Twitter and the FutureLibCon

Last Thursday afternoon, while part of my brain was preparing for the National Educational Technology Plan Public Forum that night, another part of my brain was thoroughly engaged in the Eric Dey keynote for the FutureLibCon series on social computing.

FutureLibCon: http://www.lib.umich.edu/futurelibcon-social-computing-events

Eric was unable to complete the journey here in a way that would allow him to attend, but the co-presenters (Chris Chapman and Marc Stephens) had Eric’s slides and his notes, and built off of these to do a wonderful job of engaging the audience in a really dynamic conversation and learning experience. I ended up quoting some of the conversation from the FutLibCon during the NETP forum, because it was so incredibly relevant.

Before the presentation started, Marc had set up a second screen with a Twitter visualization tool that displayed tweets from a given hashtag with a variety on screen at the same time in boxy text bubbles, with randomly selected tweets growing big and then shrinking again. This was pretty engaging for at least some of the audience, having the back chat available on screen during the talk. With two speakers it meant that interesting questions that appeared in backchat could be addressed in realtime during the talk without requiring the person at the podium to be the one tracking the second screem. I have had no luck tracking down this particular tool, but while I was hunting, I did reacquaint myself with some old Twitter tool friends and find some new-to-me twitter visualization tools of varying utility.

The only tool I could find that would have worked for engaging a live audience with their own charm and cleverness is VisibleTweets. It only shows one tweet at a time, and has transitions between tweets. The problem for using it during a presentation is that the message is obscured during the animation and people have to actually pay attention to the animation to see what is being said, which distracts from the actual presentation. With the tool Marc used, you can occasionally take a quick glance, see what is happening, and return your attention to the presenter.

Visible Tweets:http://visibletweets.com/

Twitter StreamGraphs is not useful as a support for a presentation, but is very useful in tracking discussion over time. In this image it is very clear that this was a short one-time event and not an ongoing conversation. It does a nice job of pulling out what the audience thought were the most important concepts: tools, 2nd life / virtual, Dewey, education / teacher, social / cooperation, change.

Twitter StreamGraphs: http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterStreamGraphs/view.php

Social Collider “reveals cross-connections between conversations on Twitter.” Which explains in part why it is the only visualization tool shown here that supplies a visualization crossing several days for an event that was two hours long. This is probably the most lovely and least useful of the visualization tools I tried. It took a lot of finagling to get it to actually render an image, and the image kept having large chunks disappear. I am guessing that it might be more robust with a different browser or platform, since the ability to interact with it and drill in to see what words / people / concepts were connecting didn’t seem to work for me in Safari on a Macintosh.

Social Collider: http://socialcollider.net/

People are doing some surprising things using Twitter as either a content source or a data source. This one is the latter – Tori’s Eye allows you to define a tag or a term, searches for that, and the frequency of the term determines the density of origami birds flying across the screen. Really. Not very productive, but I do love origami.

Tori’s Eye: toriseye.quodis.com/

MORE:
Flowing Data: 17 Ways to Visualize the Twitter Universe: http://flowingdata.com/2008/03/12/17-ways-to-visualize-the-twitter-universe/

At long last I came up with the idea of searching instead of through Twitter visualization tools, looking for hashtag presentation tools. Aha!

Event Manager Blog: How to Visualize Twitter at Events: http://www.eventmanagerblog.com/event-management/visualize-twitter-at-events

Speaking about Presenting: 10 Tools for Presenting with Twitter: http://www.speakingaboutpresenting.com/twitter/10-tools-presenting-with-twitter/

I finally found the tool Marc had used – Wiffiti! I think the name is supposed to be a blend of wiki and graffiti, but it makes me think of WiFi, so part of me wants to call it why-feet-ee, and another part tries to say whiff-ee-tee. Still, this was pretty nice exactly for beingn incredibly slow about refreshing the selection of tweets. During the presentation, it typically took 6-15 minutes for a tweet to show up on screen, which frustrated the audience and impaired the sense of real time interaction.

Wiffiti: wiffiti.com/

However, once the events are over, for general utility and metrics, it all comes down to my number one favorite Twitter tool – What the Hashtag.

What the Hashtag: FutLibCon: wthashtag.com/futlibcon

WTH provides detailed metrics on who is using the hashtag, a distribution of frequency, other metrics, and best of all, a complete transcript of the relevant tweets in the correct time sequence, while most Twitter tools give the tweets in reverse chronological order as they would appear in Twitter itself. This makes the following possible – the transcript of the FutLibCon event as viewed via audience tweets.

November 5, 2009
12:40 pm Wrenaissance: Next session: faculty-student conversation #futlibcon
12:40 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon at event, forgot my mac so tweeting slowly fr phone
12:48 pm Wrenaissance: What do think about when you hear “social networking” #futlibcon
12:50 pm Wrenaissance: Web as platform, collective intelligence, #futlibcon
12:50 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon Eric Dey is speaker, delayed. @marquea2 & chapman doing heroic job filling in
12:52 pm Wrenaissance: #futlibcon. Make sure the social media train doesn’t derail you.
12:53 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon bmacadam has gd idea – think of socmed in ed as matrix
12:54 pm Wrenaissance: John not Melville at good time charlie’s #futlibcon
12:58 pm britain: First year med students are not reading this. #futlibcon
12:58 pm Wrenaissance: Are Macs taking over the med school? #futlibcon
1:00 pm Wrenaissance: Dewey: sometimes play is a good way of teaching/learning #futlibcon
1:00 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon chapman says he didnt expect hissing ,)
1:01 pm Wrenaissance: Demo: family centered experience group team tool #futlibcon
1:03 pm Wrenaissance: Cooperation vs collaboration #futlibcon. Tool supports both
1:05 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon egbert 2009 article on cooperation collaboration 4 UMMS course
1:06 pm marqueA2: “Education is not prep for life, education is life itself” -John Dewey #futlibcon
1:08 pm Wrenaissance: Tools not always used as planned. Scratchpad yes; discussion tool no. #futlibcon
1:09 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon changes workflow, not pedagogy #socmed
1:09 pm Wrenaissance: #futlibcon. Med students adapt & use; next goal: change teaching
1:18 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon interesting, CC says “doctors dont wk that way” collab
1:21 pm Wrenaissance: Advanced medical therapeutics online class; geographic distrib dicussion + asynch modules. Bldg more collab. #futlibcon
1:22 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon @marquea2 like Dewey quote. Ed is life. Lrng is play =)
1:22 pm Wrenaissance: Goal: get students to be thinkers and learners not just absorbers of current knowledge. #futlibcon
1:22 pm britain: And away we go to Second Life. #futlibcon
1:24 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon @marquea2 says #sl is socmed cuz user generated content =)
1:25 pm Wrenaissance: #futlibcon @marquea2 speaking abt med ed in 2nd life
1:26 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon want 2 know what anim tool @marquea2 is using to put hashtag stream on screen
1:27 pm Wrenaissance: Histology lab: no more microscopes. Power, Ethernet and virtual scopes #futlibcon
1:29 pm Wrenaissance: 2nd life – wolverine island. 1st session boot camp. 2nd session play2train first responders. #futlibcon
1:29 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon Yay! @britain joined in. He txts faster than me. Watch fingers fly
1:30 pm Wrenaissance: 3rd session at the cave: virtual reality first responders in 3D #futlibcon
1:31 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon marvelous video of virtual disaster triage sim in #sl w/ our stdts
1:34 pm britain: I thought this would be a live demo in SL but I’m glad they just showed highlights. #futlibcon
1:35 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon thrilled that peer asked abt haptics in #sl – smart lady
1:35 pm Wrenaissance: Q: are there haptic systs that work w 2nd life? A: may be some in dev #futlibcon
1:37 pm Wrenaissance: Intrigued abt 2nd life? @pfanderson leads virtual brown bags on Fridays #futlibcon
1:40 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon bmacadam has neat thot – sim/#sl gd for ed of “inherently messy” tasks/domains
1:40 pm britain: @zaren a big group of us librarians are talking with some med school guys about Wolv Island and virtual first responder training! #futlibcon
1:45 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon gd ? Fr joehrli abt socmed integration in ed being best when goal specific
1:52 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon what are best ed tools to promote? Is it abt the tools?
1:53 pm Wrenaissance: A bad teacher with good tools is still a bad teacher. #futlibcon
1:53 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon or is it abt the teacher? Gd teacher can mk miracles w/o best tools
1:55 pm Wrenaissance: A good teacher with good tools is awesome. #futlibcon
1:59 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon @davereadscomics sd no accident gt8 innov came fr higher ed but outside mainstream
2:01 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon <3 tht he sd most impt role of higher ed is intellectual playground
2:03 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon neat – CC says techs like tools, but not always ones stdts like
2:03 pm britain: One of students' favorite study tools: watching the lectures at higher speeds to process faster. #futlibcon
2:13 pm LRC_Phill: #futlibcon is the last slide from today's plenary available anywhere? Those questions seem hugely important but i didn't write them down
2:14 pm LRC_Phill: @pfanderson #futlibcon higher ed's main (core) purpose has always been teaching people how to play in 'grown up' spaces. (cont'd)
2:14 pm LRC_Phill: students in most jobs don't remember 90% of their chemistry I course, but they do know how to pull all nighters when a boss asks them to…
2:14 pm LRC_Phill: just like getting a final project done if some-one/thing else didn't come through!
4:57 pm pfanderson: @LRC_Phill What I notice is people who are successful in higher ed environments are those for whom HE activities ARE play! #futlibcon
9:15 pm litebulb11: Reflecting on my uber techie day… @a2b3 and #futlibcon

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Systematic Reviews: Methodology, Overview, Sharing

In my previous job, a big part of what I did was systematic review searching. This is still going on as I am on a Cochrane team and a few grants. Technically, this isn’t probably emerging technologies. On the other hand I’ve found that with many “new” technologies it is all about who thinks it is new. For example, I’ve been teaching classes on using Delicious for at least five years, and there are still many people I work with now who have never heard of it. For them, Delicious, now approaching its 6th birthday, is an emerging technology.

Despite the popularity of systematic reviews in the medical literature, it is just now starting to really make the leap from being something a bit on the obscure side to something everyone has heard of. I think what is making the difference has been the push in many schools to include evidence based health care in the training of new clinicians, and to encourage graduate students to do systematic reviews as their research project.

My personal experience with systematic reviews goes back to roughly 1999 or 2000, when I was contracted by NIH to do systematic review searches for 13 of the teams preparing for the first Consensus Development Conference to require use of systematic review methodologies for all presenters.

NIH: Consensus Development Conference on Diagnosis and Management of Dental Caries Throughout Life (2001): http://consensus.nih.gov/2001/2001DentalCaries115html.htm

NIH: Consensus Development Conference on Diagnosis and Management of Dental Caries Throughout Life (2001) (University of Michigan, University Libraries): http://www.lib.umich.edu/health-sciences-libraries/nih-consensus-development-conference-diagnosis-and-management-dental-carie

I’ve lost track of how many systematic reviews I’ve worked on since that time, but it is a lot, ranging from graduate student projects to Cochrane teams, searching on topics with large research bases to those with almost no research. The techniques appropriate for searching in these various areas are very different. My particular area of expertise is searching in topics where there is a very small research base, meaning instead of seeking clinical significance the researchers are doing a preliminary project to define the levels and quality of evidence available on that topic. What I’ve noticed for many years now is that many of the articles published as systematic reviews do not actually follow an appropriate methodology for the topic being investigated. Another challenge is that many of the published systematic reviews do not include enough information about the search strategy for it to be replicated or verified by other research teams. I’m far from being the only person who has noticed this! Here is the most recent article I’ve seen examining the quality of published systematic reviews.

Song F, Loke YK, Walsh T, Glenny AM, Eastwood AJ, Altman DG. Methodological problems in the use of indirect comparisons for evaluating healthcare interventions: survey of published systematic reviews. BMJ. 2009 Apr 3;338:b1147. doi: 10.1136/bmj.b1147. PMID: 19346285

The methodological “Bible” for doing a systematic review to determine clinical effectiveness is the Cochrane Handbook.

Cochrane Handbook: http://www.cochrane-handbook.org/ OR http://www.cochrane.org/resources/handbook/

Like the actual Bible, it takes a long time and a lot of work to actually read the Cochrane Handbook, making it impractical for many of the busy clinical researchers who are exploring the idea of publishing a systematic review. On many of the Cochrane systematic review teams the primary role of the librarian is to provide the data being analyzed. I have been finding that my experience having worked on so many teams and systematic review projects has placed me also in the role of providing assistance and insight to new systematic review team leaders with respect to the process and methodologies that should be followed. This actually makes a lot of sense, since both the statistician and the librarian on these projects are more likely to participate in large numbers of reviews, across a variety of topics. It also means that I have a large personal collection of search strategies I’ve developed for other reviews that can be quickly tapped or reworked, making the time required for the search process sometimes much faster.

