The Synthetic Librarian

During my presentation on widgets last week, I used Calgary Public Library’s use of YouTube videos as example of how widgets can be used in a library promotion. At the time CPL only had two videos but this week they’ve started uploading even more!

This is really great to see. If you share your library promotional videos via YouTube or some other system, your users will be able to share them and promote them for you. If the videos are remarkable then putting them on YouTube allows people to actually remark on them. After all, the point of a library promotion is to get people talking and to spread the word right?

CPL is doing a great job with this. Here’s my new favorite video from CPLibrary:

If you wanted to post that video on your website or blog (or facebook or whatever), all you have to do is copy-and-paste the “embed” code shown on the youtube page for that video.

Zotero is celebrating its birthday. Zotero is an open-source firefox add-on that acts as a citation manager. When you browse bibliographic databases, wikipedia, and online journals, Zotero can automatically determine if the page contains a citation, and extract and save it for you. If your library has a citation linker (aka link resolver, reference linker, sfx server, etc.) then Zotero can help you find the full-text version of the articles you have saved.

If you are a research or student and you already use Firefox, you probably want Zotero. Zotero’s integration with my University’s citation linker revolutionized how I search for articles and keep track of articles. In my opinion is offers dramatic improvements over refworks, though it does not replace all the features of refworks.

This is not going to be the most agnostic thing I have ever posted.

So-called “Digital Rights Management” (DRM) technology is creeping its way into the library thanks to companies like OCLC (netLibrary and eAudiobooks). DRM-enabled ebooks and audiobooks provide content that cannot be accessed without users learning new skills, agreeing to complex legal contracts, and getting explicit permission every time they want to access some media.

1. it is frustrating for users and frequently does not work
2. it is designed to be a barrier to access
3. it implies that readers need permission to learn, read, listen, and communicate

If DRM were available for printed books, readers would have to learn a new language every year, show federal ID to crack open a book, and frequently the book would refuse to open. Completely unacceptable.

None of these are things that libraries should be associated with or promoting. Of course, library managers should also be thinking about the substantial costs associated with these problems. You pay to license DRM-enabled content, and then you pay again to train staff because it is hard to use, and again and again because it is hard to understand and explain, and again so that your staff can discuss the problems in professional venues.

It is banned book week. I hate to be yet-another-copy-cat but, I have to simply say, “ditto” to Jessamyn West’s recent post on banned book’s week:

Banning books is bad. Challenging books is an exercise in free speech and a totally appropriate way of giving community feedback on library selection policies. Lumping challenged and banned books together confuses two different issues, to my mind. — Jessamyn West

This is a screencast to go with my last post. It shows some of the screens from the “get it!” service include some of the problem screens.

Unfortunately I could not reproduce all of the problems we talked about last week… so you just get to hear me talk about them. If you have a “get it!” bug that you can reproduce, please post a comment here and describe it. I’d be happy to track it down and post screenshots (and an explanation if its helpful).

Please note that this screencast file is extremely large and may take a while to load (80MB!).

• Windows Movie File Version (smaller fast download: 10MB)
• Internet Explorer Version
• Firefox Version