Librarian on the edge

AALL Righty Then

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 11:02:25 PDT

We got in to Philadelphia Friday afternoon, so we would be rested, registered and ready to go for the Innovative meeting at 8 AM Saturday. First, after checking in to the Lowe's Hotel, which was mostly wonderful, we had to go out one more time and visit one of Donna's childhood friends who lives just outside of the city. Her directions called for a five minute ride on 76, and then a couple minutes drive after that. Fortunately, Donna noticed that there was a huge accident that had completely shut down 76. I tried to get out of it, but Donna has faith that there is no drive I can't accomplish, so with directions from the hotel valet, we were off for a half hour adventure of following a series of local streets. After 97 more traffic lights, we rolled into Betsy's beautiful neighborhood and had a wonderful talk enhanced by plates of good Chinese food.

The drive back was, comparatively, a snap.

I thought the Innovative meeting would be a two hour session like they have at ALA Midwinters, but it was a full morning event that went on in to the afternoon. The gavel of power was passed to the new ILUG president, and her first order of business was to adjourn. Then the new (well, sort of. It's been nearly a year) president of Innovative got up for a full hour to remind law librarians how much III loves them. The big news remains Sierra, and he noted that more than 50 early adopters had signed on to this package. Beta testing will begin in September. Then there were several particularly good user presentations. The first was on setting up print templates. The second was on selecting label printers. Then John McCullough came up and sang the praises of the all new improved Encore. First he talked about the advantages of Cobalt, which he claimed was the result of usability studies. They were told that users always ignored the third column because most web sites just put ads there. Then he praised the work that I had done in usage studies and mentioned a new study at an unnamed university. Then he showed off the Hein interface which really did look impressive and got a lot of positive response from the group.

After lunch I got ready for the Research and Publications Committee meeting at the Marriott. There were only about ten of us in the room because the outgoing committee members didn't show up. We did introductions and the new chair told us what the committee was all about and gave us the opportunity to sign up for this year's grant giving projects. It appears that most of the work gets done during the year because the committee was adjourned after about twenty minutes.

At five we showed up for the exhibits opening and awards ceremony,

thanks to my library director for graciously providing Donna with a ticket. There were only about a dozen awards being handed out, and most of these had their cheering squads ready to make a joyful noise. However, the sound system set new standards for poor quality, and Bill and I couldn't hear what was said, even though we were standing right at the stage. Eventually, we had our moment and posed for the official photographer and the unofficial videographer. We noted that Hein must be doing just fine because they are giving away a new car as opposed to the more customary IPad 2,

Sunday I got up very early to set up the poster. Ours was slightly bigger than the board, but I was able to straighten

it out alright. I wasn't expecting much in that hour, but was surprised with the number of people who came by and took careful notes. Paul was helpful in finding people he used to work with (there were a lot of them) and brought them by for a look. Plus, we have no idea how many people took a look at off hours. Overall, the response we got was well worth the trouble we went through in putting this together. Then I went to the general session to hear Dahlia Lithwick, an editor at Slate, who covers the Supreme Court. She told us that she was one of only two Supreme Court press passes from nontraditional media. She then went on to give the inside story on several cases involving free speech, including a major one on violent video games.

Next, I was off to the west side of the center to participate in the Cool Tools Cafe. If I was surprised at the response to DRAGNET at the poster session, I was just completely swamped here. The Cafe is based on the idea of speed dating - I show them DRAGNET, I show them the dashboard setting that make it work and I answer their questions, all in about an eight minute period, then I do it all over again for a new set of users. After an hour of that I was hoard, but a good kind of hoarse. Debbie Ginzberg was very happy with the way this played out, and told me that several people attended the event specifically to see DRAGNET. My sense that I had connected here was confirmed when we spotted this wonderful posting from Canadian Librarian Connie Crosby: http://www.slaw.ca/2011/07/25/new-york-law-schools-dragnet-focused-legal-search/

Then I went to a program on emerging technologies which turned out to be not really about the technology but about the political processes one goes through to bring forward technological innovations to a campus.

Finally, we went to the ALL-SIS reception. Thanks to Thomson Reuters for particularly good food and a free bar. After about a half hour of grazing outside, somebody clued us in that the awards ceremony was about to begin. Unlike the full AALL award on Saturday, this was simply an announcement. It was pretty funny that our award was announced just after Ping's, so the speaker said "And also from New York Law School."

The poster organizers had told us to show up Monday morning to stand by one more time, but after a half hour of zero visits and noticing that nobody else was manning their poster, I took one last look around the room. One electronic demo looked pretty impressive to me, and I'll hope to bring it up

at the Automation Committee. That was something called caselaw.com, which had a vast library of case information that could be searched by state. Once you have a search set on your topic, you can sort so that the cases that were most cited show up at the top. I

was told that this is free

to law schools so they can sell it to law firms.

I went by Reading Market for one last time, but most of the stalls were still closed,

so I got back to the hotel to pick up Donna and Yuji and walk over to 2nd street for lunch at

City Tavern, which has only been around since the 1770's. They specialize in authentic 18th century

cooking, so I had the venison and Donna got Salmagundi. The wait staff, in period costume of

course, was very quick to check on Yuji's water situation. Walking home from lunch, we stopped to

admire the cobblestones. We have them in New York, but these totally rock. Afterwards, a mainly

uneventful drive home. Great conference.

