The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

Introducing The Source

State of the Blogosphere 2008

From the Technorati website

There have been a number of studies aimed at understanding the size of the Blogosphere, yielding widely disparate estimates of both the number of blogs and blog readership. All studies agree, however, that blogs are a global phenomenon that has hit the mainstream. The numbers vary but agree that blogs are here to stay.
Technorati’s 'State of the Blogosphere 2008' report will be released in five consecutive daily segments. Since 2004, the annual study has unearthed and analysed the trends and themes of blogging, but for the 2008 study, it was resolved to go beyond the numbers of the Technorati Index to deliver even deeper insights into the blogging mind. For the first time, bloggers were surveyed directly about the role of blogging in their lives, the tools, time, and resources used to produce their blogs, and how blogging has impacted them personally, professionally, and financially.


Digital Preservation and Copyright

From the WIPO Magazine website

This article highlights the difficulties in preserving digital works, created today and gone tomorrow, for future generations. Both their nature and current copyright laws create a challenging task for preservationists.


Medieval literary treasures to go online

From The Independent website

Manchester University's John Rylands Library will be digitising much of its renowned collection of medieval manuscripts, including parts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The project, funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee, will allow widespread access to the works online. Staff will begin to scan the pages using a high definition camera in October and the results will be available by late 2009.


Achievement in reading, writing, language conventions and numeracy 2008 (Note: PDF)

From the National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy website

This year, for the first time, all Australian school students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 undertook the same assessment in reading, writing, spelling, grammar, punctuation, and numeracy. The results in this report show that more than 90 per cent of students in Australia are performing at or above the national minimum standard in each of the key areas and around 80 per cent of students achieved above the minimum standard.


University investment in the library: What’s the return? A case study at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (Note: PDF)

From the Elsevier website

Academic libraries are being challenged increasingly to demonstrate their value to their institution in compelling quantitative terms. There is a growing need to provide a response based on sound methodology to questions about the value of the university’s investment in the library. In making decisions about competing priorities, university administrators evaluate their options in terms of how to allocate resources in the optimum way that will enable the institution to achieve its goals. At the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC), Paula Kaufman, the University Librarian and Dean of Libraries, sought to identify the library’s contribution by saying “for each dollar invested in the library, the university received x dollars in return.” This statement framed the question of value from an economic perspective and guided the development of this case study.


On the Trail of the Elusive Non-user: What Research in Virtual Reference Environments Reveals (Note: PDF)

From the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) website

An extraordinarily interesting and somewhat paradoxical pattern is revealed in comparing trends in use statistics in academic versus public libraries over the past decade or so. Since 1995, there seems to have been a decline in circulation and reference services statistics at some academic libraries, and the “value of electronic resources may already have eclipsed that of physical resources". However, a different picture emerges in examining a review of public library statistics, which shows precisely the reverse – a pattern of increases in circulation and reference services for the same time period. What accounts for these inconsistencies in library use between different types of libraries? Why do people choose to use or not to use particular library services? In order to entice, attract and retain library users, we need to explore these critically important questions.


On the Dublin Core front: Harvard, NIH, and the Balance of Power in the Open Access Debate (Note: PDF)

From the E-prints in Library and Information Science website

This article reviews the recent decision by Harvard’s Faculty of Arts & Sciences to submit scholarly articles to the University’s institutional repository prior to (or in lieu of) publication in a journal. The remarkable decision, the first of its kind in the United States, reverberated quickly across the open access landscape, making many wonder which universities will follow Harvard’s lead. This article also looks at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy, which as of 8 April 2008, requires NIH-sponsored investigators to place into PubMed a copy of their peer-reviewed journal articles. The impact of this legislation will be enormous, as some 80,000 articles per year result from NIH-sponsored research.


Why Public Libraries Close (Note: PDF)

From the WebJunction website

This report captures the first systematic look at public library closure on a nationwide basis from 1999 to 2003. It examines why libraries closed during this specific time period, and assesses what the potential impact of such closure was believed to be from the librarians’ perspective. This study also presents a methodology using geographic information systems (GIS) to assess possible hidden impacts on some library users and potential library customer markets.

Baking and Configuration Management

Next year the National Library will decant from our current building so it can be redeveloped to become a new generation National Library. This is pretty exciting news for the organisation and also exciting for me as it prompted a review of our technical team’s configuration management practices. This may not sound like fun but as a list-making, paper-stacking, geek-girl the idea of digging deeply into how my team manages our technical information - and how I can design ways to make it transparent, accessible and safe - puts a smile on my face. I hope that this will be the first in a series of posts that details the project as it progresses.

Last week I wrote a Configuration Management Policy. It politely states:

“The goal of Configuration Management is to provide one authoritative source of configuration information… the configuration information will support availability through providing the correct information at the correct time to underpin sound decision making, change control, capacity planning and disaster recovery.”

In plain speak? We need to know enough about our environment to be able to move all of our technology to a new home while continuing to provide our digital services. We also need to be able to rebuild and recover all of our digital services in the case of a disaster (a big earthquake, bomb or fire takes out our computer room).

To achieve this I think we need to know:

1. What we have (identification & baseline of "configuration items" or CIs)
2. What it looks like at any point in time (change control followed by audits called "status accounting" and "verification" )
3. What services each CI is part of

The real goal is to avoid this, especially if it is my phone number listed on the sign:

The Proof is in the Pudding

So how would I define Configuration Management? It is a process that IT uses to manage and track information about the technology in their environment. This can be anything from a laptop to a server to a script. CM can be used to manage hardware, software, documentation and processes. Sounds dull? Don’t stop reading yet…

To use an analogy my mother would be proud of, CM is like the recipe for creating an IT environment. If the Library’s technical environment were a cake then we would need to know the exact amounts of butter, flour, baking powder, sugar and eggs that are needed to create this cake in order to get a tasty cake each time (repeatable outcome).

But if I change the amount of butter (more please!) then I may need to subtract one egg or the mixture will become too soggy and wont rise. This could be seen as a dependency between butter and eggs. If we are making a cake together and I put in twice the amount of butter but don’t tell you and you put in the normal number of eggs we will get a soggy cake. If I tell you that I have changed the recipe (our configuration item), and maybe even write up a new one or annotate the old one (change control), then we get a moist and delicious cake.

As far as I can tell Configuration Management is pretty similar to baking. You take a UNIX host, some software, a couple of front end servers, a load balancer, some data, some webpage code, a network, electricity, connectivity and mix them all together and presto! - you have a website that people can visit and find information important to their lives. Tasty, delicious information.

If for some reason we change one of the website’s ingredients (take out a front end server) it can become soggy and inedible (or inaccessible). To fix this problem (incident and problem management) we will need to know what ingredients the website is made of, what changes were made to them and how they relate to the other ingredients. This is where you would use your configuration management information and if it had been managed correctly - change control - then you can be assured that it is correct. (This is especially important if you have twenty busy IT people baking a cake. Although to be honest they seem to prefer sausage rolls).

So wish me luck. I have just finished the planning and policy stage of the project and am entering the phase where I open up the pantry and try to identify all of our ingredients. I have my clipboard at the ready.

If you want to find out some more about CM this would be a good place to start:

Configuration Management - Wikipedia or here
ITIL - Wikipedia

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

Introducing The Source

Survey Indicates 69% of Internet Users Already Making Use of Cloud Computing (Note: PDF)

From the Pew Internet & American Life Project website

According to a recent survey, 69% of all Internet users in U.S. have either stored data online or used a web-based software application. “These users are making use of ‘cloud computing,’ an emerging architecture by which data and applications reside in cyberspace, allowing users to access them through any web-connected device.” At the same time, most of these users are still unfamiliar with the term “cloud computing.” Listed below is a percentage breakdown of Internet users doing select set of online activities that involve storing data online or accessing applications in cyberspace.
* 56% Use webmail services such as Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo! mail
* 34% Store personal photos online
* 29% Use online applications such as Google Documents or Adobe Photoshop Express
* 7% Store personal videos online
* 5% Pay to store computer files online
* 5% Back up hard drive to an online site
In addition, 68% of users of at least one of the six cloud applications said they would be very concerned if companies providing these services analyzed their information and then displayed ads to them based on their actions.


Academic authorship, publishing agreements and open access: survey results (Note: PDF)

From the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) ePrints website

This report presents the results from an online survey, 'Academic Authorship, Publishing Agreements and Open Access', which was conducted by the OAK Law Project from the 2nd October 2007 through to the 9th November 2007. The survey obtained evidence of author’s experiences with publishing agreements, their perceptions of open access and commercial publishing, their understanding of copyright ownership in their research and their involvement with online repositories and open access journals. It is envisaged that the results will be used to enhance the strategic management of copyright in the Australian research sector, especially in relation to open access.


Introducing djatoka: A Reuse Friendly, Open Source JPEG 2000 Image Server

From the D-Lib Magazine website

The ISO-standardized JPEG 2000 image format has started to attract significant attention. Support for the format is emerging in major consumer applications, and the cultural heritage community seriously considers it a viable format for digital preservation. So far, only commercial image servers with JPEG 2000 support have been available. They come with significant license fees and typically provide the customers with limited extensibility capabilities. Here, we introduce djatoka, an open source JPEG 2000 image server with an attractive basic feature set, and extensibility under control of the community of implementers. We describe djatoka, and point at demonstrations that feature digitized images of marvelous historical manuscripts from the collections of the British Library and the University of Ghent.


The Effectiveness of a Web-based Board Game for Teaching Undergraduate Students Information Literacy Concepts and Skills

From the D-Lib Magazine website

To teach incoming undergraduate students information literacy skills, a research team at the University of Michigan School of Information developed the 'Defense of Hidgeon', a web-based board game. We opted for a game in lieu of other approaches because what people are doing when they are playing good games is good learning. This article describes the game's backstory, how to navigate its 34-space game board, and special game-play features. The research team invited a class of undergraduate students to play the game, gave monetary awards to winning teams, and interviewed students about their game-play experiences to determine what they learned and obtain their suggestions for improvements to the game. The authors offer three premises for the redesign of the Defense of Hidgeon and discuss these premises with regard to the design of future information literacy games.


Introducing Learning Commons Functionality into a Traditional Reference Setting

From the E-JASL: The Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship

For the past decade the University Libraries at The University of Akron has been modifying and enhancing its services in response to changing technologies and user needs, as well as evolving campus strategies. Library efforts centered on service excellence and student success have played a leading role in the inclusion of a planned learning commons as one of the key strategic initiatives of the University. At this time the learning commons concept has been fully developed, while the proposed building renovation plan is underway. The Library, however, is utilising key opportunities in the present to integrate learning commons functionality into its existing reference service. This article is intended as a resource to other reference departments also in the midst of planned learning commons or that are aspiring to incorporate some aspects of commons service models into their existing services.

Tagging in real life

I recently got seconded to work half-time on the Digital New Zealand project (more info coming soon) as a User Experience Analyst.

Since then, I’ve spent quite a lot of time explaining to people - like my Mum – what that job title means. I explain it by saying that it’s my job to help with the design of the web tools and experiences we’re building, so that people come to use them, they’ll move through any steps easily, and accomplish what they wanted to do without get lost, confused or frustrated.

Then I make an analogy to real world usability. You know how swinging doors have those metal panels on them that you place your hand on when you open the door? It’s not that the door won’t open if you push it somewhere else. The metal panel is just there to subtly indicate what you should do. It helps make your door-opening efforts work. Same as the iPhone makes that comforting little clicky sound when you tap things into it. Doesn’t need too – but it helps you understand that the device is paying attention to you.

I think it’s because I’m making lots of real/virtual comparisons at the moment that Nina Simon’s recent post on Designing from Virtual Metaphor to Real Experience jumped out at me.

The post is about ways we might integrate some of the useful elements of social networking sites into the physical world. Nina’s found a great example of this idea in action: like many great ideas, it’s astoundingly simple.

The library at the Hague in the Netherlands has introduced a simple form of tagging in real life. They now have two returns drop-boxes. One is for all items, and the other is for amazing books. Staff take the ‘amazing’ books and put them in the ‘amazing books’ display for visitors to browse. But they also tag them ‘amazing’ in the Library’s collection database.

I was in a session with Stephen Abram earlier this week, where he talked about how people describe their use of libraries. For many, it's not about getting books out – it’s about the human contact, the community. This tagging project seems to me to be a great way to up the human interaction element, online and in real life.

Speaking of online/real life intersections, while I was mulling posting about this idea, Douglas was twittering about tagging issues in a far more intellectual manner. We've teamed up, and his post will follow hard on the heels of this one.

Adding tags to DC metadata

In libraries we usually deal with what we call 'authoritative' metadata, but of course the wisdom of the crowds movement means there is a new source for metadata - the user community. The question I have is how to integrate the two (yet still be able to separate them if necessary).

In particular I've been looking at how to put tags into Dublin Core metadata. I had a look at how people have been defining tagging models, and I think it shows up some deficiencies in DC.

Modelling tagging

There are a number of efforts looking at modelling tagging, primarily so tags can interoperate between websites. The models all seem to revolve around tagging being an event, along the lines of: an agent asserts at a given time that a particular string is related to a particular resource within a given context.

The models include:

• Tag Ontology Design - Richard Newman (2005) - Establishes that a tag is separate to the described resource. Defines 'tags:taggedWithTag' and tags are defined as RDF resources so can identify using URIs and can be described (eg. name, equivalentTag). Unfortunately says taggedWithTag is a sub-property of skos:subject which is a sub-property of dc:subject.


• TagOntology - Thomas Gruber (2005) - Clarifies discussions about ontologies - that just formally specifying a conceptualisation (in an ontology) is different to more specific taxonomic classifications or controlled vocabularies, so Clay Shirky's claim that "ontology is overrated" isn't anti-ontology, but rather anti-"top-down-categorisation". We can now use distributed human intelligence to achieve categorisation. Proposes a conceptual model - Tagging(object, tag, tagger, source, polarity).


• SCOT (Social Semantic Cloud of Tags) Ontology (2007) - Extends Newman's model to include the collaborativeness of tagging that leads to folksonomies, so includes features like TagCloud and co-occurring frequency. Proposes an RDF ontology, using (amongst others) scot:taggingActivity, tag:taggedItem, tag:associatedTag (where the tag: namespace is Newman's ontology)


• TagCommons (2007) - Run by Tom Gruber. Still in development, aiming for common semantics. The TagCommons Wiki has useful use-cases for sharing tags and detailed definitions of terms.


• SIOC (Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities) Initiative (2004) - Aiming to model entire community sites so they can interoperate, in particular the site-forum-post-tag, space-container-item, and role-user-usergroup streams. Defines 'sioc:topic', unfortunately this is a sub-property of dc:subject.

Other relevant work:

• Semantics Through the Tag - Dave Beckett (2006) - Paper indicating interoperability of tags is hindered because the semantics/meaning behind each tag is unknown, so they are difficult to match on. Suggests tags are backed up by wiki entries, so the meaning behind each tag can be easily captured.


• TAGora project (2006) - This is a 3-year research project in Semiotic Dynamics ("a new field that studies how semiotic relations can originate, spread, and evolve over time in populations, by combining recent advances in linguistics and cognitive science with methodological and theoretical tools from complex systems and computer science").


• Annotea (2001) - A protocol for attaching external annotations to individual web pages - the Annotea model seems to mirror the tagging model thinking.


• RSS Taxonomy module (2001) - A fairly early attempt that adds 'taxo:topics' to RSS items.


• Tag Triples - Phil Dawes (2005) - A proposal for a simplified version of RDF, includes a 'tag' property.

