libraries

I‘m in the process of freshening some of the training and professional development resources on our staff intranet. Seeing as how I spent the last four years working in IA/UX environments, these resources don’t really apply to the library. What are some of your favorite resources regarding staff training and professional development for library staff/information professionals?

In the interest of fairness, I decided to post a few links from libraries, librarians, and library associations that are against DRM in libraries.

I’m trying to be magnanimous, dammit.

• American Library Association statement on DRM: “For libraries, DRM technologies can additionally impact first-sale, preservation activities, and institute pay-per-use pricing.”
• Association of American Universities: (PDF)  “The Higher Education Associations and Library Associations are aware that certain industry activities have been undertaken to identify possible technological protection measures for certain mass audiovisual media, such as broadcast television, cable television and packaged movies. These activities have been led by motion picture studios, consumer electronics companies, and IT companies, and have not been directed to or acknowledged the educational needs of libraries and academic institutions. Further, the group levies a charge for participation and the activities are conducted in a manner that makes it impractical for substantial participation by nonprofit educational institutions and libraries.”
• Connecticut Digital Library: “Fair use allowed libraries to exist. In the new world, fair use doesn’t seem to protect us. We are unable to purchase permanent collections, only transient access. Who controls the access at all times? the database or ebook vendors… It’s as though the publishers set up camp in our libraries and made sure that everyone who came to borrow books from us was - to their eyes - using the items appropriately (that they were residents of our town, etc., etc.). And we’re facilitating this by agreeing to the terms - not that we have a choice, but maybe we should be a little more vocal about protecting our readers’ rights and a little less concerned about protecting the vendors’ rights.”

And while it’s not a total refutation of DRM in libraries, I’d like to point you to this comment from Scott Colson, Applications Manager at the Boston Public Library:

I think, too, that we’re coming at the role of libraries from different directions. Our goal is to increase access to content, not to change the publishing industry. Our focus is on the user — and I anticipate your objection — so why would we not offer a service that the majority of our patrons can use? Discontinuing the service doesn’t improve any of our other services. And as other bloggers have pointed out, eliminating DRM from our library would also mean the exclusion of standard formats like DVDs.

Overdrive, the leading vendor of DRM library content, has announced that they will be making content available on DRM-free MP3s in the coming months. I know librarians who have complained long and hard about the limitations that DRM content places on their ability to archive library content, and while this move is but a small step in the right direction, it is still as step in the right direction.

But I still say that the FSF is using the wrong whetstone to grind their ax against.

Chuck sent me a heads-up about a recent action taken by the Free Software Foundation to get libraries to eliminate DRM from circulating electronic materials. While I won’t argue with them about the broader concept about free software and DRM, these activists have missed a very important point - circulation is fundamental to the way libraries work.

Yes, libraries are (essentially) free. Just about anyone can come in to any local public library, sign up for a library card, and check out movies, DVDs, books, training materials, and even tools (at some libraries). As most of you know, libraries use a system of circulation to monitor what materials are available for checkout.

So that materials can be available to as many people as possible, libraries limit the number of days that patrons can borrow materials. At my own library, these borrowing periods range from seven days for CDs, DVDs, and popular reads (books in high demand), to a high of 21 days for most other books in our collection. If a book hasn’t been requested by anyone else, or if it doesn’t fall into any of the aforementioned 7-day categories, people can renew items as many times as they wish.

As most of us learned at a very early age, you don’t own anything in the library - you borrow it and, most importantly, you take it back once you’re finished with it so that others may enjoy it. It’s a policy based on sharing, a concept that most of us have grasped by the time we reach kindergarten.

Many libraries are making digital materials available for checkout. I can’t speak for Boston Public Library, but at my library, patrons are allowed to check out ebooks for a limited borrowing period. Once that period has passed, the digital files are locked and are virtually “returned” to the library collection, where they become available to other patrons. You can’t click a button on your ebook reader to automatically renew the item, but if no one else is waiting for the title, you’re free to return to our eLibrary and check the book out again.

Explain to me why this concept should be different just because we’re dealing with data instead of a physical item? Why should libraries suddenly start giving things away when they’ve never been in the practice of giving away library materials to patrons?