Tchoupitoulas Later

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 07:10:17 PDT

My wife didn't get to go to ALA in New Orleans this year, so I figured I'd pass as well. Then we found out that my son was given

a grant by the Queensborough Public Library to make the trip. After arranging for a two queen bed hotel room in the Quarter, I

realized that I could tag along for the cost of

air fare, so I bought us the tickets. Bob is your classic white-knuckle traveller, so it's good that the flight was entirely uneventful. When we got to the Quarter shortly after 9, I knew the room had no chance of being ready, s

o we dumped the bags, ran a few errands, and finally walked

over to Pat O'Brien's to start the visit the normal way

- alligator bites and Hurricanes. Then we went to the river to take a cruise on the Natchez, the river's last actual paddlewheel steamship, which took us past the Battle of New Orleans site. We finished in style with a dinner at our hotel's restaurant, the Bombay Club. I had

drum fish, which is apparently common in New Orleans and unheard of in New York. I got in as much walking as I could. It's always a fun thing to see bands of librarians wearing sensible shoes, roaming the seedier streets of the Quarter, looking for information in all the wrong places.

Friday we met a group of librarians at Elizabeth's way out east in Bywater. The place couldn't be more funky

looking, but it was a big deal that only the real locals know about. The group was from Saint

Joseph Seminary College in Abita Springs. After some truly fabulous fried green tomatoes with boiled shrimp, I

was ready for anything. Later, we were in line for the opening stampede at 5:30, and got there early enough for good position. I had a list of a dozen or so "Hot galleys" that Donna had requested. Not a single one was found that night. I made my way to row 8 to introduce mysel

f to the people at Boopsie, the mobile app developer that we were negotiating with (now signed up with). Then I found the Innova

tive Interfaces booth

and said hello to Jerry Kline, who is the only multi-millionaire that I am on a first name basis with. The food looked disappointing, considering that this is the gastronomical capitol of the country, so I held out for the publisher-sponsored party later that evening. That didn't have much food either, but there was a really good Dixieland band. Other good news was that the party was across the street from my hotel. I should have gone to Bourbon street to get some late night snacks, but lacked the energy.

Saturday morning was spent getting ready for a 10:30 panel presentation on the future of the online catalog. Everyone else was doing such advanced stuff that I felt like comic

relief just talking about user behavior in classic catalogs compared to that in discovery platforms, but people always enjoy hearing about Google Analytics. Also, I got a number of questions, so I must have communicated on some level. You can see for yourself at libftp.nyls.edu/nola.ppt

Afterwards, I went back to the Quarter for lunch on Bourbon Street.

That evening,

Bob and I went to the Proquest Scholarship Bash. It was help at the WWII Museum (form

erly the D-Day Museum). They had an elaborate big band playing the greatest hits of the 1940s.

Sunday morning started with the Alexander Street Breakfast. We' gone to this for a number of years, and

it's always a must-do. This year's speaker was Stanley Nelson, a documentary film maker who had recently done a film called "Freedom Riders" for PBS, about the activists in the early 1960s who rode in busses to the South to test the restrictive racial laws such as separate toilet facilities. The ten minutes that he showed us was so effective that it generated a huge standing ovation from the 200 or so librarians in the room, and lots of tissue was being used.

You can check out a preview on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8CAKAXR-AM

After that, it was back to the convention center for the exhibits. At the Harper Collins booth, I noticed that my friend Ma

rilyn Johnson was signing copies of her wildly popular book "This book is overdue." I owned the MP3 version but not the book, so I hap

pily got in line, and then chatted for as long as I could without disrupting the line behind me. I got to know Marilyn through Facebook before the book was published. She described herself as an author writing a book about librarians pursuing digital projects. I thought this was someone who should know me, and it worked out well. Her inscription on the book was priceless.

Later I talked to Tim from Librarything. They have an interesting catalog interface that creates a virtual shelf, showing the book covers lined up. I had created something like this for Quinnipiac years ago, and I was happy to see that idea still in play. Main difference was that my virtual shelf titles were all full text electronic reference. You can still see it at http://learn.quinnipiac.edu/verso/versomain.html . That night we partied at the Louisiana State Museum cou

rtesy of Oxford Publishing. The barbecue beef

over grits was a standout. Afterwards, we made our way down St. Peter street to Preservation Hall. There was some mixup with the tickets so we had to go to the 9 pm show instead of the 8. Just gave us a good excuse to walk next door to Pat O'Briens for another round of Hurricanes and alligator bites. Afterwards, we enjoyed an hour with the Preservation band. It was pure fun, and one of the standout solos was from a very serious and intense drummer. Afterwards, they announced that his name was Jason Marsalis, the youngest brother in the dynasty.

Monday morning, we went to the same room at the Hilton for

breakfast courtesy of Proquest. The speaker was humorist Roy Blount, who had just written a new book about the joy of words. Afterwards, I got to chat with him for a second because we won a free autographed book. I told him he probably knew what Twain said was the difference between the right word and the almost right word. Being a fellow Twain buff, he knew of course that it was the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug. Our big sendoff from the Big Easy came with lunch at Antoines with a New YorkLaw School colleague. They had a price fix lunch with twenty five cent martinis. "Okay, what's the catch?" we asked. There was no catch. They were on the small side, but you could order as many as you pleased. It turned out that three was about right for me. Then it was one quick last round

of shopping and the cab ride to the airport. The flight home was fairly uneventful, but the pilot had an interesting route, flying up the river to Memphis, and past really cool cloud formations. All in all, it was a great conference.

An author one more time

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Wed, 04 May 2011 10:19:08 PDT

I just got a contract to write a book called "Google This: Putting Google Products and Other Social Media to Work for Libraries." The publisher is Chandos Publishing in Oxford, and they want the final work by November 30. There are two important things about that date. First, it is Mark Twain's birthday. Secondly, it isn't very far off. I have a dynamic calendar on my IGoogle page reminding me of the number of days, hours, minutes and seconds until I need to finish this. They seem to make quick work of editing, so I expect it to see print by Spring of 2012. I am starting to line up a slate of experts who will be interviewed for the project. Further information is found at www.terryballard.org/googlethis.html There will also be an electronic edition, and I consider that highly appropriate.

Farewell to the Chairman

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 13:13:41 PDT

Just heard from an old friend that my former colleague Vinnie Cappetta passed away last Friday. Vinnie taught in the Biomedical program at Quinnipiac for 40 years before retiring in 2005. That he was a brilliant and inspiring teacher was the least of it. What he was really famous for was a totally wild sense of humor. At the time of his retirement, I made a collection of Vinnie-isms. The most famous was the day that he ordered a student to remove his backwards baseball cap. "But why?" "Because it makes you look like a Pez dispenser." Another student asked for his recommendation to get into medical school. "If you want to see the inside of a medical school, donate your body to science." For at least 30 years he was the chairman of "The Breakfast Club," an informal gathering in the staff lounge. For at least six of those years I had the honor of being a part of that group an acting as a foil for the man at the opposite corner of the table. "Hey Marion the Librarian, what's new," I would hear more than a few times. Each day's meeting would include comments on the news, ribald jokes, and medical information that was more detailed than I sometimes needed. One day the science professors were having a dinner at a fancy restaurant, and Vinnie showed up early and went to the bar. The bartenders began freaking out when his colleagues filed in to the bar and, one by one, kissed his ring, When somebody that major retires, it is the protocol for a speech to be made by the Dean at the May retirement party. Dean Woods graciously let me make that speech on behalf of the Breakfast Club. Lots of laughter, along with President Lahey, famously hostile to the attitude that librarians are part of the university's intellectual life, glaring at me. He got his revenge a year later when he stripped librarians of faculty status three days after I had made full Professor (Vinnie's reaction to that is unprintable). I took home the potted plant from the table that day and we have kept it in our front bay window every since. This morning, Donna told me that the plant just made fresh blooms. There is extra laughter in Heaven these days.

DRAGNET Redux

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 13:18:25 PDT

Last week we were on the road in Savannah and staying at an outrageously fine B&B. After an afternoon of walking, I happened to check my Droid phone and look at what's happening at work. It turns out that DRAGNET, the Google Custom Search engine that we created last year has just won the AALL 2011 Law Library Publication Award, Nonprint Division. Knowing how competitive it is to get anything from AALL (I couldn't even get a presentation at the National convention), we were all a bit stunned. I had started DRAGNET in the spring, but it quickly became the work of every librarian in the building. Library Director Camille Broussard came up with the name, and I worked backwards to generate the acronym (Database Retrieval Access using Google's New Electronic Technology). Since we started work on the project we also added a DRAGNET search bar to the page I created that tracks 150 law journals with free online content. I won my first award (Computers in Libraries Article of the year 1992) near the beginning of my career, and I hadn't anticipated further recognition this late in the game, so I'm quite pleased.

On Steinbeck's Road

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 09:36:41 PDT

In one scenario of my life, I would have been retired by this week, taking my dream trip - a recreation of John Steinbeck's trip with Charley the poodle across America. I had already charted the journey in Google Maps (see http://goo.gl/maps/cnzb). Now I am here solving problems (and creating a few) for the Mendik Library, so the 50th anniversary launch of "Travels with Yuji" was put aside for all time. However, I got to do the next best thing - have a long talk with one of the people who did set out on that pilgrimage. Recently, I was contacted by John Woestendiek, a retired Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author. He has already started the western swing, getting as far as Arizona, but he wanted to leave from Sag Harbor on the exact anniversary. He suggested that we get together on the 22nd, and also asked if I knew the specific address of Steinbeck's house. I didn't but it's dangerous to throw a question like that at a librarian, so I had it within an hour.

On Wednesday he showed up at our house with his dog Ace, a giant mixed breed with a heart of gold. Ace and Yuji hit it off instantly. Donna stayed with the pups while John and I headed to Potter's in East Meadow for Irish food and brew. I asked him about the prize, and he said that he was a reporter in Philadelphia who had been given the task of writing about prisons and asylums. One prisoner he got to know was an 18 year old accused of murder in a robbery, serving a life sentence. John spent 6 months getting together enough information to force a retrial and, eventually, acquital. Later, he got a job driving all over America and reporting on what he saw.

John hopes to turn this into a book, and I have no doubt that he will succeed. Meantime, his first book is coming out later this fall - Dog, Inc., about the cloning of man's best friend. I read in his blog www.ohmidog.com that he made it to Sag Harbor, found the Steinbeck house, and paid his respects to Charley before heading off on the ferry. At dinner, I'd mentioned that he might meet another pilgrim on the ferry on the same mission. This actually happened.

That was the week that was

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 11:24:22 PDT

When I was in library school in Arizona our main professor, Ed Miller, often told us "If you remember nothing else from this program remember that librarians are the bridge between people and the information they need." I've had the privilege in the 20 years since to use electronic tools to build a few of those bridges. For somebody cursed with creativity, you couldn't ask for a better career. Now as I am getting near the end of that career I find that I have just helped to create something that has had more impact than anything else I've done. Last Friday I began to send out a few announcements to lists of systems librarians and law librarians. The response has been overwhelming.

In the past week our tracking software (Statcounter) has shown thousands of hits for DRAGNET, our new federated search engine of recommended legal databases. Some places logged in for days at a time. A law firm in Kansas City made it their website of the week on their intranet. It's being looked at in the Department of Justice, the State Department and, most interestingly the Supreme Court. By Monday librarians were blogging about it, tweeting about it and retweeting. One librarian in Connecticut was just finishing a book manuscript about librarians who add content to the web and he delayed sending to add things about the DRAGNET project.

The most amazing part of all of this is that this got created using an interface that Google gives you - there is no coding or advanced technology on my end. I can't believe that nobody did this before, but apparently nobody did. I guess the moral of this story is that the internet is still young enough that one can be a pioneer if one works at it.

