Annual 2009: Let the Games Begin</h1> <article> <h1>Annual 2009: Let the Games Begin</h1> <p>Daniel A. Freeman — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:52:07 -0500</p> <p>Annual kicked off today, and at one of Chicago's swankier hotels I took part in a distinctly non-swanky event: Open Gaming Night. In an elegant ballroom at the downtown Hilton, a group of professionals from around the country gathered to kick back, socialize and have some fun.</p> <p></p> <p>There were plenty of attendees from the time the doors opened, as eager gamers of all ages gathered at tables to play board games:</p> <p></p> <p>Rock out to the Ramones:</p> <p></p> <p>Or, lest you think this was a gathering that encouraged people to become couch potatoes, to Dance:</p> <p></p> <p>The event was a great way to kick off a conference that--as anyone who has attended knows--can get a little intense. Librarians from many different types of facilities, from big cities and small towns, wore bright smiles as they played games together. Some old friends caught up, and a lot of people made new ones. As we get ready for a weekend spent hustling around Downtown Chicago for meeting after meeting, it was great to start off with some genuine fun.</p> <p> </p> </article> <article> <h1>Back to Basics?</h1> <p>Kate Sheehan — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:23:41 -0500</p> <p>Here in the Northeast, it seems that summer means pretending we’re living in the Pacific Northwest. We spent much of June huddled under umbrellas and hoping our patrons don’t snap when they see our cheerful suggestions for beach reading. Librarians choose lighter fare for our pleasure reading in the warmer (or wetter, as the case may be) month to offset summer’s serious work. Academic librarians (I am told) cram their big projects into the studentless (or at least student – light) months between school years. Public librarians have summer reading, countless storytimes, bored teenagers and harried adults to work with. For many of us summer also means a new year. Fiscally, that is. </p> <p>As we barrel into this dismal fiscal year, libraries are scrapping to keep funding, prevent lay-offs and even stay open. Things like cool technology and even books start looking like objects of unrequited love. Where will we be without our stuff?  </p> <script src="http://video.bigthink.com/player.js?height=344&autoplay=0&loadStartTime=1247089379266&width=516&embedCode=Q1MHhpOqN73cQgraiUwKaHfXMFao9ZzQ"></script> <p>On the Big Think, Alan Webber, founding editor of Fast Company magazine, talks about finding work that’s important during an economic downturn. His point, he says, is not to be “Pollyannaish” about a poor economy, but to look at the paths people take when keeping up with the Joneses is no longer an option. </p> <p>As librarians head to ALA or fire up their RSS feeder and favorite twitter application to follow ALA blog posts and tweets, I suspect we’ll be hearing a lot of talk about what libraries are doing to make do. Surely, there will be a focus on free or cheap technology and DIY solutions to complicated technical problems. </p> <p>But I hope librarians get some time to step back and, as Webber is suggesting business types do, engage in a little reflection about what’s important. Webber is exhorting individuals to think about their own core values, but librarians have a dual purpose. We have our own interests, principles and drive, but we also have an institutional obligation to our communities. </p> <p>What our communities want is often very different from what we think is interesting or even necessary. We can see this in our book buying and the trap of “ought to” when we buy books that ought to circulate but don’t. Our tech focus can easily drift to issues and technologies we find interesting or important but our patrons don’t care about. In lean times, will your patrons be more grateful for an OPAC enhancement that lets them add reviews or another computer for their job hunts? </p> <p>Even our most regular users often don’t know what the library has to offer. Our reputation as “the book place” has a wonderful advantage here. Library use is up – people are coming through our doors for books, movies, public computers and we have an opportunity to keep them coming back to our most basic assets. Our budgets are tighter, but a new patron is just as likely to be impressed by that film series you’ve been running for years or the book review blog you started a few years ago as they are whatever it is your staff is lusting after but can’t afford.</p> <p>Like Webber, I have no wish to be saccharine about the crisis we’re all facing. But like his business students, libraries are stripped down to (or past) essentials. If MBA students can use the fiscal crisis to become more interesting, libraries should be able to fascinate.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Implementing RDA: Call for the Alpha Geeks of Library Metadata</h1> <p>Patrick Hogan — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:32:44 -0500</p> <p>"Forget Silicon Valley," writes publisher Tim O'Reilly in a Forbes.com <a title="Where Real Innovation Happens" href="http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/03/innovation-tim-oreilly-technology-breakthroughs_0203oreilly.html">article</a>:</p> <p><i>It turns out that many of the great waves of creative destruction that have reinvented Silicon Valley didn't start there. More important, they didn't even start with the profit motive. Rather, they started with interesting problems and people who wanted to solve them, exercising technology to its fullest because exploring new ideas was fun. I call these people "alpha geeks." They are smart enough to make technology do what they want rather than what its originator expected. </i></p> <p> </p> <p>The managers of established organizations in mature industries are naturally inclined to identify operational efficiencies and control costs. As libraries and their vendors deal with the constraints of the recession and declining budgets, controlling costs is imperative. "Wait and see" is the reasonable default. Therefore, the innovative breakthroughs in implementing <a title="RDA" href="http://www.rdaonline.org/">RDA</a> are most likely to come from the fringes of the cataloging community, the mythical garages of libraryland.</p> <p>The most visible test of RDA will be seen in the testing of the national libraries; that is the United States national libraries. Even from my vantage point within the project, it is unclear what, if any, testing will be conducted in national libraries outside of the U.S. The viability of RDA has been challenged most vehemently here. The testing led by Library of Congress is a byproduct of its Working Group Report, which was critical of RDA. The methodology for testing is described <a title="Proposed Methodology for U.S. National Libraries RDA Test" href="http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/rda/testing.html">here</a>. My impression is that cataloging communities outside of the U.S. are more receptive to RDA. Presumably, testing will happen, but less formally.