Superpatron

Our New Library: Ann Arbor District Library millage campaign to build a new downtown building

The Ann Arbor District Library has a measure on the November 2012 ballot to vote in a millage to build a new downtown library building. I think it would be a great project and I'm wholeheartedly supporting it.

The main pro-library campaign site is OurNewLibrary.com which lays out the costs of the new structure ($65 million to be paid for over 30 years) and the cost to the taxpayer (0.56 mills).

One of the big issues with the current library is just how underequipped it is to host functions and events. I squeezed Library Camp into the building in 2006, and it was a stretch even to get 40 or so people into the usable parts of the building for small group meetings. Downtown meeting space is scarce already - see the Arborwiki "Places to have a meeting" page to see just how hard it is to find a spot to gather a group together in a public space.

Library architecture has changed a lot since the 1950s, when the first part of the downtown AADL building was built. There have been two additions to the original building since then, but nothing to replace the aging mechanical systems. 

Look for more here as the vote date gets closer. The campaign has yard signs -- people can email ournewlibrary@gmail.com to request one.

 UPDATED with yard sign information and a graphic from the yard sign art.

Telescopes: Ann Arbor District Library's newest circulating item

The latest item to circulate at the Ann Arbor District Library is telescopes.

AADL, in partnership with the University Lowbrow Astronomers, is pleased to provide a circulating telescope collection! The Orion Starblast 4.5" Astro Reflector Telescope is the perfect family-friendly scope for entry-level and intermediate astronomy enthusiasts. You can check out telescopes from (and return them to) any branch location. The telescopes circulate for two weeks, with an option for renewal if there are no outstanding requests. Check the AADL catalog for availability.

At the moment, there are "no copies available and 130 requests on 7 copies" - if the library is true to form, that means they will be getting a few more to circulate. The catalog record includes a quick start comic  with instructions, from Anne and Jerzy Drozd.

Ann Arbor District Library summer reading game for 2011

The Ann Arbor District Library has launched a summer reading game for 2011. It's brilliant.

Once you have signed up, you can get points for doing a whole set of library-related activities. Checking out books, reading them, reviewing or rating them, and adding them to published lists all give you credit. There's also points to be scored for visiting library branches, attending events, and reading and commenting on the web site.

Essentially, almost any measure that the library might be able to count and use in national surveys of library use - here's a sample set of survey data from IMLS - have some game-related scoring attached. As points accumulate, they can be traded in for gifts that are funded by the friends group. Nothing is worth very much, so the competitive aspect stays in the realm of gameplay and doesn't go off into Bitcoin-style real money that would prompt you to set up a bot army to review books for you.

I can imagine any organization that's measured by external metrics using an internal gaming system to trigger behavior that shows up when overall counts are done at the end of some accounting period. AADL had to cope with some of the point structures being not quite correct - for instance, the number of points you got for making reviews was reduced ("nerfed") because the incentive was too good.

Libraries make excellent systems to add this to because in a typical system there's so much unexplored inventory of books that there would be no worry about too many reviews. I recall a similar gameplay within Epinions more than a decade ago that somehow prompted me to write 46 reviews, including this 1999 review of their incentive system - which was a moderately lucrative game in dot-com era dollars.

My new library!

We're working out details, but I should have a new library card for a new private library at the Workantile Exchange before too long. We have an ALA accredited library scientist as manager, so we should be cool with getting catalog records that pass all appropriate validaton checks.

For my part, I bequeathed a 4 volume set of DDC 20 to the reference collection. The volumes are ex lib. Ann Arbor Public Library, and were published in 1989 with the publisher's foreword explaining that the magnetic tapes cut in 1988. Further reading about this controversial series: Berman 1989.

Edward Vielmetti writes the Superpatron weblog.

June is crazy at the Ann Arbor District Library

Eli narrates the June events calendar at the AADL - quite a collection, including nerdcore superhero MC Frontalot playing Top Of The Park for Video Game Night.

Ann Arbor District Library patron dev projects, ahoy

It looks like there's nearly a critical mass of people and projects to resume development on patron-initiated projects for the Ann Arbor District Library.  Here's a short run down of what's going on right now, who seems to be working on what, and where there's the next set of timelines and opportunities to work together.

• The "linky" script, originally derived from work from Jon Udell, is working again thanks to the work of Wayne Eaker.  I've put it into github and you can grab it from the aadl-amazon-linky repo there or fork your own and work on it.
• Trek Glowacki put together a patrest_ruby gem for a clean interface to the PATREST API which is also on github.  There's at least one fork of that running per Winston Tsang's email of earlier in the day.  (The nice thing about git is that it's friendly to parallel development.)
• There's a Tech UnCamp in Lansing, MI on May 15 (link to Facebook page) which could be a rendezvous point for work.

Some time this summer I understand that the AADL is going to do a new software release, but I'm not on the release team and not on the tech advisory board (it was disbanded) so I know as much as has been publicly released.  Anyone doing work should be aware of that and make sure their code is in some kind of revision control system so that it can be, well, revised if it needs to be.

Working at the library

I have a new favorite workstation at the Ann Arbor District Library downtown.  It's one of the public terminals in the very front which has had its public catalog removed, and I have my laptop plugged into the ethernet and powered up.  It's a standing workstation, and it's enough in the flow of traffic into the building that a few people have stopped by to talk in an hour being here.

The station is intended for the bracket mounting of a screen or iMac; the label on the mounting bracket says " Peerless Industries Inc" in Melrose Park, IL, mfg 2005, Model ST635-S.  The shelf that holds the laptop is about at waist height.

I could work all day here, periodically unplugging and replugging to different stacks as I needed to be near different shelves of books or differently near public or private space.  All it needs is a little treadmill and I'm set for exercise too.  The only thing that could make it better would be a way to put a book for reading at eye level - the computer mounting bracket is just a little too low.

Ann Arbor District Library downtown building project suspended

via Jim Rees via the Ann Arbor Chronicle:

By Jim Rees

November 24, 2008

I’m at the meeting now. The Library’s lawyer told the board in session that the bond market is not conducive to the needs of the new building project. The board just voted unanimously to suspend all work on the project.

Editor’s note: Jim Rees left the above text in a comment on the preview article, and we’ve elevated it to be a bit more prominent.  We have a reporter at the meeting this morning as well and will follow up with more details.

I'll be watching the Chronicle for more detail.

AADL planning SOPAC 2 release in early 2009

One reason that you should send in comments through the library comment form: you get heads up on new development.  From Eli Neiburger in mail:

Hey, Ed, thanks for passing this along. The III catalog does not handle unicode very well as you can see; this should be resolved with SOPAC 2 which we plan to roll out in early 2009. We won't be using III's catalog results anymore; results will come from a Sphinx search of harvested bib records. Stay tuned!

Eli notes that there is a working version of the new catalog (very rough) available for preview, but the way the network address for it is routed it's only available in the building.  That is an effective way to show what's going on - and I'll post again next week on Tuesday to show what I've found out since then.  Some background reading for you and for me until then:

John Blyberg, SOPAC 2.0: What to Expect, August 2008.

On September 1st, Darien Library will go live with a new web site. We will also be going live with SOPAC version 2.0. In case you’ve been wondering why I don’t blog anymore, it’s because of 2.0. It’s been a massive project.

John Blyberg, SOPAC 2 Released, September 2008

So, I may have been a little ambitious when I thought I could get SOPAC2, Locum, and Insurge released within a week of launching the new darienlibrary.org.  But I can now finally say that SOPAC2 is officially released and a new project website launched.

You can visit the new site and download the software at TheSocialOPAC.net.

The Social OPAC

Thesocialopac.net is the official website of the Social OPAC application suite--an open source social discovery platform for bibliographic data. The purpose of this site is to build a cohesive community of users and developers around the SOPAC project suite.

YourLibrarySite to Offer SOPAC Integration

Some very good news from Eugene, Oregon! Drupal web design firm Craftyspace is going to integrate SOPAC into their YourLibrarySite product suite. This means that they will be offering their expertise to implement and support SOPAC in your organization.

I'm sure there's more; look for another post next week (starting to write it now...)

November 9, 2008: Huge idle equipment and furniture sale, Ann Arbor District Library

from their web site:

Come to the Downtown Library on Sunday, November 9, 2008, from noon - 6 p.m. for this huge sale. We've got tons (literally) of idle equipment and furniture we'd like to move from our basement to yours. Some of it is obsolete, some is surplus, and some has been salvaged from various library projects. Among the items for sale are chairs, tables, lots of steel bookshelves, computers, networking equipment, cubicle and office system walls and desks and much more. Everything is cash and carry and sold as-is at very low prices.

the long list includes

* File Cabinets
* Chairs
* Tables
* Cubicle & Office System Walls & Desks
* Overcounter cabinets
* LOTS OF STEEL BOOKSHELVES
* CRT & LCD monitors
* mice, keyboards, cables
* printers
* Personal Computers
* Network Appliances (wyse, netier, and neoware thin clients)
* Networking equipment
* Equipment Mounting Brackets

for your home library needs?