Library 2.0

Many of our readings and part of our discussion last class (1/24/08) was centered around the idea of Library 2.0 and the OPAC. The question was raised whether it is a good idea or not to let patrons participate in the OPAC. I would have to say: a little. Many of our readings take an extreme view of keep up the status quo or turn over everything to the people. I really doubt many feel this way, but you often have to make an outrageous argument to get published. Moderate stances are not exciting enough to sell journals or get blogs read, but I digress.

The main argument made for scraping the current system of librarian based tagging is the popularity of Amazon.com and other sites like Flickr and Library Thing. Those sites work great with user tags, reviews, and recommendations, so the idea is why not bring that to the OPAC? I have a concern that I have never seen addressed. How do we adapt a system used by Amazon.com with its millions of users to one for a single library that has significantly fewer? Think about it. How many times have you looked up a book and found no reviews or just a few? It happens to me all the time. Now there are books that have hundreds of customer reviews, but statistically 400 reviews: 4 millions copies purchased is not a high ratio. I still think patron reviews would be a cool thing to add to the OPAC, but I do not believe it would work as well as it does for Amazon.com. I wonder if patron reviews could even be used by censors to discourage others from reading materials they find objectionable? Would staff time be used to read every review posted? Would any reviews be deleted? What criteria would be used? It could be quite the can of worms.

Tagging works on the web because of the large volume of people doing it. Statistically, someone else has to tag the same way you do. Weren't standard subject heading invented in libraries to provide consistency because when everyone was left to their own devices it was chaos? A tag cloud looks cool, but really how useful is it? I think the real thing needed here is a program that can be downloaded onto any OPAC that will update some of LC's outdated terminology on every bibliographic record. For example, install the program and every subject heading that says "Cookery" would be changed to "Cooking." That would be progress.

The whole if you liked "Book A, why not read Book B" aspect of Amazon.com is also very helpful, but it has to be modified for OPAC's. There would need to be a way to ensure it only recommends books the library has. Amazon.com sells all those, that is why they can make so many recommendations. Patrons at a library will not find it helpful to be given five book recommendations just to be told five times the library does not own any of them. This would need to be a service offered by large library systems or consortia, if patrons are patient enough to wait on ILL.

My basic argument has centered around the disparity in the customer volume that a library would serve and Amazon.com serves. Many of the authors harangued OPAC's for not offering many things that Amazon.com does. I disagree. I have seen several public library OPAC's that feature cover art, reviews (from professional review sources,) and even relevancy ratings. Usually if I am having an difficult time finding the book I want, it is because the library does not own it. Amazon.com will find it because they sell everything. In the quest to sound more "cutting edge" when it comes to technology, many total Library 2.0 advocates ignore that often is more a matter of lack books to choose from then difficulty of navigation for OPAC systems or users. The OPAC's I have trouble navigating are the ones that have bibliographic records created by untrained personnel that were hired to replace expensive librarians. These are the OPAC's full of records with no subject headings, no book summaries, and the information that is there is entered incorrectly; but that is a whole other can of worms.

Multi-tasking Among the Immigrants

I am not going to reveal my age, but I am old enough to be considered an digital immigrant. I am proud to say that I seem to be doing a better job of assimilating into the digital native culture. My roommate is a doctoral student and we find ourselves on a Sunday night watching football while we each are on our wireless laptops. I am blogging while he looks up videos on YouTube. He is also on his Blackberry making jokes about blogging. (Due to the public nature of this forum, I will not go into detail about that.) However the non-native in me cannot help feel like my attention span is being compromised. Am I getting more done because I am doing more at once or am I just doing sub-par work on several things at once? It is hard to tell sometimes. Another sign that I am not completely part of this new culture is my dismay at a series of commercials. These commercials are aimed at encouraging kids to go out and play. I am all for encouraging kids to go out, the part that makes me cring everytime is at that end of the commercial they encourage kids to go online for ideas for what to play. Looking at what they can create with technology, surely kids today have enough imagination to play without consulting a website. I am not sure my attention span is up to doing all these things at once as the natives seem to do with ease. Are the digital natives really able to do several things at once with no adverse effects? Are their brains wired differently because they have grown up with all this technology? Surely there is a study out there. I will have to Google that...

The "skimming" trap

I am guilty of an offense that I get on my students about: skimming. Yes, it's true. While I was reading the syllabus online, I did not see where it told us what we were supposed to be blogging about. I decided that the first must be your standard introduction and the topics for the rest would be discussed in class or posted in "Resources" in OnCourse, so imagine my surprise when in class I discovered that my second blog was due a few hours earlier. "But I couldn't find what we are supposed to write about!" I lamented to my classmates. Rusty pointed out to me exactly where it was in the syllabus. A document that I would have sworn I had read more than once. I then realized that I had fallen into the trap of online reading: skimming. I see a lot of people who have become so accustomed to the quick answer that we do not read "deeply," especially when the text appears on a computer screen. If the answer to our question is not in the first couple of paragraphs, we just zone out for the rest of our reading. This illustrates why even though it is old-fashioned I will often give short research assignments where students are not allowed to use the printer or cut and paste. They must (gasp!) take notes by hand. It is one way I try to get them in the habit of actually reading what they are reading. Plus, I want to break them of the habit of printing sixty page articles when they only need something in the first page. Any other suggestions to break the skimming habit?

Welcome to my blog

This blog is to supplement the project we will be working on with an area public library. My background is in education. I am a high school media specialist. I have also worked at the elementary and middle school levels. Technology is obviously an important issue in education and librarianship, which is why I am taking this class.

Since my school system uses paraprofessionals at the elementary level, I am working on a wiki to help them with lessons and to keep them involved. You can visit it at lhsmc.wikispaces.com/