Accessibility http://alatechsource.org/taxonomy/term/7/0 en Virtual Ability http://alatechsource.org/blog/2009/04/virtual-ability.html <p class="MsoNormal"><a href="../../../../../../imce/browse#"><img alt="" style="width:519px;height:261px;" src="../../../../../../files/images/VAI_001.jpg" /></a></p> <p>I love quiet revolutions. They beat the odds and buck the trends. They don’t rely on the braying of pundits and prognosticators. They provide pleasant surprises, awakening us lovingly from our dogmatic slumbers.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Recently a place named Virtual Ability Island (VAI) in the three-dimensional virtual world called Second Life has provided me a fascinating glimpse of a quiet revolution in progress. I don’t know how big or important this quiet revolution will be, but it is a welcome development. At the risk of braying a bit myself, let me tell the tale.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I like Second Life and I think virtual worlds in general have a bright, significant future, but I have to agree with many tepid reviews of Second Life that note that most places seem like ghost towns, not vibrant virtual communities.  I’ve called this problem in Second Life the “reverse frontier” because the virtual landmass seems to grow faster than the resident population.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Virtual Ability Island was created in 2008, funded in large part by a grant from the National Library of Medicine, Greater Midwest Region, to the Alliance Library System in Illinois. The purpose of Virtual Ability Island is to provide orientation and training about virtual worlds for people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. The Alliance Library System partnered with Virtual Ability, Inc. on this project, and intrepid avatars such as Gentle Heron, Eme Capalini, Carolina Keats, and Lorelei Junot worked hard to make it all happen.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><a href="../../../../../../imce/browse#"><img alt="" style="width:553px;height:307px;" src="../../../../../../files/images/VAI_002_0.jpg" /></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’m involved in other projects serving library users with disabilities, and I think these projects are very important and worthwhile. Still, the idea of creating Virtual Ability Island in Second Life sounded initially to me like the recipe for a worthwhile but little-used virtual world location, resource, and community.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">That turned out not to be the case. Virtual Ability Island has proven to be one of the most-visited locations in the Alliance Information Archipelago. People are flocking to VAI. Part of this surge of visitors is due to the fact that in February VAI became an official Community Gateway in Second Life. The purpose of a Community Gateway is to provide orientation and support for newly created avatars during their first few hours in Second Life. Because Second Life is a global community, there are Community Gateways for speakers of Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and many other languages.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The owners of newly created avatars get to decide if they want to begin by visiting a Community Gateway location, and, if so, which one. For the English-speakers, there are a baker’s dozen Community Gateways, including BigPond (Australian themed), Campus in 3D (for higher ed. types), Dublin in SL, Virtual London, newBerlin, Solace Beach (pirates and tiki torches), Caledon (Victorian Steampunk) and, of course, VAI, projected to newly created avatars via the following two-sentence description, “<span style="color:#000000;"><font size="2">We provide a community of support for people with disabilities or chronic illnesses, their family and caregivers. Our training is open to anyone, and ideal if you learn best by self-paced detailed instruction.</font></span>” Hundreds of people a day are choosing VAI over pirates, tiki torches, steampunkers, outbackers, and Berliner bears. The word on the street (and the virtual street) is that VAI has a very well-designed orientation experience and a welcoming community. You can come for the great orientation experience, and stay for the vibrant community of interest. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I have been contracted to write the final report on this grant-funded project. That’s why I’ve been paying attention to this amazing quiet revolution. One thing I did to generate some data was to place proximity sensors at several places around the island. Whenever an avatar comes within range of one of the sensors, the presence of that avatar gets tabulated. No privacy-compromising data are collected. The proximity sensors I use note that an avatar came within range and how long they stayed within range. During the 45 days from February 15, 2009 through March 31, 2009, over 25,000 avatars passed within range of the sensor located near the Orientation Center on Virtual Ability Island. That’s an average of 555 per day! Surely, you may be thinking, not all of these visitors are people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. That’s true, and that’s fantastic. People with a wide range of abilities from all over the world are coming to Virtual Ability Island. There probably is no place in the real world that gets such a consistently high amount of diverse visitors. This kind of interaction could be revolutionary. They arrive in droves to this place.  Gentle and Eme remember all the Rumanians who visited VAI after Second Life was featured on Romanian television. It was the same weekend as the Super Bowl here in the States. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Of course, VAI offers much more than just a great orientation experience. They offer advanced training, lectures, social events, informal gatherings, and places to just hang out. </p> <p><font size="2">VAI seems to be proving that, when an experiential information resource is designed to be accessible and welcoming for everyone, the resource and the experience is improved for everyone. </font><font size="2">I wish the designers of other information systems and portable information appliances would appreciate and apply that basic truth. <br /></font></p> http://alatechsource.org/blog/2009/04/virtual-ability.html#comments Accessibility Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:52:01 +0000 Tom Peters 480 at http://alatechsource.org My Three Die http://alatechsource.org/blog/2007/08/my-three-die.html <p>The dog days of August 2007 may be remembered as that magic moment when librarianship as practiced in Second Life finally received permission to dine at the adults' table.  </p> <p>On August 3rd the Library of Congress announced a new initiative -- <a href="http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2007/07-156.html">Preserving Creative America</a>.  They made eight grant awards totally $2.15 million "...to address the long-term preservation of creative content in digital form."  The creative content being targeted includes the usual suspects, such as digitally created motion pictures, digital music, and digital photographs, but it also includes comic strips (Doonesbury) and editorial cartoons (Pat Oliphant) -- which I assume were not born digital, but perhaps I'm just revealing my quaint, old-fashioned notions of how cartoons are drawn these days.  </p> <p><img title="The view from the stage of the Globe Theater on Renaissance Island" alt="The view from the stage of the Globe Theater on Renaissance Island" src="/files/media/blog/GlobeStage.JPG" align="right" />The real kicker, however, is a grant made to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  Here's what the press release states, "The Preserving Virtual Worlds project will explore methods for preserving digital games and interactive fiction.  Major activities will include developing basic standards for metadata and content representation and conducting a series of archiving case studies for early video games, electronic literature and Second Life, an interactive multiplayer game."  </p> <p>I'm still pinching myself.  The Library of Congress has funded a project by UIUC and its partner organizations (Stanford, Rochester Institute of Technology, Linden Lab, and the University of Maryland) to study, among other things, how to create metadata standards and preservation practices for Second Life.  </p> <p>But wait, there's more.  Maybe I'm suffering from heat stroke.  Also this month the National Science Foundation has announced that is has funded a project to create a more accessible interface to Second Life.  <a href="http://www.eelke.com/welcome.html">Eelke Folmer</a>, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science &amp; Engineering at the University of Nevada-Reno, will be leading that project, which should conclude by next August.</p> <p>Metadata, preservation, accessibility:  These are definitely topics for the adult table.  So, let's break open a bottle of champaigne and raise a toast to the coming of age of librarianship in Second Life.  If you're in-world and raising a virtual glass of champagne, neither you nor your avatar will intake any calories or alcohol, so neither of you will gain weight and both will be able to continue operating heavy machinery.</p> <p><img title="The Whitehorn Memorial Library in Caledon VictoriaCity" alt="The Whitehorn Memorial Library in Caledon VictoriaCity" src="/files/media/blog/Whitehorn%20Memorial%20Library%20in%20Caledon.JPG" align="right" />All of this is great news, but I hope the undertaking of these mainstream projects will not distract us inordinately from what I consider to be the primary promise of librarianship in Second Life and other virtual worlds -- to wit, immersive three-dimensional information experiences.  </p> <p>Until three-dimensional virtual worlds came into existence, most human interaction with information was two-dimensional.  Nearly all interaction with printed information is two-dimensional.  Screens of various types (the canvas of a painting, a motion-picture screen, a TV screen, and a computer screen) can give the viewer a sense of depth, but rarely have we utilized that virtual sense of depth to create immersive three-dimensional information experiences.</p> <p>Second Life and virtual worlds in general may inaugurate a long revolution whereby human beings increasingly come to interact with information in immersive three-dimensional spaces.  The molecules and works of art in Second Life you can fly around and through now are just the harbingers of things to come.  Recreations of entire civilizations in an historical period, such as what Caledon does for the Victorian era and what Renaissance Island does for Elizabethan England, are fast becoming massively multi-disciplinary areas where avatars are interacting with an entire environment, not just a series of discrete digital objects.  </p> <p>So, as we toast the mainstreaming of virtual world librarianship, let's not forget the uncharted frontiers that also need attention, effort, and institutional support.  One such frontier is the effort to explore the potential of massively interdisciplinary, 3-dimensional information experiences, or MI3DIE for short, which I would pronouce like "my three die."  </p> http://alatechsource.org/blog/2007/08/my-three-die.html#comments Accessibility Second Life Sun, 12 Aug 2007 03:20:25 +0000 Tom Peters 180 at http://alatechsource.org Thoughtful Advocates: An ALA TechSource Interview with ILA's Robert Doyle http://alatechsource.org/blog/2007/02/thoughtful-advocates-an-ala-techsource-interview-with-ilas-robert-doyle.html <p><span style="font-style:italic;font-weight:bold;">"If people were better informed about social networking sites and knew and used basic Internet safety tips, the cloud of fear may decline."—Robert Doyle, Executive Director of the Illinois Library Association</span><br /><br /></p> <p>Last July, I wrote a <a href="http://www.techsource.ala.org/blog/2006/07/flickr-libraries-scary-scary-scary-to-some-folks.html">post</a> about some folks that were trying to scare libraries into dropping their Flickr presence and ban access because they likened Flickr to an amateur porn site. I urged library folk not to make any spur-of-the-moment, reactionary decisions and to put education first:</p> <ul><li>What I sincerely hope will not happen is the libraries and associations that have started using Flickr will abandon the site because they are scared... come on! Don't let this type of e-mail campaign derail you. Look at the big picture of how this site and many others are used and can benefit your online presence. Let's teach our users about the good and bad of online communities, </li></ul> <p><span style="font-weight:bold;">BUT LET'S NOT just close the door and lock it!</span></p> <p>It is a good time to revisit that post now, because in Illinois, and in some other states, there's <a href="http://tametheweb.com/2007/02/what_huh_illinois_bill_to_ban.html">a movement at the state-government level</a> to block access not only to Flickr but also to any and all that could be labeled "social network sites." </p> <p><a href="http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp?DocName=&amp;SessionId=51&amp;GA=95&amp;DocTypeId=SB&amp;DocNum=1682&amp;GAID=9&amp;LegID=29749&amp;SpecSess=&amp;Session=">IL Senate Bill 1682</a>: Creates the Social Networking Web site Prohibition Act. Provides that each public library must prohibit access to social networking Web sites on all computers made available to the public in the library. Provides that each public school must prohibit access to social networking Web sites on all computers made available to students in the school. Provides for enforcement by the Attorney General or a citizen. Amends the State Mandates Act to require implementation without reimbursement. Effective January 1, 2008. (95TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY, State of Illinois, 2007 and 2008, SB1682)</p> <p>This scares me. At first, I was dumbfounded that such a blanket banning would even be talked about let alone introduced... but I guess I should have learned that anything is possible in this age of <a href="http://boingboing.net/2006/07/02/sen_stevens_hilariou.html">Internet tubes</a> and <a href="http://pixiestixkidspix.wordpress.com/2007/02/24/thoughts-on-the-great-scrotum-kerfuffle-of-2007">scrotum kerfuffle!</a><br /><br />The bill was introduced by Illinois Senator Matt Murphy, who uses a fledgling blog—of all things—to communicate and foster conversation about the bill (as <a href="http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/archives/2007/02/22/senator_matt_murphy_of_illinois_set_to_ban_his_own_blog_from_libraries.html">Jenny Levine recently pointed out</a>). Murphy set about creating the legislation "for two reasons." First, he says he wants "to raise awareness of the threat predators on these sites pose to our kids" and second "to advance a dialogue on how we can minimize this threat." (<a href="http://senmattmurphy.blogspot.com/2007/02/lets-discuss-sb1682.html">Read the whole post here and ponder, of course, that his bill would BAN access to his own blog.)</a><br /><br />My post at TTW was <a href="http://politics.slashdot.org/politics/07/02/14/0226222.shtml">slash-dotted</a> and a lot of <a href="http://tametheweb.com/2007/02/what_huh_illinois_bill_to_ban.html#comments">comments</a> appeared in both places, including <a href="http://tametheweb.com/2007/02/what_huh_illinois_bill_to_ban.html#comment-17780">a favorite of mine</a> from Sharon Comstock:</p> <ul><li>Reading the legislation, I find it puzzling that "administrative unit," "public library," "school," "school board," and even "computer" are needed to be defined. However, the most nebulous term: "social networking" website, is left to interpretation by those charged with oversight and enforcement. At what point would a website be defined as one that enables "social networking?" Online social networking tools support basic communications in formal and informal learning environments. What framework would the schools and public libraries use to make these distinctions? Leaving aside for the moment the issue of intellectual freedom, how would the schools and libraries realistically track access? What I find most interesting in the legislation is its author's fundamental lack of understanding: how situated and dynamic the definition of "online social networking" is. I am not alarmed by the introduction of this into the Illinois General Assembly because—as it is written—it is unrealistic to enforce. Sen. Murphy is likely trying to claim the legislation's introduction for political positioning; not to see it actually become law. However, what I do find alarming is his—and others'—limited view of the potentials CMCSs provide.</li></ul><p> Good points, Sharon! And to play the scenario out, as I'm sure many of us have done, how silly does it seem that in the library setting we could no longer offer access to:</p> <ul><li><a href="http://www.amazon.com">Amazon</a> (tagging, reviews, profiles);</li> <li><a href="http://www.blyberg.net/2007/01/21/aadlorg-goes-social/">Blyberg's SOPAC for AADL</a> (tagging, reviews, profiles);</li> <li><a href="http://www.plymouth.edu/library/opac/">Bisson's WPopac</a> (you know the drill);</li> <li><a href="http://www.myspace.com/libraryloft">The Library Loft</a>;</li> <li>Hennepin County Library's <a href="http://www.hclib.org/pub/bookspace/">Bookspace</a>;</li> <li>Projects like the <a href="http://nightwiesel.blogspot.com/"><span style="font-style:italic;">Night</span> Blog</a> and any number of other sites that are adding "2.0 features."</li></ul> <p>Luckily, the Illinois Library Association (ILA) is well aware of such governmental initiatives and has already issued a <a href="http://www.ila.org/about/press.htm">press release</a> opposing the bill: "ILA is currently forming a coalition against this legislation, which includes: American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries, Freedom to Read Foundation, Media Coalition."<br /><br />I reached out to those folks and got to chat a bit via e-mail with Robert Doyle from ILA. I appreciate the time he took with me on this important issue. His ideas are thought provoking.</p> <p><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">MS:</span> Senator Matt Murphy reports the bill to be the first in the nation. Will other states follow suit?</p> <p><br /><br /><a href="http://www.ila.org/pub/reporterindex.htm"><img border="0" align="left" alt="Read about legislative initiatives that impact social software and libraries in this article by Robert P. Doyle." title="Read about legislative initiatives that impact social software and libraries in this article by Robert P. Doyle." src="/files/media/blog/ILA.Reporter.DOPA.Article.jpg" /></a><font color="#006666"><span style="font-weight:bold;">RD:</span> Yes, we have already seen bills filed in Georgia and North Carolina. Proposed laws in <a href="http://www.legis.ga.gov/legis/2007_08/sum/sb59.htm">Georgia (S.B. 59) </a>and North Carolina (<a href="http://www.ncleg.net/Sessions/2007/Bills/Senate/HTML/S132v0.html">S.132</a>, specifically § 14â€‘318.5, "Requiring parental permission for minors to access social networking Web sites") go after the owners of social networking sites and would force them to prevent minors from creating or maintaining a Web page without parental permission. Companies would also be required—in those two states—to allow parents or guardians to have access to their children's pages at all times. The Georgia bill seems the most draconian, impacting all computers in the state.</font><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"> MS:</span> And didn't I just hear that DOPA is coming back?<br /><br /><font color="#006666"><span style="font-weight:bold;">RD:</span> It should be noted that the U.S. Senate is again considering a law that jeopardizes E-rate funding for libraries that do not limit minors' use of social networking sites—a replay of the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) of 2006, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives by 410 to 15 in July 2006, but died in the U.S. Senate. Currently, there are two bills in the U.S. Congress—<a href="http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s110-49">S. 49</a> and <a href="http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-1120">H.R. 1120</a>.