Web 2.0 Expo: Communities That Connect and Thrive

The first session I attended at the Web 2.0 Expo was Online Customer Communities that Connect and Thrive: Creating the Right Mix of Purpose, Passion, People, and Platforms presented by Lois Kelly (above right) and François Gossieaux (above left) of Beeline Labs. They promised to post their Powerpoint presentation to Slideshare.net under: http://www.slideshare.net/fgossieaux. The following is my summary of the session - any mistakes are my own and should not be assumed to be that of the lecturers without verification.

Three hours in length, their session had a mix of interactive break-out sessions and lecture sessions. After a brief intro, we broke up into groups - their method was to divide attendees by month of birth, so it was a good way to get to know people and break the ice. My group was the October, from which we informally selected Chrissie Brodigan (formerly of the Huffington Post) to faciliate and be our spokesperson. We brainstormed for characteristics of (online) social communities and came up with: sharing stories, having (social) purpose, community causes, support, dependency, community interests, effecting change, shared history, open communities, outlet, safety, belonging, collaboration, personal relationships. In the pic below, Chrissie reports on our brainstorming to the rest of those assembled. (Interestingly, not all groups identified the same characteristics; some were more aggressive in their attitude towards others.)

In learning to work with each other, Kelly & Gossieaux reminded us of Clay Shirky's comment to the effect of: "A group is its own worst enemy."

Each one of the groups summarized their characterizations of social communities. It was interesting to point out that not all saw perfect harmony among participants, and that some communities were based on an ongoing debate.) They referred us to Beeline Lab's Tribalization Report (one has to register on their website to see it).

They characterized the subject as "tribalization" and quoted Wikipedia: "Tribalism is the very first social sysmte that human beings ever lived in..." They characterized the motivations for socialization as:

• People want to connect with people
• People want to help and be helped
• People operate in either a social framework, or market framework.

Further, they see 4 building blocks as part of the social network: content, members, member profiles, and transactions, and posited this interrelated axiom:

• The more content you have, the more members you will get;
• The more members you have, the more content you will get;
• The better you match content and members to member profiles the more members and content you will get; and
• The easier it is to do transactions the more members you will attract.

Among their top usage scenarios were "canary in a coal mine" and long-tail sales - kind of extremities of the market.

Who's in charge? was one of their questions. Most communities wind up reporting to the head of marketing. So they discussed several takeaway points:

Takeaway #1: The community delivers game changing results (example: Ebay's support communities resulted in their bringing in 50% more customers). It's getting the community involved in the processes. A community can amplify, increase effectiveness and decrease costs.

Takeaway #2: The changing role of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). As example they cited Ducati which eliminated their CMO and left all marketing to be done by their online community.

Takeaway #3: The need for new management thinking. If there's a mismatch between community goals and what management invests in, things won't work. So management has to really understand what to measure. This goes against the dictum "Build it and they will come." They reject that, and suggest to start small and limited, to see how the community receives it.

The provided some case studies: first, Walmart Moms - how Walmart selected 11 mothers who epitomized use of their product. But then they spoke about Fiskars's Fisk-A-Teers - 3 "ambassadors" who serve as the generators and conduit to the rest of the community.

They spoke about the Tivo community which is entirely separate from the product Tivo, but that the product people were still listening and taking suggestings from the community about improving the product. Even Lilly in dealing (delicately) with their community chose not to refer to their drug as a cure for the disease, but rather portrayed it as a way to restore regular patterns of life while coping with the disease.

To get started use the SAM formula:

Strategize, Activate, Manage to scale

We then broke into our "monthly" groups again for about 25 minutes and each was given one of 3 projects to work on - an aerospace firm, a theater company, and a toy company. Our October group came up with the title Fundawhere - a fictional community where 8-12 year olds could share knowledge, reviews and other stuff concerning the toys their owned. It was a good exercises in trying to actualize what we just heard.

Once the lecture resumed, Lois and François discused obstacles. (I'm not sure I them but they'll be on their Powerpoint presentation on Slideshare.net.) Some additional notes are these: One should have "more McKinsey, less McCann" (referring to market specialists' philosophies). Be simple: show the data, the trends, and examples. Be frank about the challenges and readiness. Frame the values to business function of goals and aspirations.

Lois was particularly influenced by Rob Kozinets's article E-Tribalized Marketing. The five common obstacles marketers face:

1. What's the business value? Lack of a strategy roadmap
2. Appealing to all of our customers and prospects
   
3. Fear of failure
4. Who's job is it anyhow?
5. What if you build it and no one comes? and (extra):
   
6. What is the right tech platform?
   

They made an interesting point, that companies that seek to create social communities of their workforce are doomed to fail because: the workers are being paid to work; their not being paid to form social communities. (They referred to Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational.)


But they summed up by saying that the social and tribal behavioral movement is part of business strategy. Content matters more than technology (well, in this context). They predicted that most companies will have community groups associated with them in just a few years.

Thereafter people asked questions for nearly 30 minues. Some of them:

Q. How to deal with trolls in the community?
A. Either a strong moderator/facilitator, or let the community cleanse itself of these disruptive people.

Q. Speak more about tribalization.
A. A focus on technology will not guide your community to success (they showed examples of communities that did not "take").

