I feel like I’ve reached some “ultimate level” of being a total nerd by creating a blog for homeowrk. Surprisingly I’ve really enjoyed using this other blog and think I will be using it fairly regulaurly. It helps me keep everything I am working on in order, categorized into my different classes, and easily available to review. I also use this blog to take notes in class for the same purpose.
Fruitville Library Open Books (Via SRQPIX)
My mom, who is super cool, works at the Fruitville Public Library within the Sarasota FL County Library system. While chatting on gmail she told me about the new Floating Collection project they launched in their library system. I had never heard of a Floating Collection and found the presentation and information they presented to the Florida Library Association interesting.
The Staff Intro Document (available here) outlines the definition and princple advantages of a Floating Collection :
The concept of floating collections relates to the idea of one system, one collection. Materials “float” freely among system libraries rather than being “owned” by a specific location. When a patron returns a circulating item, it is shelved at the location where it was returned instead of being sent back to the location from which it was checked out. Upon check in, the location is automatically updated in the library catalog to show where it now resides.
In essence, this concept of materials management eliminates the shipping and delivery of the selected floating collection. Libraries that have implemented floating collections have seen a significant decrease in
materials being shipped between libraries.For patrons, this means that materials will be immediately ready for check out or to place holds on as they will no longer be “in transit” to the home library. In addition patrons have new materials to browse in their neighborhood branch.
The concept is fairly simple with an extremely powerful outcome. The Library System is able to keep materials in circulation much faster, refresh the materials available so the selection is always interesting for patrons and reduce costs incurred by constantly shipping items. What I find most interesting about a floating collection is that it taps the hive mind of the community. If a particular library circulates more books and has higher amount of traffic, this library will naturally grow to best serve its community. The community of Sarasota is very diverse with each branch serving a very different group. The hive mind may be further exploited when patrons of a particular branch/community begin to obtain, and continually check out, works from the circulation that have sparked interest within the community.
It seems that the Floating Collection is the first step towards USER GENERATED LIBRARIES and that is something I find absolutely inspiring. By organizing and uniting the entire collection of the Sarasota Library System these librarians will be able to leverage their materials to best serve the entire community.
Reading Garden Fruitville Public Library (Via Sasota County Library)
In late 2008 my friend and I went to Honduras to visit the Copan Ruinas. I became interested in the Copan Ruinas after finding out that they were recently added as one of the UNESCO World Heritage sites. You can learn more about UNESCO World Heritage sites here. We found a round trip flight from Chicago to San Pedro Sula, Honduras for just under $300. We stayed at a really interesting hostel in San Pedro Sula. The hostel owner was a rock-star celebrity in Honduras and we watched her on the Honduran version of “MTV” before meeting her at the hostel.
We took a very long bus ride, about 5 hours, from San Pedro Sula to Copan Ruinas. The Copan Ruinas are a small, rural, cobble stone village of about 6,000 inhabitants. We spent the day wondering about and I was surprised to find a Public Library in the downtown area!
I promise that the sign says “Bibliotecha Publica” my friend was not able to get the full sign in the photo. I was really excited to see a Public Library at the Copan Ruinas but it was unfortunately closed the entire time I was in Honduras. It was also interesting to see that many of the shops in the area had set up lending libraries with an honor system. There was a sign describing how to “check out” a book by writing down the number on the spine and when to bring it back. If you liked the book enough you could even exchange a book of your own and a small fee to keep the book. If only public libraries could be so trusting and let go of control. I think that urban libraries have a lot to learn from rural libraries and literary circles.
As we were walking around one day my ears perked up as I heard a very familiary noise. I couldn’t quite place what the noise was but then it hit me, someone was playing Super Mario Brothers. I followed the noise and found a group of children playing Super Mario Bros on hacked together machines. Someone had hacked together “arcade” like machines using old cartridge games and a televsion.
There is absolutely no reason for there to be that many buttons to play a NES cartridge! I was amazed at the ingenuity of whoever set these arcade machines up. They were literally in an abandoned looking building with a big metal gate. Needless to say, I challanged some of these kids to a soccer game and they annilihated me.
If you are intereted you can see more of my pictures from my Honduras trip here
Skokie Public Library Gaming Night
I’m not originally from the Chicago area, or even the Midwest. When I started asking all of my coworkers if they had ever been to the Skokie Public Library they often laughed at me. They wondered why I would want to know about a library so far away when I work right down the street from the Harold Washington Public Library. Regardless of their scoffing I was drawn to the Skokie Public Library, it seemed like every article or blog post I read on the bibliosphere was mentioning Skokie. For example, at the end of my monitoring assignment Toby Greenwalt (virtual services coordinator) was named a Library Journal Mover & Shaker.
