jessamyn

The Trouble With Online – is it us?

Roy Tennant’s article for Library Journal about the pitfalls of trying to use an OPAC to find articles online is now itself online. I love it when people tak about disturbing failures of our profession.

We exert much more control over our library catalogs than we do with article indexes, where we are at the mercy of vendors. Since our catalogs are at least partly in our control (automated system vendors largely respond to market demand, and we control how we catalog our items), we need to find ways to enable users to limit searches to full text online. Users rightly expect this ability. Their not being able to do it easily, or at all, is a disturbing failure of our profession.

what can you use a wiki for?

Posted on 21Sep04 by jessamyn

Wikis were one of the more foreign things I discussed at my talk. It’s easy to point to Wikipedia and say “Look, a collaboratively built encyclopedia!” but it’s more difficult to explain how a librarian could use it in their own libraries. Today Teleread has a post about using a wiki for a book discussion group where groups can collectively annotate a book club web site. I think this is what the National Science Digital Library was hoping for with its Annotation and Review Services wiki but it seems to have suffered from neglect. Here’s a neat little wiki about blogs.

how to become the nordstroms of public libraries

Posted on 21Sep04 by jessamyn

I was cleaning off my desktop and came across this little helpful list from an old ALA program How to Become the Nordstrom of Public Libraries [word doc] by Robert Spector. You’ll notice most of these items don’t even cost anything.

1. Provide Your Customer With Choices
2. Create An Inviting Place for Your Customers
3. Hire Nice, Motivated People; (Hire the Smile, Train The Skill)
4. Sell The Relationship: Service Your Customers Through The Products And Services You Sell
5. Empower Employees To Take Ownership
6. Dump The Rules: Tear Down The Barriers To Customer Service
7. Promote Teamwork
8. Commit 100% To Customer Service

hi – 20sep

Posted on 20Sep04 by jessamyn

Hi. I gave my talk on “emerging technologies” to the Librarians of the Upper Valley [LUV] in Newport New Hampshire today and it went well. You can read my presentation here. You’ll notice that emerging tech isn’t really the same here as it might be in your locale. I was pleasantly surprised to see that all of the librarians I spoke with used email, and many of them had what I would consider to be a healthy skepticism for the licensing and marketing of ebooks and other tech initiatives even though I would consider them as a group “tech-friendly.”

search engines get paid to direct users to for profit sites?

Posted on 20Sep04 by jessamyn

Do you think it’s bad if search engines start receiving revenue for traffic they direct towards other for-profit sites? I’m not entirely sure I understand this article about the Google/Reed Elsevier talks. I also wonder what this means for Scirus which, by its own account, was giving Google a run for its money.

Many scientists post their research on university websites, which can be accessed free of charge. Google directs its users to Reed’s sites, but Reed does not now receive a share of the revenue generated by the traffic. Google has similar revenue-sharing arrangements with other companies, but a deal with Reed would be one of the biggest of its kind. [shelf]