I am about as worried about the Amazon Kindle Lending Library  as I would be if a guy set up a box of worn paperbacks outside the library entrance and offered to lend them to people for $ 1 as they where passing by. Sure, some would probably take him up on the offer. But as a threat to the librarian, nah. The Kindle lending library is a way for amazon to try to sweeten an already bad tasting deal. For most americans I think that the Amazon Prime is just a bit too much. Sure, you get free transport of anything you buy, and access to special stuff. But it is a lock-in that in my opinion costs more than it tastes for most people. It is a niche product for already heavy Amazon users. The so called Kindle Library is NOT a library service in any way.

The public library offers something completely different to its community. Something Amazon never can match. Local knowledge, a way longer tail that Amazon, and a commitment to the community.

The conference was one of the best I have ever been to. Greatly due to the wonderful people that you can meet and listen to, but also because of great programming.

One of the best parts of this conference is the conversations you have during breaks and meals. This year I got a chance to sit and talk to Åke Nygren, Michael Stephens, Trude Westby and many others. It is such a priviledge to learn from and share with so many brilliant people.

On the last day I started a conversation with Åke Nygren about a thought that popped into my head during the day. Why do we insist that library members log into library websites with library card number and a pin-code? Why not let them have the option to log in with their Facebook  credentials, OpenID, Google- or Twitter login? I see this option at more and more sites and would like to have this possibility available for my library members as well.

Library cards are useful, for libraries, not for library users. They are an anachronism from the analog days. Why not go the way of Social Login? The ease of use for our websites and services would be greatly increased. The possibilities for communication and services increased.

As we stand today I can see several problems with library cards.

1. They are one-use-cards. They are not useful for any other purpose (except scraping ice off car windows in winter) – other cards usually have multiple purposes today – my bank-card is also an ID, my work identidy card is an ID-card that also opens doors and gives me access to parking.

2. They are just numbers – the library card only function is as a carrier of a barcode that gives the library member number. Why  not use other ID-features, either from other cards already in use (like student ID cards at universities and colleges) or add useful information/functions to the card with smart-card techology? (I believe that DOK is working on this )3. They are easy to forget. Many people do not use the library often enough that they feel the need to carry the card around all the time. Which means that they try to use the library without the card. Usually that ends up beeing frustrating, humiliating or cost money. Bergen Public Library charges 10 NOK (about 1.5 US$) every time you try to check out books without a card.  I do not like this, it is a barrier to a happy relationship between member and library.

So I believe we have two paths to go in the “identify library member” game:

1. Make it easy to use some other means of identification to use library services both online and IRL. Facebook login, use other ID-cards as library card etc.

2. Make the library card more useful and full of added value. The card can be upgraded with memory chips and contain more information, poems, audio clips, special offers or access to “premium services”.

Here is an edited google-translation of a norwegian language blogpost I did on this project:

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That is correct, but stop a minute and think about what a love of reading and books imply.

1. Reading opens the mind. Avid readers are more open to new impressions and have a wider view of the world.

2. Readers can concentrate. In an age where the attention span of most people are on the downswing it is a desirable trait to be able to concentrate and follow a whole novel to the end.

3. Readers are information seekers. If you love reading (or are reading dependent) you have to start looking for new books and authors pretty soon. This leads to reading of reviews, looking at genres and in general developing habits of searching out information about books and authors that are useful in many situations in life and work.

4. Reading is social. This comes as a surprise to most, but think about it. Yes the act of reading itself is solitary, but the minute you have finished a good book, what do you most want to do? Talk about it to anybody willing to listen. We have book clubs, bookblogs, book prizes, author events, literary lunches etc etc… – this is a good thing to have in your portfolio when you applies for a number of jobs. The ability to talk enthusiastically about something is usually a plus when you apply for jobs.

5. Analytical ability. To read you have to decode text and meaning. Pretty useful when you want to understand and learn.

Useful stuff for librarians right? So I have come to the conclusion that I DO want readers as librarians and other staff in my library.

I know that what I have listed are unevenly distributed among readers, but it is only my opinion and experience, not research, so I’ll let it stand:-)

Feel free to argue in the comments.

1. Temple Grandin – The world needs all kinds of minds

I am the parent of a child with Aspergers and ADHD which means that this talk means something to me on a personal level, but it also has a great significance for me as a professional librarian. School and public libraries are often the refuge for children who do not fit in at school and in social settings. Libraries are environments where children on the autism spectrum both get a stable and less impression-rich environment and get to persue their interests with people who accept and enourage information gathering and deep diving. By understanding children with special gifts, librarians can do an even better job at making the library a haven for children and young adults who struggle with everyday life and the demands of social interactions.

P.S. Do get the movie about Temple Grandin in your library! And watch it yourself:-)

2. Sugata Mitra shows how kids teach themselves
An innovative look at how children learn and can teach themselves. From a library perspective this is important. Libraries are doing this every day by putting children and tools together, but we need to understand the processes and needs better to do a better job.