Increasingly, when I work on a systematic review team I ask permission for the search strategy to be archived (post-publication of course) on a public web site to make it easier for other librarians to find and use. The NIH CDC on Caries was the first time we did that.

EBHC Strategies: http://ebhcstrategies.wetpaint.com/

A more fully fleshed out wiki is here:
EBM Librarian: http://ebmlibrarian.wetpaint.com/

EBHC is focused on creating a collection of search strategies to share
among other librarians so folks don’t need to reinvent the wheel; EBM
Librarian is more a tutorial, a detailed how-to as a collaboration of several of the most expert EBHC librarians and teachers.

I like the idea of both using social media and technologies (my ‘new’ job) to help share information both on methodologies and findings from systematic reviews (my ‘old’ job). The wikis are a great start, and I very much hope more medical librarians get involved with both of them. I’d like to see a more active online community of people working in evidence based health care, as well as placing findings more aggressively in social media spaces. Again, others thought of this first.

Cochrane Collaboration:
– Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=63721740498
– Twitter: http://twitter.com/CochraneCollab

You can find out more about Cochrane’s social media presence and strategy in these slides from Chris Mavergame at Cochrane.

I’m actually writing this blogpost as a sequel to a guest lecture I recently gave for Tiffany Veinot’s class on medical librarianship at the University of Michigan School of Information. To put my money (time) where my mouth is, I’d like to share those slides also. Creative Commons 3.0 licensing applies, so feel free to download and share.

“Saying Nix To Big Deals and the Terrible Fix”

This morning I was lucky to be able to attend a presentation by Ted Bergstrom called “Some Economics of Saying Nix To Big Deals and the Terrible Fix.” Professor Ted Bergstrom of the University of California, Santa Barbara has been collaborating with Paul Courant and Preston McAfee to learn about the deals behind Big Deals and find out what the contracts really say. One juicy tidbit was that similar institutions for similar contracts can pay as much as double (or half) of what others are paying, making the idea of a costs formula basis for pricing clearly a fiction.

The short version of his finding is encapsulated in Ado Annie’s “Cain’t Say No” song from the Rogers & Hammerstein musical Oklahoma.

I’m jest a girl who cain’t say ‘no,’
I’m in a terrible fix!
I always say, ‘Come on, let’s go,’
Jest when I oughta say ‘Nix.’

The idea (oversimplified) is that the commercial publishers, like Elsevier, are the sweet-talkin’ fine young men and the libraries are Ado Annie, with a heart of gold but without a lick of good sense. In the show, Ado Annie ends up rescued (sorta’) by a combination of her sensible father and the young man who truly cares and is really on her side. The idea in this presentation is to look at the stories we are being told, how they are being told, what the real story is, and to generally piece together a sensible response beyond that of a young woman flattered that the peddlar will offer her a special deal if he can steal a few kisses on the side.

I was able to livetweet the event (until my battery ran out), which generated some interesting conversations with people from Philadelphia PA, Brockport NY, West Lafayette IN, Albuquerque NM, Denver CO, Lebanon NH, and even local folk from Ann Arbor who weren’t able to attend!

---

–> BEGIN LIVETWEET <–

* WARNING: Will be minimally livetweeting talk by Ted Bergstrom on economics of library subscription models.
* He starts by making interesting parallel between how libs select/pay journals & drs prescribe for patients – payer's not selector
* "monopolistic paradise" & California power plant economics, w/gov paying but industry setting price. Oops! "Enter ENRON"
* Interesting look at the relatively equitable historical model of paper publishing, w/ 1copy=1sub pricing + shelf space 4 storage.

• navi: RT @pfanderson “monopolistic paradise” & California power plant economics, gov paying but industry setting price. Oops! Enter ENRON
• me: @navi Well, isn’t that what libs are doing? State school, gov pays, publishers set prices, and (per California) the taxpayers lost

* w/ web access, publisher goal is extract as close as possible 2 ALL library’s “surplus” budget via Big Deals. New jrnls not added
* Big Deals created “crack journals” w/ faculty addicted 2 online access, unwilling 2 use print. “Can’t just say no” Audience laughs.
* Ted describes getting ALL of Elsevier’s journals as “freedom contract”, not getting all is called “complete contract.” More laughs.

• srharris19: @pfanderson Freedom *from* your money!
• me: @srharris19 Exactly! “freedom contract” means faculty get everything for free
• srharris19: @pfanderson I’m on an anti- big deals kick. I want access to everything, want to pay based on what we actually use.
• me: @srharris19 I hope Ted puts his slides on Slideshare or video online. His model does what you want.
• srharris19: “Big deal” subscription packages are “just in case” collection development. Pay a lot for stuff that doesn’t get used… just in case!

* Oooh, scary — ask faculty to pay-per-view. Uh hunh. Right. Elsevier charges ~$35/view for individuals.
* Ted points out that publishers don’t provide stats / metrics that allow libs to evaluate what we’re spending and how it is used
* Hehehe. Non disclosure agreements block libs fr sharing contracts w/ econs studying models. FOIA saved the day. “Pursuant to …”

• srharris19: @pfanderson We’re an open records state. Non-disclosure clauses are invalid. Yay!

* Ted keeps emphasizing that costs 2 publishers 4 online access approach 0%, but costs 2 libs R significantly greater than 1% (~7%)
* Interesting comment – libns like contracts kept secret to promote fiction they are getting a “deal”. But secrets actually hurt all
* He isn’t even mentioning the problem that users pay for their own access not realizing library already paid.
* Propose PPV 4 endusers. Works in no-fail resources, but not when quality is an issue, & endusers not best informed 4 choice #health
* “so long as monopolist 4profit publishing survives, these $$ R as real 2 U’s as heating/electric, shd B economized” Bingo.
* Does it make economic sense for monopolist publishing models to survive?
* Why Elsevier has such small profits, when small publishers like OSA charge less & make higher profits? Administrative overhead?

• jokrausdu: @pfanderson How is 30-40% profit small for Elsevier? OSA=optical society of America?
• jokrausdu: @pfanderson How can a non-profit society publisher make a “profit”? The money is put back into society activities, conferences, etc.
• me: @jokrausdu Actually, he said that. OSA pushes profits back into RESEARCH!! What a concept, eh?

* Efficiency: allow online access at no added cost, or not pub journal at all if setup exceeds value to audience
* Oh, this is cool. Model proposed that rewards authors for publishing in cheap journals – cheap=more readers, more cites

• jokrausdu: Faculty want to publish in high “impact” journals with high readership, not always = cheap. @pfanderson You prob. already know that though.
• me: @jokrausdu Yes – he is proposing pricing model to shift high impact to cheaper journals. Wish I understood better.

* Drop Big Deal subscriptions. Subscribe to avg cost jrnls as needed. Subsidize pay per view in *part*, user bears rest of cost.

• novoseek: follow @pfanderson and for tracking talk by Ted Bergstrom on economics of library subscription models.

* Praises institutional repositories, esp local one 4 contract to host Elsevier articles by local authors. Authors to provide copies
* Can publishers really stop authors from sharing copies of their own articles?

• BudGibson: @pfanderson According to copyright law, yes.
• me: @BudGibson He says not for last draft of article – faculty can share that with impunity.
• BudGibson: @pfanderson So, I guess the publisher only has copyright for the version that is actually published.
• me: @BudGibson Exactly. Publisher owns the copy they format and edit, not the copy as submitted.

* He mentions that more and more people are putting early drafts of articles online with no penalty.
* Q fr audience: how do we know if we need the article before we pay for it? How do we sample? We risk time spent plus cost of access
* Ted personally will not write, publish or review for journals that charge over $1000 for a year subscription.
* Q fr audience: remembering early computer use fees as parallel to current dynamic. Interesting. Wd make gd article.
* Another option – get libraries out of business as paying for subscriptions. Charge to grants, user pays fees, etc.
* Reputation of existing journals is what monopoly is built on. Doesn’t erode quickly, and won’t if freedom contracts persist.
* what would user fees/ PPV do to interlibrary loan? Ouch. That would take some negotiations.

• davideisert@pfanderson I would stop using the library and just buy from Amazon, Borders, or B&N
• me: @davideisert Hard to buy research journals from Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble. Probably in future …
• davideisert@pfanderson But that isn’t what I am getting from ILL. Local library typically has what I need.
• me: @davideisert Here in MI, state is closing state library & funds 4 publibs. Then you can’t get it. Can’t assume local library will persist

* Q: How do publishers maximise their profit? How do nonprofits succeed at this better? A: What gets called profits? Fancy accounting
* Hmmm. Blackwell divides online subscription fees rcd by cost of journal. Nonprofits charge less, receive less.
* MI, WI, IL Elsevier contracts for “freedom contract” 2mil, 2.3 mil, 1.2 mil – Wisconsin got the “good” deal

• Rudilibrarian: Which was IL?
• me: Illinois.
• Rudibrarian: @pfanderson got that — was wondering which number? And hearing my SUNY peeps cry
• me: @Rudibrarian There was a lot of backchat in the room when those numbers came out! We paid almost double WI. Ouch.
• me: @Rudibrarian I’m not sure, but I *think* IL was the 2mil, and MI the 2.3mil.

• loganrath: @pfanderson how’d they negotiate that??
• @loganrath He doesn’t know backstory.

* Battery out, have to stop. SORRY! Will blog.
–> END LIVETWEET <–

---

Final discussion and comments included this bits.
From the audience (mostly Scott Martin at this point):
– Libraries should be thinking of collections, not conduits.
– Many people accessing something doesn’t mean it is good.
– The idea that additional access costs $0 is an article of faith, not a guarantee for the future.

Q: What about blogs and Science 2.0 for self-publishing and collaborative science and research? How could this impact on economic models?
A: Organized open access such as PLoS still tends to have what seems to be excessive costs to preserve online access. What is the money for? Where is it going? PLoS actually has negative profist. Why? Still, for those topics where blogging is possible and effective, this may have some impact.

Learn more:
Ted Bergstrom: http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/ OR
http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/%7Etedb/Journals/BundleContracts.html.

Fundamentals Don’t Change (Details Do)

I saw this making the Twitter circles, and thought Wow. More about why Wow in a minute.

I don’t know who you are.
I don’t know your company.
I don’t know your company’s product.
I don’t know what your company stands for.
I don’t know your company’s customers.
I don’t know your company’s record.
I don’t know your company’s reputation.
Now, what was it you wanted to sell me?

Part of the point of this is pretty obvious — if your target audience can’t answer any of these questions about you, well, you aren’t going to get very far unless they are astoundingly naive and gullible. Let’s take a second look at this.

I know who you are.
I know your company.
I know your company’s product.
I know what your company stands for.
I know your company’s customers.
I know your company’s record.
I know your company’s reputation.
Now, what was it you wanted to sell me?

Very different picture, isn’t it?

Let’s say you’ve done a lot of work to get the word out. You’ve done a good job. You’ve followed up and surveyed your target audience, and they say, yeah, we know these folks, we’ve heard what they’re saying. Answering the questions doesn’t mean your target audience will buy in to your world view or goals, but it means they can make an informed decision and position your communications within the framework of their own goals, resources, ethics, etcetera. That isn’t the end of it, though.

For example, I’m working in libraries and have almost my whole life. We talk a lot about marketing problems with libraries, how people don’t understand us, don’t know what we’re doing, what we’re trying to do. That isn’t the real problem, tho, really. Think about it. If you talk with people about libraries they are likely to say:

I know who you are.
I know your company.
I know your company’s product.
I know what your company stands for.
I know your company’s customers.
I know your company’s record.
I know your company’s reputation.
Now, what was it you wanted to give me?

Right, good. So what’s the problem then? Ah, well, here we get to the crux of the matter. Here is a parable, sort of. In today’s sermon at my church, our local priest talked about when the people of his hometown had little faith in Jesus and he could not perform miracles, because they thought they knew him. He was performing miracles, but the folks at home didn’t know about the miracles, they knew him, his mom, dad, brothers and sisters. They knew his day job, the work he does, his weaknesses and foibles. Miracles were not part of the picture. So they weren’t buying it.

With libraries, IMHO, we have something more like this situation.

I think I know who you are.
I think I know your company.
I think I know your company’s product.
I think I know what your company stands for.
I think I know your company’s customers.
I think I know your company’s record.
I think I know your company’s reputation.
Now, what was it you wanted to give me?

They are probably right about knowing libraries with these part:

I think I know who you are.
I think I know your company.
I think I know what your company stands for.
I think I know your company’s record.
I think I know your company’s reputation.

Libraries have great reputations — passion, commitment, desire to serve, freedom of access, freedom of information, strong ethical foundations. Librarians are GOOD people. Everyone KNOWS that. This part is a little tricky.

Now, what was it you wanted to give me?

We like to give things away, but unfortunately it takes money to give things away. That means we have to first sell folks the idea of giving us money so we can give things away. This gets even trickier when they think we are giving away the same things they are getting for free somewhere else. That’s where we are getting in trouble. These bits might be a little hazy.

