2006 August | LIS :: Michael Habib

Monthly Archive for August, 2006

Obligatory blog day post complete with related ramblings

Published

on August 31, 2006

. 5 Comments

Apparently it is blog day. For this exercise, I have chosen to share six blogs that I think my readers might find interesting. Given that the majority of my readers are librarians, the first few are more tech oriented blogs that might be off their radar.

Unit Structures by Fred Stutzman — Regular readers might recognize this site as I have pointed to his posts numerous times. Fred, a PhD student here at UNC and a co-founder of claimid.com, focuses his research on identity and social networking. He has done some fascinating research on Facebook usage at UNC and has developed some valuable theories (Situational Relavance, The Network Effect Multiplier, etc.) concerning social networking. Anyone interested in how social software fits into the university life should check out Fred’s writings. One recent post of interest that I don’t believe I have yet pointed out is Orientation 2.0.
FactoryCity by Chris Messina — Chris is an “Independent Open Source Ambassador at Large and co-founder of Citizen Agency.” I met Chris at BarCampRDU where I attended his sesson on social browsing. He is heavily involved in all things open. He is currently devoting a lot of time to microformats (highly relevant to libraries), BarCamps, which he helped start (the precursor to Library Camps), and a number of other projects. While his writings aren’t directly related to what we do, Chris is a prolific and experienced blogger who is working on some cool stuff.

They are both also involved in OpenID, which is something librarians should be looking at as it would provide our users with a single logon. We should be pressuring both our vendors and universities to look into this. To find out more about OpenID, check out the summary I wrote of Fred’s social software session and Chris’s social browsing session here.

The next few blogs I wish to share are related to educational technology:

I only found I am Matthew Williams and You are Not last week, but it is already one of my favorite blogs. He is a writing instructor at the University of Minnesota who writes on a range of topics including collaborative learning and social software. His posts are frequent, long, insightful, and, not surprisingly, exceptionally well written. This blog truly is a gem and I highly reccommend checking it out.
heyjude: Making fortunate discoveries – Web 2.0, Library 2.0, and more â€¦ by Judy O’Connell – Judy is an experienced teacher, school librarian. I have found her blog to offer a great deal of practical advice into how to teach others about Web 2.0, Library 2.0, social software and more. She also offers a great deal of practical ways to use software for teaching. I often find that her writing helps me stay grounded and to see things from new perspectives. Pretty much everything she writes is related to the topics of my blog so I am not going to point out any specific posts. I encourage you to go explore.

Okay now for two library blogs:

Life as I Know It by Jennifer Macaulay – Jennifer is both a student at Southern Connecticut State and a systems librarian. I have found her writings about her classwork to be quite valuable. She also points out lots of valuable biblioblogosphere stuff that I might otherwise miss. I also found out about blog day from her.
The Library Rebooted: Unwrapped – Blog about Technologies Visited in MLCâ€™s 2006/2007 Special Program Series: The Library Rebooted – This blog just went live a few days ago, and will feature contributions from participants, presenters, and other L2 voices. I am very excited to announce that I myself will be contributing some posts to the blog (thanks Evette!). The program and the blog both have a lot of potential and I look forward to watching them develop.

Academic Library 2.0 Concept Models (Basic v2 and Detailed)

Published

Michael C. Habib

on August 22, 2006

in Academic Libraries, Academic Library 2.0, Library 2.0, Library as Place, Online Community and Students

. 9 Comments

I have updated the original Academic Library 2.0 Concept Model. The new version aims to maintain the simplicity of the original, while adding a few examples and using more precise language. Also worth noting is that the line separating the physical and virtual environments is now dotted to signify the artificial nature of this boundary.

This model presents a view of how students might view the library as place in relation to their academic and social lives. It is at this intersection that I propose Library 2.0 has begun to materialize. The primary goal of the model is to encourage brainstorming over how we can develop virtual environments that will fit into students’ lives. However, I would argue that new collaborative spaces in the physical environment could also be viewed as part of L2 in so much as they are responses to changing learning styles that are partially brought on by the social nature of Web 2.0 tools. In this way, a definition of L2 that focuses on Web 2.0 might include some innovative services in the physical environment. This said, it is my belief that L2 is primarily useful as a concept for developing new online tools. To learn more about this model, you can check out the post accompanying the first model here. The comments and links at the bottom of that page will help guide one through the discussions of the original model.

Academic Library 2.0 Concept Model Basic v2

I have also created a more detailed version of the model. In this version the boundary between physical and virtual has vanished. Furthermore, this model includes interaction types as well as places. Instead of focusing on exact tasks such as shaking hands (physical) or commenting (virtual), I have looked at interactions in a broader way. At this point, the key is a little confusing on the model, so please use the revised key posted below the model. However, the basic goal is to get people thinking about designing virtual and physical places according to the types of social interactions our patrons will be having in those environments. You will also notice that ALL of the interactions mentioned occur in both the physical and virtual places. Of course we will be seeing more places inhabiting both physical and virtual as well. For example, virtual group study rooms might supplement our physical study rooms.

The scale at the bottom of the model highlights some of the key spectra that lie between a student’s social and academic lives. Again, it is my argument that the library inhabits a space somewhere in the middle ground between these extremes.

Academic Library 2.0 Concept Model Detailed

(REVISED KEY:
underlined = physical
uppercase = virtual
interactions or spaces can be both
———————————-
non-italics = spaces
italics = interactions)

I am still working on these models and final drafts will be included in the second part of my Master’s Paper. I am also developing a model to describe Library 2.0 in general. I should have the paper done relatively soon and will post a link to it. Furthermore, the structure of the paper should work well for filling in the wiki that I proposed here.

As always, I encourage feedback. You are welcome to leave comments here or on your own blog. If you are linking to the image on Flickr, please link to this post as well, so that your contribution to the discussion will be included on this page. Thanks.

Technorati tags: library 2.0 library-20 library2.0 L2 web 2.0 web2.0 academic libraries academiclibrary20

“Librarian of Basra” puppet show

Published

Michael C. Habib

on August 14, 2006

in Ethics and Public Libraries

. 0 Comments

Yesterday I was fortunate to attend the Paperhand Puppet Intervention’s “As the Crow Flies: Tales From Four Directions“. Danielle Latman, my girlfriend, took a number of photos that I have now uploaded to my Flickr account.

The fourth and last part of the show was a puppet rendition of Jeannette Winter’s book “The Librarian of Basra“. For obvious reasons, we took particular care to document that part. Above is the first image from the series. If you click here and follow the photo stream, the photos and their titles will share (part of) the story of Alia Muhammad Baker, the librarian of Basra. (If you play the slideshow, the captions will be lost.)

“The Librarian of Basra” tells the true story of how Alia, a librarian in Basra, took steps to protect the books in her library both leading up to and during the War in Iraq.

While not related to libraries, the third part, “Seeing with New Eyes”, was also very impressive and featured a 20ft+ Buddha. Below is a picture of the giant Buddha in a battle of wills with a giant demon, Mara.

You can view all of the photos from the puppet show here.

If you are in the Triangle region, the show runs through the weekend of Sept. 8-9. You can find details about showtimes here.

Technorati tags: Iraq Basra puppets Paperhand librarian librarians

Brief review of WorldCat Beta

Published

Michael C. Habib

on August 7, 2006

in Cataloging/Bibliographic Data, Faceted, Metadata, OPAC and Search/Browse

. 0 Comments

The new WorldCat.org is a significant step forward. I am especially impressed with the efficient permanent urls (isbn/isbnnumber and oclc/oclcnumber) and the faceted browsing offered on the left of the results screen. Additionally, I like the breadcrumb trail that accompanies the faceted browsing. I am also impressed with the search speed and the simplicity of the interface. They have also describe a number of ways to integrate WorldCat into one’s browsing habits and websites. I look forward to seeing results appearing in search engine results. Overall, it seems like a significant step forward, but I need to look at it more carefully later.