Treasures from the past

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 07:52:40 PDT

In the first library science class I took in 1968 at Arizona State University, I did a paper on William Morris and the Kelmscott Press. Morris was a writer and publisher, driven by the idea of making books into works of art. At the time, I had the extra privilege of being in a library where Kelmscott titles were on the open shelves. Years later, when I started working in digitization projects, I wanted to be the first person to add a Kelmscott title to the internet. Now it is clear that I won't get that honor. At least one Kelmscott title is up on the Internet Archive in full color. You can see it at www.archive.org/stream/amisamile00kelmuoft . This just proves the capability of the internet to deliver things that most people would otherwise not have a chance to see. The image is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Customized search engines

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 10:29:23 PDT

I first heard about Google's customizable search engines in 2007 at the American Library Association conference in Washington D.C. Ben Bunnell, a librarian-friendly Google exec was showing off some of the new, but lesser known, features of Google. One that caught my eye was a customizable search engine - looking at only databases that you pre-select. I tried it for Irish history sites, but the results were definitely mixed. Last week, I unearthed the idea again for legal databases. I set up 40 of them - mainly from resources recommended by the Law Library of Congress. Very different story. It turns out that having a greater number of sites to search makes all the difference. The initial set has gone public at http://www.nyls.edu/library/research_tools_and_sources/dragnet

It is now searching Thomas.gov, the United Nations, CIA World Factbook, Harvard Law Review and many others. No one database overwhelms the sets for most searches. It calls up recent material - usually with your search terms in the title. The worst limitation is that they will harvest no more than 100 hits for any search. Once we get this officially loaded, I expect to do a second custom engine for just law reviews.

Any law school that wants can just capture the coding in the middle of my page and rebrand it. Better to do your own though because different schools have different geographic slants. Just go to http://www.google.com/cse/?hl=en and get started. You only need to have a Google account to work with this - otherwise, you may customize to your hearts' content.

Google's Sweet 16

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 07:06:42 PDT

For the past year, I have been creating themes that are available for people to use in their IGoogle home pages. When I search themes, I can see the number of subscribers to a given theme if there are more than 100 of them. When I add the ones I do know about, there are usually about 15,000 subscribers. Once I had created about 300 of these, I started to slow down. There are only so many shots of Ireland or New York that lend themselves to the 1400 by 185 pixel format. In the past few weeks, I've noticed that Google has completely revamped the theme creation gadget - now you can create themes that have up to 16 pictures that rotate throughout the day. It took me about five tries to get things satisfactory. In single-shot themes, you name the image for the location involved. For multi themes, I found that the best solution was to add text to the shot in a strategic place that would not interfere with Google's preset text.
This is more work, but it is really exciting to call up the page and be surprised to see which image is active. One of my earlier efforts is now in the directory at
Google Themes.

The Queens campaign continues

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Fri, 28 May 2010 11:30:38 PDT

Had a wonderful time at Book Expo 2010. I got to chat with William Peter Blatty and Richard Peck, listened to Cory Doctorow, Adriana Trigiani and Jonathan Alter and, oh yeah, Jon Stewart. I talked to many interesting people, brought home lots of books, but the highlight of the conference was meeting up with Marilyn Johnson, author of the highly successful "This Book is Overdue" after her audiobook signing. She wanted a video statement about her dismay at the state of Queens Libraries, with proposed 30% budget cuts that would absolutely cripple the system, laying off nearly half of their employees. Her words were eloquent, passionate, and completely unscripted. You can see it now on YouTube.

Save Queens Library!

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Mon, 17 May 2010 06:55:38 PDT

The doomsday budget announced by the Queens Library System calls for the layoffs of more than 400 staff, including all librarians hired since 2005. Our son was hired as a reference librarian there in 2007. He has developed a reputation that has patrons asking for him by name, and two of them even wrote letters to the library director. This is a job he loves. I've never seen his library when it was not packed with users, but this will likely be one of the libraries that is closed altogether or only open two days a week. The only solution will be a public outcry that even Mayor Bloomberg will hear. We made a video in front of his library and hope it will be seen by as many people as possible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu2a4UEqZsU If this goes through, Bob will be fine, but others moved to New York to pursue this opportunity, and they won't be alright. The big loser, however, will be the citizens of Queens.

A fool and his quotes

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Mon, 10 May 2010 09:05:13 PDT

"It is better to remain silent and let people think you are a fool than to speak up and erase all doubt." We've all heard that quote from Mark Twain. I saw it the other day in a well-respected blog, except that the author credited the quote to Abraham Lincoln. I was ready to pounce on him with my superior knowledge, but decided to verify the thing. If you just Google it, you will get about 15,000 hits citing Twain as the author. You will get an equal number citing Lincoln as the author. In cases like this, I turn to Google's gigantic library of pre-1923 books, including hundreds of thousands of old books from Harvard's library. It turns out that if you search the 19th century, you won't find a scrap of evidence that either man said it. The oldest match I could find was from a 1907 book of Mother Goose rhymes. See Google Books. A decade later, the quip started showing up in speeches - first attributed to Socrates. It sounded like something Twain or Lincoln would have said - homespun and on target, so these misattributions were inevitable.
Going back in the Google mega-library to check source materials, you will also not find a shred of evidence that Lincoln ever said "You can fool some of the people all of the time..." It started showing up in print after 1888, after Lincoln had been dead for nearly a quarter of a century.

Thanks to the practice of people on the web blindly copying quotes, you will see that Diogenes Laertius said that "Gold is pale because there are so many thieves plotting against it." True, it is in his book "Lives of the eminent philosophers," but he is quoting Diogenes of Sinope. That's a difference of hundreds of years. The truth matters. As Mark Twain said: "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't." He really did say that - you can look it up in Google Books.

