Libraryman

Last Friday’s “Web 2.You” event at McGill University was crammed full of interesting speakers and attendees. The sessions were useful and thought provoking, the crowd was smart and engaged, the egg salad at lunch was even magnifique’. On top of that, they even hosted a reception after, where we got to get into some meatier conversations (a perfect follow-up to a heady, info packed, full day of material). They even had a cheese ball, twice the size of your head! Seriously though, all around this was a great event, one I was very honored to be a part of it.

So if you are in Montreal around this time next year try and get your ticket (before they sell out of them again). And to Amanda, Adrienne, Amy, Brianne and the many, many other capable volunteers who made this student run event work so well, kudos to you all, as well as to McGill University for supporting this fine student effort. Very impressive work!

Finally, here is some commentary from Montreal librarian Lora Baiocco, who attended the event. This is from her “infinite digressions” blog. Thank you, Lora!

“Michael Porter, aka Libraryman, uncensored, live at Thompson House, one day only”…”what are the right tools for us? Do we have them? Are we using them? Who are we trusting to build what we need? What started off as leisurely stroll through the tech park grew into a frantic facing of the facts. Where is the infrastructure to support libraries and, more importantly, library users’ needs (what, when, where they want it) and why are we not real players in the infrastructure game…that so directly impacts access? that so directly impacts service? that so directly determines our relevance? I can put it down here as a few reasonable questions, but the effect in the room was like running in heels while being chased by zombies through that tech park with only a gum wrapper, a salad spinner and dead AA battery for protection. The presentation also reminded me of that distinct Montreal music sound – it starts off soft and then builds and builds to a cacophony. All of a sudden, Arcade Fire’s Régine is screaming over 15 instruments. So in the spirit Arcade Fire let’s ask “Who’s gonna throw the very first stone?” and then, why can’t it be us?”

Best…review…ever.

Stats of note for libraries in todays iPad launch slides: Apple stats: “75 million iPhone users”, “iBookstore”, “over 125 million accounts with credit cards”, over 12 billion downloads”…These brief notes say more about what the things Apple is doing to pieces of library business than any hype or buzz ever will.

I’ll be doing a free webinar March 3rd with my pal Jeff Dawson (Director of the Lester Public Library in Two Rivers, Wisconsin). You should come! “Library Images and Video: Engage, Inspire and Tell Your Story” is the title. Here is a registration link with more details.

Session description:
“In this entertaining and heartwarming presentation you will learn how two librarians teamed up to advocate more effectively (and boldly) while staying true to the personality of the communities, the libraries and the staff they serve. You and your library really can market your services and engage more effectively, and images, video and authenticity can be a key! Learn how you too can use images and video creatively and effectively to inspire Libraryland, engage the communities you serve boost staff morale and get more enjoyment from your job. The stories and lessons in this session will be presented by Jeff Dawson from the Lester Public Library in Two Rivers Wisconsin and by Michael Porter from WebJunction.”

I’ve also got a slew of presentations coming up, including two international presentations next month, which are pretty exciting!

Also, I wrote a summary post for WebJunction about ALA Midwinter, (which was an exhausting blast btw). You can find that post here.

WOW WOW WOW!!! The Library 101 Project made it to Boing Boing!!! So cool! Huge thanks to Cory and to Boing Boing, and again, thanks mostly to everyone that joined in the project so far (and still will). Libraries rock!!

David and I also want to thank the other librarians who sent this in to them too. As with this entire project, it has been a massive group effort, proving what astounding collaborators modern library staff are.

PS- If you don’t know Boing Boing you might give it a shot beyong scoping out Library 101. Of all the interweb sites out there on the tubes, this is one of my personal favorites.

Last Thursday I left sunny (yes, it was sunny!) Seattle to head to Topeka, KS and record both the audio AND the video for the new library/technology song/video porject called “Library 101″ with David (Lee King). So how did it?

Well, did set up on Thursday in David’s basement, we recorded audio on Friday, then recorded video (in that basement) Friday, late into the night. Then on Saturday moved to another location (a church gym in fact) to set up some special backdrops and lighting and do some more video shooting. It’s hard to quickly describe all that we did, and all the careful thought and planning that went into that. Suffice it to say that it was a HUGE amount of effort this was the physical culmination of months of research, conversation and collaboration (on top of several thousand dollars of materials, software, production and travel expenses).

So, you know, no pressure!

Still, we managed to pull it all off, despite it being brutally hot and crunched for time. Sure, we had to recruit assistance from David’s family (huge thanks to Nathan for his long hours of assistance, L. for painting nails black for the punk scene and D. for doing our eyeliner…yes, eyeliner). And we couldn’t have don it without our friend Jen Waller, who drove in from a trip she was on to spend time with family in Oklahoma. But we did it! We got our audio recorded (even the screaming punk part and the silly, funky boy band part or the song) and all 6 sets and two dozen plus costume/wardrobe changes were successfully filmed during the lip synch sections.

While the editing still awaits, we are feeling grateful to have been able to get so much done in such a tight time and are so looking forward to getting the message of Library 101 out there to Libraryland at large. Watch for the video launch in October, coinciding with a live session at Internet Librarian in Monterrey next month. Oh, and if you are inclined and interested in sponsoring part of the video, drop us a line. Otherwise, just kick back and get ready to rock out, have fun and learn together.

Here are some pictures of the last few days Library 101 events:

Way over in the right corner, is the drum set, the mics, the bass, guitar, banjo and a few other recording devices (David used to work in the recording industry don’t you know!):

This is a part of the “boy band” section of the song. It only lasts about 30 seconds, but it had two sets and four costume changes!

Yep, this is David ready to $&%*#@!ing punk rock:

And, I’m right there with him on that:

And here we are in that gym, with me in front of the backdrop, the lights and one of the three video cameras. This is one of three multicolored backdrops we shot in front of in the gym:

We hope when the song/video comes out next month that you’ll check it out and join in the Library 101 movement. We’ve got a new set of basics to follow in libraries if we want to stay relevant and useful and we are hoping to advance that with this project. Really, if libraries weren’t so amazing and important, we wouldn’t even try to do all this. Go, go Library 101!

My heart goes out to Greg Schwartz and the rest of the folks (staff and patrons) at the LFPL. Greg posted these pretty shocking pictures of the damage just s few minutes ago:

As I write this entry their site is down (as their machines are under water), but once things are back up and running I am sure they will have a way for you to donate to the repair and rebuilding on their web site: www.lfpl.org/

Today Zappos.com announced that they were becoming a part of (though still separate from) Amazon.com. Jeff Bezos made this video to accompany the video announcement of the partnership that you see below. It is definitely worth watching and thinking about from the perspective of a library, as the library industry and also to imagine how vendors would would see this too.

In the video, Jeff says he knows four thing.
1. Obsess over customers
2. Invent (on behalf of customers)
3. Think long term (5-7 year time frames)
4. Its always Day 1.

Jeff is right about Zappos by the way. They rock customer service, plain and simple. I bought almost all of these shoes there, in large part because zappos just does it right as a web business. Anyway, there is a lot of good food for thought here for libraries!

You, yes YOU are officially invited to be in our new, inspiring, yet lovably goofy nerdcore music video, “Library 101″!!!!
Hundreds of librarians, technologists and library lovers are already signed up to be in our next big video and we now need YOU join in as well! And it is EASY to do! More info can be found here, but please read on for more details:

Our previous song and video, "hi-fi sci-fi library" was a big hit in Libraryland and beyond in 2008 and now we are at it again. (pssst…you can watch that video below). Getting into this video is actually really easy. Simply take and share a picture of YOU posing with a 0 and a 1! (Tagging it with library101 on flickr will be really helpful). We even have the flickr group linked above where you can put your 101 pictures. So c’mon! Do it and get just a little bit famous! Your family and friends will love finding you pop up in the video (and maybe even your coworkers?)! Put your kids in it! How about the family dog!? And you know grandma loves the library too, riiight? The most interesting your submission the more it will be featured, so get creative!

Look for the song and video in October of 2009 (debuting at a special “Connecting Through “Lights, Cameras & Action” session at the Internet Librarian Conference in Monterrey, California).

Click on these two pictures to get your own "1" and "0" to print out and use as a prop in the picture of video you send in for the "Library 101" video! Join in the library fun with us!! (Be sure to use the large size!:)

Here is the "1":

Here is the "0":

Finally, here is that link to the song and video that David and I made last year called “hi-fi sci-fi library”. Watch it and we hope you’ll want to be in this one too!:

PS- You can submit videos for us to include too!!
PPS- If you have any questions please ask away here.
PPPS- Want proof you’ll be in good company if you join in? Check this out!

The Seattle Public Library system to close Aug. 31 through Sept. 7
The Seattle Public Library system will close Monday, Aug. 31 through Sunday, Sept. 6 due to citywide budget cuts. Please note Monday, Sept. 7 is the Labor Day holiday and all libraries will be closed. Regular Library operations will resume Tuesday, Sept. 8. press release here

While I don’t know all the deepest details here, I usually advocate for very thoughtful, strong, quick, dramatic action when forced into situations like this. And I believe that closing the web site is a great idea! That might not be a very popular stance to take, but it does makes good sense if handled properly.

