LITA National Forum 2011: Practically Minded
By David Rapp Oct 5, 2011Rarely has a conference subtitle been as apt as at this year's 14th Annual LITA (Library & Information Technology Association) National Forum: "Rivers of Data, Currents of Change." The roiling tech landscape for both public and academic libraries—from the rise of the ebook to the uses of cloud-based computing and beyond—was atop attendees' minds in St. Louis from September 29 to October 2. But for all the tech talk, the most stimulating sessions dealt with people, not programming, and the everyday, practical experience of getting things done with technology in libraries today.
Getting proactive
John Blyberg, a 2006 LJ Mover & Shaker and assistant director for innovation and user experience at Darien Library, CT, kicked off the conference off with something of a pep talk—addressing tech worries, but focusing less on specifics and more on library attitudes and direction.
Blyberg and Darien both have a reputation for leading from the cutting edge of library tech; Blyberg is perhaps best known for his work on SOPAC, the open source catalog interface that he worked on earlier in his career at the Ann Arbor District Library, MI. So it's little surprise that he looks at the storm of new technologies, including ebooks as opportunities, not obstacles. Today, giant media and technology companies like Google are "omnipresent" and "set the pace," he said. They are investing in expensive projects, including library-content-heavy Google Books, because that's the future—and a potential moneymaker. "If you look where the [Google] money's going, that's where we're going," he said. "They're not pumping money into these things for fun."
However, he indicated, it's not enough to simply follow trends. In response to an attendee question, Blyberg pointed out that libraries need to be more proactive when thinking about technology, and strive to be the first to come up with new ideas using library content and infrastructure, instead of having other companies "taking advantage of us."
Library consultant and blogger Karen Coyle, too, in her keynote, saw a drastically changing technological world. "Some people are very apocalyptic about where we are right now," she said. She approaches this not with trepidation but with an eye toward practical solutions. As information becomes more and more digitized, she said, the more necessary it is for libraries to engage not with the library catalog, but with the web, using linked data. From the online version of her keynote:
Use is an information activity; and users need to interact with resources during use. These are the services we need to support. We will support them partially with data from the catalog, but we will also use data from the web—because we will be of the Web. If a user asks a question, we can answer it using any resources we like. Linked data will help us get there, but not because OUR data has the answers—it will help us get there because we will be on the Web. Our data will play a role because it will connect users with resources managed by the library. But the library catalog needs to be a back-room database; the ugly stuff that keeps track of what parts of the information universe the library actually HAS, but not the only part of the information universe that the library can interact with.
New contexts
Despite the keynoters' calls-to-arms, however, several sessions focused less on fostering up-to-the-minute innovation and more about making use of existing technologies—for example, how QR codes or Google Apps can effectively be used in a library context.
Others eyed new refinements. For example, one session detailed the Seattle Public Library's experiences with its custom-made Boopsie mobile app, which has added several new features over the past several months, including OverDrive ebook integration. Another session covered the development of Emma, the "catbot" on the website of the Mentor Public Library, Mentor, OH—a stylish spin on the automated "chatbot" to answer patron questions.
In many cases, the message was less about the technology itself than about using existing ideas in new contexts. A prime example of this was a popular session by Margaret Heller, web services librarian at Dominican University, River Forest, IL, about the Read/Write Library (formerly known as the Chicago Underground Library), an experimental archive of Chicago's independent and small-press media. The library allows anyone, librarian or not, to help catalog and create metadata, encouraging commenting and tagging. It's a different approach to cataloging, to be sure, and takes several cues from social media and recontextualizes them-and goes far beyond an Amazon-like "star rating" system. The session later won the voter-selected "Risky Business" prize at the close of the conference. (The text and slides of this session, and others, are available as PDFs on ALA Connect.)
Heads in the cloud
Cloud-based services were also a popular topic. One session from Pepperdine University's Michael Dula and Grace Ye plumbed that school's implementation of OCLC's much-discussed Web-scale Management Services. But the most interesting session on the cloud that LJ saw was one by Edward Corrado, the director of library technology at Binghamton University, NY, and Heather Lea Moulaison, assistant professor at the University of Missouri's School of Information Science & Learning Technologies, which centered on the more practical issues of working with cloud-based services—and, more specifically, cloud-providing companies.
Corrado spelled out brass-tacks considerations in his presentation-hard questions that a library tech person should ask. For example, when a library stores data with a cloud-based service, what rights does the library vendor have to that data? If a contract with a provider ends, how, and in what format, can a library get its data back? What happens if a provider goes out of business?
Corrado and Moulaison listed the top ten things to take away about cloud computing in a library context-a sort of Cliffs Notes primer for any library considering moving to such a service. (The list, they said, came out of a recent European Library Automation Group conference.):
1. Understand what you are moving to the cloud.
2. Separate fact from hype.
3. Understand local legal requirements.
4. Understand the costs of moving to the cloud.
5. Find a cloud provider you can trust.
6. Articulate requirements clearly.
7. Understand your SLA (service-level agreement).
8. Get a lawyer involved.
9. Have a plan for freed resources (both funds and staff).
10. Have an exit strategy. (On this last point, Corrado asked the crowd, "How many people have the same ILS [integrated library system] that they had in 1970? No one. Eventually you're going to move.")
Telling stories
One late session crystallized the overall trend toward pragmatism at the conference. In it, Erin White, web applications developer at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), Richmond, VA, talked about her experience dealing with administration when she wanted to implement a new discovery system at the VCU library. She related the many steps in developing a project—stressing the need to spell out the necessity of a project to administration, and to ask for input from staff throughout the library.
But when White invited attendees to share their own tips,she illustrated the true benefit of a library-tech conference: real-world information that attendees can bring back to their own institutions. Much of the advice was simple, but tested by experience: one audience member said not to be a "slave to the urgent," and institute a ticketing system for IT issues to better allocate staff members' time; another spoke of the importance of estimating the ongoing cost of maintenance when putting together a project.
One stressed the need to "publicize your wins" when a project goes live—something that's not instinctual for many tech workers, as projects are often ongoing, and those in the trenches often know how much more work lies ahead.
