New Initiatives

We had a good SELCO board meeting Wednesday night. I received my "23 things on a stick" flash drive, and my name was drawn out of the hat for a DVD player. That was a cool surprise! There was good discussion about the new Strategic Plan for the consortium. I'm particularly excited about the Teen programming component. We also decided to go ahead and take a serious look at creating a new catalog utilizing Endeca.

Endeca is a great product used by a lot of large e-commerce companies. I'm glad everyone seems excited about it, but I think we still need to take a look at the alternatives as well. Solr is a similar open source project that is used by a lot of large e-commerce companies as well. It's not as slick as Endeca, but I think it is worth a look as well. Here are some links if anyone is curious.

Here is a list of sites using it for their guided navigation/search.
http://wiki.apache.org/solr/PublicServers

There are some pretty big sites in that list.
http://reviews.cnet.com/
http://shopper.cnet.com/
http://www.netflix.com/
http://www.archive.org/

I do see some libraries in the list as well.
http://deweybrowser.oclc.org/ddcbrowser2/
http://peel.library.ualberta.ca/index.html
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/digital/resndev/blacklight.html
http://siris-collections.si.edu/search/results.jsp

I also think we should be looking at AquaBrowser as well. They are a more library specific company. They've built a lot of the social aspects into their product. They do things like import LibraryThing tags and reviews, and allow patrons to do tagging, reviewing, and networking. Definitely worth a serious look. Plenty of libraries in their list of customers.

Thing 23. Final Thoughts

This was a good experience. It was a lot more time consuming than I was expecting. I definitely can tell I spent more time on the early things. I did learn quite a bit, especially about the more library specific sites. I definitely plan to play more with LibraryThing.

Thing 22. What Did I Learn Today?

I'm constantly learning new things about technology, that's the nature of having a tech job. What I don't generally do, is ask myself how the library might use whatever I'm looking at. I think about what it can do for the business I work for. So my resolution is to make a conscious effort to start thinking more about how the things I run across could have an application in the library setting.

Thing 21. Beyond MySpace: Other Social Networks

There are a lot of social networking sites out there. I use meetup.com to keep in touch with the MN MySQL User Group. I use Linked-in to keep track of my former co-workers and colleagues, here is my profile. I notice from my Linked-in connections that a couple of my former co-workers are now in charge of operations at Ning. They are definitely smart people, no wonder Ning has such a great architecture.

Thing 20. Libraries and Social Networks

Facebook and MySpace, I can understand the attraction. They combine a lot of things you used to have to get ala carte. Web space, blog, BBS, IM, its all there. You used to have to get each one of those things individually. MySpace has been used a lot for marketing, especially in the music business. Here is an example. I don't see why you couldn't do the same sort of thing to market your library.

Thing 19. Podcasts

I regularly listen to podcasts. I pull a lot of them down from public radio. Two of my favorites are Wait Wait Don't Tell Me from NPR, and Musicheads from MPR's new music station, The Current. I use Juice to download my podcasts automatically.

One way podcasts could be used in the library would be setting up a podcasting booth. I think that would be a great way to engage teens by enabling them to create content at the library. It wouldn't have to be anything too fancy. A PC with a microphone, audacity, and an internet connection. A booth to put it in that has decent acoustics, preferably something that could be setup and taken down easily.

Thing 18. YouTube & Other Online Video

I really got a kick out this movie. It is both entertaining and informative. I think it really displays how YouTube can be used as a reference in the library. I could also see libraries using YouTube to upload video of various events that happen at the library, or to promote upcoming events.