Preliminary ALA Conference Schedule

My preliminary 2012 ALA Conference Schedule. I know there are several of time conflicts so I'll need to narrow some of these down.

Libraries and Foursquare: What's In A Name?

Several months back Foursquare released a major update to their iPhone app. At the time I was still using the iPhone 3G so I was slow to download the update. Since then I upgraded to the new iPhone 4S and begun using many of the new Foursqaure features.

One thing I quickly noticed was that Foursquare now gives less room for venue titles. At this point it appears that they are allowing about 30 characters to be visible on the venue search screen (including spaces). This is problematic for libraries on university campuses as the word 'university' is 1/3 of the 30 character limit. For universities with long names, such as my school 'University of Hawaii at Manoa' this is even more problematic as our school's name is 30 characters long itself. Below is a screenshot of the search results for 'University of Hawaii at Manoa'.

As is customary on the Foursquare App 6 venues are viewable above the fold but if you were to scroll down you would find at least 30 venues that all look the exact same. I was intending to check into our Quad by searching for the university's name then browsing venues on campus. Obviously this is not going to work. I am still unsure as to if someone at my university added each of these venues or if they were automatically imported at some point from an online map application such as Google Maps. Either way this creates a problem for venues on campus that are aiming to engage students through Foursquare.

What I did to fix this problem was to simply reverse the order of our title on Foursquare. I know this sounds really basic but had I not spent the time to check into other buildings on campus I may not have noticed this issue.

The title of our library went from 'University of Hawaii at Manoa: Hamilton Library' to 'Hamilton Library: University of Hawaii at Manoa'. I believe that maintaining the institutional name helps keep the library's page looking official.

Take the time to find the library's Foursquare page in different ways and on different devices. This will allow you to maintain the visibility you are aiming for by using Foursquare in the first place and will allow you to see what the patron sees.

The University of Hawaii at Manoa Libraries Foursquare Page:
https://foursquare.com/user/13773510

Hamilton Library:
https://foursquare.com/v/hamilton-library--university-of-hawaii-at-manoa/4b613d2ef964a520ca0d2ae3

Sinclair Library:
https://foursquare.com/v/sinclair-library--university-of-hawaii-at-manoa/4b613cd3f964a520bd0d2ae3

Book Review: Raised Right by Alisa Harris

          The issues surrounding our political landscape are not black and white, no matter how much the mainstream media wants you to believe this. “Raised Right: How I Untangled My Faith from Politics” by Alisa Harris is a great example showing how some within the conservative movement are struggling with their ideologies and what that means in our current political landscape.

            I read this book because I was interested in how Harris’ story compared to my own. I consider myself raised conservative but now holding to progressive points of view. What I learned was that what was lacking from my own story, and I imagine from most evangelical Christians, is a strong stance politically. Harris shows in her book that for Culture Warriors of the 80s and 90s politics and Christianity are never separated.

            The audience that Harris writes to is a generation of conservatives struggling to understand their stance in a post-Bush America. Conservative Christianity has always been a single-issue machine, they have always had their one “sin” that they have fought against. For Harris’ generation (and mine) that issue was abortion, before that it was divorce and today the issue is homosexuality. “Raised Right” works as an inside account into what it meant to be anti-abortion in the mid-90s.

            Today however, more and more young conservative Christians are struggling to identify themselves through these single issues. Harris’ story shows how voting for a candidate simply because of the position on abortion is no longer a responsible decision.

            Where Harris’ book falls short is in the details. “Raised Right” reads more like a collection of vague antidotes then a detailed account of her transition from conservative Christian politics. Not once does she name the Christian denominations that formed her ideologies nor does she discuss important theologies or doctrines important to her outside of the general political concerns that framed her life. While this does not render the book useless it does make it impractical outside of one’s personal library. There is nothing in this book that would add to an academic collection. Harris also has the tendency to quote things as if the reader already knew the source. Adding more context in the text itself would make the few footnotes she does use that much more valuable.

            The book is also slow to get to the point. This is a book that is being marketed as a memoir of an ultra-conservative that has transitioned into a more moderate political position. However, she presents herself as more and more progressive with each chapter. If I knew where she was politically at the beginning of the book instead of needing to wait until the final chapter the rest of the book would have benefited. Instead, the way that she organized her story made for a bit of a confused and inconsistent mess by the end.

            Even with all this being said, Harris came to some profound conclusions on many of the issues she described. The book is a quick read and is insightful. Transitioning one’s ideologies is not an easy task. For those struggling to understand their position in our current political landscape, especially if their background leans right, this is a good book to read. “Raised Right” is a great reminder that there are many issues outside of what the conservative Christian movement is attempting to market as the current “big issue”. Harris’ ability to interweave concerns for all Americans, no matter their political identification, is what helps keep this book relevant. 

A Quick Two-Week MacBook Air Review

Two weeks ago I purchased a new MacBook Air and I thought I would share all aspects of my user experience so far.

The model I bought is the 11" 124GB HD w/ 4GB of RAM and a 1.6 GHz Intel Core i5 Processor. It is running OSX 10.7 (Lion). The way my graduate program is set up, nearly all of my reading is done online so having a reliable computer that I can easily carry to school is important. I switched from a 5 year old MacBook with a failing internal hard drive.

Size: 

The size of this computer is awesome. Perhaps this is the first truly mobile computer. I've actually noticed that this computer (and probably all Macs running Lion) acts more like my iPhone. I'll get into the nuances of this later. I've watched movies and played video games on this small screen without feeling like it's too small. However, when I run programs like Dreamweaver or Word I do miss the extra work space. Sometimes windows will open larger then the screen and I'll need to resize them to be able to work with them. Also when editing documents with small text (Word, HTML...) I tend to lean in closer to my computer then I have ever before.

The balance of the computer is a bit off. It feels like it could easily be tipped over. When I lightly push on the top of the screen it easily tips backwards. This also makes it difficult to open with one hand. Instead of opening, the computer will rock back toward the hinge. I do not foresee this to be a problem over an annoyance. The computer is very light in weight which is why I bought this computer.

Functionality:


The MacBook Air is sold without an optical drive. I was not really worried about this because I rarely ever put CDs into my computer anymore. However, it is difficult to get around CDs when you first begin using a new computer. I had two new applications I needed to load that I bought from my campus bookstore plus I had professors giving me CD-ROMS full of readings. The nice thing about Macs is that they can share optical drives with each other. This means I can use the optical drive on my older MacBook to load these programs onto my computer. The downside of course is that both computers will need to be present for this to work. Perhaps this computer is ahead of the game here. It will be interesting to see if software programs will begin to sell their products as digital downloads even when sold through vendors like campus bookstores.

The hard drive capacity is the same as on my previous MacBook but I wanted to create a system of storing all of my data on an external hard drive. The system I am now using is the GoFlex Home by Seagate. (Costco had a great deal on these!) This is a 2TB hard drive that syncs to my computer wirelessly from home. I believe I can even access my files from the web but have not played around with this much. The wireless transfer rate is really slow compared to USB or Firewire but once the data is on the server it can instantly be accessed. I now keep all of my music on the hard drive which frees up a ton of space on my computer. It's great! Of course if I leave home I need to transfer a playlist onto my iPhone or else I'll have no music. I'll need to get creative when I go on my first vacation. The hard drive dock even has a USB port so I can plug my printer into it and print wirelessly.

Lion:

Perhaps the only downsides so far has been with the new Lion OS. Not all of my previous programs work with this OS. I image eventually these programs will begin to work. For example Time Machine cannot sync with my new wireless hard drive but it does sync with my older Mac running Snow Leopard. The SFTP client I use (Fugu) also does not work with Lion. This was really problematic last week when I was trying to get a webpage I had worked all day moved onto my Unix account. As I said, I image these will all begin to work at some point.

On the positive side, Apple has create an OS that mirrors their mobile applications. This means that scrolling on the touchpad is similar to the way you would scroll on an iPhone/iPad. In previous versions of OSX they were reverse. What this means is that scrolling is completely backwards to the way I use to do it. It took a couple of days for me to get use to it.

I also really like all the new shortcuts that were added with Lion. Launchpad gets me to my apps with a single click, my document folder is always open and accessible and downloads are always found in the same place! These are great.  

Overall, I really like this computer and would encourage anyone looking for a truly mobile computer to consider it. I've been a Mac user for just under 5 years now and have always been pleased with their products. Right now I think their computers are a bit overpriced compared to other options. I looked into other mobile computers and none of them seemed to be as powerful as this computer. Still, I do believe it is worth the money I've paid for it.

Creating a Personal Current Events Catalog

Last week I was reading a blog post by Meredith Farkas (who you all should follow!) titled The Changing Professional Conversation. This post is about how difficult it is to recall conversations done through microblogging and status/RSS feeds (think Twitter, Blogs, Google+ or Facebook).

This got me thinking about an antidote a preaching professor told my class nearly 10 years ago. What he explained to the class was a filing system he developed for keeping track of current events and stories he wanted to save from the local newspapers. He told the class that every morning he sat down with the paper and a pair of scissors and clipped out stories he found interesting or important. He would then file them in his filing cabinet under particular subject categories. The purpose here was to have at hand sermon illustrations that were pulled straight out of the community at a moments notice.

I thought this was a brilliant idea. However today this practice runs into three problems. First, I don't own a filing cabinet nor do I know anyone who does. Second, nearly 100% of the news I read is done online. Third, a majority of what I read is delivered through aggregators and at times I am unable to recall the direct source of where I read the information. (This was the problem Farkas speaks to in her post.)

So can we create a system to help us quickly retrieve information sent to us through aggregators? I believe we can! Below I'll show you three ways (two online and one offline) to document and file this type of information. (Because I use a Mac these examples will be slanted in that direction. I'm sure there are similar  ways of doing the same tasks using a windows based computer. Feel free to share those in the comment section below.)

To begin with it is important to think about this process at the level of the collection you will create and not at the level of the item. Going back to the filing cabinet idea, it would be better to have 50 folders with different subject categories then to have one or two that act more of a catch all. Your goal should be to crate folders that will catch a maximum of 30 items. With some of these systems you will be able to tag your items with multiple subject categories. When you use a consistent vocabulary for tagging future recall will be a breeze.

First Things First:

The first thing you will need to know is how to find the unique URL of aggregated posts. On Twitter and Facebook this is done the same exact way. Simply click on the time code of the post you are reading.

The image below was taken directly from my news feed on Facebook.

When I clicked on the time code (what the red arrow is pointing to) the post opens as it's own webpage. This will make it easy to file away in your new subject-based filing system.









This works the exact same way on Twitter. Simply click the time code in your Twitter Feed and the Tweet will open as it's own webpage. (See example below)

Saving For Off-Line Use:

Once you have the posts open as it's own webpage you can simply save it to your hard drive for future viewing. I do this in two different ways. First: You can save the page in a Web Archive format by clicking Command+S. When you reopen a file in this format it will look exactly like the original website including clickable links. Keep in mind that the page is being viewed from your hard drive and not from the web which might cause some problems for imbedded links. Another option I use is Command+P, which opens the print window. From here I click on 'save as PDF' (see example below). I'll save pages as PDFs when I want to add annotations to them for future reference, such as highlighting or adding notes. This is especially nice when reading longer articles.

You can save web based e-mails in a similar way. In Gmail you will find the print icon just to the right of the e-mail title. Simply click this icon but instead of printing the page save it as a PDF, as in the above example. Many news websites will also have a "printer friendly" version of their articles. This will allow you to save the content as a PDF without all the advertisements surrounding the article. Just look for the print icon and when the print window opens click "save as PDF".

Now that the files are saved on your hard drive you will need to figure out a system for retrieval. Typically I will create a master folder containing multiple folders within it. Here is where you will need to be creative with your subject categories. These folders will need to be named something broad enough to catch multiple pages you are wanting to save but narrow enough to be unique. Of course you can always rename folders so don't feel stuck if you cannot think of good folder names right away. I'm working on a project right now about QR Codes. Anytime a blog comes through my RSS aggregator I'll save it in the folder I've titled QR Codes.

Cloud Based Filing: Delicious and Instapaper

I call these Cloud Based Filing because you will be able to get access to these files from any computer that is connected to the web. Both of these sites will require you to register an account.

Both Delicious and Instapaper will allow you to archive webpages for future viewing. Both of these websites have shortcut links you can embed into your browser that will let you save websites directly from the page you are currently on, no need to navigate away from what you are currently reading.

Delicious will ask you to 'tag' the item before it is saved. You can think about tags in the same way as folders. As stated above think about your tags on the level of your collection. For example "classic films" would be a better tag then "Casablanca" unless you have a ton of pages about Casablanca. Think about words that will have the potential to group together a maximum of about 30 pages.

Instapaper uses folders to group your saved pages. The difference here is that with Instapaper you will need to go back in and create your folders after you save the page. This adds an extra step. You will want to play around with both websites and choose which interface you like best and which has the most favorable features.

As a privacy reminder, keep in mind that you might be saving Facebook status updates or Tweets that your friends have posted. Resist the urge to post these items in a blog or on a slide presentation without their permission.

Using these tips and manipulating them to fit your online habits can help save you time in the future when you are trying to recall what someone previously posted or a relevant blog for future reading. I'm not advocating for the archiving of your entire newsfeed, but instead showing ways to assist with information recall in the future.

Digital Collections As Library Outreach

Last week I gave two presentations on using technology in academic libraries. One was about ways to adopt a social media campaign and the other was about ways of integrating augmented reality with our digital collections. Both of these topics were fascinating to research in their own respect, however the lesson I took away is that technology is forever changing and libraries will always need to find ways to keep up with the current trends. The library that is focused on using technology will need to spend the time learning how the technology is being used and how to adapt it into the library setting.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about the relationship between the library, the technology and the patron. While it is fun to engage with technology and to think about how to employ it in the library setting perhaps the most rewarding aspect is the fact that it allows us endless opportunities to reach out to our students.

Beginning a social media campaign, for example, will not only give us the opportunity to learn how to use platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and so on, but it will allow us to think of ways to teach students how to best use these resources themselves. Despite what the latest Pew report says, I’m sure there are students who enter our library wishing they knew more about how to use social media. Perhaps a 30-minute workshop offered once a month will help those students use those resources. Or maybe there are students who are concerned with safety and privacy on social media. A library that uses social media for outreach will only benefit from hosting a social media privacy seminar once a semester. This will help with the library’s transparency by showing their students that they are concerned with privacy issues.

I do not mean to pick only on social media here. While I know many academic libraries offers hundreds of hours of instruction a year there is still a certain amount of information on our websites we expect our students to simply stumble upon. Every time one of these tools is added to our digital collection it allows us the opportunity to teach our students how to use them. We could even ask the students which tools they would like to learn.

I love learning about new informational technology, yet I enjoy the idea of teaching others how to use these tools even more. By thinking about our digital collections as possible ways to reach out to students we are creating opportunities for students to feel more connected to their library and perhaps in the long run creating an environment where students will feel more engaged and more comfortable using the tools in the digital collections.        

Digital Handout Form My Presentation on Social Media

Adopting Social Media in an Academic Library:

Especially for Outreach and Accessibility Purposes

By: Philip Whitford

Articles & Reports:

Farkas, Meredith. “Going Where Patrons Are: Outreach in MySpace and Facebook.” American Libraries 38, no. 4 (April 2007): 27. Accessed Online From Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts.

Pew Internet & American Life Project. “Social Networking Sites and Our Lives.” Pew Research Center. http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Technology-and-social-networks.aspx (Accessed August 3, 2011).

­

Wellman, Barry et al. “The Social Affordances of the Internet for Networked Individualism,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 8, no. 3 (April 2003), under “Netville,” http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol8/issue3/wellman.html (Accessed August 2, 2011).

Sachs, Dianna E. et al., “Striking a Balance: Effective Use of Facebook in an Academic Library.” Internet Reference Services Quarterly 16, no. 1-2 (June 2011): 35-54. Accessed Online From Taylor & Francis Online.

Schrier, Robert A. “Digital Librarianship & Social Media: The Digital Library as Conversation Facilitator.” D-Lib Magazine 17, no. 7-8 (July 2011). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july11/schrier/07schrier.print.html (Accessed August 3, 2011).

Resources For Creating a Social Media Policy:

Kooy, Brian K. and Sarah K. Steiner. "Protection, Not Barriers: Using Social Software Policies to Guide and Safeguard Students and Employees." Reference & User Services Quarterly 50, no. 1 (Fall 2010): 59-71. Accessed Online From Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts.

http://www.inc.com/guides/2010/05/writing-a-social-media-policy.html

Social Networking Sites (SNS):

http://www.facebook.com

http://www.twitter.com

http://www.foursquare.com

http://plus.google.com

Tools:

https://developers.facebook.com/

http://search.twitter.com/

https://dev.twitter.com/

https://bitly.com/

http://goo.gl/

http://hootsuite.com/

http://cotweet.com/

http://www.tweetdeck.com/

Google+:

http://mashable.com/2011/07/16/google-plus-guide/

Blogs To Follow:

David Lee King - David Lee King

iLibrarian - Ellyssa Kroski

Information Wants To Be Free - Meredith Farkas

Librarian In Black - Sarah Houghton-Jan

Tame The Web - Michael Stephens

The Ubiquitous Librarian - Brian Mathews