Who should head the library? Well certainly not a librarian

(Found via here). Saw this post by Dale Askey entitled Librarians leading libraries. The opening sentence starts:-

Consider this: if we librarians have a profession, then we are professionals. As such, if libraries are to be operated professionally, they need librarians and should be run by those most qualified, i.e.- librarians. Why then do so many elite institutions hire unqualified scholars to lead their libraries?

He then points out that Yale President Richard Levin had appointed Frank Turner to University Librarian, even though a historian. Adam has a pretty relevant point. Are there no librarians to take on this role? After the recent discussion on the Agnostic, Maybe entitled The Master’s Degree Misperception, I think to some degree our qualifications are perhaps rarely needed.

One final point, loved this comment on Dale's blog

Another Mash Up in Bath

Mashed Library 2010 – MashSpa in Bath! is coming on the 30 October,2010. The cost is £20.00 only. I would love to go, but unfortunately will be on holiday.

First impression of the Amazon Kindle

I was recently around a friend who has a new Amazon Kindle. I know that much has been written on the Kindle, so I wanted to see what the fuss was about.
Firstly, it is very light and easy to put in a (large) pocket. Its easy to use and the look and feel is nice. The battery life is excellent. Its easy to buy new titles.
My problems with it. First off, when you turn the page, it has to reformat and flickers, which I think may cause eye strain (but I'm no expert). Also I prefer the paper format, and enjoy the look and feel of books.
Anyhow, short and sweet.

Facebook film

As many of you may know, on 15 of October, 2010 the film The social network is released. Based on the excellent The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal, the film looks at the early life of facebook and Mark Zuckberg's company and falling out with friends in Harvard over the company. I'm really looking forward to it. I might even put it on my facebook page.

Goodbye Bloglines....hello Google reader

Thanks to Dave Pattern, on twitter who informed me that Bloglines is closing down. As I have used it for over four years, I've finally transferred my feeds to google reader. Pure laziness has kept me on bloglines, but having transferred them, some are working. W00t.

Anyhow, more on the bloglines closure here and here.

The Googlization of Everything release date confirmed

Siva Vaidhyanathan has confirmed the date of the release of his book The Googlization of Everything as being early 2011. Have spoken of the book before I'm quite excited by this news.

The book :-

Assesses Google's global impact, particularly in China, and explains the insidious effect of Googlization on the way we think. Finally, Vaidhyanathan proposes the construction of an Internet ecosystem designed to benefit the whole world and keep one brilliant and powerful company from falling into the "evil" it pledged to avoid.

I also noted another interesting book by Tim Wu's book The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. Both sound fascinating.

Programmable web and British Library Maps Crowdsourced Sounds

Programmable web has a great post entitled British Library Maps Crowdsourced Sounds, this discusses:-

The SoundMap uses Google Maps to plot sound recordings over England and Ireland. When you click on one of the push pins the sound recording will be played in your browser. For those looking to contribute, there is a blog post with ideas on what kinds of sounds to record.

I'm always impresssed by what the British library does.

Oh my.....librarians promoting themselves

(Found via) here. Phil Bradley pointed me in the direction of Voices for the Library website and blog. The site says :-

Voices for the Library is a place for everyone who loves libraries to share their stories and experiences of the value of public libraries.

The team includes Bethan Ruddock, Gary Green, Ian Clark, Johanna Anderson, Katy Wrathall, Lauren Smith and Mick Fortune.

So, if you want to:-

Promoting the need for and value of trained librarians within a free and open-to-all UK public library service.

Go there today. And great site and even better idea.

Lisnews post on the need for a masters degree

Lisnews has a interesting post entitled The Master's Degree Misperception which looks at the need for librarian need for a masters degree (or as this is an American post an MLS degree).

The author puts forward the idea that:-

I’d like to imagine that I got an advanced degree so that checking out books would be a once in a while thing, not a regular gig.)

It is a disservice to the education, to the degree, and to the profession when the bulk of a librarian’s daily tasks could be performed by someone with a GED. It does not take a master’s degree to place a hold on a book, clear a copier, push in chairs, tell people they are being loud, shelve items, or other similar tasks. When librarians are seen doing this and then told there is an advanced degree requirement, there is a reasoning dissonance that occurs in the outside observer.

