CODI - Top Five Technology Trends

one presenter missing, resulting in only 4 trends.

Eric Graham, Sirsi-Dynix - moderator.
presenters: Jenian Gebeaux, Beth Degeer, Ben Ostrowski & Eric Sisler

Jenian Gebeaux, SAS (corporate library in N.C.)

Trend: Wiki as a collaborative tool.

They use a wiki at the reference desk and to manage information overload.

Wikis close the gap between creating content and consuming content.

Ward Cunningham developed 1^st wiki in 1995.

Over the last 10 years, wikis have hit popularity.

Wikipedia
is an online encyclopedia used and maintained by its users. Anyone can edit the content and it works surprisingly well.

At SAS they use wikis for meeting minutes, staff calendar, faq

They also have a blog for reference desk : called for printer service call, etc.

Staff can edit entries. No HTML knowledge needed.

Wiki incorporates a search tool, bread crumbs

Beth Degeer, Bartlesville PL

Trend: MP3 audio for checkout.

At Bartlesville, their patrons are tech-savy and they allow checkout of MP3 audiobooks from the library.

Overdrive (partnerned with Sirsi-Dynix) also have music subscription now. Have a lot of childrens books. Have picture books online. Overdrive was too expensive for Bartlesville. Seattle & New York PLs use Overdrive.

Audible
Wonderful for 1-on-1 subscriptions. Have lots of NPR programs, content will play on iPod, but Audible is interested in only having a limited number of MP3 players on a single subscription.

Netlibrary via OCLC
Lots of classics, very few children & YA titles.

$5000 for 1 yr subscription. Can download at home, play on own player. Cannot burn dowloaded content to CD. After checkout period expires, file expires. They had 200 checkouts in 1^st week. Doesn't accommodate iPods. [iPod dominates the market. Over 70% of all MP3 players sold are iPods, have sold close to 20 million units in 4 years. note: these stats are pre-video iPod-ks]

Apple hasn’t integreated DRM to manage expiration of a particular file.

Bartlesville PL's solution:
To serve iPod users, library has subscription to iTunes. They have purchased $4000 worth of audiobooks. How does it work? Bring in your iPod, library loads audiobooks. iTunes lets you use as many different MP3 players as you want with a single iTunes subscription. Adding music titles to their selection would address issue of stolen CDs.

Library has 5 MP3 players available for checkout, for patrons to try. Buttons are small, but patrons seem to catch on quickly, even the seniors.

Drawback: Patrons cannot download iTunes remotely. Must bring player into the library for library staff to load the book. Library “owns” the book in the iTunes.

Audience Q&A:
What happens when you dock the iPod on the computer?
Loading the audiobook erases their iPod content. Patrons must re-sync their iPod when finished with the audiobook to regain their tunes.

What MP3 players did you buy?
Creative nanos. [link to one of Creative's products. I don't know specific model they bought.] Buttons small for older patrons. Very durable. Cost for iTunes subscription is free. Each iTunes audiobook is $20-$60.

Why do you wipe the patron's iPod?
Don’t think can switch to manual to load audiobook.

Does library only own 1 copy of each audiobook title?
Yes. But if 2 patrons wanted the file, they’d probably load it.

Ben Ostrowski, Tampa Bay Library Consortium
Trend: Anonymous Library Cards
Ben is also the author of an article on this topic that appeared in Computers in Libraries June'05 issue.

Traditional circ: borrower proves identity, library keeps identity info, borrower borrows items.

Storing confidential information is inherently risky for several reasons: Patriot Act, Clerks get bored & look up their friends!

Reduce the risk of confidential information. How? Patches on software, firewalls, etc.

Destroy info you no longer need. ILS does this anyway.
(for example: can’t retrieve borrower records from 1997.)

[Horizon 7.4 introduces “circulation long term history” which is the ability to save a borrower’s history of checked out items. 7.3 saves the prior borrower on the item record. Options: do not keep circ history, always keep, or allow borrower to choose. [default is yes] examples: can keep for a # of days (90 days) or last 10 items. Will your library decide to implement this "feature" or not? Viewing a borrower's record shows the circ history. -ks]

Ben says...Can’t be forced to provide info if you don’t collect it.

We’re using identity for collateral.

Why not car keys? children? Cash?

Gift cards are bought with cash, card stores monetary value. Not associated with identity of buyer or the person using it.

Would people really put down cash just to get a book?

At Cracker Barrel, buy an audiobook on tape or CD. Pay cash value for it. Return at any cracker barrel, minus a weekly rental fee.

Anon cards in use at Sturgis Library. Offer cash based lending for the bikers $50 deposit=1 item. Give name, but can use an alias. Return item, tell them the alias, and they refund the $50

Another method is the borrower puts down a deposit to cover the value of what they’re checking out.

Library creates borrower record. Btype=anon. Place misc charge to reflect that we have money from them. May be able to voluntarily collect zip code. (might be nice for stats)

Can still deduct a late fee or damage fee from their deposit.

When they return, they get refund.

Law enforcement. Search the suspect, find anon library card, could come in and retrieve the borrower info. We could show them our records link to anon user, we're not withholding info, can't provide info we don't have. Nobody needed to show ID to read book in house.

Drawbacks: some materials are impossible to replace. Can control this by not allowing certain collections to circulate to anon btype.

Enhanced service to the rich. Doesn’t help the poor.

Could allow people who can't prove mailing address to place requests or ILL and use in-house. Library never required identity for storytime, to ask a reference question, or read a magazine.

Horizon 8.0 will have a database structure that supports anonymous library cards.

Q&A

How do you limit items that are restricted to adults only, to keep kids from checking out adult only items? Could have 2 btypes anon adult & anon juvenile and set up circ parameters accordingly. Could inspect applicant's ID just to determine if they were juv. or adult when setting up the anon card.

Certain restrictions for non-local patrons?
Make sure the anon users don’t automatically get access to the online database subscriptions.

How do you handle recall?
In an academic setting—using if you're using the recall function in Horizon, since you can't mail the recall notice you could give anon btype a shorter loan period.

Eric Sisler, Westminster PL
Trend:Computer virtualization

VmWare allows you to run “multiple computers” on one server.

Can run virtual machines, completely independent of each other, own cpu, own ram, own peripherals,

How does it work?

Physical hardware itself. Software that provides the virtual layers for you: a slice of the processing, a slice of the ram, etc.

Virtual PC from connectix

Other market leader is VMware (recently purchased by EMC, who makes blade servers, etc)

Eric uses VMware at their library.

Microsoft VirtualPC=VMware workstation product desktop

Good for testing new software

VMWare gsx server. Designed to run on a server, rather than a desktop

Can do things remotely. Snapshot functionality allows actions similar to deep freeze (can undo actions)

Vmware esx can move a virtual machine from server a to server b to without any shutdown

[note: Jack Blount said in a later session that as of right now Horizon is not supporting virtual machines in 8.0 When Eric asked why, Jack asked him to talk to him afterwards. Eric--feel free to add a comment to fill us in on what Jack told you!]