ways of thinking. For example, one of her staff suggested spending less time planning and more time doing. They always ask of new processes - will this make it easier for our customers? She fosters the culture of change readiness. Change is not an event. It is an on-going life process. They don't stop changing after a certain date because it is not in the customer's best interest. She encourages continuous questions and improvement. She has a passion statement instead of mission statement for the library. She has a Best At statement instead of a values statement. She has an annual full staff day where she had goals written on butcher paper and then had staff go and write their names under which goal they felt was important. Then she made that staff person responsible for initiating that goal. One of the most important things was to determine what they would stop doing. They stopped doing school visits and trainings because 80% of staff time was being used for just a minority of the library's users.
4. Final speaker was San Jose Public Library Director. She subscribes to the Charlie Robinson philosophy of give them what they want. Make it easy for the patrons. First thing that patrons see when they come into her library is not a big desk of staff, but a big display of new books. 96% of their circ is done via self checkout. They buy materials that patrons want. Their guiding principles are to take the customer first, teach customers to be more self-sufficient, make it convenient so they can find things quickly, make it comfortable - they want a home-like setting not an institutional feel. They found that the number of reference questions decreased significantly and 80% were directional or simple questions so they did a massive retraining of clerks and have one service point instead of separate desks. That freed up the librarians to do programming instead. They have roving staff to help people. Staff are assigned a zone to walk around and help people during their shift. They also have budget cutbacks so they may be opening fewer days or lesser hours. She offers consulting to other libraries if they want help making similar changes.

A similar workshop that I went to was Why We Borrow - 2010. Lisa Rosenblum of Hayward Public Library had gotten a grant to have Envirosell, a marketing firm, to study the library. A report showed that they needed to make retail style renovations. They put all the computers together in one location to make it easier for the public. They cleared out the front lobby because the public needs a decompression zone and consolidated flyers with digital photo frames. They also dumped some brochures. They put in slat wall to display book covers. They moved the circulation desk and 90% of survey recipients thought it was a better. They improved signage and made more judicious use of signs and posters. They have one desk for reference and circulation so they empower clerks to answer reference questions. Most of the questions do not require an MLS degree. They gave the example of when you go to the Doctor's office, 90% of the time is not handled by the Doctor. It appears that the trend is towards reducing service desks and not always having professional librarians staff the desks.

Another workshop I went to was Hold Your Ground! How to Maintain Funding in Tough Times hosted by San Francisco Public Library and Friends of the SFPL, and the Pasadena Public Library Director. They said the key was to develop strategic relationships with the mayor and city council members well before you need them. Lay the groundwork in having the support by having them come to library events and take the credit so that when you do need their support later, they'll remember you. You also need to define your value and impact. SFPL benefits from a strong and active Friends of the Library group that does all the strategic relationship building with the council members for them. The Friends group paid for a professional benefit study by Berks & Associates that showed the value of the library to the community. Pasadena Public Library Director was proud of a value calculator on their site. An audience member said that libraries could visit http://www.engagedpatrons.org/ to get the code for their own website. Also need to Tell the Story of the library not only with circ numbers but personal stories that show how important the library is to people. San Francisco Library Director has built a relationship with the newspapers editors to get their story out. One of the libraries has a newspaper editor on the board of Select One Book One City to ensure media coverage. They also cautioned to assess the value of partnerships, don't sell off the library's brand too cheaply if it doesn't forward the library's mission.

An interesting tech workshop I attended was OCLC Web-Scale Library Management Services. Basically, OCLC is re-entering the ILS business. No one remembers that long ago that they used to provide ILS systems for libraries. Their new system takes advantage of cloud computing. The system is still in the alpha and beta developmental stages, but they have some free components like WorldCat Local for OCLC subscribers - of which we are. I'll experiment with setting that up in the coming months. Since the system is new, they don't have any pricing for it yet.

Another tech workshop I went to was Is it an iPhone or an iLibrary? which really was a discussion of useful iPhone apps. The talk was given by academic librarians who found it useful in their environment of serving students. I didn't find much that was applicable to our public library.

Another not very interesting workshop was Small Business Resources @ Your Library which was a talk by a Library Director of how she made presentations to her local community and told them about her library's business resources. She had a bibliography of business books and a list of useful websites: http://www.calbusiness.ca.gov/, http://www.census.gov/, http://www.greenbiz.com/, http://www.sba.gov/, and http://www.score.org/

Finally, I attended Using Statistics to Make the Case for your Library hosted by OCLC. This was a dry workshop without many groundbreaking revelations. The OCLC rep said to create a culture of assessment and have outcome measures to ensure accountability for resources. Identify changing patterns or trends. No single golden method exists, it's best to combine several methods. Leadership needs to support assessment activities. There are 3 types of evaluation, goals-based, process-based, and outcomes-based. Have qualitative and quantitative data. Ira Bray from California State Library was there and he said that they have a site free to access library statistics.

SirsiDynix User's Group Meeting - Oct 23rd, 2009

The meeting, at Cerritos College, started off with a sales presentation of a public catalog add-on product called Enterprise. I think SD has missed the mark on what a library catalog really needs. Enterprise is supposedly a portal product that when a user searches, they'll get results from the Internet, databases, and the catalog. That large result set will just confuse the average library user imho.
Then the group broke off into 4 user groups: Tech Services, Sys Admin, Public Service, and Ask SirsiDynix. I went to the SysAdmin group and mainly found out that other libraries also had to pay for new Telecirc replacement module and it wasn't a free replacement. However, during the SD morning sales presentation they did mention that if Horizon customers migrated to Symphony it would be a "free" upgrade and we would just have to pay for service charges. That would be cheaper than buying a whole new ILS outright.
Finally, the last third of the meeting was a talk by Stephen Abram. His entire slideshow will be posted on his blog site at http://stephenslighthouse.sirsidynix.com/ Some interesting points from his talk were:

• The top 10 presidential campaign contributers were copyright owners - A large majority of them were foreign. This is on his radar because he is involved in the Google book digitization project of over 150 million books.


• Thinks that in the next 5-10 years most non-fiction will be digitized.


• Thinks libraries should be geo-tagging cardholders to find out demographic usage.


• Future is shifting to experience-based learning instead of transactional-based.


• USA is experiencing a brain drain of knowledge, India building 500 new universities and China over 1,000 in the next few years.


• USA needs to remain competitive in a knowledge based community and we can't wait for everyone to catch up when it comes to adopting new technology.


• Some small town in Virigina has installed broadband on a television channel so if you get can get a TV signal you can get free broadband. Government focusing on broadband for rural areas.


• Top circulating materials were books on Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology - not because they're teaching that in schools but because World of Warcraft players are writing avatar essays.


• Kids are smarter than generations past. Top website draws are news, weather, sports, celebrity gossip.


• 1 in every 6 pages viewed on the Web is Facebook.


• Library is the only government entity that people visit by choice.


• Some creative ways to engage patrons - A library in Wyoming got hundreds of mp3 players preloaded with 3 audiobooks and shipped them to overseas military along with library cards so they can continue to use the library's downloadable audiobooks via the Internet.


• Libraries should put up photos of their star staff, storytellers, do podcasts, storytime videos - Number 2 search engine is Youtube. Offer paying fines by Paypal.


• End users value Community, Learning, and Interaction.

What a library catalog really needs

After 8 years of supporting a public library catalog, I think I know a thing or two about the failings of catalog systems. I recently viewed a sales presentation on SirsiDynix Enterprise, an add-on catalog product. It was woefully off the mark on what a library catalog needs.