3. Taylor Mali – What teachers make
A great slam poet and one of the really powerful ways of showing what importance teachers (and librarians) have on kids lives. Think about this poem the next time somebody looks down their nose at you for choosing a life of public service and powerful infulence in peoples life instead of a life of money.

4. Sarah Kay: If I should have a daughter …
Another poet. It is amazing how powerful poetry is in this setting. I wonder if all the really booring poetry we read about in school was as powerful when it was written and performed? I wish I was as good as this to make poetry as powerful and alive to the people in my library.

5. Brewster Kahle builds a free digital library
Basically the fundamentals of librarianship in a digital age!

Anyway, I wanted to find out if my blogging frequency would increase if I dropped out of Facebook and Twitter. So I decided to do a small experiment. I would be off Facebook and Twitter for a month, i.e. until my tenth anniversary as a blogger on February 26th. Then I would sum things up in a blogpost and post it on Facebook and Twitter.

First I should say that it was not a total absense of FB in my life. I posted links if there was a “Share on Facebook” button on the page, and I was on FB for the “save libraries day” as well as conference posting from the Bergen Neptune library seminar on February 15th. I also communicated with a few people on Twitter when that was the natural channel.

But the main point for me was to avoid the checking of status updates, the frequent interruptions and the distraction that FB and twitter invites.

I kept a short keyword file for this experience on Evernote and I noticed that the keywords went from negative to postive as time went by. At first my main feeling was one of lonelyness and isolation. I did not know what was happening to my friends and I missed all the cool links and discussions going on. On the plus side was less distractions and more uninterrupted time with my kids. I used my iPad less (is that good or bad mr. Jobs?)

It was more noticeable that I think in “status updates” – when you don´t have a place to post them they keep swirling around in the brain. And “big” things in life feels smaller when they are not shared with others.

When I try to sum this last month up I think that I both came to appreciate the distraction-less time and miss the connectedness that FB and Twitter offers. On balance I think that I will try to be more aware of when and how I use social media and try to limit the time I´m on. But I also learnt the value of the connectedness that social media offers. I see that I get a lot from communicating and just beeing updated.

On the whole I´m not dropping Facebook and Twitter, but it will be easier to take a short break when needed and limit the exposure to social media in my life.

The one thing I did not get, that I hoped for, was more time to blog and more blogposts. I did blog a little more, but less that I expected when I started out on this little experiment.

Now I just have to sum up ten years blogging.

The really curious thing about this book is that I, a forty-seven year old male boringly normal librarian in Norway, can identify so closely with a fifteen year old magic using welsh girl with a bad leg going to a very british boarding school. It helps of course that Mor (short for Morwenna) is fifteen in 1979, the year I turned 16, and discovers Science Fiction literature in much the same way I did, and with the same fierce need that I had. 1979 was not a good year in the world and not a good year for me. Unlike Mor I was pretty well off in the family department, but was ill at ease in school and the rest of the world. Science Fiction literature both helped me make sense of the world and catch a glimpse of a greater side to my own existence than what I saw in a norwegian suburb just before the turn of the decade. 1979 was a year I have avoided thinking about for a long time and at first I was reluctant to revisit this part of my life, but Jo Walton manages to make the whole experience so much more human and understandable than I would have been able to myself. So now I am actually able to look back on this year with a fonder eye than I would have had on my own. Thank You, Jo Walton, for giving me back this period of my life.

The descriptions of the discovering of new books and new authors, reading and discussing Science Fiction resonates really well with how I remember it for myself. This joy of discovery is rarer these days, but I can still experience it, as I do now with Among others (which Cory Doctorow reviews so much more competently than I can).

The other thing  Jo Walton does better than any author I have read, is to  blend magic with the world as we know it. The understated yet immensly vital part of the book that magic plays is in how Morwenna handles the conflict between her everyday life in a world where magic is fiction, and her own use of magic to fight her evil mother and preserve what she loves.

I am unable to do the wonderful language in this book justice, but I want to say that it certainly is a great part of why I now have a new top five book in my life.

The Galaxy tab is in itself a really nice piece of hardware. I like the size (7 inch screen)  which makes it a lot more comfortable   to use in sofa and while standing.   I suspect that there will be moments when I would like a larger screen, but so  far that has not been an issue.

I have an android phone at work and  one privately, so I am familiar with the Android OS. I really like the multitasking and the range of apps. I have not encountered any problems when using the GT and enjoy the experience. I have both used it as an ebook reader, both the Kindle for Android app and other ebook apps, and  enjoyed the experience so much that I really must admit that I prefer the GT as a reading platform to the Kindle. This came as a total surprise to me as I  have loved my Kindle (and still do). but the reading experience is great and it is nice to have a device that can do other things that display text.