</font><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"> MS:</span> It amazes me that in Illinois, a state known in library circles as a hotbed of social technology innovation (such as the <a href="http://lions-online-shesaidhesaid.blogspot.com/">thriving blogs</a>, <a href="http://www.lions-online.org/Podcasts.html">podcasts,</a> and <a href="http://www.kankakee.lib.il.us/blogs.htm">RSS feeds</a> from <a href="http://www.kankakee.lib.il.us/">Kankakee Public Library</a>), that such a bill is even considered. It could become a nightmare for librarians and really change the services offered. How does the Illinois bill compare to DOPA?<br /><br /><font color="#006666"><span style="font-weight:bold;">RD:</span> This question is a little hard to answer, since the Illinois bill doesn't even define social networking sites. Just last Thursday, Illinois State Senator Matt Murphy, the bill's sponsor in the Illinois General Assembly, <a href="http://www2.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3336505722289388063&amp;postID=5922056255656576825">hosted an online chat at blogspot.com to discuss the issue</a>. Of course, it is the height of ironic that he was using a social networking site to discuss the issue, since he wants those sites banned from public and school libraries.</font><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"> MS:</span> The irony indeed!<br /><br /><font color="#006666"><span style="font-weight:bold;">RD:</span> In my opinion, comparing bills might be interesting, but it avoids the central issue. We have a huge educational effort here—to explain what social networking sites are, the value of them, and why are they important. For example, the skills required when using social networking sites are the skills that will be required for the future.</font><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"> MS:</span> I agree! The <a href="http://www.techsource.ala.org/blog/2006/12/desperately-seeking-the-adaptive-librarian-on-the-20-job-description-part-3.html">series we did here on 2.0 jobs</a> is a good example of that. If it passed, what would happen?</p> <p><br /><br /><font color="#006666"><span style="font-weight:bold;">RD:</span> Well, we obviously hope it won't pass in Illinois. Even if defeated, we anticipate that similar legislation will again be reintroduced. Considering our experiences with eleven attempts to mandate Internet-filtering legislation in Illinois, legislators have exhibited little reluctance to abandon these efforts, since they continually reintroduce this type of legislation.</font><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"> MS:</span> What can Illinois librarians do?<br /><br /><font color="#006666"><span style="font-weight:bold;">RD:</span> Again, the central issue for the library community is education. Librarians need to accelerate their efforts to provide Internet and information-literacy education and safety programs for kids, teens, parents, and caregivers.<br /><br /> Library advocates should contact their elected officials, both on the state and federal levels. We need to state first and foremost that libraries support the goal of protecting children from online predators. One of the primary concerns of the library community is the safety of children. We know the best way to protect children is to teach them to guard their privacy and make wise choices. <br /><br /> We also urge library advocates:</font></p> <ul><li>to participate in the discussions;</li> <li>be respectful, but firm;</li> <li>focus on education as the answer; and</li> <li>develop your own talking points, i.e., use your language, your local examples, substitute the appropriate bill number for your discussions, but read and think about the following talking points:<span style="font-weight:bold;">Talking Points</span><br /></li><li>Education, not laws blocking access, is the key to safe use of the Internet. Libraries and schools are places where kids learn essential information-literacy skills that go far beyond computer instruction and Web searching. Indeed, Senate Bill (SB) 1682 would block usage of these sites in the very environments where librarians and teachers can instruct students on how to use all kinds of applications safely and effectively and where kids can learn to report and avoid unsafe sites.</li> <li>Limiting access to social networking sites in schools and libraries will have little impact on the overall problem, since young people access these collaborative sites from many locations and over a period of time. If children are going to get into trouble online, chances are it won't be at school or at the library. They'll be home, they'll be at a friend's house, or they could even be using their mobile phones completely apart from adult supervision. Schools and libraries are relatively protected environments where adults are never far away and, for the most part, computers are in public locations that make it difficult for users to hide what they're doing.</li> <li>While seeking to protect children from predators, Senate Bill (SB) 1682 would impact a wide range of social networking sites used daily by millions of Americans. Senate Bill (SB) 1682 is much too broad. It proposes to block access to beneficial collaborative Web applications and resources.</li> <li>Senate Bill (SB) 1682 ignores the value of interactive Web applications. New Internet-based applications for collaboration, business, and learning are becoming increasingly important, and young people must be prepared to thrive in a work environment where meetings take place online and where online networks are essential communication tools.</li> <li>Local decision making—not state law—is the way to solve the problems addressed by Senate Bill (SB) 1682.</li> <li>Senate Bill (SB) 1682 would restrict access to technology in the communities that need public access most. Senate Bill (SB) 1682 denies the students and library users in schools and libraries in the poorest communities from accessing appropriate content and from learning how best to safely manage their own Internet access in consultation with librarians and teachers.</li> <li>School officials note they are faced with a new problem of monitoring students' and teachers' use of the Internet on personal laptops on school grounds.</li> <li>Libraries do need help to accelerate their efforts to provide Internet and information-literacy education and safety programs for kids, teens, parents, and caregivers. If people were more well informed about social-networking sites and knew and used basic Internet safety tips, the cloud of fear may decline and that success rate for sexual predators will be dramatically reduced. We need your help, Senator Matt Murphy, in funding an educational campaign now. Will you support us?</li></ul><p> Finally, this isn't just as issue for librarians. I have continually used the term "library advocates " because we want kids, teens, and parents—not just employees of libraries—to contact their elected officials and tell them personal stories about how they have benefited from having free Internet access in their libraries and how social networking sites may have enhanced their lives. We want the public engaged in this issue supporting our principles: open access to information being essential for a participatory democracy.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"> MS:</span> What can all librarians do, not just those in states that have bills introduced?<br /><br /><font color="#006666"><span style="font-weight:bold;">RD:</span> The library community needs to be at the table. We need to be offering the Web-safety classes at all libraries and systems. We need to post the "Basic Rules of Online Safety for Teens" at our public-access terminals. In Illinois, we need to enact our Action Plan (See <a href="http://www.ila.org/pub/reporter/vol24no5.pdf">page 21 of the October 2006 ILA <span style="font-style:italic;">Reporter</span> [pdf]</a>). We need to support our colleagues when they are in trouble.<br /><br /> We need to be proactive. We are far behind on this issue considering the coverage in the media, proposed federal legislation, and proposed legislation in selected states. We need to connect the dots as reported in the local, state, and national media. To all the states that haven't seen this legislation yet, be prepared!<br /><br /> We need to act in a <span style="font-style:italic;">thoughtful</span> and coordinated effort.</font><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"> MS:</span> Finally, I am concerned about my students. I worry about what type of world they might find themselves in if this legislation passes and everyone finds other places to connect to the social Web. What role should LIS educators be playing?<br /><br /><font color="#006666"><span style="font-weight:bold;">RD:</span> My initial reaction to that question is, "Their roles are too numerous to mention quickly." So, here are a few—very quickly developed partial thoughts:</font></p> <ul><li>Help students to learn to think, to evaluate, and to judge discerningly.</li> <li>Help students to learn to articulate their thoughts and marshal their arguments in an effective manner.</li> <li>Help students learn how to engage in advocacy; encourage them to follow the leadership of LIS educators by joining and participating in state and national organizations that champion our values and principles.</li> <li>Get out of the vocational business; prepare students not only for current library operations, but also for the future.</li></ul> <p><span style="font-weight:bold;"> MS:</span> AMEN! I like that a lot. <span style="font-weight:bold;">We need to be thoughtful advocates.</span></p> <p>I will add that to <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/libraryman/369479057/">my list of goals for LIS education and for librarians confronting the shifts in society, technology, and culture</a>:</p> <ul><li>Learn to Learn</li> <li>Adapt to Change</li> <li>Scan the Horizon</li> <li>Be a Thoughtful Advocate</li></ul> <p>Robert, thank you again for your time. Librarians and others reading this post, please follow the links, print out the Talking points, and look for ways to make a difference—education, understanding, and thought should trump banning, driving young people out of the library, and locking down the Internet.