There is no getting around that fact that the reality of these situations makes us feel a bit queasy, but this really is a rare and (hopefully) unique teaching opportunity. As budgets get trimmed all over the world, libraries are chipped at bit by bit. It has almost become a sad tradition of sorts for many library systems. And in these systems we work ourselves silly with fewer resources and less money while trying to not show how thinly stretched we are. We keep doing more with less until…one day we wake up to find that we don’t have things like effective methods of distributing the most popular electronic content available on the web through the library(see Netflix, Amazon and iTunes) or that we aren’t the platform considered most seriously as new display technologies become closer to ubiquitous (see iPhone and Kindle). And we can afford smaller budgets? Well, ok, but there is a cost…and we shouldn’t try to hide that cost from the communities we serve.

So when the SPL site is down I’d advise them to have their page go black expect for a one sentence (linked to the press release) “The SPL and all its branches are closed from **-** due to budget cuts.” Under that sentence I’d have a link that says something like: “When a library is open it returns $$$ value for every $ spent. Click here to read the facts.” and link to solid/scientific examples and proof of the value/ROI of the library being open.

I know its is easy for me to say this since I don’t work for SPL, but I think this is the right way to go. If you get cut, make sure people can see how it hurts them. WE don’t do ourselves any favors by glossing things over and if people clearly understood the costs they might just prevent things like this from happening to libraries in the first place.

But what do you think?

PS-Some library ROI links for ya’. And another doozy!

Before you read this, if it is the first you have heard the news it will come as quite a shock. It was very unexpected and while it isn’t good news by any stretch, things are starting to look a little better than they were last week. Here’s what is happening:

Last week, Chris Peters, a very dear friend of Libraryland, employee at techsoup and MaintainIT, author, former Washington State Library and Gates Foundation US Library Program employee and all around good person, very unexpectedly had a stroke at his home in San Francisco. He has been receiving intensive care and observation for almost a week now. Happily, things are starting to look better. In fact, I very unexpectedly just got off the phone with him shortly after getting a text message from him (which had me very nearly squealing with excitement I must confess). His text and call demonstrate that, all things considered, he is functioning very well. It was a such huge relief to hear his voice and have a conversation with him! His parents and his sister are at his side now and he is in good hands.

And it even looks like Chris will be up and around enough in the not too distant future to share more info himself and reply to well wishes. In the interim we wanted to let folks know what happened and that he is doing better. It would also be nice if you folks out there in Libraryland would send him good wishes.

At this point we don’t have an address to share that you can send cards (or cookies, assorted treats or amazon gift certificates) to. I’ll definitely share that here once we have it. Until then, it would be good to drop him a good wish on his facebook page, in comments here or via an email. If you can view it, his fb profile is here and his email is chrispeters72**at s i g n ** gmail dot com. You might even consider sending @cpetersc a message on Twitter. I’ll be sending well wishes via all those channels and I hope you’ll join me!

If you don’t know Chris, believe me, you really, really do want him to get well. He has worked tirelessly for many years to share, support and grow libraries. As Brenda Hough recently said on the techsoup blog: “Chris Peters, MaintainIT Cookbook author (is) one of my favorite people to turn to when I need to better understand something about library technology. If he doesn’t know the answer to a question I ask, he sees that as a challenge and soon he does know and explains it to me, too.”

Yep, that’s good ole’ Chris!

Here is a little more Chris Peters goodness for you…

Lot’s of folks have loved Chris’s writing work on “Recipes for a 5-Star Library” which you can download and use for yourself via this page. And just so you know, he’s got more cookbook authorship under his belt that you can find if you poke around a bit (like here).

And here is some of what he are written and published online at work for libraries and non-profits:
Choosing the Best Internet Connection
Tips for Buying Refurbished Computers
Understanding Cookies and Their Effect on Your Privacy
Selecting and Configuring a Firewall
How to Extend Your Wireless Network
Choosing a Disk-Cloning Solution for Your Nonprofit
Tips for Hiring IT Staff: Balancing Skills and Communication
Managing Your Organization’s Technology Assets
Leasing Computers and IT Equipment for Your Nonprofit
Anti-Spam Solutions for Nonprofits

Here is a link to his blog on the MaintainIT site.

Heck, he was even very recently was shown some love on the Google blog.

As you can see, Chris is thoughtful, informed, curious, engaged, and generous. It would be good to drop him a line of support during this difficult time.

Chris, we all wish you a speedy recovery and send you mad love, my brother!

PS- Here are some shots of Chris in action. The good stuff above is part of why Chris is our friend, but the pictures help tell more of the story. For one, Chris loves snacks. He shows great restraint or course, but my man loves a good snack: