A few items from today's meeting

Another great TechTalk meeting today! This post includes links to stuff I talked about. I hope others who presented or mentioned sites will post their links too, so we have a record of what was covered. Here's mine:

• Rethinking How We Provide Bibliographic Services for the University of California, the final report of the UC Bibliographic Services Task Force
  
• Meebo, web-based instant messaging (with widgets)

And one last thing: The first e-mail I read when I returned to my office after TechTalk was American Libraries Direct. It contained a link to an amazing story from the LA Times about a Mississippi Delta librarian's last day on the job. I am struck by the contrast between what he dealt with every day and the fascinating technology discussion I just left. I feel very privileged to do what I do, but I also feel very privileged to be part of a profession that includes this man and his library. Read it for yourself and realize how much libraries matter.

Mashup Awards

Talis, British library vendor and recent purveyor of all things Web 2.0, has announced the first winners of the "Mashing Up the Library" competition, which is "intended to openly encourage innovation in the display, use, and reuse of data from and about libraries." Check out this announcement from ALA's TechSource.

LJ article on Library 2.0

The current issue of Library Journal includes an article on Library 2.0 that's worth a read. John Blyberg's comments on ILS vendors and the lack of open standards are of particular interest. We have recently purchased some 2.0-ish products from Innovative, but they are, of course, proprietary and -- as far as I know -- cannot be accessed except via Innovative's ILS. That's quite different from the leading Web 2.0 sites, most of which offer a variety of ways to interact with content outside of their own interfaces (e.g. APIs, RSS). Isn't it ironic that these private, for-profit companies can open their systems, but many nonprofit libraries can't?

Modules and Widgets for Customization

At today's Tech Talk meeting, I'll talk about widgets. I've put the main points of the presentation into the OHSU Library wiki as well as in this blog post. In addition to the what and how of widgets, I hope you'll think about the implications for libraries. Yahoo widgets to search a catalog are nice, but I think there are larger implications here. Users expect customization in all their online tools, but libraries have been slow to provide it. Yes, there's MyLibrary, but consider for a moment what widget-like customization could look like. A library could provide a list of modules (e.g. document delivery, database search, FAQs, news headlines). The user could choose modules of interest and assemble them into a fully-customized interface to library services. Ideally these modules would be compatible with other campus resources (e.g. intranet, employee information system, student information system, research portal), so that library services could integrate smoothly with other systems needed by the user. Even cooler -- the modules could integrate with third-party services outside the library and university (MySpace, Facebook, Google personalized home page, etc.). Hey, I can dream, can't I? In the meantime, here's what we can do now:

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While users have been able to customize content within various services (e.g. Yahoo) for awhile, customization is being taken to a new level with modules and widgets. Now we can customize our desktops or create a customized home page by assembling various small programs and tools into a unique combination of functions and information to meet our needs. These tools are created using lightweight code and, often, APIs that allow them to interact with other programs or web sites.

Types of Modules and Widgets

• Accessory widgets - self-contained programs that don't require internet access or an additional program. Examples: clocks, timers
• Application widgets - associated with some other application. Examples: iTunes controllers, media players
• Information widgets - interact with data from the internet. Examples: stock quotes, news headlines, internet radio tuners, Flickr photo tools, satellite radio tuners, weather information.

Platforms

• Yahoo Widgets - http://widgets.yahoo.com. Require Yahoo Widget Engine.
• Google Desktop Gadgets - http://desktop.google.com/plugins/. Require Google Desktop. Can be docked to Sidebar or roam free on your desktop.
• Apple Dashboard Widgets - http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/. Requires Dashboard, which debuted in OS X Tiger.
• Modules for Google personalized home page. Requires Google account. Then go to http://www.google.com/ig and add content.

Creating Widgets and Modules (especially in libraries)

These tools don't appear to be too difficult to create. Some libraries have created Yahoo or Apple widgets for searching their catalogs, and CISTI has created a Yahoo widget for ordering documents and checking the status of orders.

Scan This Book! - New York Times

In Scan This Book!, Kevin Kelly of Wired discusses the universal library, the (ending) hegemony of the copy, the legal tug of war between Google and publishers, and the larger conflict between old, copy-based business models and new technology. Here's a brief snippet:

What is the technology telling us? That copies don't count any more. Copies of isolated books, bound between inert covers, soon won't mean much. Copies of their texts, however, will gain in meaning as they multiply by the millions and are flung around the world, indexed and copied again. What counts are the ways in which these common copies of a creative work can be linked, manipulated, annotated, tagged, highlighted, bookmarked, translated, enlivened by other media and sewn together into the universal library. Soon a book outside the library will be like a Web page outside the Web, gasping for air. Indeed, the only way for books to retain their waning authority in our culture is to wire their texts into the universal library.

Kelly offers more than the idealistic, "information wants to be free," argument. Definitely worth a read.

» Napster founder commerce enables unprotected MP3s on MySpace | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

Here's another short piece addressing the economics of web 2.0, as well as that perennial favorite, digital rights management. See
Napster founder commerce enables unprotected MP3s on MySpace | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

» YouTube, Digg, MySpace: How much is a non-paying 'user' worth? | Digital Micro-Markets | ZDNet.com

Can free web 2.0 sites ever be profitable? Or have we entered another dotcom boom, soon to be followed by another dotcom bust? I'm not sure I agree with this author's take, but his post is worth a read: YouTube, Digg, MySpace: How much is a non-paying 'user' worth?

256 Resources on Complete List of Web 2.0 Products and Services - Listible!

Want to check out some new Web 2.0 resources? See
256 Resources on Complete List of Web 2.0 Products and Services - Listible!

for a big ol' list of them.

EDUCAUSE REVIEW | March/April 2006, Volume 41, Number 2

EDUCAUSE Review just published an extensive article on Web 2.0 technologies for teaching and learning: Web 2.0: A New Wave of Innovation for Teaching and Learning?

popurls.com | popular urls to the latest web buzz

Can't keep up with all the cool stuff being posted to social software sites like del.icio.us and Flickr? A new site, popurls.com, includes links to the most popular stuff on a bunch of these sites, all on one page.

When you first go to popurls.com, the blue text on black background can be hard to read. But have no fear! There's a formatting bar in the upper righthand corner that will let you change the background color and make the text bigger.

ALA TechSource | On the 2.0 Job Description: Part 1

Michael Stephens posted to ALA TechSource about Library 2.0 job postings: ALA TechSource | On the 2.0 Job Description: Part 1

It's interesting to see that some libraries are beginning to include Web 2.0/Library 2.0 technologies (blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc.) in position postings. I'd love to know how many applicants they get who actually meet the qualifications.

Some ideas for using this blog and our del.icio.us account

Here are some ideas for using this blog and the del.icio.us account in conjunction with our Tech Talk meetings:

The blog can be a place to continue discussions that begin in meetings or start new ones. It can also be a place to comment on new technologies, post links (with comments) to interesting new sites or web services, etc.

The del.icio.us account can serve as our community bookmarks, a place to store links of interest. You could post links you find interesting at the time you find them. Then, in our meetings, if we need ideas for what to discuss, we can talk about some of the sites that have been added recently.

For me, the difference between the blog and del.icio.us is this: If you find something interesting on the web, post it to del.icio.us. If you want to comment on it -- or comment on some general topic not tied to a link -- use the blog.

What do others think? Any other ideas for how we can use these tools?

Welcome to Tech Talk!

In this inaugeral post, I'll try to explain what Tech Talk is. I'll talk about the blog in a subsequent post. Please post and comment with your own ideas! Tech Talk is brank spanking new and can become whatever we want it to be.

Tech Talk is an informal group of OHSU Library staff, students, and guests that will meet at 3 PM on the second and fourth Friday of each month in the OHSU Library's History of Dentistry Room. It's intended to be a place where we can share cool technology we have discovered (software, web sites, gadgets... whatever) and ask questions about technology topics. The group is open to any staff member, student... oh, pretty much anyone who wants to come. You don't have to be a techie -- but you might become one if you stick with the group long enough :-)

Before we go any further, I should present the Fundamental Rule of Tech Talk:

No Preparation Required

We all have too many meetings with agendas, minutes, action items, and prepared presentations. Tech Talk isn't one of those! Come as you are. We'll have a laptop and projector for showing off stuff, but you are not expected to do any formal preparation for the meeting.

So c'mon in, pull up a chair, and enjoy some tech talk!