http://www.oclc.org/uk/en/nextspace/014/librarystatistics.htm

Yup, that is about 1,300 pages of my next book going into the mail (don’t worry, it is all double spaced and big margins for editing – the final book will be much smaller). More on the book (and how it fits into a larger project) later.

For now, I’d like to just take a moment to apologize to my family for a year staring at the back of my head.

What makes me nervous about iBooks, the new eBook app from Apple targeted for their iPad, is not what you might expect. DRM, cost models doesn’t worry me. These are mostly imposed by the publishers, and we saw how this played out in music and MP3’s. It is certainly not that eReaders or the move away from physical books in some way endangers the future of the library. Libraries are about knowledge and facilitation, not artifacts and stuff.

No, what worries me about iBooks is that it is so damn boring. I actually found myself angry and disappointed after the big iPad announcement. I expected so much more. I was a little apprehensive about posting these thoughts because I haven’t actually seen the iBooks software. So for all I know, everything I am about to say is there, but there just wasn’t enough time to talk about them. So if that is the case, Apple, my bad. If not, what were you thinking?!

You have a reputation for reinventing things. The iPod, iPhone, etc were amazing because they did things I always wanted and didn’t know, or they did something I had been doing, and suddenly realized there was a much better way. Cool.

So ebooks… apparently I was missing color and a really cool page turning animation? Really? I still look at the promo video and say to myself, it is like watching a video of someone reading a hardcover book, and calling it digital. I can buy a book with a click of button and download it in real time. Cool, and then it goes on, wait for it, a little wooden bookshelf that can’t show more than 15 or so books? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell me there is more there.

Here’s where talking with a librarian would help. First, we understand that books are inherently social things (to be precise the act of reading, not the books themselves). We pick the next book based on recommendations, or from talking with other folks. Also, we pass them around to stimulate discussions. We highlight them for ourselves and for others. Librarians also understand that you need to arrange these books by something more than title. This is not about Dewey and classifications, it is about people and their bookshelves. I put science fiction together, sure, but I also put together a bunch of books and papers together that I’m reading for a class.

Pardon my bluntness, but after a few centuries can we just go ahead and say that there are better ways to organize books than book shelves!

Also, as an author I am trying to stimulate conversations with my books. These may be conversations within the reader, and/or with a community. What excites me about ebooks is not that they are easier to carry around, but that they are digital documents. Couple that with a digital network, and now we are talking about reinventing reading.

So what should iBooks look like?

With a ubiquitous network connection, not only could I take notes, but bring them up with cited passages online, and send them to colleagues and friends. Imagine if I could do this in real time. In fact, right now I can look up a word in a dictionary as I am reading, but imagine that I am struggling with a passage beyond a simple definition. I could bring in a colleague in real time to work through my confusion. Not by going home, and then into mail, and blah blah blah, but right there in the “book.”

Imagine reading a book on the iPad, and having a conversations with the author, or friends, or co-workers as you are reading? Imagine a device that was more of a social access mechanism through text than a display reader.

Now, ask yourself, in that environment, is an e-book really a book at all? By turning printed text into 1s and 0s, are we not in fact making a much more profound change? Is an e-journal that allows real time per paragraph commenting and annotating the same thing as a printed journal on a screen?

The answer is no.

When we transform books, journals and traditional documents into a digital sphere, we use the terms “book” and “journal” as metaphors. They are book-like, or journal-like. It took centuries for the book as we know it to evolve. Introduction of things like titles, tables of contents, page numbers, glossaries, indexes and such emerged as people discovered new technical and use possibilities for the newly mass-produced bound book. Where once the goal of the printer was to mimic the illuminated manuscripts as closely as possible, now we have a whole new beast with its own conventions.

In fact, almost any book you read today (as in 99.999%) is in fact an electronic document that has been bound to paper. Even if an author hand writes (or draws) out their texts, they are transcribed and laid out as digital items. We maintain the physical form for convenience and to perpetuate a business model centered on items with hard boundaries among other reasons.

Why, for example, do I ever have to finish writing my book? I could release it as I am writing it, and continually add to it, edit and prune it. I could open it up for you to do the same. Is it still a book? Why wait for editions when I could use Wiki-style edit histories? Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of reasons to finish the book, and make editions (citations, version control, etc.), but they are now choices, not rules dictated by the medium.

This is the reinvention we need from eBooks, not pretty pages and a new store. We need a community! You want to reinvent reading? You want the iPad to truly be a revolutionary third product? See reading for what it truly is, a conversation! A conversation that is supported by a text, but open to communities.

Let me scribble in the margins, and have those scribbles appear in real-time on my friend’s copy. Sure, the color pictures will be great, but IM in the margin would be amazing. Make my next book a sort of bibliocast, where, like podcasts, new episodes are automatically downloaded and synced. And throw away the bookshelf and replace it with a table top where I can make piles of “books” I like, and piles of books I hate, and let me share those piles with my social network.

Give me a way in the new bookstore to put together “course packs” of books and materials tied together with a multimedia lecture and an online discussion. Let me show my friends and my students not only what I am reading, but why, and how they are tied together.

I know, I know, if I feel so strongly, I can just write an app to do it…except I can’t. My Objective C is a little, well, non-existent. You want to rock the world of books, give me a Pages iBooks edition (not Pages I can use on the iPad). Make Pages useful for more than pretty report and stuff to print, and make it easy to author amazing social book experiences. You know what, forget pages and word processors, give me Garage Band iBooks edition. Make writing a book an experience that both releases writers from the tyranny of typesetters and galleys, AND allows the curious amateur to come up with the new thing (reanimate HyperCard as HyperPad and stand back).

I love my eBooks. I read on the Kindle, I read on the iPhone, I had a Sony eBook, and before that a Rocket eBook. I actually prefer eBooks for fiction. The iPad will be great to finally be able to read my professional literature and technical work on (please please please let PDF’s work). But it is time for someone with vision to step up and see what eBooks can become, and it is NOT pretty page animations and a faux wood bookshelf.

I feel better.

Staff and faculty members from the University of Illinois Springfield’s Brookens Library and the Center for Online Learning, Research and Service (COLRS) are teaming up with staff members from the Illinois State Library and other libraries throughout the state for a prestigious new institute that will be one of the most significant Illinois library initiatives of 2010. The institute, called ILEAD (Illinois Libraries Explore, Apply and Discover) U: the 21st Century Technology Tools Institute for Illinois Library Staff, will be comprised of three in-person sessions from February 23 to 25, June 15 to 17 and October 26 to 28 on the UIS campus. The sessions will be supplemented by online instruction between meeting dates.

ILEAD U, funded by a Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program Grant awarded to the Illinois State Library by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, will encourage both the experimentation with and building of participatory Web services and programs. Library educator R. David Lankes of Syracuse University will lead the instructors for the project.

As part of the institute, the UIS participants and their colleagues from other Illinois libraries will implement web technologies that foster community participation and develop leadership, innovation and positive change.

The institute is the brainchild of Anne Craig, director of the Illinois State Library, who has “exceptional vision in seeing a need and conceiving of such an innovative way to meet it,” according to Dean Jane Treadwell, University Librarian at UIS. Treadwell is chairing the steering committee which selected the instructors, mentors and teams of participants and will guide the work of the project.

Other UIS participants include Natalie Tagge, visiting Instructional Services Librarian at Brookens Library, who will serve as a mentor in ILEAD U, and two other Brookens librarians, Pamela M. Salela and Amanda Binder, who will participate in cross-institutional teams that will learn to use participatory technology tools to understand and respond to patron needs.

“We hope to foster a philosophy that technology becomes powerful in libraries when people engage with it critically and thoughtfully,” said Tagge.

Additionally, Ray Schroeder and Shari Smith of the Center for Online Learning, Research and Service are acting as consultants to the instructors for the project, and David Racine of the Institute for Legal, Legislative and Policy Studies will direct the evaluation of the ILEAD U grant.

“We in the Brookens Library and COLRS are very excited to collaborate with the Illinois State Library on this project that has the potential to transform the way that libraries interact with their patrons,” noted Treadwell.

Smith, associate director of COLRS, added, “The ILEAD U grant is an excellent example of why libraries and librarians are uniquely qualified to lead their communities forward to a new knowledge society. The grant has been carefully crafted to include cutting-edge technology, careful assessment and evaluation, location-specific consideration and stakeholders from around the state.”

Participatory technology tools will include:
Blogging tools
Digital audio/podcasting, photography and video
RSS feeds
Social networking and photo-sharing sites
Videoconferencing and web conferencing
Virtual reference and virtual worlds (ie. Second Life)
Gaming
Instant messaging
And more

“The Illinois State Library is proud of its strong commitment to continuing education and providing librarians with the tools and resources necessary to address the ever-changing needs of their patrons,” said Secretary of State and State Librarian Jesse White. “Nowhere is the need for continuing education more important than in the area of technology. Librarians need to constantly enhance their skills to keep up to date with the latest technology, and ILEAD U represents an exciting, innovative new program to build technology and leadership skills among Illinois librarians.”