I think I know your company’s product.
I think I know your company’s customers.

It isn’t that our audience doesn’t know us, is that they think they DO know us, but what they know about us is fairly accurate in the large view and inaccurate in the details.

Just a little something to think about.

Video: Who, Why, and How We Serve

I am delighted with the short highlights video version of my presentation for the MLGSCA group in March in Cerritos California.. The complete talk will be put on the Health Sciences Libraries website fairly soon, but in the meantime, please enjoy these excerpts.

The talk focused on a vision of collaborative librarianship, based out of the history of the profession and extending through potential applications of new and social media.

Mobile-izing the Library

Edward Vielmetti gave a preliminary presentation on the potential use of mobile devices and cell phones for providing library services and resources. Here are my notes from his presentation.

===========================

worst possible interface
– screen is too small
– poor user interface
– keyboarding

Assumption that it is a waste of time to try to adapt because of barriers
Challenges fitting archaic systems into mobile footprint and tech

Bookstore side of the world driving this more than libraries
– Kindle
– revival of Star Trek franchise

Wind back to late 1940s
Vannevar Bush, Memex
trailblazing
production workstation
scientific production
would have taken a whole desk > physical size

What if the Memex was your mobile device?
What would it look like?

Collecting things, not just passively absorbing/reading
– pictures
– record audio
– communicating with others, the authors,
– public production
– with you everywhere
– your access to the World Brain is not just behind yr desk, but everywhere you are

What portions of a library fit in a mobile world?
– source of handbooks, manuals and field books
– ready reference
– ePocrates (drug info and PDR type of tool) (lots of info, frequently updated)
– ie World Radio Television Handbook >> embed this in your radio
– ie Star Trek tricorder (“I’m a doctor, not a librarian, Jim”) device with sensors being informed by books, embedded in the device
– embedded / embodied knowledge “baked into” the device
– fiction becomes interactive fiction
– UNIVERSAL DEVICE
– notion of traditional library activities meshing with mobile devices (ship’s computer)
– upload, download, query
– Hamlet as the right size device > pocketbook
– Google model? will you get back the right answer?
– is it a perfect memory? logging items, will they be there forever and not disappear
– can this advocate on your behalf with others?
– if the first question doesn’t get useful answer, can the device continue searching without your direction?

OK, fictional landscape covered.

To design good user interfaces, we have to think beyond what they can do right now.
Tech is moving fast enough that you can’t catch up, you need to lead
You’d be dissatisfied everytime
Tap into people’s imagination of what it could be

EG. Reading Kafka’s “The Trial” while waiting for jury duty.
– locate
– download
– reader software
– read
– does it fit on this screen?
– has it been digitized?
– rights to it? public domain? licenses negotiated on my behalf

“Any book ever written could fit HERE.”

What if my vision is bad?
– Audio
– text to speech
– ask someone for help to find and they will queue it for me

Planning and decisions developed by REAL patterns of use

How wonderful could it have been, could it be?

From the LIBRARY point of view:

Relationships:
– patron
– support library through taxes, donations
– subscribers
– friends of the library

Similar to Bookstores, but not always equivalent
– “buy NOW”

Metrics
– circulations, not sales
– measures of success?
– “renew all my books now” button >> on phone? why not?
– authentication barriers
– no real API
– would need undocumented system access

patron innovation frustrated by library system complexity

how to empower your patrons to solve your problems?
crowdsourcing yr endusers

customer relationship gives you clear success metrics
libraries lack clearcut success measure with mobile systems

maybe just “we got good press”

Library relations with their communities?
– who cares enough about you to try this out?

Mashup Power
– top ten most circulated books
– what’s hot this week
– mosaic of cover images
– outsider visions of potential

Is the book too big to fit inside the screen? Well, the cover pic will fit.
Browsing the stacks with your mobile device
iTouch interface for browsing

browse the cover art or table of contents for books on the 6th floor via your mobile device
NOTE: words are hard to read on the small screen

navigation tools get you into the building, but not through the building

VIDEO: Harlan Hatcher Graduate Labyrinth

Useful things a library could do:
– wayfinding information
– convert full page maps to handheld application
– race to the location > scavenger hunts in lib
– library as game

Keep it light, or you’ll be frustrated by the device
exit the practical every once in a while

ways people have built systems for mobile use
A. good behavior > some one else has already built reference info for device
– Library (Brown?) menu of relevant items for mobile menu
– discovery and sharing of tools created by your users
– risk: people sometimes remove apps they’ve made
– systems that are well adapted to mobile access
– Buses >> system down for 6 weeks at coldest time of year, politics
– parking spaces >> was not launched properly , system use resulted in access cut off access to the data
– partnerships, data sharing, who owns/supports data?
– intellectual property murky for much of this
B. Beyond technical issues of squeezing things onto small screen
– Kindle > does it fit in your pocket?
– small enough to carry
– large enough to see and type
– Memex
– reserve items via device >> texting (Like TrialX for CTs)
– reading something, want to fetch other item, “Buy Now” button as “Reserve Now”
– capture trail of what I’ve already read
– Reference collections
– what sorts of materials
– miserable user interface to e-ref sources
– logins, permissions, interfaces
– accessible formats
– Using SMS or Twitter for query/access
– How much paper would we save by putting bus schedules onto mobile devices?
C. Private wiki
– personal library
– papers
– articles
– chapters from books
– quotations
– snippets
– commonplace book

Devices: size comparison
contrast mobile devices with comptuers

What sort of things are in libraries that could be used on mobile devices?
(What are books?)
phonebooks
what happens to the newspaper when it isn’t paper anymore?
reading on the bus

what can you fit on a 3×5 card?
mobile device as business card
postcards
writing changing to fit in small spaces
– postcard poems
– twitter novels

How libraries interact with people who are not their typical patrons?
– children’s rooms, how to find all libraries with nice children’s rooms in geographic area
– locations/hours of local libraries while traveling
– have our patrons shifted with mobile population?

using library catalog on mobile device really tells you how bad your search itnerface is

Wish I had examples of wonderful interfaces, but I don’t right now. They are coming.

Different information needs, different information access

Questions that can be reframed if you assume that people have no computers

===============
Q&A

NYT article: mobile device to identify plants along a park path
birding

device add-ons
– pedometer
– GPS maps
–

reference
– people
– good set of friends to ask good questions
– chacha
– trialx
(take people who are too helpful with a grain of salt – they might have a hidden agenda)

Match making service: news stories sources match up with reporters writing on topic

Who, Why & How We Serve: The Evolution of Collaborative Librarianship through Social Media

Yesterday I repeated my presentation from MLGSCA last month. I think I was a lot more dynamic the first time, but the second time the slides are less gory and I’ve added a model I had to skip over before due to lack of time. We videotaped it, so that is coming, and I hope to get the audio spliced out to add to the Slideshare version (below).

Meanwhile, just a few very terse notes on what I wanted to say.

For the presentation in Cerritos, I had been asked to talk about Web 2.0, health librarians and the communities we serve. When I started to work that up I agonized over it and went through several complete overhauls of how I wanted to say this. (You should all be grateful I didn’t go through with the Gilbert and Sullivan parody, singing “You too can be a guide to new technology!” to the tune of Sir Joseph Porter’s Song “When I Was a Lad / You too can be a ruler of the Queen’s Navee” from HMS Pinafore. Really. Grateful.)

I was having trouble framing it, but I had this strong gut sense that it was critical to place these ideas in a historical context. The point of the title is that I believe what librarians have done and are doing has, at bedrock, not changed; the same core essential functions we have always done are still happening. What has changed are the objects of our attention, and those have changed cumulatively. We add on — we don’t stop paying attention to one type of item, we just add more types of items to those we give our attention.

Our goal as librarians has ALWAYS been to get information to the person who needs it to support their learning, growth, life activities, and decisions. Traditionally, as librarians have had the opportunity to unlock the chains that restrain information flow, we have grabbed the keys, turned the lock, and thrown the keys away. Moving into social media is doing the same — putting ourselves and the information where the people are, to the best of our ability. The slides below try to tell that story, at least a small slice of it.

Tech Trends (Important Pieces I’m Trying to Read)

Since I’ve been too busy to blog lately, I am way behind on sharing the really delicious and important discoveries that have been percolating to the surface. So much I want to share! Each of the follow deserves at the very least a full blog post (or several) to talk about various concepts and issues in them. These are all important documents that deserve our attention.

Horizon Report / New Media Consortium: http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2009/

The Horizon Report is an annual publication (usually released in late January or early February), one of those I eagerly await with baited breath, grab while it is hot off the presses and read several times to absorb. I absolutely love the brilliant structure that makes the most critical concepts absolutely clear even if you only have a few seconds, and then enriching and embroidering upon those themes. Just look at the Table of Contents!

• One Year or Less: Mobiles
• One Year or Less: Cloud Computing
• Two to Three Years: Geo-Everything
• Two to Three Years: The Personal Web
• Four to Five Years: Semantic-Aware Applications
• Four to Five Years: Smart Objects

Report of the Provost’s Special Committee on Institutional Innovation in Collaborative Technologies for Learning, January 2009 / University of Michigan. http://www.lib.umich.edu/news/IICTLrept.pdf

While this was completed in January, it wasn’t released until March 2009. Just a few selected highlights.

• “University Library to be charged with fostering and enabling a more efficient and rapid deployment of transformative learning-technology and related pedgogies.”
• “Digital Media Commons be adminsitratively part of the library.”
• “CRLT work in close collaboration with the University Library to help foster innovation in learning technologies across our campus.”

Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning / George Siemens, Peter Tittenberger. March 2009. www.umanitoba.ca/learning_technologies/cetl/HETL.pdf

This is just a stunning piece. Incredible graphics and visualizations to communicate the concepts, terse pungent statements that put a finger right on the important issues … just brilliant. Here are a few favorites snippets.

• “Changes to the information cycle (from creation to validation) are at the core of change in higher education.” p. 3
• “Rapid growth of information requires higher education to change its focus from knowing (epistemology) to being (ontology). p. 7
• “Knowledge is distributed across a network that includes people and objects. To navigate, make sense, and come to understand … knowledge, the process of cognition is also distributed across networks …” p. 10
• “Research mindsets required by academics to succeed in their discipline are also important in teaching with technology. Through an ongoing cycle of personal research, theory and practice, educators are able to create an approach to technology that fits within the scope of their discipline, and the expectations of learners.” p. 15
• “A defining trait today is the ability to speak into the context others have created.” p. 41

The Tower and the Cloud, Higher Education in the Age of Cloud Computing / ed. Richard N. Katz. www.educause.edu/thetowerandthecloud

I’m writing a review of this for a journal, due next week, so you’ll be hearing more, soon. Briefly, it looks at the evolution of what it means to be an academic individual or an organization of higher learning in the context of the incredibly potent and rich information environment that has exploded with social, semantic and cloud computing technologies. My blog post yesterday on Science 2.0 actually touched on this peripherally, but they do a much more elegant job of this.

Open Cloud Manifesto: http://opencloudmanifesto.org/

I owe you all a blogpost on “what is the cloud”. After all, you’ve seen it mentioned in at least three of the five publications listed in this post. Obviously it is important. As the term gets adopted and used, it is also misused, so I want to take the time to clarify some of those for those of us who are working outside the heart of geekdom. I find the many ways I see the term used a bit confusing, so it will also help me to get a better handle on it. However, this manifesto? Touches on the foundation issues already addressed as part of the University of Michigan vision — a commitment to open educational resources, to open access, to transparency in our intellectual lives and academic endeavors.

MLA Work Life Webcast – Notes

I was asked by @eagledawg to blog about the MLA Worklife Webcast, but right now, my worklife balance isn’t going to permit that, so I am simply throwing up my (very!) rough notes.

—————–

teleworkers
– same type of job requirements
– maintaining teamwork and cameraderie

Work/life balance means you make the choices about what falls off your plate

atmosphere of trust and respect key

meaningful contribution
having a say in work decisions
team decisions
strategic plan
sense of fun in work activities
connect sense of purpose
camaraderie
visible
leaders be role models

work worth doing – roosevelt
enjoy work you have – carnegie

no one size fits all solution

FMLA > military

employers w/ >15 employees provide sick days

first week in April events

save $42/employee in coverage

games and gamin in workplace relieve stress and encourage creativity

national library workers day – April 14

flexible scheduling options
parttime work
job sharing
flex time
leaves of abscence beyond what is required by law to deal with temp situations
phased retirement (valuable expertise)
telecommuting
transportation options
parking
showers for bikers
shift schedules to avoid peak travel times
tuition assistance

supportive workplace culture

measure staff on output rather than facetime

see employee as WHOLE person

BENEFITS

everyone has to work together to make it work

this trumps everything else when it comes to people liking their job and staying

rewards are exponential

stress makes physical and emotional health worse, make you less productive
you can then really focus on working, better quality time
better relationships

stress and fear do not make for good relationships at work,
create bitterness

more opportunities for promotion, since you are not worried about losing your quality of life

librarians are givers, we do too much taking care of others and not enough taking care of ourselves
feeling guilty about taking time away from office is barrier to participating in work-life initiatives

keeping the good people you recruit
increase engagement, retention, for the highest performing employees, reduce absenteeism, reduce illness up to half, more motivated/productive

creativity and problemsolving depend on safety of balanced life

complications

sense of entitlement
incentives for participation
return on investment
– lower absenteeism
– presenteeism (coming to work sick)
– participation
– how are folks measure? redefine what it means to be productive at work
– lower healthcare costs

how aggressively does culture reward this?