This action against BPL is misguided, and the anger is misdirected. I have to wonder if anyone from the Free Software Foundation bothered to talk to a librarian to gain an understanding of library circulation policies and how they support the library’s mission of being “free to all” - which means free access to all, not freedom of ownership. Had they spoken to a librarian, I’m sure that the FSF would understand that circulation isn’t just bean counting, it’s a means of determining library usage, and that these usage statistics are used to establish library budgets - these same budgets that make it possible for us to provide access to ebooks in the first place.

If they’d talked to a librarian, maybe they’d realize that their bone to pick isn’t with the libraries, it’s with the vendors who provide library materials, or even better, they’d recognize this process for what it is - a 21st century version of the tried and true library circulation polices that exist almost everywhere.

(Interface photo originally uploaded by Scriblio)

One of the things I missed most about working in corporate environments is that it was hard to keep up with the cool things many libraries are doing with open source software. Tonight over dinner, I found out about Scriblio, a library catalog and content management system that uses WordPress. With Scriblio, you can import MARC records from any MARC-capable system, and you can also import catalog records from any Innovative Interfaces library catalog. This matters because libraries — those bulwarks of intellectual freedom — typically use systems that are based on proprietary software. This locked-in software means that librarians can’t make (many) modifications to their catalogs that better serve their communities themselves; rather, they have to depend on the catalog vendor to make modifications (many of which are expensive modifications, or in the case of some vendors, are only made begrudgingly).

Scriblio may not take the place of your neighborhood library catalog, which is OK because it isn’t really meant to. Rather, it provides librarians with an easy to maintain system that anyone with a basic understanding of how to install and configure WordPress is free to customize the system to fit their needs. Pretty cool stuff, that.

Libraries that currently use Scriblio:

• Lamson Library of Plymouth State University 
• Cook Memorial Library in Tamworth, NH

The developers have also created an installation screencast that covers installation, configuration, importing records, and browsing. The geek in me loves that they used Subversion to install WordPress.

This isn’t going to be one of those posts that bemoans the image of the librarian, because, well, look at me. Cooler people are hard to come by.  Instead, I’m going to offer up a couple of examples of representations of libraries in popular culture that demonstrate that even when people think they’re doing libraries a service by portraying them at all, they’re only contributing to their image as stuffy, technology-averse spaces.  First, a still from the 1995 film Party Girl:

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Don’t get me wrong: I liked this film, and I love me some Parker Posey, but she’s stamping books with a date stamp. I worked in a library as a circulation assistant my first year of college — 1986 - -and we had computers and barcodes even then. But it was 1995, and I’m (almost) willing to cut the filmmakers a little bit of slack.  

Next, a still from Questionable Content, a web comic that I read religiously: 

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

It’s 2008 and Tai, the red headed girl at the counter, is a library and information science student at mythical “Smif College” in an moderately-sized Northeastern town. What is that that Tai — the future librarian — is holding in her hand? You got it - a date stamp for checking in/out books.

It isn’t hard people. In this day and age you don’t even have to leave your desk and visit a real library to see that libraries have these newfangled things called computers in their buildings, and that we use these computing devices to manage information. 

Alright, fine. I admit I’ve got a moderately-sized bug up my butt, but I’m the person who gets off on pointing out continuity errors in movies and TV shows. 

At SXSW I finally had the chance to meet Baratunde Thurston, where we talked about the kind of work I’m interested in doing. SXSW was the
first time I introduced myself as a librarian to the general public,
and I had ample opportunity to think what it was about libraries that
drew (back) to them in the first place. I told Baratunde that I’m
interested in examining the library’s role as physical community
center, and how that sense of physical community can be moved into
virtual spaces. In a Future of Libraries interview, David Lee King
had this to say about libraries as community:

“The community part (besides where I mentioned it above) is
interesting. For example, my library has thousands of public meetings
scheduled each year - we have, in effect, turned into a community hub.
We are a gathering place for the community. We even have plans to make
our website more social, too, so both our physical AND digital spaces
can be community gathering places.”

Over the next little while, I’ll be thinking about ways that I can
help my library become more social. How do we encourage
community-created content? How do we distribute it? What are some of
the perils and pitfalls that might be associated with cataloging this
content?

Only the third day on the job, and I’m already thinking like a librarian again.