Library clips

I’m so addicted to podcasts lately, I can’t walk to and from work these days without listening to my own personal radio station.

Yesterday I listened to an On The Pod episode with Kathryn Greenhill about Library 2.0.
Kathryn has the blog Librarians Matter and is also part of the multi-author blog Libraries Interact (anyone is welcome to register and become and author, just like a Cit J site like Perth Norg, infact I think they both work on the WordPress Multi-user platform).

Anyway, it turns out that I followed Kathryn on Twitter, but not her blog (I am now a subscriber of her blog being impressed by the podcast). A couple of weeks earlier I also found another aussie librarian blog the same way, I was following HeyJude on Twitter and now have subscribed to her blog.

This is quite a refreshing experience for me, over a year ago I moved from Libraries to Document Management, so I’ve lost touch will all things library 2.0, dropping 50 or so blogs I used to read. I’m subscribed to only a handful now, but I don’t really read them that often, but now with two cutting edge aussie library blogs I’m happy to know what’s happening on a more local scale.

Out of interest the library blogs I read nowadays apart from the two already mentioned are Tame The Web, The Distant Librarian, Information wants to be Free, and ResourceShelf.

My blog posts used to be library oriented, as you would expect coming from a blog called Library clips, but now my posts are more about web 2.0 tools, the user generated web and the participative culture…also knowledge management. Check out the Library category on my blog.

Since I’m doing a personal trip down memory lane, here are a few library posts from the past:
OPAC in a blog and library 2.0 (includes links to all my library related bookmark tags)
Library 2.0 Reference
SLE feeds for Library OPAC’s
OPML for OPAC
Library Reference blogs
Internal Library blogs

Back to it…

The podcast was not just on Library 2.0, it also touched on the modern library and librarian in general…plus an extensive portion on a library’s experience on SecondLife.

Kathryn mentioned it all started with RSS and then she was thrown into a new world, where she adopted social tools such as blogs, Flickr, wikis, and toolbars such as LibX for FireFox (search your catalogue from the toolbar or right-click, click articles in Google Scholar that are available in your library, or click on an ISBN to see if your library has that book).

A few interactive web 2.0 ideas were patrons taking photo’s on library event days and tagging them so they appear on the library website…and photo blogs where people can leave comments.

Other web 2.0 tools not mentioned that some libraries are using are Twitter, Meebo (IM), Squidoo (Topic guides), OPAC 2.0 (user tags and RSS…actually I here moreso Museums experimenting with user generated tags), podcasts, startpage widgets, etc…

As far as a librarian community, the biblioblogosphere was mentioned, which Crawford at large tackled at one stage. Librarians networking through the blogosphere sharing advice on new tools and library methods, it astounds me that this enigmatic way of sharing of intellect has not caught on like wildfire in the enterprise, why the snail pace. Maybe it’s culture, and as Kathryn mentions librarians are web savvy, so it’s natural they adopt blogs in a big way.

BTW, I like the term the biblioblabosphere for librarians that tweet.

Also a mention of librarians using wikis for best Practices and documentation eg. Library Success.

And I totally identify with the librarians perpetual nature of finding things for people, almost like everyone’s personal information agent…I know being a librarian didn’t shape me this way, I’ve always been of character to be excited about the latest and share it with everyone.

I guess part of the job is evolving to less personal agent and more helping people construct their own news radars…personalisation and customisation.

The librarians role as facilitator is more than ever cemented as a guide and perhaps gardner in the, using the old school term, information highway. Librarians organise information to make it more usable, and the web has so much more information that a librarian now has a bigger job.
Some say the difference is people don’t need to go to the library as they can navigate the web themselves. But not all people:
- do they have a computer
- do they know how to use a computer
- do they know how to search for content and sources
- do they know of websites that specialise in a topic
- do they know how to determine authoritative sources
- do they have access to research sources like journals, etc…

The library itself is also changing, I now hear that some public libraries are ditching Dewey (DDC) for more bookshop like topics, other things:
- Community space and information
- Coffee shop and food
- Fast Track
- Couches
- PC’s
- Laptop area
- Learning centre (social space)
- Print/Bind/Photocopy
- 24 hr access

And the old things like:
- Record History (archive newspapers, books, etc…)
- Deposit library (local heritage)
- Borrow instead of buy

The question was also asked is Library 2.0 augmenting the social captial in an online social space, maybe a Facebook group, or a MySpace page, a meebo room, a Ning network, etc…in Perth I see local social networks like Loconut in a similar space.

Another question was asked will you be able to browse the stacks in SecondLife, is the idea to mimic a physical space. I tell you what, it sounds like a fun experience to visit a virtual supermarket like Kinset, pick things off the shelf and read some metadata about the product, calculate the cost. I suppose you could just look at your previous shopping receipts and select things so the present trip auto-fills up your trolley, but that may take out the fun.

Direct Download

Just listened to an excellent On The Pod podcast by Duncan Riley (of TechCrunch) interviewing Bronwen Clune and Myles Eftos from the local startup Norgmedia (Norg stands for News Organisation).

As mentioned in the podcast and on TechCrunch this two person team have expanded from their beginnings as PerthNorg (which I posted back in Jan) to other Australian Capital cities, and they plan to take on the world.
They even have a brilliantly layed out Election07 topic page.

Now that they have a home page for Australia, their next move is to be able to cross post to all sites.

Just a recap a Norg is a citizen journalism type of site where you register a profile, from there you can post your own stories or write a blurb and link to a story, photo’s, video, just choose a category for your story. It reminds me of a news version of CommonGate, as you don’t have your own blog with it’s own name, well you kind of have a blog but it’s more a profile where all your posts can be seen (as well as a feed), your posts can also be seen on the category page you file it in (can’t remember if they also have tags).

There is also an active user ladder: Cadet, Level 1-5 Journalist, Top Level Journalist…not sure if this is based on frequency of posts, most commented or voted, but I like the idea of a type of authority and seriousness.

So this is an entirely user generated news site, I wonder in the future if there will be any resident blogs (actually I noticed they do eg. PerthMusic)

Anyway the homepage looks great, you have: Top News, Just In, Top Picture, Recent Comments…people can also vote for a story.

The podcast also mentions that you could have a Norg for the enterprise and education sectors…this isn’t quite an enterprise social network, but it is multi-user blogging, with a focus just on “news” not general stuff like social networks or usual blogs. But imagine the news part of a global companies intranet being a Norg, that’s just awesome.

A few other thoughts I had that was also mentioned in the podcast is mobile interaction, posting would be easy enough, even sending text, photo, video by email, but viewing a mobile version is a hard game. Not long ago when Australian footballer Ben Cousins was arrested it happened a couple of metres outside my work, I noticed this as I was walking to my car…this would of been an opportunity to capture some video or photo’s, write a blurb and post it to PerthNorg as it happens.

Once they are mobile, presence news would be a good feature (ala Twitter), being able to post a 140 character story by SMS.

A good idea to drive participation is competition’s or encouraging young journalists to go out on their local streets and do video interviews, etc…I’m not a journalist type person, but there a a cool bunch of skateboarders on my walk home that have actually got great moves, they band together in the local carpark. I read in the local paper about a skate competition in a near by suburb, this would be an ideal oppotunity to do a feature. This sort of thing might be bordering on current affairs or magazine type features, but it generates interest and has a stickiness value.

For more here is an interview with Bronwen Clune that also has a link to a newspaper article.

Other similar sites:

NewsVine (review), NowPublic, Wikio, NewsCloud, , Sweeble

Change.Org (a topic based Cit J site on social activism)

Lifeat (review), StreetAdvisor (review), YourStreet (review), FatDoor (review), Outside.In (review), Placeblogger (review), socialight

There was mention to bring back a more happening Classifieds section, I’d love to see this, especially a job hunting section. insiderPages and Yelp are a more general version, but a localised version would be great, as they mention in the podcast so far no-one in Australia has done this seriously. The only competition I see so far is, Loconut, the Perth local social network (kind of like a Facebook for Perth). This is kind of what Norg does, but is not focused on news, and more focused on community social networking, great for business and local community information…others are OnMyCity, Smalltown, BackFence, Baristanet, WickedLocal and H2otown.

[ADDED 23/11/07: Now get updates on latest news items via Twitter]

Direct podcast link

[ADDED 5/06/08: Roundup : EveryBlock, Nouri.sh, Twiddla, LinkBunch, PdfMeNot]