TechEssence.info

I was asked for permission, which I happily provided, to republish my "Top Ten Things Library Administrators Should Know About Technology" list in the "Librarian's Book of Lists".

The book is now out, and although it is a small little volume it is kind of fun. Lists range from "How to say “Where is the library?” in 50 different languages" to "Top 12 silly reasons to ban a book" and many other places in between or beyond.

I was recently asked by Blake Carver, of LIShost, to answer a few questions for an upcoming presentation he was making. I thought that my answer might be interesting to others, so I'm reposting it here. He asked me what is in my "toolbox" (online and offline) that helps me do the following things:

1) Be more productive

This is an interesting and tricky question. I can answer for myself, but in
classic style I will have to say that "your mileage may vary" -- in fact,
I'm fairly certain it will. But I will try to call out those things that are
more broadly applicable.

As someone who is not employed as a programmer, but who has needed enough
technical skills to prototype and develop proof-of-concept services that can
then be re-engineered in a production environment, I've found the following
skills essential:

• Knowledge of a scripting language. I know Perl, but others may suffice as
  

When I was writing my "Top Ten Things Library Administrators Should Know About Technology" I put a message out on Twitter asking for the thoughts of my followers on that topic. And boy, did you ever respond! I decided that it would be worth following up my post with many of the things that my followers said, since as it turned out that I was pretty set on my list and I couldn't by any means include them all. Here you go, and thanks to all who participated!

Vendor solutions still require knowledgeable staff to make them work. A vendor who claims otherwise is lying.

No platform is forever. Ask not only how you'll move onto it, but how you'll move off of it.

It won't solve any of your problems without proper staffing and management policies, which you should allow techies to shape.

Administrators need to know that just because a staff member can support certain tech doesn't mean they can support all tech.

It's not insulting to say that those who run libraries tend not to know all that much about technology. A very different set of skills are needed to run an organization, and those skills do not often come packaged along with technical knowledge and experience. But administrators need to know some specific things about technology in order to do their jobs well, so here is my list:

I recently undertook an analysis of the cost savings (if any) of a client's use of automated checkin. This was an interesting project for me because I wasn't sure how it would turn out. Although I'm a big fan of automated checkin for many reasons, I wasn't sure that it would result in clear cost savings for this particular client because they were already using automation in their central sort operation. The automated central sort system included a tote checkin feature -- this means the receiving library only had to scan a tote (or bin) to checkin all the items in the tote. So, to justify the cost of the AMH equipment installed at the individual library, we had to compare it against another similiar sized library that was pretty darn efficient already.

There was a chance that I would find that the cost of their in-library sorter and the automated checkin system wasn't justified. Wrong.

I've been writing a lot about open source stuff lately, and I find my back getting up everytime I have to refer to Evergreen or Koha as an open source ILS. You see, I think the ILS (Integrated Library System) is exactly what we're trying to get away from with open source products such as Evergreen, Koha, OPALS and (please god) the others that are sure to follow.

So, I propose we let go of the image of the monolithic, tightly integrated (as in immobile and inflexible), closed, proprietary and non-standard ILS when we talk about open source versions of library software. I propose we say Open Source Library Software (OSLS).

Rachel Singer Gordon has launched a site, The Tech Static to "assist librarians with technology-related collection development." A press release about the launch says that the site contains:

* Reviews of current computer books
* Reviews of technology-related titles targeted at librarians
* Collection development articles (weeding, “must-haves,” balancing a computer book collection)
* Prepublication alerts
* Publisher press releases
* DVD and ebook reviews
* Announcements
* … and more!

There are already a number of book reviews of technology books available.

Neil Godfrey recently posted an "INFORMAL Comparison of some institutional repository solutions" that anyone trying to make a platform decision may find useful. You will no doubt need to go much deeper before making a final decision, but at least this may serve as a good summary introduction to what each platform provides.

Also keep in mind that the landscape can be slightly more complicated than depicted here. For example, with the Digital Commons solution from bepress.com, you can easily add a full-featured peer review publication system to your institutional repository. This is something you cannot do with many other IR solutions, including the popular DSpace platform. This distinction is not covered in Godfrey's informal review. But overall it isn't a bad place to start in getting to know the various solutions.

If you haven't seen the new Amazon Windowshop site, you gotta click on over right away. This is where we are going. It's a complete experience. The user has complete control plus it has audio (music and spoken word) AND it includes great CD and book cover images as well as movie clips. Using space bar to get a bigger view of the items grouped together. Click the space bar again to zoom in. It's fun, it looks great and it walks and talks and sings!

Oh, and you can click on stuff to buy it or download it. So, it's simple too.

Now, while you are there...think about this. Imagine that (as you click the right arrow key) you are scrolling through material from your catalog in Dewey order (okay, imagine something even better than Dewey). Using the up arrow key takes you to related material (e.g. "See Also").

I'm thinking this would make a very nice addition to Amazon's Web Services product offering.

The VirtualHosting.com site recently posted an article titled "Test your Website: A 57-Point Checklist for Maximum Usability" that summarizes a number of things to think about, each of which is linked to a different source that discusses that issue in depth. For anyone wanting to make sure their site is up to snuff, it's worth checking this out.

While you're there, you may also want to poke around a bit. Other articles that may be useful to you include "Microformats University" and even "Top 25 (Non-Obvious) Ways RSS Can Make Your Life Easier".

All in all, a site worth keeping your eye on.