Category: Computers in Libraries

Becoming TechCentral: Cleveland Public Library

Anastasia Diamond-Ortiz, Knowledge Manager

CJ Lynce, Tech Central Manager

Olivia Hoge, Lorain Branch Manager

Cleveland Public LIbrary

Connect kit. — someone in the audience is going to play with one during the presentation.

Tech Central at the Cleveland Public Library is a downtown destination.

Downtown library had absolute chaos before tech central.

60 public computers in 2 buildings/9 locations and 2 sign-up stations = chaos

TechCentral was developed as a way to come out of this chaos.

Different use cases for each space — developed personas to understand users in different zones.

Providing a wide-range of tech in a shared space.

1. Learning space: expert help in a friendly setting, not in a small space or classroom style. Learner & teacher on equal footing. Smartboard station in that area. Small informal and formal instruction happening there.

2. Play space: where people could touch and play with Kindles, 3D printing, iPads, and others. Space to delight their users, and show them the latest and greatest. Try something new!

3. Connect space

4. Create space: adaptive stations, Mac and Linux machines

5. Getting things done: resume, check email, job applications. Chunk of time and a robust computer to actually do this. Get out of people’s way and give them time and space to work.

Tech Central is not just a place, a space. It’s a mantra to provide service to people. Right team for the job. Recruited people who embodied the spirit of tech central. Curious, committed people work there.

Tech Toy Box — lending device program.

People want to learn how to use these devices.

myCloud: personalized devices that can be checked out.

One of the first services provided in Tech Central when it opened was 3D printing. 5 cents a gram of the plastic. No one piece printed has been more than $5. Most cost between 1-3. Creating objects to print isn’t easy (3D Cad, Autodesk, etc)

Thingiverse — Wikipedia of stuff

They want to use this experience to inspire people to learn and design their own 3D models. Minecraft gateway, possibly.

Maker Kit — kids can use these to create things.

Learning about circuits.

Monotron device.

Maker Labs: so patrons can create something and have a takeaway at the end of the day.

First session? Custom 3D cookie cutters (cookiecaster.com) — patrons were helping each other, creation AND collaboration going on!

Panaromic image makers (still images/video)

VIdeo slideshows.

Kaleidoscopes

Font making labs

Patrons at all skill levels can participate in these labs.

Digital graffiti art on a wall in the library: Need: Laptop; projector; web camera; laser pointer

Laser Tag 2.0 instructions

Cleveland Mini Maker Faire

Tech Toy Box v3 —

In House Use Devices (Id left with staff members; 3 hrs usage)

When you check out tier 1 devices, you’ll get points that will allow you to check out tier 2 devices, and eventually check out tiered at-home checkouts. Levels used to develop trust with patrons and the library.

Tier 1: SD Video cameras; gps units — small, simple devices

Tier 2: eReaders

Tier 3: Internet tablets

Learning how the patrons create is amazing.

Library is going to see how this roll-out works.

Future programs: electronics soldering lab; Programming with Rapsberry Pi & Ruby language.

Future space: dedicated creative space. Current space not working out.

Ex. Ability to Record music using library-provided instruments & recording equipment? WOW! Many people don’t have instruments in their house anymore

Library wants to replicate tech central idea into various branches in the library system, in different areas.

Are there things people can’t print? Library policy, certain objects won’t be printed.

Libraries, Archives, & Museums: Collaboration on a Large Scale

Michael Edson, Director, Web & New Media Strategy, Office of the CIO, Smithsonian

You can tell a lot about someone by what they choose to measure…and what they measure with.

Willy Sutton.

Where the value is today in society, cultural institutions, etc.

Most of civic institutions instituted success in the mid 20th century. New physics of dreaming, global value creation, but we haven’t recrafted our dreams.

Chandra project. 

National Gallery of Art, -1% growth in attendance over last 33 years. How you feel about this depends on what you think your mission is and how you think about scale. But either way — there’s a lot of room at the top.

Hypothetical Projcet X, starts where the National Gallery of Art started, but grows at 10% a year for 33 years.

A global “audience” of collaborators (individuals, learners, fans, community) of this scale was not imaginable” 33 years ago. But it is now.

108.4 million viewers for 2013 Super Bowl. 1.3 Billion views of Gangnam Style.

TED reached its billionth video view!

Wikipedia 1.7 billion edits.

Trove, 39398 text corrections, by volunteers, today

Zooniverse, almost 800K taking part worldwide: people exploring science. Crowdsourcing climate change from several centuries possible now, based on ship logs.

OpenStreet Map — 900K registered users; contributed 14 million edits; 1.6 billion locations(?)

Kickstarter — all kinds of projects.

Room to Read — 1600 schools; 15K librarians; 10 million books; 9 million checkouts; 7.5 million children.

Many of these small groups get a lot of work done at scale.

We love our museums, libraries, and archives. We need them to be super successful… by:

  • Put the tools of knowledge creation into more hands
  • Share the joy & meaning of artistic and culture exploration with MORE citizens
  • Deepen engagement w the challenges that face our species.
  • nurture the habits of civil and sustainable society

Can this happen quickly enough?

If you’re only counting stuff, staff, checkouts, it’s not enough. If the library checkout is the standard of excellence, success isn’t possible.

Scale can be confusing.

There are more powerful ways of accomplishing museum mission than getting people through the doors.

Larry Page interview in Wired, 1000 percent improvement requires exploring the edges, asking different questions, looking at problems.

Thinking about libraries beyond big systems, door counts, and collection, and that:

  • Every library a standalone [one-off].
  • Every transaction is single event [one-off].
  • Library: what’s in it for me? [city council; governing body questions]
  • What’s the ask? [leaving something behind; research; mentoring; cognitive surplus; effort]
    • Librarians kinda pride themselves on staying out of their patron’s lives.
  • Trust is a check you’ve got to cash.

How do you get to scale?

  • Start global by default; smart people all over the world are interested in a projet and will contribute
  • Open by default [unnecessary property restrictions can suffocate a project]
  • participatory by default
  • rethink who can contribute
  • rethink the value-creation arrows
  • don’t collaborate: solve big problems [collaborate to get big work done]

GLAMS can go to 11: And when they do, new opportunities present themselves…

How can people take collaboration to a global level? It’s in the ASK. The power of the network.

Ex.: David Lee King, TSCPL: His blog posts, video, podcasts, he puts stuff online at no extra cost. Very simple. Just Internet by default & global by default and using platforms everyone could use.

If we believe in the open web, libraries and museums and civic institutions — who already have the public’s trust to archive historical data — we may need to create open portals for more digital content to be shared and stored, as businesses are shuttering services.

Scale has a z axis, as well, in depth. How do you measure the depth of an interaction, a person-to person, artwork to viewer?

Zoo visits were about learning.

Merete Sanderhoff (@msanderhoff), Researcher/Project manager, Statens Museum for Kunst (SMK) via video & Skype

Art Museums. Platform with art images + stream of comments on Twitter. Take a picture of an painting/object in a museum. Leave comments, questions, links.

Why Twitter as platform? democratic; multilingual. production is manageable. reactivate existing content. dynamically updated.

Open licenses adopted by the museums.

What has been learned? people are adopting the open licenses. users appreciate the democratic approach. they don’t participate. Curatorial voice, comments, add value, looking down at screen, not at artwork. learning curve for the technology. People may not want to use mobile while in a museum. People may want a mobile guide.

How can we make this scale? More museums…Want a more sustainable mobile tool.

Michael Anker, Senior Advisor, Danes Digital Library, “Collaboration on a Large Scale: Danish Digital Library” 

Slides: www.slideshare.net/digitalbiliotek

500 public libraries main and branches in Denmark. 5.5 million people. 1/3 frequent users; 1/3 occasional users; 1/3 non-users.

The Digital Library — lots of different groups involved at different levels.

Mission statement: individual citizen’s ability and opportunity to acquire knowledge…. more on his slides

The challenges ahead are only getting bigger. we can only do this together.

Several different sections to this library. Several different websites: for video, for print, for audio, for ebooks, for objects. Companies are not good at curation.

A few examples [in Danish :)]:

Formats changed dramatically over the last 30 years. CDs, then digital fights back. If you want to be ready for change and know the format that’s coming, you can’t. As a result, must have an infrastructure that changes. Curation sites that change.

Bridging the gap between the digital and physical library.

Sharing content on screens in libraries project.

Library produced content, sharing of content. Facilitation of the editorial work in the libraries.

CMS platforms. 50% of the libraries in Denmark are already sharing lots of information. Drupal CMS.

Looking ahead — making the platforms available to others.

Personalization of sites and the data gathered has relationships.

How (design model): Project (development) [ongoing] –> infrastructure –> Maintenance (operations) [ongoing]–> curation that goes into the infrastructure

knowledge=process + true information.

Ting Community to share coding knowledge [again, in Danish]

Lots of different platforms involved in this project.

eBook access use cases. target audiences; function;s different needs; architecture  All of this is up for grabs and anybody can take it.

Very interesting project.

Q&A section

Library School students advice: Michael pushes museum students to rethink the platforms they are to use, the outcomes, libraries are one of many industries that are confused about why they exist and confused about their mission. “The future has arrived, it’s just not evenly distributed yet” -William Gibson.

Libraries are buildings in community. People have to come into our place, for lifelong learning, and leave our place. This isn’t enough. Librarians spend that trust, and be learning leaders in their communities.

Train librarians to change the world. Not vocational training, a calling. Not everyone called to do this.

Single librarian libraries: everything is possible. MUST collaborate and share, to survive.

Bill Joy — Sun microsystems. Most of the smart people work for someone else.

Digital training, necessary. People aren’t being taught this enough.

Understand that technology is only a tool.

You don’t do technology for technology’s sake. Think about what you want to achieve with it. Wireframing and use cases.

Thesis about the solo librarian. information ecology. Tapping into community, institution, and can achieve a lot.

Crisis; we’re still in siloed professional categories. Library studies. museum studies. archival studies.

Digitization is one thing and affordable access is another. More digitization projects are the opposite.

Libraries with like needs could share infrastructure with like needs.

Nonfiction 2.0: Digital Extensions of Text to Support the Common Core

Dr. Marc Aronson, Author, Lecturer Rutgers

Knowledge is inherrently changing quickly — ability to process data, doubles every two years. [More’s law]

We have to begin to give them the context that information changes. Ability to process knowledge as it changes. Pluto perfect example of this.

Marc is telling stories about fossil finding.

Lee Berger used Google Earth and had a new perspective looking down. Because he looked w new eyes and asked new questions, he found new answers. And we can do the same.

Story told in print form. How does the story change in digital form? Marc showing book in iBooks format (not out yet)

The story opens with a video, explaining how Lee Berger used Google Earth for new fossil discoveries. No hominid clavicles had ever been found before.

Digital platform — freedom where you more space on digital platform.

As science changes, Marc & Lee will be tracking changes at Scimania.org

The print book that narrates a story to the iBook that shows the story. To the experience that allows you to see change as it happens.

InFORMation. Knowledge as it takes form. That’s what is exciting about Common Form.

Read for evidence, argument, POV. Compare/contrast. To see one view against/another. Not passively absorb, but actively think through reading, writing, and speaking.

That is the only training that will prepare young people to deal with 9 planet solar system vs 15 planet.

Knowledge is In – Form – Ation.

Melissa Jacobs Israel, Coordinator of Library Services, NYC Dept. of Education [@missyji]

“How can the use smart tech web tools and apps build curiosity, critical thinking and independent inquiry amongst students?

You can’t just teach to a standard, still have skills to teach. Many skills needed to get to the standard. These skills scaffolded. To meet a standard, you’re teaching over time. You have to break down the standard to the individual skill.

Teaching kids to critically think through these digital apps/ebooks. Not necessarily teaching a site. Teaching kids to critically think about the items they are extracting.

Ebooks

Bats! Flurry Fliers of the Night book. How does this change the learning experience for kids vs. flat book? How does it extend idea of inquiry? Repetition, further discovery of the bat’s life, there’s being the bat. The book uses the space of the iPad (horizontal/verticality). Understands that digital space is different from print space.

It understands that kids have questions. What does it mean to be a bat? Where would I live? What would I eat? Can I survive during the day?

Al Gore’s Our Choice book. An app like this is changing the way we interact with books. Changing the way kids are reading. They are empowered as learners, to dive deeper in the process of thinking, gives the context and the content to deal with the information and the problems.

Web Tools

Provide historical context — historypin.com Tour collections. Narrow by date, area, subject. Look at two photographs and seeing how they’ve changed. Capturing first hand account information when something happened. Gathering that from around the world. This is a way of starting inquiry, critical thinking, and getting kids excited about learning about the world around them. Also teaching kids copyright, authoritative sources, debate.

Extend conversations and inquiry w Multimedia Resources from ARKive Images of life on earth. Photos & videos of wildlife of endangered species around the world. Help students see beyond facts of the animals, the information. Why are these animals endangered? Why do they need to be saved? It has a kind of wiki feel to it. People can edit the entries, ARKive verifies the posted info and if it’s correct, will incorporate. Gives credit to the videos and images. Post, comment, share information.

Education part of the site, resources for different age groups. It has teacher notes, presentations, and activity packs. Edit presentations/resources to what you need.

AASL Best Websites for Teaching and Learning project

NEW! AASL Best Apps for Teaching and Learning project

To Flip or Not to Flip, That is the Question!

Kari Arfstrom, Ex. Director, Flipped Learning Network, Washington, DC

Pat Semple, Upper School Librarian, Bullis School, Potomac, Maryland

flippedlearning.org

Pat: Flipping allows me to spend more time with students, build relationships with them.

Her school is BYOD for Middle School and Upper School. Lower School uses iPads.

Her environment is heavily digital.

Kari Arfstrom, quick overview of Flipped Learning

Ben Stein video being shown — awful lecture.

Classrooms: Used to sitting in nice neat rows, looking forward at lecturer [kind of like the conference room setup]

Many classrooms today are chaotic, project based learning.

Flipped learning: built in the trenches, for and by teachers/librarians

Why do we have so much unprecedented change in education? Lots of different examples on slides.

What is the best use of your face-to-face class time? Better…

  • practice
  • discussion
  • assessment
  • instruction
  • application
  • remediation 

Time shifting the direct instruction… 

So isn’t that blending learning or online or virtual?

All of these are specific methods, techniques, that involve technology and learning.

Online — online – little interaction.

Blended learning — missed her definition.

Flipped model: interaction with the students and teachers have together — this is the key piece.

Flipped learning occurs when direct instruction is moved from the group learning classroom to the individual learning space. Moving from a teacher-centered classroom to a student-centered learning environment.

[Thought: Could the Library 23 Things programs be an unintentional example of flipped learning, before this concept existed?]

Flipped learning IS NOT all about videos.

Some teachers will front-load videos, some will share them in the middle, or some will share them at the end. Some are asking students to help create videos or find them. Up to the teacher for when these videos can be used.

Digital Divide. If one-to-one initiative exists, everyone has Internet access, the buses have Internet access, this is great. But what if you don’t? Making sure students have Internet access some way (not that they DO the homework), but just that they have access to the Internet. This is still a HUGE issue in many parts of the country.

Different ways of recording the videos: showing computer, whiteboard, chalkboard, or videoing face, or tiny face.

25 minute lecture during might be compressed down to 8 minutes — much shorter.

Ex. PE teacher has a flipped classroom – Pickle Ball video.

Does flipped learning propagate bad teaching (lectures)? If the teacher is bad yes, good, no.

Is flipped learning THE answer? No, it’s ONE of the answers.

Still can have discussion, project based learning, socratic method, or other methods. What works for you? For your students? Find your style as a teacher.

Bloom’s taxonomy — can time shift remembering/understanding down the time level.

Flip your classroom book

Lots of webinars on this teaching method available online at the Flipped Learning Network website. Flipped conference in Stillwater, MN, July 17-19, 2013. Workshops. More!

Foundations of Flipped Learning — blended learning course available

Pat Semple

Too much time on general information, not enough of her. Also wanted to get into answering questions well why isn’t Wikipedia a good resource, ec. She taught the basics of using citation software, setting up accounts beforehand, and many other things, etc., using the flipped model.

Side perk: not being a classroom teacher & 500 students, could have more relationships with students. Talk about their topics, getting the information kids need for research.

Solution: use websites alot, her school uses Haiku LMS — hard for the librarian to use this, so she set up www.ineedgood.info as her resources website.

Flipped learning allows me to set up groundwork beforehand. Gotten feet wet, and have questions and problems that many are sharing. Allows students to pick and choose.

She can help students much more now. She does a better job, doesn’t have to give the lecture multiple times of day, and wants to be the value-add to the students.

[I really need to read that Flip Your Classroom book. Wonder how this method could be used in professional development/continuing education settings with adults.]

Keynote Notes: Evolving Community Engagement- What would Amazon & Google Do?

