I took Tristan to the dr. yesterday where we learned that he has mono with a possibility for strep throat as well. He has never been this sick before and it is kind of worrisome and upsetting. He has a high fever all the time and can’t keep anything down. He usually just lies on the couch all day.
Yesterday I turned 41 years old. I had a happy birthday this year. For some reason I am usually down in the dumps at this time of year but not this time. We had an enjoyable weekend highlighted by the return of Keegan and Tristan, who were gone all last week on a trip to Canada.
One of my work responsibilities is to maintain the Voyager integrated library system from Ex Libris. A new release (7.0) is now available and one of the features that is getting the most publicity is the new web interface to the catalog. It features dramatic architectural and feature improvements from its predecessor, as well as adding new features that weren’t possible before. The Voyager product manager and folks from Ex Libris customer support have posted several enthusiastic reports on new features to come on the Voyager discussion list (closed to customers only), and I think they are doing a fairly good job of trying to build excitement. Except that all that I’ve heard and seen so far leaves me cold.
Why? Well, although I definitely agree that there is much to like about the new interface, it’s not really that new. During my last stint at what was then Endeavor Information Systems three years ago, I participated in user studies at some existing Voyager customer sites that were based this same interface. The functionality and changes I see in the Voyager 7.0 web interface (a.k.a. WebVoyage) were all designed and finalized, as far as I can tell, three years ago. That’s light years in technology time.
Worse still, the things that are so “exciting” about this new interface (persistent URLs! WHoooHeee! — different “skins”! Oh my! — a truly simple, Google-like basic search! Isn’t that original!) are features that have been available and taken for granted in other systems for years. And they are ones that in some cases have been implemented better than what I have seen so far in Ex Libris’s Voyager offering.
Sorry, but this is just a new flavor of lipstick applied to an old pig. It would take a lot more than this to get me excited about this particular product again.
I was pleased to read about a list of the 25 most modern libraries in the world via LISNews. One of the criteria for selecting these libraries was their architecture and I clicked on several of the links to library homepages hoping for a way to see what the physical environment looked like. I was disappointed. Why don’t libraries, especially those with distinctive and/or award-winning architectural details, provide an easier way for virtual visitors like me to see them in photographs and/or video clips? Maybe such information is readily available on many of these library website and I simply overlooked it, but I don’t think so. I think libraries should spend more time thinking about advertising themselves in this way to their virtual visitors (who, in many cases, far outnumber physical visitors).
I’m lucky to own an iPod Touch but I can’t help longing for an iPhone 3G too 
The main difference between them, for me, is that the iPhone 3G can truly be an “always on” device in terms of Internet access because of its dual wifi/cell capabilities. The iPod Touch can only connect via wifi, and I find that aspect of its functionality too limiting. On the other hand, I don’t want the additional service costs that an iPhone would require.
Just about every iPhone application also works on an iPod Touch, but with sometimes significant limitations. For instance, all of that cool location-based functionality that iPhone users get to have isn’t available for the iPod Touch since it is wifi only. When I’m at work, for example, there is no wifi access that I can use. Well, there is wifi access but I’m prohibited from using it. (Oh how I wish for ubiquitous, free wifi wherever I go!)
I’ve tried quite a few of the free apps in the Apple App store and like most of them, but I was particularly excited to read this a.m. of the availability of a WordPress app. This app is free and it works quite well from what I can tell so far. If you are an iPhone or iPod Touch owner and also manage a WordPress blog then this software is a must-have.
Other apps that I particularly like so far include the Facebook app, Twitterific, WeatherBug, and Stanza (a free ebook reader that I think is quite functional). Another free app that I think is really cool but is more of a geeky showpiece than something practical and useful at this point, is PangeaVR.
Some other library bloggers have pointed out the lack of library-oriented applications for the iPhone/iPod Touch platform. I agree that this is unfortunate and I look forward to reading about new developments in this space soon. I wish I was smart enough to develop something myself, but I’m not.
Tonight marks the second-to-last live session I will have with my students in the graduate library course I’m currently teaching. Time has flown by. As always, I learn things during the course that I can hopefully use in future teaching. One lesson I learned long ago is that an online curriculum is only as good as the technical infrastructure and support that is offered to it by the school. LEEP at the University of Illinois has a fantastic, dedicated, service-oriented support team and I am thankful for their help and responsiveness. There have been a few glitches here and there but they have been quickly addressed.
I’ll miss interacting with this group of students but at the same time — and I think they would agree — there’s something nice about hitting the home stretch. An awful lot of stuff has been compacted into a very short timeframe (eight weeks) during summer session.
I’m also looking forward to a faculty retreat to be hosted by the school at Allerton Park, a fabulous estate owned by the University of Illinois that is located near Monticello. It’s worth a visit just to see the gardens and the grounds, especially the sculpture scattered throughout. The retreat will be held over the course of two days in August and I have been asked to facilitate one of the sessions, a technology “show and tell.” I’m really looking forward to that.
A colleague informed me of the following interesting news from BMJ: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/336/7659/1450.
Basically BMJ will be presenting articles continuously as they become available. At first this sounds ho hum, not a big deal. But then I got to thinking about it and I think this turn of events is significant. One of the things I talked a bit about in my chapter on the future of e-resource management (written two years ago) was this very thing, referring to the disaggregation of journal content and likening it to how iTunes changed the way we think of music albums. I’m not patting myself on the back here; it’s not an original idea or concept because others have talked about this for a long time. But I’m intrigued by the possibilities and implications.
Meet Charlie – what is Enterprise2.0?.
The link above goes to a Slideshare page for a sort of offbeat explanation for Enterprise 2.0. I’m working with a few others on this topic at MPOW and have co-presented three workshops on this topic. In the next few weeks there will be a larger group of people to whom we will be presenting on social web stuff and the presentation will include a consultant from Forrester. I wish I could state that I see lights going off in everyone’s eyes who attends such meetings but…I just need to be patient. What I really want to see is the library organization being a leader in this area.
Dear readers, can you provide me with advice on how to deal with intense frustration? Not over one particular issue or even in one area but many different ones spanning multiple aspects of my life. I suppose the ultimate answer is patience. The Bible speaks of having patience through times of trial. If you have other suggestions or things that work for you, though, I’d like to hear them.
In my previous post I ranted a bit about soundbites in our library profession and how I fear that such soundbites are too easily digested without question. Karen Schneider encouraged me to listen to the MP3 recording of the live panel discussion at ALA from which I derived my original criticism. So this is what I did late yesterday.
First, kudos to LITA (one of the only areas of ALA that I have any respect or use for) for making the recording of that session readily available. Second, I realize now that I should indeed have listened to that session first because it provides a much more well-rounded picture of the entire discussion than what I had initially derived from Roy Tennant’s shorter writeup. Just to be clear, I’m not then criticizing Roy for his short writeup. That’s usually the way information is reported from conference sessions. Instead this incident reminds me that basing one’s judgment on one short writeup isn’t a good idea at all. I should have known better by now.
So let me admit that I was too hasty to rush to judgment. Sorry.
But let me also state that I still have a problem with the growing prevalence of soundbites and the lack, at times, of more in-depth reflection and questioning about important issues like the role or future of the library catalog. Stephen Abram just commented on my previous post and in his comment mentioned the fact that all of the panelists in fact do provide deeper insights in terms of their writing in various forums or in books and articles. That’s a valid point.
I also still have issues with some of what was said in that particular panel discussion. (One example is the brief mention of use of sentence case in cataloging, which I truly think is a strawman argument, even as I concur that the average person can be confused by it, and agree that we need to be aware of how broadly cataloging data is being used in ways far beyond our small library universe.) But as Stephen reminded me, in a way, this discussion was purposefully about soundbites to stimulate debate and further discourse.
In sum, I’ll be more careful about getting as full a picture as possible about a discussion blogged or reported by someone before commenting on it. And maybe I need to spend more time and effort articulating my own views and possible counterpoints to some of the neo-dogma that I see out there.