by Starting tomorrow, we will be offering virtual reference service in our space on Cybrary City! Thanks to the 5 volunteers who have agreed to help me out! This is a pilot to see if such a service is necessary and how it might be staffed. We are just starting the summer term here, so we will be running the pilot for the extent of the term. Feel free to stop by and ask a question! For more info, check out our post in the Daily News.
The End is Nigh
Yes, learning 2.0 is winding down. This is our last week of assignments and then a couple of weeks to catch up. It’s been a great program and I think a lot of people enjoyed it or at least learned 1 new thing. We now know how to keep up to date with some of the latest web 2.0 applications – which is a good thing, seeing as there are constantly new things to learn and try! Congratulations to the ETG group at Mac – it was a lot of work on your part and greatly appreciated.
This week we’re looking at extensions and add-ons. I’ve had a couple of add-ons for firefox for a while, such as the del.icio.us tag which makes tagging extremely easy, I suggest trying it if you have a del.icio.us account (which I know you do if you’re in the learning 2.0 program). I thought I’d give another a try – this time it’s Clipmarks, which allows you to clip parts of a page and share them if you’d like. Sounds like it could be useful – I’ll let you know how it goes. Add-ons are generally a great short cut to your normal routines.
In case you’re wondering, I did change my image header. It is now showing some of the hills along the coast of Cape Breton which I took during a lovely sunset on a summer’s day.
Ancient Librarian
Here’s an interesting blog that combines my two passions – libraries and classics. Alexandrine Librarian is a fictional story, blogged by Larry Greenwood, which follows a librarian after he discovers the library at Alexandria destroyed. Below is the official release. Check it out!
What if you showed up for work at your library one day and the
doors were locked, or worse, the building has been completely
destroyed and the collection burned.
That is what happened to Yarrl of Alexandria in 415 AD. You can
follow the story of Yarrl at:
http://alexandrinelibrarian.blogspot.com.
Larry Greenwood, a retired academic librarian, has begun a story
about the life and times of a librarian working at the Great
Library of Alexandria in early 5th century. It is an interesting
look at religious fundamentalism and its influence on ancient
libraries and librarians. The story is serialized in blog format.
More on Gaming
Well, we just finished our gaming week for learning 2.0, so I thought I’d post something (although I promise it will be short. People are likely tired of hearing my thoughts on gaming and Second Life). The week itself was great, with demos of MUSHs, World of Warcraft, Dance Dance Revolution (which I unfortunately wimped out from trying – must do it some day), and Second Life.
Gaming has become a huge discussion and research topic, with academic and library conferences on the issue. Gaming certainly isn’t for everyone or every course, but for many gaming offers a new more engaging way to learn content and theories. The biggest problem at the moment is that while lots of theory has be written and shared, there remains to be enough concrete evidence, especially for critics, that gaming truly makes a difference in the learning process. With the present emphasis in gaming in education, we should hopefully see some good strong results in the next couple of years.
Virtual World Librarianship
The Alliance Library System and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are offering a 6 week course on Virtual World Librarianship. Sign up here.
Strategy for Academic Libraries in the Next Quarter Century
This was probably the most controversial session I attended, but forecasting is often controversial. David Lewis outlined what he thought would occur over the next 25 years.
- we need to finish the migration from print to electronic, particularly reference collections and journals and start planning for move to ebooks
- retire legacy collections (ie. put jstor journals in storage)
- create diversity of user study spaces
- reposition information tools, resources, and expertise – be where the students are (google), embed librarians – less routine interaction and more technology and personal relationships, provide new services for research and scholarship
- move from purchasing material to curating content – this will be the result of open access scholarship, partons will be less reliant on local collections. Lewis predicts that while we spend 80/20 on material purchase and content curating, this will change to 40/60.
While this may seem difficult to achieve, Lewis believes it can be accomplished. He stresses repositioning oursevles and change our service model. He sees a hybrid model of librarian/technologist/instructional design with skills including teaching new information skills, develop and manage information support systems and building collections of curated content. This transformation will take some time to achieve.
Other thoughts included meeting the needs of the undemanding before addressing those of the demanding. I’m not sure this is possible, as the demanding are often the impatient ones who will make life difficult. Another point was to watch what patrons are doing rather than asking them. This makes more sense, as patrons often don’t realize what they want and asking puts them on the spot.
Horizon Report
Alan Levine, Bryan Alexander and Cyprien Lomas summarized 6 of the trends noted in the annual Horizon report. The report examines technology trends and hypothesizes which will affect libraries and education in the near horizon (adoption in the next year, 2-3 years, 4-5 years) . The process to narrow down to technologies is difficult at best but the trends include:
- user-created content
- social networking
- mobile phones
- virtual worlds
- new scholarship and emerging forms of publication
- massively multiplayer educational gaming
It was a great candid discussion and we were asked if we felt the trends were “out there” or not. While many libraries are starting to look into these technologies I think they were right that these will be the major ones that will be adopted in the next few years. Adoption is the key term – there are a number of other technologies that may be examined in the near horizon but adoption will likely go to those we are already getting comfortable with. The question will be whether we adopt them in time or whether our patrons will have moved on to the next big thing as we adopt them on their way out. I think it was a good thing to note the type of technology (social networking) rather than a particular product (we’re already seeing MySpace use decline). What do you think?
Trends in Info Commons
Information Commons can vary dramatically but Joan Lippincott highlighted the trends she’s seen in information commons around the country. These included:
- technology for users
- services bridging physical and virtual spaces
- special spaces
- design and aesthetics
This was the first time I heard mention of teamspot – a software that allows students to hook their individual laptops into a common (usually larger) monitor and all contribute to a project – great for collaborative group work. Joan also stressed that signage was essential when sharing services – make it clear what is available (ie. laptop loans, multimedia equipment available, etc). Some of the special spaces were quite interesting – one commons offered binoculars and a bird book for bird watching!
Unfortunately we ran out of time for discussion of assessment of info commons.
The session was a great way to see the variety of interpretations for information commons and also reinforced that our Learning Commons is moving in the right direction.
Gaming as Learning, Research and Collections
This great session was presented by Lisa Hinchliffe, Karen Schmidt and David Ward of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. They’re doing some great things around gaming and should be an inspiration to other libraries considering this path. The session began with background on gamers, stressing that many of us are gamers, including grey gamers and our students – for this reason we should be considering gaming.
They are collecting games, both new and vintage and are developing appropriate policies. They surveyed students during gaming nights, talked with faculty using games, and read relevant literature. This collection serves both to preserve the object and the experience. By collecting the games, students can both see the object but also experience what it is like to play the game. This experience is generally lost when the only way to play a vintage game is through an emulator.
While they are not actively pursuing creating games, they are considering a variety of uses for gaming. They have offered gaming nights which have been a smash with students. They also highlighted that short games (esp and a bartending game I can’t recall the name of) can be used for instruction and training. I think this is a great idea and can’t wait to try it out in my sessions next term. It breaks the ice, creates an atmosphere of fun and allows for easy conversation into more serious topics, such as controlled vocabulary and customer service.
They are also working with faculty to embed gaming in curriculum where appropriate and are supporting classes which are using gaming. They will be providing copies of Civilization 4 to a class. As one of the first to try this, they have discovered that gaming publishers don’t have a model to deal with this type of licensing and hope to help establish working models.
This is library and are ones to watch for future gaming innovation.
Conference Wrap Up
I thought I would highlight some of the sessions I went to for the CNI Spring Task Force Meeting. It was a great conference overall and very difficult to choose a session, there were just too many good ones! There are a lot of new, innovative, and exciting things happening in libraries right now, so keep reading the next few posts. Handouts can be found at the CNI site and powerpoint will likely come soon.