TechEssence.info

I’ve taken a couple of weeks to mull over a comment I heard recently. Earlier this month, I spoke to a group of academic librarians, mostly non-techies, about how well we deliver our search services to a user population that has literally grown up with Google, Yahoo, and Amazon.

The current discussion over technology not working as hoped during ALA's Library 2.0 BootCamp gives me to ponder over how best to react when a technology fails or underperforms. Certainly, all due diligence should be performed so that technologies don't fail—but look, sometimes they will; they're created by humans, and humans are imperfect.

How does a library best recover from a technology failure?

I received in the mail today my very own copy of Rachel Singer Gordon's newest book, The Nextgen Librarian's Survival Guide. I've read the introduction and poked through a few other chapters, and I'm fascinated. The book is intended to provide much-needed information on preparing for and being a librarian to GenX and GenY-ers in library school, in the library job market, or just starting out in the librarian profession. I'm in the latter group - I'm finishing up my second year as a librarian, although I've been working in digital libraries for almost six years now. So what am I doing talking about this on a blog for library administrators thinking about technology decisions?

When I was a young adult, and dabbling in college while working, a close friend came home one evening and said she was blowing off a college paper that was due the next day. No you’re not, I said, and I insisted that she write it while I typed it (yes, this was before personal computers). Page by page, as she finished writing I snatched it from her hands and edited as I typed. We finished early in the morning. She got a C, which is still much better than an F.

Executive Summary

Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) is a conceptual model of the bibliographic universe outlined in a 1998 report from the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). The report uses entity-relationship analysis to “provide a clearly defined, structured framework for relating the data that are recorded in bibliographic records to the needs of the users of those records.” (FRBR Report, p. 7) The most influential parts of the FRBR report are the definitions of user tasks and bibliographic entities.

As anticipated, earlier this week the International Standards Organization approved the OpenDocument Format for retrieving and exchanging documents. The impetus to move to an open standard has come from governments, archivists, and librarians concerned about the storage and use of longtime proprietary document file formats such as MS Office documents and pdf files.

Meredith's excellent post about acquiring staff buy-in caused a commenter to raise a related question: how to get buy-in from the higher rungs of the ladder.

As with anything, there's no one foolproof way. Evaluate any strategy suggested in light of what you know about your library's administration. That said, here are a few things that have worked for me and folks I know.

Back in the "what shall we write about?" post, we were asked about large-scale website redesign, as well as research portals and pathfinder/research-guide management.

The latest issue (24:1, 2006) of Library Hi-Tech just got routed to me, and lo and behold, it's a theme issue on web content-management systems! An article of particular interest may be Goans, Leach, and Vogel, "Beyond HTML: developing and re-imagining library web guides in a content management system."

I'll be reading the whole thing—I hope the heads-up is useful to others as well!

Executive Summary

RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification. It is a wireless technology used by libraries in place of bar codes. Approximately 300 libraries in the U.S. use RFID systems but many more are considering implementation in the next few years.
High prices for tags, lack of standards (which would make tags interoperable between systems), and privacy concerns are among the most commonly listed reasons that most libraries have not yet converted from bar codes to RFID.

So you may be all gung-ho about a new technology you've read about and really want to implement in your library. You're sure it will benefit your patrons a great deal. However, it is likely that it's your staff who will be doing the heavy lifting of implementing the technology, marketing it and making it successful. And if they aren't as committed to this technology as you are, they likely will not be as committed to its successful implementation. The key to the success of any new technology is an enthusiastic and committed staff. As an administrator, it falls on your shoulders to build up that enthusiasm. Here are some tips that will help to ensure staff buy-in: