Library clips

This was going to be a comment in Dave Snowden’s blog post (which was a comment about one of my posts) but it has turned into a blog post.
It’s basically riffing on Dave’s comment about librarians having the real KM attitude of being people connectors, which gets knowledge flowing.

It also connects to a few library oriented posts I have published lately,
Why did I become a librarian?
Library 2.0 local

I’m in document management at the moment, but in my previous corporate librarian role a big part was in researching and sourcing information for staff, as well as updating people on the latestest in their industry.

This results in the librarian knowing the interests of lots of people in the organisation. We have to capitalise on this as we are one of the few people in the organisation who knows who likes what…so we introduce these people that have common interests, this is especially interesting if it’s cross disciplinary.

Introducing and linking people slowly creates a network, the librarian is overworked, but hopefully the network will start to manifest its own connections, but how will this happen (assuming people want to network) without enabling technologies.

Currently, and in most instances, people that have been introduced sustain their new relationship by sharing information by email, they might invite others to their informal group. This technology doesn’t provide a way to bump into others who may be interested in sharing this topic based information, in this situation we are still limited to physical connections a la the librarian.
The other part is that since this relationship doesn’t have a place (like a forum/CoP or profile pages) it may not sustain connectivity.

I wish I was using Google Reader in those days, as I could subscribe to various feeds related to a staff members interests and tag those subscriptions in a folder with that persons name. When I’m reading the feeds in that folder I tag useful items and they appear on a public page.
That person can bookmark that page or subscribe to it’s feed for daily updates.
But once they are updated, it becomes static, unless they email a link to someone else…there are better ways.

How can the librarian do this for everyone?

…instead people need to learn how to find feeds (librarians can still do their job of sourcing quality feeds) and use an RSS Reader themselves, and do their own bookmarking or link blogging.
Others can perhaps subscribe to their bookmarks or link blog feeds, and perhaps visit their public RSS Reader to see the feeds they read.

Plus people need to then push the information they are reading elsewhere, this works OK in email, but what is more effective is a more open and connected environment.

Explode this into a social network, and we all have profiles (listing expert tags), we have a blog, we add friends, compare feeds, subscribe to each others bookmarks, send links to each others, updated on friends activity, send private and public messages.
This is a sense of place that solidifies our relationship and interests, but much more than a group page, as it’s a profile network, endless connections and discovery can be made, it’s more an ecosystem.

See an RSS Reader social network like FeedEachOther, a Lifestream/people network like Ziki and Mugshot groups, link sharing networks, link blogs like and Siphs and Google Shared Stuff, collaborative recommendation, or everyone’s darling of 2007, Facebook.

Social networks can now replace the librarian being the people connector; RSS Readers enable people to read content from both internal and external feeds, we can send links to our friends, discover people, and now we have blogs to share thoughts and feedback and to spread and discuss news that we read.

These technologies are much more enabling, in the past the librarian would create various topic newsletters for various audiences, I guess now we could call this topic blogging and bookmarking.
Now everyone can do it for themselves, they can subscribe to content, do their own blogging and bookmarking and we can subscribe to each other (our trust filter, common abstraction, shared context) in a network and share and communicate.
This connection is with trusted people, we can also discover people and content (capitalise on weak ties).

So perhaps Dave Snowden is right…librarians being people connectors are what KM is about…creating knowledge flow.

The librarian can take a sigh of relief and let the network do its thing, and once again the librarian becomes the facilitator.

A post from yesterday on Library 2.0 got a comment from Suelibrarian, she re-phrased something I was trying to say for the better (that’s the thing about blogging sometimes, it’s so quick to publish you don’t really go over things much, as there is something to publish round the corner).

Anyway Sue put it “…being a librarian didn’t shape us that way- we become librarians because we are shaped that way”.

Now this got me thinking, why did I become a librarian?

Even though I don’t currently work in a library, I’m still a librarian through and through.

NOTE: Since I no longer follow the biblioblogosphere I’m not sure if this meme has done the rounds…

When I was changing career from the film/music industry and I wanted to work somewhere that reminded me of the open space and and peacefulness of the cinema, the library came to mind.

Ever since a kid I’ve always been a researcher (as is my brother), whatever topic we were exploring we had to read old and new books on the topic, actually we were bibliography hoppers, we had to explore authenticity by reading everything in the bibliography of every book (checking sources like a detective)…how did a writer come to their conclusions-who were they heavily influenced by, etc…

I think our interest in reading and researching mostly came about because we had the whole Britannica encyclopedia in our bedroom, as it didn’t fit anywhere else in the house…so we’d research all night on existential philosophers like Swedenbourg, Nietzsche, Sartre, Huxley…or plant medicines…Atlantis…etc…

Anyway, when we are interested in something we have this addictive nature to know everything about it, and become quite emersed…it’s quite a burden.

I’ve always organised my music, video’s (even clothes at one stage) into categories…this is the sure sign of a librarian…I think being a Virgo helps as well.

Lastly, I have a nature to update people about the latest about stuff.
As I mentioned when I’m into a topic I’m emersed, so when I was into the Melbourne music/film scene I worked in a eclectic video shop, played in a band and went to underground shops. I’d let my friends know what was happening most nights (there is so much art/media culture in Melbourne).

So when it comes to the web, I’m the same, I come across so much information, that if I see a blog post on real estate, I can’t let it slip, so I send it to a friend.

I haven’t mentioned anything selfless here, like helping people…yikes!

And I am not a typical introvert or extrovert (actually I’m kind of in the middle), I’m quite vocal in the company of people I know.
It astounds me that the librarian archetype of the stern older lady with her glasses hanging from her chest shhhhhing people, is still in the general psyche. And that people who don’t frequent libraries think they are stale, boring and for bookworms or geeks. Libraries are essential as too many people are being entertained these days instead of entertaining themselves. Our society has more than ever before got this fetish with celebrity and entertainment culture, this illusion of intimacy, and just being the passive spectator (viewer).
This is not a good thing, people can become bored easily, are not as creative, cannot entertain themselves, leading to frustration, etc…

Anyway, they are the basic qualities:

- perpetual organising and categorising
- open space and sanctuary
- researcher
- information consumer
- messenger

Coming full circle this comment rings true, “…being a librarian didn’t shape us that way- we become librarians because we are shaped that way”.

Why did you become a librarian, or how did it come to be?

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

ChaCha is a different search experience, it seems more akin to asking a reference librarian for help.

You can use it as a normal search engine by hitting the search button, or you can choose to hit the “search with guide button”.

This opens up a sidebar window where a chosen expert or guide (according to your search term) is available then and there to chat with you in order to help you find what you are looking for…so far they have employed 10,000 Guides.
After a chat they will return some useful websites, and you can rate their service, very interesting indeed.

The great thing is that it learns from itself (turns this information into knowledge so to speak), from the website:

“The more you use ChaCha, the smarter and faster ChaCha becomes! Because ChaCha indexes all the questions that are asked and associates them with the search engines and resources used by Guides, and the links visited by the users, ChaCha knows where to look and what the best human-approved resources are for each question or topic. “

It’s kind of achieving a similar purpose as a Q&A (expert locator) service eg. Yedda, but has more of the immediacy of Qunu (ask an expert via an IM chat).

I wonder how they get enough people to cover all topics, maybe it could be made social, kind of like Yedda…since Yedda knows your interests, questions from one user are sent to other users for a possible answer, plus whoever else notices the question posted on Yedda.
This way if there are 500,000 users, the system has from 500,000 people to choose, but it has to know who is online now…the plus side is you have more experts, but will they really experts (quantity vs. quality).

This brings me to attention, being asked questions according to my interests is great, but what about the other services I use, I bet Yedda would be even more precise in the questions they ask me if they knew my whole social identity or personal content network.
If I had an attention file representing my personal content network (bookmarks, photos, RSS reading, searching, etc…) and plugged this into Yedda (as well as explicitly telling it what my interests are) it would be able to more accurately target experts and inturn have more of a chance of getting an accurate answer.
Pity attention is proprietry, why can’t we just all get along with OPML.

NOTE: Other services like StumbleUpon could really benefit from attention data, as their game is recommendation]

This is a very clever idea for libraries to adopt, perhaps a network of libraries could offer their own version of ChaCha, kind of like ChaCha closed groups.

[ADDED: I just discovered ChaCha Underground which seems like a social version of ChaCha…it lists topics and guides (a way to get a profile is to be invited by a guide).
Each guide has a profile page and an RSS feed, and their latest search results, visitors can leave comments…what about having an online status so a visitor can IM a guide.]

Related:
Attention in APML
whonu then ZingBoxx : pre-made search topics

LibWorm is like someone made a Rollyo with over 1000 LIS related blog feeds. In fact even made smaller Rollyo’s according to subject…technically this is incorrect as Rollyo searches the HTML content of blogs, whereas LibWorm is searching in the RSS content of blogs, so it’s more like ScoopGo. See more search rollers.

Actually I’m not sure if you can limit your search to a category or subject, since each category or subject doesn’t list its source list, I can’t test this…

What is interesting is that it is also a newsmastering portal for all things LIS, taking the baton from LIS feeds. If you look on the category or subject page, you will see lots of topics, each has a spliced RSS feed, clicking on one will show you the latest posts from the blog sources populating a topic, each hit will link to the source, but only thing is the topic doesn’t list the sources.

And that’s not all, you can even clip a hit to your own clippings folder (have to sign up to use this feature), signing up to MyLibWorm also gives you a space to subscribe to feed categories or subjects in an RSS Reader called “Reading List”:
- posts you read will go into your reading history, and you can remove a post as well, in all it’s the basic elements of an RSS Reader, only thing is your reading choice is default to a river of news.

The sources you chose for your Reading List live in “My Favourite Feeds”, basically a list of the feed categories or subjects you have subscribed to, and each displaying an RSS feed, all it needs is an OPML.
Problem I have is “My Favourite Feeds” should really be called “My Reading List”, and “My Reading List” should be called “My river of news”.

For LIS journals see Informed Librarian, for LIS e-prints see e-LIS, and more.