video and video tutorials

If you haven't already seen a library produced video on You Tube or seen one embedded in your library Web site, you probably will soon. One of the qualities of a good librarians is the desire to connect and share with their patron community and in the age of social media, video is one of the most accessible ways to do this. The question that comes up for me when I think about library produced video is, "What are you going to say, and why should I watch it?" There is still a novelty associated with short librarian generated video that will certainly create a little buzz in your user community and perhaps raise a general awareness of the librarians and services available. Videos that present a hearty welcome and an orientation to the library may have their place, but when this novelty wears off, users are going to have little tolerance for information in video form that is not clear and concise and above all, useful. Library users are not visiting the library Web site in order to "surf" it. They are there for a specific reason and are not interested in anything but fulfilling that particular need. We can use the video format best when we use it for tips, tricks and solutions to specific problems we know our users experience while obtaining the information they need.  For example, if there is a known problem with the Web site surrounding access to article databases, a 20 second narrated screencast about selecting an appropriate database could be inserted (embedded) at logical point where users are forced to make a selection between two paths. There are any number of examples that can be thought of where a context sensitive help video could be unobtrusively linked.

The great bifurcation

I have felt pulled in a couple of different directions since I started this blog nearly five (!) years ago. I started it to post about professional interests as a librarian, and the occasional personal or amusing post about anything else. But lately it has been harder and harder to decide which way to go, but I've finally made a decision (with the help of a parent-in-the-trenches). My Library-centric worldview will now be here at "Internet Librarian Ship." "Lost in the Stupormarket" will be about life as a 40-something dad of small children.Wow, such range.

Augmented reality by "Common Craft"

Re-posting a LITA-L email from Gerry McKiernan:

This video is an introduction to augmented reality - a new and growing way to use smartphones to learn about the world around you. This video introduces the technology and covers the basic applications. It includes:

•A high level introduction to the big idea
•Using it to find a restaurant
•Using it to compare products, be entertained
•A look at future possibilities of augmented reality

http://www.commoncraft.com/augmented-reality-video

can memes become extinct?

So this wikipedia article says "Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct." So, if a meme is recorded in some fashion, either textually, in pictures, video, et cetera, but is no longer in general use, can it be considered extinct? Unlike extinct biological life, a meme could be revived at any time be simply by a culturally influential person (or entity like a tv show or advertisement) reintroducing it. For example, what if Lady GaGa started saying "where's the beef?"

"zones of intervention"

I've been reading Carol Kuhlthau's writings about the "Information Search Process" (ISP) lately as research into an article I'm revising on the single search box. In them she reminds me that the early stages of the ISP include a level of anxiety and uncertainty. It is natural for the user of an information system to have an affective response to an information need as well as a cognitive one. The anxiety felt at the beginning of the research process comes from the user's lack of knowledge about the topic of interest, but also from a lack of focus on the topic of interest itself. This is usually where an information professional like a librarian might provide guidance to the user in the form of an interpreter of the information system, or as an interviewer helping to elicit a more focused information query. Kuhlthau writing in 1996 also refers to a "zone of intervention" in the ISP. "The zone of intervention is that area in which an information user can do with advice and assistance what he or she could not do alone. Intervention within this zone enables the user to move along in the information search process. Intervention outside this zone is inefficient and unnecessary; experienced by users as intrusive, on the one side and overwhelming, on the other." (Kuhlthau 1996) Interestingly, Kuhlthau was writing about this zone to address the question, "What is the role of the information professional as intermediary in an environment where information systems provide direct access to the end user?" (Kuhlthau 1996) Fourteen years later the question is still just as incisive, if not moreso since Google Scholar, Federated search, Article databases and link resolvers bring full text library content into the users lap. For remote users searching via the library Web site (the vast majority), that intervention must occur asynchronously through context sensitive help, or not at all. One philosophy of librarianship, — which is admittedly more nuanced than I am giving it credit for here — eschews a simplified search interface and feels that the user requires education and instruction on how to use library resources. I do not necessarily disagree that the user often needs guidance or instruction, but I am of the mind that we ought to be providing the best content possible with the simplest and least mediated interface that we can. Currently, the best technological solution to this issue is the single search box across multiple databases, including commercial search engines. The "zone of intervention" exists post-search when the user is reviewing and interpreting results. The presentation of search results is the most important point at which the librarian has the opportunity to exert their expertise by providing "contextual buttressing" (to borrow a delightful phrase, thanks Kathryn S.) to help searchers understand the types of information they are retrieving.

Joi Ito photo: Generation Gap

The thread that brought me to this picture started out as a You Tube search for my last name. That in turn lead me to a 2008 talk at UC Berkeley by the (then) President of the Digital Library Federation Peter Brantley. He spoke about his interactions with the newspaper industry as the president of Dig. Lib. Federation.

Generation Gap
Originally uploaded by Joi

Death of Publishing video

The fictional "millennial" narrating this video tells us that we must listen to her values. But this video doesn't state what the producers think those values are. It just shows us that we can see the glass as half full or half empty. View it as half full and the publishing industry has a future in its current form. View it as half empty and book publishers are fighting a losing battle. Neither are true are they? Publishers of all content -- textual, musical, visual, and other, have major challenges in front of them due in part to the plethora of formats in which that content is accessible. What publishers of all media are scrambling to do is to monetize every form of access. Publishers would have you (or your library) pay twice or thrice or per use for the content of a book or CD or DVD depending on whether you buy the paper, stream the digital video or download it as a proprietary audio format. Publishing is dying? Hardly. The question is really about how many times the consumer can be charged for something they presumably already paid for.

UIC Library budget cuts: books, journals, electronics, EVERYTHING

Everyone on campus received this email today from the Library Dean Mary M. Case.
It contains a short description of current issues in journal costs.

Dear Colleagues,

I write to advise you that the budget reductions for which UIC is
preparing for FY2011 will diminish the Library’s collections budget
and consequently impact the resources the Library provides for your
teaching and research.  Because we do not know the extent of the
reductions, the Library is preparing for a range between minimal to
quite serious cuts to the collections.

In general, we expect to purchase fewer books and cancel selected
subscriptions for journals and databases.  As we proceed, we will be
in contact with your departments to talk about how library resources
in your disciplines will be affected by the cuts.  You will be
hearing by mid-March from XXXX XXXXXXXX, Principal Bibliographer,
about a process that the subject bibliographers will use to identify
potential candidates for cancellation and to confer with you about
your priorities.  The Library would like to make its cancellation
decisions in consultation with the faculty.  In the meantime, if you
have questions, please contact her at XXXX .

UIC is not alone in addressing budget issues, nor is the Library
alone in struggling to sustain research collections in this economic
environment.  While limited funding is a part of the problem, there
are other systemic factors, and I would like to take this
opportunity to explain them and how they affect our current
situation.

The Journals Market
Many of the research journals we subscribe to, especially those in
science, technology, and medicine, are very expensive and are
bundled in large electronic packages that are licensed for several
years at a time.  The journals are owned to a large extent by a
small number of firms that have continued to merge over the past
decade to create a highly concentrated industry.  Many scholarly
societies have sold their journals to these companies or have
entered into distribution agreements that keep prices high.  The
benefit of gaining access to rich collections across disciplines
with predictable annual increases that the bundled packages offer is
offset by the restriction on our ability to cancel even the least
used titles for any but a minimal net gain.  This means, in the
current environment, that a number of strategies for how we build
and manage our collections in the future will need to be considered.

Changes in the Scholarly Publishing Model
While we are currently forced to cut subscriptions, publishing is in
transition and we are optimistic about the future.  Many in the
academy, including here at UIC, are making efforts to change this
system and improve accessibility to up-to-date research created
around the globe.  Efforts, such as the CIC Author’s Addendum,
approved by the UIC Faculty Senate in 2006, provides authors with a
tool to retain rights to their work.  This addendum allows authors
to post their work on a publicly accessible website increasing
access to quality content on the web and helping to break the
monopoly control over articles that most publishers have had.

For reasons of both enhancing access and facilitating research, the
NIH’s Public Access Policy requires grant recipients to submit the
results of their research to the ever-growing PubMed Central (PMC)
repository within 12 months of publication.  The NIH policy is
driven by the belief that results from research funded by taxpayer
dollars should be available to the public and not only to those
institutions that can afford the high subscription costs.  More
importantly, the content in PMC can be computationally manipulated
to find potentially productive relationships that may lead more
quickly to new discoveries, a benefit not possible in the print
world or with the proprietary silos of electronic journals.
Legislation has been introduced in Congress to require similar
public access policies in all other federal agencies.

There are many other initiatives within both the publishing
community and universities to build infrastructure and find models
to sustain a more economically viable scholarly publishing system.
To see more about these and what UIC is doing, I invite you to start
at
http://library.uic.edu/home/services/publishing-and-scholarly-communication
Regarding our current situation, you will be hearing more soon
about how we will work collaboratively with faculty to manage
necessary collections reductions.

Sincerely,

Mary M. Case
University Librarian

The website IS the library

In many ways, the library website is a destination much as the library building is a destination. You go there purposefully to acquire information or communications that are wholly contained as part of the site itself. But library websites are also seen as gateways to other "places" such as subscription databases. Librarians need to shift their thinking about the website as a gateway to the library, and start thinking about the website as the library itself, the physical space being inseparable from the Web space. The website should be considered a destination in and of itself; an actual place in addition to and instead of a virtual place. I think that for libraries to remain a desirable destination in users' minds and not just an authentication gateway, they will need to pull subscription content out of the provider's Web environments and bring it into the library's Web environment. Additionally, libraries might try to have a much more responsive presence on the website, anticipating the questions and navigational choices our user might make. By making this shift in thinking, the physical place/space becomes just one of many resources and services available from the “place” of the library website.

This is a radical de-centering of what we understand as The Library. In this "destination paradigm" The Library, (and its electronic parallel the online library catalog,) is replaced by the website as the nexus of collections, services, expertise, communities and (lest we forget) buildings that have heretofore formed our concept of library. As the librarian at the reference desk is to the in-person user, so the library website is to the online user. The library website serves as librarian by proxy for users who never engage directly with a librarian as a result of their location or disposition.

Libraries need websites that respond to users as they navigate. We take pride in the availability and responsiveness of librarians and staff in our buildings. Why should the website be any different? Let us shift the website experience from a static one, in which the library serves as the login gateway to subscription resources, to an active experience in which the user has the convenience of a single search box for resources, or they can choose to immerse themselves a media-rich interactive user experience that allows for independent or guided learning.