Tags are metadata too!

Now, it seems to me, that tagging is essentially the act of creating metadata - information about a resource. Conventionally we think of tags as user-generated and consisting of a couple of words, but generally there's no actual restrictions like that, especially in the above models, so theoretically a tag could be what we conventionally think of as a subject term ("dog"), a title ("The Red Report"), a creator ("ByDCMI"), description ("Yellow with green polka dots"), etc.

Which begs the questions - isn't traditional descriptive metadata effectively a sub-class of tagging? Both 'metadata' and 'tagging' are about associating information with a resource, it's just metadata is usually considered to be doing it in a more structured way.

In contrast, the above tagging models are actually richer than DC. DC metadata is silent on who asserted (and when) that this resource is about 'Dog breeds--History', all DC metadata does is record the result of the description process without capturing details of the description event itself.

There have been attempts to add this to DC metadata. In particular Administrative Components (aka "Admin Core), which includes ac:source (tagger/agent?), ac:scope (context?), and ac:dateRange (taggedDate?), except this is only for the entire record, not individual properties as is possible with the above tagging models.

If I append tagging metadata complying with the above models to my 'authoritative' metadata record, it now looks uneven - the tags all come with provenance details but the main metadata doesn't - it's anyone's guess who made those "authoritative" bits up!

Tag metadata requirements

I've already described two use cases I have, plus the fact that we do know the meaning of some community-generated metadata. But to re-state the requirements, I want to be able to:

1. Indicate which metadata values within a DescriptionSet (metadata record) are 'authoritative' and which are 'community-generated'. I'm not going to get into the argument of which source is better, but I need to be able to separate them if necessary at this higher level. Maybe it's kind of like the "non-preferred" concept in controlled vocabularies - it's not a judgement call on which term is better, but more "lets just standardise on this version for interoperability"??


2. At a more granular level, I want to be able to indicate the exact source for each value in the description (if known), this reason is obvious for community tags/comments, but even authoritative metadata may come from multiple sources (e.g. geographic location may be added separately sourced from the local Land Information Ministry).


3. The above two apply for all properties, not just a 'tags:taggedWithTag' (or equivalent) property. If I know the user-generated tag "black dog" is a subject term (e.g. because the input screen has a different field for different types of tags, or the user enters the tag as "subject:blackdog"), then it makes most sense to add it to the dc:subject property, except to satisfy (1) above I need some way to indicate this dc:subject wasn't entered by the original cataloguer/indexer/describer.

What might a solution look like?

I don't have the answer, but am willing to discuss...

The question is whether every property needs provenance added, or if it can be applied as a default to the DescriptionSet with the possibility of overriding it in individual properties. Would something like this work? [Apologies for hacking the DC-Text format]

DescriptionSet(
AdminSource( "National Library of NZ", RDFType("Authoritative") )
Description(
Statement( dc:title, "Homepage" )
Statement( dc:subject, "'Dog breeds - History", Vocabulary("LCSH") )
Statement( dc:subject, "BlackDog", AdminSource("user:39398") )
Statement( dc:spatial, "georss:point:45.256,-71.92", AdminSource("Land Information NZ") )
Statement( tags:taggedWithTag, "CoolWebsite", AdminSource("user:77766") )
)
)

There's also the question of what property is best to use for un-typed tags. Should we use one of the above proposed properties (tags:taggedWithTag, tag:associatedTag, sioc:topic, taxo:topics) or look for a new one? Pete Johnston has pointed out that it is not appropriate to place tags in dc:subject (or any sub-property of dc:subject) unless it is known they are definitely subjects - tags are often not "about-ness", eg. the tag "YouTube" is more about the publisher/distributor/host than the topic of the resource/video. This would rule out all of these properties (except tag:associatedTag).

If we do create a new property, it seems dc:relation is the most appropriate to be a sub-property of; the alternative is to create a top-level property.

