Thing 9: eBooks

I have seen plenty of people using eReaders, but had never even touched one before last week when I played with a few at Staples while waiting for the copy shop to print out an oversize poster for me to bring to the New York Archives Conference.  Sure, I would certainly be thrilled to get one as a gift, and one would certainly be handy to have when traveling, but this cheap and overloaded librarian has never felt a need to seek one out.  For now, free hard copy books from the library are serving my needs just fine.  As for traveling, I got a bunch of books for only a few cents each at Albany Public Library's Book Ends sale a few weeks ago.  I can lose, drop, or mutilate these books however I please with no worries, and I don't have to be concerned about the airport metal detector messing with them.

I can see eReaders being most useful for textbooks.  Textbooks are usually huge, and students often have to carry several around at a time.  Even so, I approach eReaders with caution for students younger than college age.  I have read many articles lately stating that we should be giving all students laptops or iPads or eReaders or whatever to enhance their learning experience.  Setting aside the fact that schools these days are having trouble scrounging up enough money for toilet paper, I think this idea is idealizing the level of responsibility of kids.  Here are a few stories I've heard from parents and kids in the past few months to show what I mean:

• A sixth grader sets her Nintendo DS on fire because she's mad about losing a game.
• A ninth grader loses his phone one day after getting it on the first day of school.  He is now on his fifth phone, even though he buys them with his own money.
• A 7th grader breaks a fan by sticking scissors in it for no particular reason.
• All the lights in a school hallway continually are turned off after students accidentally discover that sticking their bus passes in an outlet will cause this to happen.  (Why would you stick your bus pass in an outlet, you ask?  You obviously haven't spent much time in middle school.)

The above stories did not involve students perpetually in detention.  These are all relatively well-behaved honors students.  I really think that until eReaders become more indestructible AND include GPS tracking devices, they should not be distributed to young students wide scale, unless whoever is providing them has lots of money and time to burn.

But on to the assignment part of Thing 9.  I approached this with much trepidation.  I have heard lots of stories from librarians much more tech savvy than I about their feelings of inadequacy when helping patrons with ebook issues. (Or eBooks?  Why do I want to capitalize the "B"?)    Not only does every device work differently and interface slightly differently with the library software, but each version of the devices has changes that can affect the downloading.  I have heard that it is not uncommon for library staff to be unable to solve all a patron's ebook problems.

I easily found the ebooks section of the Albany Public Library's web site.  However, I use this site practically every day, so I knew that the "readers services" link was the most likely place to find ebooks.  This might not be so obvious, or obvious at all, to less frequent users of the web site.  I don't know that putting this information on the library's home page would be much better, though.  This weekend I visited Bethlehem Public Library's home page to look up their hours, and found their home page just as difficult to navigate because it had too much information on their home page.  A library just can't win when it comes to web page design, I guess.

The next step was finding a book to download.  This might have been the most difficult part of the assignment. The search function was not as robust as the catalog.  (Ebooks are listed in the catalog, but, at least as far as I can tell, you cannot limit your search to ebooks.  This feature may be coming soon as ebooks become more popular.)  Once I got the hang of browsing, I discovered that, indeed, ebooks are popular!  Almost all of them were already checked out.  Now, it is hardly fair to compare ebook holdings to print holdings since there are under 3,0000 ebooks in the collection and tens of thousands of print books, but I can say with certainty that there is demand for the library to spend more resources on ebooks.

Once I finally found a book to check out, the process was relatively simple.  I had to download some Adobe software onto my computer first, and I should be able to use this software for future ebook library loans.  Because Adobe is a very well-known and well-respected company in the computer industry, I had no qualms about downloading the software.  I would likely have been more cautious if the software had an unknown name.  Once I had the software loaded, my ebook downloaded in a matter of seconds.  I was quite impressed.  It took less time for a 200+ page book to download than it takes for the three songs I usually download from Freegal  - another great library service - every week.  I know sound files take up a lot of space, but I was still expecting the ebook download to be slower than it was.

Now I have this nifty e-cookbook on my computer for the next 21 days.  I don't have any desire to read a novel on my computer, so I chose a cookbook.  The rights page for the book also tells me that I can print out up to 30 pages, so if I find a good recipe, I can keep it for my files.  The trouble is, I'm not seeing a lot that strikes my fancy.  It looks like I have no way to return the book before my 21 days are up, so I am keeping others from using this book even though I am likely done with it.  I have read in the library literature that some libraries and/or vendors are working on ways for patrons to authorize early returns.  I think it will be great to implement this as soon as possible, given the huge popularity of library ebooks.

Thanks for this lesson on ebooks.  I now see that they are fairly easy to use and have a lot of potential.  Library patrons are thrilled that libraries are entering the ebook world, and we should find ways to do more for our patrons in this area.  For me, personally, however, I still think I would rather use the $100+ that an eReader costs for a day at the spa.

Thing 8: Video

Video is something I am not very good at.  I can think of lots of ways that it could be used in libraries and archives, but since I am not very adept at it, I have not used it much.  I liked the David Lee King/Michael Porter video on tips for making a good video.  But how long did it take them to make it?  Michael Porter's shirt changes alone must have taken half an hour, not counting the time it took to gather the shirts and iron them!  (I do like the flowered ones, though.)  The rest of it is polished as well.  I like the suggestion to make short videos about your staff.  This may make patrons more comfortable with approaching staff members.  I don't know if this idea would get a good reception among staff members, however.  At my workplace, staff members don't even want to have their photos on our web site.  In public libraries, where staff are sometimes worried that certain patrons might harass or stalk them, there would likely be even more resistance on the part of staff about revealing a bit about themselves online.

Some of the library/archives videos I like the most are fairly simple in terms of graphics, sound and transitions.  The video below is from the University of Manitoba.  Watching this video would be a great homework assignment for courses that include work in the archives.  Students could watch it before visiting the archives, so more class time could be devoted to more substantive issues.  It would also give the students, most of whom have probably never visited an archives before, a point of reference.  The video could make students less intimidated by the archives, especially since it is narrated by one of them and not some scary archivist-type.



The next video is from the New York State Archives, and it features a College of Saint Rose professor introducing viewers to ideas for using primary sources in the classroom, especially at the elementary level.  The NY3R's should consider connecting this video to the New York Heritage digital collections web site.  Several regions of the state will be merging our collections, and we have many grand ideas for improving the user experience, including providing tools to teachers for using these digitized resources in their classrooms.  This video would be a good start.



What little professional experience I have had with video has been helping (and I use that term loosely) Ilka Morse create the screencasts on using CONTENTdm software that she discusses in her blog.  Even these very short videos (the longest is 5 minutes long) that did not involve any camera work took a very long time to perfect.  Part of this was due to our unfamiliarity with the Camtasia software and the process.  But it is also true that it is difficult to edit mistakes, and it is easier to look/sound goofy or fumbling on video than in writing or in person. 

The "non-professional" videos that I have embedded above are actually very smooth.  I would be curious to learn about how the people made them - did they write a word-by-word script ahead of time?  Did they memorize the script?  Did they shoot the video in very short segments?  How many times did they practice it?  Who critiqued it?

We have received very positive feedback about our screencasts.  It is much easier for people to troubleshoot when they can actually see what we are talking about "live" than on a static help sheet or over the telephone.  However, as mentioned above, these screencasts are very labor-intensive and time-consuming to make.  Once we are at the point where we can resume creating educational tools like this for New York Heritage contributors (we are currently in the midst of transferring things between servers), we will need to carefully consider which topics and procedures warrant the resources needed to create the screencasts.  If the issue is something that only a few people are having trouble with, it may be easier to work with people one-on-one using a tool like join.me,  highlighted in Thing 7.

Finally, I have a Flip camera at home that our family received as a Christmas present a couple of years ago.  This has been great fun to use, and it helped my Girl Scout troop earn their Audiovisual Production Badge (excuse me, Interest Project Patch, at least until September, when all the insignia change yet again).  However, I have found the software needed to edit, post, etc. the videos to be clunky and difficult to use.  I have never used any other type of camera, however, so it may just be my incompetence.  What types/brands of cameras do people like to use for their work-related videos?  How about software to manipulate the videos?

Thing 7: Productivity and Collaboration Tools

I started writing this post when Blogger went down for a couple of days, and it was hard to return to it.  Thing 7 has been the best lesson for me yet, but it is an embarrassment of riches.  (An aside:  As I typed this, I was wondering about the spelling of "embarrassment." Can you believe it took me this long to notice the spell check tool in Blogger?  Sorry for all my previous misspellings.  Oh, and it just told me I misspelled misspellings.)  There are so many wonderful tools in Polly's post that might be useful in both my personal and professional lives.

The tools I am most interested in are those related to backup & file storage.  This is something I've been meaning to look into for a long time, but just never seemed to get around to it.  Since I am an archivist, you would think I would be diligent about backup, but that is not the case.  A tool like Back Blaze will be a backup to my lax backup. I will have to talk to Polly to see how she likes it, although, truth be told, like everything these days, I have information overload.  There are so many tools out there.  If it works and Polly uses it, that's probably good enough for me. 

A few thoughts on some of the other tool:

Hoot Suite:  Hmm, I think I know someone who must use this or something like this.  He has posts always and everywhere.  Very useful, but be careful - using it may lead to the impression that you are not working at all but are spending all your time on social media.  Especially true if you have contact with a lot of people that are not highly tech savvy, although they do use some social media.  May be a lot more useful for a corporation trying to sell something or raise awareness.  Of course, libraries also want to raise brand recognition, but at the same time don't want to appear TOO corporate, as it may turn people off or lead voters to believe we have plenty of money.  A bit of a tightrope.

Reminder Tools:  I am definitely going to have to play around with these.  I have used Outlook Calendar in the past for this sort of thing, but I have found recent versions more cumbersome and clunky to use.  Or maybe I'm just more used to the functioning of web-based tools now.  I could definitely use some reminders, although a paper calendar works pretty darn well for organizing my days and seeing the big picture of my month at a glance.

join.me:  This looks like something that could be very useful to CDLC Digital Collections.  I watched the video, and it appears that you can share anything that is on this desktop during a call/online meeting using join.me  We have a lot of calls from CDLC Digital Collections participants for help with troubleshooting CONTENTdm, our Digital Asset Management System.  Using join.me means that a remote user can see exactly what we are talking about.  It also means that users who are having a problem could share their desktop with us, and we could more quickly identify whether the problem is something going wrong with the software or the user doing something incorrectly.  I really like the fact that you do not need to download any software with join.me  I don't think I'm ready to have a remote user take control of my desktop, though!  Maybe some of our project participants have a lot of faith in us, and would be willing to allow our staff to temporarily take control of their desktop to help with CONTENTdm.

Doodle:  We use Doodle all the time to schedule meetings at CDLC.  We have so many people from so many different institutions participating in CDLC committees and task forces that it can be almost impossible to figure out when people are free to meet.  This tool gives you that information in a glance (as long as the people you poll respond).  I highly recommend it.

I have several questions and concerns related to all of these tools.  The first is how much disk space is taken up by those tools that require a download of some sort.  With one or two tools, it is probably negligible, but if you really want to take advantage of the great things many of these things can do, it could greatly slow down your computer.  My home computer has lots of space on it - 3 drives, in fact - yet I still often have to clean up the drives because they are almost full due to the downloads my kids do to play their games. 

The second concern I have is privacy/security.  Most tools have security safeguards.  However, we have all read stories of big corporations whose records have been compromised.  These corporations have a huge incentive to keep this from happening, and yet happen it did.  What's to keep some tiny tool from being hacked, other than the fact that it is tiny.  The trick might be to stick with the less well-known tools.  And perhaps it's irrational, but just putting things like my passwords together in one document using one tool freaks me out a little.  It would be very useful, however, so weighing the risks versus the benefits is something I do with every tool.

My final big concern is related to the obsolesence of these proprietary products.  I am reluctant to rely too much on these tools that might be gone tomorrow.  I think they are good as a help or a back-up, but if you are relying on them to do your day-to-day work, you may find yourself out of luck one day when you wake up and find that tool is gone.  That's why I always advise people to put the photos and other documents they really want to save onto multiple media formats.  Flickr is fine for distribution and back-up in case your disks fail, but it cannot be counted on to be there tomorrow.  What happens to tools like Flickr is totally up to those running it.  If they wake up bored with it, they could simply stop providing the service.

Paul Rapp had an excellent column, "Hey Hugh Get Offa McCloud," in the May 19, 2011 edition of Metroland ("The Capital Region's Alternative Newsweekly").  In this column, he basically says that by using tools where your information is in "the cloud," you lose a lot of control.  You are at the mercy of how Google, Flickr, Facebook or whoever, maintain their servers.  You also have to rely on being able to connect to the Internet, something that isn't always (or even often, in places like the Berkshires or the Adirondacks) guaranteed.  He makes some very good points that warm the cockles of this archivist's heart.

Thing 6: Online Meetings and Webinars

Attending online meetings and webinars is old hat for me.  Maybe because there are many fewer archivists than librarians, most archivists seem to be more familiar with these methods of getting additional training than librarians are.  There are so few of us archivists that we often have to travel a distance to get in-person training on more advanced topics or to meet with one another. 

I find webinars be a useful and easy way to gain knowledge.  The most successful and enlightening webinar experiences for me have been those where several of us gather in a room to participate in the webinar.  We usually gather together like this to spread the cost among many people. The Society of American Archivists offers their webinars for the same price to one location whether there is one person in the room or twenty.  An unexpected benefit of this economically-motivated decision has been the engaging discussion in the room after the webinar is over.  The webinars are usually short enough that people don't feel the need to rush off afterwards, and often there is discussion of what people liked, didn't like or learned in the webinar.  Because of the medium and short format of webinars, people leading webinars often have to generalize.  The discussion in a room after a webinar helps participants better understand the nuances of the topic.

I find Rose, the librarian at Maria's post on online meetings interesting.  She said that she found it easier to ask questions in the online format than in a large meeting.  When I have been in group webinar meetings, I have not found that to be true.  People who often ask questions at in-person workshops do not ask them at webinars.  I don't know why - maybe because they know there are LOTS of people in the class?  Maybe because they don't know who else is in the class - there maybe some people prominent in the profession and the participants don't want to look dumb?

A difference between online and in-person training is the role of discussion between the participants.  Last weekend, I had the opportunity to attend the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference meeting in Alexandria, Virginia.  I ran into a former supervisor of mine who is now teaching both in-person and online courses at the iSchool at Drexel University.  She said one of the hardest things to get used to was the etiquette of chat in online courses.  Students would have side conversations in online courses in a way that they never would in-person.  She did not want to squelch student interaction, which can be difficult to develop in online courses, but she was finding it extremely difficult to keep track of the conversation and conduct her lesson.  She finally told her students that if they had a question that they wanted her to respond to right then - espcially on parts of the lesson that they were having difficulty understanding, they should type the question in the chat box in all caps.  Otherwise, she ignores most of the chat during the class and reads it after the class is over so she can discuss it and incorporate the ideas in future lessons.   I thought this was a good solution to the problem, but it also got me thinking about how many students might be missing the main focus of the lesson by getting too involved in side conversations through chat.  In an in-person class, it is easier for the instructor to teach and pause for questions, making sure that everyone is getting the benefit of both the lecture and the discussion. 

Online learning is great for the motivated learner, especially when limited to a specific topic.  However, if the training is required for staff or something you really want your staff to learn, and they are not signing up of their own accord, you may want to stick to in-person instruction.  A certain attorney I know, who shall remain nameless, does some of his continuing education online.  He just turns on the computer, loads up the training, and then goes about other business.  Although I would like to think that the library profession is more responsible than the law profession, this is probably a temptation for everyone who is required to learn something for which they did not take the initiative.  

I have added Web Junction to my RSS feed, something I probably wouldn't have done without this class.  So that in itself is probably worth the class's price of admission.  I have taken advantage of Web Junction classes before, and I have found them very useful.  Previously, I was only aware of classes that I received an email about. 

I have never moderated a webinar.  The tools look fairly easy to use, so Thing 6 is motivating me to take charge of a webinar or online meeting in the future.  However, I only learned how to moderate a conference call this morning.  First things first!

Thing 4: Online Communities - Facebook Tidbits

After looking at a number of teens' Facebook pages for determining a proper approach to Internet safety programs, I was feeling negatively about the value of Facebook.  Even if 96% of kids are using social media, like the video I discussed in my previous post implies, they appear to be using it mainly for the following sorts of banter: 
"Justin Bieber ROXXX!" 
"No, he Sux, like you."
and
"Letsxz kutt dha storie short."
"Yhu ghot dhat rittee."  
along with tons of comments about this is poppin and that is poppin.  (Now I feel really old.  I have no idea what poppin is.  According to the Urban Dictionary, it is a type of dance done to funk music.  According to the Slang Dictionary, it is used in the phrase, "What's poppin'" to mean "What's going on?"  Neither of these definitions seem to fit in the context of the Facebook comments I've been reading. Anyone more with it than I am care to fill me in?  Just remember, though, this is a work blog, so if it's obscene, forget it!)   Although I use Facebook a bit myself, these sorts of posts were making me feel like it is mainly a big time waster.

Then this morning I read some posts on my own page that once again flipped my opinion on Facebook back to the positive side.  First of all, there were a number of posts from an archivist-friend in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.  Whenever she saw or heard from someone she knew in the area, she would post it in her Facebook status line.  Because electricity and phone and Internet connectivity are very spotty down there right now, this is a good way to update people outside of Tuscaloosa.  Folks in Tuscaloosa may not be able to get emails or phone calls out to individual people, but when they can sporadically get on the Internet, they can post so that loved ones know they are OK even though they can't be reached.

Another tornado-related post was from the Library of Congress's National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program.  In this post, they link to an article in the New York Times about a Facebook page that has been created by a woman to reunite people with their lost photographs and documents that have shown up in people's yards and parking lots all over the Southeast.  I don't know how long the article will remain live, but you can view the Facebook page, "Pictures and Documents found after the April 27, 2011 Tornadoes."  This is an amazing page that has posts added to it every few minutes.  Just while I was looking at it brieflly this morning, a reader connected someone who found a class photo with the teacher from that class, someone posted a sepia photo they found in Tennessee, and someone else in Tennessee posted that they found an ordination certificate for someone in Alabama.  This is clearly a great way to use social media.  Besides reuniting people with the few scraps that may remain of their belongings, it helps those who are suffering realize that people all over are thinking about them.  

Thing 4: Online Communities - Some Musings

The video Polly gave us to watch asks whether social media is a fad or a revolution.  I would have to say neither, or maybe a little bit of both.  People are excited about it because it is new and exciting, but even at this point, I am starting to see the novelty beginning to wear off.  For instance, most of my Facebook friends are on much less frequently now than they were when I first joined. 

However, people still use social media a lot, and I don't think it's going away.  I think it's akin to cell phones.  Remember when they first became affordable?  How people who had them would use them ALL THE TIME to give a play-by-play?   This one-side of a cell phone conversation I heard about 10 years ago while shopping was typical:

"I am walking down the sidewalk.  I am going past Frank Adams.  OK, now I am going into the Book House in Stuyvesant Plaza.  I am going to buy a book."

People don't (usually) do that anymore, yet they continue to use cell phones in their daily lives to do work, make live easier, and, yes, ocassionally annoy others on the train, at restaurants, and in the doctor's office.  (Do you really have to tell your spouse, mother or whomever about what should be your private, personal, and sometimes graphic medical problems right now?)  I think we are still in the early part of the romance with social media where we just can't get enough of it, but soon the bloom will wear off and we will move into a more solid and stable relationship with it like we have now with cell phones.

Back to the video.  I know this video was made to sell something, so it's probably not fair to pick it apart, but several things about it really bugged me, so here goes.  First of all, they put two facts together at the beginning of the video:  1)  50% of the world's population is under 30 & 2) 96% of Millenials are on Social Media.  They put these two facts one right after the other, so it makes it sounds like these two go hand-in-hand - that 96% of people under 30 (are Millenials under 30?) are on social media.  But I'm guessing the 96% of Millenials that quote refers to are Millenials living in the USA.  A big chunk of that 50% of the world's population that is under 30 are scrounging just to get water and electricity.  The richer countries tend to skew older.

The video also states that students who learn online do better than those who learn face-to-face.  Who are they talking about, and what do they mean by "better?"  Having just done some reading on standardized tests, I know that tests can easily be gamed by those that know the ropes.  The jury is still out on whether those who score higher have learned more.  I teach adults informally in face-to-face workshops, and I am involved in a PTA at a school with a lot of "at-risk" students.  Although I don't have any empirical data, in both cases I think the face-to-face contact helps the students.  In workshop evaluations, normally at least half of the participants state that what they liked best about the workshop was interacting with the instructor and other students in-person.  Perhaps this is because many of them work in isolation and appreciate the fact that, for once, they are among others who understand their work.  Maybe people who have more in-person camraderie at work would not have such a strong preference for in-person workshops.

With at-risk students, I cannot imagine having a whole education online.  Perhaps some portion of it, but not all of it.  The physical school and schedule gives structure to the students, and faculty and staff do so much more than just teach.  They talk with parents, set up meetings with guidance counselors, listen to students' problems, line up social workers or other services as needed, identify learning disabilities, and so much more.  My fear with "facts" like those stated in the video is that people wil be tempted to replace teachers with computers and software, and those children who are already on the edge will fall farther behind.  Human interaction is an especially important part of learning in those vulnerable years of early adolescence.

That said, I was very interested in the many examples of ways that libraries are using social media.  The book discussion over Facebook could be very attractive to people who can't get to the library at a particular time for a book group or who may be intimidated at first by long discussions of books.  I can see this being a great tool for school librarians and a fun way to get students to recommend books to each other.  Sometimes kids will be more forthcoming online than in person.  Reading is often seen as nerdy, so kids don't often talk about it among their friends, but I know lots of kids are "closet readers," and this forum might be a good way to draw them out.

I can also see social media as a great tool for connecting staff members in libraries with long hours.  Some staff members will see each other only rarely in libraries like this, and social media can help them connect.  I do find, however, that people are often misinterpreted online.  This is especially true for people that don't know each other well.  A person's off-beat sense of humor may come off as simply rude online.  It may be a good idea to come up with a continuing education course on writing for online communities. 

Thanks, Polly, for pointing us to the Librarian In Black's blog post on Social Media Capital.  This is a great practical article on things librarians should consider when entering the world of social media.  She talks about policies, registering names, finding followers, finding mentions of your library on other sites, and more.  Even if your library has no interest in officially using social media, this is a great article to read.  Because, like it or not, every library has a  presence on social media, and this article can help you figure out what that presence is.  If you read just one article on Polly's list for "Thing 4," it should be this one!

Thing 3: Photo Sharing - Socrates Sculpture Park

Earlier today on this very blog I griped about people overloading me with links to their personal photographs.  Well, here I am doing the very thing I complained about.  Polly is a menace encouraging us to use these tools!

This past February my children and my husband had the same week off, which is unusual.  We looked at tickets to all kinds of warm places - Miami, New Orleans, Birmingham, Biloxi, San Diego, Phoenix, San Antonio.  All proved to be too dear for our wallets.  So we grudgingly settled on going to New York City.  Again.  What new things could we find to do in New York City?  (OK, stupid question, I know.)  We ended up having one of our best trips ever.  Among the many great new things we found on that trip was the Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, Queens.  This park, run by City of New York Parks & Recreation, is especially interested in promoting the work of emerging artists and in encouraging the interaction of visitors with the art work.

Here is what the site looked like before the park:

Photo Courtesy of Socrates Sculpture Park Web Site

And here it is in 2011:


 I want to go back and visit in the warmer weather.  It looks like they have all kinds of programs, including a sauerkraut making workshop(?).

It is taking forever for my photos to upload into Blogger.  Is anyone else finding that to be the case?  I am also having trouble moving the photos around in the blog posting.  I have never been good at using a mouse, so it could be me.  In any case, I will let you view the rest of the photos of the park at my Flickr page.