tara robertson

We’re using Laurentian’s reserves interface (see Kevin Beeswick’s code on github) and just rolled out a reserves kisok on our circulation desk using:

• an iPad
• MediaKisok to lock it down
• one of these enclosures

When we were on our legacy ILS our reserves staff person would manually create a page for each course in Word, print them, then file them (alphabetically by instructors last name) in an old navy blue binder that was tethered to the desk with a lanyard that was at least 3 years old. I can date the lanyard because it said Emily Carr Institute, and we were granted university status in 2008.

This kiosk is a way better user experience for students and it saves staff time in creating and maintaining paper sheets of reserve items. Hopefully this small improvement in user experience improves the perception of the library in students’ eyes. Much like redesigning the library forms, I think that caring about these details demonstrate that we are thinking about ways our library can reflect the values of our students. I’m the liaison to Design and Dynamic Media, which includes communication design, interaction design, industrial design and animation. I know that my faculty and students notice and care about these details.

Dan Scott has a great post on other ways to manage course reserves in Evergreen.

No Comments | In: Blog | tags: design, egils, user experience. | #

I recently attended ApacheCamp. I had been meaning to have a conversation with a friend about the future of libraries and threw it up on the scheduling board. I was delighted that about 20 other people were interested in participating in that conversation too. It was awesome to pick the brains of some really clever people about what libraries could be doing with technology.

ebooks

Zak Greant elegantly summed up the conversation by stating that technology, namely the shift from physical books to ebooks and other licensed electronic content, is eroding many of the core values of libraries, like access and free speech. Someone complained that they can’t use the ebook and audiobook content that their public library provides because it only works with proprietary software. I also learned that Amazon is now renting ebooks.

Librarians need to collectively educate and lobby publishers, content creators, content providers and vendors to create content that supports access and intellectual freedom. The boycott of HarperCollins is one of the more aggressive things that libraries have done. Librarians need to better understand copyright and licensing issues and how they affect our business.

Other ideas

The mention of Amazon brought up the suggestion that it would be great if libraries could embed themselves in Amazon and show Amazon customers that the items that they are about to buy are available at a library close to them. This reminded me of the Greasemonkey script that Steven Tannock wrote for VPL’s holdings. Luke Closs said that while that was useful he was doubtful that many people used it. He’s right, it’s only been downloaded about 300 times.  Luke thinks this is a good proof-of-concept, but that libraries could do a couple of things to make this work better:

So if your org came to the conclusion that the amazon hack is a useful thing, your next step should be how can we get as many people using it as possible. This would require 2 things. 1) Technically – you’d want to re-package it to be as easy as possible to use. This probably means re-creating it as a Firefox/Chrome browser plugin so that it can be installed with one click.  2) Putting some marketing muscle behind it – maybe posters in the libraries, add it to email footers on outbound notifications to your users…

I’m sure there’s something that could be done with the WorldCat API.

Zak suggested that the library could be a place where people could bring old files that they can’t access because they don’t have the software like Lotus 1-2-3, or the hardware to access stuff on old floppy discs. In Vancouver I reckon this could be a great partnership between VPL and Free Geek, though I imagine the biggest hurdle would be library staff’s anxiety around not being experts in this area.

In discussing content models and how expensive digitization was, someone suggested using Kickstarter or setting up something similar for digitization projects. In addition to fundraising for digitization it would also build a community support around digitization projects and digital collections.

Ross Gardler flipped things and suggested a kind of reverse digitization. Ross stated that librarians are good at curating information and can find you stuff you don’t know exists (it makes my heart sing to hear non-librarians say this). He thought it would be useful if he could get a printed book with the most relevant information curated from various print and electronic sources. This reminded me of Peter Rukivina’s paper ebooks.

I feel really lucky that so many smart folks at ApacheCamp love libraries and were willing to brainstorm on how to make libraries better. I’m super excited and energized by this type of cross pollination.

2 Comments | In: Blog | tags: apachecamp. | #

In the spring I was invited to speak at a design event hosted by Continuing Studies. We would each have 10 minutes to talk about what’s been happening in our respective fields, or what our careers have been like for the past 10 years. Public speaking is slightly scary, but the idea of speaking at an non-library event scared the crap out of me. Of course I said yes.

I really enjoyed the other speakers: architects, graphic designers, interaction designers, folks working in sustainable design. Favourites for me included architect Marianne Amodio, who talked about feeling love in the details of design and Oliver Kellhammer, an interdisciplinary landscape artist, activist and wonderful weirdo.