don’t let people feel penalized for participating

pilot the program, try out telecommuting to work out the kinks, then roll out

what about injuries? on work time elsewhere

average cost to replace employee is 65% of annual salary

vacation time that isn’t used creates imbalance

81% profession are women, caretakers
have to be especially careful about overwhelmed exhausted employees
age: 56% are 45-64 baby boomers
people of color, health disparities – include these issues in screenings

sedentary profession
get up
our librarian bodies, our librarian selves
do our parent institutions do this? do we feel connected to our parent institutions? cost … part of our culture

food everywhere

DDR before staff meetings

health and productivity index report (date?)
high levels of energy reported from balanced diet, healthy weight, etc.

wwii generation
boomers
gen x
gen y

custody of grandchildren
different needs for work/life balance by generation
younger resistent to giving everything to work, afraid of being hurt like their parents were

outside passions – you are more than your job title

generation and gender in the workplace Oct 2004 report

http://familiesandwork.org/eproducts/genandgender.pdf

rejection of the father’s workplace
uninterested in jobs with more responsibility if it means less time for family and friends

trends – women working more hours than ever before
more overtime work, unpaid

men shifting to more work at home

Lisa Marks
about getting pregnant shortly after starting new job
flextime and eldercare

back to presentation team

TELECOMMUTING
VPN, remote email
share-drive files at home
google calendar
shared calendaring
IM
web conferencing

you can help employees a lot by simply being flexible – it doesn’t have to cost a lot
telecommuting is great if institution has tech to support it
communication is KEY

what if policy is flextime only for parents of young children, not others? oops
requirements of the job define the amount and flexibility, not whether they are a parent or not

what about negative attitudes

up to the manager to set the tone, establish positive tone
manager should investigate if there is an underlying cause for their unhappiness, maybe you can fix it

telecommuting : meet wiwth mgr before and after to show outcomes
accountability
results and outcomes are key to everyone – onsite or offsite
it shouldn’t make any difference if your employee is sitting at home in their bunnyslippers as long as they are being productive

CHALLENGES AND STRATEGIES (part 3)

NLM
create clear goals for the program
have an executive champion
program coordinator
training for managers about how to manage teleworkers
same appraisal process
meet the tech needs of teleworkers

half of NLMs 300 employees telework

morale
travel time saved
etc – great slide

frequent check in on goals, not hour by hour or minute by minute, but progress toward goals
performance assessment should be goal oriented, and should be same for home and office employees
telework > forward work phone to home
home computer connected to work resources
good tech support essential

tech that can help:
videoconferenceing
speakerphones
web conferencing
discussion lists
IM
document sharing (wiki blogs)

what’s in it for staff?
save time
save gas
can do extra exercise etc
save money
dress code (save wardrobe)

benefits to society
1 day a week is 20% reduction in parking and pollution
which jobs CAN telework?
– no direct onsite materials or people
– performance below standard
– need to be a successful worker already

jobs that can’t:
ill
binding

if you don’t do it at work, then don’t do it at home on telework days

reference can on selective days if not on desk

BENEFITS: improved morale, recruitment, retention, emergency preparedness, free office space (desk sharing), expands virtual service hours

telework agreement:
sample agreements on website
– tasks, times (days and hours)
– how to maintain contact
– who supports workspace
– who pays
– dependent care
(childcare is not a telework activity)
– when it is required to come into work
– periodic review, tweeks

Get management buy in to support project
set milestones to evaluations

Gabe Rios
– structure for flexibility
– outlet
– tech

assumption is that people spend ~40 hrs a week, but flexibility and when and where

find something that is a mental vacation for you, reinvigorate your work

tech can be liberating
IM
social presence awareness
wireless
mobile businesses
sit outside or have meeting at coffeeshop
skype, dimdim, zoho or google docs

Back to main presentation team:

tech can also take away your worklife balance
you’re never off work, your never free
organizational culture
how are employees expected to stay in touch
manage the tech, don’t let it manage you

what do you want and why
how will it benefit the organization
how can your job be adapted
what tech will you need, what do you already have
how will you be visible, present, available
meetings? will you come in or speaker phone?
objective measures of success
who are the people who will make the decision?
address their concerns & objections head on

Health and wellness programs

work with HR

“Center for Mindfulness”
“wherever you go, there you are”
onsite fitness
mothers room
seminar series > humor at work, building your financial future

drycleaning pickup on campus
discounts

“the healthy librarian”

active commuting
showers and secure bike locks
fitness fairs
alternative medicine
diabetes care
ergonomic specialists
ten thousand step programs
walking clubs
biggest loser contests
healthy snacks

colleagues inspiration > triathlon

worklife balance classes – this is her most popular class

comfort drawer at work >> tea, dark chocolate, healthy snacks
fun events to bring staff together
celebrate successes
strong dream team >> who supports you? family and friends
lunchtime knitting group
nap room

appreciate what your employer does for you, think about what you already have before you initate something new

Top offerings:
flu-shots
employee assistance plans
flex time
health screening

if you don’t know about what’s there, you feel like it isn’t there
publicize the wellness options available
communication is key

stress management
depression is a fact of life – 6.7% of all adults
depression ranks 2nd as cause of lost productivity
few received proper treatment

4 step
relaxation, resilience, time, humor
stop, breath, reflect, choose
time management – Melody Hawks, 2008 / harvard business essentials
importance of saying NO
humor – bless in the mess

creativity and productivity are linked
“when someone’s laughing it’s contagious”

SMITH COLLEGE LIBRARIES
take the staff birdwatching, trival pursuit, origami, digital photography workshops, bikerides, brewery night, walking tours

wellness week – no meetings for the whole week

one hour a week release time for wellness activities
take advantage of local talents

both employee and employer have to be flexible

24/7/365 technology leash
Exempt positions means need to work flexibly and at higher level of work – sometimes evenings, sometimes weekends. You probably work more than 40 hours per week, closer to 45. 45 isn’t a problem, 60 hours a week *is* a problem.

make technology turn off time
establish expectation that you are NOT always available

granting of telework should be based on needs of positions, not the individual in the position
“it’s unfair to other employees” is no excuse to take away telecommuting privileges
do employee and employer both feel connected enough for telework productivity

CONCLUSIONS
question your assumptions about where, when and how work needs to be done
we don’t need to do things they way we always have
you’re worth it, your employees are worth it
it doesn’t hurt to ask
we are all evidence that worklife balance is not a myth
make balance important to your institution
develop collection and activities
planning is key,
create support systems
Circle of Wellness > inventory and passport
set a worklife balance goal

Ada Lovelace Day: Women in Tech I Admire

When I started thinking about writing this post, the tricky part was who to write about. I thought of people like Julie Virgo, Linda C. Smith, and Martha E. Williams, all of whom I admired in my early career. Instead I decided to write about the two women who really opened my mind to a passion for technology.

I never meant to become either a geek or a librarian. I practically lived at the city library growing up, and the librarians told me they’d marked me as one of their own, to which I replied (with a notable lack of enthusiasm), “Thank you very much” while thinking “not if I can help it!” Similarly the Kuder Career Interest Profile said I should be in computers, an idea to which I violently objected, having other ideas and wanting to not be like my DadTheGeek. But here I am, a geek librarian! How did this happen?

I had wanted to be some sort of creative genius – not art, but music, dance, poetry. I wasn’t completely without talent, with an undergrad dual degree in music composition and psych, and then turning down a fellowship in creative writing to instead go to library school. The idea at that point was to get a job that would allow me to support my kid as a single parent, but wouldn’t be so distracting as to interfere with my primary duty to write poetry on my own time. (I can hear people laughing – stop that now!)

So I entered library school with the idea that computers were easy, and this was basically to fill the gaps. I had no real enthusiasm for the profession, and was marking time. What I wanted was a good job, and grad school in librarianship and automation was just a way to get there. Then I met two women who changed my mind.

– Maurita Holland
- Judith Weedman

Maurita Holland

Maurita was my boss, sort of. In grad school I worked as one of the first two people in the Library Associate program at the UM library school, with my position being within what was then the Engineering Transportation Library. Maurita was up the chain of command a bit, but always took brief moments to touch base with us lowly grad students, find out what we were interested in, just kind of keeping tabs on us. She was the most exemplary professional I have ever met, serving both as a wonderful mentor and setting an example of how to rationally and humanely manage a balanced personal and professional life. I am still in awe of her, and have given up hoping to achieve the balance and level of professionalism she exhibited on a day to day basis.

My duties were mostly to serve as one of the reference librarians, some special projects, and was also the liaison for Artificial Intelligence. The artificial intelligence bit was really interesting, especially since Maurita was married to John Holland, the father of genetic algorithms. I felt it behooved me to do a little better than simply know my sources, and made a point of especially tracking the AI literature on learning theory, expert systems and neural networks – a background which has served me well.

Maurita’s own area of research at the time was in technological gatekeepers and the influence of social networks on information flow and technology transfer. She, as a head librarian, was enough of a name in this research area that while I was there we had visiting scholars from Saab, Sweden and elsewhere in Europe who came to work with her on researching this, partnering on some fascinating studies. I still remember one of them fondly – Kirsten Dahl. At the time, and probably even today although less so, it was unusual for either a woman or a librarian to achieve that kind of notice in a truly technological field.

When I had my first term paper assignment, Maurita walked by on her way into the office, and I asked her what she thought would be an interesting and useful topic. She didn’t take very long to think about it, and said, “How about you do something on technological gatekeepers?” When that term paper won the ASIS Student Paper Award, she helped me buy a dress to wear for the award ceremony.

While I’m telling the story of how Maurita influenced my life, you mustn’t think this was anything unusual. Maurita mentored many students, both in her tenure as head librarian and later when she became a faculty member at the School of Information. She was a leader in the study of the interface between technology and communication, using the findings both to improve corporate effectiveness and also to work for social good. She didn’t preach about why we need to do good; she just did it. She also had a real life outside of technology, with annual piano concerts, rich friendships, and a lot of books. Not to mention that she was elegant and graceful and always feminine. She was the first person to ask me about whether there was much science in poetry, setting me off on a lifelong journey to collect poems revealing either the life, process or substance of science. Maurita is a marvelous model of a woman in technology, and I have been honored and graced by her influence in my life.

Judith Weedman

Remember that paper I wrote on tech gatekeeping? Well, that was for a class taught by Judy Weedman. Judy taught what was basically an Info Sci 101 class. I had never really heard or thought of information science, and this was not part of my mental world when I decided to come to library school. I think I thought librarians bought books, shelved books, filed cards and answered questions, then went home and read books. The idea of an underlying intellectual infrastructure was not something I had figured out.

In Judy’s InfoSci class, we read some really great articles. I came out with my eyes sparkling and my brain feeling swollen with the fervor of new neural connections. Literally. I had never imagined that anything about librarianship would excite me so profoundly. Talk about the lightbulb going ON! I felt almost as if I’d been newly born, as thoroughly inspired as I had ever felt about anything else, and probably more so. What a gift that was!

After that class, I never took another class from Judy. Instead I stopped by her office all the time, and we would talk and talk and talk. I needed someone with whom I could think through these ideas, the ramifications, significance, processes, etcetera. Someone who could be my science friend.

Like Maurita, Judy set a wonderful example of a real woman working in technology. Before coming back for her doctorate, Judy had worked in public schools and as a secretary. She had learned computers late and told stories about her boss laughing as the blasted automated system bleeped every time she made a typo. She had a gift for mentally deducing a understandable framework and structure to organize the knowledge, and then cloak it in something that seemed as ordinary as blue jeans. Judy made the tech seem accessible and a part of human life, which wasn’t often the case in the mid-1980s. Like me, she had fascinations, odd quirky interests she would track down and collect (like resumes at one point). She would distill interesting trends and patterns, and was delighted to share thoughts, observations and ideas with others. She looked explicitly for ways to connect tech to making life better for people.

Both Maurita and Judy were powerful influences in shaping my own love of technology and approach to research, but in very different ways. Between the two of them, there was a broad scope and range, and I could see not only a passion for the ideas but also niches into which I might insert myself and hopefully be useful. I cannot express how grateful I am to have known them both.