</p> <p>As co-publishers of RDA, ALA Publishing is just beginning to reach out to library systems vendors to explore ways that can incorporate the tools and perhaps the content of RDA. Part of the product will include schemas (.xsd files) made available at no cost. A schema is a record template of sorts--vendors might use it as a building block in their cataloging modules. It's possible that a Software Development Kit (SDK) could make RDA instructions available to institutional subscribers through cataloging modules. All of this, however, entails development costs. None of the major ILS products use native XML databases, so integration with RDA may be more likely at the front-end or Web services layer.</p> <p>We asked Marshall Breeding about other information systems that might be considered candidates for FRBR records created using RDA. He suggested we look at institutional repositories and digital object management systems. I don't know if the schema will be useful to these systems, but they will at least support tinkering.</p> <p>Schemas, which will be made available from the RDA product site, could be loaded into any XML editor. Nannette Naught will demonstrate such use at the presentation "Look Before You Leap: Taking RDA for a Test Drive," Saturday afternoon at ALA's Annual Conference. During the weekend, we will be meeting with librarians who catalog music and cultural objects. We hope to get specialized communities involved in beta testing RDA and creating schema. In our product development, we are working with Diane Hillmann and Jon Phipps of Metadata Management Associates. We initiated registration of RDA Vocabularies in the <a title="NSDL Registry" href="http://metadataregistry.org/">NSDL Registry</a> with the <a title="dcmi-rda task group" href="http://dublincore.org/dcmirdataskgroup/">DCMI-RDA</a> project. Future plans include a discussion layer at the registry to enable community input. Jennifer Bowen's team at the <a title="eXtensible Catalog project" href="http://www.extensiblecatalog.org/">eXtensible Catalog</a> project is reviewing RDA entity relationship diagrams (available as PDFs <a title="RDA home page" href="http://www.rdaonline.org/">here</a>) and helping with the development of schemas. A common theme of these projects, echoed in the writing of Karen Coyle, Jonathan Rochkind, and others, is interoperability of library data, a vision of the creators of RDA and a benefit that, if achieved, would outweigh many costs.</p> <p>What will you do with RDA that we co-publishers, the Joint Steering Committee, and the Committee of Principals don't expect?</p> </article> <article> <h1>TechSource Forum: Annual is Coming!</h1> <p>Daniel A. Freeman — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:54:49 -0500</p> <p><a title="Annual" href="http://www.ala.org/ala/conferencesevents/upcoming/annual/index.cfm">Annual</a> is just around the corner. Our bloggers discuss what they're most looking forward to this year in the Windy City:</p> <p><b>Jason Griffey: </b><span>ALA Annual is always a blur of activity, and it's sad to say that while I tend to overplan like crazy, it usually takes me days after I get back before I really know what the most valuable part of the whole Annual experience was. There's a whole lot to look forward to this year, from the first ALA Annual Unconference to some great speakers (I'm looking forward to Junot Diaz, for example). But what I may be looking forward to the most is seeing what the effect of the </span><a href="http://connect.ala.org/node/75938" title="LITA Electronic Participation Task Force Recommendations on virtual participation">LITA Electronic Participation Task Force Recommendations on virtual participation</a><span> have on the conference. I'm hoping that a myriad of groups uses the suggestions to increase the number of people that benefit from the ALA Annual 2009 content, even if they can't make it to Chicago in person. I'm also looking forward to, of course, the </span><a href="http://www.yourbigwig.com/showcase" title="3rd Annual BIGWIG Social Software Showcase">3rd Annual BIGWIG Social Software Showcase</a><span>, on Monday July 13th in McCormick Place West room w-184! If you haven't experienced a Social Software Showcase, I can guarantee that they are unlike any other program at ALA. Come join us and see what I'm talking about. </span><br /><b><br /> Tom Peters: </b><span>I'm really looking forward to the unconference preconference on Friday. Meredith Farkas and Michelle Boule are "unorganizing" this day-long event, which is yet another great presidential initiative from Jim Rettig and his band of merry pranksters.</span><b> </b><span>At the risk of revealing my overall nerdiness, I have to admit that I'm also looking forward to visiting the exhibits and speaking with vendors this year. Quite a few innovative resources and services are launching. It will be interesting to discuss them with vendor reps and other librarians. In general, even if Paddy Bauler, the ebullient Alderman of Chicago's 43rd Ward, was prescient in the 1950's when he noted, "Chicago ain't ready for reform," I think this ALA Annual Conference, 32 years after Paddy quaffed his last, will be remembered for the general mainstreaming and diffusion of technological twists that have been recently tried and tested: unconferences, online events, events in virtual worlds, blogs, wikis, tweets, videos, etc. ALA Annual Conference 2009 in the Windy City may be remembered years hence as the first major instance of a "reformed" new-style professional conference. It promises to be an exciting, high-energy conference. </span><b> </b></p> <p><strong>Kate Sheehan:</strong><b> </b><span>This is only my second ALA Annual, so in many ways I’m still figuring ALA out. My calendar is filled with conflicting sessions that all sound wonderful – I still don’t know how I’ll decide between Nora Rawlinson and Top Tech Trends! I’m thrilled by the idea of an ALA unconference, which seems like the perfect way to capitalize on the power of the friendly hallway conference at libraryland’s largest gathering. Last year, I found that walking the exhibit hall with other librarians was a great way to get ideas and spark interesting conversation about both the vision for and the day-to-day practicalities of our libraries and I already have an exhibit hall date with Cindi Trainor. Of course, I’m always happy to see my fellow TechSource bloggers and I can’t wait to see Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me (one of my favorite NPR shows!) live. </span><br /><b><br /> Michael Stephens:</b><span> Chicago in July will be beautiful: the lake, the cityscape, the hustle/bustle. The location this year is perfect for Dominican GSLIS students to attend - with exhibit passes or for the conference itself. I'm most excited about our students getting to see what a full-blown Annual is like because in class, when we talk about associations and memberships it doesn't have the same impact as being there. I'd urge LIS students who are near Chicago to take advantage of this opportunity to see the throngs of library folk. I'm doing a little bit of speaking as well, but I'm very excited to hear some of the folks I'm speaking with: Alan Gray from Darien Library, Bob Fox from Georgia Tech and </span><span><font size="3"><font size="2">Erik Boekesteijn from DOK Delft Public Library, all talking about their innovative services and spaces.</font> </font></span><span>I am also really excited about reconnecting with colleagues I only get to see at conferences. </span></p> <div><b><br /> Cindi Trainor:</b><span> Each year's Annual Conference has its own flavor and highlights. This year, the thing I'm perhaps looking most forward to is meeting up with so many folks from my library during the conference. With Annual Conference a relatively short drive away, </span><a href="http://library.eku.edu/" title="EKU Libraries">EKU Libraries</a><span>' leadership team decided to support attendance of several of our library staff (who are all library school students or recent graduates) at the </span><a href="http://www.ala.org/ala/conferencesevents/upcoming/annual/2009/Empowerment.cfm" title="Empowerment Conference">Empowerment Conference</a><span>, a conference-within-a-conference held each year at Annual with library support staff in mind. This year's Empowerment Conference agenda is packed with great sessions addressing everything from leadership skills to protecting First Amendment freedoms in our libraries. Annual Conference can be huge and overwhelming even for seasoned conference attendees; I hope that the smaller scope of the Empowerment Conference--and of course, the exhibits!--is exciting and informative for all.</span></div> </article> <article> <h1>Creating Zones with Heart</h1> <p>Michael Stephens — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:59:06 -0500</p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"><font size="2">Greetings from Northern Michigan! The days of summer are flying by and I’m splitting my time between trying to wear out our new Labrador Retriever Cooper and prepping for upcoming talks at ALA Annual. I’ll be presenting for LLAMA BES (that’s the Library Leadership & Management Association Buildings and Equipment Section if you’re spinning the wheel of ALA acronyms) in a program called “Library 2.0 Buildings: Creating Zones with Heart.” </font></p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"><font size="2">I’m excited about the topic because sometimes we get so caught up in talking about technology, the spaces and places of our libraries take a backseat. Libraries need to encourage the heart in the physical realm as well as the online. </font></p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"><font size="2">I agree with folks like <a href="http://www.oclc.org/news/publications/newsletters/oclc/2005/267/stayinthegame.htm" title="John Beck">John Beck</a> that</font><font size="2"> the library can offer many spaces and opportunities to varied groups. We should constantly be looking for creative ways to create zones in the library for our different user groups. I also think it should be okay to have fun at the library - gaming, DDR, creation of stuff, etc - as well as make it comfortable and useful for others. I’m not just writing about public libraries but about academic libraries too. </font></p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"><font size="2">For my part of the program, I’ve been batting around these “zones” in my head on long walks with Cooper at the “Quiet Area” pond nearby. I’d be very interested in feedback from our readers about these zones and any others they may have in their libraries.</font></p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"><b>Community Zone</b></p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"><font size="2">A space for the community to gather encourages people to use the library not only as a place to get “stuff,” but as a central, integral part of people’s lives. Think public libraries and meeting space or think academic libraries and the campus community the library serves: students, faculty and staff.</font></p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"><font size="2">One goal for a library might be to re-establish the idea of the commons - that shared space that can become many things to many people and everyone feels ownership. I want our constituents to feel strong ownership of our buildings and services.</font></p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"><b>Creativity Zone</b></p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"><font size="2">This zone encourages people to express themselves via technology or other media. Podcasting stations, video production areas, image manipulation setups, space set aside for writing activities, and any other creative endeavour may find its way into the library.</font></p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"><b>Curiosity Zone</b></p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"><font size="2">What do you want to know today? That could be the motto for this zone - where any and all questions are answered via online and (gasp!) print resources by knowledgeable and engaged staff. I’m reminded of </font><a title="John Blyberg’s “Let’s Be Curious with our Users” post riffing on Seth Godin’s points about curiosity." href="http://www.blyberg.net/2008/01/22/lets-be-curious-with-our-users/%29">John Blyberg’s “Let’s Be Curious with our Users” post riffing on Seth Godin’s points about curiosity.</a></p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"><b>Collaboration Zone</b></p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"><font size="2">This zone encourages people to come together to work on projects or complete a task. It might be teen-centered, or an “office on the go” type set up, or a craft/art type space or a technology rich environment, but my guess is it will be a mash up of all of these things.</font></p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"><b>Caring Zone</b></p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"><font size="2">This zone should encompass the entire space. The wonderful thing - and the thing that brings this post to TechSource is through all of these zones there are two very important threads that tie them together and make them work -technology and people. We need technology - all shapes, sizes, and cost factors - to create some of these spaces, but we also need dedicated encouragers/facillitators to help people learn, experience, and utilize the space. The most important one is the people of course - a caring mindset trumps spiffy expensive technology everyday. The mindset should also be humanistic, </font><a title="kind," href="../../../../../../blog/2009/05/plugging-in-with-kindness.html">kind,</a><font size="2"> and in all ways encouraging. </font></p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"><font size="2">Sometimes it seems we get so hung up on control and workflow, that we miss opportunities to involve users with the library and library staff. A recent example i</font><a title="s this one, from a photo by Kathryn Greenhill :" href="http://tametheweb.com/2009/06/26/no-you-may-not-have-a-friendly-chat-with-library-staff/">s this one, from a photo by Kathryn Greenhill :</a></p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"><font size="2">“They have added a half wall so that staff and patrons cannot make eye contact or see each other,” she writes. “It felt really dehumanizing to stand on one side of the barrier, centimetres from someone in a building built on service and not be able to smile or say hello.”</font></p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"><font size="2">The library should be human. The library should be there for users. The library should be built by involving users every step of the way. And spaces and places within our walls should reflect that. At the LLAMA BES program we’ll hear two notable library innovators who have achieved these goals, sharing and talking about their spaces: </font></p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"><font size="2">Case Study 1: Darien Library, Darien, Connecticut, Alan Kirk Gray, Assistant Director - Operations</font></p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"><font size="2">Case Study 2: The Commons, Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta, GA, Robert E. Fox, Jr., Associate Director, Libraries</font></p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"> </p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"><font size="2">Until then, please share your “Zone Stories” here and read more about the case study locations:</font></p> <p style="margin:0px;font-family:Helvetica;font-style:normal;font-weight:normal;"> </p> <p><span style="text-decoration:underline;"><a href="http://www.alatechsource.org/blog/2008/08/keeping-the-library-relevant-a-tour-of-the-georgia-tech-library-learning-commons.html">http://www.alatechsource.org/blog/2008/08/keeping-the-library-relevant-a-tour-of-the-georgia-tech-library-learning-commons.html</a></span></p> <p><a href="http://www.alatechsource.org/blog/2008/06/on-the-information-experience-an-ala-techsource-conversation-with-john-blyberg.html">http://www.alatechsource.org/blog/2008/06/on-the-information-experience-an-ala-techsource-conversation-with-john-blyberg.html</a></p> <p><a href="http://www.alatechsource.org/blog/2009/05/plugging-in-with-kindness.html">http://www.alatechsource.org/blog/2009/05/plugging-in-with-kindness.html</a><br /></p> </article> <article> <h1>Planning technology for the next 30 years</h1> <p>Jason Griffey — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:30:26 -0500</p> <p>I don't often post specifically about things I'm involved in at my real job (Head of Library IT at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga), and try instead to examine general technology useful to libraries of all types. But this month, I'd like to talk about something that I've been involved in for almost 2 years that has recently come to a head (especially as it concernstechnology). I've spent the better part of the last month hip-deep in planning the technology for UTC's brand new academic library.<br /> </p> <p>We had some scares over the last couple of week regarding the funding for the new library, but it's officially part of the budget now. We've locked down the floorplans, are about to lock down the exterior look of the building, and I'm working on pulling together the technology infrastructure plan. This new building is being designed to have a lifetime of 30 years, so some of the decisions we're making will resonate for decades, in the same way that decisions made over 30 years ago are still affecting us in our current building. So how do you plan for technology 30 years out? What are we trying to do with the technology for the new building, both for the infrastructure and the front-line tech? Over the next year, I'm going to try and cover at least some of the decisions we've made about the technology in the new building.<br /> <br /> We decided very early on in the process that we believed that technology use in the library is never going to lessen in importance. We are going to try and embed technology in as transparent a way as possible for the end user, with the exception of a few showpiece objects. However, as many of you know, transparent for the end user is far, far from transparent for the library staff.<br /> <br /> One of the challenging parts of the planning is that because of the rules on spending the capital funds set aside by the State, none of the building budget can actually be spent on PCs or other non-infrastructure technology. We are going to have to find another funding source for computers, but we are trying to ensure that the infrastructure that we can spend money on is top tier.<br /> <br /> We are currently planning on having about 2000 Cat-6 ethernet jacks in the building, in addition to wireless coverage on all 5 floors extending outside the building onto the patio and seating areas. The network is being designed to be redundant to failure of individual hubs, as well as to limit any double failures to only half of any floor in question. More fail-safes are being added on floors with the heaviest patron usage.<br /> <br /> We are planning gigabit connections throughout the building, with the potential to run fiber in the future if it becomes needed. In addition to the pipes that we need to be able to do really anything in the building, there are a ton of pieces that we still have to plan for. Signage systems, webservers, fileservers, RAID systems, cameras, card swipes for doors...just a ton of technology.<br /> <br /> What technology do YOU wish had been planned for when your library was built?</p> </article> <article> <h1>Getting Virtual: ALA Works to Increase Electronic Member Participation</h1> <p>Cindi Trainor — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:55:36 -0500</p> <p>Hot on the heels of the latest issue of <a id="vt.k" href="../../../../../../ltr/index" title="Library Technology Reports">Library Technology Reports</a>, <a id="m0qn" href="../../../../../../ltr/collaboration-20" title="Collaboration 2.0">Collaboration 2.0</a>, is a toolkit designed to help ALA members who want to bring remote participants into a meeting or who want to stream a session’s audio or video out to a remote audience. A group of ten LITA members has been working together for the last few months via email and on the <a id="lfpa" href="http://wikis.ala.org/lita/index.php" title="LITA wiki">LITA wiki</a> to create the <a id="x-bf" href="http://wikis.ala.org/lita/index.php/EParticipation_Task_Force_Recommendations" title="EParticipation Task Force Recommendations">EParticipation Task Force Recommendations</a>.</p> <p> <br /> What’s in a Name?</p> <p>The <a id="y43w" href="http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/governance/council/index.cfm" title="ALA Council">ALA Council</a> voted to adopt several recommendations made by its <a id="" href="http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/governance/council/councilcommittees/tfoemp.cfm" title="Task Force on Electronic Member Participation">Task Force on Electronic Member Participation</a>, which, after the 2007 Annual Conference, was assigned to “examine existing documents and develop recommendations to adapt ALA policies to help<br /> the Association move forward with effective e-participation practices.” LITA volunteered to assist in this effort, and division President Andrew Pace appointed the LITA Electronic Participation Implementation Task Force. The Task Force was asked to answer this question: “if ALA provides Internet connectivity in hotels as well as the convention center for Annual Conferences and Midwinters, what can we do to help regular committees use it to connect with absent members at no additional cost?” The provision of wireless at the hotels is proving to be cost-prohibitive, but meeting coveners in the convention center have an array of free tools to choose from.</p> <p>What Do You Need?</p> <p>One of the decisions that must be made by members wanting to provide e-participation opportunities is to decide whether two-way communication is necessary. Is feedback or input required from remote participants? In what form will that input be gathered? Is it important to capture that feedback for later reading or replay? If so, should the remote content be integrated with what is said and shared face-to-face? The Task Force put together a <a id="k2-f" href="http://connect.ala.org/node/75941" title="visual decision tree">visual decision tree</a> that should help meeting planners make an informed choice about which tool(s) to use.</p> <p>Want to share meeting happenings in real-time? Try using <a id="xh8h" href="http://wikis.ala.org/lita/index.php/Twitter" title="twitter">Twitter</a> or <a id="jo6y" href="http://wikis.ala.org/lita/index.php/Live_blogging" title="live blogging">live blogging</a>.</p> <p>Have a committee member who can’t make it to Chicago? Bring her into the room via <a id="fk0w" href="http://wikis.ala.org/lita/index.php/Conference_call#Skype" title="Skype">Skype</a>.</p> <p>Want to solicit audience input at your program? Use <a id="gfdb" href="http://wikis.ala.org/lita/index.php/Twitter" title="Twitter">Twitter</a> or create a <a id="sk0f" href="http://wikis.ala.org/lita/index.php/Chat" title="chat room with Meebo">chat room with Meebo</a>.</p> <p>Want to show off your panel’s slides or workshop’s handouts? Upload them to <a id="y456" href="http://wikis.ala.org/lita/index.php/SlideShare" title="Slideshare">Slideshare</a>.</p> <p>See the <a id="svp7" href="http://wikis.ala.org/lita/index.php/EParticipation_Task_Force_Recommendations" title="entire Toolkit">entire Toolkit</a>, which also includes options for <a id="jv7k" href="http://wikis.ala.org/lita/index.php/Podcasting" title="recording audio">recording audio</a> and <a id="g7u9" href="http://wikis.ala.org/lita/index.php/Live_video_feed" title="streaming video">streaming video</a>, on the <a id="o63w" href="http://wikis.ala.org/lita/index.php" title="LITA wiki">LITA wiki</a>.</p> <p>Other Benefits</p> <p>Providing members the ability to listen, watch, or chat remotely will help them immensely in these tough economic times. Conference attendees with conflicting engagements can return to an archived meeting or program and listen in after the fact. Presentation slide shows and workshop handouts can be provided online before or after a presentation, saving paper and the time that it takes to print and organize materials. By putting our association’s business and conference materials online, we are creating an archive of its history and the work that we do to create it.</p> <p>The LITA Electronic Participation Implementation Task Force is David Lee King (chair), Lauren Pressley, Derik Badman, Andreas Orphanides, Michele Mizejewski, Barbara Blummer, Jason Puckett, Cindi Trainor and Beth Hoffman. Jonathan Blackburn, Aaron Dobbs, Kenley Neufeld and Jason Griffey also contributed.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Absent at the eBook Revolution</h1> <p>Tom Peters — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:35:50 -0500</p> <p><a href="../../../../../../imce?app=nomatter%7Conload@imceInlineImceLoad#" title="Send to textarea"></a><br /> Conference program topics tend to be lagging indicators of the hot topics in a given field. The lag time develops because it takes time to plan for a professional conference, even an online or in-world conference. In fact, by the time a molten topic spews forth many conference programs, sometimes even entire conferences, that’s a signal that the magma has started to cool and harden. </p> <p>The eBook movement is heating up worldwide, with many major corporations launching eBook services and significant chunks of the worldwide reading public – the Chinese and romance readers come to mind – giving ereading a sustained try. The paucity of programs about eBooks at next month’s ALA Annual Conference in Chicago could be seen as a case-in-point of this general truth about conference program topics as lagging behind hot topics. Nonethless, I think a different, more troubling dynamic is developing between eBooks, libraries, and librarianship. I worry about the role that libraries and librarianship will have in the real eBook revolution. </p> <p>A colleague recently brought to my attention that his search of the program titles and descriptions for ALA Annual in Chicago turned up only two programs about eBooks. One is a RUSA STARS program about resource sharing in the 21st century, and the other is an ALCTS preconference about Streaming Media and Proliferating E-Books. </p> <p>My search didn’t find much more. Of the dozens of topics proposed to be discussed during the ALA unconference preconference (or is it a conference unpreconference?) scheduled for Friday, July 10th, only one proposed topic -- “Audiobooks, e-books, and online reading” – specifically mentions eBooks. Jessica Moyer at the U. of Minnesota(Go Gophers!) suggested that topic. Registrants for the unconference are still voting on which of the proposed topics the group actually wants to discuss, so eBooks may get voted off the island. </p> <p>The problem with the eBook movement is that it is no longer perceived as a newly emerging hot topic, but as a stale, old, previously overhyped topic. eBooks have been in the radar of librarianship for over a decade now. In the late 1990s, the launch of the Rocket eBook device, the buzz created by the then standalone start-up company called netLibrary and other innovative efforts created a lot of excitement and interest. The prognostications and preferences of eBook pundits have become petrified. When the eBook revolution is mentioned, many librarians may think to themselves, “Been there, done that. Fooled once, shame on you. Fooled twice, shame on me. “</p> <p>And much has happened vis-à-vis libraries and eBooks since then. Many publishers and eBook aggregators (OverDrive, ebrary, etc.) have developed and delivered lots of eBooks to library users. Nevertheless, the really big social revolution in reading hasn’t happened yet, but we may be on the verge.</p> <p>Many major corporations like Amazon, Apple, Google, and Sony, are really pushing eBook services directly to end-users. The Kindle family of portable dedicated ereading appliances seems to be selling well, although Jeff Bezos won’t share sales figures, even with Amazon’s shareholders. Another wave of dedicated reading devices is beginning to hit the beach, and startup companies like Pixel Qi are developing low-cost screens, better batteries, and other improved components that will drive down the hardware costs. Although ereading still seemsprimarily to be a domain for the gadgetista and affluent readers, that’s a typical phase through which most technological developments pass. </p> <p>The real problem with eBooks, IMHO, is that, while that overhyped dud in the late 1990s didn’t result in paperless offices and parlors around the world, we may be on the verge of the real eBook revolution now. I write this guardedly and sheepishly, because I don’t want to overhype eBooks yet again. After suffering through a decade of hype, many false starts, and only modest successes, librarians may be lulled into a sense of complacency about eBooks just as the real revolution begins.</p> <p>An interesting professional conundrum may be developing here, because, while recent developments in the eBook marketplace may be generally good for readers (a debatable assumption, I admit), most librarians seem to agree that most of the recent eBook developments may result, intentionally or unintentionally, in locking libraries out of the process. Most of these emerging eBook systems are designed to move content directly from publishers, aggregators, or even authors to the end-readers. What’s good for readers may not be good for libraries.</p> <p>This may be a fundamental professional challenge: To put the needs and interests of your clients before your needs and interests as a professional. We all know that lawyers, educators, and healthcare professionals have to confront this conundrum occasionally, and librarians do, too. If push comes to shove, we need to remember that the goal of serving readers trumps the goal of saving libraries, even if we are frustratingly saddened that these two noble professional goals may suddenly become out of sync. </p> <p>I just re-read Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science in light of this possible conflict between libraries and readers. Those laws emphasize books, reading, and readers/users. I assume Ranganathan would have accepted eBooks as a type of book. Only the enigmatic 5th law (the library is a growing organism) specifically mentions libraries. </p> </article> <article> <h1>Library 2.0 Gang 06/09: Library System Suppliers view of OCLC Web-scale</h1> <p>Richard Wallis — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:50:42 -0500</p> <p><div style="display: block; float: right; text-align: center; margin: 3px"><br/><a href="http://librarygang.talis.com">More...</a></div></p><p>In <a href="http://librarygang.talis.com/2009/05/06/library-20-gang-0509-cloud-computing-libraries-and-oclc/">last month’s show</a> there was some speculation as to what reaction there would be from the organisations that supply ‘traditional’ library systems to the <a href="http://www.oclc.org/us/en/news/releases/200927.htm">OCLC announcement</a> of their web-scale, cloud computing, library system initiative.</p> <p>In an attempt to answer that speculation I took the unusual step of bringing together a specific set of Library 2.0 Gang members from that community as against our usual open house of whoever is available.</p>  The result was an interesting conversation between Ex Libris’ <a href="http://librarygang.talis.com/carl-grant">Carl Grant</a>, <a href="http://librarygang.talis.com/nicole-c-engard/">Nicole Engard</a> from LibLime, Talis’ <a href="http://librarygang.talis.com/rob-styles">Rob Styles</a> and newcomer from Axiell, <a href="http://librarygang.talis.com/guests#boris_zetterlund">Boris Zetterlund</a>.</p> <p>The initial reactions to hearing the announcement included “why did they take so long” and guarded “uh-ho”. There were several aspects of, and reactions to, the announcement in the conversation - from welcoming the initiative, the inevitable move of library functionality to the cloud, questions about the size of library that would use it, the cost model, and of course issues about data and API availability.</p> <p> <param name="movie" value="http://librarygang.talis.com/wp-content/plugins/podpress/players/1pixelout_player.swf" /> <param name="FlashVars" value="playerID=1&bg=0xF8F8F8&leftbg=0xEEEEEE&rightbg=0xCCCCCC&rightbghover=0x999999&lefticon=0x666666&righticon=0x666666&righticonhover=0xFFFFFF&text=0x666666&slider=0x666666&track=0xFFFFFF&loader=0x9FFFB8&border=0x666666&autostart=no&soundFile=http://librarygang.talis.com/podpress_trac/play/185/0/twt20090605-TL2G-15.mp3" /> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <param name="menu" value="false" /> <param name="wmode" value="transparent" /> </object> <br/><br/>Library 2.0 Gang 04/09 [00:54:12m]:<a href="http://librarygang.talis.com/podpress_trac/play/185/0/twt20090605-TL2G-15.mp3" target="new">Download</a><br/> <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/uk/"> </a></p> </article> <article> <h1>Chatting with Char Booth</h1> <p>Daniel A. Freeman — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 13:55:15 -0500</p> <p>Char Booth is a Library Journal Mover and Shaker and one of ALA's Emerging Leaders, and is a voice of growing prominence in the Library Technology community. As the E-Learning Librarian at UC Berkeley, Char works at a unique intersection of technology, advocacy, public service, and education. Char blogs at <a title="info-mational" href="http://www.infomational.wordpress.com/" id="njwy">info-mational</a> and will be the author of an issue of Library Technology Reports in 2010. </p> <p> <br /> Char recently authored <a title="" href="http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/digital/ii-booth.pdf" target="_self">Informing Innovation: Tracking Student Interest in Emerging Library Technologies at Ohio University (A Research Report)</a>, which examines one institution's attempt to modify its own technological and organizational makeup by better understanding its local users. Char places the story in the context of a thorough qualitative and quantitative analysis of academic library usage and technology patterns.<br /> <br /> I had a chance to talk with Char about her work and the changes she sees coming in our libraries.</p> <p> <br /> <br /> Dan Freeman: So, let's talk about your book. What was the genesis of your work, and how did Ohio University end up as the setting?<br /> <br /> CB: What started as a user research initiative to understand local technology and library cultures at Ohio University developed over the space of a year or so into its current form, a in-depth case study of our survey findings on students and emerging technologies as a framework for analyzing the current climate of technology development in libraries in general. The book also offers a lot of practical advice about how librarians can use homegrown survey methodology to investigate their local users in order to integrate more usefully into their campus communities and create a better response in terms of emerging services.<br /> <br /> Before I began my current position as E-Learning Librarian at UC Berkeley, I worked as a Reference and Instruction Librarian at Ohio University for several years. I was part of the Reference/Instruction department’s Technology Team, headed by my former colleague <a title="Chad Boeninger" href="http://libraryvoice.com/" id="sfh4">Chad Boeninger</a>. We and several others on the team were involved in developing the tech side of many public services initiatives at the OU Libraries, and due to an extremely flexible working environment and strong institutional support had a record of early experimentation with various kinds of emerging tools – web calling and video, podcasts, toolbars, open-source knowledgebases, and so forth. While most of these initiatives were successful, our work in Skype reference and video kiosks panned out as somewhat ahead of the curve and/or off the mark in terms of student adoption. This experience led us to question whether we were creating new tools in a somewhat off-the-cuff way, using our assumptions about how students were interacting with technology without much actual investigation or needs assessments. We were starting to run the risk of becoming stretched too thin - the more services we added, the more we asked of our coworkers in