Slowly but surely, we're adding content and improving our new website. Over the next few days we will be doing the following:

• Adding the committee charges to each of the committees
• Adding the committee members

What that means is that when you go to the committees drop down list and pick one of the committees, you'll be able to see what they base their activities on and who's on the committee (in case you want to contact a member about their work).

There are still a lot of changes to come, so keep checking back!

I've come across two items within the last 2 days that have made me stop and think.

The first one is a study commissioned by the British Library and the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) entitled "Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future." The study was conducted by the University College London (UCL) CIBER group and looked at

"how the Google generation searches for information and the implications for the country's major research collections. The study will try to address the following questions:

• whether or not as a result of the digital transition and resources being created digitally, young people, the "Google generation", are searching for and researching content in new ways and if so, how this will shape the way they research and search in the future;
• whether or not new ways of searching and researching for content will prove to be any different from the way that existing researchers/scholars work"

The resulting paper is very interesting reading for those of us interested in reference, especially in-depth (e.g., second-level) reference done in libraries. I strongly recommend reading it. Only 35 pages long, the executive summary can be found here. For the entire set of documents, click here.

Note: A BIG THANK YOU to Stacey Aldrich, Deputy State Librarian, for sending me the original link!

The second item is last night's PBS Frontline episode, entitled "Growing Up Online." It "takes viewers inside the very public private worlds that kids are creating online, raising important questions about how the Internet is transforming childhood." The entire episode is available online here.

Note: A BIG THANK YOU to The Travelin' Librarian for alerting me to this one via his blog.

In George Needham's latest entry on It's All Good, he points us to the latest edition of Trendwatching. Entitled "The Expectation Economy," it focuses on the demanding consumer of today. Here's what caught George's eye (and mine):

"never before have consumers enjoyed doing research and 'competitive analysis' as much as they do now, and doing it far more diligently than most corporations do."

"an economy inhabited by experienced, well-informed consumers from Canada to South Korea who have a long list of high expectations that they apply to each and every good, service and experience on offer.

Their expectations are based on years of self-training in hyperconsumption, and on the biblical flood of new-style, readily available information sources, curators and BS filters. Which all help them track down and expect not just basic standards of quality, but the 'best of the best'."

Think about it in view of your own information needs and how you satisfy those needs. 

Congratulations to MCLS Associate Member Pasadena City College Shatfod Library on winning a 2008 Excellence in Academic Libraries Award from the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL). The Shatford Library won in the community college category. According to Camila Alire, chair of the Excellence in Academic Libraries Selection Committee, "innovative is the best word to describe why Shatford Library won this award. It excels in its information competency work and it provides new technologies to advance the academic success of Pasadena Community College students." The Shatford Library and other winners will be recognized during the ALA Annual Conference that will be held in Anaheim in June.

The RUSA STARS (Reference and User Services Association Sharing and Transforming Access to Resources Section) is sponsoring a preconference at the Anaheim meeting "Throw Off Your Policies and Expose Your Resources: Rethinking Resource Sharing." Here's a description straight from the ALA RUSA STARS website:

"The session will help library administrators and ILL librarians interested in the future of library resource sharing discover innovative ways – such as a plug-in that helps users find material in libraries or on the Internet, a manifesto that sets the stage for new lending policies, scan-on-demand services, and the promise of home delivery – that will help librarians get people what they need, when and where they need it. As we rethink local, regional, national and international approaches to information resource sharing, we will also consider ways to implement and expand on these ideas.

This day is designed to give librarians an opportunity to develop creative responses to the changing expectations of library users’ and ideas about ways to improve service to our patrons, some of which might even save your library money one day."

Speakers include the always popular Stephen Abram, John Bodfish, Gina Persichini and other resource sharing professionals. You can get more information by going here.

The Urban Libraries Council has just published a new report, Welcome Stranger: Public Libraries Build the Global Village. The report is based on data gathered in March 2007 from a survey of ULC members. The survey asked for information on “the ways in which urban public libraries are involved with the transition of immigrants into American life.” Augmented with data collected in another 2003 member survey, the findings show “that urban public libraries are in the forefront of the effort to make their cities stronger by welcoming and integrating new residents from all over the world.”

You can purchase the report or download it by going here.

Two items have come to my attention recently that have intrigued me. The first is a posting on The Technium, a “semi-blog” by Kevin Kelly. Mr. Kelly is “Senior Maverick” at Wired Magazine and conceived and oversaw the publication of four editions of the Whole Earth Catalog back in the 1980s. His January 31 entry is titled “Better Than Free.”

His theory is this:“When copies are super abundant, they become worthless. When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.”

Think about that. One of the issues we are facing in the library world is that information is now abundant, very abundant. And most people looking for information are satisfied with what they find – it’s good enough even though it may not be the best or most precise answer! His response? "When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied." (And, yes, indeed we are "selling" our services to our users -- they pay taxes or fees which we then use to provide services.)

According to Mr. Kelly, “in a real sense, these are eight things that are better than free. Eight uncopyable values. I call them "generatives." A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured. A generative thing can not be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced. It is generated uniquely, in place, over time. In the digital arena, generative qualities add value to free copies, and therefore are something that can be sold.” Read his entire posting. As we move forward on making our services more valuable, keep his “generatives” in mind.