Upper Class Tweet

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 06:12:42 PDT

I'm still not sure about this Twitter thing. It took about a year of posting to get a modest following of 30 lost souls. I try to add one posting every day - either a home made witticism or a quote from one of the greats - Mark Twain, Diogenes, Dorothy Parker, T.S. Eliot, De La Rouchefoucald, and even Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. It seems like every other day I get an email that reads like this "Anastasia O'Malley is following you on Twitter. Anastasia is following 758, has one tweet and has no followers." Anastasia and her ilk are always 22, and looking for love in all the wrong places. I suspect that I'm targeted for this sort of thing because I am an old man - why else would I be on the web? These followers never stick around for very long - I suspect that the Tweet police are on to them within hours. In the meantime, I'm trying my best to pursue my goal of bringing the level of Twitter discourse up .0001 per cent. Coincidentally, I'm giving a speech at a forthcoming convention in something called the "Lightning Round." I'm given 5 minutes for my presentation and 5 minutes for questions. I decided that no frame in my PowerPoint will have more than 140 characters. It's their world, we just tweet in it.

New York Public Library- we have to talk

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 10:05:52 PDT

I went in last week to the branch on Murray Street to get a new NYPL library card - I'd had one about ten years ago, and it went away. I was particularly interested in regaining access to some of the online databases you could get by validating with your barcode. After I cleared the Circ desk, I went over to see the reference librarian and had to ask him how they were getting along with Encore (the new Innovative Interfaces ILS that is now giving comprehensive access to the catalogs of the research libraries and the branches). I got a blank stare. "The new version of CATNYP" I prompted. I got a noncommittal "I'm starting to get used to it."

This morning, I got out my library card and went in to CATNYP to look through some of the databases. Since joining the New York Law School library last year, I was starting to miss some of the access I'd had at a more general university. In the past, they had a screen of information about which databases they provide and whether they are home access or in-library only. They may have such a list still, but after ten minutes of searching, I could not find it. After more than a dozen blind alleys, I at least got to their Serials Solutions page and searched "Rolling Stone." It showed as being in two databases (You had to guess whether access was inhouse or outhouse). I first tried Proquest Platinum. It told me that I had to log in using my specific library. I used the dropdown to go through a list that did not include NYPL. No problem - it was also in Academic Search Premier. It let me in. I chose an article and clicked to get the full text. There was no full text. This was citation only. After a dozen more misadventures, I finally got into one article in one database - proving that it can be done if you keep trying long enough.

New York Public Library - instead of getting mad at me, I urge you to take a good hard look at how your web page is providing a path between people at home on their computers and the information they need. I do this stuff for a living, and if I can't find what I'm looking for, regular people don't stand much of a chance. I will, in the interests of honesty, admit that I finally found the Databases page on my third attempt, under "Using this website." Still, this was buried several levels down from any main screen. By comparison, I checked several public libraries (East Meadow on Long Island and Rodman in Ohio) and found that database search was on the main screen in both cases.

Wireless

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 06:17:53 PST

Even though I've written previously in this blog that I think the age of 5 inch disks is spinning to an end, I bought a Blu-Ray late last year. Several reasons. 1. They've finally made them affordable. 2. Some of the new generation machines have WiFi that allow to to connect to online movie and music sources. I found out the hard way that I'd need an extra WiFi antenna built by Samsung to make the wireless things work. Once I got that, it was days of frustration before I could start connecting to my upstairs computer. The four sources hardcoded in were Blockbuster, Netflix, YouTube and Pandora. Blcokbuster was pay per movie and they had a bit more of a selection of A list movies than Netflix. Netflix on the other hand has a library of thousands of titles, including a killer selection of documentaries. We were surprised that we could build up a watch list of titles and view them all night for a set price under $10 per month. For Pandora, I had to set up a joint account to accomodate the musical tastes of 3 Ballards. YouTube was a bit disappointing because I have to log in every time using a clunky text interface, and it will only give access to videos on my favorites list - no searching. If they ever add ITunes this will be an amazing resource. As it is, we have turned our basement into a room fit for waiting out a blizzard (as long as the power stays on).
I just saw this morning that one of the key products at the Computer Expo Show in Vegas is a wireless device to recharge cell phones and cameras. Finally, a Steven Wright joke becomes a reality - the cordless extension cord! Now if someone invents powdered water Wright will look like Nostradamus.

Space Case

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 11:27:06 PST

My wife's library (East Meadow Public) on Long Island was given a grant to put on a day-long program in partnership with NASA. She asked me if I wanted to help, and what kind of project could I think of to entertain people waiting to get in to the movie? I suggested building cubes of light from public domain Hubble images, and send the users the code so they could add the personalized cubes to their blogs or web pages. We're still working out the details, but the final product will look something like this:

How's the commute?

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:35:20 PST

After almost a year of commuting from Long Island to Lower Manhattan, I have refined this to a science. Each day begins at 6 and I'm off to the station by 7:15, to catch either the 7:32 or the 7:43. On the 7:32, we are the last of 3 stops before Penn Station, and it can be a bit challenging to find a seat. On the 7:43 we are the first of 3 stops, so the stampede to get on the train is far more relaxed. Hardcore commuters here know that the train door will most likely open at around the 'W' of the painted "Watch the Gap" sign. For the 7:32 I wait for the rear door of car number 4. This is important because this stops directly in front of the escalator at Penn Station.

Once inside the train, I open my briefcase and pull out a badge holder and hang it around my neck. Then I open my wallet and pull out three cards. First my law school id badge, then my monthly subway pass, then the train pass. When the conductor goes by, I move the train pass to the back. Then I settle down to either read a book or listen to a playaway. Playaways are Ipod-like devices that contain an entire book - a new delivery system for existing books on tape or cd. I alternate a book with a Playaway - there is a great supply of these at the East Meadow Public Library. This week I'm reading Barbara Ehrenreich's wonderfully depressing "Nickeled and Dimed," about how this sophisticated woman with a PhD in biology went underground to work as a minimum wage drone. She used her real name getting jobs and never lied - just didn't mention that she was researching a book.

