LibraryTechtonics

First, Happy Samhain!

According to the pagan calendar, Halloween is really New Year’s Eve.   What to start your new year with a crazy bang, pagan or not? Try committing to one (or both!) of these Herculean tasks starting tomorrow.

NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month is back! 50,000 words… 30 days… totally doable?! Think of it as button mashing for authors :D! Listen to this week’s WrimoRadio Podcast on Inspiration to hear Fred Miller, a librarian and regional coordinator in Topeka, talk about her experiences with this death-defying feat. I’m definitely down: I’ve got a storyline that combines genetic experimentation, animals, self-modification, human culture examination, and a whole lot of identity crisis… I call it scifi that might be funny, we’ll see. My personal goal is 25,000 this year (my current record is 12,000), so anything extra is gravy. My username is Andrea Mercado, so if you feel like buddying up on the site, feel free to add me.

NaBloPoMo: Looking for something lower on the commitment scale? Put on some training wheels and give National Blog Posting Month a whirl.  Doesn’t roll off the tongue as nicely, but the premise is smooth and easy: post everyday.  That’s it!  For serious, what could be simpler?  Just join the Ning group (it’ll give you an excuse to play with Ning and figure out what all the fuss is about, if you haven’t already), and get writing starting tomorrow.  Give your lolling blog a push, and start off the new year, write!

Sound crazy to do both? Um, yeah.  Will I try?  Yeah, probably.  You’ll see which one falls to the wayside.

Who’s crazy with me?  Who’s even half-crazy with me?

When I created the Massachusetts Library Association article on Wikipedia a while back, I really did mean for it to grow. It wasn’t much to look at, a few details and a bunch of links (which I’m sure attracted the eyes of the eager deleters). I didn’t think I’d be the only one to work on it. I tried to make time to get information from MLA about the organization, but life got in the way. All the same, I didn’t think I’d be the only one trying to grow it out, and I didn’t want to “own” it, so I kinda let it sit organically to see what would happen, but I haven’t looked at it lately.

Earlier this week (while I was away on vacation), I received an email from Pam Davies, a retired librarian in the UK and newly self-dubbed Wikipedia addict, saying that the MLA article had been slotted for deletion. A {{notable}} tag had never been placed on it, so I didn’t know it was in danger. So now there is only 1 more day until the article is deleted, unless there are enough votes to keep it. If you have a minute, please go to the article deletion discussion page and vote to keep/improve this article.

I’ve contacted the archivist at MLA by phone to obtain more information to flesh out the article, I mentioned it on Twitter, and I’m posting it here. Pam has been a total rock star in helping me feverishly try to add bits and pieces of data and citations wherever possible while I wait for information from the archivist (a good amount of it is in the archives at the Boston Public Library, and/or in non-digital format). I also mentioned on the deletion discussion page that I’m making efforts to improve the article with the help of MLA.

One big reason given for the deletion is that the Massachusetts state library association itself is not by nature notable as determined by the novice editor who flagged the article. Steve Lawson saw my tweet about the article on Twitter, and tweeted back a post about the issue of “notability” on Wikipedia, which I found sad and disturbing. I realize that not all deletions are just power plays on Wikipedia, but in perusing the lists and seeing how much work was done on some of these articles, Jason Scott’s point on the subjectivity of “notable” on Wikipedia is very well taken. Perhaps Wikipedia needs more librarians to help maintain those High Watermarks…

Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, 415 Summer Street, Boston http://www.podcampboston.org/

Where I’ll be schedule bits of note:
10/26: Kick-off party at Tequila Rain, 7-11p
10/27: Social Media Breakfast 3, Starbucks @ the BCEC Westin, 7-8:30a
10/27: “Smart Plan, Sexy Cast” Presentation, BCEC Room 204b, 2-2:45p
10/27: Big Ol’ Party, Boston Seaport Hotel, 7-9p

This will be my second year at PodCamp (I was at the very first PodCamp in Boston last year), and my second year covering PodCamp for the PLA Blog. I absolutely can’t wait! This is a free barcamp-style conference, where anyone can give a presentation. As a matter of fact, I’ll be presenting “Smart Plan, Sexy Cast” on Saturday, October 27 from 2-2:45pm in Room 204b on the virtues of making a plan before you make your first recording.

The registration process recently went into “wait list” mode, but since the venue is huge and the numbers look OK, the fellas running The Joint are honoring all wait list “tickets” (preregistration online via EventBrite). As of this writing ,there are 69 “wait list” tix left, so if you can even attend for 1 day, I’d recommend it!

If you’re going to PodCamp, gimme a shout out here in the comments. Alternately, I’ll be checking Twitter off and on (mostly on), so feel free to DM me there.

Can’t come to Boston this weekend? Look for a PodCamp near you! Since October 2006, PodCamps have been cropping up all over the US, as well as in Canada and Australia. If you have a podcast or vidcast of your own, or your library has a podcast or vidcast, consider doing a presentation on ‘casting libraries and librarians, or something else that interests you about the casting sphere. Besides, it’s free!

The Pour House, 907 Boylston Street, Boston, Massachusetts
http://bostonblogevents.com/blogtoberfest

I’ll be hanging with bloggers from all over the Metro Boston area tonight at this free event. Why do I go to things like this, you might ask? I mean, I’m not networking to find a new job outside of librarianship, and I’m not a marketing person, so what gives?

Any blogger, especially a librarian blogger, benefits from meeting more of their family, blogger, who aren’t necessarily their genus, librarian (I consider species here to be the flavor of librarian: public, academic, corporate, archivist… you get the gist). Whenever you get out into the world in a non-genus setting, you are doing outreach, telling the larger family what librarians are up to, smashing stereotypes, getting ideas, inspiring unpatrons to become patrons, and much more. You represent your genus when you get out there.

You can also shop for ideas, and learn about new tech by hanging with people in the know. What’s new and upcoming? What’s going to tank? What do you use that for? You get a sense of real Web 2.0/social software culture, as well as just being social. And, because so many of the people who attend these things are helpful as well as social, it’s a good way to shop for people to help you, often times for free. Friends like helping friends, see?

If you are a librarian who blogs, how often do you get out to these things? I’d be interested to know, so drop me a comment about your experiences. If you’re not sure how to find the blogger family in your area, try sites like Meetup.com, or Ning.com, and search for “blogger” in your vicinity. You can even try searching for groups on Facebook or MySpace. It’s like any other reference question, you just need to be your creative selves in finding the answer.

If you’re in the Boston area, and you want to get involved, let me know. Sometimes it helps n00bs to have a buddy at these things, and I can definitely introduce you around. And, if you happen to be attending Blogtoberfest tonight, drop me a comment and let me know!

I’ve been away for a few days (a fabulous little birthday/anniversary vacation in CT and NY with The Husband), and sick for about a week before that, so I haven’t really been up on the news or anything. Catching up with my work email my first day back at work (today), I saw a link to the Boston Globe article “Libraries move with times, discover niches” from Monday, October 22.

While the photo for the article highlights the latest craze in gaming, reading the article reveals the true secret to success in libraries these days: variety.

It’s not just about bringing in teens with gaming, or using the latest technology in every way, shape, and form possible.  It’s expanding into the various niches available to us in all age groups, really understanding the community, how it uses stuff, and how we can be a part of that.  It’s video collections and ILL that rival justifying the monthly cost of Netflix, it’s Playaways (we just got a bunch of these, and they’re *awesome*) that make portable audio so very easy and completely solve the iPod/not-iPod dilemma, and events at the library that really make it feel like a real night out and not like an embarrassing place to be seen.  A little something for everyone, depending on who your everyone is.  It also highlights that libraries that depended on books as their mainstay actually ended up reducing hours and closing this past year.

Sometimes I think that these things go without saying, but other times I feel like librarians need to reminded that not only is change good, it’s a necessity.  I confess that do see the changes happening, but just making the effort at change, or just making progress, sadly, isn’t good enough. We need to be in it for the long haul, and our profession and professionals need to be flexible enough to not just make changes, but to be in a state of evolution.

Librarians: What is your library doing these days to evolve?  Are there particular problems that you or your library are facing going beyond “making a change” into flexibility?  What kind of help do you forsee needing to get over the hurdles, or what tips can you share with others?  Have you done a survey lately to see what your patrons really want in the library?  What are they asking for?  How is it different from what you do now, or is it (perhaps a more subtle evolution is in store for many libraries)?

For all the patrons out there: What evolution is do you want to see in your libraries?  What are your libraries doing well, and what could use improvement?  Are the changes in your library obvious to you, and what can libraries do to make the changes more obvious to you?