Bear Flag Republic Radio Weblog

< 8:23:55 AM        >

Everyone is (rightly) talking about Peter Rukavina's homegrown RSS feeds for what he has checked out from his library (and new DVDs). I am overjoyed to see this, but saddened to see that once again users are having to route around library services because we're not providing the service ourselves (Your Honor, the prosecution submits LibraryLookup into evidence as Exhibit A).

I was going to leave the following comment on Aaron's post, but I was getting so agitated that I decided it made more sense to post it on my own site.

Rant: It's true libraries have limited resources, but they already have a vendor for their catalog, and that vendor should be the one leading the way.  Libraries must begin demanding these types of services from the vendors. It's crazy to see users writing code to compensate for a lack of services from library OPACs. Granted RSS has come on relatively quickly, but companies like Innovative and Sirsi need the equivalent of Google Labs in order to react faster to these types of disruptive technologies. If a user can write code to produce an RSS feed from the catalog, certainly the vendor can do even more on the backend.

This is a MAJOR wake-up call for integrated library system vendors, and libraries must force them to follow-through on this. I realize vendors don't have unlimited resources, but they could do a hell of a better job of listening to their customers and tracking trends. I've been trying to talk to Innovative about RSS feeds for MORE THAN 2 YEARS and they have never once contacted me in response to my comments, suggestions, or feedback. I talked about this at length with the ProQuest reps at the Texas Library Association conference, and I never heard back from them, either. In fact, it's embarassing to note that I've talked to several different vendors at various conferences and NONE of them have ever followed up with a response. That's pathetic, and I'm calling them on the carpet about it. From now on, when I go to a conference, I'm going to post the name of every vendor I talk to about RSS and we'll see if any of them have so much as the courtesy to follow up with me afterwards. I don't expect the floor reps to really get what I'm saying, but the promise of "I'll take this back to the home office" no longer holds any water for me without some type of follow-through.

Robert Scoble says, "If you're in PR now and not watching what several hundred of your best customers are saying about you you're at a severe disadvantage." I would expand that quote beyond just PR because there's enough going on in the online world of pagerank, trackback, social networking, and permanently-cached word-of-mouth to warrant tracking your brand no matter what industry/field you are in. Compared to most sectors, the library blogosphere is large, incestuous, and not afraid to speak its mind. It still amazes me to think that companeis devoted to library services don't pay attention to it.

Here's hoping they start. Soon.

comments < 8:22:18 AM        >

Bad News Spreads like Wildfire.

Here's a perfect illustration of the need to track what's being said about your organization online:

• Mustn't Text
  "I can understand a place like a restaurant asking mobile phone talkers to step outside, or a place like a gymnasium asking mobile camera users to please not get strange, but a library threatening to fine people if they use text messaging... that I don't quite understand...?" [JD on MX]
   
• Surf City Libraries Gets Tough on Mobiles
  "The new regulation, which comes into force from 15 September, means that if a phone rings, or if anyone is caught talking or texting, then they will face a stern warning. After the first ticking-off, though, library vistors can expect to receive fines of $250, $500 and $1,000 for repeated offences." [The Register -- in the U.K.!!!]
   
• Use a Cell Phone in a Library, Pay $1,000
  "City leaders of Huntington Beach California adopted an ordinance, which takes effect September 15, that bans all cell phone use in libraries, including talking, text messaging and ringing tones of any kind, reports The Associated Press." [textually.org]

And those links are just for starters (just wait until it hits Slashdot!). I feel bad for the Library because this seems to be mandated by the City (was it requested?), but can you imagine what teenagers must think of them for this? How many young librarians do you think will read that story and still want to work there?

I'm the first person to be annoyed by people talking on cell phones and the ringers, but there are far better compromises than this. After all, the press from the first $1,000 fine is not going to go well, and either it will be dismissed (removing the bite from the bark) or the Library will come out smelling quite badly. It would be far smarter to have a designated area for cell phone use, and it's ridiculous to ban text messaging as long as alerts are silent.

Instead, the Library is becoming the butt of jokes online. Do you think they know what's going on their permanent record?

[The Shifted Librarian]
comments < 8:21:39 AM        >

What Type of RSS Reader Are You?.

The RSS Weblog has two interesting posts today that I won't go into too much detail about since no one but me can read what I'm posting (if a blogger blogs in the woods and there's no one around to read it, is it still blogging?...).

• An Open Discussion of Feed-Reading Habits
  "Web designer D. Keith Robinson asks his reader how they consume RSS [~] full text or summary,  do they mind ads in feeds, and the obligatory 'what reader do you use?' "
   
• RSS Would Be Perfect If...
  "Me? I love RSS. I couldn[base ']t keep up with the embarrassingly small percentage of WIN sites I read if I didn[base ']t have FeedDemon, but there are a few things I wish RSS and feed readers could do."

Interesting questions and thoughts proposed in both pieces, which run parallel to something I've been thinking about - the different types of RSS readers (human, not machine). Thinking about it in the car this morning, I came up with four distinct types of RSS users that I know of (in no particular order):

1. The Anal Information Junkie -  reads every post and gets the shakes when she can't goes too long without her aggregator (I'm in this category)
2. The Trend Spotter - scans for patterns and digs deeper when a specific topic starts percolating (I think Bernie Goldbach is in this category)
3. The RSS Pack Rat - keeps an archive of selected feeds that can be searched when the pack rat wants to research a topic (I think Phil Wolff is in this category, but there are similarities to the Trend Spotter)
4. The Casual Causal RSS Reader - someone who has a reader (or an account for one somewhere) and has subscriptions, but only reads them when she has time, which is rare, so it normally takes an out-of-the-ordinary event to get the user back to the reader (I know a couple of people at my office that I think fall into this category because they don't have time to read their Bloglines accounts regularly, until something forces them to)

What RSS profiles have I missed? Which one are you? How does a #4 get to a #1? Is one of the great things about RSS that it works well for all of these types?

[The Shifted Librarian]
comments < 8:20:32 AM        >

The Digital Hoards.

We Are Becoming Digital Pack Rats 

"Personal computers -- our jukeboxes, photo labs, accountants and film studios -- are becoming the proverbial junk drawer, scattered with scads of must-have information. Sister devices such as digital cameras, MP3 players and digital video recorders overflow with often barely a bite of spare storage.

The ravenous nature of society coupled with the quest for convenience has spawned a nation of digital pack rats, eager to possess every gigabyte of media they can download, and too greedy -- or lazy -- to let it go....

One's desk might be clean and tidy, but countless computer desktops have become chaotic.

'It's like an infinite attic, and we're filling it,' said Peter Lyman, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley School of Information Management and Systems. 'People are feeling overwhelmed and trying to find coping strategies.' " [The Indianapolis Star, via Library Link of the Day]

Heh - good timing! I just wrote about the rise of the personal server as part of my "Product Pipeline" column for the next issue of netConnect. The day after I turned it in, I bought a 1GB SD card for my Treo because I can't carry around enough ones and zeroes on my current 512MB version. Storage storage everywhere, and not a drop to drink! I paid a little under $100 for the new card, a Gigabyte of portable storage the size of a postage stamp! Next year, terabytes will be affordable.

To quote Roy Tennant, "Storage is officially cheaper than dirt."

[The Shifted Librarian]
comments < 8:20:12 AM        >

Dear sir, it seems we have misplaced an oil tanker.  ;-> [John Robb's Weblog]
comments < 8:18:37 AM        >

A Sound of Thunder [Slashdot:]
comments < 8:12:36 AM        >