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

Introducing The Source

Valuing Culture: Measuring and Understanding Canada’s Creative Economy

Download for free (upon free subscription) from the Conference Board of Canada e-library

This report sheds light on the value of culture as a cornerstone of the creative economy and as a contributor to economic performance across all sectors. It also presents evidence of how countries around the world recognize the pervasive role of the culture sector in building social cohesion and improving quality of life. The report examines key trends and drivers that are fundamentally changing the way we create, access, and experience culture, and the business models that support culture activity. Taking into account the substantial direct, indirect, and induced contributions of the arts and culture industries, the Conference Board estimates that the culture sector’s economic footprint was $84.6 billion in 2007, constituting 7.4 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP). Employment in the culture sector exceeded 1 million jobs.In total, culture accounts for more than $43 billion or 3.8% of Canada's GDP. Libraries account for $1.3 billion of Canada's Gross Domestic Product.


Books in a virtual world: The evolution of the e-book and its lexicon (Note: PDF)

From the E-LIS (E-prints in Library and Information Science) website

Over recent years there has been considerable confusion over the use of the term ‘e-book’, and this article examines the variety of definitions used to date while proposing a definitive construct. Beginning by examining the definitions of ‘book’, the paper moves on to consider the essential element of a book – the content, and to examine publishing and structural aspects of e-books, as well as their place in libraries, before arriving at a final definition. The definition and its derivation embrace all of the issues that affect the way in which e-books are understood and used today. In conclusion, the article looks at both the genesis of e-books, and the stage of acceptance and adoption that they have reached, with brief reference to 3rd-generation e-book readers available at the time of writing.


From the blog designed to bring the wonderful world of marketing to librarians:
The Power of Marketing (Note: Video)
AND
Marketing 101 - Creating a demand (Note: Video)


2008 Kids & Family Reading Report: Reading in the 21st Century: Turning the Page with Technology (Note: PDF)

From the Scholastic website

A new study just released finds that 75% of kids age 5-17 agree with the statement, “No matter what I can do online, I’ll always want to read books printed on paper,” and 62% of kids surveyed say they prefer to read books printed on paper rather than on a computer or a handheld device. 'The Kids & Family Reading Report', a national survey of children age 5-17 and their parents, also found that kids who go online to extend the reading experience – by going to book or author websites or connecting with other readers – are more likely to read books for fun every day.
The key findings of the research, based on interviews with 501 children age 5-17 and their parents or guardians (1000+ total respondents) in 25 cities across the country, are as follows:
Kids & Reading
* a majority of kids say they like to read books for fun and that reading books for fun is important. Most kids perceive a correlation between reading and success
* One in four kids age 5–17 reads books for fun every day (high frequency reader), and more than half of kids read books for fun at least two to three times a week
* Reading frequency declines after age eight and is stronger among girls than boys
Technology & Reading
* Kids believe that technology will complement — not replace — book reading. After age eight, more children go online daily than read for fun daily; however, high frequency Internet users are still more likely than lower frequency users to read books for fun every day
* The majority of kids of all ages (62%) prefer to read books printed on paper rather than on a computer or handheld device
* Nearly two in three online tweens and teens (age 9-17) have extended the reading experience via the internet. These kids are more likely to value and enjoy reading, read more frequently, and agree with the statement: “No matter what I can do online, I’ll always want to read books printed on paper"
Parents’ Role
* Parents overwhelmingly view reading as the most important skill a child needs to develop
* Trouble finding books they like is a key reason kids say they do not read more frequently. Mom is the top source for book suggestions for kids age 5-11, and friends are most influential among kids age 12-17, who also turn to the Internet
* Eighty-two percent of parents say they wish their child would read more books for fun, and parents employ several tactics to encourage kids to read more


The Desk and Beyond (Note: podcast - Time: 29:27)

From the ACRL Insider weblog

In this podcast, 'College & Research Libraries News' editor-in-chief, David Free, talks with Sarah Steiner and Leslie Madden about current and future trends in reference services.