[liveblogging, please forgive typos]

“In a world of change, the learners shall inherit the earth, while the learned shall find themselves perfectly suited for a world that no longer exists.” -Eric Hoffer, American social writer and philosopher

Brent Leary (@brentleary, BrentLeary.com) & Rebecca Jones

In 2005: 5M Terabytes of info (Google)

No Twitter, little Facebook, no iPhones, iPads back then.

Today, it’s ridiculous the amount of information getting creating.

iPhones being bought, than babies being born. 378K vs 371K (each day/each week/each month — didn’t catch that that rate)

2005: last pope elected, very few cell phones and pictures being taken.

2013: almost every person had cell phones and taking pictures.

People skip TV ads; direct mail never opened; unsubscribing from emails

“The attention economy is not growing, which means we have to grab the attention that someone else has today.

Tech has changed our behavior, activities, expectations. But the philosophy hasn’t changed. People still want to be listened to and valued, more than just the money.

NCAA tournament and March Madness On Demand: built apps around the experience, and social experience built in to the platform. TV ratings went up. Traditional way (TV) people watched more — people expect more and more and more, as they get used to different technology.

“Improving the life experience of a customer goes beyond improving their experience as your customer.”

This is the way to get people’s attention, and keep it. How do we better develop ______ to create a better experience for our customers, our patrons?

Google Glass and Google Now — examples of creating technology to make experiences better for people. Different ways of taking information and making it more consumable for the people they are trying to engage.

“True service pays off”

1pt increase in customer satisfaction can predict a 14% change in revenues on the web; also, people more likely to buy again from the same company, recommend company to others, felt sense of brand commitment (2012 Foresee E-tail satisfaction index)

Subscription Economy (example Zuora): instead of buying products, people will subscribe more and more to services.

Zip Cars, instead of buying a car, pay a fee to use a car.

By 2015, more than 40% of media and digital products companies around the world will use subscription services…”

Tie Society: people don’t necessarily want to buy ties, company built subscription service like Netflix for ties. Tie selected goes in an online closet. Sent through mail, wear it for awhile and send back. Interesting… Hmm.

Definitely is a new way to engage with customers!

Amazon Effect: People don’t buy from companies. People buy from other people: people buy based on good experience.

‘People buy from a good experience’ Not people, not company, but how they enjoy the experience. ‘Frictionless experience’. #cildc –darnlibrarian

“Amazon who invented the one click purchase, perfected online shopping with data, efficiency, and customer service.” -Flurry.com, 2012

Amazon Prime membership.

How do you go through all these stages? Data; information; insights; empathy; action; interaction; trust.

Cannot skip empathy.

If you don’t get privacy right, info used for nefarious purposes, people will drop you quickly.

Sentensity. Sentiment + Intensity. How passionately do people feel about things?

Amazon bought Goodreads. People aren’t happy about that.

People are relying on people and social networks to find books. Why Amazon bought Goodreads — good network, with even more data.

Speaker is okay with this purchase, as long as the data is used correctly.

Pyramid of Customer Loyalty graphic.

Q&A Time with Rebecca Jones

Libraries are in relationship business. This is the first customer service expert the conference has had. People don’t buy [borrow/interact] from companies [libraries} with experiences.

The possibilities there are IMMENSE, when looking at our libraries within this lens.

What does this mean for libraries? 82% of Amazon Prime members will buy from Amazon, even if it costs more. If you create the right environment, climate, people, it allows you to create a community online/offline that will last for the long haul.

Rewards come from maintaining customers who are our advocates not from customer acquisition. Something for libraries to think about #cildc. @lauramoore

Amazon will look at the data to find the answers that they can’t get elsewhere. [My question: but can people be FULLY understand, simply through data? I don’t think data captures every bit of human nature & its vast diversity.]

Good point from Twitter: I agree. Data informs decisions; it doesn’t make them. #cildc -@anastasia_do

Rebecca Jones: it’s not just about the relationships. It’s the end of the relationship — the impact on the lives. YES!

Idea of mutual value–customers bring value to a organiz & we give value to them. Creates bonds to discover what those values are. #cildc -@Whslibraryrocks

How do you keep from going to the dark side with our data? His answer? We’re consumers. Did anyone else catch a real answer to that question?

Quick reaction: I enjoyed his talk, but as I began thinking about something Aaron Schmidt said yesterday in a UX Boot Camp workshop, that should we be imitating Amazon/Google/Apple, or be ourselves and then I also realized that data isn’t the WHOLE story for our communities and libraries, I became kind of disenchanted with his talk. Need to process more.