I have changed my homepage (if you are just reading my blog you probably didn’t notice). Why? Well my former website was a hybrid site for both my professional work, and the area of participatory librarianship. Participatory librarianship, or new librarianship as I am now calling it, has grown beyond my personal agenda. Also, the Participatory Librarianship Starter Kit site is about to go under a pretty major transformation with the upcoming Atlas of New Librarianship (more on that in the months to come). It seemed like a good time to divide things.

So if you are looking for articles, presentations, and ideas on participatory or new librarianship, go to http://ptbed.org. Want stuff on me including my presentations, articles, and such: http://www.DavidLankes.org. No need to change RSS feeds.

Also, I’m changing the “Participatory”category on my blog to New/Participatory Librarianship.”

Let me know what you think.

Worse still our constant use of the library as a sort of “royal we” leads those outside of the library field to see the library as a place and collection, not a group of expertise, people, and a mission. This makes it all too easy to cut it, or stereotype it, or even ignore it. We need to take back the language, and force ourselves and our communities to realize that it is all about librarians and their skills, not buildings and collections.

A simple shift in our language use, librarians instead of library (the librarians of X University, or the librarian of X city) can have an impact on our community’s and our own perceptions. Sure we use words like hospital or law practice as a normal aggregation. But no one thinks you go to the hospital to get well because of the walls – it is because of the doctors. Law firms don’t help us because they have an outstanding collection of law books. But that is what we perpetuate in our own language and marketing with the library. Go to the library to lose yourself in books, or to get free stuff.

If we want people to appreciate our efforts (our communities, our bosses, even our colleagues) we need to start giving credit where credit is due. You are the library. I am the library. The library is a place of knowledge, and knowledge is active and human and conversation. Andrew Carnegie said it best:

Take away my people, but leave my factories, and soon grass will grow on the factory floors. Take away my factories, but leave my people, and soon we will have a new and better factory.

So my resolution for the New Year is to make it the year of the librarian. To put a face on the building and the services. To take credit, and make sure my community knows me. My resolution for the New Year is to make a brighter future for librarians, and in doing so, making a brighter future for my community. My resolution for the New Year has a name – it is Karen, and Nicholette, and Joe, and Jeff, and Paula…

Those selected will get a full ride at SU for the LIS program (including a stipend) as well as mentoring by Cornell science librarians, money for travel, and a paid summer internship.

Take a look!

Sherlock Holmes is called in to investigate a murder. After examining the scene Holmes announces that the killer was a librarian.

“However the real give away is that after the victim was killed the murderer dragged his body over to the toilet and wrote on the body ‘can you find the bathroom now?! can you find the bathroom now?!”

Not a big deal, and hopefully easier, just wanted to let you know. I’ve gone back and made the format changes to previous presentation as well. Hopefully it will make it easier to find everything.

Abstract: The best days of librarianship are ahead of us. However, to get there the field must step back, refocus, and reexamine our core principles. We as a profession have become so focused on the trees of standards and process that we are now at risk from missing the larger forest of opportunities. This talk will present a view of a new librarianship, one focused on knowledge and action instead of artifacts and collection. The presentation will look beyond the trends of today’s technologies to a durable new librarianship that focuses on innovation, leadership, and service.
Slides: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/Presentations/2009/Charleston.pdf
Audio: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/pod/2009/charleston09.mp3

Screencast:

A few hours later the director decided to walk the building and get a sense of moral among her staff. In rare books area she saw a group of librarians busily scanning books. “What are you scanning all of those books?” the director asked.

“We’re trying to increase the digital collection of the library so we can put a lot of great content on the website and make it more appealing to potential students.”

The director went to the acquisition area and saw the librarians surfing Amazon. “What are you doing?” asked the director.

“We are looking to see if we can save money by buying directly from online retailers.”

Finally the director went to the first floor where se saw the reference librarians pulling books off the shelf, tearing off the covers, and then randomly replacing them.

“WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT?” cried the director.

“Job security”

Sarah talks with Dr. R. David Lankes, Associate Professor and Director of the Information Institute of Syracuse School of Information Studies at Syracuse University about the concept of participatory librarianship. They also discuss the mission of a librarian, learning as conversation, and the four major ways of facilitating knowledge and information.

http://www.librarybeat.org/longshots/play/191

Abstract: This presentation examines work to redefine librarianship not as a set of functions, or skills, but as a deeper mission rooted in how people learn and use knowledge.
Slides: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/Presentations/2009/RealSweden.pdf
Audio: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/pod/2009/Sweden.mp3

Screencast:

So Albert Einstein goes to a party. The host is keen to show off the world-famous physicist to his friends so he escorts Einstein around, introducing him.

