I see three immediate advantages in my situation (small physical library, small budget, no shelf space for fiction):

• no shelf space used
• possibility of download-on-demand for fiction or non-fiction titles. No guessing work on the library’s part as to what fiction to buy. User’s needs are met quickly.
• can serve advantageously the students who are visually impaired.

and a bonus one:

• cool “toy” –> nice PR opportunity

Now, are the younger generations (millenials) into e-readers? I’ve tested the waters with my local Student Governement. I think they were intrigued but not completely sold. I’ll keep working on it and prepare a good proposal for their support. Maybe when e-textbooks are used more here.

Meanwhile, if Sony wants to do another project with a smaller university campus with a polytechnic vision, I’m available for a meeting…

UPDATE Since I’ve written this post, Brigham Young University Library has decided to shelve their Kindle pilot for the time being, waiting for clear, written approval from Amazon. See the Mormon Times and LISNews for more details.

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However, there is an existing Google Group. There will also be a meeting at ALA Chicago, in the ACRL Suite. If you are interested (even if not a ALA/ACRL member), it is requested that you fill out a survey in order to find the best time possible for all.

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Is this a increasing trend or is it more covered by the media? While I think the students have good intentions, the possibility of injury is present (crowd surfing, jumping off the building like at UTC). And, how does the event ends? At UNC, the crowd seemed to disperse rapidly on its own. At UTC, security shot mace over the crowd. At UK, someone pulled the fire alarm. Do you know of a library emergency plan that cover that situation?

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So, they use it to connect with friends, but couldn’t care less about businesses, brands or organizations trying to reach out to them that way. Which could means that very few students would follow a library’s Twitter profile, or if we extrapolate to other platforms, a library’s Facebook Page for example. Discouraging when students are the main clienteles I want to reach using those tools.

Rates of usage are very low:

Of the 250 Florida college students surveyed, 99 percent use social networking sites. However, only 15 percent have an account with Twitter and 34 percent have never even heard of the site. Some 58 percent of the students who have Twitter accounts never use the service or rarely log-on.

Is this only in Florida? Is this only for the lowerclassmen? If I look right now at the followers of my library’s Twitter profile, I see faculty, staff, other librarians and library organizations, an alumn and community members. No one that I could really call a true-blue student. I’m working on more promotion right now so maybe that will change a bit. I need to research what has worked elsewhere (because there are plenty of libraries on Twitter.)

I still think Twitter is a great way to push news and content to users but maybe those users need to be more educated on Twitter.

And by the way, my library’s profile is @usfplib

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My system has a WorldCat Local beta installation (and several Ebsco products). Users who have tried the beta have really liked the fact that you can search both books and articles with the same search. Easy access to the full text is a definite plus.

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I’m playing with the idea of a session for my faculty.

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Particularly interesting, and new, is the “popular passages” search, the subject headings, the ability to clip and paste from public-domain works and the personalization options now offered via “My Library” with a Google account. There’s also the links to Worldcat (which I find myself using more than my own library catalog now.) All in all, without mentioning the copyright issues, Google Book Search does get better and better.

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I would like to highlight two women here that I admire for their technological skills. I also have the pleasure of knowing them personally and, bonus, they’re librarians!

• Jill Hurst-Wahl is an expert on digitization and social web tools like Second Life. She has her own consulting firm, Hurst Associates and is a faculty member at Syracuse University at the School of Information Studies. She blogs at Digitization 101.
• Stacey Greenwell is an expert on information/learning commons. She is the Universtiy of Kentucky’s Information Commons “Hub” librarian and a former IT support professional. She blogs at The Uncommon Commons.

With these spotlights, I do not wish to undermine all the other women I know that make techology sing (and there are many of them) - please ladies, rock on!

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The two millionth article loaded into IEEE Xplore is “Intelligent Packet Dropping for Optimal Energy-Delay Tradeoffs in Wireless Downlinks,” by Michael J. Neely from the University of Southern California. It appears in the March issue of IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.

You can download a copy for free.

I remember when IEEE made this database available. And I remember making the case for it in a previous job. It was pretty much a no-brainer for us. Kudos to IEEE!

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• Concordia University Libraries, in Montréal, Qué is using a web form (?) to gather comments and publishes responses via a blog. Questions/comments and answers are coming at a good clip. The Libraries administration actually uses the comments to improve services (as evidenced by double-sided printed by default and a Working Group on Noise)
• Western Washington University, in Bellingham, WA held a “14 Days to have your say” event this past spring. They open up a blog where students could just say what they wanted about the libraries for a two-week period. Students could also comment on other posts. The libraries provided input and comment after the period and offered a report on what’s been acted on and addressed.

I’m interested in these initiatives because it has proved difficult to get my users’ opinions (I’m not naive enough to believe they don’t have any comments to make about the library). We have a webform that has basically been unused. The Facebook discussion board is silent as well. Sometimes, students will comment to the evening student assistant but do not wish to put their comments in writing. Maybe turning the thing into an event could bring the comments out, short of organized surveys or focus groups.

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Arabian Library, Scottsdale Public Library, Scottsdale, Arizona
richard+bauer architecture, LLC
about the project

C.V. Starr East Asian Library, University of California Berkeley
Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects
about the project

Chongqing Library, Chongqing, China
Perkins Eastman

Biblioteca Central Estatal Wigberto Jiménez Moreno, León, Guanajuato, Mexico
Pei Partnership Architects LLP

NYPL Francis Martin Library, Bronx, New York
1100 Architect, P.C. (not a direct link to the project)

Gentry Public Library, Gentry, Arkansas
Marlon Blackwell Architect
about the project

Minneapolis Central Library, Minneapolis
Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects
about the project

Palo Verde Library / Maryvale Community Center, Phoenix
Gould Evans Associates + Wendell Burnette Architects (no direct links to the project)
about the project

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• current and future -possibly permanent -budget cuts
• cancellation of ongoing commitments
• bigger preference of electronic over print
• shortening of “long tail” collection development
• changes in pricing models, which affects mostly negatively the bigger institutions.

ARL then makes recommendations to scholarly publishers about pricing, contract terms and renegociation, swith to electronic only, archiving, open access, and consultation with libraries.

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The new site will offer new features and enhancements, including:

• New graphical user interface: state-of-the art functionality streamlines access to content and reader
• New taxonomy book view: the website is now book-centric with faster title-by-title access to our premiere engineering collection
• Improved Advanced Search: faster search and access to more accurate content that saves time and delivers exact results
• McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Engineering embedded on all search pages: search and generate results from the world-renowned McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Engineering, which contains more than 18,000 entries containing synonyms, acronyms, abbreviations, and a pronunciation guide are included for each term.

Unfortunately, no FAQ or advance views are available before March 9th.

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Hey, does it matter where the students get it if they do use scholarly, quality sources? At least, they not Googling everything? Well, there’s the thorny, ginormous issue of copyright. I cannot condone students downloading illegaly but now, I cannot ignore it either.

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Because of the size of the system and its importance as a research library, this should be a very interesting process for anyone who works in an academic/research library system. No doubt a multi-year effort.

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(Thanks John Dupuis for the heads-up)

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A few months ago, I gave a seminar using synchronous electronic classroom software (Elluminate). While I was presenting my slides, the chat room was full of questions and back and forth among the participants. It was a bit distracting for me. However, it permitted some participants to answer other’s questions without having to interrupt me to get access to the microphone (and helped me in the process because I didn’t have answers for all of them). It permitted participants to create relationships and compare their experience. I imagine a Twitter back-channel to be very similar to this experience.

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Peer-to-Patent involves 1) review and discussion of posted patent applications, 2) research to locate prior art references 3) uploading prior art references relevant to the claims, 4) annotating and evaluating submitted prior art, and 5) top ten references, along with commentary, forwarded to the USPTO. The goal of this pilot is to prove that organized public participation can improve the quality of issued patents.

The Project has already been renewed for a year, until June 2009. Hopefully, it will be extended again because this is a great way to involve the general public in the scientific process and the scientific discourse.

(Thanks to Nicole Engard for the link)

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