Leader's Digest February 2007

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Leader's Digest February 2007

Contents

by Leslie Dillon

February 6, 2007

Google's moon shot

If you haven't already read Jeffrey Toobin's article in the February 5 issue of the New Yorker, I heartily recommend that you read it, but if you don't have the time, here's what I took away from a pretty close reading. Toobin describes Google's quest for the universal library, looks at the Google Books Project, which aims to digitize all the books described in WorldCat "inside of ten years," includes some explanations of Sergey Brin and Larry Page's goals, clearly explains the legal issues behind publishers' lawsuits and describes how Google Book Search works and the business model behind it.

Before Google, Brin and Page worked on Stanford's Digital Library Technology Project. The project participants believed that "putting things on dead trees was obsolete and getting it all into a searchable, digital format...had to be accomplished someday." But, according to Brin, they were less interested in making it easy "to obtain the full text of books online than in making accessible the information those books contained." What they wanted was "comprehensiveness of a search...having the really high-quality information."

Google hosted a recent conference on the future of publishing, whose message, Toobin believes, can be best summed up by a quote from Charles Darwin: "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change." One former publishing executive described Google as the gatekeeper. They're reaching audiences that publishers haven't.

So it makes sense to use a search engine to help sell books. By now, Google has formed partnerships with almost all the major American publishers. But in spite of that, some of those very publishers have sued Google, particularly over books that are still copyrighted, or of uncertain status and out of print. Google's defense is that its use of these books is "transformative," that Google Book Search is a different product from the original books. Being able to search a book isn't the same as making the book available. Most of those involved in the legal dispute believe there will be a settlement. Unfortunately, though, "a settlement could insulate Google from competitors, which would be especially troubling, because the company has already proved that when it comes to searches, [Google] is not infallible." YouTube got video search right, not Google, and they didn't get blog search right; Technorati did. So if Google doesn't get book search right, and the lawsuit is settled, that could eliminate competition.

Toobin's interviews included Google's chief engineer for book scanning, Dan Clancy, who explained that previous book-scanning efforts were constrained by budget and scale, and they had to spend all kinds of time "figuring out which were the perfect 10,000 books, so they spent as much time in selection as in scanning." Because there hadn't been any need to build a machine that could scan 30 million books, Google had to build it themselves. Google doesn't discuss its proprietary scanning technology, but instead of investing in page-turning technology, they've hired people to run the machines. That's at least in part because automatic page turners are designed for the normal book, but there's no such thing as a normal book. Google also won't discuss how much the books project is costing, but using Microsoft's claim that it will spend $2.5 million to scan 100,000 books, Toobin estimates it'll cost Google $800 million to scan 32 million books (the number in WorldCat), "a major, but hardly extravagant expenditure for a multibillion dollar corporation." Clancy said the book project's biggest challenge was to "get somebody something that they are actually interested in, inside a book... Web sites are part of a network," but books aren't. "There's a huge research challenge, to understand the relationship between books."

Toobin makes it clear that "the central truth about Google Book Search" is that it is a business. And while prospects for making huge profits from the books project aren't likely, Google has often made money from unlikely sources. Also while there is "nothing evil about Google Book Search...there is nothing inherently virtuous about it" either. "Google has succeeded because...it has developed excellent products." (Jeffrey Toobin, "Google's moon shot", The New Yorker, Feb. 5, 2007.)

Social software in action: Nancy Pearl's Book Lust wiki

Yesterday I had my first look at Nancy Pearl's Book Lust wiki. Have you seen it yet? If not, take a look!! It's a great example of what can be done with these new, free social networking tools.

The Book Lust wiki has reviews, favorite books, links to author sites, ideas for book clubs, ads from Google, links to Nancy Pearl's book review broadcasts--you can listen to the broadcast or read a summary--the audio is more interesting though! And it has 800 users, some of whom are adding content to the site.

Nancy Pearl's wiki is based on WetPaint, one of the new, easy-to-use, collaborative tools on the web. I've worked with earlier, traditional wikis, and found them difficult and confusing to set up and use. WetPaint, on the other hand, is amazingly simple. One reviewer called it unprecedented in its simplicity and ease of use. And it's quite robust; it has WYSIWYG editing; it has tagging; and you can add images and video. It's better than any wiki software I've seen before, in spite of a few drawbacks (e.g., no RSS capability). Here's a great review if you want to read more about WetPaint.

