The Distant Librarian

Gale's iPhone app - AccessMyLibrary

Got a chance to play with Gale's new iPhone app, which acts as a portal to its AccessMyLibrary service. AccessMyLibrary is a service that allows you to access your local public library's Gale databases w/o having to authenticate through the library.  So back to the iPhone app.  In a nutshell, it works well as far as it goes.  As pointed out by Dave in the comments of LiB's post on the app, it really is only a portal, in that it's easy and pleasant to find the products using the iPhone interface, but the databases themselves are not mobile-optimized, making for a less-than-ideal experience.  An excellent start though, and it'll probably stay on my phone.

QR codes in the library

Aaron at Walking Paper linked to this great short Prezi by Laurie Bridges on how using QR Codes in Libraries and Museums.

3 more mobile-friendly vendor sites

All three now on the M-Libraries wiki page, Resource Shelf points out that LexisNexis, EBSCOhost, and Summon are all sporting fancy new mobile-friendly interfaces.

SirsiDynix developing an iPhone app

This isn't brand new news, but I was reminded of it today.  SirsiDynix is holding a contest to name their new iPhone app (to be released sometime in 2010 - no other date given). From the contest page:

SirsiDynix is excited to announce an iPhone application that will be available in 2010. The app will give iPhone users information and catalog access to libraries using Symphony. We need your help deciding what to name it.
If we choose your entry, you will win an iPod Touch!
The SirsiDynix iPhone app will offer quick access to your library catalog with a simple discovery interface

• Users find your library through GPS or on a global map
• Patrons can search their library's catalog, place holds, and view a list of their own checked out items
• Libraries can configure the set of available physical library locations and the policies tied to those locations, the library URL, and an image for each library

Any library staff member is eligible to submit up to five possible names. Help us get the word out - send this page to coworkers and peers.

To enter, fill out the form below before November 25, 2009. The winner will be announced in December.

Internet Librarian days 2 and 3

Didn't take many notes on day three, so I'm combining two days in this post.  Even so, it shouldn't be as long as the day one post.  I took these notes for myself, not necessarily for the blog, so they're most definitely not session reports - hopefully some useful links to explore.

I started the day at the Summon-sponsored breakfast where we heard Peter Jacso speak mostly about how awful Google Scholar metadata is, and how whenever he points out a series of errors, Google immediately removes them from the database.  Some examples include a vast number of records with author:methods or author:password  He's just published an article under the title of "Google Scholar's Ghost Authors" in Library Journal.  Good speaker who reminded me very much of my late Grandpa Pival :-)

Day 2 Keynote was an interview OF Paul Holdengraber, who hosts / moderates / interviews people for the Live from NYPL program - I want to search for audio of these - they should be great. (update: This lecture series is available in audio and video with transcripts AND Conversation Portraits in iTunes)  Start at http://www.nypl.org/LIVE .  Paul feels very strongly that the library should surprise people, not necessarily deliver only what people expect.

First Session - Dreaming, Designing and using mobile platforms - mostly overview stuff in this double session - I left after the first half to go listen to the UMich session (below).  Tom Ipri's slides available at http://www.slideshare.net/Tombrarian/mobile-library-platforms. Also check http://lifeonterra.com/m and compare it to the traditional version at http://lifeonterra.com/.  This is a project of the University of Montana, introduced by Jason Clark. I think Jason mentioned this site makes use of something called meta viewport, which I want to further explore.

Toby Greenwalt mentioned using a combination of Yaz + Z39.50 + PHP = mobile catalogue?  He also talked about using Shoutbomb for SMS alerts.  Red Laser, costs $1.99 in the iPhone app store, but has an SDK so someone may be able to get it to scan our library barcodes...

Designing for content-rich websites - UMich Library
John Creech is the Website Content Manager, Ken Varnum is Web Systems Manager
Use the regular libguides XML data dump to search via Solr, to integrate search results with those from the rest of the Drupal site.
Similar to UT Mississauga, librarians are listed in the catalogue by subject headings (call number ranges) and if there's a high-enough number of matches the subject librarian will appear along with the search results.  In Drupal, taxonomies are assigned to librarians.

An excellent tip picked up from Ken Varnum, Hathi is pronounced "Hot-ty" (that's 98% correct, but a lot better than the way I had been pronouncing it!  :-)

Marshall Breeding on SEO, then Andrew White from SUNY Stony Brook  Scholarly Stats, a service which is supposed to help with COUNTER and SUSHI stats.

Check out Splunk.com - appears to be a real memory and processor hog, but could provide some interesting slice and dice on ezproxy stats.

Kara Reuter, Extreme Makeover - user-centered design of http://worthingtonlibraries.org - they borrowed heavily from the museum world using a "visit" link to contain information about hours, parking, info, etc.   Their navigation choices are Visit / Borrow / Research / Interact / Calendar / About

Char Booth suggests replicating the OCLC User Perception reports at the local level - the survey instruments should be available.  "The more you like libraries, the more likely you are to like library technology" NOT "younger people like library tech"  The report Char was speaking to is Informing Innovation: Tracking student interest in emerging library technologies at Ohio University (147-pg PDF).  Really interesting results, but Char pointed out several times that this is a case study, and that results could be pretty different at your library.

Keynote - Day 3 - Growing up and Grown-up Digital - Net-Gen Speaks
Stephen Abrahms and a panel of teens - see note above about "case study".  Really interesting to hear these three young adults talk about their use of technology and thoughts about libraries, but I wouldn't bet any money that this was a representative sample of America's youth.

Nicole Engard - Library Mashups
http://mashups.web2learning.net (homepage for her recent book, Library Mashups)
http://www.programmableweb.com -- tracks mashups and tools
Mashup Tools - Yahoo Pipes (http://pipes.yahoo.com) Jody Fagan wrote an article in Computers in Libraries (2007) that explained it very well for Nicole - also chapter 7 of Nicole's book
http://readingradar.com - NYT bestseller list and merges with data from Amazon.com
http://www.thisweknow.org - interesting local / govt info for locations in the US
Check out "machine tags" on the flickr API
http://mashups.plsinfo.craftyspace.com - Library Mashup Demo site
http://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/api - Open Library APIs
http://worldcat.org/devnet/wiki/SearchAPIDetails - WorldCat APIs

I could really use an entire session or workshop on Yahoo Pipes! - plenty of reading to do there.

And that's where my notes end.  Overall I really enjoyed the conference this year; especially nice to meet so many twitter friends in person :-)  Might be heading to CIL2010 next April - that'd be my first time there since 1994!

CFP: Handheld Librarian 2

Alliance Library System and LearningTimes Offer Handheld Librarian 2!

More people than 2000 people attended the first ever Handheld Librarian Conference in July 2009 which featured a wide array of collaboration, learning and networking activities focused on Mobile Library Services!  The Handheld Librarian 2 will continue the dialog with a 2-day online conference scheduled for February 17-18, 2010 and is now accepting registrations at http://www.handheldlibrarian.org. The program -- sponsored by Alliance Library System, and LearningTimes -- will include a series of  wonderful keynote and featured speakers collection of available resources, discussions boards, and access to the recording of all live events for one year after the conference.  More people than ever are using mobile devices for a wide variety of purposes including communication, internet access, text messaging, and entertainment. It is important that libraries provide mobile services as handheld use increases.

The conference will feature three exciting keynote talks:

• Joan K. Lippincott from the Coalition for Networked Information speaking about “Mobilizing Libraries for Today’s Students”
• Joe Murphy from Yale University speaking about “This is Now: The Mobile Library”
• Tom Peters of TAP Information Services, addressing “Morphing with Mobile”

Registration for the conference is $69 per individual or $119 for a group.  LIS students can register for $29.  LIS students need to contact Lori Bell, Alliance Library System, at lbell@alliancelibrarysystem.com for a coupon code to register for the $29.

“With the avalanche of new mobile devices and applications, the Handheld Librarian 2 online conference will be a golden opportunity for library land to cost effectively learn how to reach a whole new audience,” said Kitty
Pope, ALS Executive Director.

The Handheld Librarian II will also include the real-life experiences of libraries and information professionals. We are now soliciting presentation proposals highlighting current, evolving and future issues in mobile library services.  To submit a proposal for the conference, go to http://www.handheldlibrarian.org/call-for-proposals/.  Proposals are due November 15 and you will be notified by January 1, 2010 if your proposal has been accepted.

For more information on the conference, go to the conference site at http://www.handheldlibrarian.org.  If you have questions, please contact John Walber at LearningTimes at john@learningtimes.net or Lori Bell at
Alliance Library System at lbell@alliancelibrarysystem.com.

New entries to the M-Libraries page on the libsuccess wiki

Just added two new entries to the Publishers offering databases for mobile devices section on the M-Libraries page of the Libsuccess wiki.  I was surprised to learn that Questia still seems to be going strong after all these years.  And the American Institute of Physics has also released an iPhone app called iResearch, which "is an offline e-reader that enables users to save PDF files locally to their device and view them offline without a Wifi or cellular connection. Users navigate through the journals, the volumes and issues to select an article they wish to read."  The big problem with iResearch is that it checks only for an institutional IP address, which means you can't fully use it from off campus.  'Twould seem pretty easy for them to allow users to plug in a proxy server address to take care of this - we'll see what the next version brings.

Oh, and I also found this cute little Public Library finder app called Library, which you'd think would be relatively simple to find in iTunes but really really isn't!  All it does is pop open Google Maps to show you the closest public libraries to your current location - seems fairly complete in the two cities I've tried it in.  For finding stuff like this, I recommend AppMiner - it allows title and keyword searches, instead of just the default keyword search you seem to get in iTunes :-/

iPhone apps for textbooks and another library catalogue

Yesterday brought two interesting iPhone apps to my attention.  The first is iUSask, the University of Saskatchewan iPhone application, which includes a category for searching the OPAC.  This is touted as "the first iPhone application of its kind in Canada for University Students."  I played with is a bit yesterday and unfortunately wasn't very impressed.  The campus map was VERY slow to resize, and I couldn't tell if my iPhone had frozen, or if it was still just chugging away.  Of course it's the OPAC we really care about, and while it worked just fine, it was very difficult to read; small white text on a black background (unlike what's shown in the demo on the site).  Hopefully this is just a starting point for them.

The second is CourseSmart, an application for reading textbooks on the iPhone/iPod Touch.  Here's some background on the provenance of the product: CourseSmart takes on Kindle, puts textbooks on iPhone. I signed up for a student account and looked around a bit.  You'll have the choice to buy an Online Version OR a Downloadable Version; I believe you must choose the Online Version in order to be able to access the content from the iPhone application.  They do offer a pop-up explaining most of the differences between the two options.

Interesting model in that you don't get to own the textbook; they all have a subscription model for either a 180 day subscription (most common) or a 360 day subscription.  There are a few sample textbooks available when you download the app, and I don't think I like them.  On the one hand, it's nice to be able to see the same pages you'd see in the print version, with sidebars and images and such, but on the other hand, there's so little real estate on the screen these extras make the text much harder to read.  Another minor problem is that you can't purchase textbooks from the app; you have to do that from the website.  Pretty minor as students would likely buy a few at the beginning of the year and be done with that, but still.

They've covered themselves in their TOS with what I'm dubbing "The Kindle clause":

From time to time CourseSmart may move, delete or update material on the CourseSmart Site and you agree to periodically check that your links and any Licensed Material are current and promptly remove or update any link that is broken or incorrect or any Licensed Material that has been deleted or is out of date. CourseSmart reserves the right in its sole discretion to revoke these licenses at any time for any reason, and if you are so notified, you agree to immediately remove all links to the CourseSmart Site and all Licensed Material from the Instructor Website. You agree not to not use or display the links or the Licensed Material with any other material that could be viewed as disparaging the CourseSmart eTextbook or its author or publisher or otherwise casting the CourseSmart eTextbook or its author or publisher in a negative light.

So a couple of starts, with room for improvement.  Speaking of which, I'm now off to revisit SafariBooksOnline to see if there's been any improvement there from the library POV.

ALA Conference 2009: Ubiquity of Mobiles Greatly To Affect Libraries

Library Journal reports, "Libraries had better prepare for an explosion in the capacity of mobile devices as well as the transformative increase in user capacity and expectations. This was the message conveyed by a panel yesterday at the American Library Association's (ALA) Annual Conference on Libraries and Mobile Devices: Public Policy Considerations."

Many libraries are lending Kindles

While we wait to see if BYU will reinstate their Kindle lending program, take a look at the list of libraries that are still lending them put together by iReaderreview.  I's not just a list; there's a fair bit of supporting content in the post.

Kindle, Libraries

BYU suspends Kindle program over legal concerns

Sometimes it's a problem pushing the envelope - seems that the BYU Library initiative to use Kindles instead of getting books via ILL has been suspended after "some buzz on library-related blogs for breaking ground in the uncertain area of lending books on the Kindle." 

"We are playing it safe," Layton said. "Two people here said we have verbal permission. But if we don't have it in writing, that's a different thing. We don't want to do anything that Amazon doesn't completely agree with."

Everyone in the comments seems to be in favour of the initiative.  Hope this forces Amazon to acquiesce!

Handheld Librarian Online

From the conference website:

More people than ever are using mobile devices for a wide variety of purposes including communication, internet access, text messaging, and entertainment. It is important that libraries provide services on these devices as use increases.

The first ever Handheld Librarian Online on July 30, 2009 is the place to learn about these and other topics related to using wireless and hand held devices in your library.  The program, sponsored by Alliance Library System, LearningTimes and Infoquest, will include a variety of ways to collaborate, network and learn from a great group of experts in the field.  In addition to live interactive webcasts, we will have a collection of available resources, discussions boards, and access to the recording  of all live events for one year after the conference.

Registration is $49 USD for an individual or $89 USD for two or more people logged in from 1 computer.

Brigham Young Library Tests Kindle as ILL Alternative

Gerrit van Dyk, Document Delivery Services Manager at Brigham Young University, blogs about their new initiative to loan Kindles to faculty members instead of trying to obtain new material via ILL.  You can also read a brief article about this at Library Journal.

Kindle, ILL, BYU

Simon & Schuster to Sell Digital Books on Scribd.com

I looked at Scribd.com when it first came out and dismissed it as lawyer-bait because it appeared to be so easy to upload pirated content.  Just did some searches and found lots of links to questionable content, but after clicking through, every one had been removed, so apparently they're doing a good job policing that.  Such a good job, in fact, that the New York Times is reporting that Simon & Schuster have just signed a deal to sell digital books on the site.  "Scribd, a start-up based in San Francisco, also says it is working on a reading application for the iPhone, which should be ready in a few weeks."

Do you love books or do you love reading?

Ann Kirschner has a thought-provoking piece in the Chronicle describing how she read a 1,000 page novel across four different formats; paperback, audiobook, iPhone and Kindle.  You might be surprised at what she decided was the best format, at least for her.  As an aside, I'm now reading my fourth book in the Stanza iPhone application. I love the fact that it's always with me, and I can change the font and lighting depending on my situation.