<br /><br />For further information, including "Talking Points," please read "DOPA and the Participation Gap" (ILA, October 2006<span style="font-style:italic;">,</span> <span style="font-style:italic;">Reporter</span>, pp. 16–21; available via PDF at <a href="http://www.ila.org/advocacy/pdf/DOPA.pdf">www.ila.org/advocacy/pdf/DOPA.pdf</a>) or ILA <span style="font-style:italic;">Update</span> #2 (available at<span style="text-decoration:underline;"> </span><a href="http://www.ila.org">www.ila.org).</a><br />Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/DOPA"><img style="border:0pt none;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em;" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=DOPA" alt="" />DOPA</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/librarians"><img style="border:0pt none;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em;" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=librarians" alt="" />librarians</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/libraries"><img style="border:0pt none;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em;" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=libraries" alt="" />libraries</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/library-20"><img alt="" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=library-20" style="border:0pt none;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em;" />library-20</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/social+networking"><img style="border:0pt none;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em;" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=social+networking" alt="" />social networking</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/social+software"><img alt="" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=social+software" style="border:0pt none;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em;" />social software</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/web-20"><img alt="" src="http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16x13.png?tag=web-20" style="border:0pt none;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em;" />web-20</a></p> http://alatechsource.org/blog/2007/02/thoughtful-advocates-an-ala-techsource-interview-with-ilas-robert-doyle.html#comments Accessibility Digital Divide Information Literacy Intellectual Freedom Library 2.0 School Libraries Web 2.0 Thu, 01 Mar 2007 02:38:48 +0000 Michael Stephens 157 at http://alatechsource.org Have Laptop, Will Learn? http://alatechsource.org/blog/2006/12/have-laptop-will-learn.html <p> Last Thursday's <span style="font-style:italic;">New York Times</span> contained <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/technology/30laptop.html?_r=1&amp;adxnnl=1&amp;oref=slogin&amp;pagewanted=all&amp;adxnnlx=1165255255-WfQZxe+2lGQyyi9RawhFfA">an article</a> (a no-cost subscription is required) that provides a progress report on the $100 laptop initiative, officially known as <a href="http://laptop.org/">One Laptop per Child (OLPC).</a> The project is based at <a href="http://www.media.mit.edu/">MIT's Media Lab</a> and was first announced in January 2005. Led by Nicholas Negroponte, the OLPC project proclaims its main outcome goal thus: “a unique harmony of form and function; a flexible, ultra low-cost, power-efficient, responsive, and durable machine with which nations of the emerging world can leapfrog decades of development—immediately transforming the content and quality of their children's learning.”<br /><br /><a href="http://laptop.media.mit.edu/"><img border="0" align="right" src="/files/media/blog/green.laptop.jpg" title="$100 Laptop Prototype, image by Design Continuum" alt="$100 Laptop Prototype, image by Design Continuum" /></a></p> <p>That last part about transforming learning has caused much of the rub. Many educators and public-policy theorists are wondering if OLPC is engaged in dangerous or frivolous activity by thinking that such basics to any formal educational system, such as teacher training and curriculum development, can be effectively sidestepped by putting laptops in the hands of the children you wish to have learn.</p> <p><br /><br />Other than general support for the humanitarian goal of providing better educational experiences for the children of the world's developing nations, why should librarians care about the $100 laptop initiative? Here are three reasons: <img border="0" align="left" src="/files/media/blog/Tang.layers.jpg" title="Tang--an innovation resulting from space program" alt="Tang--an innovation resulting from space program" /></p> <ol><li>Whenever anyone tries to achieve something never before achieved, or even just build a radically better mousetrap, unexpected breakthroughs and outcomes often occur. Just as the space program gave us Tang and space blankets, the $100 laptop program already has given us better, cheaper screens. As John Markoff mentions in his <span style="font-style:italic;">NYT</span> article, Mary Lou Jepsen, a member of the OLPC team and a former chip designer, developed a modification to conventional laptop displays that cut the manufacturing cost by $40, reduced power consumption by 80 percent, and made the display clearly visible in direct sunlight. These new, more efficient displays could help the e-book business that, to date, has been primarily yet another instance of a great idea poorly executed.</li> <li>Whenever a manufacturer shows that a harmonious, flexible, and durable widget can be constructed at a cost far below the current market price for widgets, that tends to drive down the cost of all widgets from all manufacturers. Granted, the first batch of laptops have cost closer to $150 per unit, but, if the OLPC initiative proves successful, we may see prices for all types of computer equipment soften a bit.</li> <li>Last but not least, this whole debate about the best way to jump start learning and education among the children of the developing nations could impact libraries worldwide. Seymour Papert, an adviser to the OLPC project, had the idea attributed to him in the <span style="font-style:italic;">Times</span> article that giving computers and access to information to students will help them learn <span style="font-style:italic;">how to learn</span> better than educational bureaucracies, traditional teaching strategies, and testing. Dare I say that we may be witnessing the emergence of Learning 2.0?</li></ol> <p>The <span style="font-style:italic;">NY Times</span> articles generated more than 180 reader comments within a few hours after it was posted. <a href="http://news.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=98#comment-20968">Commenter #8</a>, sounding like a librarian, summed up the bold new idea in one sentence, “I believe access to information is education.”<br /><br /><a href="http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=879#top"><img border="0" align="right" src="/files/media/blog/Millet.Man.with.Hoe.jpg" title="Man with a Hoe, Millet" alt="Man with a Hoe, Millet" /></a></p> <p>It seems to me that libraries always have been more in the camp of self-directed learning. Although many libraries exist in some formal educational environment (e.g., school, college, and university libraries), they try to create an information-rich learning environment—with lots of structure supplied by librarians—that users can explore with their own learning styles and at their individual paces.<br /><br />So, if this project is a huge success and actually causes some global reconceptualization of what learning is all about, it could have a positive impact on libraries. On the other hand, having Intel, Microsoft, and the worldwide education establishment poo-poohing your initiative is, as we used to say in Iowa, a tough row to hoe.Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Digital+Divide">Digital Divide</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/E-Books">E-Books</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Education">Education</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/learning+2.0">learning 2.0</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/librarians">librarians</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/libraries">libraries</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/OLPC">OLPC</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/%24100+laptop">$100 laptop</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/one+laptop+per+child">one laptop per child</a></p> http://alatechsource.org/blog/2006/12/have-laptop-will-learn.html#comments Accessibility Digital Divide Information Literacy Mon, 04 Dec 2006 20:53:43 +0000 Tom Peters 139 at http://alatechsource.org Public Libraries: Essential for Today's Technology Needs http://alatechsource.org/blog/2006/10/public-libraries-essential-for-todays-technology-needs.html <p><a href="http://www.ala.org/ala/washoff/contactwo/oitp/2006_plinternet.pdf"><img border="0" align="right" alt="Download PDF of Public Libraries and the Internet 2006: Study Results" title="Download PDF of Public Libraries and the Internet 2006: Study Results" src="/files/media/blog/PL.Internet.2006.jpg" /></a> Last week, Andy Bridges, from ALA's Washington Office, put together some summary information on the<a href="http://www.ala.org/Template.cfm?Section=News&amp;template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&amp;ContentID=138765"> recently released</a> <span style="font-style:italic;">Public Libraries and the Internet 2006: Results and Findings</span> study.<br /><br />According to Andy, "The report was conducted by the <a href="http://www.ii.fsu.edu/">Information Use Management and Policy Institute at Florida State University</a> (FSU) and was funded by the <a href="http://www.gatesfoundation.org/default.htm">Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation</a> and the <a href="http://www.ala.org">American Library Association</a>. Its primary goal was 'to provide current information that describes public library activities in the networked environment.'"