It seems like only yesterday when libraries were reflecting on how they could survive in the face of stiff competition from bookstores and the like. What a difference an economic downturn makes (NY Times):
People are flocking to libraries after forsaking Barnes & Noble or ditching their HBO service and subscriptions to Netflix, library officials said, because libraries’ books, DVDs and CDs have a significant advantage: They are free.
Some people are showing up at libraries for the first time for free entertainment — movies, lectures, concerts and puppet shows, library officials said. Still others are capitalizing on their newspaper racks, books and free Internet service for job searches and investment advice or advice on a topic that the title of a much-thumbed book makes obvious: "Surviving a Layoff: A Week-by-Week Guide to Getting your Life Back Together."
'Puppet shows'?
Okay, today was the official launch of the new community site that I've been working on for the Public Library Association: PLAspace.org
The announcement reads:
Today marks another milestone in the rollout of PLAspace. We officially open the doors to new CoPs and new participants.
We created PLAspace to give Public Library Association members a place where they could share ideas and work together on common interests. Today, the first official day for the site, we already have several dozen members and a half-dozen CoPs.
I wish I could say my lack of posting for the last week or so is because of me 'gone fishing'.
Instead, I'm working on a site for the Public Library Association that, happily, is close to completion.
The thing's looking good but it's taken all my free time away.
I've got a neat job building a community site for one of the library organizations here. I'll talk more about it at our Drupal4Lib BoF in Anaheim but basically the idea is to promote online collaboration. Needless to say (for those in the know), I'll be making great use of Drupal's Organic Groups.
They recently installed the Aquabrowser at the Columbus Metropolitan Library (CML). This is how the head of IT over there explained it to the Columbus Dispatch:
"We're accommodating what people are used to seeing -- people who just want to plug in a search term and get their list." [h/t Lorcan Dempsey]
What people are "used to seeing"? That animated tag-cloud doohickey?
Unless they really do things differently in Columbus, I can't imagine anyone (other than library staff) ever seeing one of these things or knowing the least what to do with it.
I mean, you can almost predict that the color-coding of the whirlin', spinnin' topics will be totally lost on the average user. Equally as bewildering is why they bothered to include what suspiciously looks like instructions (instructions?) on the main search page that attempt to explain enigmatic terms such as "Search", "Discover" and "Refine".
Confused yet? The newspaper article quotes one user as calling it "distracting" while another thinks it may not be "as intuitive as they think it is".
Touchée. Like Second Life and the Kindle, we have the implementation of a technology that has yet to receive the "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" from the public. In other words, there's no indication of widespread acceptance or adoption on the part of our users. This is precisely the wrong approach to take.
Lastly, it doesn't help that a keyword search on "Treasure Island" only turns up the book by Robert Louis Stevenson on Page 2 of the search results.
Maybe they were focusing on the wrong thing?
P.S. In contrast, check out the results for Google and Amazon.
Not exactly the best shot of Frank Rich (left) being interviewed by John Galloway but I figured if I used my flash, they'd hussle me out of there.
Anyway the interview took place at the Harold Washington Center and was the final event in the city-wide "One Book, One Chicago Event" Program.
The book this year was The Crucible by Arthur Miller. Rich talked about the play (he never saw a great production), about his personal encounters with Arthur Miller (two interviews) and how this related to our post 9-11 world.
Needless to say, it was standing room only.
Columnist Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune has raised a fracas because CPL Commissioner Mary Demsey wasn't nice enough to him when he suggested a possible hire for Branch Library Manager.
He quotes on his blog the offending email from Demsey:
You suggest that outside individuals should be allowed to influence the city's hiring processes. You are wrong.
...
Your suggestions that outside influences such as community mobilization or aldermanic input should be involved in the particular situation about which you write are absolutely inappropriate.
Zorn of all people should realize how sensitive an issue this is. Opening up hiring decisions of people supposed to run branch libraries to outside pressure groups _is_ inappropriate.
You can imagine what a can of worms this would open up -- here in the city of Chicago.
It's not surprising then that Commissioner Demsey is so adamant in her reply. She's got 50 aldermen and a mayor who'd love to do the same thing (and that's just the elected officials).
UPDATE: Note, this might be the dumbest hiring decision ever made but if that's your 'beef' then argue it as such.
The notion that you're going to have outside pressure groups involved in the hiring of library branch managers is an administrative nightmare.
The Queens Borough Library Website is so good that it made me want to do this review. It practically cried out for it. The developers have done a fantastic job. They've taken features we routinely find on other sites -- features like creating accounts, specifying preferences and grouping information -- and applied them to a library context.
In so doing, they've upped the standard of what a library website can do -- and what the public can expect from one. They've also provided a good model for other libraries to follow.
(more after the jump...)