I started my brand monitoring by first checking Google Reviews directly from Google Maps. I assumed that this is where many people gather information about a library, or really anything, when they are looking into visiting it for the first time. Almost all of the reviews are 5 stars with titles like “The Best Library in the whole Area” and “Wow.” The top review (the one you see bellow the name of the location in Google Maps) starts with “”I study many times at this library. It is a very good library and it is always …“
Twitter searching also revealed similar results. Many people go to the library to study and the Skokie’s twitter presence is prominently displayed. Here is a screenshot from the search query while snagged while creating this post. I think it’s important to mention that Skokie Public Library has a great bio on twitter : “Cornerstone of information, entertainment, and community on the North Shore.” Not only are they striving to provide information but so much more.
Although I can’t claim to have seen this for myself as part of brand monitoring I looked through the blogs of those library staff that I could locate. From Toby Greenwalt’s blog:
This is great, but it tends to overlook the biggest reason to have a good Twitter Search feed set up: it lets you know when people are talking about you. Much like having Google Alerts set up, you can identify and respond to all the good and bad chatter taking place out in the cloud. Right after I made that last post, I found the following conversation in the feed:
I decided to try a website out that I know is often used for scathing and snarky reviewers, Yelp. I was hoping to find at least one bad review but everywhere I looked everything was great! Almost all 5 Star reviews from Yelp as well with reviews like ” This is my favorite library in the world. When I lived in the suburbs, this was my happiest hangout.” via
After monitoring Skokie Public Library I could plainly see that they provide great service that is truely appreciated by their community. I decided that to contact the library about possible volunteer opportunities. Last weekend I took the haul out to Skokie and got to the library a little before my meeting. I decided to grab some coffee next door and read a little. The cafe employee guessed that I was there to visit the library and we started talking. She began lamenting on how much she loves the library and how many people it draws to the downtown area. After I sat down with my bagel and coffee a librarian came in and inquired on how to place group size coffee orders! Overall, Skokie Public has created and maintained a highly appreciated brand.
Recently the library bibliosphere has been chattering about Druapl. Drupal is an open source content management system which many libraries are using to create their websites. One of my favorite and undoubtedly one of the most famous Drupal library websites is from Darien Public Library: http://www.darienlibrary.org/ Drupal allows for a high level of customization on a website, blogging, commenting, and tagging.
I decided to configure and set up my own Drupal website just to see what the back end of the service looked like. This was a rather exciting and simple process. I’d like to use this post to explain how to set up a Drupal testing environment so that you can test Drupal yourself.
1. I am running Mac OS X, so I installed the MAMP stack : http://www.mamp.info/ Mamp stands for (Macintosh, Apache, MySql, and PhpAdmin if you are using Windows it would be called WAMP)
2. Download Drupal : http://drupal.org/ (Do not unzip/install yet)
3. From here it gets a little tricker but hopefully I can explain it. Run the MAMP stack, when it opens it should look like this you want to click on “Open start page”
4. This will load the MAMP stack admin page. Drupal runs through a database, so we have to create a database for Drupal to run in. Select “phpAdmin” from the top bar.
5. Click Databases.
6. Enter a name for your database under “Create New Database” and make sure to select “utf8_general_ci”
7. Click Create
8. Next you want to create a User ID & Password with admin access within your database. Click on phpMyAdmin again and select click “Privileges”
9. Click Add a new user.
10. Fill out the user information page and makse sure to switch from “Any Host” to “Local”
11. Do not change the “None” button selected under the “Database for user” section. Do not select anything under the “Global privileges” section. Click Go in the bottom right hand corner.
12. When you arrive at the next page select “Database Specific Privileges” and make sure to select the Drupal database we selected.
13. Make sure you select ” SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP, INDEX and ALTER” and then hit Go
14. Now you want to unzip/unpack Drupal in the htdocs folder within the MAMP folder in your applications.
15. I suggest renaming the folder to just Drupal, it will make the next step easier.
16. Go to http://localhost:8888/drupal/ and follow the install instructions. Use the USER ID and Database we created. From here you should be able to play with Drupal!
Here is what it looks like from the Admin End:
Drupal Home Page:
I hope this quick tutorial will help some of you experience Drupal hands on. If you have any questions please feel free to ask and I will do my best to help!