<br /><br />Andy's summary notes:<br /><br /><font color="#660000">The study revealed that 99 percent of all U.S. public libraries provide free public access to computers wired to the Internet, compared to 25 percent 10 years ago. Also, librarians overwhelmingly report that the most important impact of this service is providing Internet access to those who otherwise would not have it.<br /><br />This is the first time that impact has been quantified on a national scale. Findings included:</font></p> <ul><li>Despite increased demand for library computers, libraries typically have not seen a corresponding increase in budgets and many are challenged to provide enough computers or fast-enough connection speeds to meet demand.</li><li><br /></li><li>More people are relying on library computers to find government services, which increasingly are more available online. For example, senior citizens facing the 2006 deadline to enroll in the Medicare prescription drug program in 2006 relied on library staff and library computers to research programs and complete online enrollment forms.</li><li><br /></li><li>Only 1 in 5 library branches say they have enough computer workstations, and 45 percent have no plans to add computers because of space considerations, cost factors, and maintenance issues.</li><li><br /></li><li>Nearly half of libraries report their connection speeds, regardless of bandwidth, cannot meet user demands some or all of the time. The study identified connection speeds of 769 kbps or higher as adequate, but most commercial home broadband connections, at three to six mbps, surpass this rate. As online learning tools, information databases, and computer programs require more intensive bandwidth, Internet users need faster connections for a meaningful experience.</li><li><br /></li><li>Rural libraries are particularly vulnerable as they tend to have fewer computers and lower Internet connection speeds, and more than a third of rural libraries have no plans to add or replace computers.</li></ul> <p>Findings like these listed above and those in the rest of the study are important not just to libraries and library advocates, but also to legislators, information technology professionals, and, most importantly, those communities served by libraries.<br /><br /></p> <p>Share this report with your Representatives and Senators! Let them know how vital libraries are to your community and that for many they are the first or even only choice for Internet access.—<span style="font-style:italic;">Andy Bridges, Communications Specialist, ALA Washington Office </span><br /><br /></p> <p>The 255-page study (PDF) is here: <a href="http://www.ala.org/ala/washoff/contactwo/oitp/2006_plinternet.pdf">ala.org/ala/washoff/contactwo/oitp/2006_plinternet.pdf</a>Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ALA">ALA</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/American+Library+Association">American Library Association</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Internet">Internet</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Internet+access">Internet access</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/librarians">librarians</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Libraries">Libraries</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/library+funding">library funding</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Public+Libraries">Public Libraries</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Public+Library">Public Library</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/technology">technology</a></p> http://alatechsource.org/blog/2006/10/public-libraries-essential-for-todays-technology-needs.html#comments Accessibility ALA News Sun, 01 Oct 2006 15:57:45 +0000 Teresa Koltzenburg 128 at http://alatechsource.org Wowio: It All Ads Up http://alatechsource.org/blog/2006/08/wowio-it-all-ads-up.html <p><a href="http://www.wowio.com/index.asp">Wowio</a>, an LLC based in York, Pennsylvania, recently launched a free downloadable e-book service. The company's collection at launch is pretty sparse, but it does include both public domain and copyright-protected e-books. During my first use of the collection, I downloaded both <span style="font-style:italic;">The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</span>—if for no other reason than to relish Emmeline Grangerford's mournful <a href="http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1190.html">Ode to Stephen Dowling Bots</a>—and <span style="font-style:italic;">Slaughterhouse Five</span>. <img title="YOUR AD HERE!!!!!!!" alt="YOUR AD HERE!!!!!!!" src="/media/blog/blank.billboard.jpg" align="left" border="0" /><br /><br />Although the service is free, in the sense of the absence of cash transfers, there is a price. First, a user needs to register, answering such required questions as birth date, zip code, credit-card number, gender, race (huh?), formal-education attainment, occupation, and salary. You also need to divulge a few of your favorite things, such as food (BBQ for me), music (blues), and hobbies (gardening). <br /><br />You also must consent to be exposed to some advertisements. During my speedy first use, the only ad I spotted was one for Wowio itself interleaved in the front matter of <span style="font-style:italic;">Slaughterhouse Five</span>. I registered last night, and as of today, I don't see any ads, clearly spawned from my Wowio registration, in my e-mail inbox. <img title="Your attention here, please!" alt="Your attention here, please!" src="/media/blog/Your.attention.please.jpg" align="right" border="0" /><br /><br />The idea of ads in "real books" is not new. As I recall, many of the paperbacks I purchased in my youth contained ads, usually for other books, but ads nevertheless. The journals and books, with nary a difference, published by the <a href="http://www.haworthpress.com/">Haworth Press</a> also come to mind as being replete with ads. Wowio's venture, coupled with the high probability that <a href="http://books.google.com/intl/en/googlebooks/about.html">Google's massive digitization project</a> will result in some sort of ad-based "free" service, makes me wonder if advertisements are about to invade the world of books in a big way. <br /><br /><img title="This Space for Rent" alt="This Space for Rent" src="/media/blog/this.space.for.rent.jpg" align="left" border="0" /> As we move deeper into the digital world, we seem to be bombarded by ads. Human attention is the precious commodity of this age, and advertisers seek every opportunity to make their pitches, even as you look over the shoulder of the pitcher during a televised baseball game. <br /><br />For some, another price to pay the Wowio piper will be the onerous PDF-file format the company uses. Granted, PDF is not as open and flexible as other file formats for e-books, and there are serious accessibility issues for blind and visually impaired individuals, but it is a serviceable file format.<img title="This is your brain... on ads." alt="This is your brain... on ads." src="/media/blog/for.rent.forhead.jpg" align="right" border="0" /><br /><br />I have read horribly designed and produced printed books, and I've listened to audiobooks with a dullard or dolt as the narrator, all because I wanted to ingest the content. If content is king, I renew my oath of fealty on a daily basis.<br /><br />By the way, if you don't remember the ode-to-Stephen episode in <span style="font-style:italic;">Huck Finn</span>, and if you didn't bother to the follow the link above to the poem, poor Stephen died an ignoble death by falling down a well. Mmmmm, that gives me an idea... We could have had some ads plastered on the walls of that well, maybe even in e-ink so we could change them to match the demographics of each subsequent victim, so that poor Stephen would have died with our highly targeted product on his mind.Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/books">books</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/digitizing+books">digitizing books</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/E-Books">E-Books</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/ebooks">ebooks</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Google_Book_Search">Google_Book_Search</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/google+book+search">google book search</a><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/research+libraries"> </a></p> http://alatechsource.org/blog/2006/08/wowio-it-all-ads-up.html#comments Accessibility Digitizing Books Intellectual Property Reading Fri, 18 Aug 2006 00:43:32 +0000 Tom Peters 122 at http://alatechsource.org UC Libraries Join the Google Books Library Project http://alatechsource.org/blog/2006/08/uc-libraries-join-the-google-books-library-project.html <p><img border="0" align="right" src="/files/media/blog/Peters.Tom.outdoors.jpg" title="Tom Peters" alt="Tom Peters" />Soon after <a href="http://www.google.com">Google</a> announced in late 2004 the collaborative project—currently called the "<a href="http://books.google.com/googlebooks/library.html">Google Books Library Project</a>," involving the five research libraries of <span style="text-decoration:underline;"></span><a href="http://www-sul.stanford.edu/about_sulair/special_projects/google_sulair_project_faq.html">Stanford</a>, <a href="http://www.lib.umich.edu/mdp/">Michigan</a>, <a href="http://hul.harvard.edu/hgproject/index.html">Harvard</a>, <a href="http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/google/">Oxford</a>, and the <a href="http://www.nypl.org/press/2004/google.cfm">New York Public Library</a>—to scan millions of books, the five libraries became known as the "G5 Group."<br /><br />When the G5 Group was mentioned in conversations among librarians, often there was at least a note of despair or hostility toward the G5 Group for collaborating with the "enemy," or for, perhaps, significantly altering the future course of research and research librarianship without consulting with representative samples of these communities.<br /><br />Longing to be a member of the G5 Group was not one of the dominant emotions I detected in the conversations I heard about their involvement in Google's massive digitization project. But evidently there is some longing out there.<br /><br />First, the Library of Congress began to <a href="http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2005/05-250.html">dabble with Google</a> in this project, which is not surprising. Then the <a href="http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/">University of California Libraries</a> System—which collectively, across its 100 libraries, claims to have the largest research collection in the world—began serious discussions with Google, as evidenced by an <a href="http://dailycal.org/sharticle.php?id=20931">article</a> that appeared in the <span style="font-style:italic;">Daily Californian</span> in July. Reports in other publications, such as the <a href="http://www.calendarlive.com/books/cl-me-ucgoogle2aug02,0,4193029.story"><span style="font-style:italic;">Los Angeles Times</span></a> and <a href="http://chronicle.com/free/2006/08/2006080901t.htm" style="font-style:italic;">The Chronicle of Higher Education</a>, followed, culminating in the official <a href="http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/2006/aug09.html">August 9 press release</a> that an agreement had been struck.<br /><br />The press release emphasizes:<br /></p> <ul><li>the public trust upon which this massive collection has been built;</li><li>the need for quick and easy means of discoverability;</li><li>the possibilities for new and accelerated forms of scholarly inquiry; and</li><li>the archival need for massive digital back-up copies of printed books in collections on or near areas of frequent seismic activity. </li></ul><p> The UC Libraries' System already is a member of the <a href="http://www.opencontentalliance.org/">Open Content Alliance</a>, which has also undertaken a very large-scale book-digitization project. The OCA, however, has intentionally limited its scanning efforts to books clearly in the public domain, which is estimated to be only twenty percent of the books held by the various libraries across the UC System. By becoming a major player in the Google Project, the UC System could potentially have thirty-four million books scanned, with one master copy going to Google and another staying with the UC System.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">The Chronicle</span> article quotes Adam Smith from Google stating that they are in active conversation with other research libraries with interesting special collections. Smith hinted that some of these libraries are located outside the United States, with Oxford University as the precedent. Perhaps before long the majority of the member libraries of the <a href="http://www.arl.org/">Association of Research</a><a href="http://www.arl.org/"> Libraries</a> will be Google partners. <br /><br />There has been much speculation about how Google plans to generate revenue from this massive digitization project. For the libraries involved, avoiding the cost of a massive digitization project seems to be a major motivation. In the <span style="font-style:italic;">Daily Californian</span> article, Dan Greenstein is attributed to have said, but is not directly quoted, that through the use of Google's top-secret and proprietary scanning process, the cost to scan a book will be only $1 or $2, compared to approximately $30 via the process being used by the Open Content Alliance.<br /><br />Other monetary advantages may redound to the Google libraries as well. For example, Google recently announced plans to build an advertising office that will employ approximately 1,000 people in <a href="http://www.mlive.com/business/aanews/index.ssf?/base/business-4/1153044710131380.xml&amp;coll=2">Ann Arbor</a>, which coincidentally is the home of the University of Michigan, one of the original G5 Group members. All politics, as they say, are local.Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/book+scanning">book scanning</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/books">books</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Copyright">Copyright</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/digitizing+books">digitizing books</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/E-Books">E-Books</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Google_Book_Search">Google_Book_Search</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/google+book+search">google book search</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/librarians">librarians</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/librarianship">librarianship</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Libraries">Libraries</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Open_Content_Alliance">Open_Content_Alliance</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/research+libraries">research libraries</a></p> http://alatechsource.org/blog/2006/08/uc-libraries-join-the-google-books-library-project.html#comments Accessibility Digital Libraries Digitizing Books Intellectual Property Wed, 09 Aug 2006 23:36:12 +0000 Tom Peters 120 at http://alatechsource.org It's Too Darn Hot: A Curmudgeon's Asides http://alatechsource.org/blog/2006/07/its-too-darn-hot-a-curmudgeons-asides.html <p>This week it's hot as a pistol across the United States, and as I sit in my office without A/C, a feeble fan drying the sweat on my face, I'm grumpy. Grumpy enough to line up a few peeves against the wall and slap them around.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Open-source software</span><br />Yes, I know, open source is a saint and you'd let your sister or brother marry it. But I hate the idea that for some librarians if a particular software is open source, hands down, it's the right choice. The right choice is the software that meets the mission. While the principles behind open source are admirable, when an open-source product doesn't meet your library's needs, your first obligation is to your users. <br /><br />Some open-source software (OSS) is almost beyond reproach. Apache, Linux, MySQL, PHP, and Perl are software programs with huge user communities that have proven their worth. But I've experienced (or been made to suffer) software based on this argument:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;font-style:italic;"><img border="0" align="left" src="/files/media/blog/Stpfrd.libs.gif" title="Stepford Librarians" alt="Stepford Librarians" />Me:</span> What's a good search engine? Here's my criteria (unfurling long list).<br /><br /><font color="#333366"><span style="font-weight:bold;font-style:italic;">Another Librarian: </span>Use X. It's open source!</font><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;font-style:italic;">Me: </span>But the software doesn't meet my criteria!<br /><br /><font color="#333366"><span style="font-weight:bold;font-style:italic;">Another Librarian: </span>It's open source!</font><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;font-style:italic;">Me: </span>But what good is it to me?<br /><br /><font color="#333366"><span style="font-weight:bold;font-style:italic;">Another Librarian:</span> It's open source!</font><br /><br />Or even worse—and this makes me glower—Another Librarian responds, "It's free!" Which reminds me of a tee-shirt seen at a technology conference: "We make open source affordable." The TANSTAAFL principle applies here (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch). Software isn't "free" unless the labor to maintain it is "free." Maybe you have the in-house expertise to deal with OSS... but even so, it's still your time and therefore money, and if you don't, you'll have to buy it. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">iPods</span><br />A strange target, you may think, but iPods irritate me because Apple irritates me, with its smug hipper-than-thou commercials and its draconian DRM policies. Just ask <a href="http://overdrive.com/">Overdrive</a> about trying to work with Apple in order to provide e-books. Librarians who tout open-source software while iPods trail out of their Ã¼ber-cool messenger bags doubly irritate me. You want to change the world? Get Apple to play well with others! Oh, and another thing: take off that iPod while you're riding your bike around town, ya big lug!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><img border="0" align="right" alt="Scrooge McDuck 2" title="Scrooge McDuck 2" src="/files/media/blog/barks.scrooge.gif" />Penny-wise pound-foolish library-tech spending</span><br />That list could roll out the door and down the street. Needless to say, the perps will remain unnamed to protect the guilty and keep me out of trouble. But to start with:<br /><br />Libraries that go through elaborate, staff-intensive contortions to <span style="font-weight:bold;font-style:italic;">avoid the purchase of a piece of hardware</span> (such as a small server) that would solve a problem or provide a service.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;font-weight:bold;">Bandwidth-stinting—</span>"We can't do X because the bandwidth would be too expensive." In some large systems, that is probably the case. In some remote locations, as well. But when I hear it from a small-to-medium system buying its own bandwidth, I say, show me the cost sheet.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;font-style:italic;">Buying cheap retail-store computers</span>—the kind some human will be fixing a lot over the next two years—instead of negotiating bulk purchases for enterprise products with service plans.<br /><br />One library I worked in had a staff-to-computer ratio of 1:7—except up in Admin, where it was 1:1. If computers are so important that every administrator needs one, maybe, just maybe they're important for the front-line staff? I also have been in a library where the staff had to take turns to use a computer and sat waiting for it. Computers are cheap. People are expensive. Buy more computers. If nothing else, how are information professionals supposed to upgrade their skills if they don't have access to equipment?<br /><br />Then there are the <span style="font-weight:bold;font-style:italic;">library consortia that prop up services with questionable return on investment</span>—from in-house book processing to "pool collections" where books are laboriously schlepped from one library to another—and fund these services by overcharging for underpowered technology support. One library system I was in was charging libraries $100 per month per IP address—that's $1200 a year per Internet-enabled computer—and the only justification, the budget made clear, was that this money was needed to prop up old-tyme services. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Retrograde anti-technology policies</span><br />Ah yes, the good old days, when libraries had card catalogs, we all read books by gaslight, and women didn't have the vote. Who wouldn't want to go back to that era?<br /><br /></p> <p>Some library practices that mystify me:</p> <ul><li>Libraries that insist users turn off cell phones. I never turn off my cell phone (well, except on airplanes). It stays on, either muted or not as appropriate. I use it for my timepiece, e-mail, Web, and chat. Asking cell-phone users to take calls outside is reasonable. Asking us to turn off our brain-assist systems is not and makes libraries look clueless.</li> <li>Self-policing library computers. Absolutely, leave it up to the users to manage themselves. I'm sure the same person who squeezed an SUV into a compact parking spot is going to observe a thirty-minute time limit. No need for you to buy time-management software!</li> <li>Libraries that make it impossible for users to save files. Yes, I read a thread on the PUBLIB list where the library explained that users couldn't save files to any device and the computer was erased on reboot... Come on. Find a way to help the user save his or her file, or don't offer the service.</li> <li>Libraries that block instant messaging/gaming/Flickr/YouTube and so forth because computers should be used for serious purposes. Have you ever browsed your new-book shelves? Danielle Steele, Jan Karon... let a thousand flowers bloom, but don't kid yourselves that you have an intellectual renaissance going on over in the stacks. Libraries serve important roles in society, and one role is that as provider of recreational information. Whether it's in a book or on a screen, let people explore their worlds.</li></ul> <p><span style="font-weight:bold;">One last beef</span><br />As I was getting this piece ready to go live, the news said we might get down to double digits tomorrow. Hey, there's no global warming, right? So here's my final beef: we need a government that believes in access to information as a public good. We don't need Web sites pulled down, government reports rewritten, or flacks posing as reporters and lying to us. We're fortunate that ALA goes to bat for us on these issues. So when you renew your dues, you can complain about ALA loud as you want, but don't grouse about the quality of advocacy we get. It's hot, all right, but when I think about ALA going to bat for us, I don't mind feeling a little bit warm. Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Apple">Apple</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Digital+Rights+Management">Digital Rights Management</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/DRM">DRM</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/e-books">e-books</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Hardware">Hardware</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/information+access">information access</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/intellectual+freedom">intellectual freedom</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/iPod">iPod</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/librarians">librarians</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/libraries">libraries</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/open+source">open source</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/software">software</a></p> http://alatechsource.org/blog/2006/07/its-too-darn-hot-a-curmudgeons-asides.html#comments Accessibility Digital Rights Management Digitizing Books Intellectual Freedom Open Source Tech Pans Thu, 27 Jul 2006 04:48:42 +0000 Karen G. Schneider 112 at http://alatechsource.org Left to Their Own Devices http://alatechsource.org/blog/2006/07/left-to-their-own-devices.html <p>Two news items that scurried across my attention in July have led me to conclude that, in this era of overlapping eras, we have entered yet another age.</p> <p><br /><br />The first item was an <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-060719apple-story,1,3993241.story?coll=chi-business-hed">industry report</a> that Apple shipped more than eight million iPod devices in the second quarter of 2006.<span> </span>That's almost three million per month or 100,000 per day, and the second quarter is not a big gift-giving quarter, unless Apple packaged all those iPods in large plastic Easter eggs. (Remember, you read it here first.)</p> <p><br /><br />The second item is a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/technology/22soft.html?_r=1&amp;ex=1153713600&amp;en=78691f5524ed9816&amp;ei=5087%0A&amp;oref=slogin">report in the NY <span style="font-style:italic;">Times</span></a> (free subscription required) of an "official" confirmation, sent as an e-mail message, from Microsoft that it is indeed developing a device—code name <span style="font-style:italic;">Zune</span>—to compete with Apple's iPod. If Microsoft hopes to ship thirty-five million Zunes in 2007 or 2008, it needs to best the iPod in some significant, indisputable manner. It won't be able to do that on the coolness factor, but it may be able to do so on the features and price fronts, which I always have considered chinks in iPod's shining white armor.</p> <p><img align="right" title="Yellow Ice Cube, har, har" alt="Yellow Ice Cube, har, har" src="/media/blog/yellowicecube1.gif" /><br /><br />The new age I see dawning is the age of the <span style="font-weight:bold;text-decoration:underline;">p</span>ersonal, <span style="font-weight:bold;text-decoration:underline;">p</span>ortable <span style="font-weight:bold;text-decoration:underline;">i</span>nformation / <span style="font-weight:bold;text-decoration:underline;">c</span>ommunication / <span style="font-weight:bold;text-decoration:underline;">e</span>ntertainment device. Granted, that's a long gray name for a bright new age, but if you vocalize the acronym—<span style="font-style:italic;font-weight:bold;">PP ICE Device</span>—it has certain melodious qualities. (I can already envision some waggish comments to this post, such as, "Don't eat the yellow ICE, har, har," and, "This fool is predicting a new ICE age when the scientific evidence of global warming is undeniable.") <br /><br />PP ICE devices are intensely personal and eminently portable. We carry them in our purses, briefcases, backpacks, and pockets—even in our underwear. I could find <a href="http://www.freshpair.com/catalog_section_men_brand_143.html?CMP=KNC-G">boomboxer styles</a> for both women and men, but no briefs or thongs. Already we use them to communicate with others, to interact with information objects (digital audiobooks, e-books, documents, etc.), and to experience entertainment objects (music, videos, TV shows, etc.) while on the go.</p> <p><br /><br />The forthcoming iPod–Zune slugfest is just part of a larger industry battle to determine which PP ICE device design will dominate. When I discussed this with several library-information vendors at the <a href="http://www.ala.org/ala/eventsandconferencesb/annual/2006a/2006an.htm">ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans</a> last month, they thought the basic cell-phone design would eventually prevail. Personally, I think the portable MP3 player will morph into a portable media player, then merge with portable gaming devices to give the cell phone a run for its (um, our) money.</p> <p><br /><br /><img border="0" align="left" src="/files/media/blog/IceCube.gif" title="Another Yellow Ice Cube" alt="Another Yellow Ice Cube" />Notice that the cell phone emerged from the communication sector of the ICE race, and MP3 players, portable media devices, and portable gaming devices all emerged from the entertainment sector of the ICE race. The devices that emerged out of the information-storage and -retrieval sector are not shipping more than eight-million units per quarter. The PDA line did well for a while, but dedicated-reading devices really don't have much chance of becoming serious PP ICE contendas.</p> <p><br /><br />Librarianship needs to take the PP ICE device era more seriously and plan for the day when most library content and services will be delivered predominantly to PP ICE devices. Many libraries will need to address digital-divide issues by purchasing some of these devices to circulate, but in most instances patrons will be using their own (or company-owned) devices to access library content and services.<br /><br />If the "I" (information) already is the weak spot on this new ICE sheet, librarians need to work together, as well as with the information-technology and -content industries, to strengthen it. Let's not leave library patrons on thin ICE... let's not leave them to their own devices. Technorati tags: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Apple">Apple</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/digital+content">digital content</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/E-Books">E-Books</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/E-books+and+other+digipubs">E-books and other digipubs</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/iPod">iPod</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/librarians">librarians</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/libraries">libraries</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/library+2.0">library 2.0</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Microsoft">Microsoft</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/mobile+media">mobile media</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/MP3+Players">MP3 Players</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Portable+Media">Portable Media</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/time+shifting">time shifting</a>, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/zune">zune</a></p> http://alatechsource.org/blog/2006/07/left-to-their-own-devices.html#comments Accessibility Audio Books Audio Visual Department Digital Libraries Digitizing Books Library 2.0 Time-Shifting with Technology Web 2.0 Wed, 26 Jul 2006 15:39:32 +0000 Tom Peters 115 at http://alatechsource.org Squeezing the E-Turnip http://alatechsource.org/blog/2005/11/squeezing-the-eturnip.html <p> <img align="left" title="Tom Peters Head Shot" alt="Tom Peters Head Shot" src="/media/Peters.Tom.head.blog.jpg" /></p> <p>Earlier this week the <em>Wall Street Journal</em> reported that Google and an unnamed publisher were having discussions about leasing access to e-books. The general idea is that users would pay approximately ten percent of the list price for the printed book to be able to read the e-book for one week. In other words, they're talking about a pay-per-circ digital lending library.</p> <p>When it comes to new (and recycled) schemes for pricing e-books, November has been a "Katy-bar-the-door" month. Amazon and Random House announced separate plans to sell e-books in less-than-complete chunks, such as chapters. If we manage to get through the remainder of the month without any more turkey announcements like this, we'll have another cause for thanksgiving. </p> <p>During my daily pre-dawn walk with Max my dog, I pondered all of these related developments. Max, as usual, had devoted his entire attention to the ambient olfactory sensations. </p> <p>I decided to conduct a little thought experiment. Here's the question I posed to myself: If I were one of the big six publishers with lots of e-books and other e-content to lease or sell, what would be the most comprehensive pricing model I could construct to squeeze the most juice from my crop of e-turnips?</p> <p>Here's my progress report: I would set up my pricing scheme as a multi-dimensional spreadsheet. The x-axis would be a continuum of sizes of content chunks, starting with a letter and progressing through words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, entire books, and series until we arrived at everything that had ever been written. In my thought experiment, my mental publishing firm suddenly had gained control over all written content, and the public domain had ceased to exist. </p> <p>Please note that I did not attempt to place "snippet" on the x-axis. I may be an early-rising thought experimenter, but I'm not stupid.</p> <p>The y-axis represented time, moving through the seconds, hours, days, weeks, years, decades, centuries, and millennia until reaching eternity, or as we like to say, "access in perpetuity." I suppose the subliminal advertisers would lobby for the nanosecond as a viable unit of time-sharing for e-content, but you get my point.</p> <p>So far, so good. Each cell in this two-dimensional spreadsheet would contain a price. If you want to lease access to an entire e-book for a week, it will cost so much. If you want to own a copy of everything that has ever been written (with continuous updates, of course), we'll offer you easy payment terms at reasonable interest rates.</p> <p>Then I remembered that in the reports of the report of the rumored discussions between Google and an unnamed publisher, other terms of use were being added to the stew, such as terms that prohibit downloading and copying of the e-book on loan. In my mental model that would require a z-axis to cover all the ways a reader can interact with a text. The continuum is not as neat as the continua for the x and y axes, but at one end would be "mere reading" and it would branch out to include downloading, transferring to one or more of the hundreds of portable devices, copying and pasting chunks, highlighting, underlining, glossing, etc.</p> <p>But clustering of purchasers also requires another axis. Now we are beyond the easily comprehended three-dimensions. At one end of this axis sits the individual, the common reader. But my Ã¼ber-publisher also is willing to sell and lease e-content to immediate families, extended families, work groups, friends, all the registered users of a library, library consortia, all the citizens of a state, nations, continents, and the world. There may even be some squeezable revenue through sales and leases to other species. I glance at Max and detect a slight nod of approval for that last thought.</p> <p>I probably would need yet another axis to cover all the other types of content that could be bundled with the "core" content I would be leasing or selling. I'm thinking about translations, audio versions, raw data sets, earlier editions, drafts, and the like.</p> <p>By the time I reached the corner of 20th Street and Morningside Drive, my head was spinning. When the thought experimenters who had focused on the digital music industry had heard the music of the spheres, the result had been the beautifully pristine vision of the celestial jukebox. Why had my thought experiment about the e-book industry resulted in the spreadsheet from hell?</p> <p>There is an old saying that you cannot squeeze blood from a turnip, which, according to the 3rd edition (2002) of <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/59/3/youcantsquee.html" style="font-style:italic;">The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy</a> means that you cannot get out of people more than what they are willing or able to give. Perhaps my ultimate pricing scheme for e-books won't generate much revenue after all. Come to think of it, I don't even like turnips. </p> http://alatechsource.org/blog/2005/11/squeezing-the-eturnip.html#comments Accessibility Digitizing Books Intellectual Property Fri, 18 Nov 2005 16:31:19 +0000 Tom Peters 36 at http://alatechsource.org Button, Button, Who Has the Button? http://alatechsource.org/blog/2005/10/button-button-who-has-the-button.html <p>Cell phones, PDAs, MP3 players, and other portable information/communication appliances all have buttons. For most tasks, the dominant way of interacting with these devices involves pressing buttons. The functionality of some buttons has become so multifarious that they seem like joysticksâ€”without the stick and without the joy. </p> <p>The problem is: most button designs are poor, assuming that easy usability is the principal design goal. Somewhere along the line the device-design community developed the collective wisdom that the purpose of button design is to enhance the overall styleâ€”and sales attractivenessâ€”of the device. The result is a bunch of gadgets with buttons that elicit user responses ranging from confusion to open hostility. </p> <p>Button design is a key component of both the usability and accessibility of these devices. This summer the Canadian National Institute for the Blind concluded a three-year study of the accessibility and general usability of a specific hardware device and a specific software program. The full report is available at <a href="http://www.cnib.ca/library/daisy_info/results_report.htm">www.cnib.ca/library/daisy_info/results_report.htm</a>. The manufacturer of the device and software is not a secret, but not worth mentioning here, because I'm not picking on one device manufacturer but on the entire collective of designers of the buttons we all use every day in our personal portmanteaus of portable information appliances. </p> <p>One interesting finding (identified on page 26 of the <a href="http://www.cnib.ca/library/daisy_info/docs/OLT_Full_Pilot_Project_Results_Report_-_June_30_2005.pdf" title="Enhancing Digital Access to Learning Materials for Canadians with Perceptual Disabilities">online PDF version of the report</a>) was that 42 percent of the participants made suggestions on how to change and improve the button design. This is, by far, the most frequent type of recommendation related to the device used in this study. This study supports, although in a small limited way, my thesis that the <span style="font-style:italic;">most important thing</span> any portable playback device manufacturerâ€”from Apple on downâ€”can do to improve the accessibility of a proprietary device is to redesign the buttons (size, placement, tactility, etc.) for <span style="font-weight:bold;">accessibility</span>â€”rather than for stylishness and increased sales. This tentative thesis seems to apply for devices purportedly designed specifically for print-impaired users as much as it does for devices designed for the general consumer market.</p> <p><img align="right" src="/media/Muvo2.jpg" alt="MuVo MP3 player" title="MuVo MP3 player" />One device I have been using intensively for more than a year is the <a title="Creative Labs, NOMAD MuVo MP3 Player and USB Flash 2.0 Flash Drive" href="http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=213&amp;subcategory=215&amp;product=10919">MuVo MP3 player from Creative Labs</a>. It is designed for the general consumer marketâ€”an iPod shuffle wannabe, even though it came to market before the Shuffle. Although all the anecdotal feedback I receive from print-impaired users indicates that the MuVo is much better than average when it comes to accessibility and general usability, the button design is all style and no substance. </p> <p>Why should librarians care about button design, and what should we do about it? Let's face it: We are more closely aligned with digital content end-users than with content creators or device manufacturers. We should serve as advocates for the end-users' experience. For better or worse, finding and pressing buttons on devices will be an integral part of interacting with information systems into the foreseeable future. We should help develop first principles, guidelines, and best practices.</p> <p>At the dawn of the digital age we are presented with a unique opportunity to expand and improve access toâ€”and the accessibility ofâ€”information for all users. Let's not squander this opportunity. Let's stop pressing the wrong buttons, become advocates for all users in this regardâ€”let's press a few of the device manufacturers' buttons.</p> http://alatechsource.org/blog/2005/10/button-button-who-has-the-button.html#comments Accessibility Mon, 31 Oct 2005 08:54:57 +0000 Tom Peters 23 at http://alatechsource.org
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