Exploring characteristics and effects of user participation in online social Q&A sites

From the First Monday website

People are seeking more meaningful and customized information than what is obtained by keywords–based queries and document retrieval through a search engine. In this paper, we look at a set of such services, referred to as social Q&A sites. With sites such as Google Answers, and primarily Yahoo! Answers, we attempt to understand various characteristics of user participation and their possible effects on the design and success of the site. We discuss these social Q&A sites by comparing their designs based on user participation and point out the effects and defects of each. We show that active user participation is the core component of these sites.

The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

Introducing The Source

British Library Digitisation Strategy, 2008-2011

From the British Library website

"Our digitisation strategy underpins the British Library's corporate strategy to 2011, including our content strategy and digital library programme and these will inform our thinking as we develop our strategy to 2020. We set out in this paper our vision for the next 10 years and how we will achieve this."


Will bookworms get their teeth into the Sony Reader?

From the Times Online website

The slim volume in my hands could mark the beginning of the end for slim volumes. It is the Sony Reader, the electronic book that hits the British market this week – and the gadget that, if the publicity is to be believed, could kill off the book as we know it.


Being Wired or Being Tired: 10 Ways to Cope with Information Overload

From the Ariadne website

Sarah Houghton-Jan explores different strategies for managing and coping with various types of informational overload. What is information overload? 27 instant messages. 4 text messages. 17 phone calls. 98 work emails. 52 personal emails. 76 email listserv messages. 14 social network messages. 127 social network status updates. 825 RSS feed updates. 30 pages from a book. 5 letters. 11 pieces of junk mail. 1 periodical issue. 3 hours of radio. 1 hour of television. That, my friends, is information overload.
It is also my daily average amount of information received, sampled over a two-week period. That’s right - that much in every category every day. I suppose that is why I was called upon to write an article about coping with information overload. I am still here, I am still alive, and my brain has yet to explode, so somehow I must be finding a way to make it work. At least, that is what other people tell me.


Library spaces for the 'Google Generation' (Note: PODCAST)

From the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) website

As investment continues to be made into new build and refurbishment projects across the country, librarians are playing a key role in the design of buildings more suited to current styles of teaching and learning. In this podcast interview with Philip Pothen, Tim Giles, Librarian at the Norwich School of Art and Design, talks about a major refurbishment project at his college and how it's supporting the needs of a new generation of learners."


Libraries Connect Communities: Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study, 2007–2008 Note: PDF)

From the American Library Association (ALA) website

The study presents national and state data gathered through three integrated approaches: a national survey that collected information about public library Internet connectivity, use, services, funding and sustainability issues; a questionnaire sent to the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA); and focus groups and site visits held in four states: New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia. This year’s study reinforces a key finding from 2006–2007: Library infrastructure (staffing, space and bandwidth) is being stretched to capacity. This year’s report expands our understanding regarding the strain on public libraries to provide public access to the and other technology, and sounds a warning about the long-term sustainability and future quality of free public access to the and other technology in our nation’s libraries.
The interconnectedness of funding, staffing, buildings and maintenance cannot be underestimated, as all have a direct impact on the amount and quality of public access technology services that public libraries can provide to their patrons.


Evolution to Revolution to Chaos? Reference in Transition

From the Information Today website

It cannot be denied that our reference stats are down, though this is not the case with our research requests, training activities, and one-on-one contact with clients. Public library circulation is way up. Website hits - from nearly any measurement data point - are up. Even gate count is up in most libraries. In public libraries, life is proceeding very well. In the academic and college space, change is moving apace with elearning and learning commons initiatives growing and major technologies expanding, such as OpenURL, federated search, portals and portlets, APIs, and more innovation in user experiences aimed at learning and research missions - and not centered on libraries alone. Reference and research services, the front line of library service, are dealing with a far-less-predictable future.


Beyond The Book #60: The Future of Reading

From the Copyright Clearance Center website

In this discussion of the 'Future of Reading', panelists from publishing, academia, and the library community explore how social networking, online programming (including Internet-delivered TV), and related technology are poised to become saviors of printed word. Originally recorded at Book Expo America 2008.