The other item was brought to my attention by Rushton Brandis, California State Library. He alerted us (via Calix) to a recent announcement that HarperCollins is going to offer some titles for free via the web and that Random House will be selling some of their titles chapter-by-chapter via the web. Why? To try to generate more interest in their overall offerings. One of the titles being sold chapter-by-chapter is Made to Stick, Chip & Dan Heath’s popular book.

It will be interesting to see if making titles available for free via the web or chapter-by-chapter ends up generating more purchases of the complete books. At the same time, how are we adding value to our services, uncopyable value that can't be copied, cloned, faked, etc.?

Do you think of your library as a “hub for knowledge, entertainment and digital downloading”? If you do, you’re thinking along the same lines as Borders – yes, the bookstore chain that’s everywhere (or wants to be). This recent article in USA Today is about a new concept store being tested in Ann Arbor, Mich. Borders hopes that offering “a digital center where you can download music or books, burn CDs, research family histories, print pictures and order leather-bound books crammed with family photos — with help from clerks who know how to do those sorts of and won’t embarrass you in you don’t” will help reverse years of sluggish sales. Wait a minute! Researching family histories? Downloading music or books? Haven’t we been offering these services all along? And many public libraries have the coffee shops to go along with the services, just like Borders!

Top 10, top 20, etc., lists abound. Infopeople’s Infoblog has pointed us to the Top 100 Tools for Learning (big thanks to Infoblog for pointing this out to us). Want to work your way through various Web 2.0 and non-Web 2.0 tools? The Top 100 Tools breaks it down into very manageable chunks. And it is being updated regularly as more folks contribute their “top 10” choices.

The list includes obvious choices (del.icio.us, Google Search, Firefox) and not-so-obvious choices (MindManager, Captivate, VoiceThread). Check it out. And bookmark the site because you will want to keep coming back to see what’s been added.

We're all jumping on the social networking bandwagon. Libraries have FaceBook and/or MySpace accounts, we set up IM identities to receive questions. Do we then sit back and wait for the interactions to start happening?

This morning I came across a thoughtful posting on the question of "if you build it, they will come." The posting is from Field of Dreams, a movie about baseball. Bernaise Source is a blog about “mapping the brave new world of new media, the PR profession, news, and web 2.0” – that’s a lot to take on!

In a posting dated Monday, 2/18, Dan Greenfield says the following:

“In launching a social network, it is tempting to create a FaceBook page and declare mission accomplished. Yes you can check off that item on your social media to do list. But having friends on your company page rarely taps a user base looking for a meaningful forum to engage with your brand or company.”

(Note: substitute “library” for “brand” or “company.”)

I recommend reading the entire post. Then we need to think about what we are doing to get our users engaged in our efforts.

The Institute of Museum and Libraries Services (IMLS) announced the recipients of its Connecting to Collections Bookshelf grants. Sixteen California libraries were among the recipients. Of those sixteen, three are MCLS members and one is a member of Santiago Library System!

Congratulations to the following recipients: Arcadia Public Library, Irwindale Public Library, Mission Viejo Library and Pomona Public Library. These four libraries will receive “a core set of books, DVDs, online resources, and an annotated bibliography that are essential for the care of collections.

“The Bookshelf focuses on collections typically found in art or history museums and in libraries' special collections, with an added selection of texts for zoos, aquaria, public gardens, and nature centers. It will address such topics as the philosophy and ethics of collecting, collections management and planning, emergency preparedness, and culturally specific conservation issues.”

For a complete list of grant recipients in California, click here. A new round of applications for these grants will be accepted beginning March 1st and continue until April 30th. To view the application questions prior to availability of the application form, click here.

You might want to make sure that you have at least one copy of Eckhart Toll's A New Earth in your collection. An announcement from ALA's Public Programs Office tells us that Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Toll will be leading an online book discussion every Monday from March 3, through May 5. Each session will focus on one chapter in the book.

Interested participants are encouraged to register. By registering, they will be able to ask questions of Winfrey and Toll before and after each session. You can register by going to the link above.

DRM (digital rights management) – you either love it or hate it. DRM is seen by many as a barrier. Now, according to a posting on BoingBoing by Cory Doctorow, Random House has announced that “it will now allow its audiobooks to be sold without DRM by all of its online retailers. In the announcement, Random House notes that they've been running a DRM-free audiobook program with eMusic for months, and that none of the pirate editions of their audiobooks online came from those DRM-free editions; rather, they've come from DRM'ed editions that were cracked, and from ripped CDs.”

Wow – that’s a change, a good change. Let’s hope others follow their example! You can read the entire posting here.

If you use Ask.com to help find answers to your questions, you might want to rethink that. Yesterday the company announced that it was adopting a new strategy “aimed at boosting the loyalty of its core customers.” And with that change came a layoff of 40 folks, including Gary Price who also works on DocuTicker.

Now, why should you care that Ask.com has changed its strategy? This change reduces the number of search engines by one more. Yes, Ask.com will still be around, but its core customers are NOT librarians or library users. According to the Wall Street Journal article, its core customers are predominantly middle-American, white females.

Stay tuned to what they are doing. Maybe Ask.com won't be dramatically changed. But then again...