1. Stability - a catalog system needs to be rock solid and go down very seldom. I am surprised how often our current catalog server goes down and services need restarting. Will buying a catalog add-on product make our catalog more stable? I think not, they need to give me a more stable system not a band-aid.
2. Reliability & Low Maintenance - It is ridiculous the amount of manual reindexing required to keep our current system working properly. This should all be automated. Staff shouldn't have to manually run indexing programs to keep the system working correctly. Will adding Enterprise help to automate mass indexer?
3. Fuzzy-logic spell check - Enterprise did offer this, but when I mistype a title, the system should be smart enough to give me close approximations. The Enterprise suggestions weren't as good as Amazon's system. With Amazon, it offers book results that are currently popular, with Enterprise, it only offers word correction suggestions.
4. Suggestions - If you like this, try this - Another of Amazon's strong points is offering suggestions of other similar books, I didn't see Enterprise offering this. Why can't they program the catalog to suggest the most popular books based on the number of checkouts? When I search for a book, I don't care if it is the 25th edition or the 1st edition, can't they program the catalog so that it's smart enough to say you want Grapes of Wrath - here's the most popular one (based on number of checkouts).
5. Book reviews and ratings - Enterprise did offer this. These days a good catalog system will allow people to rate books and reviews.
6. Book Lists - Amazon lets users create book lists and an inventory of their books. The My List feature of our current catalog is terrible. It limits the amount of books that users can keep. I think Enterprise's limit was 200, and with every upgrade we've had, the users' lists were wiped out. I have no faith that our catalog system won't lose a users' list.
7. Facebook Apps - I don't think Amazon has this yet, but I currently use weRead and it lets me share books I'm reading with my Friends, keep track of books that I want to read, currently read, and have read. Furthermore, there's a handy link that says "Buy this book" or "Find this at a library" that connects to Worldcat which really should be connecting directly to my library's catalog.
8. iPhone App - We're on Horizon, but this should be standard in an ILS vendor's catalog offerings.
9. Large Results Display - The Enterprise result screen was a small square in the middle. It should be like Amazon's and show me the book and its cover in large bright color across the screen. I shouldn't have to be distracted by two side columns of extraneous info.
10. Show me Catalog Holdings Only by Default - SirsiDynix seemed very proud of the fact that Enterprise can offer federated searching - pulling in results from the Internet, Databases, etc. When users come to a library catalog they want to find the library's books not other stuff that would only confuse them.

Children's Web pages are a haven for annoying web effects

After caving into finally using Flash on the library's website, I decided to open the floodgates to a multitude of other cool yet annoying web effects. The main gripe I have against all these extra multimedia effects is that they slow down the site. Nothing is worst than having to wait and wait for a page to download. However, with a children's website, anything goes because it's okay to wear mismatched clothes when you're a kid. We're still a long way off from having a really cool kid's page like Disney.com but all those "cool" yet amateurish effects are beginning to pop up on the children's "fun page". Animated, blinky gifs - check, a bunch of mismatched fonts - check, loud clashing colors - check, Flash, javascript - check, check. I'll soon tack on some hideous midi sound wav files and mouse trailing effects because a kid's webpage should be a little like Wonka's chocolate factory.

I LOVE RSS

RSS has made my work really simple. For those who don't know what RSS is - it's magic code that allows me to export newly published content from one website to another. HBPL has about 6 blogs maintained by different staff. I was struggling with how to showcase all of them on Facebook. Thanks to a fellow librarian's blog, I discovered Yahoo Pipes. Pipes gathers up all the blog rss feeds and lets me repost them into Facebook. In addition to Pipes, I can use Twitterfeed to forward posts to the Library's Twitter page. I just sit back and the bloggers post to their hearts' content and it automatically gets posted on Facebook and Twitter.

Subcumbed to Adobe Flash and Page Curl Peel

My resistance to using Adobe Flash and scripting on has been broken. I had to find a way to present a lot of information with a less cluttered look. So thanks to Youtube tutorials and Sam's Teach Yourself Adobe Flash CS4 in 24 Hours, I was able to put together a basic flash banner. I hesitated to use Flash because it can take a long time to load if there are too many fancy features. Also, if users block scripts from their browser, the fancy features won't show up correctly. But, it was inevitable since all the coolest web sites now use Flash.

One very cool feature that I noticed on some sites was the use of the dog ear page curl effect. Luckily for newbie Adobe Flash scripters like myself, more advanced gurus have made their Flash files and scripts available. I found this very useful site that offers premade script files for free at a German site: http://www.webpicasso.de/blog/pageear-free-peel-away-ad/ I found a video tutorial that explains how to install the dog eared page effect step-by-step at http://www.videos.bycenay.com/blogging/wordpress/add-page-peel/ So thanks to the benevolent online community, I was able to install a quick and easy page peel curl website effect.

Internet Browsers

There are quite a few free Internet browsing software out there as an alternative to the typical Microsoft Internet Explorer. Some other popular browsers are Mozilla's Firefox, SeaMonkey, Opera, Flock, Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari. I personally like Firefox because of the feature rich add-in options. FireFox's No Script add-in, which blocks potentially harmful spyware, and pop-ups, is very useful for keeping my computer adware-free. I use it when I'm googling research topics and I'm not sure if a web page is safe. For sites that I do trust I use Internet Explorer or one of the alternatives. The FTP plug-in is also handy. I like using Flock for accessing Web 2.0 sites like Facebook and Myspace since it makes logging into those sites easy. Google's Chrome hasn't impressed me greatly. It's not significantly faster than any of the other browsers. For web page designers, it's handy to have a different browsers installed to see how a web page will look. But for the general user, I recommend using Firefox with the No Script plug-in when browsing unknown webpages. Internet Explorer can be used for well-known, safe sites.

More new social networking sites

Social networking sites are popping up like rabid bunnies.
Here's more I've discovered this week.

Glogster
Hi5
TinyPic - Photo sharing site
FotoFlexer - Free online photo editing site. Good if you can't afford Photoshop.

See this list of 100 top social networking sites: http://www.100bestsocialnetworksites.com/

Library Centennial Slideshow Final

A cool site is Slideshare.net that lets you upload powerpoint files and embed them into Web Pages like Youtube.

Library Centennial Slideshow Final

Website Redesigned

After 8 years, the Library website has finally been redesigned and updated. The old website featured a blue, green, and teal color scheme to match the Central Library's blue phase of the 1990s. In 2007/2008, the Central Library was renovated to return the original 1970s brown, green neutral colors scheme. Luckily, the City's website already featured an olive greenish scheme that matched. In 2001, a web design firm called Atomic Source was employed by the library to design our blue/green site. This newest revision was done completely inhouse with the help of our talented City IS dept. The IS dept handled the technical details and a team of five Library staff were responsible for the design and layout. As the team of five, or the Furious Five as I like to call us, has more time to develop our skils in fancy, flashy web design, we'll do our best to keep it fresh and modern looking. But it is a work in progress.

One of the challenges has been to present a huge amount of content in an attractive and engaging format. I've often been torn between presenting a slow to load, yet flashy eye-catching graphics filled page versus fast-loading plain old text page. Due to lack of expertise in Flash and fancy web design, I opted for the fast-loading plain old text in many cases. One of the things I've learned is that XHTML for content, CSS for presentation, javascript for action. I'd love to have a more interactive Children's and Teen pages, but it requires flash and javascript. I'm loathe to have too much flash and java on a page because A) it's slows down the page loading and B) technogeeks like myself like to disable java & active scripts in our Firefox browsers to avoid getting potential spyware and viruses. I like to use FireFox's No Script add-on to block those annoying pop-ups and spyware ads but it also renders many of the cool flash and scripted goodies of webpages useless. However technology rapidly changes and perhaps by then there will be a new web technology that allows for fast loading, yet flashy and interactive features.

HBPL Catalog Widget

Tell Us your story blog

HBPL now has a Tell Us Your Story Blog for the public to tell HBPL what they like about the library and positive effects it has had on their lives.

Add our Facebook Search Catalog app

HBPL has a Facebook app that you can add to your Facebook profile. Just search for “HBPL catalog” while logged in Facebook and add our app. It will allow you to find a library book from Facebook.

Move over Netflix, now there's Hulu

There is a new website http://www.hulu.com/, that allows viewers to watch videos for free. The difference between hulu.com and http://www.youtube.com/ is that there are full feature length films and tv shows. The caveat is the video is sprinkled with short Internet ads. A small price to pay to watch an obscure film that is hard to find or a favorite missed tv episode. There are also Web 2.0 features where you can rate the film and write film reviews like at http://www.imdb.com/

Vivaty, an alternative to Second Life

There is a new virtual reality web game called Vivaty which is still in Beta. It can be played right in your facebook account and while not as powerful as Second Life, it is a fun way to build a customized virtual room. Best of all it is free to use as Second Life is but you don't need virtual money to set up your own room. I set up one with HBPL's Youtube film playing in the room.

New Director, New Directions

HBPL has a new Director and these are some of the links she's dugg:
http://delicious.com/hbpl/director

Bluray Videos @ HBPL

High definition Blu Ray DVDs are now available at HBPL. For a listing of available blu ray titles, do a Dewey Call Number search for BRAY items.