Superpatron

MLibrary 2.0: The Future is Now / Peter Morville, Jessamyn West, Kristin Antelman

The U of Michigan Libraries are doing a series of Library 2.0 events this summer - I gate-crashed today's event just long enough to talk to a few friends and grab a bagel, and I think that some of the talks will be online in one form or another.

MLibrary 2.0: The Future is Now

The Kickoff Session will provide an overview of the major trends and issues that are emerging and shaping today and tomorrow library services and resources. Peter Morville will talk about ambient findability the way today's users find the information they need and how libraries can better enable their users to interact with their resources. Jessamyn West will share examples about how libraries are adopting and incorporating 2.0 trends them into their services. Kristin Antelman will lead us through an investigation about how libraries are adapting their OPACS to facilitate user interaction. This session serves as the kickoff for the MLibrary 2.0 activities throughout the summer.

Thanks to Patricia Anderson for giving me the heads up, and I'll be doing my bit for libraries worldwide this evening by feeding macaroni and cheese to Jessamyn.

(will be updated later with links)

Technorati Tags: library, michigan, umich, annarbor, superpatron

Ann Arbor District Library adds patron tagging, rating of items

If you wondered why John was so quiet for so long, he's been coding. From the AADL announcement:

Second, you will notice that the catalog screen has changed a little. We have added the ability to rate and review items. Other members of our community can then comment on those reviews, fostering discussion on the material in our collection.

In addition, users may tag catalog items with keywords. This lets users organize items while also providing a mechanism for others to discover new and exciting material.

You must be a registered web-site user in order to write reviews and tag items, though you do not need to be a card-holder. Registered users have also been given tools to manage their reviews, comments, and tags under the "My Account" section of the website.

We hope you enjoy these new features. We are pleased to offer them and anticipate that they will enhance your online library experience.

Excellent! Note that you don't have to be an AADL card-holder to use this service; you can be a registered user from anywhere in the world.

This looks just splendid - note already the midwifery collection.

Technorati Tags: aadl, folksonomy, library, superpatron, tags

National Library Agenda Summit 2006 on wordie, delicious, superpatron blog

I'm keeping a wordie list for the National Library Agenda Summit which I should be packing for now. I seeded it with language from the agenda.

Looking forward to seeing Jenny Levine and meeting Leslie Burger there. I'll do my best to keep good notes. The tag for the conference is nla2006 (that's delicious). I won't have a camera with me.

Library Lookup for MeLCaT - Michigan interlibrary loan network

MeLCat is the Michigan statewide library interlibrary loan network. From the ASDAL newsletter

At the very first MeLCat user's meeting there was a comparison made between the costs of traditional inter-library loan and this new delivery system. Traditional ILL costs between $17 and $30 dollars per item, with deliver time of up to two weeks; while MeLCat costs are between $1 to $5 dollars per item, with delivery times of one to three days. Pretty fantastic!

Indeed, with borrowing rights now at research and public libraries across the state, there's hardly ever a book I might want to look at that isn't somewhere a few days away. The trick then is finding it before you give up on your search, and for that I turned to Jon Udell's Library Lookup project. A few tweaks to my older Ann Arbor District Library lookup script created a new MeLCaT Amazon Linky (Greasemonkey needed) which embeds search results in your Amazon pages.

Thanks to superpatron Jon Udell for the original insight that led to this, and to Pittsburgh area blogger "Inner Bitch" who was the proximate cause for me revisiting this in her "Taking a can opener to Amazon" post.

The next natural step is to revisit the Google Books library lookup script I did for Google and Ann Arbor and mash that around again so it hits the whole state - I hope to have that ready in time for when Google's Ben Bunnell visits the Ann Arbor District Library on November 30 2006 (see upcoming.org for details).

UPDATE: Google Books MeLCaT library lookup just updated.

Technorati Tags: amazon, google, judell, librarylookup

Personas of online library users

Michael Stephens writes about Internet Librarian 2006 and a talk by Stephen Abram:

Another engaging moment came during Stephen Abram's talk on the Personas project from SirsiDynix (where he has the coolest title ever: VP of Innovation). By analyzing data and building "characters" based on typical library users, we can better plan our services and programs. "Discovery Dan, Haley High School, Mommy Marcie, Rick Researcher, Senior Sally, and Tasha Learner" are all personas that probably find their way into your buildings. Are we meeting their needs? I appreciate this most of all because it goes way beyond the "We had 1000 people pass through the door" statistics to give us qualitative "stories" of our users: the busy mom, the browsing-the-shelves explorer, and many others.

I had the good fortune to see and to share a podium with Michael and Stephen at the MCLS Technology Leadership Institute (Rochester, NY). I've been working on some personas of my own to support some site design, and ran across these good resources to help you think of your own:

Setting the Stage for Building Usable Information Sites - 2003 Information Today article by Alison Head.
Perfecting Your Personas - 2001 Cooper Interaction Design newsletter article by Kim Goodwin.

The Persona Lifecycle - 2006 book by John Pruitt and Tamara Adlin

2003 ACM article Personas: Practice and Theory (PDF) by John Pruitt and Jonathan Grudin (Microsoft Research)

Georgia Pines open source library catalog is live

See http://pines.lib.ga.us/ for a tour.

This from the Georgia Public Library Service pages:

A program of the Georgia Public Library Service, Georgia Library PINES is the public library automation and lending network for 252 libraries in 123 counties. PINES creates a statewide "borderless library" that provides equal access to information for all Georgians. Georgians with a PINES library card have access to materials beyond what is available on their local shelves and enjoy the benefits of a shared collection of 7.7 million books, tapes, CDs and videos that can be delivered to their home library free of charge.

If you are a resident of Georgia, you are eligible to receive a free PINES library card. Visit one of the 252 PINES participating public libraries for additional information.

The Open ILS blog is here. The entry for September 7, 2006:

The past 5 days have been super-busy, as anyone who has migrated ILS’s knows. Bottom line: we made it. PINES is running on Evergreen. We really appreciate all of the well-wishes and support we received during this stressful time.

We’re planning on writing up a full post-mortem on the migration and go-live as soon as things slow down around here.

From the Evergreen FAQ:

8. What core technologies are you utilizing?

* Database: Postgresql
* Logic/glue languages: C++ and Perl
* Webserver: Apache, mod_perl
* Server operating system: Linux
* Server hardware: x86-64
* Messaging core: Jabber
* Client side software: XUL

Thanks to Kevin Yezbick for the heads up, and sending me a note about it even though he figured that I would know about it already, which I didn't.

Technorati Tags: georgia, pines, ils, opac