terms of learning and staffing new tools, and the lower the potential service quality we were providing in general. This inspired us to investigate through a broad-based student “environmental scan” what would actually work for our local users. We simply wanted to understand what types of social and mobile technologies they would find useful as library services based on their current and future needs, and also how they used and perceived our buildings and services. I spearheaded a project that conducted several web-based surveys that generated strong response rates - roughly 20% of the student body - to help us evaluate and prioritize how we served users technologically and otherwise. Because I was also working on a degree in educational technology at OU at the time, I had a chance to go beyond our local report and analyze findings in more detail for my master’s paper, which revealed some interesting and unexpected results in terms of how different demographics used and viewed social and mobile tools and libraries in general. The master's report provided the foundation for the book I published with ACRL, which considers our findings against the trajectory of the Library 2.0 response to emerging technologies, analyzes the broader implications of creating library "cultures of assessment", provides advice on research and visual communcication, and provides a sample survey instrument template for others interested in pursuing similar research at their institutions.<br /> <br /> DF: Do you think this is the first book written of its kind? Can you point to other published studies that inspired you?<br /> <br /> <br /> CB: As a case study that investigates the assumptions that continue to shape what has long been thought of as the 2.0 approach to technology and public services, it’s unique as far as I know. Like everyone else, I had been hearing catchphrases like “culture of assessment”, “Library 2.0”, and “user-focused technology” for years, and with Informing Innovation I tried to break these open a bit and demonstrate what their actual implementation looked like from an on-the-ground perspective. I didn’t go into the OU study intending to publish anything about it – the survey project was not remarkable in any sense other than that we received good returns, were comprehensive, and got very interesting comments and results. When I began to notice how consistently surprising the findings were and how thoroughly my analysis challenged my perceptions of user archetypes I didn’t even know I had, I saw that I had an opportunity to use this research to help shed critical light on how unpredictable a cohort of students can truly be, and to illustrate a simple way to inform and improve the types of services to which a great many librarians devote a lot deal of energy. I advocate for this type of user research as a simple, scalable way for academic libraries to become more fully customized and customizable. I believe we should be more self-conscious and responsive reflections of our unique campus cultures, and technology is only one aspect of this. The most direct way to acheive this kind of goal is to simply find out more about the people who are/are not crossing our physical and digital thresholds. Who are our users? Who do they think we are? How can we understand one another better?<br /> <br /> The Foster and Gibbons Studying Students report from the University of Rochester was inspirational in that it illustrated the value of detailing the results of local research project in order to provide insight and motivation for similar studies in other contexts. At Rochester, they employed a series of interesting ethnographic methods to discover the authentic undergraduate research culture – Studying Students has deservedly received wide attention since its publication in 2007, but for anyone who hasn’t yet taken a look I highly recommend reading this study, which is also available in full as a free download on the ACRL Digital Publications site (http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/digital/). Their results are fascinating and highly useful, yet practically speaking some of their research methodologies might be difficult to replicate to such an extent in other libraries. Most institutions do not employ a team of trained researchers who can successfully lead a study of this depth and magnitude. Extensive ethnography can be highly effort-intensive, and in the current budgetary climate scalability in research is key. Therefore, I wanted to show the depth of insight that can also be gained using other research designs such as web-based survey methodology. This is why I included the <a title="template student library/technology questionnaire" href="http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publications/digital/ins-booth.pdf" id="k9n7">template student library/technology questionnaire</a>, which is Creative Commons licensed and meant to be customized – no permission necessary, just take it and use it as you will. Creating a strong survey instrument takes a lot of work, so I hope people download the template, hack it up, make it fit their needs and local survey software, and conduct their own campus-wide library environmental scans.<br /> <br /> <br /> DF: You write a lot about cultural/demographic approaches to library technology and their pitfalls. For instance, you note that library technology planners often "inadvertently neglect to consider immediate user communities as well as the limitations and characteristics of their organizational cultures, leading in effect to emerging technology services tailored to other climates and therefore not well integrated, functional, or discoverable." Can you talk about the implications of this statement and how your book can help information professionals avoid this type of mistake?<br /> <br /> CB: I think that for various reasons, in order to get a sense of what’s possible and useful in terms of new technologies in the library context, most of us tend to turn outward instead of inward. We look to blog posts and articles that describe the technology implementation experiences and user demographics of other institutions, and consult national survey research such as the OCLC Perceptions report or the <a title="ECAR Undergraduates and Technology" href="http://www.educause.edu/ECAR/TheECARStudyofUndergraduateStu/161967" id="o6pb">ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology</a> to get a sense of what students use and need in terms of libraries and technology. While useful, this also has the effect of potentially misrepresenting local environments in several ways. Campuses and libraries are cultural microcosms – invariably unique, made up of many subcultures comprised of different demographics that develop their own identities and ways of doing things. Organizational climates affect the success and pace of technology development, and the service and outreach history of a library system impacts how students will discover and adopt new tools. Therefore, it’s not safe to assume that a) what worked for another library will work for you and b) that national research reflects your local users in any meaningful way. A good example of this is found in a recent ACRL Conference paper by Sutton and Bazirjian (2009) that replicated part of the OCLC Perceptions study at two different college campuses. An identical series of questions that tested library perceptions among students generated radically different responses at each campus, both of which diverged from the original OCLC findings (Sutton, L. , & Bazirjian, R. (2009). Replication of the OCLC Perceptions study: The experience of two academic libraries. In D. Miller, Ed., Pushing the edge: Explore, extend, engage. Proceedings, ACRL 14th National Conference. Chicago: American Library Association.) What I’m really doing in Informing Innovation is advocating for a local, practical approach to testing our assumptions about how different types of users actually interact with our libraries and new technology tools in order to be more responsive to them in every sense – not just technologically. <br /> <br /> DF: As with any research on a fast-developing, multi-faceted trend, you found some paradoxes in your research. Let's talk about some of those. I was intrigued by the figures you cited that stated that older patrons are simultaneously the most receptive to new technology and the least engaged with it. With new technology trends emerging and impacting libraries at a rapid pace, what do you make of these kinds of findings? How do we make sense of them?<br /> <br /> CB: That was surprising to me, too – older participants were, regardless of their academic standing as graduate or undergraduate students, more receptive to new library tools when all of the types of technologies surveyed were averaged. There were, of course, a lot of variations in the levels at which different age groups actually used specific applications in their personal lives, which affected how a participant reacted to the possibility of library services via different platforms. For example, younger users were more likely to use Facebook and text messaging and therefore were somewhat more interested in library services via these platforms, but older users still tended to be more likely to indicate that they would use emerging library applications across the board regardless of whether they actually used the technologies in the first place.<br /> <br /> In the book I describe this as a “library predisposition” among older users – returning undergraduates and graduate students simply seemed more receptive to library products that offered them new ways of researching and/or interacting with librarians, regardless of whether they currently used the platforms in question. Whether this comes from greater information needs or more experience using libraries over the course of their lives and/or academic careers, either way it confirms the considerable outreach challenge of marketing not only new services to younger users, but the idea of libraries in the first place. A positive discovery in terms of age and library technology receptivity was that despite their lower levels of library receptivity and awareness, undergraduates seemed eager to learn more about what was available to them – we received literally hundreds of open-ended comments communicating that students had no idea the library had so much to offer across the board, and encouraging us to promote better visibility. I believe that these findings would likely be evident at other campuses as well as among public library users. My sense is that in general our youngest extant and potential users do not yet have a sense of how libraries can benefit them academically and in other ways, and therefore are less likely to see the utility of library applications based in the technologies we assume they are using more heavily than older users. This brings up another paradox – at OU, older respondents tended to be heavier users of content-rich social and communication applications like podcasts, wikis, virtual worlds, and web calling, which was not what I expected to find at all. <br /> <br /> The upshot is, it is always useful to challenge the assumptions you hold about the constituencies you serve – this survey project consistently surprised and complicated our notions of who used what, when, and why. It is important to build assessment infrastructures that helps us learn what we can about our immediate contexts in order to respond strategically when new technologies present themselves, and in ways that offers users a means to communicate with us and evaluate our services in an ongoing loop. This is also important as older social tools become outmoded by newer platforms - for example, many are now finding that apps like Twitter and Facebook are reducing the number of people who are signed into IM clients, meaning that it is likely time for many to reevaluate their IM reference services and consider whether another communication platform would have better potential impact. It’s all about building informed flexibility into the way you evaluate and implement new services.</p> <p> <br /> DF: Generational and demographic divides are discussed a lot when people explore how different groups relate to technology. What about the commonalities? What are some general principles of technology in libraries that you think transcend these boundaries?<br /> <br /> <br /> CB: I think that simplicity and customization are both key – regardless of age, participants in the OU study were interested in using library services to create unique “personal learning environments” that simply made their academic lives easier. It’s not necessarily about using one tool over another to conduct research or communicate, it’s about having options and being able to shape and select these in a way that is comfortable and convenient depending on one’s needs. I think library users understand that their research and information habits will fluctuate and develop over the course of their lives and/or academic careers, and they are looking for libraries that will help them be both casual and intensive researchers as well as hobbyists, media creators, collaborators, and readers. Library users need much more ease and intuitiveness in our buildings and systems – I think that, particularly in academic libraries, most of what we expect users to do to access information is simply still too complicated, and it throws/turns people off. This is not necessarily related only to technology, which I believe is only one of many roads to making libraries less inscrutable. We need to keep working towards the ultimate goal of making library complexity recede into the background, while allowing more of our service and community value to come into focus. Outeach, education, more productive and collaborative campus initiatives, and raising user awareness are all important components of this process.<br /> <br /> DF: You are going to be doing an issue of Library Technology Reports next year. Can you give our readers a sneak preview of your topic?<br /> <br /> <br /> CB: For sure. I’ll be writing an issue on internet-based voice and video communication platforms such as web calling and webcasting, which provide a range of ways to interact, educate, and collaborate in the library setting via tools like Skype and DimDim. These technologies are coming into their own in terms of quality and accessibility, and can provide creative options for information help, instruction, and library public services, not to mention significant savings in landline and videoconferencing infrastructure costs.</p> </article> </main></body></html>