My talk was titled “Power and control: How library catalogues have changed in the past 10 years”. Sound thrilling, right? There’s been a big shift in the past 10 years with libraries becoming more empowered with technology and embracing open source software and starting to develop their own systems, instead of relying on expensive proprietary software that didn’t meet our needs. I gave some examples of how controlled vocabularies are awesome, and how user tagging provides another way to access information. About 5 years ago when I was in library school the conversation about user tagging was framed in a really dumb way: either controlled vocabulary or tags.  It didn’t take long for librarians to figure out that ‘both’ is the correct answer. I used some examples from radical cataloguer Sandy Berman to illustrate how Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) are slow to change and sometimes really absurd, like Cookery–Indic instead of Indian cooking, and Electric light, incandescent, instead of lightbulb)  Also Tim Spalding’s talk “What is social cataloging?” has some great examples of where user tags are far more useful than LCSH. The best example of this is William Gibson’s  Neuromancer. LSCH for this title include:

• Business intelligence › Fiction
• Computer hackers › Fiction
• Conspiracies › Fiction
• Cyberspace › Fiction
• Information superhighway › Fiction
• Japan › Fiction
• Nervous system › Wounds and injuries › Fiction
• Science fiction
• Virtual reality › Fiction

“Nervous system–Wounds and injuries–Fiction”?? Neuromancer is the best example of cyberpunk, which is not listed in the LCSH.

I remember librarians fretting: what would we do if someone tagged something incorrectly? What would we do if someone tagged something using a naughty or rude word? And what would we do about things like plurals (i.e. dog vs dogs), should we clean up the tags our users apply, so that there’s consistency? If other people saw messy or inconsistent tags, what would they think of us? Would they still trust us?  The attitudes underpinning these conversations were that we don’t trust our users and as the “experts” we think we know better than the people actually using libraries. It makes me a bit bonkers that our library catalogues have sucked so bad that we need 1 hour instruction sessions to teach people how to find things. Instead of being unidirectional (from us the “experts” to our uses), I wish we viewed instruction as a way for us to teach our users about some of the information we provide access to, and for users to teach us how they are actually looking for things.

A friend who works at A Very Large University was telling me about an internal debate their librarians were having about library FAQs on their website. Currently the FAQs are maintained by only librarians, are out of date, and according to analytics data, don’t seem to be answering all the questions that users seem to frequently ask. One such question, asked by hungry students, was “where can i get food?”. He suggested allowing users to add their own questions and answer and rate whether the answers was useful or not. Similar concerns to the tagging debate were brought up: what if users answer questions incorrectly, or in an incomplete way? What if these FAQs get out of date because they are not being properly maintained by a librarian? Librarians seemed to want to teach users the right way to navigate the library website to find this information. Hungry users just wanted to find the closest place to grab something to eat. This is another example of us dictating what the correct way to find information, instead of being responsive in changing the way that we do things to better serve folks.

We need to let go of the idea that we are the experts and instead view library spaces, collections, websites and catalogues as places for co-creation with our users. We need to thoughtfully evaluate data, have meaningful conversations with our users, and really listen to what our users are saying. We will need to give up some power and control and that’s okay.

2 Comments | In: Blog | tags: analytics, evaluation, is there hope for libraries?, presentations. | #

My friend and colleague Baharak has complained that there’s no beauty in libraries. For the most part, I think she’s right.

I love the brand for Access that Emily Carr students Brian Tong and Jack Curtis developed. This is a generous gift to the Access community that I appreciate deeply.
Access 2011 design work by Brian Tong and Jack Curtis

In the spring semester I convinced Haig Armen and Tak Yukawa to take on branding Access as an in-class design competition for one of their 3rd year classes. Students had about 3 weeks to put together a comprehensive brand for my favourite library conference. It was awesome to have time to chat with these students about the technology work that happens in libraries. They asked smart questions about the participants (demographic, jobs, outside interests), why this was such a great conference, and why they, as library users, should care about the work that we do. It was a reference interview in a design context. Their questions helped me articulate what Access is all about.