Other similar social networking tools include Ning (check out its bookshelf) and pbwiki, which I've tried before, but with less success than WetPaint.

It looks like wikis will soon be ready for prime time. So send your staff out to explore how they can use these tools to enhance your library's web presence! They can link to Nancy Pearl's Book Lust wiki from your library's web site, or they can experiment with setting up a book lover's wiki for your library patrons--maybe with input from the library's book group members. (Inspired by a post from Chrystie Hill on It's all good, Feb. 3, 2007.)

Thinking ahead

PALINET's John Houser imagines how his smart cell phone could inform him of available library materials: "[M]y phone pops up a reminder when I have a meeting, but what if it also popped up a message indicating a book that I might be interested in was available at the library? Even better, what if I could choose for that message to only show up just as I walk in the door to the library? With RFID-based library cards and a user profile stored on the library system, such services would be entirely possible." (John Houser, Discovery Tools, Jan 3, 2007.)

Library Workflow Redesign: Six Case Studies

Excerpted from the abstract:

The proliferation of electronic information and tools has changed the way that readers and researchers do their work. It has also changed the way library staff members provide materials and services. CLIR offered workflow redesign support to teams from six institutions that are part of consortia. This volume documents their work. [CLIR] hope[s] that this publication can be the beginning of describing changing work patterns, and that it can be followed by additional publications...on imaginative ways of providing good services in a shifting environment.

Links to the report are here. (ResourceShelf, Jan. 26, 2007.)

Open source metasearch

The proof is in the pudding, and here's one of the reasons why it looks like the predictions about open source are coming true. Oregon State University has released LibraryFind® metasearch software. Features in this first public release include 2-click user workflow, integrated OpenURL resolver, and customizable user interface. A number of additional features, functions and efficiencies are planned for later releases. The library encourages involvement from others in the library community who are interested in working on an open source metasearch product. (Catalogablog, Feb. 1, 2007.)

Is Microsoft's Vista operating system irrelevant?

John Blossom believes that the money spend on the debut of Microsoft's Vista operating system "would have been better spent coming up with something a little more likable that could market itself virally. Overdue, oversized and overburdened with features that fail to advance the interests of publishers or enterprises significantly there are few who can give compelling reasons to upgrade to Vista for the sake of publishing.

"PCs are far from dead, but with open source software making slow but steady gains in desktop use and more specialized platforms for mobile and home entertainment content rising rapidly the PC seems to be migrating to a role of a personal server for a variety of more specialized platforms. The multiple flavors of the Vista operating system try to fill a variety of specialized roles, but in the process of doing so it winds up being too many things to too many people." (John Blossom, ContentBlogger, Feb. 3, 2007.)

Crowdsourced novel: A Million Penguins

The crowdsourced novel A Million Penguins went live the other day "with a few first tentative chapters and a great deal of technical confusion". Part of the problem resided in the MediaWiki software (the software that Wikipedia uses) , which is known for its virtues and its vices. (PLN also uses MediaWiki software.)

But, according to John Blossom, "the content itself is doing some interesting things. It's kind of a tacky novel...but there is dialog, character development and more than a small amount of effort being put into coming up with something that just may work as a piece of literature at some point. The greatest limitation [he sees] at this point besides the technological limits of MediaWiki is the lack of vision in creating narrative fiction online. So far, it's just classic storytelling. That's not a bad thing altogether, but with hyperlinks, multimedia and open-standards functionality available it's a little like pretending that only the tones of expression available from a harpsichord matter in the era of pianos and electronic keyboards." (John Blossom, ContentBlogger, Feb. 2, 2007.)

Quick takes

Pew report on tagging

A December 2006 survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project finds that 28% of internet users have tagged or categorized content online such as photos, news stories or blog posts. On a typical day online, 7% of internet users say they tag or categorize online content. Here's a link to the report (9 pages, PDF). (Catalogablog, Feb. 1, 2007.)

Information industry: $365 billion market

A recent report from Outsell, an information industry market research firm, estimates that the $365-billion information industry grew 10.4 percent in 2006.(Outsell Recent Reports feed, Jan 30, 2007.)

