In the library field, there is a lot of talk about Library 2.0, inspired by the Web 2.0 discussions. It is basically a change in attitude, where libraries make sure the information they have to offer, is available to users where those users want it, not merely at the library website or building. So far, the talk is mostly about changing ones online services, to better accomplish this. But what about the physical aspect of library services?

One of the reasons why I often buy books instead of borrowing them from the library (besides reasons like wanting to own certain books) is the convenience of buying them. I will either buy books from a store I happen to visit while I am traveling (train stations, shopping in town) or order them online. Why? Because going to a library or book store with the sole purpose of buying a book is too much effort. It takes time to go there, and there is always a chance of not finding what I want. Then it is definitely time wasted. When ordering a book, I can watch tv at the same time, or download stuff or do whatever else.

I can imagine people with busy work and/or personal lives hardly having time to read, let alone go out and get books. If they do have a quiet moment, they'd probably rather be reading than traveling to a library. So what could be one solution? Create a NetFlix like model for libraries, where people can order books from home (by phone or online), and get them in the mail. Instead of their regular library subscription, they pay an extra amount to make up for the shipping cost. Or an amount per book. The drawback? Well, for one thing, borrowing a book would become too expensive. Our library pays over $7 postage per book for books through interlibrary loan. At that price, it's cheaper to actually buy a book. An alternative could be to deliver the books by hand, using a specialised delivery service. Your own library bookmobile, if you want. I think that could be a viable business model for a public library, as long as it restricts itself to a certain area.

This probably isn't much of a revelation and maybe I'll be embarrassed by this post tomorrow, after sleeping on it for a bit, but I know I would actually consider this if it was available over here. Not for those books I want to own anyway, but for those books that I want to give a try. I notice I tend to stick to books I'm pretty sure will be good, and never try anything unfamiliar, because it's a waste of (time and) money. Borrowing such books could help me expand my horizon. I realise we used to have the mobile libraries up until several years ago, but I hardly see those anymore. I know those aren't viable enough anymore, but I wonder when we'll see the first book delivery cars. Or scooters, like the pizza delivery ones. Maybe that would make working at a library interesting again for teenagers

“At most public libraries in the Washington area, an adult can view pornography on a library computer more or less unfettered. Montgomery asks customers to be considerate of others when viewing Web sites. If others are put off, librarians will provide the viewer of the offending material with a ”privacy screen.“ ” [Source]

Boing Boing had a link to this story about two Homeland Security officers trying to stop a library user from watching porn on a library computer, only to find out they were the ones in the wrong. A privacy screen, that might be a solution for our university library as well. Although all student workplaces are somewhat private, each being in a little cubicle-like area, it is still easy to see the screens. Even when you cannot tell exact text on the screen, it is possible to tell what kind of video someone is watching. The university doesn't allow watching porn on any campus computer, but of course students don't always comply with this rule. It is not a surprise to hear a colleague suggest we start handing out Kleenexes ...

There are some creative librarians out there. Some of which used an online tool to create librarian-themed trading cards and posted those at Flickr. With some nice examples. I should probably create my own some day, but I'm not going to put my face on the web.

It is funny to see how some cards are presented as the traditional baseball-like trading cards, while others are in a format more similar to collectible cardgame cards. Guess which type mine would be? Thinking about if I would ever create one, made one thing clear though: I don't even know how to describe my current position. So I'll give that some more thought [Source]

It took me a couple of days to actually look at this, since I figured it would require a lot of time to set it up. Boy was I wrong. It took me all of five minutes to sign up and add three books to my personal library, over at LibraryThing. LibraryThing lets you manage your own library on the web. Free accounts let you keep track of up to 200 books. Paid accounts are $10 for a lifetime. Well, the life time of LibraryThing, I guess.

Adding books is extremely easy. Enter keywords or ISBN and LibraryThing takes information from Amazon and a number of libraries. One of the features is a display of the Library of Congress information, from the LoC itself. You can have a private library or a public one. Right now, my own library only contains three books, because I just wanted to try it. Seeing how easy this is, perhaps I will actually put all my books online. Well, all the books that I don't mind you knowing about.

This service seems to have quite some options, including tagging of books. The tags make it easier to find similar books. You can also search for users and books, and get information about libraries that contain books similar to yours. This can be a good way to find new books to read. It is now also possible to use Amazon Associate IDs.

One feature I would like to try out, is the blog widget option. This creates javascript code that you can include on your page, to display the most recent or a random number of books from your library, on your page. Similar to the “last book read” part on my own index page. I would like to present three random books from my collection, changing every 20 minutes or so, but I have to see if I can get this to work in the current layout.

With a tag line like “There is no intelligence prerequisite to use the public library, and idiots everywhere take full advantage.” I just have to come back and read some more. The blog Libraries for Dummies hasn't been around for long yet, but I've found a couple of entertaining posts there. No, most of my work experiences are not that bad, but then again, I don't work in a public library in a rough neighborhood. The level of intelligence of the average Dutch student using our university library still amazes me though. And not in a good way.

