ALA Techsource Press Releases

Gaming and Libraries Update by Jenny Levine

Teresa Koltzenburg — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:42:37 -0500

2007 was "the year gaming caught the imagination of libraries,” reported American Libraries (“Top 10 Library Stories of 2007,” December 2007). “And what an amazing year it was,” recalls Levine in the new issue of Library Technology Reports, “Gaming and Libraries Update: Broadening the Intersections.”

“In an uncharacteristically (for our profession) viral and rapid way, videogame services in libraries broke through the niche, cult-like status that had relegated them to something only geeky nerds did at home in the basement,” she adds.

In “Gaming and Libraries Update: Broadening the Intersections” Levine adds to the growing body of content documenting gaming and libraries.

In her previous “Gaming and Libraries: Intersection of Services,” (LTR 42:5) Levine identified the various gaming and videogame-related activities occurring in libraries — public, school, and college — as well as explained gaming activities outside the library domain.

In this issue, Levine focuses on unique videogame services libraries are implementing. “We will hear from nine innovators in the field, each of whom spent 2007 taking gaming in libraries in new directions, providing inspiration and leadership.”

Levine approaches the topic of gaming and libraries with her quiet and practical zeal and openness and wisely features the work of these innovators, who provide case history examples of these new directions at the intersection of library services and "videogames." [Says Levine of the spelling “videogame”: “In 2007, P3: Power Play Publishing released The Videogame Style Guide and Reference Manual and noted the official spelling of video games as one word (videogames), not two. I have had trouble adapting to this convention myself, but this LTR represents my first full effort to finally integrate this new spelling into my own writing.”]

Contributors to “Gaming and Libraries Update: Broadening the Intersections” include:

Scott Nicholson, Associate Professor, Information Institute, Syracuse Univ. and founder of Board Games with Scott (Broadening Our Definition of Gaming: Tabletop Games," Chapter 2)
Eli Neiburger, author of Gamers… in the Library?! The Why, What and How of Videogame Tournaments for All Ages (Broadening Our Definition of Gaming: Big Games, Chapter 3, Case Study 3, Dewey Dare)

Plus more case study contributions by Martin D. House, Mark E. Engelbrecht, and Paul Waelchli.

About the Author
Jenny Levine is the Internet Development Specialist and Strategy Guide for the American Library Association's Information Technology and Publishing departments. She earned her MLIS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1992 and has been an eminent technology training evangelist for librarians during her career. In 2003, she was named one of Library Journal's Movers & Shakers, the publication's homage to “the people shaping the future of libraries,” published every March.

“Levine has one simple goal,” notes the March 15, 2003, Library Journal profile, “to help us librarians become as technologically adept as our users are so that we can deliver services to them when and where they wish to use them and in their preferred medium and platform.”

Levine is a keen advocate for gaming services and libraries, as she is a gamer and has witnessed, through personal observation and study, how gaming services can help members of several generations (particularly younger users) feel connected to the library.

“Gaming,” she concludes, “provides a wealth of service intersections for libraries today and for the libraries of the future. And that future is all about opportunities and weaving together threads, both old and new.”

Since writing a 2006 LTR on this topic, she has organized the 2007 ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium, helped coordinate ALA's first National Gaming in Libraries Day, and is already working on the next gaming and libraries symposium.

Levine also writes about gaming and libraries on a regular basis on her popular blog, The Shifted Librarian, which can be found at theshiftedlibrarian.com. She began the first librarian blog in 1995, The Librarians' Site du Jour, which can still be accessed at http://jennyscybrary.lishost.org/sitejour.html.

Digital Info: Preserving the Past for the Future

Teresa Koltzenburg — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 22:43:09 -0600

Library Technology Reports

Priscilla Caplan, author of the second issue of Library Technology Reports in 2008, is Assistant Director for Digital Library Services at the Florida Center for Library Automation, where she oversees the Florida Digital Archive, a preservation repository for use by the eleven state universities in Florida.

Caplan, who has been involved with digital preservation for more than ten years and has published widely on the subject, lends her expert perspective to this fascinating and extremely important area of information science in "The Preservation of Digital Materials."

"This issue of Library Technology Reports," she notes, "is intended to provide a relatively brief, relatively comprehensive introduction to digital preservation."

Digital Preservation Defined
In the February/March 2008 issue of LTR, chapter 1 ("What Is Digital Preservation?") describes digital preservation in terms of what it is (definitions) and what it does (goals and strategies), and chapter 2 ("Preservation Practices") provides a look at preservation strategies and the management of materials.

Chapter 3, "Foundations and Standards," introduces core frameworks and standards, while chapter 4 ("Support for Digital Formats") delves into the heart of digital preservation, digital formats.

The Who and What of Digital Preservation
In chapter 5, "Preservation Programs and Initiatives," Caplan reviews various initiatives around the globe, including NDIIPP (National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program) in the U.S., the United Kingdom's Digital Preservation Coalition and Digital Curation Centre, and the European Commission's Digital Preservation Europe and PLANETS and CASPAR. And in chapter 6, "Repository Applications," Caplan covers institutional repositories, such as DSpace, Fedora, and EPrints. The author also delineates such applications as DAITSS, LOCKSS, and aDORe in this chapter.

Finally, in chapter 7 ("Special Topics") Caplan outlines unique projects, including electronic journals, records and archives, Web harvesting, databases, new media art, and personal collections.

About the Author
Priscilla Caplan is Assistant Director for Digital Library Services at the Florida Center for Library Automation, where she oversees the Florida Digital Archive, a preservation repository for the use of the eleven state universities of Florida. She has been involved with digital preservation for nearly ten years and has published several articles on the subject, including “The Florida Digital Archive and DAITSS: A Working Preservation Repository Based on Format Migration” (International Journal on Digital Libraries, March 2007) and “Ten Years After” (Library Hi Tech 25, no. 4, 2007). She co-chaired with Rebecca Guenther the OCLC/RLG working group that produced the PREMIS Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata, and she currently serves as a member of the PREMIS Editorial Committee.

She is also interested in standards for digital libraries and has chaired several standards committees, including the NISO Standards Development Committee (1997–2002) and the NISO/EDItEUR Joint Working Party on the Exchange of Serials Subscription Information (2002–2006). She is the author of Metadata Fundamentals for All Librarians (ALA Editions, 2003). She holds an MLS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2007 she received the LITA/Library Hi-Tech Award for Outstanding Communication for Continuing Education.

The Future of Library Work

Teresa Koltzenburg — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 20:29:32 -0600

Library Technology Reports

The way of work in the Information Age continues to be commuted by the Internet. The interconnected, collaborative functionality the World Wide Web provides, when implemented and utilized, can help individuals, as well as working groups, achieve greater flexibility and productivity, reports Michelle Boule, the author of the first issue of Library Technology Reports in 2008.

A social sciences librarian and technology trainer, Michelle Boule (Univ. of Houston) examines how technology—which in Boule's report is defined as "any tool that can be used to communicate and collaborate over the Internet"—can and has impacted libraries in her issue “Changing the Way We Work.”

The New Way We Work
Committees, task forces, and small working groups—all common ways to assign projects, divide work, and produce results in libraries—can benefit from “technology-enhanced work.”

In her issue of Library Technology Reports, Boule reports on technology-enhanced work from several library or library-related projects, including:

the open-source software-based integrated library system known as "PINES," which was developed under the "Evergreen" project—"an ongoing effort to create the best open-source integrated ILS available"—conducted by the Georgia Public Library Service.
"LibraryFind," a federated-search tool built by Oregon State Univ. Libraries (with funding from OSA and Oregon State Library). “OSU wanted to build an open-source tool that worked the way federated search was meant to work,” reports Boule.

In addition, Boule looks at the other technology-enhanced work projects/software: Material Digital Libraries Pathway (MatDL); MyHamilton; and Scriblio.

In "Changing the Way We Work," Boule also provides best practice tips for working in a virtual team environment as well as a list of selected references that provide additional research and analysis about technology-enhanced work in libraries.

