Category: Computers in Libraries

Weathering the Virtual Library

Adriana Edwards-Johnson, Pioneer Library System @adriej

Slides

Pioneer LS serves a three-county area in central Oklahoma, outside of Oklahoma City. 11 branches and 7 information stations; information stations serve communities that are too small for a branch and provide library services like book delivery, storytimes.

VIrtual library has been around since 2006. 3 librarians who handle all the online library services & social media.

3 Days in May 2013: 5/19; 5/20; 5/31 all in the Pioneer Library System service area.

May 19: Rural communities (Cleveland and Pottawatomie counties). Library services impacted: info station; Moore, Norman & SOKC libraries closed early; staff property damage; Response: check on staff; get word out on damaged/lost material help.

Power outages in other communities.

May 20: High alert from NWS. 1st library cancellation for evening was 10:30am; city of Moore announce school evening events cancelled — we share; Virtual Library Coordinator leaves at lunch to go home; library cancellations continue early closings begin at 12:30pm; 2:19pm All PLS libraries officially closed for day. VL Coordinator is communicating the closings via social media.

Moore PL was 2 blocks north of the tornado; SOKC PL was 1 mile north of the tornado.

This tornado hit in the middle of the day: they normally don’t hit then.

In the Moment Response: are you going to be in the state of mind to respond quickly, that your staff and users need? Immediate aftermath and long term aftermath. P

Phone services down. Cell service, too. Adri was home, able to get ahold of City of Moore PR person. City Hall in Moore was still there. She assumed the library was there bc city offices are next door.

Contacting staff — monitoring social media search terms. Tracking #okwx — important to track severe weather hashtags. Family of library staff trying to find their staff. Shared, Retweet & Respond, facilitating the conversation.

FEMA and NWS and Red Cross: number one thing people want after a disaster is to get ahold of loved ones. Libraries can help facilitate that. Hurricane Sandy response — libraries were active in this. Must have structure in place to respond as quickly as possible.

Hurricane Katrina response; Galveston;

Challenges in the aftermath of May 20:

Immediate:

  • phone service not reliable
  • electricity failure to library w webserver and email server
  • fiber network went down to Moore (4 days to restore Internet)
  • Library voice lost in the noise?
  • Outside do-gooders — people want to help, even as people were still traumatized in the aftermath.
  • Life still going on (library services still ongoing in other parts of the service area) — how do you reconcile that? Relief mode vs continuing service.

On Going:

  • Power struggle bw AT&T & Cox Communications
  • Small ISP in Rural Areas
  • Enough followers on social media

Google Crisis Maps

Adri couldn’t get down I35 to get to her office in Norman — it was blocked by debris. She worked out of the SOKC branch for awhile, and saw a lot of patrons and their needs after the tornado.

VL Actiosn in the Aftermath of May 20

  • A lot of communication
  • Message from Director in 1/2 day
  • Online giving for staff impacted in 1.5 days
  • Tornado Relief info up in 2 days (wanted to make sure it was good information) — info and terms used sent to Google Crisis, for people who can’t read maps, info in text format
  • Share, Retweet & Respond
  • Tornado Damaged Material process
  • Joplin conversations
  • Disabled ToS for Wifi — people needed to get online to tell family they were okay
  • Power strips — people didn’t use them. AT&T had a lot of stations out in the community already; other businesses anticipated needs as well.
  • Obituaries — had to go through library records of the kids & their parents who were killed in the tornado, and remove their materials checked out, so they didn’t have to worry about them. Adri took the initiative and did it herself. It was hard to do — but the right thing to do. Long-term impact considered (so collection agency didn’t go after these people)
  • Life goes on

Your Work Now is Your Voice Later — before and after photos.

  • Library able to provide before pictures to media via their Flickr account that was licensed creative commons. Its important having the metadata there as people searching.

May 30&31

Library services closed by 4:30pm on May 30 – nothing happened

Cleveland County Libraries closed 5pm May 31

Challenges: power outages; landlines phone services; debts

El Reno Tornado. Lots of debris into service area. Hit north of SOKC branch.

Changes for VL & IT changes since May 2013

In place:

  • Remoting hosting
  • Website – Rackspace
  • EZ Proxy – OCLC
  • ILS – SIrsiDynix
  • Calendar – Evanced
  • SMS Service – Mozio
  • Email: Mircosoft 360
  • AT&T Wifi hotspot backup
  • High end laptops — used as servers if needed
  • Redirect from FB Check-in Pages

Forthcoming: offsite backups of virtual servers; Master Plan for System (meeting with emergency leaders for response on the ground)

What have others done in response?

  • Galveston: Move HVAC/electrical/DMARC from first floor to second floor after a flood in Galveston from a hurricane; blocked entrances so water can’t come in there; infrastructure stuff as well;  also changed to virtual hosting off-site; lost of cell service. Rethinking how to solve faster later on.

Have a plan before the crisis hits: social tech work builds a better foundation during crisis. Facebook algorithm difference, paying for the access– playing with different posting strategies to get page to get the info out there better, instead of paying for it. Twitter adjusting for big events.

Twitter links for major players in the emergency response. Google Crisis — identifying who the major stakeholders are in the area for authoritative information. Cities, Emergency, News, more.

Virtual Services have place in the on-the-ground response. Never can have too many ears to listen to people. Meeting people needs where they’re at.

Life does still go on. Moore has already rebuilt 50 percent of the homes destroyed. Storm shelters going in. Staff did have homes destroyed, and rebuilt. Schools being rebuilt. Memorial project under way.

Know ways in advance to track information for patrons who may lose materials — proactively help them out. Have policies in place to deal with these situations.

Academic libraries: on-campus students vs commuter campuses, during snow storms, and campus closures? How do you make up lost information sessions?

Guide on the side for targeted training virtually

Google Hangouts used for training replacements virtually.

Plan for ways library can help community during these times of disaster.

Audience member says they put in a generator in their server room to help…but not if the infrastructure is down.

Slides

Monday Keynote: Hack Libraries: Platforms? Playgrounds? Prototypes?

David Weinberger @dweinberger

Co-Director Harvard Library Innovation Lab, Harvard University and & Author, Too Big To Know; Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, & Co-Author,Cluetrain Manifesto

Notes

* Why hacking now?

Libraries squeezed: cut costs or increase value

Hacking: fresh thinking that finds new opportunities for increasing the value of a system perhaps in unintended ways. (White hat hacking). (vs Exploit hidden weakness of systems for personal gain. (black hat hacking))

Bozo hacking: couch into car…. bungee cord tried to defy law of physics.

Why opportunity now for hacking in libraries?

  1. Networking of everything [not just going digital] (Digital provides access; networking allows interaction)
  2. Opening of Everything: from closed by default to open: Creative Commons/Open Access/Open Source/Open Education –> “there seems to be a consensus that open access is an inevitability” – Stuart Shieber, 2012
  3. Lifecycle Engagement: in old architecture: Author –> Distribution –> Readers; Now, because readers are networked, readers connect to one another across the world; connect directly with the author. Talking with one another in public, and development of ideas, value is in the development of ideas, in public, in the new public of the web. Physical objects typically cut off from those conversations. Now, conversations in public place, online.
  4. New Networked Ecoystem: Google Books, Wikipedia, Amazon instead of Library: How do we get libraries into the game

* Why isn’t every knife a Swiss army knife? Every possible tool. World of utility. Cultural assumptions.

Swiss army knife is a hack — we don’t have replicators: which tools do we hack together? Anticipation…

It’s negative to have too many tools on a Swiss Army knife. Need to decide which tools we really need. #cildc —@LauraSolomon

love @dweinberger mega swiss army knife analogy — A Swiss Army knife is a hack, preparing for what people “might” need. #cildc —@technolibrary

Filtering…reducing number of clicks that it takes for readers to get to materials. Filtering on the web is a filtering forward, not filtering out. We curate.

Anticipate needs for: Collections; cataloging; shelving; space; services. –physical and digital.

Base fields for Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center — metadata, that is Dublin-Core based. Anticipation didn’t have replication_of metadata in existing system.

Put platform underneath library services: one service that the library provides. Portal has open data. Collections; Social; Mashups; Analytics; Recommendations; Games; Browser; Open data usage, items, reviews, notes. With a platform, others can create their own interface on top of it.

Sounds a lot like Bibliocommons 🙂

DPLA platform metadata is open. App Library

Library Cloud at Harvard project

Item; Event; LCC; API’s; MARC holdings; usage links; item IDs.

StackLife project: OPAC alternative will be checking this out for sure!

StackLife catalog: ow.ly/i/59PMb really interesting open source catalog. @dweinberger: “please use and customize” #cildc —@AlexZealand

Point of platform is to mashup do things with it that you want to do.

Library platforms isn’t only digital. Labrary at Harvard. Library Lab at Harvard.