The first guest asks Einstein, “So what is it you do Albert?”

Einstein replies, “I seek to understand time.”

“Wow,” says the guest, “We’re in the same business. I sell watches.”

The host introduces him to the second guest who asks, “So Albert, what is it you do?”

Einstein, trying to impress, replies, “I seek to understand how all the planets and stars in heaven move about the universe.”

“Wow,” says the second guest, “We’re in the same line of work. I build telescopes.”

A third guest asks Einstein, “What is it you do?’

To which Einstein replies, “I have discovered that light, magnetism, and electricity are all the same force.”

“Wow,” says the third guest, “We’re in the same business. I repair TVs!”

The host takes a now depressed and exasperated Einstein to meet a fourth guest.

“What is it you do Albert?” asks the fourth guest.

Now completely deflated Einstein says, “Nothing. I don’t sell anything. I don’t build anything. I can’t even repair anything. I’m useless.”

“Wow,” says the fourth guest, “I’m a tenured professor too!”

So God calls a meeting, and to this meeting he invites Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern classification (he’s the guy who gave out all the latin names we had to memorize in biology), Melvil Dewey, and Penny a rural library director who had just passed away the week before.

God says, “Well I’ve done it. I’ve called the rapture and brought up all the souls from Earth for judgement. In fact they’re all behind that door over there. The problem is, when I came up with this plan there were a lot fewer people on Earth – like two – and you folks have been busy. There are now a couple billion souls in that room and I need some help in sorting the saved from the damned.”

“No problem,” says Linnaeus who stride confidently through the door.

An hour goes by, then two, then 5. Finally at 7 hours Linnaeus crawls back out of the door. His cloths are torn and he is clearly shaken.

“I couldn’t do it.” He says. “I was doing OK until I came upon a goth Japanese teenager and I ran out of Latin. It can’t be done.”

“I’m on it,” says Dewey who strides confidently through the door.

An hour goes by, then two, then three. Finally, 8 hours later Dewey crawls out of the door covered in sweat.

“It can’t be done! I had all the Christian denominations all sorted out, then I ran into a Jewish family and a couple of Muslims and I ran out of numbers.”

Upon hearing this, Penny turns on her heals, marches through the door, and one minute later walks back out “Done,” she says.

“That’s great,” says God. “But how did you do it?”

“I just asked everyone who had ever voted to increase library funding to raise their hands and told the rest they could go to hell.”

Abstract: The mission of librarians is to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities. Through service, innovation, and leadership, librarians facilitate conversations in schools, communities, colleges, government, businesses, and beyond. It is this act of facilitation of knowledge in partnership with communities that makes a library, not collections, blogs, catalogs, or ivy on walls. This is the central premise of participatory librarianship. This discussion will explore the new role of librarians as a passionate and powerful force focused on the social good.
Slides: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/Presentations/2009/NNYLN.pdf
Audio: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/pod/2009/NNYL.mp3

Screencast:

Abstract: An argument for taking a step back and reconceptualizing librarianship through conversation.
Slides: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/Presentations/2009/Lansing.pdf
Audio: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/pod/2009/MichiganLansing.mp3
Lecture Notes: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/Presentations/2009/LansingNotes.html

Screencast:

To me this video is about a lot of things, but one that may not jump immediately to mind is information organization. I gave a talk at the last ALA on the Death of Documents. Part of that argument is that more and more of the data folks are going to use/create/look for is not bound and static like our current perceptions of documents.

Take a look at what these folks have down. They have mashed up (mind you with some very high-level programing) all sorts of geospatially encoded data (video, maps, etc) and even added real time interpolation (i.e., not all the data being shown is “real” data – some of it is simulated), to create a fascinating (and slightly creepy) information space for folks to navigate.

Does it make sense to put this in that catalog? How would you even do it? Not the paper they are presenting, but the actual system.

As librarians we must greatly broaden our concepts of the services we provide, and how we organize them. One could imagine a transportation library where this is the primary interface for members. Add to this real time world links to planning and environmental data (click on that road, up comes the construction records – click on that bridge and access the inspection schedule).

Anyway, plenty to think about.

Things will be picking up in the next few weeks. I’m still here, and really cool stuff is happening. Stay tuned.

If you subscribe to this in iTunes or any podcasting tool you will still get all my presentations and screencasts. Please update your feed readers (note just if you subscribed to just the podcast one). If you are reading this, then you have the right link already.

Slides: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/Presentations/2009/CTChange.pdf
Audio: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/pod/2009/CtChange.mp3

Screencast: