No Excuses

Mal Booth
Originally uploaded by Paul Hagon

I have no excuses left.

Through my blog aggregator and other online networks I have a tsunami of information, ideas, pictures, videos, commentary and opinion directly related to my field of work, as well as peripheral work that impacts on my job.

Most of the people posting this information freely share their ideas and opinions and offer all sorts of help when asked.

A lot of theses ideas are relatively cheap, easy and simple to investigate and implement. All that is required to do similar work is the right attitude and mindset.

I have no excuses left not to create the best possible digital library experience I can for the users in my community.

Information Online 2009 - Day 1

Some thoughts and notes on day 1 of Information Online 2009. This is the first time I've travelled with a PC to a conference (have a Dell mini) and I've found it handy to note-take during sessions. Topping up the battery at random Power-point's in public spaces during breaks has worked ok, but wireless internet is too expensive for live blogging/twittering.


Highlights so far - Neerav's efforts with this page to aggregate all of the user-created content for the conference, meeting people who I've 'met' online via twitter and blog commenting, and meeting old colleague and friends.


Official opening by Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. He stressed a few times that the government's approach to ISP level filtering would be evidence-based, and that any technology used for such filtering would be well tested and trialled. I couldn't detect much anger in the room, but there wasn't much love either.


Next speaker was Sherman Young, Senior lecturer, Dept of media, music and cultural studies at Macquarie university, talking about the role of the book in an online world. I liked the way he tried to distinguish a 'book culture' apart from a 'print culture', and if we can understand and debate the use and value of books in an online world without becoming emotionally attached to the 'printed object'.

I was inspired by the work Paul Hagon from NLA has done mashing things like Google Maps, heritage images from The Commons on Flickr and geolocation services. Very cool...
Check out Paul's work on his blog: http://www.paulhagon.com/

Liz Lawley gave an outline as to why games and gaming is so important and central to most people's lives, and how effective games are as teaching tools, and encouraged libraries to understand and use games more in library services.

Exhibition hall was good, not quite the buzz I remember from previous conferences, but that may just be me. Looking forward to day 2!

People are sacred, objects are not

People (our customers, our colleagues) are sacred.

Objects (library books, library processes, computers) are not.

Pretend for a moment that nothing else exists and you have a choice between meeting the needs of an object or the needs of a person. Which would you choose?

Extrapolate that out to the everyday-ness of working in a busy library environment. Consider each and every transaction and decision. - which do you choose to be more important, objects or people?

People are sacred, objects are not.

Cool Christmas in Cafe Isabella

Cafe Isabella
Originally uploaded by Unbendable Girder

December in NQ, it's 33 degrees C outside, but these chaps look nice and cool inside the libary cafe!

Microsoft Surface in a public library

Microsoft Surface at Darien Library - found via John Blyberg's blog

The best part? They're putting it in the kids section!

From John's blog post:
We decided to put it in the Children’s Room for several very basic reasons. Kids will just “get it” immediately without any explanation. Kids are tactile creatures who are very comfortable with hands-on activity. If we can give them a piece of really cool technology they’ve never seen before and invite them to literally put their hands on it, I have no doubt they will not only be impressed, but empowered as well. They’re not going to ask silly questions like, “why would you put one of these in a library”, because they intuitively know why.

Moving use of a still image

Yesterday I caught up on a lot of reading (mostly online) and one of the few things that has stuck in my mind today is the following, found via Paul McGovern's blog - McGovern Online:

Every now and then you come across something that totally inspires you both in it's simplicity, and the power of it's underlying purpose....It's only one image - and a digitised one at that, which has then been edited and given a really beautiful sound track.

I'm not going to embed or link to the image, because I'd like you to head over to Paul's post and read his commentary on this truly beautiful, moving digital object.

Mo-vember - week 2

The moustache is coming along slowly. This picture was taken yesterday at our Library 2.0: making it work professional development day with our Mo-brarians team captain Keil, who is so brave he shaved a mohawk for Movember!