Awesomebox.io return box. lil@law.harvard.edu

Linked Open Data.

  1. Use URIs as names for things
  2. Use HTTP URIs so that peoplce can look up those names
  3. When someone looks up a URIs provide useful info using the standards RDP/SPARQL
  4. Include links to other URIs so that they can discover more things.

Linked open data allows synonymous terms to be linked.

System will get much smarter, much faster, when all this data is linked together.

Linked Data for Libraries: Cornell; Stanfard; Harvard Library Innovation Lab

Graphing Data. The side bar that appears in Google Searches that mashes up data together, basic facts… comes from graphing data. Google’s database of information crawled comes up with this.

Collaboratively libraries graphing data together. Possibilities endless

LIbraries hacking the future: do in public sphere, so world gets more value from it. Enrich existing assets and relationships, and librarian expertise. Community expertise — they notice relationships we haven’t. Infrastructure of knowledge. Allows us to continue infrastructure of knowledge — curation. Every point of view is challenged and should be challenged, even as we believe it. This is what libraries have always done. Providing sources, but showing disagreements among the sources.

We have a connected world, but the connections aren’t being made yet. They need to be made.

To capitalize on relationships, enrich existing assets, and fight the echo chambers, we need libraries curating @dweinberger #cildc —@queequegs

Yellow brick roads are wonderful, but they only take us in one direction…

CiL presentations on Innovation and Open Education Resources

On Tuesday, I presented without slides during a sunrise session on innovation with Jill Hurst-Wahl and James King. Purposefully presenting without slides for the first time in probably 15 years (dating back to high school, yes),  I very briefly spoke about Kansas libraries and the continued innovation that goes on there, because (at least from my perspective) the Kansas library community is open to sharing, collaborating, and working together on initiatives, because many libraries have limited staff, time, financial resources, and collections. This has allowed for a lot of innovation to happen in consortias, open source software deployment, statewide platforms, and ebooks.

At the end of that same day, I presented on Open Educational Resources for the School Librarian as part of the school libraries track. The slides are embedded below. All presentation resources are available here. Gary Price also presented in the session on the same topic, focusing on open web resources and their untapped wealth of potential for educational use. All of his great resources are available on his presentation website. There is huge potential for open education resources to be used at all levels of education (K12; College; Self-Education).

Ms. Kansas Librarian Goes to Capitol Hill

As I referenced in my earlier notes post, Michael, Patrick and I went down to Capitol Hill for the Broadband for America meeting.

America’s New National Pastime: The Innovative and Competitive Internet Marketplace, Capitol Hill 10 April 2013

I sat through the different presentations, at the same time recalling Jessamyn West’s Without A Net: Librarians Bridging the Digital Divide book, as well as a presentation on digital inequality I had put together for a grad school class a couple of years ago. Not much had changed on the reasons for the digital divide that were in Jessamyn’s book and from information I did on the presentation.

Panelists pushed for continued light regulation of the broadband infrastructure, counter to the requests of net neutrality groups. The panelists finished, and I listened to different staffers, policy analysts, and other members of the audience ask questions.

The questions all seemed to be around the spectrum (frequency) issue. That more spectrum needed to be freed. Fine, but what about the people issue? The access and adoption issues?

I started raising my hand, without a complete question in my hand, and kept getting passed over, partially because I was hidden behind a projector, I think. Finally, the moderator said there was time for one more question. I desperately raised my hand, feeling quite silly. Michael and Patrick finally got the moderator’s attention and I opened my mouth to speak, and the nerves hit.

But I tried to be coherrent. I think I mentioned I was a librarian from Kansas, who while interested in the spectrum issues and other technological issues, what about the relevance and skills reasons for non-adoption of the Internet? And the role libraries were playing in dealing with those issues. And I wondered if the panelists had heard of the EveryoneOn and Connect2Compete programs? I think there were other things I said, but that was the important part.

Three panelists quickly responded to the question. One was obviously aware of the programs I referenced, and knew all about libraries and their important role in this issue (he’d had connections with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at one point), but the other two panelists answers were disappointing and somewhat irrelevant, at least from my perspective of things. (I was honestly giddy at that point the question had been answered and wasn’t fully paying attention to what they were saying.)

Afterward, several people said thank you for the question, and I ended up speaking to a staffer from one of my Senator’s offices about technology policy and technology innovation in Kansas, including the Google Fiber implementation in the Kansas City metro area.

It was an incredible experience and goes to show that if you stay alert, and are willing to jump on opportunities that may seem scary or out of reach or out of your element, and yet take a risk anyway, you never know what will happen.

I noticed a couple of things during the meeting. I hate to bring up gender issues, but I noticed that the panel was all men. I know the tech-industry is still heavily male-dominated, but are there honestly no women experts in broadband Internet policy? It’s an honest question.

And during the question period, until I was able to ask my question, all the askers were men. Again, why was this? I’ve never been to a Hill meeting like this before, obviously, but as an obvious DC and political outsider, even with my undergrad degree in political science, this frankly bothered me, especially on such a current, future, global, economic, and critical issue such as broadband policy.

Finally, libraries DO play a critical role in the continued national broadband policy discussion and implementation.

Libraries are learning centers in their communities for all community members, especially in more rural or lower income areas where broadband access is limited, unaffordable, or not available at all (those areas without broadband access still exist, even near the Google Fiber implementation area in the KC Metro area). Libraries are places where people can learn how to use computers and the Internet, apply for jobs, benefits, legal and government services, research health conditions, take online classes, connect with family and friends, and create content. But all of these activities require broadband access.

And as Dr. Ehrlich stated during his section, “The web has become an avatar of markets. It is a representation of markets. To be in the market of the world is to be on the web. The economic benefit we get from broadband is going to depend on the ubiquity of access to it.”

If communities and citizens are to participate in this world market, they must be on the web, and if citizens are still going to struggle to get connected to the web because they don’t understand why they need to be online, they don’t have access to the technology to be online (don’t own an Internet-enabled device), or they don’t have the skillsets to use the Internet, how are they going to compete in this world market? How can they be reached? The library is usually the one institution present in most communities and neighborhoods in the country, and librarians are already working to help people use the Internet and show them its value in daily life.

I hope the Broadband for America group and other entities working on increasing broadband access in the United States will remember to keep libraries in the conversation. I’m glad I was able to be a part of the larger conversation today.

Broadband for America meeting notes

Wednesday morning of the conference, Michael Sauers, Patrick Sweeney and I took off for Capitol Hill to attend the Broadband of America meeting briefing, “America’s New National Pastime: The Innovative and Competitive Internet Marketplace” on Capitol Hill in one of the House Buildings.

Michael has more notes over on his blog, as well as pictures from the event. Thanks to Patrick for getting the word out to the #cildc twitter stream on Saturday about this!

Speakers:

Rich Galen

Technology has changed a lot since Rich Galen came to Washington. Modern computer systems brought ability to deal with constituents in a far more meaningful way.

Former Senator John Sununu

BB for america is an organization that is an organization for sound BB deployment and access.

Motivation is simple: deployment for high speed, quality deployment. Important economically, national security. Today high dependency on high speed broadband in the future.

Members are state based community organizations, manufactures of telecom industry, healthcare, other stakeholders.

US is really a bb success story. Bb is backbone of US success, building vibrant economy.

80 million BB subscribes, 200 million wireless subscribers.

US leads in 4G LTE deployment.

WWW Index report — US ranks 2.

Policy is why US is leading. Light regulatory touch has helped this. Started back in the Clinton admin. private investment in this infratustrature is key to its strength and success in our economy.

Predictable, simple legal framework for encouraging electronic commerce. Approach that has been sustained through FCC in national broadband plan. Internet should be fueled by private sector innovation and investment.

Economic dollars at stake? Back to 1996, Over $1 trillion invested in state of the art BB networks.

During most recent economic downturn, since 2008, over 250 billion has been invested in high speed broadband networks. Job creation. Meaningful investment into meaningful job creation. in 2011, wired/wireless investment increased 24%.

The policies that have served us well in the 1990s and 2000s that light regulatory touch needs to continue to happen.

Rob Atkinson, President, The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

“The Whole Picture: Where America’s Broadband Networks Really Stand”

Why does this matter? debates abt US BB policy are premised on whether the US broadband system is performing well compared to other nations.

Four dimensions about BB Policy:

  • Deployment: what share of postal addresses does the network cover
  • Adoption: What share of households subscribe
  • Performance: Speed/Download speed
  • Price: cost to use service

Deployment: 3rd highest rate of wired intermodal in the world

  • 96.3 percent have access to some form of wired bb
  • 96% have access to cable modem….
  • 4% who don’t have
  • OECD Fiber (we don’t lead in Fiber deployment) Japan/Korea have dense populations. Smaller countries.

Adoption: The US ranks 15 of 33 OECD nations on adoption.

  • 88.6% adoption by US computer-owning homes
  • It’s that people don’t have computers….
  • Reasons for non adoption: Pew survey stats: availability; price no computer; usability; relevance (people don’t get why they need the Internet)
  • America leads the world in adoption.
  • Compared to other nations, we have a larger percentage of lower income populations.

Performance

  • Speed Overall: 22nd in speed. 29.6 mBps peak rate.
  • American speeds are improving faster than world-leading speeds.
  • Speed: 6th in OECD in % of users w connections faster than 10 MBps

Price: entry level pricing: 2nd lowest in OECD

  • The US rank in prices for higher speed is lower [but what can you really do on Low speed internet]
  • US broadband prices are progressive.
  • Factors for price — not excess process: US bb providers are less profitable than EU15 providers.
  • low price high speed nations have committed heavy subsidies to private firms
  • (but adoption rate, at least in japan isn’t different than us)
  • Factors for high costs: 27th lowest rate of urbanicity
  • costs of bb are mbps/miles

Conclusions: is a facilities based deployment leaders in cable, fiber, and LTE & others…..

Issues:

  • internet engagement, digital literacy, computer ownership
  • subsidy programs for poor and rural residents, following connect for america model
  • use of smart auctions to locate subsidies (more spectrum)
  • spectrum remains scarce due to govt over allocation

Larry Irving (Irving Info Group strategic planning group):

Lifeline phones.

digital divide

2003 — only 15% were on bb on home.

August 2012: 94% online; 74% on broadband.

Citizens on tribal lands, rural areas, and minorities are much less likely to have broadband access.

Less than 2% take Internet from dialup today.

Latinos and blacks are much more likely to depend on mobile

76% latinos; 70% blacks; 60% whites

Trend of mobile use — strong in younger minorities. If you didn’t start with a wired laptop, would you get broadband. There’s been a paradigm shift people aren’t looking. Young people aren’t getting wired phones any more. Just mobiles.

Why aren’t we giving kids mobile devices? iPhones, iPads.

Recipe: lets meet people where they are instead of dragging them where they need to be.

  1. 1. How are we going to get bb tech/wired/wireless into where it isn’t?
  2. 2. How are we going to get web more relevant to more americans?
  3. 3. More spectrum available
  4. 4. Fed govt users off spectrum so it is used for private use.
  5. 5. National Info infrastructure for action (trying to figure out what the Internet was going to be)

Classic ways in the past for action

  1. 1. private sector investment/competition
  2. 2. univ service
  3. 3. promoting innovation/application
  4. 4. eseemless use and interaction
  5. 5. security
  6. 6. improving management of freq. spectrum

We’re at an inflection point. We can continue to drive this vision on classic principles, and go in the wrong direction, or…. Go somewhere else?

Hance Haney — Discovery Institute, Democracy and Technology Program

Couldn’t follow this guy. it was a written piece that was read. I know it was important information, but the presentation style/writing difference made a difference trying to process what he was saying/reading.

Conclusions: industry dictated by moore’s law, gilder’s law. therefore, it only gets easier to deploy new tech, new devices, etc. the problem: legacy regulation: federal, state level (pre-existing tech). AT&T trial runs to next gen services to see the new regulations that are needed.

Ev Ehrlich. Former undersecretary for commerce on Clinton

econ benefits of broadband

Moore’s Law outcomes….

3rd one he mentioned: Changes way things are organized to production.

Ability to track info within firms.

The web has become an avatar of markets. It is a representation of markets. To be in the market of the world is to be on the web.

The economic benefit we get from broadband is going to depend on the ubiquity of access to it.

When digital divide was popularized by larry Irving and ev ehrlich, it was about the fear of those getting shut out, the new problem solving, cognition, reference, skills that are inherent in the bb world. more opportunity to networks, passport to economic citizenship around the globe.

Very tempting to say hobby farm

Let consumers drive development. many people don’t need 100mb delivered to their home. many people don’t want a wired connection. wireless fits their lifestyle.

Q&A — just listened — lots of questions about the spectrum issues

This requires a separate blog post (that I’ll write on the plane), but I was able to ask a question at the very end of the session about libraries’ role in the relevance and skills factors for lack of broadband adoption, as well as mention the EveryoneOn and Connect2Compete programs. The responses from the panel were varied (see Michael’s notes for those), but it still was quite thrilling to speak up on behalf of libraries.