When the train pulls in to Penn Station after a 45 minute ride, we get out to the escalator (assuming we came in on tracks 15 or 16) or the stairs (if it's tracks 13 or 14). Then I walk to the C and E downtown subway stop. At the top of the stairs before the turnstile, most days there is a man of Middle Eastern extraction who gives out daily copies of "Metro New York," one of two free (and very good) newspapers for commuters. I slide my monthly subway card and return it to the lead position for now, because it's not cool to display your name tag in public. Usually, one of the subways arrives within a couple of minutes. I walk down about 20 yards because the C trains are shorter than the E's. E trains are superior in terms of cleanliness and happiness level. It's about a 12 minute ride to the Canal Street station where I go up 2 more flights of stairs. By this point, I've usually climbed the equivalent of a six story building. I assumed in January that I would toughen up and breeze through these paces without feeling the pain, but that didn't quite pan out. Some mornings (particularly if I've taken the 7:32) I'll go one more stop and get out at Chamber's Street. Between the subway station and work is Mike's Papaya, a hot dog place that has a morning special of a salami egg and cheese sandwich with coffee for 1.75. Hard to beat.

Now there is a seven minute walk to Leonard Street and West Broadway. By the time I get within a block of campus, I take out the subway pass and move it to the center position. I slide my id card at the school turnstiles and have to wait 3 seconds for it to be recognized. When I turn in to the library, my colleague Joe Molinari is always at the reference desk with a friendly greeting. My office is on the 3rd level below ground - about 40 feet below water level on the Hudson River. It's now about ten minutes until 9 - I try to get here early every day so I can, with good conscience, take the 5:19 on the way back - Merrick is the first stop. By the time I walk back in the house, eleven hours have passed.

Open Source

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:56:36 PST

I was just at a demo last week of Koha, an open source ILS. They've been having a lot of success marketing this to northeastern libraries through the Westchester County WALDO system. In all but one case, it has been the smaller liberal arts colleges who have given up their expensive ILS sites for Koha. The WALDO representatives went head on for the big drawback that I'd consistently heard - "You don't have to hire extra networking geniuses at your library to make open source work." We were told that the servers are operated off-site and everything is taken care of in the contract.

Looking at some of the web sites, Koha doesn't take away much functionality that the patrons would ever notice. The screens had facets on the left for users to drill down to a more specific search. It was attractive, with book covers displaying in the browse screens. The real differences are in the more technical services areas of cataloging and acquisitions. New customers take some of the considerable money they've saved and feed it back to the company to develop more functionality in these areas. We were told that more than 50 improvements were in the process of being dealt with. The tactic of funding development was a strategy for library directors who might have had some explaining to do when two thirds of their ILS budget suddenly disappeared.

I noticed that among the 20 or so local academic libraries who had migrated, there was St. John's, where I used to work. I called Charles Livermore there because he had been a valued colleague and somebody who was well aware of technology issues in libraries. He told me that Koha has gone over very well at St. John's. I asked specifically about the cataloging and acquisitions areas which seem less developed than the KOHA opac, but he said that those people were very sanguine about the future of this. They told him that every migration comes with an adjustment period and this one didn't seem any worse than the one they had before.

Because it is open source, libraries have the right to tinker and develop extra features for their catalogs, if they have the technical capabilities to do this. On the whole, I'm not sure this is entirely ready for prime time, but I can understand why this has become a factor to be dealt with. This is something to keep your eye on.

The Judge Judy Effect

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:33:49 PDT

Last week, we were preparing for the arrival of the New York Law School's most famous alum - Judith Sheindlin from the class of 1965. Her bio says that she has written six books, so I did a keyword search "Judge Judy" and found two current titles displayed. However, when I did an author search of Sheindlin, three of her titles came up. It turns out that there was a variation in the author information, and one of the titles had no reference to "Judge Judy." We had just purchased Encore, so I used this as a test case for "Social Tagging." I called up the book that had not displayed in keyword and clicked on "Add a tag." I was reminded to log in. Once that happened, I got a data box to enter my own search for this title. I added "Judge Judy" and saved it. Then I searched in Encore and all of the titles came up. My understanding was that this would only happened when the machine was logged in to my account. My understanding was wrong. The extra tag was present for everyone to use in a search.
I soon found out that this technique could have a more serious use. My director recently complained that a student searching in Encore got no hits for the Supreme Court case "Pennoyer v. Neff." While this case is mentioned in many of our books, there is no chapter title for it in the catalog, so the user came away with nothing. Without at least one hit, the student could not follow a link into WebBridge to search the case in other sources such as JSTOR or Hein Online or even Google Books. To address this, I found a copy of the Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court and confirmed that this contained information about Pennoyer, so I logged in, called up that record and added a tag for Pennoyer. Now when anyone searches the catalog for Pennoyer, they get references and links to other sources through WebBridge. A committee of librarians is being formed to strategize the appropriate use of social tagging here.
Did Judge Judy stop in to the library and look at the catalog? She did not. She was running a few minutes late so she raced through the lobby and up the elevators to give her speech. I did catch a glimpse of her in this run.

Encore, Encore: Or, uneasy lies the head that wears a crown

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:15:19 PDT

When I was interviewing for my current position at the New York Law School, I was told that the library had just purchased Encore from Innovative Interfaces, but they hadn't implemented it yet. It probably didn't hurt my chances that I had already brought up an installation of Encore at my past library. Once hired, I explained to them that the decisions they had made in bringing up Webpac Pro would carry over to Encore, so they had already done most of the work. We wanted to install the server in May so we would have the summer to learn it and then show it off to the incoming students in August.