Movember is all about tackling men's health issues and being proactive in the fight against men's depression and prostate cancer.

To donate to our team you can either:

Click this link and donate online using your credit card or PayPal account,

or Write a cheque payable to

‘Movember Foundation', referencing my Registration Number 1723631 and mailing it to:
Movember Foundation
PO Box 292
Prahran VIC 3181

Remember, all donations over $2 are tax deductible.

The money raised by Movember is used to raise awareness of men's health issues and donated to the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and beyondblue - the national depression initiative. The PCFA and beyondblue will use the funds to fund research and increase support networks for those men who suffer from prostate cancer and depression.

Work / Life balance

This morning, in a conversation about work/life balance, a colleague said words to the effect of "you know, work/life balance is not something you get right and it carries on, it's something you have to make a decision about each and every day".
I've never thought about it like that before, and her comment really resonated with me for some reason...

Online reputation management

Found this morning via a Very Short List email:

Is your user name — the one you always register with online — unique? Use the Username Check to find out. The application searches Yahoo, eBay, Flickr, Tumblr, and 56 other popular websites, and tells you whether anyone else is using your favorite alias. If your name is available, sign up! — even if it’s a site you don’t use. (You don’t want to see some twit Twittering in your name, do you?)

Very handy for keeping track of where you have (or have not) registered.

Library service excellence is like making good espresso

Last week I enjoyed a three hour ‘espresso class’ – a wonderful birthday gift from my wife. I took our little espresso machine to a local coffee shop where the staff led us through the complexities of coffee making. My caffeine-fuelled brain was buzzing that night, and as I was thinking about the many steps of making a good espresso coffee, I somehow drew a correlation with library service excellence. In the cold light of morning, I think the link may be a bit of a stretch, but like a dog with a favourite tennis ball, I’ll run with the idea until it wears out!

A cup of coffee has many variables; type of coffee bean, origin of the coffee (altitude where it is grown, local soil characteristics etc), type of roast and blend of coffee beans in a roast, type and cleanliness of espresso machine, coffee grind, how the ‘basket’ is packed with coffee, pressure of hot water forcing the extraction, type of pump pressurising the water, length of extraction, texture and mix of the milk, plus a few more things I’ve probably forgotten. Get all of these things right, and you have an excellent cup of coffee. To earn a good reputation and loyal following, a barista has to get this mix right cup after cup, day after day. And that’s just the coffee. What about the café design and ambience, the cost of the coffee and the attitude of the staff. The morning after my espresso class, Timothy Greig tweeted this: hopes baristi realize their potential to change our world one coffee at a time: a short chat with Liz at Peoples' turned my :( upside down!

So how many elements are there to good service in a library – or any service/retail place? Location, design and layout, ambience, range and availability of stock, programs and events, wait times in queues, staff attitude, problem resolution, up-selling/value-adding etc. Like a good barista, library staff have the challenge of providing all of these elements, for every customer, every day, week-after-week. When all the elements are broken down like that, it almost sounds exhausting.

In helping to reach, then consistently keep high service levels, library staff face are a number of challenges.

• We can teach customer service skills, but can we teach people how to genuinely love serving people? This has implications for recruitment. Do we recruit for skills and experience or attitude?
• How do we keep experienced staff motivated and prevent staleness and boredom? Ground coffee is good for three weeks (I hope library staff last a bit longer than that!) but after a few years on a busy circulation desk, how ‘fresh’ is the customer service going to be? Perhaps there are opportunities for multi-tasking, job rotation, and self-governing teams.
• A good espresso coffee is a blend of coffee varieties, each type chosen for its unique characteristics. Can library staff keep ‘folding in’ the strengths of other professions like IT, teaching, public relations, marketing, retail, performance and museums into the library field to help perfect the ‘blend’ of service that a library offers?

Some other points...

• A barista constantly tweaks the coffee grind to suit the ambient temperature/humidity, the espresso machine and customer taste. How often do we tweak our collection development activities to match customer needs? Daily, weekly?
• It’s important to keep an espresso machine clean and functioning. It is of course critical to stay on top of the cleaning and maintenance of our library facilities (physical branches and virtual spaces).

I’m sure there are a whole heap more correlations to be made. Each time I enjoy a truly good cup of coffee, I won’t help but reflect on the mix of things that make a library service consistently great.

Movember 2008

During Movember (the month formerly known as November) I'm growing a Mo!

This picture is day 1 - no mo. I'll post updates through the month.

Movember is all about tackling men's health issues and being proactive in the fight against men's depression and prostate cancer.

To donate to my Mo you can either:
Click this link https://www.movember.com/au/donate/donate-details.php?action=sponsorlink&rego=1723631&country=au and donate online using your credit card or PayPal account, or
Write a cheque payable to ‘Movember Foundation', referencing my Registration Number 1723631 and mailing it to:

Movember Foundation

PO Box 292

Prahran VIC 3181

Remember, all donations over $2 are tax deductible.The money raised by Movember is used to raise awareness of men's health issues and donated to the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and beyondblue - the national depression initiative. The PCFA and beyondblue will use the funds to fund research and increase support networks for those men who suffer from prostate cancer and depression.
Did you know:
Depression affects 1 in 6 men....most don't seek help. Untreated depression is a leading risk factor for suicide.
Last year in Australia 18,700 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer and more than 2,900 died of prostate cancer - equivalent to the number of women who will die from breast cancer annually.

More information is available at http://au.movember.com/.

On a personal note...

I am immensely proud of my wife, who is in Brisbane today to receive a Peter Doherty Award for Excellence in Science and Science Education. She is one of five teachers in Queensland to receive an award in the category of Outstanding Teacher of Science. It's great to see her dedication, enthusiasm and passion for science teaching recognised in this way.

Amsterdam Central Library

Now this sounds like an amazing public library. Christine Mackenzie from Yarra Plenty Library has just returned from a round the world trip visiting some great libraries. Here she writes about the Amsterdam Central Library.

From Christine's post:

• It is the largest public library in Europe, at 28,000 sq m over 10 floors.
• It is the highest public point in Amsterdam and many visitors come for the view of the city.
• There are 2 eating places, a small café near the magazine area and a restaurant.
• The City of Amsterdam recognises that the library needs to be regularly refurbished and renewed. There is a budget for total renewal in 10 years.
• A Radio station is located in the library, broadcasting in the afternoon and evening to a city and national audience.
• There are 600 pcs, many of them Apple Macs.
• The Theater van ’t woord is professionally designed with the latest in light/ sound/ recording technology. It seats 270 (the 10th largest in Amsterdam) and is linked with the library. Nearly everything is possible: film/ music/ lectures and it is also linked to catering and conference rooms.

My favourite point - Librarians work on the floor, the information desks are designed to consult with the borrower side by side.
Nice work folks!

Keeping up to date with What's New

Of all the blogs and email lists I subscribe to, there are a precious few that are 'must-reads'. An item falls into that category only if the content is consistently interesting, new and unique. What's New from Mary Ann Kajewski at the State Library of Queensland is a definiate 'must-read'.
It an excellent round-up of sites (with brief descriptions) that covers useful websites and online applications, webcasts and other such events, training tools and tips and more. It is posted to a few SLQ email lists, and is available on the OPAL Training blog. The content is always good, the decriptions are short enough to quickly scan, but detailed enough inform, and each edition is short, not too many items to wade through.
This is one skill of librarians that should be promoted and encouraged more to non-library users - in a time of information overload, who do you go to in order to find 'the good stuff'.

Library 2.0: Making it work - Townsville Professional Development Day

Over the last few weeks I've been working with some wonderful staff from JCU Library to help plan...


LIBRARY 2.0: MAKING IT WORK
Townsville Professional Development Day

Learn how Web 2.0 is being applied in Townsville libraries, from other local librarians.
This information and networking day will include presentations on Second Life, iGoogle, blogs, wikis, instant messaging, and future trends in technology by staff from the tertiary, government and public library sectors. Anna Raunik (Executive Manager, Resorce Discovery) from State Library of Queensland is a special guest.

A program of the Professional Development Day is available, but I haven't figured out how to link a PDF here...yet. Drop me an email (warrenbc * at * hotmail * dot * com) and I'll send it to you.

Date: Tuesday 11th November 2008
Time: 10:00am – 3:30pm
Location: CitiLibraries Thuringowa, Von Stieglitz Room. 86 Thuringowa Drive, Kirwan
Cost: $25 (includes morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea)
RSVP: By 4th November to Claire Swift claire.swift@jcu.edu.au

Conference papers available - ALIA 2008

Some interesting reading can be found in the papers from Dreaming 08, the biennial conference of the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) which are now available: http://conferences.alia.org.au/alia2008/

Nice roundup of cloud computing links

Thanks to Bibliothekia, I now have a better understanding of cloud computing...

Towards a taxonomy of blogs - what kind of blog is yours?

In a commentary (Towards a taxonomy of blogs ) for the Creative Economy, Margaret Simons writes:

Sometimes language can obscure as much as it reveals, particularly when the world changes faster than our ability to create new vocabulary.
I think we have reached this situation with “blogging.” Never the most beautiful sound, the word “blog” is now manifestly inadequate to allow us to talk in sensible ways about the many different things that are happening in internet based publication by individuals and groups.
We need new words.
...
I am going to make an attempt to invent some new words for different kinds of blog, in the hope that readers will dive in, add and improve.

Margaret then goes on to list:
Pamphleteering Blogs
The Digest Blog
The Advocacy Blog
The Popular Mechanics Blog
The Exhibition Blog
The Gatewatcher Blog
The Diary
The Advertisement
The News Blog

I wouldn’t pretend for a second that the above taxonomy of blogs is exhaustive or final. But I hope I have demonstrated that when commentators sneer at blogs and ridicule any suggestion that they could be a useful and important adjunct, or even replacement, for aspects of the mainstream media, they would do well to define their terms.
Blogs do some things very well indeed. Some of the things they do are old functions in new clothes, and some of the things they do are new.
I suspect that in a decade, the word “blog” will no longer be widely used. Instead we will have a whole lot of new words to reflect the diversity of individual publishing on the World Wide Web.

So, where does your professional blog / your personal blog / your personal blog about your professional life fall?

Bloggers and Coders

Roy Tennant recently posted an interesting distinction between library bloggers and coders on his Library Journal blog. (For the record, I fall into the blogger camp, but would like to learn some more coding).

One of the most useful things I have read recently (apart from some great comments to Roy's post) was this post from Ryan Deschamps (The Other Librarian), titled "Under the Hood of Web 2.0 : the top ten programming concepts for librarians to understand"
Thanks Ryan!

Our Searchlight newspaper column

A few weeks ago Walt Crawford posted a question about library newspaper columns and blogs.
I responded with some information about our Searchlight column, and Walt kindly included it in two pages on the PALINET Leadership Network and one of my favourite wikis, Library Sucess: A Best Practices Wiki.
Thanks Walt!

Searchlight is a weekly column in the IT/Computer "Switched On" section of the Townsville Bulletin newspaper.

The aim of Searchlight is "to help make your internet searching more effective, efficient and fun, by reviewing search tools, providing hints and tips, and helping with tricky search topics."

Our aim is to take the search expertise of librarians, and make it available to a wide audience in a medium they regularly use (newspaper), using language that they understand.

You can subscribe to Searchlight via email (instructions here) and there is a blog, which stagnated for a while, but thanks to Walt's enquiry, I've started updating again as of last week.