All in all I think the GT has a great future as an alternative to the iPad and look forward to seeing what will come in the future.

What we are not going to do is as important as what we are going to do.

Clay Shirky – Cognitive surplus

Social media are not an alternative life, they are part of it

How social media can influence life. Finding people to talk to on the train with twitter. Facebook updates in a family that lives far away from each other.

Information + People

Library and Information Science Research Coalition

To what extent are we genuinly engaging with library stakeholders?

a) Social media currently provide additional platforms for traditional information delivery

b) Sophisticated personal professional application of social media demonstrates potential for further innovation in services.

c) How we concieve relationships will dertermine the boundaries of service innovation

New Knowledge happens at the boundaries – meeting people with different background

Long term effects of social media difficult to predict

Social media is “just another” techonology application

We still dont know the effects of the printing press

Our tools cannot keep up with the quantity of information

Example: Wikipedia as a site of breaking news

Twitter accpetance – five stages: denial, presence, dumping, conversing

Snapshot of 2010 research – pockets of sophisticated personal professional use

Library services delivery: Function, not tool

The search principle blog

Virtual refence

current awareness on twitter – twinforming – not tweeting, just putting out information

Where is user participation as opposed to consumption? The Question of the Day!

New forms of interatcion – example – Facebook Geek the Library

We are all part of the reality: develop our users – develop ourselves

Umar Ruhi, PhD: http://www.umar.biz

We steward – we accept flux&beta – we collaborate

Tactics vary: Networked cells vs. conventional action amonst large groups

Develop stakeholder participation: lead communities

They (users)  are here (in the library) with mobiles and wireless

They do it because it is useful – because humans like making and sharing things

Changed her mind about following on twitter – from strategic following to a more open approach – use lists to organize, increase peripheral vision and understanding context

For interacting with students – Facebook rules

Biggest risk? Missing the boat!

Author of: Breakfast with Socrates

Knowledge – what it means to know things – Socrates and Platos view of that.

Reading from: Dropping ashes on Buddha

Meditation is on beeing extremely present in the moment.

Beeing human is to have an imagination – did not want to give up the ability to think about the past and the future.

Lapsed Buddhist:-)

Socrates and Plato – the imperfect world and the “more real” platonic ideals

What you know is true? Before Copernicus everybody knew the earth was the centre of the universe. You can know something and be wrong.

Blows to mankind

• Copernicus – not the centre of universe,
• Darwin - not gods special creature
• Freud – We do nok know ourselves.

Plato – Everything we know is corrupt – the real exists on a higher plane

Cloud technology – separation of the lasting world (the cloud) and the corruped working world (on your machine)

Real world vs. ideal world

We are enslaved to higher ideals – religion, philosophy etc. – Nietsche

The notion of the lie – Why lying is useful and a source of knowledge

When you try to describe the world – categorize – taxonomy – you must make distorted desiscions

Categorize – you gain something and you loose something

Gain in understanding – loose in accuracy

The Noble Lie – Plato – Framing is a lie – taxonomy is a lie – but it is noble because it is helpful. Gives a way of relating to the world, society, people etc.

The Noblest Lie of all – The war on terrorr – A distortion of the complexity of the state of the world after 911. Huge simplification and generalization –  useful to make sense of the world for international society (Not an moral approval!)

Helped de-fragment society – Unified illution

Knowledge happens as a distortion of the truth that is useful

Distorted knowledge may be very useful.

911 story – builds on the Biggest Noble Lie of the all – the Cold War.

Noble Lie – helps people understand

Poles – left and right – makes it easier to position yourself

Makes it easier to selforganize

Everything we know is based on where we are – Geography of knowledge

Knowledge effect – distorting – but useful

Horizontal relationship with knowledge – influenced by other people

We think in terms of the group we belong to – even ad-hoc groups (on bus etc.)

Very hard to be in a system without taking on the beliefs of the group – helps us make sense of the world -

Stop making sense

First we make it simple – then we make it complex again.

Sensemaking – about exluding as much as including.

Realtivism – one of the signs of modernity

Collections of subjectivity – working self-knowledge in a group – ethics, beauty, – Communities of knowledge, ethics, etc.

We will never get to a universal understanding of something

Wittgenstein! Overlapping frames of reference = working language (example in-jokes) (Best explanation of Wittgenstein I have heard!)

Madness – where  frames does not overlap with anybody elses

Communities of knowledge – indistinguable with cults

We have a responsibility to find ways to behave

Question from the room: How can we as info professionals change distorted views of what we do in society.

Answer – directing people towards knowledge/information – broaden horizon – Not  - this is the information, but – this is another field of thinking – unexpected info – broadning knowledge field – more random

Facillitate Chaos

Can we be innocent anymore? NO! We are inside – not neutral bystanders

Declare agenda.

Brands – simplification – breeds lazyness – few people surf outside well knows websites

randomwebsites.com

Lazy internet users