Well, although the author says he helps out on the desk etc, do many of us with degree's get the profession insist on a greater separation of duties?

Actually, no. Just because you have a masters degree does not mean you get to do the reference work, cataloguing or specialising. Many masters students in the UK certainly won't even get the most basic library roles. I remember the real wikiman, point out that his first jobs in libraries uasually asked for a minimum of 5 GCSE's but usually wanted at least degree's students, if not masters students.

I would love to be able to do more interesting things at my library, but my masters degree does not allow me to do that, as i'm doing shelving, photocopier repairs etc but i'm just happy to be able to work.

Frank Skinner get's busted for Times article

Seems the west bromwich supporting, unfunny comedian Frank Skinner, has been roundly slated for his article in The Times [no link to story due to the times walled garden policy].
The Guardian has an article entitled Frank Skinner's attack on free libraries is a bad joke, which opens with the rebuke :-

Do you believe in a well-funded, free library service? The comedian Frank Skinner doesn't. Writing in the Times last week, he sneered at old black and white images of cloth-capped workers educating themselves for free. He's a working-class lad himself, he reminded readers, and libraries never did anything for him. These dreary hangouts are just a big joke.

Seems there's more people that support libraries I'm afraid Frank.

Can the social web save the public libraries in Britain?

I was interested to see that Mumsnet has started a thread entitled to think that we NEED libraries? This is horrific.. I had only heard about Mumsnet prior to the UK election of 2010.
Mumsnet had been responding to the threat that public libraries are presently facing.
I had noted that the good library blog had noted mumsnets interest in public libraries in a post earlier this week.
But who are mumsnet? Well its described as :-

a British community website set up by mothers to give advice on parenting and family issues.

As said previously, I had only learnt of Mumsnet during the last election, when they seemed to become the new essex man of political punditry and/or poor journalism.
Not all of the talk about mumsnet though was always positive though.
Mumsnet seems to me to also be a support group for parents and family members. Discussing the needs, advantages and disadvantages of parenting. In discussing the fear of public library closures seems a fairly symbiotic relationship, in that for those who work in public libraries, will know that parents are regular users of libraries. Many parents may bring there kids for childrens hour or to get books for there homework. Or so they can use it for free internet access and homework clubs.
But can the social web help us in stopping closures?
Well, yes and no. I do think mumsnet could be a useful tool in assisting in bring these closures to the forefront of politicans. Mumsnet, as said previously was very much seen as important to politicans in the last election. So there support is needed.
But I did not this comment on the mumsnet post:-

StuckInTheMiddleWithYou Sat 21-Aug-10 14:16:28
Would MN like to run a campaign on this?

Thats not good then, if they can't start a campaign on the site.
I also feel you would need greater support from other high end users (say kids, schools, pensioners). The support and iniative of other librarians and users to would help.
Anyhow, its the weekend. Enjoy.

The decline of the library?

With all the depressing news about the closures and cut within public libraries, it good to see some positive news for a change. Norwich's Millennium Library, in which the BBC reports:-

Figures in April 2010 saw the library's popularity increase by nearly 20,000 people compared to the previous year.

I wonder what they are doing right then?

Sarah Hammond and Public Libraries 2.0 article

I'm a bit behind, but just seen that Sarah Hammond has article entitled Public Library 2.0: Culture Change?.

The main premise of the article being that she wanted :-

To discover the level of engagement of UK public libraries with Library 2.0, I specifically concentrated on blogging in order to narrow the focus of the research to a scope that was achievable given the time constraints. I also felt that blogs are perhaps the most versatile Web 2.0 tool at libraries’ disposal, so that taking a snapshot of blog activity would give a pretty good idea of their wider engagement with Web 2.0 tools. Consequently, I tried to find as many UK public library blogs as I could. Further to this end, I wanted to explore the attitudes and behaviours of public librarians towards the use of Library 2.0 in their libraries which I did with an online survey.

If you have time and work in public libraries its well worth a read.

Great piece on Librarianship by Rory Litwin

I'm a big fan of Rory Litwin and his blog. I remember reading a great piece he wrote a few years ago entitled The Central Problem of Library 2.0: Privacy. Certainly worth a read.
Anyway, he has another great piece entitled Our niche and how to get back into it. This opens with the following gambit :-

More and more, I find that the library profession’s efforts to stay relevant in the age of information technology are in fact eroding our relevance. As a result of these efforts, it is becoming less and less clear what we offer that is different from what everybody else offers in the information economy.

He then proceeds to say:-

I have a good idea of how I use my knowledge of our resources, and I know that I wish I knew more. I don’t wish I knew more about our search tools – those are designed to be easy to use for librarians and the public alike, and I don’t regard our ability to use them as anything special. Where I feel that greater knowledge would help me to be a better librarian is across the board – within my assigned subject areas, yes, but in all subjects, and particularly about things like scholarly communities, the research into reading behavior, learning theory, media studies, and all of those fields that are connected to what we do. I think that improving my general knowledge and working to improve my insight into people are the most effective ways I can work to become a better librarian.

Thought provoking.

Reuters article on the social web and how universities are integrating them

(Found via here). Reuters has an article entitled Schools, tech comPanies tailor social sites for students. The article says:-

Colleges and universities across the United States are going beyond simply creating websites and pages on Facebook for students to "friend" or "fan." They are working with technology companies to build their own social networks and integrate them into campus life to boost admissions and retain students.

Obviously, somethig that could be transfered to a library environment. So, perhaps you could use it for patrons to sponsor books (to increase money's for the library).

Could twitter be used to see positive book reviews?

I've previously discussed social cataloguing sites here before. Therefore, I was quite interested on programmable web to see Fflick, a movie review site, which:-

Fflick is a social movie review site, where the reviews come in bite-sized pieces from Twitter. The way its developers combine the reviews with other APIs and visuals shows how an excellent site can be built by bringing in content from elsewhere.

The most impressive piece is how Fflick mines Twitter to find tweets that include mini movie reviews. It looks for the name of a movie (or sometimes a portion of a movie name). From there, it also attempts to determine the positive or negative sentiment, seemingly by looking for specific words in a tweet.Therefore, I was wonering if this could be done for book? Taking API data from Amazon for book covers and Librarything etc for reviews?

Haringey allegedly closing 9 out of 10 libraries in borough

(Found via here). Good library blog reports 'there is a rumour [my italics].....that the borough of Haringey is to close 9 out of its 10 public libraries, leaving only one central library at Wood Green.'

I have worked at Haringey and I hope this is not true. Also, I recently saw the library manager there Diana Edmonds at Cilip and asked if everything was OK with the libraries there. She seemed to feel it all OK.

Anyhow, lets hope its not true.

Yahoo pipes and Spectrum Software

As mention previously, I've been reading about gaming, and have a fond memory of my ZX Spectrum years. On top of this I wanted to combine it with my trying to learn Yahoo Pipes, especially after reading Information twist result on 'this made me' project, using Pipes.
Therefore, I've presently used nearly all his code trying to make one for Spectrum Games companies, and use a map to show where they are. Results can be seen here (its early days yet).
What I wish to do, is then have another map showing each companies games, and perhaps use world cat to indicate if these companies have been tagged etc.
Thanks to Gary for the twitter assistance to..

Chips and Mash today at Huddersfield

Most of you reading this will most likely be there, but Chips and Mash are at Huddersfield university today. The hash tag for those following via twitter may be found here.

Viral marketing of the library

(Found via here). NPR has an excellent article entitled 'Why the next big pop culture after cupcakes might be libraries'. The article looks at the impact of the viral marketing of libraries via the (excessively) meme'd Old Spice video and Lady Gaga also. The article looks at the positive article's that seem to being picked up, on the importance of libraries in this 'big society' no skills/pay/promotion world.
The article then looks at the positive impact of libraries on societies to. Obviously, people have to pay for them, but they do provide a cultural outlet for many users. But in Britain when I think of of Cameron, Conservatives and libraries I think of Goring:-

Whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my browning.