Unfortunately, this was also the time that we were moving into a new facility. Holly Murphy, who had given us our Encore training at Quinnipiac, was scheduled to fly out and do the same for us in New York. However, due to problems of scheduling and various uncertainties, we did not have a working Encore server when Holly was about to leave for the airport, so we had to take a rain check. Then came the actual move, the mind-numbing construction pounding around us and, finally, the American Association of Law Libraries conference in Washington. In the last of July, we finally got our training. I had been working with Encore for months, but I felt obliged to keep this away from colleagues, since I didn't want to spoil the kickoff session for anyone. During that time, I noticed a problem that had to be addressed before we went public. The location displaying on the left were in alphabetical order by their labels. Our main book location is Stacks, which means that it would almost never display without someone clicking on a dropdown for more locations. The solution - we renamed it Book Stacks, so it is always at or near the top. Locations like Administrative Reference had just enough titles to intrude where they didn't belong, so we gave them names like "The Administrative Reference Collection."

Christine Haggstrom was our trainer, and she came out from Boston. Since there was severe weather the night before, she had to take a 6 AM flight in, but she made it in plenty of time. She got to be the first person to try out one of our new electronic classrooms for the library. We know she was the first person ever to use the room for a web conference, because we soon found out that the phone did not work with the sound system. After a feverish visit from our AV crew, all was working. Holly was on the line, but Christine hardly needed her. Encore looked very impressive and our librarians peppered Christine and Holly with questions. At the end, Holly announced that I was the only person so far to bring up Encore in two separate libraries, and she dubbed me the "Encore King." I'm trying to keep from this going to my head, but it's tough.

A week later, we made our final presentation to the entire librarian group, came to decisions, and brought the service up live at encore.nyls.edu. For now, we are taking Innovative's advice and leaving the option for our users to rate titles and even add tags. We set up a usage report with Google Analytics, and note that people are already searching this. Book covers will be added within a few days. The only thing missing so far is the throng of students checking out their new library. That is just days away.

Themework - Google does it again

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:22:50 PST

I hated "themes" in high school English. I hated them so much that I opted out of senior English and took journalism instead. My classmates would expound "Moby Dick is an illustration of Man vs. Nature," while I am thinking "Moby Dick is a book about a guy that obsessed about catching a fish and went off his nut."

About 5 weeks ago, I had noticed that Google added a new interface on their Igoogle themes page that allows the rest of us to add new theme bars to the directory. This was in keeping with the easy interface that they added to Google Maps that allowed the non-XML programming people in their audience to add pages with useful and graphically interesting material. As someone who had an archive of many hundreds of images concerning Ireland and New York, I couldn't wait to get started.

They make it easy, yes and no. You start with a simple interface that says "upload a file" that allows you to browse for a directory of images on your hard drive. They don't tell you this in so many words (or actually, any words at all) but it won't take your file if there is a space or nonalphanumeric in the name). Then you get to the really hard part. They put up your image and you get to mark out the area to be covered, and then it shows you what you got. Then you find out that the picture of the bridge you thought you were loading shows nothing but sky. Get ready for some trial and error. The best technique, I found out after many, many errors, was to create your original file with the dimensions 1400X190, then use the entire picture. That will get you a banner that fills all of the needed area, but will also display in full wide-screen monitors.
Before that, I found that the picture you okay and allow to be added to the directory may have wide blank spaces to either side, and then it is too late to take it back. Your image is reviewed, and almost everything is chosen within a week or so.

When the themes show up in the directory, you will see that there are fewer than 100 subscribers. At first, I thought "Sure thing. Me and my dog." After a month of this, I found that four of them were going past 100 subscribers at one time or another, so these do get used. By October I had more than a dozen with countable subscribers, including one theme with more than 9500.

One final thought - avoid the natural instinct to make the center of attention display in the center of your theme, or you'll find it blocked by the search box.

Opus 100

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:39:50 PDT

Those of you of a certain age will recognize that title from the 1950's when Philip Wylie used it as the title of his 100th book. This is the 100th posting of Librarian on the Edge. It began on March 14, 2005 when I was automation librarian at Quinnipiac University. In the ensuing years, Quinnipiac would send me to Ireland twice, England, New Orleans, Nashville, San Francisco, Savannah, Cocoa Beach, Salt Lake City and Anaheim. Many of those trips involved speaking engagements. In 2005 I held faculty status and speaking engagements were counted as scholarship by the university. That changed abruptly a year later when the university president got rid of the faculty union and then declared that librarians were no longer faculty. Because he said so.
I still did the occasional speech whenever I had something to say.

Also in this four year period my son went to library school, graduated, got a job as a reference librarian at the Queensborough Public Library, and seems to be on his way. Since my wife is a public librarian on Long Island, that completed the Trifecta. When we attended Book Expo last month, we noted that this was the first conference we'd attended when all three of us were certified librarians. After faculty status went away at Quinnipiac, I went through a time that I was happy to put behind me. Anyone who has lived through a situation of being treated like someone administration had to put up with knows what I mean.

I January I took an opportunity to work at the New York Law School's Mendik Library doing what I do best - systems librarian work. I've been like a kid in a candy store working through a vast backlog of problems that had built up in the months and years before a systems librarian arrived. This gives me one last chance to use the knowledge of Innovative Interfaces systems that I've built up over the last two decades. I may hold the record for being the first librarian to bring up Encore in two different libraries. Also, it doesn't hurt that I go to work in one of the most fascinating parts of Manhattan. The things we are doing here are interesting enough that I may be writing Opus 200 in another four years.

Saving a library

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:44:23 PDT

Recently, Library Journal announced that the Queensborough Public Library had been named library of the year. That's not a surprising choice overall - in more than 60 branches they have an annual circulation that often leads the entire country. Their branches are thriving social centers - vital to their divergent communities for employment information, access to the internet, ESL and countless other services. One other important fact about the library - Mayor Bloomberg had created a doomsday budget that would eliminate most weekend service in Queens and force the library to lay off more than 200 employees. Many of those were young librarians hired in 2007.

In the news release announcing the award, Library Journal said they would fight to save the library every day. Now the fight seems to be over. The mayor and council worked out a plan this week to put back most of the money and save the library from layoffs and major service cuts. As New York librarians, we are grateful to LJ and to the mayor for seeing the light of day. As parents we are extremely grateful, because our son Bob was one of the young librarians hired in 2007. Unlike librarians who moved to Queens from other parts of the country, Bob would have been lucky enough to have a Plan B option on Long Island. More to the point, he works in a branch that serves a Korean neighborhood in Flushing, and he absolutely loves what he is doing.
I can't remember ever getting a better Father's Day gift.

Right back where we started from

terryballard@gmail.com (Terry Ballard) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:00:30 PDT

I was told by my new employers, the New York Law School, that I would only be sent to one conference this year. The choice was easy. The Innovative Users conference held in Anaheim the week of May 18 would be my 14th out of the 17 that have been held. My immediate supervisor, Paul Mastrangelo was there to accept an award for being present at 16 of them.

I had told my wife how easy it is to take the train to Queens and then the monorail to JFK. With an 8:10 flight, we felt confident that taking the 6:07 train from Merrick would get us there in ample time. The monorail, which supposedly runs every 6 minutes, took at least 10 to arrive. Then, at every stop along the way they waited for 2-3 minutes, even though nobody was getting on. Finally we got to the JetBlue terminal only to find out that they had moved into a new wing, and we had to walk a half mile to get to the ticket counter. Then security took forever, so we barely made our flight.

The flight across America was long but uneventful. There were low clouds over LA, so we could not claim to have seen both oceans before noon. We caught our cab easily enough, but the cabbie overshot, ended up miles south of Disneyland and tried to take us to the wrong hotel. At the right hotel, we got right into a room, but it was right over the swimming pool. No matter, because we were off to Disneyland and California Adventure for an afternoon of concentrated fun. Donna had read up on the system for getting advanced passes to the more popular rides, so we made out extremely well that first evening, finishing off with dinner at the much-sought Blue Bijou restaurant. This is a very up-scale restaurant, but it has to adhere to the strict Disneyland rule of No Alcohol. Otherwise, we were very happy with our meal.

After six hours of Disney fun, we were not only jet-lagged but exhausted. We always try to stay up until at least 9:30 or 10 on coming in to California, but I passed out at around 8. Later, Donna said something like - "Were you shaking the bed?" No. Back to sleep. That was that until the next day when somebody mentioned the 5.0 Earthquake that hit the LA area the past evening.
Just my luck, sleeping through the whole thing.

The next morning, I was walking down Harbor Blvd. to get to the Hilton in time for the opening ceremony. Jerry was polite enough to keep 1000 people waiting a few extra minutes until I sat down. This was the 17th IUG gathering, and awards were given to people who had made it to at least 15 of them. This was my 14th, so I just missed the cut, but they told me I may be in luck next year in Chicago. In spite of the economy, attendance was fine and the number of IUG institutions was growing slightly. Jerry then spoke briefly about the state of the company, which is doing quite well. Disclaimer here - in past years I was told not to report on anything at IUG that would be of use to their competitors, so I will not talk about any new III products or services, but rather concentrate on things like CSS and Javascript that are not unique to Innovative.

The keynote speaker was Michael Johnson, from Pixar, who is in charge of the development of new motion picture projects for the wildly successful company.

He said that they have a similar problem to librarians – providing analog materials in a digital world. He quoted a friend: “Pain is temporary. Suck is forever.”

He came into the company later and didn’t know the reason for the name. The most likely is a blend of pixel and artist. They merged with Disney in the 1990s when they had 800 employees. Takes about 3 or four years to go from an initial idea to a finished film.

Storyboarding is the art of story re-boarding. Movies are recorded before the visuals are created. “Do something so we can change it:” the story reel. B&W prototype of the entire film. Notes will go out about problems with the film. Solutions re proposed in a timely manner. In the case of the Incredibles they eliminated a pilot character who was killed off early in the original script. “Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity.” (I prefer my own aphorism: "Reality is only a theory"). Most of the early visual work is done without computers.

“An animator is an actor with a pencil.” Walt Disney

Did 125,000 pictures in storyboarding Wall-E. Johnson worked out way to get storyboarders working in digital format – easier to share, format. “Passion will get you through.”

The first program I attended was one I planned to see even before I found out that my good friend Karen Perone was speaking. This was an introductory course in CSS, which I sorely needed. I'd been able to manipulate a few of our CSS files since coming to NYLS, but it was trial and error, with an emphasis on the latter. With her usual calm demeanor and great command of the facts, Karen helped me along quite a bit. We saw her later, and I promised her that I would treat her like I do Bob Duncan: If I've hit an absolute brick wall and can't get anywhere with a file, I'll ask her to help.

She suggested the following tools for improving CSS files:

Firebug add-in from SitePoint. Tools.sideburner.com/codeburner gives an add-in to Firebug. CSS Validator: Jigsaw.w3.org

The next day I went to a program about leveraging online content into an opac. The presenter had added a lot of the obvious free marc sites like Making of America, but the thing he was most proud of was getting links to things like NASA records working when he had no specific informaiton about the web site - just the title and SUDOC number. He took the time to hand check each URL in his spreadsheet before generating a marc record and adding it to the catalog.

Next was the single most useful program I've ever seen at an IUG: Richard Jackson from the Huntington Library speaking about Regular Expressions - a shorthand way to generate massive searches of a catalog in list creation. The classic example is a search of the records for anything that has a check digit of 4, but the 4th digit is not a blank or a quotation mark. I tried this when I got back to New York and found a few dozen records that were lost to a title search because they were mis-tagged. This method is used in other systems, but Jackson was the first to realize the true potential of this for Innovative systems. You can see more at

sciug.ucr.edu/docs/sciug2007_matches.pdf . Strongly recommended.