The Distant Librarian

Thoughts on privacy and libraries and social networks

OK, actually I'm mostly curious about your thoughts, 'cause I haven't sorted mine out yet. 

This post is a result of the social network stuff Brian Mathews has been working on (honest, this will be the last time I mention him today, unless he does something else interesting ;-).  When I first saw Brian's post about lurking and participating as a librarian in places where students hang out online (MySpace, Live Journal, Facebook, where ever), my gut reaction was that it was somehow an invasion of privacy, and from a couple of the comments Brian got on his orignal post I'm not the only one.  But before posting my summary I emailed Brian and his response made sense to me; that the students he'd contacted actually seemed to appreciate the contact, and that these were completely open and accessible sites. 

Add to that the quotes I grabbed from Marshall Keys' keynote that "Young folks today (13 - 25?) have no expectation of privacy because they do not believe that it exists in an electronic environment.  "If I view it or send it, they will see it, and I don’t care." and perhaps more telling, the note I paraphrased that "Privacy is unimportant - community is important.  This was a strong theme of his keynote, and later he pointed out that libraries seem to care more about our patrons privacy than our patrons do, and this may actually hinder our ability to deliver some of the services our patrons would like to see!"  (I've just emailed Marshall to see if I can track down the sources on those ideas). 

When Marshall said that I remembered thinking how much I agreed that even if we wanted to, there's no way our OPAC would allow us to provide some Amazon-like interesting information (recommendations based on previous circulation, for instance) to our patrons, and the PATRIOT Act is a whole 'nother issue altogether (one that even has a major impact on us up here in Canada - think of where we buy our systems from!).

But what if it's true that our patrons don't care at all about their privacy as long as they get cool and useful services?  Is the fact that the institution (PL or University) is legally bound by privacy legislation going to forever hinder our ability to compete with the social networks?  Does that mean librarians are forced to resort to the guerrilla warfare that Brian suggests if we want to participate even in the smallest of ways?  Do our students even want us there?

Maybe it's all true - maybe offering IM and SMS reference service is the first baby step to understanding how important it is to meet the students on their turf.  I haven't payed any attention at all to the gaming in libraries posts, but that would be part of it too.  The idea of sticking our content in to their course shells is also a continuation of this idea.

I think I'm coming around to the conclusion that if that's where the students are, and if we want to provide them with the best service, we should be there too.  At least until the students tell us to leave them alone, and I haven't heard of that happening yet.  Have you?  What are your thoughts on this, please?


Technorati Tags: privacy, libraries, social_networks, students, turf

Technorati Tags for OffCamp Conference

I know there will be at least a few other bloggers at OffCamp in Savannah next week - anybody up for settling on a common Technorati tag?  I propose OCLSC06.


Technorati Tags: OCLSC06

Another RSS to E-mail service

Amit blogs that there's a new kid on the block when it comes to RSS to Email services, and it's likely to prove to be a big kid 'cause it's a service from Feedburner!  I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but I guess you can add it to the rest of the list of similar services.



Technorati Tags: RSS, email

Intuitive Revelations: The Ubiquitous Reference Model

How's that for an ear-catching title? Brian Mathews at Georgia Tech is working on a really interesting project.  OK, so we know some libraries have created pages in places where patrons hang out, like MySpace.  I use a Pubsub feed to look for anyone who's blogged about the University of Calgary, and on rare occasions have been able to leave a library-related comment.  Well Brian's mashed those ideas up.  Check out his post on alt ref for the details, including a screencast, but here it is in a nutshell. 

He created an account at Xanga and LiveJournal - first as a library, but later as his human incarnation.  For the purposes of his study he subscribed to the RSS feeds of 20 GT student blogs at those sites (explained in the paper).  But what he's done that seems really innovative to me is that he's using the Bloglines keyword alert feature to monitor the postings in each of those student blogs for words such as assignment, library, help, paper, project, etc.  So if any of these words shows up in a post by a GT student he checks out the post, and if it is indeed a library or research-related post, he chimes in with some suggestions for help.  How cool is that?  Yeah, it's a little like evesdropping on the students sitting around the Information Commons, but the students don't seem to mind at all, according to Brian. 

And this gets to the core of Brian's thinking that "we need to get out from behind the desk and help students when and where they need it."  Surely in your physical library you don't just wait at the reference
desk for poor souls to come to you.  Every once in a while you wander around the computers, and even occasionally offer assistance to someone who looks obviously lost, right?  What do you think of this idea?



Technorati Tags: libraries, Xanga, LiveJournal, AltRef, GT

Librarycasting SE

Chad at Library Voice points to Librarycasting SE (the SE is for Sciences and Engineering).  This is a wonderful collection (blogged) of screencasts and podcasts put together by Pete Kirlew at Virginia Commonwealth University.  A sampling of some of the recent posts include: Tutorials for Engineering Village, PubMed Video Tutorials, Finding Online Tutorials at VCU Libraries, Searching for New Book Titles at VCU Libraries, Staying Current Using RSS Automatic Updates, NOAA Podcasts and RSS Feeds, Automated Updates of Journal Article Titles and Database Search Results for the Health Sciences.  There are separate RSS feeds for the tutorials in the disciplines of Engineering, Library Services, Life Sciences, and Physical Sciences.

Chad sums it up well at the end of his post, "This truly is awesome, Pete. This serves as a great model for other subject specialists. It’s a blog, it’s a podcast, it’s a screencast. No, it’s super-duper subject librarian outreach!!! Fantastic!"

Camtasia Studio seems to be the poison of choice here.


Technorati Tags: screencasts, podcasts

CLA Services for Distance Learning Interest Group

After a hiatus of several years, the Canadian Library Association Services for Distance Learning Interest Group is back.  Laurie Prange at Yukon College is the new convener, and she has a section of her blog dedicated to this group.  First order of business is to complete a survey on the top 10 services necessary in library suport of distance learning, but you might want to hold off for a day or two before filling out the survey - she asks for up to 10 responses, but it was only recording one of mine...

Creating RSS feeds where none exist

Is there something magic about the number 20?  Why don't individual wiki pages offer RSS feeds?  These are two of the questions I've been forced to ponder this week.

Here's my story.  A month ago I blogged about the launch of the COPPUL Animated Tutorial Sharing (ANTS) Project.  We're using a wiki (MediaWiki) to track who's doing what with the tutorials.  I wanted to create a simple automated way to inform people when something had changed on that wiki page (ie someone had taken ownership of a particular tutorial) so my quest for a service that would create an RSS feed from a wiki page began.

There are over 100 items on a list on the wiki page and it turns out that's very important.

First up was Feed43, which I found several weeks ago while it was still in beta.  It was fairly complicated to get going, but eventually I provided all the right data and had a really nice feed.  It worked well until about a week ago, when Feed43 went public and their servers became overwhelmed.  They scaled all the feeds back so they would only deliver 20 items via RSS, which is fine for most, but completely ruins a feed that's trying to monitor a list of over 100.  I exchanged several emails with one of the founders and he says they're working on a paid version that would allow me to monitor that many items, but the subscription model isn't in place yet so that's of no use to me.  I was very impressed with the communication and support though.

Earlier today I found FeedYes, which is much easier to get started with, but seems to have the same frustrating limitation!  The other drawback with FeedYes is that it doesn't send full descriptions of the page content; only hyperlinks. I could live with that, but found it frustrating that the preview they showed me had the entire list, but what's delivered via the feed stops at 20 items.  I'm still waiting to hear back from the email I sent them, so maybe I'm missing something with this service.  UPDATE: I heard back from Jeroen at FeedYes within an hour, and he wrote that the limit is currently 30 items, and that they've heard from several people requesting the ability to monitor more items in their feed.  They're considering it for their next release, "which should be available in 3-4 weeks."

Turns out I'm not the only one playing with these services this week.  Robin Good and John Tropea (Library Clips) both have posts from earlier today on these services.  They both also mention FeedFire, but I couldn't get that one to work at all with the wiki page.

So does anyone out there know of a good way to monitor a structured wiki page?  I want to be able to receive updates of the specific items that have changed on this list.


Technorati Tags: RSS

Useful Tools - blog software comparison and file sharing

Lifehacker points to these two useful posts today.  The first is a blog software comparison chart from the Online Journalism Review.  If you're thinking about starting a blog as your New Year's resolution, this chart may be helpful in deciding which software to use.  One thing it doesn't include is the cost though, so you'll have to do some additional research on that front.  I guess you won't have to do much research though, as the chart accompanies an article that does include pricing and additional useful information.

The second post looks at 50(!) free file sharing services.  Long ago I looked at YouSendIt, which can be used to send very large files (poor-man's electronic document delivery) to other people w/o breaking an email inbox.  Turns out there are at least 50 of these services, and they're all free!  This list comes from the CreativeGuy, who notes, "Today, I have a list of 50 similar services that are absolutely free and require no e-mail registration to use. Included in the list are file size limits, download limits and the amount of time the file remains on the server for download."

Excellent - definately keeping this one tucked away for future reference.

As an aside, I'm posting this using Performancing for the first time - it's pretty darn slick!  The only thing I don't see here is the ability to trackback, so I may have to enter with the native interface to plug those in...

Technorati Tags: blogsoftware, filesending

Podcasting with The Distant Librarian (sorta)

This is a little experiment.  I just found a service called Talkr that will take any RSS feed and turn the text into an mp3 file, read by a nice robot female voice.  It's surprisingly good!  Not only can you give them an RSS feed to turn into mp3s, but I can, and have, given them my RSS feed so all my posts are automatically made available as a podcast via this feed -- just plug that in to your podcast aggregator and hear my posts read by me (if I was a female-sounding robot).  You'll also find the feed over on the right under my Subscribe  section.    This service is free.

One drawback is that when I write something like "this feed", you will hear the words "this feed" read, but not the actual link.  So because I (and most bloggers) tend to be telling you about other stuff on the web, you won't get the actual links read to you, unless of course I provide the entire URL spelled out in the post.  We'll see.

Obvious connection to distance education (or ANY educational setting) - I absolutely guarantee that you have more visually-impaired students than you're aware of.  What a great way to make your content more accessible!!!

Give it a listen at least.  You don't have to use my blog as your experiment; find another one and imagine you couldn't read it.  Listen to the mp3s created by Talkr - isn't that about 100% better than not having access to that content at all?

Disclaimer:  Talkr does offer a revenue stream option, but I have chosen not to participate in it at this time, so I'm not getting anything if you decide you want to upgrade from their free to their paid-version.

We'll see how this goes - I may or may not leave it turned on, though I probably will, as it's just one more way to reach out w/o any additional work by me :-)

Open Access Librarian blog

One of my colleagues here at the U of Calgary is a contributor to this new group-blog:

OA Librarian is a new, cooperatively produced weblog, which combines a pathfinder function with news and commentary on open access and librarianship. Please visit us here: http://oalibrarian.blogspot.com/

Under OA Resources on the right-hand side of the page, you’ll find links to free open access resources in Library and Information Science: the LIS journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, and two open archives for LIS: E-LIS and D-LIST.  There are also links to bibliographies and advocacy tools.

Postings vary widely: news items pertinent to librarians, relevant conference presentations, and other blogs or resources about open access developed by librarians.

One theme of OA Librarian is highlighting the work of librarians who advocate for Open Access.
Recent articles focus on Antonella de Robbio, the originator of  E-LIS; Anita Coleman, the driving force behind DLIST; and Charles W. Bailey,  Jr., the author of the Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals.

Blog team members are:

1. Marcus Banks, New York University School of Medicine
2. Anita Coleman, University of Arizona School of Information Resources & Library Science: http://www.u.arizona.edu/~asc/
3. Lesley Perkins, Blogmaster
4. Andrew Waller, University of Calgary
5. Heather G. Morrison, British Columbia Electronic Library Network: http://www.poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/

Why I Blog

This question has been addressed by many people already, and I really don't have anything new to add to the topic, but since an article I wrote over a year ago has finally hit hard copy I thought I'd share it with you anyway.  I was pleased, when looking at it again a year later, that the reasoning still stands up.  A couple of the URLs mentioned in the article are gone, but hey, that's the web for you.  Also note that Haworth doesn't allow the use of contractions in their journals, so the writing is a little more formal than I would've preferred.  I'll be updating this post with the standard disclaimer that Haworth says I need to include, but here's the article:

Pival, P. (2005) Blogging for the Distance Librarian.  Journal of Library and Information Services in Distance Learning, 2(2), 55-63.

Interestingly, today brought yet another story about how bad it is for Academics to blog - this one from Slate, Attack of the Career-Killing Blogs.  I guess because I tend not to post many personal or political thoughts I don't feel worried about my blogging activity, though I too am up for tenure next year.  Maybe I'll be able to post that the committee found my blog to be a favourable factor in their decision :-)

Library equivalent of Slashdot?

Ok, so it's not quite as dramatic as the /. effect, which regularly brings down servers when millions of visitors rush off to check the mentioned site, but late on Monday night, Jenny Levine, the Shifted Librarian, mentioned my site.  I happened to get my hit stats mailed to me this AM and thought it was pretty interesting to see the result; my stats for Tuesday are more than double any other day of the past seven...  :-) 

Leigh thinks Librarians Rock

Leigh came on my radar several months ago when I was playing around with translation services; he's involved in online education.  Gotta love it when someone posts with a title of  Librarians Rock!  I don't think I have any librarian feeds from Australia, so I've added his recommended feed.

Long Distance Librarian: Just close your eyes and jump...

Not sure if Kylie's actually practicing distance librarianship, or is just a librarian a long way from her home, but the Long Distance Librarian has just launched live from the UAE.

And while we're on the topic of the UAE, can I just mention that it's snowing really hard here right now?  I think I'm developing a hang-up on this Calgary weather thing...

TechSmith Blog

TechSmith, the folks who produce Camtasia Studio and SnagIt have a new blog: TechSmith Visual Lounge. No real content there yet, but I would expect them to announce product news there, and they accept comments, so this could be a good way to provide them feedback on their products.  Well, this is what they have to say:

Find out about TechSmith behind-the-scenes, see screencasts and videos from other customers, meet up with your fellow TechSmith users and staff, and get more tips and tricks!