According to the study results, it appears that libraries indeed remain relevant in this internet age. In fact, the study found more than half of all Americans manged to visit libraries last year. Even more surprisingly, those tech-savvy, web-loving, Wikipedia using Gen-Yers were the biggest library users of all.

To start a discussion on the topic, WebJunction member alatreil asked:

“Would you say that Generation Y (18-30-year-olds) are your library’s heaviest users? What do you think this means for your library—and what does it mean for the nation’s libraries?“

As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Please post in the original thread, or here in the blog comments.

At least that’s the roadblock member amberdevo seems to be facing with an intern-developed RSS implementation. They have a technology solution and need advice to help them get it to the live stage:

“Our IT dept keeps putting off (since August 07) in setting it up so it can be used. “Security risk — we’re looking at it — we need to have the code verified, blah blah blah” We don’t know what the security risks are, have never been told. Could someone perhaps enlighten me on what the possible security risks may be and how to set things up so there is no security risk.“

I’m guessing that some in our community have dealt with similar issues and may have best practices, or at least war stories, worth sharing. Don’t be shy! If you have any tips, tricks, or horror stories about convincing an IT department to move forward with RSS—this really this applies to any new technology— please post here as a comment or in the discussion forum thread.

And as always, if you’ve got a question you want to ask the WebJunction community or you see a good question coming in, please post it in the Question of the Week topic.

You still have a couple hours yet to make a special V-Day post in the Why I love libraries or Why I love my job WebJunction community discussions. We’ve had some great stories shared so far, and would love more.

For those of you with, ahem, other plans this evening—don’t despair. The whole of February (an extra day this year!) is Library Lovers’ Month, You’ve got plenty of time to read and share.

PS — don’t forget to keep tagging content in del.ico.us and flickr with “wjlove.” More on that project at the end of this post.

This Question of the Week embodies one of the best things about WebJunction: Sharing!

Rhastings added Web 2.0 features to his library’s website and thought it would be helpful to see more examples from the community. This particular discussion has been percolating for about a month, but we are sure many more of you are using Web 2.0 in a Library 2.0 context. Rhastings asked the WebJunction community:

“What library websites have you all seen that incorporate the features and applications of Web 2.0 in a really innovative way?”

We’d love to see your work, sites you come across, or even hear about your future plans! Please respond to this question in the discussion boards or here, in the blog, as a comment.

If you’ve got a question you want to ask the WebJunction community or you see a good question coming in, please post it in the Question of the Week topic.

This month we are trying an experiment with our long-running “I’m Curious George” column. As regular readers know, George’s pieces can often inspire reflection and occasionally lend themselves to group discussion. To facilitate such discussion we are posting the entire column here at BlogJunction. We’re optimistic that the “I’m Curious, George community will engage in a conversation right here in the blog comments. If this proves successful, look for more of our regular features published in BlogJunction. If it bombs, well, this is the web and we are supposed to try new things, right?

E-books Kindle Buzz

by George Needham

Dear George: When I was young, “kindle” was how we started a fire in the fireplace. Now, I see the name has been appropriated for yet another electronic book reader. I’m curious, George: What is it about e-books and e-book readers that make techies salivate? Don’t they realize that the good old paper book is the best possible technology for carrying information?-Passionate about Paper in Poughkeepsie

Dear 3P:

Before I address your question, full disclosure: E-content provider NetLibrary and WebJunction are both part of OCLC, and I work for OCLC. Second, I have a Kindle on order from Amazon for my personal use and to use in the workshops I teach. Finally, everything stated below is my personal opinion and not the opinion of OCLC or NetLibrary or WebJunction or the commissioner of professional football or the studio producing the movie contained herein.

That being said, many years ago I attended one of the first Public Library Association conferences where the keynote speaker was science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. He talked about writing a story in which he needed a high-tech device that was easy to produce on a mass scale, fairly indestructible, and compact, and that could hold vast amounts of information. Then, he said, he realized it had already been invented: it was the book.

“Wikipedia lists two dozen formats in its comparison of e-books, and that doesn’t even include Kindle. It seems that the woods are littered with dead e-book readers.”

Since that day, your faithful correspondent has watched the rise and fall of a score of electronic reading formats, and there was a time when I would have agreed with you. Wikipedia lists two dozen formats in its comparison of e-books, and that doesn’t even include Kindle. It seems that the woods are littered with dead e-book readers. As one writer said on the flickr site “ebooks kindle amazon” (run by WJ’s own Michael Porter), “The public library I worked at bought a ton of e-books and e-book readers back about, oh 8 years or so ago. A huge flop. I think they’re using them for coasters. Or to hold up bookshelves.”

I looked at several of the earlier technologies and decided they weren’t for me. The flickering screen, the short battery life, the onerous usage restrictions, and the lack of available content were all factors that discouraged me from using e-books.

“I believe we might be at the point where e-books move from techie toy to mainstream product.”

E-books have taken a beating in the courts of library and popular opinion. But one of the few advantages of being older than dirt is that I’ve gained some perspective. There seems to be a pattern to the adoption of these things. When a new technology is introduced, the initial manifestations may be bug-ridden, expensive, highly restricted in operation, and available in limited supply. A few people will become passionate advocates despite the flaws, a few people will become passionate adversaries despite the potential, and the vast majority of people will be blissfully unaffected. Slowly, the new technology may improve and become more acceptable to the vast middle group by coming down in price, becoming more dependable, and improving functionality. If it doesn’t, it disappears into the sunset, rightfully.

I believe we might be at the point where e-books move from techie toy to mainstream product. The E Ink has greatly improved readability of the electronic page. The battery life on the new readers is much longer than its predecessors. Amazon already has nearly 100,000 titles available for the Kindle, along with magazines, newspapers, and blogs. Are there huge holes in the offerings? Of course. Will I trash my personal collection of thousands of books in favor of replacing everything with digital surrogates? No.

But it strikes me that e-books could have a huge positive impact in several ways. First, there is inordinate waste in the current production of paper books, magazines, and newspapers. Millions of these items are printed and pulped every year without ever being read. Millions more clog landfills after they’ve served their purposes. E-books take this inherent inefficiency and environmental damage out of the system.

E-books could be a very effective distribution mechanism for high-demand items. I certainly would have preferred to put in my order for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and have it delivered directly to a Kindle than waiting in line at midnight at the local superstore to buy it. it would have also weighed about a quarter as much as the paper version.

“Another positive impact could be the e-book reader as a possible delivery tool for textbooks.”

E-books might make it possible for iconoclastic authors with views outside the mainstream of any publishing house to make their views known to a wider audience, and even make a living at it. This could, possibly, help keep the huge communications conglomerates from limiting access to the marketplace of ideas.

Another positive impact could be the e-book reader as a possible delivery tool for textbooks. When I see my grandson lugging a backpack full of textbooks home from school each night, I wish that he could have just loaded all that material to a 10-ounce reader and saved his back. It would also be possible to keep e-textbooks up to date on an e-book reader, something that’s not an option with paper books.

Despite this screed, I’m not totally sold on e-books yet. I need to start using my Kindle to know if it’s going to be something I can’t live without, like my iPod, or a tchotchke that sits on my desk and doesn’t get used, like my digital picture frame!

So all I ask is that you keep an open mind, 3P, and don’t write the technology off just because the early versions are clunky. That’s my beef with the gentleman who posted about the library that bought e-book readers eight years ago: a lot has happened in the intervening eight years! We don’t base our decisions on buying a car today on the shortcomings of the 1903 Stanley Steamer, do we?

Want a second opinion? Read William Lund’s of Brigham Young University review of the Kindle e-book reader.

I started a week’s vacation on Monday. I’m taking some time for a ‘writing retreat’ so that I can make my next deadline (Nov 1 - ahhh!) for the infamous book I’m writing about libraries and community building.

Serendipitous it was then that the new OCLC report on sharing, privacy, trust, and social networking was published online here (in pdf) on Monday. It’s perfect timing because it has such relevance to that ‘other’ work.

But because it also has such absolute relevance to my work at OCLC and with WebJunction, I couldn’t help but pop in here and say ‘hey! you should read this!’ and invite everyone over to my other blog for early thoughts and highlights. As I say over there, there’s more to come, I’m sure, as we dig into all those juicy details.

Back to vacation — very much looking forward to seeing some of you at Internet Librarian next week, BTW. If you’re gonna be there and want to connect, my profile and schedule is up on the IL wiki (as are those of some other WJ friends you may want to connect with).

Thanks! Stephanie Gerding, author of The Accidental Technology Trainer

Top 10 Training Tips from Today:

• Respect your participants
• Use activities
• Provide info in short bites
• Letting them DO more
• Train the Trainers
• Provide candy
• Reminder that the beginning and the end are the most important — make more beginnings and endings
• Give them an experience
• Patience is important
• Team teach when possible
• Keeping their attention, by making it fun
• Remember smokers…they may need to break more often…
• Don’t overdo the content
• Learning is not consumption but creation
• I like someone’s suggestion of partnering people of different skill levels
• Providing time for them to work independently
• Have structured and independent work on computer class
• Action plans
• Snowball fight exercise…great fun idea
• Let your participants do more — you just give backup at a certain point
• Begin and end strong and memorable
• Hands on is key
• Give them something to create so they leave with an example
• Mixing up the activities - lecture + activities
• Use humor to help keep the atmosphere relaxed.
• Variety, variety, variety!
• Polls
• Be flexible
• Make the classes smaller rather than larger.
• Laughter is a great motivator
• Find out participants expectations at the outset
• Get feedback!
• Immediately useful take-aways, professional or personal
• Let participants know they can request breaks
• Peer tutor
• Give time for independent learning and reflection
• Drawing
• Have them paraphrase what you have said.
• Positive Reinforcement
• Whoever is doing the talking is doing the learning.
• Allow time for practice
• Info they can take with them
• Allow plenty of time
• If available, guest speakers break the monotony
• Don’t try to cover too much material
• Certificates at the end for participants
• Tell them what you’ll teach, teach, tell them what you taught

No matter what type of library you work in or what kind of training you do, join our learning community to share tips and advice.

Compliments of the publisher, InfoToday, we will give away 5 copies of the book during the webinar. You just need to pre-register and then join the webinar to be included in the drawing. Over 100! people have registered, some who are new trainers and some with lots of experience, and I look forward to sharing and learning with everyone.

The Accidental Technology Trainer
October 17, 11 AM – 12 PM PT / 2 – 3 PM ET
Free via WebJunction’s Live Space
Register here (optional)

I’ll be back with more posts to keep the conversation going. Feel free to leave your comments and question here, before or after the session!

More soon,

Stephanie Gerding
Photo outside her home in sunny Phoenix where everything is in bloom

While registration for this free webinar is not required, we invite you to enter a drawing to receive a copy of Stephanie’s new book, The Accidental Technology Trainer: A Guide for Libraries, by registering through the WebJunction Calendar of Events. We are looking forward to hosting a fun and informative presentation and hope to *see* you there!

The Accidental Technology Trainer
October 17, 11 AM – 12 PM PT / 2 – 3 PM ET
Free via WebJunction’s Live Space
Register here (optional)

Anyway, one of the projects I’m working on (with my colleagues here at the WJ, including ‘my’ librarian) is gathering some basic info about librarians in the US. Who are we? What do we do? Where do we work? How many of us are there? Frankly, though I don’t often come right out and say it, I’m generally not all that interested in numbers, but this project proved to be pretty interesting and so I thought I’d share some of our findings:

Two ideas emerge from these stats. First, if the bulk of retiring librarians is at the director level, who will the profession promote to those positions? Even if the post-MLIS force keeps up with retirees, will they be ready for the positions they’re asked to fill? Second, if MLIS students are increasingly moving into non-traditional environments instead of taking traditional positions in public, school, academic or other types of libraries, where does that leave us institutionally?

I’d like to append to these facts and figures with an impression that has developed for me through conversation with colleagues over the last several years. Some of my friends in LibraryLand, many of whom are extremely innovative, ambitious, and eager to contribute to the profession, are often struggling in their library jobs. They seem unsupported by their institutions, sometimes specifically by their library directors and senior colleagues. Age, along with tech savvy or advocacy and a shift towards community-based authority or expertise layers in additional divisive factors, sometimes widening the gap between ‘us’ and ‘them’. I have personally benefited from relationships and mentoring with elders in our field - I won’t call them traditionalists! - as well as from very strong institutional support from my employer for my work. But I’m wondering if there’s a way to shift our culture as a profession so that my experiences along these lines are more of a norm, rather than an exception.

And so, how can we bridge these gaps in our daily work? Can we create inter-generational or inter-experiential dialog and (two-way) mentoring so that the library profession, and our institutions, can thrive (not just survive) in the midst of this particular change?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to approach this. At least two projects in the works so far! Stay tuned…