Posts

Posted on

Participatory Version of Tech Brief

So, it has been a long summer. Sorry fort he delay in news. I’m just starting my sabbatical, so I had to get a lot of stuff out of the way first. Much more news should now be coming, starting with:

We’ve now put up a new participatory version of the technology draft “Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation.” As you may recall we had a home grown version up before based on the if:book project. Now they have released their software open source, so we are using that for the participatory version. Please play around with it.

Posted on

Librarians Invade the Boards

This is too cool:

From http://answerboards.wetpaint.com/page/Slam+the+Boards%21?t=anon

Slam the Boards!

Librarians invade the “Answer” sites
Monday, 9/10/07–All Day
Supporting Wiki: http://answerboards.wetpaint.com
I’d like to invite any and all interested librarians to be a little bold and have a little fun by going to online “Answer” sites, such as:

* Yahoo Answers
* Amazon’s Askville
* The WikiPedia Reference Desk

(see a list of others at http://answerboards.wetpaint.com/page/Registry+of+Answer+Boards?mail=1127)

Once there, let’s answer!

I envision a day-long answer fest. Answer as many questions as you feel you can. 5…10…20…you decide. Just try to do what we do well–provide answers from authoritative resources.

…and then MARKET!

This means making it clear that this question was answered by a librarian/library professional/etc. End each answer with the mention your own library, your VR service, etc. Add the link. Mention that readers should consider their own libraries, too. Promote it to local media. Keep in mind how many people don’t even realize that libraries offer reference services. Let’s surprise and delight them with our quality.

I’d like hundreds of librarians to do this. Thousands? Why not?

Be clear…you’ll almost certainly be helping patrons who aren’t yours, but I see this as an opportunity to make the reference librarian community more visible. I’d like to see a number of us remain engaged in the answer services, on the chance that the users will have us in the backs of their minds when they have questions they don’t want everyone to see. As such, I’m not expecting to see a huge “blip” in our reference/VR stats because of this. But who knows?
The point is to meet some folks where they otherwise wouldn’t expect us.

What to do next?

First of all, pass this message along to anyone who might remotely be interested.
Second, this is a very informal “action,” so you can just mark the date and start answering, but you may also want to visit the Wiki and put your name up as a participant: http://answerboards.wetpaint.com/page/Participating+Librarians. I’m very lonely there right now!
While you’re on the wiki, share. Think of good marketing “tags,” signatures, etc. that we can use.
Most of all, visit the various answer sites, see if you need to set up an account. Try answering a few questions. A couple of us have already done this and we’ve already got a few “Best Answers” under our belts. See the “Exemplary Answers” section of the Wiki. Post one if you’ve got one!
Then, on September 10, get ready to “Slam the Boards!”
–Bill Pardue

Posted on

Raymond von Dran, 1946-2007


If you haven’t heard the news, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you. Today Ray von Dran, Dean of Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies died. It was quite sudden, and quite a shock. In the coming days there will be stories, remembrances and accolades remembering a man who made such a difference in our lives and the field. Tonight, however, there is only great sadness.

When my father passed away he was surrounded by friends and family. The room was filled with equal parts laughter and tears. It was then I realized that the amount of sadness we feel at a person’s death is equal to the joy the brought into our lives. With Ray, there will be a great deal of laughter and grief. In many ways, when my father died, Ray von Dran stepped in.

Good bye Ray. I can never thank you for all you did for me. You shall be long remembered.

Posted on

Conversations

Yesterday (a day late…sue me I got a new iPhone and had to play) we changed the Participatory Networks tech brief page to a participatory librarianship test bed site. It’s not very interactive…yet. Take a look and get involved. Below is the video introduction for the site posted on YouTube.

Posted on

Has Dave Abandoned Virtual Reference?

I was asked several times at ALA this past week if I had abandoned virtual reference? Was virtual reference passe? Is it dying? Do I think “been there, done that?” In a word — no. I remain an advocate for virtual reference and there are still a few virtual reference related publication in the pipeline. I take some pride in seeing virtual reference deployed widely and seeing the whole field of reference coming out of the 50% rule doldrums and into some really innovative research and development. However, I am certainly not devoting as much of my research time to the topic.

This is for lots of reasons, not least of which is there is now an active community doing brilliant research in the area so I can focus on new implications and practices in librarianship. When I started writing about digital reference, it was a pretty lonely field. Now with folks like Marie Radford, Jeff Pomerantz, Lynn Connaway, and Lynn Westbrook (among many others) it is an active field. I feel like I can learn from them while I seek new implications of how expertise and human interactions fit into information systems. Couple this with real deployment and development from folks like Caleb Tucker-Raymond, Dynex/Sirsi, Tutor.com and there exists a real marketplace of ideas.

The reality is also that my current work in participatory librarianship is just the current place my overarching research has taken me. Starting with AskERIC on how you build a digital library that begot the Gateway to Educational Materials to deepen the investigation into how you organize digital library resources (and metadata and the like). It also begot (love that word) the Virtual Reference Desk into how people provide expertise online. All of this work lead up to the power of conversations… that is the primacy of context in sharing information and the necessity of discourse. This of course lead to my current work in participatory librarianship. In many ways, this is taking what I learned in virtual reference (including on digital reference knowledge bases) and projects it out to the library as a whole.

For those who remember the last VRD conference in San Francisco we rolled out Story Starters and OpenQA that used blogging as a social means of providing reference service. This work itself came from Reference Extract, a search engine based on reference citations. These projects came out of my work in credibility, that was an examination of how users can believe the information they get from reference or in general. Even my more theoretical focus in the participatory world comes from an attempt to better conceptually integrate reference and other functions of the library.

So have I abandoned reference? No. I want to take what we all learned in virtual reference and play it throughout the rest of the library world. Remember, at heart I’m a systems guy, meaning I always want to see how all of these pieces (reference, metadata, archives, etc.) fit together, and what can we get out of novel combinations.

So keep up the good work in virtual reference. Call me when you need me, I still consider myself one of you. I also invite you to be active in the new participatory library world.

Posted on

Buckle Your Seat Belts

We are doing some rearranging/upgrading of our servers at the Institute tomorrow (Thursday June 28th). This includes the machine I host my site on (quartz…upgrading from a G5 Apple XServe to a Power Mac in case you care). Hopefully by the end of the day all will be back to normal. Just hold your breath.