I attended a lecture by The Shifted Librarian. I expect that most people who attended, are now at home completely drained from trying to keep up with her fast-paced presentation, but it was an interesting lecture. Although I know the basics about blogging (hey, I've been doing this for a while now) and RSS, it was good to hear more about possible applications of these technologies in a library environment.

To be honest, I occasionally mention something like wikis, weblogs, and RSS at work, trying to get people involved. It seems my presentation of these matters is severely lacking, since nobody ever gets all excited when I mention this. Now some colleagues are excited though, so I guess having some good, practical examples (presented by someone with authority on the topic) helps.

Now if we can just keep on to this momentum and actually put it into action, that will be very interesting, especially in an organisation where, sadly, the majority of colleagues is fairly computer-illiterate. But hey, blogs are easy to use, so everybody should be able to participate.

RSSifying your library, is simply (ahem) providing information through RSS, and highly recommended by Jenny Levine. This is a good point and important advice, because our end users are no longer necessarily coming to us. It started with them staying away from the physical library, because we provide so much online access. Now we also see a move away from the electronic library presence. People don't drop by on our site to see what's new, they want to get this information where they will actually read it at their own leisure: in their RSS feeds. Sounds good to me, since I mainly read RSS feeds. I have a very select set of sites that I actually visit. Sometimes because I want to make sure I read the most recent post and I worry that my aggregator isn't updated yet, sometimes because I want to see the site's original lay out, to see what else is new (graphics outside the feed, for instance).

Sunday, time for links that might have fit in the 'Entertaining' category, but that are even better suited for the 'Libraries' one, since that one is still pretty empty.

Over at Songs To Wear Pants To, Andrew will create songs on request. Send him some challenge and he may put it to music. Either a short (70 second) song, or a longer one for paid requests. His Librarians Rule The World (warning: link starts an mp3) has a funny title, and it actually sounds the way I expect it to sound if it would be a librarian singing [Source]

There are also actual (commercial) songs about libraries. If you would rather read some new library lyrics based on existing tunes, you will find plenty of that here. Don't worry, neither of these links provides mp3's.

This is one of the stranger things I have read in a while. The Evansville public library wants to keep unaccompanied adults out of certain sections of the library. Apparently this is done “as a precaution against ”those who might be there for inappropriate reasons ...“, so I guess they worry about child molesters or something similar.

I can think of several reasons why an unaccompanied adult might want to visit the children's section of a library. The most obvious one: parents may want to pick up a book for their child, without having said kid present. After work, during lunch time, or just because the kid is incredibly annoying to tote around. And of course there are people whose reading skill is limited, and who may feel more comfortable reading children's books. Children's books are also helpful in learning a new language, because of the type of language used. And of course there are adults who actually just like to read children's books.

Instead of banning all these adults from entering the kid's section alone, it might be more effective to simply pay more attention to who is doing what is that section. Library staff has a responsibility in making sure the library is a safe place. By being present in a visible way, a signal is given to possibly ”bad" adults. It seems to me that the currently planned measures are just a tad extreme. [Source]

Al@din is a Dutch site, maintained by Dutch public libraries. Through an online question service, people can find answers to questions. Answers provided by public librarians. Habbo Hotel is some kind of meeting place/chat room for kids. People. Apparently they can use credits to expan their character or rooms or whatever. I never looked into it. The only reason I know of its existence, is because I got a lot of people begging for codes for an online payment system, after my experiment. This is even the only post with closed comments because of this. But I digress.

In an attempt to increase visibility of Al@din, there was a competition planned in cooperation with the Dutch Habbo site. Kids could earn Habbo credits by visiting or using Al@din. However, the action got cancelled prematurely, due to the extreme success. Participating Dutch libraries found out that there were way too many questions generated from this competition, creating problems for the people staffing the Al@din service. Al@din questions are answered by library staff from many different libraries, each taking their turn on certain dates. This means that on average, the actual number of people available to answer questions is probably very limited. To prevent further problems, the action was cancelled and that was that.

Makes me wonder what would happen if kids actually started to use the public library again, like kids before them may have done. Would this cause a major problem for public libraries, in this Internet era? I have a feeling it would.

According to a BBC article, robotics researchers are working on robots that can be used in libraries. The robots would be able to find books by themselves, pick up the books, and transport them.

An interesting application, no doubt. With robots taking over some of the more boring and laborous tasks, there would be more time for library staff to focus on other aspects. However, it will be a while before this works. Even with researchers working out how the robot should do this, I wonder how fast a robot would be able to do this. At our library, the average time to pick a book, was a few minutes. Robots can probably move about just as quick, but I wonder if they can move about in the limited space between shelves.

Now, what I would like to see, is robots that will collect used books and put them back on the shelves. Now there is a job that is not very interesting.