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COSUGI 2017 Opening Session

SirsiDynix likes to pitch new products at the opening session of the annual meeting of the Customers of SirsiDynix Users Group, Inc, (COSUGI)…

Pause to take a breath

…and this year was no exception. Today they rolled out three new shiny things: –BLUEcloud Mobile –BLUEcloud Analytics –Digital Academy- programming delivered to catalog. Unlimited use.

BLUEcloud Mobile is a mobile app for patron services such as the catalog, place requests, etc. SirsiDynix is partnering with Solus, a Scottish company. With any luck, this will be what we all hoped BookMyne would be, but sadly wasn’t. They promise Mobile will have full access to WebServices which will, if true, have a lot of potential to shine.

BLUEcloud Analytics isn’t new. But it is shiny and SirsiDynix plans to make it even shinier by breaking it up into tiers that more closely match the needs of libraries. The lowest-cost tier, for example allows running reports but limited (or no?) ability to create reports. For a library with limited needs and budget, this might be more accessible than the powerful, complex, and more expensive current product.

Digital Academy is a collection of webinars and online videos covering a wide range of topics such as learning JavaScript. SirsiDynix says they consulted a number of surveys and other research documents on library programming for topics; the idea being that these online resources will help supplement the programs libraries have already determined to be useful. The videos will be available through the catalog and will have unlimited simultaneous uses. No word on what this will cost but, of the three products announced today, I think I find this one most intriguing.

EDIT: Since posting this, I have learned that many of the videos must be purchased by the patron after being discovered in the catalog. This takes a little of the shininess off but does help address the question of cost.

#cosugi17

SirsiDynix first showed their Connections video at last year’s COSUGI conference but its popularity was limited by a pitch for their library automation products at the end.

For this year’s conference, they have re-released it without the commercial and are making it available to any library for use in marketing efforts. Say what you will about such a message coming from a library vendor, it does a nice job of showing “the ways you (libraries) nurture your community and why libraries are vital community connectors.”

To download the video for your own use, visit http://go.sirsidynix.com/Connections-Video_Connections-Video-LP-new.html

#cosugi17

San Jose Public Library took a 39 foot Winnebago, crammed it full of makerspace-type equipment, and hit the road.

#cildc

Visualizing Funding for Libraries

http://libraries.foundationcenter.org/ This is one of the cooler things I have discovered at Computers in Libraries 2017. Visualizing Funding for Libraries is a web-based service that takes data about grant funding for libraries and plots it out in a variety of visual displays. The data comes from the IRS, which makes it more comprehensive than many other sources. Charitable foundations are required to report their activities to the IRS and this data is public. With funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the team takes this data and visualizes it in a way that any librarian can use. Upon entering the site, I am first confronted with a map. Tapping Minnesota, I learn: --Since 2006, there have been 727 grants made to libraries by foundations --The total value of said grans was $33.9 million --The total number of funders was 182 --The total number of recipients (libraries) was 113. I tapped a few more times and drilled down into the data to get details on each project including the foundation, the recipient, amount, and purpose of the grant. Search filters allow me to limit my results to specific types of projects such as capital projects. How cool is that? The data is about a year and a half old, since it takes time for the IRS to process and make it available. But still. This is a great resource. There's a lot more, such as maps that show relationships between different foundations (great for figuring out how to most effectively schmooze) that I have yet to explore. There is support information on the site but online video training is coming in June 2017, which should make it even easier for libraries to jump in and start searching for funds.

#cildc

Horizon Going Down - In a Good Way

I was struck by a slide from Marshall Breeding's Resource Management & Discovery Products & Vendors presentation. ICYMI, Breeding was giving a sneak preview of the 2016 International Survey of Library Automation. The full results will be published in May 2017. Anyway, there was a slide showing percentage of libraries that report considering migrating from their current Integrated Library System (ILS) plotted annually back to 2007. In all but one case, the trend line either held roughly steady or was going up. In other words, each ILS had a percentage of customers considering a move that was either holding steady or going up. Except Horizon. The trend line for Horizon is going down consistently since 2010. I suspect that most of the libraries able and willing to make a move did so, many in the less-than-great years around 2008 to 2010. Those who are left, including SELCO, have compelling reasons to stick with Horizon. That's what I think, anyway. Breeding didn't venture an opinion but did find it interesting enough to mention in his remarks. The promise of Web Services and BlueCloud has yet to be fully realized for Horizon, in my opinion, but the tempo of progress has accelerated noticeably in the last couple of years. If that continues, Horizon may stick around for awhile yet.

#cildc

Check this site out; it's really cool!

#cildc

"Failure is always an option!"

"Failure is always an option!" was an unofficial motto of The Mythbusters and I think it held a great truth. It didn't mean that you should be sloppy or not care about the success of whatever you undertake. It simply meant that you should always be trying something new; something outside the box. If you try often enough, the occasional failure is going to happen. The point is to keep trying. I took something of that away from one of today's Computer in Libraries sessions. Helene Blower spoke about Columbus Neighborhoods. The project created a website with digital collections of photos and other information about neighborhoods in the city of Columbus. Created in collaboration with numerous partners to celebrate the anniversary of Ohio's statehood, Columbus Neighborhoods is a rich source of history and stories. It's hard to argue that the project is not a success. It is well used and popular with patrons. But there is one issue. One of the project's selling points for partners and funding sources was the ability for the public to add their own comments and content to supplement the digital collections. While the website is well-visited, the user-generated content never developed to the degree expected. Blowers suggested today that she and the other project planners were thinking outside the box when they envisioned the website. Perhaps, they should have been thinking inside the box. Or, as she put it "inside the core". What is the core? The core is the motivations of the public for whom the site was designed. Demographic analysis of Columbus reveals that the target audience, based on the time period in most of the photos, is not the largest subset of the website's users. For this and other reasons, it became clear that the audience using the website was unlikely to generate the volume of content expected. The project didn't successfully consider the motivations of their audience. I want to be clear here: Columbus Neighborhoods is NOT a failure. The website is popular and houses an amazing digital collection that you cannot find anywhere else. Those who planned and created it have much to be proud of. But we learn from our mistakes and it's important to consider what didn't work out as we consider what did. Kudos to Blowers for bringing her "failure story" to Computers in Libraries. At SELCO, we sometimes let worrying about failure get in the way of new innovation. We sometimes feel that we have to nail down every single detail before moving forward, lest we forget something or get it wrong and open ourselves to criticism. After this conference, I am going to try to be a little more daring, a little more forward. I don't intend to throw stuff together in hopes it will all work out. But I hope to do good work with the rallying cry 'Failure is always an option"!

#cildc

Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library did this great Taylor Swift parody video for National Library Week. I think you'll like it.

#cildc

<p>Sorry for the lousy picture but we’re 20 minutes from the keynote for day one of Computers in Libraries. I’ve done some preliminary scouting of the program and am trying to figure out how to cram in as much cool stuff as possible. Sessions that have caught my eye include topics like customer experience planning, development of online communities, and a cool new resource for schools from the Smithsonian.</p>

#cildc

More of the Great War in Books - Battle and Campaign Narratives 1

EDIT: Found this in my drafts right after I posted about what happened to the series. It looks pretty complete to me so I’m posting it as is.

Sorry not to update this blog with more books recently. October was a tough month with a death in the family thrusting other priorities to the back burner. But I’m back with battle and campaign narratives. Here’s a few that didn’t make it into my MLA 2016 presentation:

The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 - Alistair Horne The second book of a trilogy, Horne tells the story of the battle in which at least 700,000 were killed and attrition (i.e. defeating the enemy simply by trying to kill all his men before he could do the same to yours) was adopted as a viable tactic of war. The book has been continuously in print for over 50 years and is considered one of the classics of the WWI canon.

Caporetto and the Isonzo Campaign - John Macdonald For almost two and a half years, Italian and Austro-Hungarian armies were locked in battle along the Isonzo River. The battles in eastern Europe are much less well-known than those of the Western Front but Macdonald brings them to life. The final battle of the campaign, Caporetto, featured two soldiers who would go on to play leading roles in World War II - Benito Mussolini and Irwin Rommel.

#greatwarinbooks #mnlib16

What Happened to the Great War in Books

Well, real life happened. Shortly after I started working on this, my mom passed away and I got a little sidetracked. Life at SELCO got a little crazy at the same time as our search for a new Executive Director swung into high gear with me serving on the Search Committee as the staff representative. And yada yada yada busy blah blah blah.

So, the Great War in Books took a back seat. I’m heading to Computers in Libraries next week so there will be some new posts here but not, alas, related to WWI. If you still interested in the Great War in Books, bear with me and new posts will come in the next few weeks. In the meantime, I’ll be blogging from CiL in the near future!

#greatwarinbooks #mnlib16 #cildc

More of the Great War in Books - Civilian Memoirs

Soldiers weren’t the only ones writing memoirs of the Great War. Here’s a few that didn’t make it into my presentation at MLA 2016:

Home Fires Burning - Georgina Lee Written for her son, who was born in 1913, Lee had no loved ones fighting in the war. Her memoir of life from 1914 to 1919 therefore lacks much of the fear and anguish seen in so many others. As a chronicle of English civilian life (for a fairly well-to-do family, it must be said), this is a a valuable addition to the primary sources of the period.

The World Crisis, 1911-1918 - Winston Churchill Before serving as Prime Minister during World War II, Churchill served as First Lord of the Admiralty during World War I. His memoir of those years, written after the end of his public career, recalls the great battles and decisions of the war. As much a history of the war as a personal memoir, it’s still worth reading for the light shed on the famous man himself. He sometimes skews the history to put himself in the best possible light but forewarned is forearmed, right?

Next time: Battle and campaign narratives.

#greatwarinbooks #mnlib16

More of the Great War in Books - Soldier’s Memoirs

When I presented on the Great War in Books for the Minnesota Library Association 2016 annual conference, I promised to follow up with more great books. There just wasn’t enough time to list them all. I’m a little late getting started but here goes. In my presentation, I talked about Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger as a great example of a soldier’s memoir. Here’s some more:

Good-Bye to All That - Robert Graves Graves joined the British army at age 19, was made an officer solely based on his upper class upbringing, and was wounded so badly that his family was told he had died. After the war, he went on to fame as a poet. Good-Bye is about more than his war experience but the war left an indelible mark on his psyche that permeates his memoir.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom - T. E. Lawrence Better known as Lawrence of Arabia, T. E. Lawrence wrote this autobiographical account of the Arab Revolt immediately after the war. The details of Lawrence’s role in the revolt are still controversial and the man himself was known to be somewhat cavalier when it come to telling the truth. Seven Pillars is still worth reading for it’s vivid descriptions of everything from the Arabian desert to guerrilla warfare tactics to suffering torture after being captured.

Poilu - Louis Barthas Not published until 1978, Barthas’ scribbled out his memoir in 19 notebooks during the four years he served in the French army. In his notebooks, he records day-to-day life in the trenches including some of the most destructive battles of the Western Front such as Verdun, the Somme, and the Argonne. Miraculously, Barthas survived the war and closed out his memoir in 1919 with thoughts of his fallen comrades: I heard their curses against the war and its authors, the revolt of their whole beings against their tragic fate, against their murder.

Next up: Civilian Memoirs!

#greatwarinbooks #mnlib16

125 years of MLA in 12 panels, Part 2

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125 years of MLA in 12 panels, Part 1

#mnlib16

Does anyone really know how to maintain sustainable social media for libraries? The folks from Hennepin County Library do. There was a lot of good information but here are a few of my takeaways: --treat each platform differently, according to its strengths and weaknesses --create scope and guidelines statements for each platform you use; before a post is made someone should "check the boxes" to verify it fits --define sustainability for your library and plan content accordingly --silence is as important as contributing; the library's voice isn't necessary in every controversial conversation.

#mnlib16

The Great War in Books

I am very excited to be part of 50 in 60 Book Blast - Nonfiction, a readers advisory panel sharing nonfiction books at the Minnesota Library Association annual conference this week. My chosen topic is World War I:

#mnlib16 #greatwarinbooks

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