3 weeks later a few members of the organizing committee came for the student presentations. We were all super impressed with what they came up with. I was relieved that none of the designs were book focused. The work was fantastic, but what was more impressive was how the students articulated their creative process and design thinking. Libraries need to hire designers because they can make us look really good. Librarians often complain that people do not respect our professional skills, yet we often believe that we can do our own design work, even though we are not designers. This is as stupid and offensive as people saying we don’t need libraries because we’ve got Google. Google is a tool and not a replacement for a librarian. Adobe’s Creative Suite and a suitcase full of fonts do not make you a designer, it just means that you have some tools.

For me, reference is magical when I can help a user find the perfect bit of information that they never knew existed. Designers are awesome because they do something similar. I didn’t ask Brian and Jack for a smart orange logo and avatars that used the filament from the letterform as part of the face. I told them about why I love coming to this conference, the awesome community of people and the work that we do. They heard the important parts and developed a clever brand around this.

Normally designers despise design competitions, as they undercut their professional skills. Also without a relationship between a designer and client the output is often not as good as it could be. There’s a good post on Core 77 explaining why design competitions suck. This case was different, as this was part of a course for which they received a grade.
I love libraries and open source software, but both communities tend to make some pretty ugly (but functional) things–there is very little beauty. Imagine a Venn diagram: the overlap between library ugly and FOSS ugly is double ugly. We need to budget hiring designers into our library software projects.

The work that Brian and Jack did for Access was beautiful and hopefully inspired participants to consider design and beauty in their own work.

No Comments | In: Blog | tags: access2011, communication design, designers are awesome, emily carr. | #

I’m exhausted and thrilled that we pulled off an awesome Access conference. I normally hate the “how we done it good” posts and presentations, but I think we did a great job. Here’s a brain dump of some of what we did and my thoughts on why we made some of the decisions we did for future conference organizers.

Pick a good team

We had an awesome team of 7 eight people. I quickly reworked the Vancouver code4lib proposal and got some other people from other institutions to put their name on it. Once we were awarded the conference I put together the organizing team with a few people I knew I wanted to work with, then we collectively picked a few more people. There were two rules in adding people to the group: do they get stuff done? are they drama free? I’ve organized a lot of events, but this was my first library conference. This was the most functional and fun group of people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.

While we each had areas we were responsible for, we updated and got feedback from each other. It was the best of both worlds–we all felt empowered to make decisions and get stuff done, but also benefited from the support and input from everyone else. Most of us communicate in similar ways and preferred to use email. We met in person once a month. It was challenging to keep our face-to-face meetings moving forward, as most of us have strong personalities and most people are detail oriented. One person said that they normally hate meetings, but always looked forward to our monthly meetings. This was deeply satisfying for me, as the majority of my work meetings are inefficient as they take the most ineffective person as the lowest common denominator.

One of my hidden agendas was to develop more of local systems community and to get to know some people who I admire. I achieved this and developed some friendships with people I only knew professionally. Now when I need to call this guy, with questions about CONTENTdm, we are no longer just faceless email addresses at different institutions.

Know your audience

Access is my favourite library conference because it’s my favourite people in libraries: geeky, creative, generous problem solvers. These folks are passionate about libraries, sharing, learning, teaching and not afraid of failing or breaking things. These are people who delight in rolling up their sleeves and helping out and getting stuff done. I know that some things that are important to this group include: good wireless (including free wireless in the hotel rooms), somewhere to charge their devices in the conference and tasty food and beer. We chose to DIY many things to save money, so we could spend the majority of the budget on good food at the conference hotel and good local beer and tasty food at the social events. After all, the best conversations often happen over good food and drink.

No swag but stickers

We went back and forth on conference swag and decided not to have a bag of paper stuff that most of us usually throw out. We didn’t want to waste time making these bags and we think they are wasteful. This made it a bit tricky when soliciting sponsors, but many companies, organizations and libraries generously sponsored us anyway.

Emily Carr design students Jack Curtis and Brian Tong developed an awesome brand for the conference. Part of the brand was an avatar that we turned into stickers for attendees. They also made custom avatars for each of the speakers that were used on the website, as introduction slides for each session, and turned into stickers as part of the speaker’s gifts (or gifs as someone quipped on Twitter). Both of these were a huge hit and it made me really happy to see the stickers on people’s laptops and on their online profiles. This was better (and cheaper) than making ugly t-shirts. They gave their brand to the Access community. I need to chat with them about how they want to license it, if they want to write a brand standards guide, and figure out where we should put the files.

Social events

Photo credit: BigD on Flickr

Most people at Access are a bit shy and introverted, so having structured social events makes it easier for people to interact and connect with people. Alcohol also helps as social lubrication. I was worried for the first bit of the karaoke event, as there were only about 40 people in a room that was too big. Normally when I plan public parties, how many people come is a measure of success. However in this case, the attendees were so awesome that they decided to give ‘er, get up and sing and at one point, there were a bunch of people dancing. (We also realized that there were 3 kegs of beer that needed drinking and decided not to charge for beer–free as in beer.) It turned out to be one of the most epic library social events I’ve ever been to. Look and see for yourself.

Program

I’m really proud of the program that we put together. The theme was “the library is open” so it made sense to do an open call for submissions. We considered what people proposed as well as what we knew about their presentation skills. We were reluctant to give people who are doing cutting edge work but have weak presentation skills, a full 45 min session. We had 3 sessions of lightening talks and encouraged some of the people to do that instead. Access is a technical conference. One of the proposals talked about Solr as being a “new and exciting technology”. Solr is rad, but it was new to libraries about 5 years ago.

Some of my favourite sessions were from people outside of libraries: Heather Piwowar and Kimberly Christen. We collectively decided we wanted to introduce the Access group to local Vancouver people who were doing amazing things, like Jon Beasley-Murray and Andrea Reimer. I met Jer Thorp when he was an artist-in-residence at Emily Carr. Many people said that Jer’s talk was one of the best talks ever at Access and I’d agree.

One of my other not-so-secret agendas was to be mindful of women’s representation on the program. Access 2010 in Winnipeg had 4 female speakers out of a total of 23 (17%) and Access 2009 in PEI had 5 female speakers out of a total of 23 (22%). We did slightly better with 8 of the 29 speakers (28%), which still isn’t great. We need to do better. I invited two women who hadn’t submitted proposals to speak. I explained to them at the conference that I didn’t want them to feel tokanized, as they are working on amazing projects and doing cutting edge work in the sphere of library technology. It was awesome to hear that the Hackfest was close to 50% women. Simply counting the number of women on a conference program is a crude measure of participation, but is an important one nonetheless. We talked about this at the pub and agreed that we need to get more women coding, but we also need to incentivize other types of participation in open source library projects.

My last agenda was to encourage more collaboration between the Koha and Evergreen communities. There was strong representation from the Sitka and KCLS (BC and Washington state installations of Evergreen) as well as someone from Bywater Solutions (Koha) and Chris Cormack, one of the first Koha developers from New Zealand. There were 3 sessions related to open source ILSes and quite a bit informal conversation.

Create ways for people to participate

For me, being able to actively contribute something to an event is more satisfying for me than just passively attending. Most of the Access folks are like this too. Amy Buckland organized a panel on library fail, then invited other people to share their fail stories. This was excellent warmup for the Ask Anything session, that Dan Chudnov started at code4lib. Brian Owen, the convenor for Ask Anything, described the session as part Craigslist (have equipment to get rid of, need a specific driver?), part Trivial Pursuit and part speed dating. He compared himself to a cable access channel 4am host of some game show. It was excellent. The lightening talks and hackfest report sessions were also great and it was nice to see new people get up and do their first short presentation at Access.

Amy Buckland did live note taking, which will be useful for people who need to write conference reports. Declan became the unofficial conference photographer and also offered to help archive the live stream video. 3 people responded to my tweet asking for help with Illustrator. It was very easy to find volunteers to lead groups to various restaurants. When the morning finished 30 minutes early and lunch wasn’t quite ready, we threw in an impromptu lightening talk session and a few people got up and spoke. Peter Binkley started a Google doc to document the history of past conferences, within a few hours, most of the basics had been fleshed out.

We also invited people from our institutions and from the wider library community in the Lower Mainland to do speaker introductions. This was a way for us to involve people who may not have attended the conference (and to have them hear some of the issues that we think are important) and to give some of our bosses a useful role that didn’t require much of their time.

Software tools to make your life easier

• Eventbrite – the fees are worth the time and hassle you’ll save in managing registration and processing money
• GroupMe was a good way for all of us organizers to keep in touch during the conference
• Google Docs – we put all of our planning docs here, which will make it easy to hand off to the next organizing committee

If you were at Access, please fill out the feedback form. I’d love to hear what you thought worked, and what we could have improved on.

7 Comments | In: Blog | tags: access2011, conference planning. | #