WebJunction offers conferencing service

WebJunction is offering a new Web conferencing service for libraries called Live Space. The service combines robust and feature-rich, easy-to-use, technology with the training and support to use it successfully. For the first year, only a limited number of Live Space Partners will be accepted, on a first come/first served basis. In the future, WebJunction hopes to be able to accommodate all who are interested in the service. The charge for 1 year of unlimited access will be $2,000 per organization. (Information Today NewsBreaks, Feb. 5, 2007.)

Large-scale digitization of ERIC reports

The National Archive Publishing Co. has announced a 2-year project to digitize a backfile of microfiche reports in ERIC. (Barbara Quint, "NAPC digitizing ERIC’s document backfile", Information Today Newsbreaks, Jan. 29, 2007.)

New York Times to post user-generated content

The New York Times will begin posting user-generated video in March. And Yahoo plans to introduce a "different approach to news telling" near the end of March. These announcements were made recently during a panel discussion at the SIAA Information Industry Summit. Will The Times abandon newsprint and become an online newspaper? New York Times executive Nicholas Ascheim said "a portable Times will exist in the future. The question is whether it will be printed on trees." (Ken Schachter, "You times?", RedHerring, Jan. 31. 2007.)

February 13, 2007

Harvard Business Review

The February issue of Harvard Business Review has some excellent articles on strategy, leadership and management. I've summarized 2 articles below and attempted to focus on their applicability in a library or other non-profit setting. If you want to read one in full (or any of the other articles for that matter), they're available via EBSCOhost or you can order a reprint from HBR for $6.00.

"How managers' everyday decisions create--or destroy--your company's strategy"

Organizations' formal strategies determine how their business is carried out-right? Wrong! say the authors of this article. It’s managers' actual day-to-day behaviors, including their decisions about resource allocation, that really drive strategy. Sometimes these choices don't support high-level plans. Every resource allocation decision moves an organization "either into or out of alignment with its announced strategy."

The authors have found that the way strategic commitments are made falls into two categories:

  • Organizational structure: The fact that responsibility is divided among various individuals and units has vital consequences for how strategy is made.
  • Decision-making processes: Equally important, the way decisions are made in an organization has vital consequences for strategy.

Senior managers are urged to focus less on formal strategy and more on the processes of resource allocation. Here's how to make that happen:

  • Know who's driving key resource allocation decisions
  • Actively manage resource allocation
    • Understand the people making the proposals.
    • What's the track record of the person making the proposal? A near-perfect record means "there’s probably little downside to approving the request."
  • Recognize the strategic issue and make sure managers address it.
    • Requests for resources require making two decisions: Should we support this idea? and Is this the right way to go about it? Most budgeting processes are aimed at the second question, not the first.
    • So, when evaluating requests for resources, spend more time with your managers discussing Should we support this idea?
  • Connect the dots for managers.
    • Frame the questions you ask about resource allocation to reflect your organization's perspective.
    • Meet with your division managers together and ask them, “What’s best for the organization?”

Joseph L. Bower and Clark G. Gilbert. "How managers' everyday decisions create--or destroy--your company's strategy", Harvard Business Review, February 2007.)

"In praise of the incomplete leader"

The authors of this article believe that no one person can be all things to all people, and they've developed a framework of distributed leadership that consists of four capabilities:

  • Sensemaking: able to understand and map the context in which a company and its people operate. These leaders can quickly identify a situation's complexities and explain them to others.
  • Relating: able to build trusting relationships within and across organizations by inquiring, advocating, and connecting.
  • Visioning: able to create a compelling vision of the future. This is a "collaborative process that articulates what the members of an organization want to create."
  • Inventing: able to develop new ways to achieve that vision.

It's rare for any "single person be skilled in all four areas." Here's how incomplete leaders differ from incompetent leaders: "They understand what they’re good at and what they’re not and have good judgment about how they can work with others to build on their strengths and offset their limitations." It's critical that leaders find [and develop the ability in] others to "offset their limitations and complement their strengths. Those who don't will...find themselves at the helm of an unbalanced ship." [Emphasis added] Take the test!

You might want to wait for a really good day to look at these, but here are some signs to watch for.

  • Signs of weak sensemaking
  1. You feel strongly that you are usually right and others are often wrong.
  2. You feel your views describe reality correctly, but others’ views do not.
  3. You find you are often blindsided by changes in your organization or industry.
  4. When things change, you typically feel resentful. (That’s not the way it should be!)
  • Signs of weak relating
  1. You blame others for failed projects.
  2. You feel others are constantly letting you down or failing to live up to your expectations.
  3. You find that many of your interactions at work are unpleasant, frustrating, or argumentative.
  4. You find many of the people you work with untrustworthy.
  • Signs of weak visioning
  1. You feel your work involves managing an endless series of crises.
  2. You feel like you’re bouncing from pillar to post with no sense of larger purpose.
  3. You often wonder, “Why are we doing this?” or “Does it really matter?”
  4. You can’t remember the last time you talked to your family or a friend with excitement about your work.
  • Signs of weak inventing
  1. Your organization’s vision seems abstract to you.
  2. You have difficulty relating your organization’s vision to what you are doing today.
  3. You notice dysfunctional gaps between your organization’s aspirations and the way work is organized.
  4. You find that things tend to revert to business as usual.

(Deborah Ancona, Thomas W. Malone, Wanda J. Orlikowski, Peter M. Senge, "In praise of the incomplete leader", Harvard Business Review, February 2007)

Library marketing--thinking outside the book

Recently, I've been following a blog called Library Marketing--Thinking Outside the Book, written by Jill Stover, who's the Undergraduate Services Librarian at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her blog has resources, readings, etc., for librarians looking for marketing innovations for their libraries. I've been really impressed by the breadth and depth of her posts, and I'll be sharing some of my favorites from her marketing tips and tricks with you from now on!

Here are some excerpts from Jill's post on the importance of a powerful brand:

Peter Fisk's book Marketing Genius talks about "Finding the big idea that defines you." Fisk contends that powerful brands resonate with customers' aspirations and derive their value from their ability to engage and inspire people. He states, "A great brand is one you want to live your life by, one you trust and hang on to whilst everything around you is changing, one that articulates the type of person you are or want to be, one that enables you to do what you couldn't otherwise achieve." The foundation of these super-brands is what Fisk calls "the big idea." As Fisk summarizes, "If brands are about people rather than products, then the big idea around which they are formed is more to do with what it does for people rather than the company."

Each brand has three components:

  • Rational ("What you do for people")
  • Comparative ("How do you do it differently?")
  • Emotional ("How do people feel about you?")

(To uncover your unique branding big idea, Fisk maps out a Brand Definition strategy).

For too long, the library brand has been linked to stuff instead of people. Patrons are more likely to associate libraries with books, information and facilities than with community and personal achievement. While there’s nothing wrong with books and information per se, these strong brand associations are limiting, as Fisk points out, "Of course, if you define your brand around your customers, based on a belief or attitude, a benefit or aspiration,... it gives you far more scope and flexibility in the future." Being aligned with objects rather than with aspirations makes [the library] brand static and difficult to adapt to environmental changes.

Jill goes on to ask us about our favorite brands. She believes that the appeal comes from one or more of the sources Fisk mentions, including:

  • reinforcing your self image
  • helping you become what you hope to be
  • enabling you to do something
  • connecting with others

To revitalize [the library] brand, we need to take a hard look at ourselves and ask tough questions. For example, do our communications say, "We want a genuine relationship with you," or "We want to retain formality"? Do our spaces say, "Welcome! Come in and explore your potential," or "If you do come in, you must follow our rules"? How much of our branding efforts originate from a desire to support patrons' ambitions, and how much originate from our desire to showcase ourselves and our stuff? By turning the spotlight on patrons' success, we can in turn build more successful library brands.

Jill's blog also has links to some great marketing resources, both general and library-specific. (Jill Stover, Library Marketing--Thinking Outside the Book, Jan 29, 2007.)

Quick takes

ONIX records for libraries

Here's a list of publishers who make ONIX records freely available for downloading. (Catalogablog, Feb. 8, 2007.)

New From United Nations: GEO Year Book 2007

The GEO Year Book 2007 is the 4th annual report on the changing environment produced by the United Nations Environment Programme. The 2007 Year Book includes global and regional overviews of significant developments over the past year. Individual chapters are available as PDFs, or you can order the report online. (ResourceShelf, Feb. 8, 2007, from the press release.)

New guides: African Americans in science and technology & African American health and wellness

The Science Reference Section at the Library of Congress has two new sets of guides to online resources available: Selected Internet Resources African Americans in Science and Technology and Science Reference Guides African American Health and Wellness Selected Reading List. (ResourceShelf, Feb. 11, 2007.)

New Federal Reserve website: Resources for bank directors

Resources for Bank Directors offers resources designed to assist bank directors with their management oversight responsibilities. Developed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, information available through the site includes:

  • Data resources–-financial data for banks and bank holding companies
  • Publications-–examination manuals, regulation and supervisory letters issued by the Federal Reserve System, written director training materials, speeches by members of the Board of Governors, and other general information
  • Training-–materials used by Federal Reserve System examiners and the System’s director training course
  • Events–-a calendar of Federal Reserve events
  • Banking Agencies-–links to the web sites of other federal and state banking agencies

(ResourceShelf, Feb. 10, 2007.)

New edition: European business--Facts and figures--2006 edition--Data 1995-2005

The new edition of European Business--Facts and figures--2006 edition--Data 1995-2005, published by Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities, gives a comprehensive picture of the structure, development and characteristics of European business and its different activities. It presents the latest available statistics from a wide selection of statistical sources describing, for each activity, production and employment, country specialisation and regional distribution, cost structures, productivity and profitability, the importance of small and medium sized enterprises, external trade etc. You can download a PDF of the full edition (418 pp.), or PDFs of individual chapters. There's also a summary. (ResourceShelf, Feb. 9, 2007.)

It's official: Cambridge completes acquisition of ProQuest Information and Learning

Cambridge Information Group (CIG) has acquired ProQuest Information and Learning. CIG will combine its CSA subsidiary with ProQuest Information and Learning to create a new, privately held independent company, ProQuest-CSA. The transaction, valued at $222 million, was backed by a minority equity investment in ProQuest-CSA from ABRY Partners, LLC. Marty Kahn will join ProQuest-CSA as the new CEO. (ResourceShelf, Feb. 12, 2007, from the press release.)

Librarians Without Borders

Librarians Without Borders is rooted in the Master of Library and Information Science program at the University of Western Ontario (London, Ontario, Canada). In February 2005, a group of ambitious students were so inspired by the efforts of an Angolan colleague to build a library for his community that they decided to partner with him in achieving his dream and to found an organization that would benefit libraries around the world. They had their first meeting in December 2006 and have been incorporated in Canada as a nonprofit organization with more than 300 members across the globe. Recently, LWB has issued three reports. (ResourceShelf, Feb. 10, 2007.)

February 20, 2007

Content Industry Outlook: 2007

Shore Communications, which provides consulting and research services in the content arena has recently released a free report (20-page PDF) called Content Industry Outlook 2007: Reality Checks. It's an overview of major trends in the content industry aimed at buyers, sellers and facilitators of content and content technologies. Libraries buy and facilitate content; they also buy content technologies, so this report is of particular interest. Send the URL to your managers and plan a meeting to discuss it! Be careful, though, to heed Shore's warnings about copying on the cover page.

Significant points (and the library-related questions we need to ask)

  • User-generated content (YouTube, etc.) will increase and further challenge traditional content. (How do libraries change their collection development practices to adapt to this new environment?)
  • Mergers and acquisitions and "funding from private equity specialists will continue apace". (How will this trend affect libraries' decisions on ILS systems, aggregators, etc?)
  • "[T]hose who can point to the world's content and put it in context are gaining the loyalty of today's audiences." (How will we fit libraries into this new model?)
  • Enabling...social media [blogs, wikis, etc.]...will be a core element of publishers' future success. (What are your plans for enabling social media in your library?).

Key areas of focus in 2007

  • Answers. There's a shift to services that provide answers rather than "collections of potentially interesting content." (Do library reference services provide the kind of answers our customers want, or do we just send them to the shelves or to links on the Web?)
  • Audience. Look more carefully at how you reach your target audience. (Libraries need to go where their patrons and nonpatrons are.)
  • Aggregation. What the report's talking about here is what we call collaboration: Wikis and other content technologies are allowing collaboration on custom content. (Libraries are experts on collaboration and on aggregation of information. Let's use the new social networking tools to extend our reach! How about building collaborative reference wikis? or contributing to or underwriting the accurate entries in Wikipedia--rather than telling our patrons not to use it--because they will anyway.)
  • APIs. (Application Programming Interfaces) APIs are making "it easier than ever to tailor content services..." (Watch what leading libraries and consortia are doing here.)

Recommendations

(While the report's recommendations aren't aimed specifically at libraries, let's look at several from the library perspective.)

  • "Rethink content licensing aggressively. The single most crying need for the publishing industry in 2007 is to rethink how it approaches...licensing".
  • Listen to your customers.
  • Look at ways to integrate content from social software (blogs, wikis, etc.) and premium databases.

(Shore Communications, Content Industry Outlook 2007: Reality Checks, Feb.8, 2007, 20-page PDF)

Library marketing initiative uses YouTube

The New Jersey State Library is conducting a marketing experiment to see if they can break the record for the most comments posted on a YouTube video. They created a video with some clips from people who love libraries, set to a background of rap music. The idea is to have people post 3 reasons they love the library and then pass the word to 5 friends. The goal is to make this “library video” not only the most viewed, but to set the record for the most comments ever posted to one video on YouTube. Here's the link to the YouTube video You can read more about the initiative on Nancy Dowd's blog. (Library Marketing--Thinking Outside the Book, Feb. 14, 2007.)

Five Weeks to a Social Library

Five Weeks to a Social Library is a free, grassroots, online course devoted to teaching librarians about social software and how to use it in their libraries. While the course itself is limited to 40 participants who've already been chosen and is currently underway, the course content is freely available. Also the Webcasts are archived for later viewing. The course covers Blogs, RSS, Wikis, Social Networking Software and SecondLife, Flickr, Social Bookmarking Software, Selling Social Software @ Your Library. For a listing of the social software experts who presented during the course, see the Program. You can also access content for each week of the course from the menu on the left side of the page. (BlogJunction, Feb. 14, 2007.)

Printers move to build Google-like scale for custom publishing

From the summary:

Like publishing, the printing business has been undergoing quite a bit of consolidation, creating ever-larger printing conglomerates focused on increased revenues. The key to their improved economic performance will be "short run" printing for customers wanting to reach highly targeted markets with customized messaging. What will happen when the economies of mass customized printing are married with the source-agnostic aggregation of today's Web? Call it Google Print--and call it the next major challenge facing today's publishers.

(John Blossom, "Google Print: Printers move to build Google-like scale for custom publishing," ContentBlogger, Feb. 16, 2007.)

Reference review: Peter Jacso looks at CSA Illustrata

Peter Jacso calls CSA's Illustrata an innovative, leading edge database. It consists of over 165,000 traditional indexing/abstracting records plus nearly a million richly indexed illustrations from scientific journal articles in the last 10 years. CSA is bent on revitalizing and revolutionizing the indexing/abstracting database genre. One may argue exactly how many words a picture (chart, table, graph, map, photo, etc.) is worth, but [his] in-depth testing of the pre-release version of CSA Illustrata showed that an image can be worth much more than a thousand words as they can significantly improve the precision/pertinence of the scholarly information retrieval process. (ResourceShelf, Feb. 16, 2007, from the review.)

New portal to Second Life: Your phone

Cell-phone users can now make the ultimate long-distance call: to friends in the virtual world. With this new software for mobile phones, citizens of Second Life will never have to leave their cozy virtual world. They'll be able log in to Second Life remotely, see who else is "in-world," and communicate with them via text messaging. (Wade Roush, "New portal to Second Life: Your phone," Technology Review, Feb. 16, 2007.)

Yahoo Pipes

Do you know what Yahoo Pipes is? Well, I confess I didn't, until I read Katie Greene's article in Technology Review. I'm including an excerpt and a link to the full text in case you overlooked Pipes like I did and because I think it's something we all need to understand!

Last week, Yahoo announced the release of an early version of a tool designed to help users personalize the Internet. The tool, called Pipes, lets people combine all sorts of oft-updated Internet information, known as feeds. Pipes could, for instance, enable a feed that includes New York Times articles featuring the phrase "plasma TV," Flickr-posted pictures taken in a specific neighborhood, and traffic updates along a commute. So, instead of drowning in headlines from standard feed aggregators, the user gets information that is winnowed down and personal.

(Kate Greene, "A more personalized internet?", Technology Review, Feb. 14, 2007.)

Quick takes

Science.gov 4.0 Released

Science.gov 4.0 lets you refine search queries, email your search results, and sort them in a variety of ways. In addition, DeepRank, a more sophisticated ranking algorithm, has been deployed. (From the press release, via ResourceShelf, Feb. 12, 2007.)

Reactions to Patrick Sommer's resignation from SirsiDynix

Marshall Breeding explained it this way to Andrew Pace: "It's clear that Pat Sommers was hired by Seaport Capital to grow Sirsi from the $25 million company that it was then to the new SirsiDynix that is nearly five times that size. But he was Seaport's guy, and Vista will want to bring in their own leadership." (HecticPace, Feb. 16, 2007.)

International Reading Association: What’s Hot, What’s Not for 2007

The 2007 list contains one extremely hot issue—adolescent literacy. Not only did respondents agree that this was a hot issue, but they also all agreed that it should be a hot issue. (ResourceShelf, Feb. 20, 2007.)

Launching Instant Messaging reference at Binghamton University

Excerpted from the abstract:

Binghamton University Libraries implemented an IM reference service at two reference service points. This paper addresses: software selection, creation of IM accounts, development of a staffing schedule, and training of reference staff. Also included is an outline of future plans for improving IM services.

(Maximiek, Sarah and Brown, Elizabeth and Rushton, Erin (2006) "Connecting to students: Launching Instant Messaging reference at Binghamton University." College & Undergraduate Libraries, via ResourceShelf, Feb. 2007.)

February 27, 2007

Wikinomics: How collaboration will change the way we do business

I've been trying to get my hands on a copy of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, but all three copies of this wildly popular book are checked out of our local library system. So, while we wait for our personal copy to arrive from Amazon, I decided to read about it, which may be almost as good as (or better than) trying to read the whole thing! Here's what I've taken away so far:

  • Wikinomics is based on four principles: openness, peering, sharing, and acting globally.
  • Based on these principles, wikinomics advocates profound changes in the structure and modus operandi of the corporation and our economy
  • Rapidly surging online creation and collaboration (e.g., Wikipedia) will revolutionize the way "business is conducted in the 21st century."
  • These new communications technologies are leveling "the playing field with the world's mightiest enterprises" and "democratizing the creation of value."
  • Leaders must think differently now; they must "embrace a new art and science of collaboration".
  • Customers want a two-way relationship with products.

Based on a $9 million research project, Wikinomics shows how the masses of people can participate in the economy in ways that were never possible before. Authors Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams found that 65% of online customers want a "two-way relationship with the brands they select, with the ability to provide feedback and direct input." These "prosumers" are creating commercials, news stories, remixing music, designing software, etc. The book contains some fascinating stories about how companies are working collaboratively with their customers.

The classic example here is Wikipedia, which has 7 billion page views a month, and is translated into over ten languages. Although any Wikipedia use is forbidden in many schools, and Middlebury recently banned citing Wikipedia, some studies have found Wikipedia's accuracy similar to that of Encyclopedia Britannica. Note, by the way, that Wikipedia has about ten times more entries than Britannica.

Tapscott and Williams believe that the rise of Wikipedia was no accident; instead it's been a "perfect storm." That storm consists of "technological advances" that facilitate online collaboration and communication, plus there's this generation of digital natives "that insists on taking a more active role in creating or editing...online content."

Be sure to check out the Wikinomics site--not only is it full of interesting content, but the site itself reinvents the book in ways we librarians need to pay attention to. It has passages from the book, a collaboratively-written chapter, a wiki, a blog, and much more! (Knowledge@Wharton, Feb. 21, 2007, via ContentBlogger, Feb. 22, 2007.)

Community of practice

A recent post by Joe Anderson on WebJunction's BlogJunction really caught my attention. He talks about communities of interest and communities of practice. Isn't that what Web 2.0, Library 2.0, Wikinomics, etc. are about--online communities of practice? This is from Etienne Wenger, who helped coin the term:

A community of practice is not merely a community of interest–people who like certain kinds of movies, for instance. Members of a community of practice are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems—in short a shared practice.

(BlogJunction, Feb. 22, 2007.)

Answers.com & reference services

In a post about Answer.com's AnswerTips (small information bubbles that define a word when double-clicked), John Blossom makes some interesting observations that apply not only to Answers.com, but also to libraries: He explains that Answers.com was trying "to build more brand equity in an increasingly crowded marketplace for answers services."

The habitual use of Google for looking up basic answers is now being hemmed in also by Wikipedia's rising role as a default for reference information. [Emphasis added.] (Answers.com includes content from Wikipedia and many premium sources). How to break out of this squeeze? Get more trend-setters to see Answers.com as a cool "must have" tool so that broader audiences will get the bug as well.

I think this is exactly the problem for library reference services. We need to build more library brand equity--"cool tools"! (John Blossom, ContentBlogger, Feb. 22, 2007. You can read more about AnswerTips from Barbara Quint here.)

Tagging--what works and what doesn't

Both LibraryThing and Amazon allow users to tag books. But with only a fraction of Amazon's traffic, LibraryThing appears to have accumulated ten times as many book tags as Amazon-—13 million tags on LibraryThing to about 1.3 million on Amazon. LibraryThing's Tim Spaulding believes what's going on here has implications for tagging, classification and "Web 2.0" commerce. Tagging works well when people tag "their" stuff, but it fails when they're asked to do it to "someone else's" stuff.

Tagging may be one way libraries could get collaborative input from their customers. Tim's post is long but worth reading. If you can't read it, skim it; if you can't skim it, give it to one of your staff to read and report on! (Librarything Thingology Blog, Feb. 20, 2007, via Catalogablog, Feb. 21, 2007.)

Solving the copyright puzzle

The blog on the impact of technology by Forrester's Charlene Li has recently morphed into a new blog, The Groundswell: How People with Social Technologies are Changing Everything, which is a collaboration with another Forrester analyst, Josh Bernoff while they write a book called The Groundswell. I think it may have some overlap with Wikinomics, but never mind that. Josh Bernoff has some interesting insights into copyright that are worth sharing, and I love the incisive way he writes, so what follows is a direct quote:

The Internet works because it can be indexed automatically. This is what makes Google work--it's what makes everything from RSS to Technorati work. Those indexes drive traffic. The original owners of that content need the traffic. They just don't want to give up all their rights.
The solution here has to be a technical solution, because that's all that scales up. I can see a few ways out:
  • Indexing sites need to read and make copies of things. This can't be illegal or the whole Internet indexing structure collapses. So let's agree that it isn't.
  • Links are legal. Are excerpts legal? This is a fair use argument that Google has tried to live within, for example, in the way it shows small excerpts from book searches. But in general, beyond these excerpts, content owners need to be able to opt out--it's their content. There should be a flag you can set on pages that indicates they can't be snipped.
  • Automated video and audio copyright checking is here. I spoke with Audible Magic about this technology over three years ago--now it's pretty mature, and Gracenote does it too. Any site featuring hosted rich media that wants to work with media companies won't get far without these technologies. Myspace has already figured this out.
In the end, the Net can't move forward unless this problem gets solved.

(Josh Bernoff, Charlene Li's Blog, now Groundswell: How People with Social Technologies are Changing Everything, Feb 20, 2007.)

Quick takes

ISBN Feeds from LibraryThing

LibraryThing has created a feed of the ISBNs in their system. Now you can compare your holdings to theirs. (Catalogablog, Feb. 27, 2007.)

ARL issues brief on Wiley acquisition of Blackwell

ARL has published a brief on Wiley's acquisition of Blackwell that "outlines the growing dysfunction in the journal market resulting from the exercise of market power by an ever-shrinking group of large commercial publishers. This document also provides talking points that librarians can use to create a broader understanding of the situation..." (ResourceShelf, Feb. 27, 2007.)

Library advocacy materials from ProQuestCSA

ProQuestCSA materials to help libraries connect with their users include:

  • Library Marketing Kit
    • How-to guide on Marketing Your Library’s Online Resources
    • Sample database descriptions that speak “patron” rather than library language
    • Customizable promotional flier and advertisement
    • Customizable press release template
    • Getting Started Demo--a digital “ad” that can be downloaded to the library’s homepage
  • Librarian Education Program

(ResourceShelf, Feb. 24, 2007.)

Your turn: Talk about it

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