About the Author
Michelle Boule's love of information and libraries started at a very young age. After she received a B.A. in English with minors in women's studies and anthropology from Texas A&M in 2001, her love of reading eventually led her to the library profession. Michelle completed her master's in library science at Texas Woman's University. It was in graduate school that a fascination with technology and information-seeking behaviors took hold.

Michelle is a social sciences librarian at the University of Houston. During her day job, she maintains the Ethnic Studies collections, teaches classes, answers questions, does technology training, and works with students and faculty. Though technology is not a formal part of her job, she lives much of her life online. Michelle is very involved with LITA, the Library Information Technology Association; serves on BIGWIG, the IG that maintains LITA Blog (http://litablog.org); was part of the ALA Emerging Leader Program in 2007; and is always looking for ways to do new and innovative things within ALA.

Michelle was a part of planning team of the very successful Five Weeks to a Social Library program (www.sociallibraries.com/course), a free, grassroots course that allows librarians to learn about social software and libraries. She writes and speaks about technology and education in libraries.

Michelle can be found online in various places and maintains her own writing space at A Wandering Eyre (http://wanderingeyre.com). She has been an online gamer and all-around geek librarian for a very long time. Michelle believes that e-learning and Web 2.0 tools are the way of the future and that libraries can survive only by adapting to an online environment.

Essential Info for the Future of Your Library

Teresa Koltzenburg — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 17:37:09 -0600

Library Technology Reports

Since the advent of the Internet—as library technologists and librarians are well aware—the relationship between the user and his or her library has changed.

In a world of quick-and-easy search engines and of online social networks, information retrieval and aggregation are no longer the purview of the library institution alone.

“[N]ow that I am a library administrator dealing with staffing and budget issues on a daily basis,” states Dr. Brad Eden, in the “Introduction” to the sixth issue of Library Technology Reports in 2007, “it has become quite clear that the way libraries do business just isn't working.”

Eden, who early in his library career worked as a cataloger, is now the Associate University Librarian for Technical Services and Scholarly Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

"We have gone from a monopoly, which could impose whatever rules and software and search strategies that we wanted on our users, to a bit player in market overflowing with technological gadgets, tools, and algorithms that capture the attention of the public and leave libraries with but a slim slice of the information pie, all in the space of approximately 15 years," he notes.

Thus, Eden tackles the important topic of “Information Organization Future for Libraries” in this final issue of Library Technology Reports in volume 43.

In this issue, Eden focuses “not only on current initiatives around ‘reinventing' the OPAC and all of its attendant possibilities (provided in the context of economic realities),” but, in the report, Eden also looks at “opportunities to get away from the OPAC and focus resources on new areas, such as 3D information visualization, mass digitization, Library 2.0, and metadata related to digital resources."

In this issue of Library Technology Reports, you'll find:

a chapter on essential resources: electronic mailing lists, blogs and wikis, and other tools;
a chapter on “Reinventing the OPAC,” an annotated listing of papers, articles, reports, lectures, presentations, Web sites, even a music video, providing a range of perspectives on the future of the library catalog; and
a chapter on Library 2.0 resources.

About the Author
Brad Eden is Associate University Librarian for Technical Services and Scholarly Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Previous positions include Head, Web and Digitization Services, for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Libraries; Head, Bibliographic and Metadata Services, for the UNLV Libraries; as well as Coordinator of Technical Services for the North Harris Montgomery Community College District.

He is editor of OCLC Systems & Services: Digital Library Perspectives International and The Bottom Line: Managing Library Finances, is associate editor of Library Hi Tech and The Journal of Film Music, and is series editor of the Routledge Music Bibliographies.

He has master's and Ph.D. degrees in musicology, as well as an MS in library science. He publishes in the areas of metadata, librarianship, medieval music and liturgy, and J. R. R. Tolkien.

He recently edited Innovative Redesign and Reorganization of Library Technical Services: Paths for the Future and Case Studies (Libraries Unlimited, 2004) and is the author of five previous issues of Library Technology Reports, including “Metadata and Its Applications” (ALA TechSource, 2002), “3D Visualization Techniques” (ALA TechSource, 2005), “Innovative Digital Projects in the Humanities” (ALA TechSource, 2005), “Metadata and Its Applications: New Directions and Updates” (ALA TechSource, 2005), and “FRBR: Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records” (ALA TechSource, 2006).

Web 2.0, Part 2: Next Level for Libraries

Teresa Koltzenburg — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 14:07:34 -0500

"As libraries synchronize their services to the Web 2.0 world, there are some issues we [librarians], as a profession, need to reconsider in light of changing user expectations."—"Presence in the 2.0 World," From the Foreword by Jenny Levine
From the American Library Association to social software news aggregation, it's clear the trend toward utilizing "Web 2.0" technologies for information and communication in the 21st century is growing ever stronger.

In "Web 2.0 & Libraries, Part 2: Trends and Technologies," librarian and educator Dr. Michael Stephens continues his 2.0 work from his best-selling LTR last year, "Web 2.0 & Libraries: Best Practices for Social Software," and re-emphasizes the importance of libraries embracing this world of conversation, community, and collaboration. In addition, he covers new ground in the 2.0 landscape for libraries.

"In this issue [of Library Technology Reports]," he writes, "we'll address some trends guiding social technology in libraries, take a look at some newer tools, and cover some best practices for using 2.0 tools in your library."

With the "Presence in the 2.0 World " foreward by Jenny "The Shifted Librarian" Levine—and author of the popular "Gaming and Libraries: Intersection of Services"—this 80-page issue of Library Technology Reports covers a broad range of Web 2.0 topics, tools, and considerations, including:

value-added blogging
building a community Web site with a blog
Ten Best Practices for Flickr & Libraries
libraries and social sites like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube
tagging and social bookmarking
Messaging in a 2.0 World: Twitter & SMS
podcasting
The OPAC Rebooted
how libraries such as the Hennepin County Library and the Arlington Heights Memorial Library are using 2.0 tools

About the Author
Michael Stephens, Ph.D, is an assistant professor at the Dominican University Graduate School of Library and Information Science in River Forest, Illinois. A frequent speaker at library conferences around the world, he was named a Library Journal Mover and Shaker in 2005. He has been the keynote speaker at many conferences, including the Iowa Library Association Conference, Ohio Tech Connections, the Rethinking Resource Sharing Conference, the Mississippi Library 2.0 Summit (Mississippi State University), and the Ohio Library Council. He also spoke at Internet Librarian International in London in 2004, 2005, and 2006, and at the August 2006 TICER Innovation Institute at the University of Tilburg, the Netherlands. He serves on the editorial boards of several major journals, including Internet Reference Services Quarterly and Reference & User Services Quarterly.

A prolific author, Michael wrote “Web 2.0 & Libraries: Best Practices for Social Software,” the July/August 2006 issue of Library Technology Reports published by ALA TechSource (a unit in the publishing dept. of the ALA), and he writes a monthly column, “The Transparent Library,” in Library Journal with Michael Casey. His blog, Tame the Web, is read avidly by many librarians.

Michael holds bachelor's and MLS degrees from Indiana University and an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Information Science from the University of North Texas. He divides his time among Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan.

Assessing Audiobook Services for Your Library

Teresa Koltzenburg — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 11:27:28 -0600

Latest Issue of Library Technology Reports Helps Librarians Make Informed Decisions about Audiobook Content and Services

A "report focus[ing] on digital audiobook systems for libraries, library consortia, and other institutional customers."

The first issue of Library Technology Reports in 2007, "Digital Audiobook Services through Libraries" (vol. 43, no. 1), "examines in some depth digital audiobook services that can be purchased or leased. It also looks briefly at a few free online digital audiobook sources."

Author of the report, Tom Peters—who is a librarian and an avid user of audiobooks—explains, "The purpose of this report is not to convince librarians to implement a digital audiobook service, but to help librarians make an informed decision."

Among the areas that Peters covers:

The popularity of audiobooks and the demographics of the users who consume content in digital audiobook form;
Major library vendors for digital audiobooks and free sources of digital audiobooks;
How the interaction with audiobook content is understood or perceived by librarians: "As you consider a digital audiobook service," Peters notes, "it may be beneficial for librarians and other library staff members to discuss how users will interact with the content....Do users 'listen' to audiobooks, or are they 'reading' the book? This is not a merely semantic question. How your librarians answer may reveal the value they place on using audiobooks."
Current digital rights management (DRM) issues (such as the "The iPod Impasse") that affect audiobook services for libraries;
Content comparison and decision points, e.g., content characteristics; cost components; purchase, lease, and licensing options; circulation models; integration with other library services; and technical support;
Methods for implementing and sustaining digital audiobook services in your library;
Reports from the field (e.g., The Mid-Illinois Talking Book Center's field tests); and
Potential new vendors of audiobooks this year and beyond.

About the Author
Thomas A. Peters has been a librarian for nineteen years and is the founder/CEO of TAP Information Services, a company that helps libraries and library-related organizations innovate. TAP Information Services provides coordination services for Unabridged (www.unabridged.info), a downloadable digital audiobook service for blind and low-vision users in nine states. Tom also contributes to the ALA TechSource Blog and Smart Libraries Newsletter. Tom previously has worked at the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), an academic consortium of research universities; Western Illinois University; Northern Illinois University; Minnesota State University—Mankato; and the University of Missouri—Kansas City. He currently lives in beautiful Blue Springs, Missouri, with his wife, children, cats, and dogs. He often listens to digital audiobooks while walking his dog Max morning, noon, and night.

Getting Game @ Your Library

Teresa Koltzenburg — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 14:41:34 -0600

New Issue of LTR Reveals Benefits of Gaming Services at Libraries

ALA TechSource is pleased to announce the publication of its latest issue of Library Technology Reports, “Gaming and Libraries: Intersection of Services” by Jenny Levine, librarian, author of the popular The Shifted Librarian blog, and an avid gamer.

“What if traditionally apathetic library users were instead motivated to get up early on a Saturday morning and plead for library staff members to open the doors?” she asks in the introduction to this highly accessible report.

Libraries and Gaming Case Studies
Numerous detailed examples of what libraries are already doing—including public, school, and academic libraries—provide Levine the springboard to illustrate how librarians can reap positive gains by proactively, creatively, and (above all) affordably integrating gaming into the services and programs already offered at your library. The case studies reveal that gaming programs often turn out to be among the most popular a library can offer. “I have yet to hear about a library of any type offering gaming that has received negative feedback from patrons,” Jenny notes.

All the way to the conclusion of her report, “What Librarians Can Learn from Gamers,” Levine entertains as she informs. Along the way, you can:

Read the section “But They're Not Books!” to discover how things look when you turn the question “Why gaming?” on its head.

Focus on educational value as she shows how these “cognitive workouts” are proven to enhance the development of learning and literacy skills.

Get insights into the social value of gaming—an activity that cuts across age, socioeconomic groups, gender, and technical know-how—from “Meet the Gamers.” (Did you know that the biggest group of online gamers is women older than 40?)

Learn how other libraries, with creative planning and little money, have incorporated gaming services for a big return on investment. The appendix section of the report includes materials (librarian-created press releases, real examples of promotional fliers, and staff checklists for game-day events) that librarians can build upon to create a successful gaming program at any type of library—which can engage your community's youth and adult gaming populations.

The issue covers video game consoles (e.g., MicroSoft's Xbox 360, Nintendo's GameCube, and Sony's PlayStation), computer-based games (e.g., Myst, The Sims, Civilization IV), and Web-based games (e.g., Bookworm and PopCap Games) as well as some of the common gaming-equipment configurations in libraries. In addition, Levine briefly looks at the popular and rapidly growing virtual-reality online community Second Life and the library services now being offered there.

About the Author
Jenny Levine is the author of the popular blog The Shifted Librarian blog and she has contributed to the ALA TechSource blog. She is currently Internet Development Specialist and Strategy Guide for the American Library Association's Information Technology and Technical Systems and Publishing departments. She earned her MLIS from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and was named one of Library Journal's 2003 “Movers & Shakers,” the publication's homage to “the people shaping the future of libraries.”

To Subscribe or Purchase
For more information about subscriptions and individual issues for purchase, call the ALA Customer Service Center at 1-800-545-2433 and press 5, or visit www.techsource.ala.org.

Best Blog Practices and More for Libraries

Teresa Koltzenburg — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 08:33:28 -0500

What can social software do for your library? Find out in the latest issue of Library Technology Reports, "Web 2.0 & Libraries: Best Practices for Social Software," by librarian, author, and technology trainer Michael Stephens.

A comprehensive, pass-around resource you and your fellow library staff members can consult to plan your library's social-software initiatives, Stephens's report details numerous successful library implementations of some of today's most used social-software tools, including:

Weblogs (blogs)
Podcasts
RSS feeds
Instant Messaging (IM)
Wikis
Flickr

In the issue, Stephens illustrates how libraries across North America are embracing social software to reach out to their patrons—the report is brimming with examples of libraries' cutting-edge social-software use and strategies, implementation case histories, and best-practice suggestions.

"Some see...Web 2.0 as a set of ever-evolving tools that can benefit online users," notes Stephens in the report's introduction. "With these tools, users can converse across blogs, wikis, and at photo-sharing sites...via comments or through online discussions.... Some libraries and librarians are involved in creating conversations, connections, and community via many of these social tools, but it may be time for more librarians to explore how these tools can enhance communication with users...."

Among the libraries discussed in the report:

the Ann Arbor District Library, which recently garnered accolades from the Library Adminstration and Management Association (Best in Show 2006 Web Site/Home Page, $6 million+ cateory) for its blog-based online portal;
the Kankakee Public Library and how it's using Podcasts and Streaming Media to provide access to and information about community-interest topics such as local history and regional newsmakers; and
the Kansas City Public Library and how its innovative use of RSS feeds is notifying patrons when new information has been added to its Subject Guides.

Filled with library-literature resource lists (print and Web-based journal articles, blog and wiki references, etc.) and with stories and interviews about numerous organizations, Stephens's report highlights the inroads that libraries have made (and are making)—by using social software—with their virtual and physical users in our increasingly Web 2.0 world.

"Web 2.0 & Libraries: Best Practices for Social Software" (Library Technology Reports, 42:4) is available from ALA TechSource. To buy a single issue of the report, or to subscribe to Library Technology Reports, visit the ALA TechSource bookstore at https://publications.techsource.ala.org/bookstore.

About the Author
Michael Stephens (MLS, Indiana University) has spent the last fifteen years working in public libraries as a reference librarian, technology trainer, and manager of networked resources. This fall, Michael will join the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at Dominican University, River Forest, Illinois, as an Instructor. In 2004, he was awarded an Institute of Museum and Library Services–funded fellowship for the University of North Texas IMLS Distance Independent Information Science Ph.D. Cohort Program to study libraries, librarians, and social software. He is currently writing his dissertation.

Active in the American Library Association, he has presented at library conferences locally, nationally, and internationally as well as at leading workshops for libraries and library associations across the country. Michael is well-known for his popular Tame the Web Blog, and he also writes for the ALA TechSource Blog. The Social Technologies Roadshow, a workshop he teaches with Jenny "The Shifted Librarian" Levine (ALA's new Internet Development Specialist and Strategy Guide), is making stops in Illinois, the Netherlands, and London before the end of the year. In 2005, he was named a Library Journal "Mover and Shaker," and he served as a scholar at the Chicago Public Library's Scholar in Residence program. He also has written for Library Journal and co-authors a department in Computers in Libraries with Rachel Singer Gordon. He resides in Mishawaka, Indiana, and spends as much of the summer as possible in Traverse City, Michigan.