The Synthetic Librarian

On October 23, 2008 I gave a talk at Netspeed 2008 titled Hackers in the Library. The talk was designed to build awareness regarding information security threats in libraries and to dispel the myth that “nobody would want to hack a library.”

In this presentation I tell many stories of actual security incidents that I have encountered in various libraries and punctuate these stories with reports from the media of similar events in libraries around the world.

The slides for the presentation are now available for download in MS Powerpoint (PPT) format. The slides include embedded notes covering the content of my speech and additional commentary and links. I have also included some questions and answers that have come up after the talk.

The slides for my Ecommerce lecture for MIS 311 are now available for download.

Note that if you view the slides in Powerpoint, that there are detailed notes for most slides in the “notes” area. These can be viewed in powerpoint, or you can print out the “notes” view of the slides to see them. The end of the slides includes many slides from previous versions of the presentation that have been removed for this term. You might find them interesting out of curiousity.

There is also a light reading list including both fiction and non-fiction sources that relate to this topic. I highly recommend the fiction books “Pattern Recognition” and “Rainbows End”

If you have any questions, please feel free to post them as a comment to this post (below) and I’ll be happy to answer them. You can also email if you prefer or use the contact information on my contact info page.

The slides for my presentation at Netspeed 2007 are avaialble for download now. The title of the presentation is Widgets, Gadgets, and Badges for your Library, Website, or Blog. There is also a handout.

See also the page I created with links to widget examples.

Last Saturday (April 28, 2007) I gave a presentation at the Alberta Library Conference (ALC 2007) titled, “How to Get the Technical Support You Need.” I think many, if not most, people have had negative experiences trying to obtain technical support. Contacting a helpdesk leaves people feeling frustrated, ignored, or like they are getting the run-around. After dealing with tech support, people often feel as if they are expected to learn new technical skills or adopt a new language of three letter acronyms just to get a little help.

My presentation rejects the idea that people need to learn technical skills just to get a techie to help them. Instead I introduce management and communication skills that can be used to obtain better tech support.

The presentation is divided into three sections. First, I explain how helpdesks generally work following the Limoncelli (1999) 9-step/4-phase model. Second, I explain how to write a great support request that has enough information that tech support won’t need to ask a lot of question and give you the run-around. Last, I present some rules-of-thumb for effectively managing communication with tech support for those worst-case scenario problems.

All of the ideas are based on my nearly 15 years of experience in giving and getting support. The rules and advice are inspired by some of my worst-cases in getting support and I show how my advanced technical skills are not enough to allow me to get tech support: Managing communication is the key to getting good support.

The slides for my presentation can be downloaded and they contain commentary in the “notes” field that can be viewed or printed if you open the file in Powerpoint or OpenOffice. The presentation is covered by a Creative Commons license and can be redistributed and remixed as long as attribution is provided and you share-alike.