Superpatron

IDEA 2006 presentation online

I spoke at IDEA 2006 in Seattle on October 24. There's audio from the talk, as well as a lot more from the event, up on their pages.

(Do I really sound like that?)

UPDATE: I do sound like that.

David Sturtz created an XML file so that the audio can be accessed as a podcast. Peter Merholz uploaded it to iTunes and Odeo so you can manage it as you choose. http://www.ideaconference.org/blog/?p=49

What have you ORANGE lately?

orange display
Originally uploaded by rambleonsylvie.

Books by color, orange edition. Library in Florida inspired by library in Illinois.

What have you RED lately?

What have you RED lately?
Originally uploaded by lansinglibrary.

Books by color, red edition, Lansing IL library. (As seen on Jenny Levine's The Shifted Librarian).

Saline (MI) Friends booksale

From Mark Smith comes this alternative Ann Arbor area book sale:

Another alternative for those who don't mind a short drive is the Friends of the Saline District Library book sale (scheduled for October 28th this month). Warning: in the morning, the book sale area is usually very crowded with many people bumping into each other.

Their web site says:

The Book Sales are held on the last Saturday of every month from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. The Book Sales benefit the community by enabling the public to buy a wide variety of books at very low prices, recycling donated items through the community, and providing a steady income used to enhance the library’s services and materials. Hardcover books cost $1, trade paperbacks are 75 cents, and mass market paperbacks are 50 cents. Other items are also reasonably priced. A $5 bag sale is held from 1:30 to 3:00 p.m.

Friends of the Ann Arbor District Library web site

The web site for the Friends of the Ann Arbor District Library has moved from the library's site to its own site.  Please make a note of it.  It still reports that the Friends book sale is postponed.

The Friends book sale was a source of $0.25 childrens paperbacks for Halloween; if you need those in Ann Arbor, your best bet is the ReUse Center.

Letter to the editor re Library Lot building proposal

To the editor of the Ann Arbor News:

The city of Ann Arbor is considering building a new police station on the Library Lot site downtown. That particular parking lot is prime real estate, and it would be an ideal place for a brand new downtown library building, with a new design that reflects the importance of the AADL in this city's civic life. That would leave the site of the old building as a fine spot for a new police station.

Edward M. Vielmetti
Ann Arbor, MI

This letter is intended for publication.

cc: Margie Teall, City Council member
cc: Ron Suarez, City Council candidate
cc: Barbara Murphy, Ann Arbor District Library
cc: Josie Parker, Ann Arbor District Library

Political displays in library front hall entrance (Sun Prairie, WI)

From the Wisconsin State Journal, Madison WI:

Library welcomes controversy
GENA KITTNER
608-252-6139
[email protected]

SUN PRAIRIE - Front and center as patrons enter the city's library are pictures of happy couples and families along with a sign urging voters to support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages and civil unions.

The political message by Vote Yes for Marriage at the Sun Prairie Public Library is in response to a September display advocating against the ban by Fair Wisconsin, which held a similar space in the library's entrance.

While the library offers the space as a public forum and has posted displays on controversial issues such as school referendums, these most recent messages have been the most political the library has displayed.

"(The displays have) been a very popular way for the community to share all kinds of information about itself," said Sharon Zindars, the library's director. "This is the first time we've had such a political message in our (display) case. It could turn out that's all the case becomes."

Their "displays and exhibits" policy (pdf) is interesting - essentially anything non-commercial and "of interest and enlightenment to the community" is OK:

IV. Guidelines for Display and Exhibits

(A) Any material of general cultural and educational interest to the community may be exhibited. No
items or services for sale may be exhibited or displayed

(B) The library staff will not be responsible for setting up or taking down exhibits. Display cases will
be locked and remain locked until the time the exhibitor removes the contents.

(C) Library staff will, however, provide assistance with signage, moving glass shelving and display
techniques.

(D) Items may not be taped, stapled, glued or in any other way fastened that would damage display
cases or display areas.

I'll wonder out loud what kind of restrictions other libraries would have to what kinds of things they can or should display. Bulletin boards and display cases are very typical community building tools.

Technorati Tags: politics, wisconsin, badgers, badgerbadgerbadger, marriage, library

Library catalogs have represented stagnant technology for close to twenty years

David Bigwood's Catalogablog has this lovely citation:

Toward a 21st Century Library Catalog by Kristin Antelman, Emily Lynema, and Andrew K. Pace (2006) appears in Information Technology and Libraries 25(3):pp. 128-139.

Library catalogs have represented stagnant technology for close to twenty years. Moving toward a next-generation catalog, North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries purchased Endeca's Information Access Platform to give its users relevance-ranked keyword search results and to leverage the rich metadata trapped in the MARC record to enhance collection browsing. This paper discusses the new functionality that has been enabled, the implementation process and system architecture, assessment of the new catalog's performance, and future directions.

The article neatly skewers most 1980s-vintage catalog technology, noting that all major vendors are shipping systems that are virtually unchanged in their basic search structures from the systems that were in place 20 years ago. They then go on to talk about their new Endeca system in detail, with some use cases like these recommender systems:

Two features in Endeca that have seen a surprising amount of use are the “most popular” sort option and the “more titles like this” feature available on the detailed-record page for a specific title. Both relate broadly to the area of recommending related materials to patrons.

The “most popular” sort option is currently powered by aggregated circulation data for all items associated
with a title. While this technique is ineffective for serials, reference materials, and other noncirculating items, it provides users a previously unavailable opportunity to define relevance. To date, the “most popular” sort is the second most frequently selected sort option (after publication date, at 41 percent), garnering 19 percent of all sorting activity. Most-popular sorting was trailed by title, author,
and call-number sorting.

UPDATE: TrotskyProletariatLibrary is fired up or frustrated about the problem of hard to use online catalogs.

Vertical file travel collection at Sterling Municipal (Baytown, TX)

From David Bigwood's comments on Ryan Eby's blog:

For several years I worked nights at a local public library, Sterling Municipal. They had an extensive vertical file collection part of which was travel brochures and maps of many locations. They received the material by being on mailing lists of chambers and travel and visitor organizations. When the staff went somewhere and picked up that kind of material they would bring it back and dontate it to the collections. Even some patrons would bring in material. Some local travel agencies would pass on maps and flyers. The collection was very well used. Folks would stop by before a trip and pick up the brochures and flyers to decide where to stay and what to see. They could get the addreesses for the Web sites of the items, for another look. They they would check out the maps for the trip itself. Works well.

As an aside, Sterling Municipal is announcing availability of a patron reading history so that patrons can see what books they've checked out (opt in, of course). I recall being sternly lectured by a senior librarian at a library conference that that was a dangerous thing to do, even if it's what people wanted.

Book Burro wins 2d prize in OCLC mashup contest

Book Burro is a Firefox plugin that gives you a heads up when you are looking at a bookstore web site that the book you are looking at might be available cheaper at some other bookstore or for free at a local library. Recently Jesse added integration with OCLC's Open Worldcat so that you can an immediate heads-up as to availability.

Some reviews -
- Lorcan Dempsey - "it is indeed very nice"

- Liz Lawley - "I've already installed and fallen in love with"

OCLC had a contest for best Worldcat mashup; Book Burro won second place, behind Ross Singer's Umlaut OpenURL resolver.

Technorati Tags: oclc, bookburro, libraries, amazon, library