I found it a valuable session. A person I chatted with found it limited, as the speakers were speaking theoretically. She wanted to see the succcess they had with clients. Indeed, they did not mention any that they had.

IgniteNYC: intro to the Web 2.0 Expo

On Monday evening, Sept. 15, the reception IgniteNYC served as the kick-off for the Web 2.0 Expo. Never having been to one of these things, I wasted my time coming early and having no one to talk to. I couldn't even figure out who to talk to, because most attendees were attending the New York TV Festival -- NYTVF (you can tell from all the media sponsors's logos seen in the picture above). Part of the "social" aspect of the event was a cupcake decorating contest (you can see the "winners" in the lower left corner of the picture above).

This IgniteNYC post describes who gave talks in pecha kucha style: each person could have a maximum of 20 slides, running at 15 seconds each. Some seemed barely relevant to the theme of the expo, such as those dealing with cupcakes (come on, who can eat them, with such an overload of sugar?), magic at the Democratic National Convention (whatever my political leanings, what did this have to do with Web 2.0?).

But some of the talks were interesting. Raffi Krikorian's holmz.com facilitates self-monitoring of energy consumption, Sam Lessin gave a wake up call to how we view our privacy in today's world, and Don Carli spoke about the carbon footprint of all our computer issues (making one realize that anyone who espouses "green" attitudes and uses a computer is a hypocrite). Some were amusing: Deb Schultz's "Alley vs. Valley" was a spot-on comparison of working in New York City versus working in San Francisco, Andrew Schneider's experimental devices for performance might really have a chance - maybe not the projection of lips on someone else (it reminded me of the 1960s cartoon Space Angel), but the sneaker devices that generated rhythm, not to mention the wrist things that could produce a variety of sound effects. (Broadway: watch out! Or maybe Fringe festivals...)

I found the most interesting talks coming from Audacia Ray and Jennifer Pahlka. Ray spoke about the relationship of pornography to innovation. She pointed out that porn was in part responsible for the adoption of VCR (over Betamax), since there was more porn available in that medium (despite Betamax's better quality). Ray characterized the porn industry as one that was run by the stakeholders, but that recent developments on the Internet - namely a more socialized world - had challenged that. Now there are a number of sites where users can upload their own porn stills and videos -- so who needs the companies that produce the stuff? In fact, she said, many people prefer to watch, comment, and interact with each other's porn through these websites than the impersonal ones of big companies. In this way, they are fulfilling the web 2.0 dictum of interrelating with one another. Watch for ongoing changes in this industry.

Jennifer Pahlka's talk was humorous and more. Entitled Technology Anxiety: Jello and Web 3.0, she used the metaphor of cooking for showing the development of technology. She compared utilitarian cookbooks of the post-World War II era to beginnings in technology. She showed advertisements that tried to portray stoves and ovens as new devices where one just pushed a single button that would create a finished meal - just like promises of technology. Continuing in this vein, she showed that a little bit of cooking knowledge could create some really awful confections from those who didn't know how to cook, just as it had in the technology world among those less creative or innovative. In speaking of the threat or fear that some have of web 3.0 (which was characterized as a world that would leave us out), she made a funny metaphor to Jello sculptures, where one could put in all sorts of food within the Jello and have it magically "work" simply because of the medium of Jello. She warned us about having such illusions in the Web 2.0 world. Very nice.

It would have been nicer if the presentations were vetted a bit more and were a bit more releavant, but I guess the mood was to party with beer (served on the house) and cupcakes.

Wikipedia and the community

Most people I know (including librarians) don't like Wikipedia.  Some people complain about the uneven quality of articles, while others even more vociferously object to policies which they perceive as bordering on facism.  There is a great deal of truth in both of these criticisms, and yet, loads of people use Wikipedia.  I use it as part of work sometimes, because it's a fast and easy way to find information which I know I can supplement with more authoritative sources.  (I also find there is lots not to like.)

Information Today has an article on the phenomenon, Putting the Library in Wikipedia by Lauren Pressley and Carolyn J. McCallum.  The authors go further than other writings I've seen.  They say we've got to embrace Wikipedia, because library websites are losing hits since no one suspects there to be much content on them.  Thus we should put our content on Wikipedia - and goes on to describe an abortive attempt with a lesson.

I've been a strong voice of the same feeling, not because I feel our websites are under-visited (although I'm sure they are), but because by getting ourselves entrenched in Wikipedia, we can better direct information about our unique holdings.  I've systematically put in entries for our many archival collections in the appropriate articles, and on a few occasions, have created articles so I can include mention of an important collection.  (While the individuals may not necessarily be important, what is important are the links to and from other articles.  That is what raises the significants of topics - just ask Google.)  Some of the information I've put there are the products of research done in response to reference questions.

Oddly, when I've tried to suggest engaging Wikipedia on e-mail lists of musicologists and music theorists I get either no comment, or agreement without any follow-up.  One anonymous Wikipedian began a WikiProject devoted to music theory.  Even though I announced it on the list of the Society for Music Theory, SMT-TALK, which has over 1,000 people interested in music theory (including many students), not a single one of them signed up.

Why the lack of interest?  I think it has less to do with the idiosyncracies of the Wikipedian community and more to do with the vacuum in which certain types of professions operate.  If I may resort to armchair psychology:  music people need to spend a lot of time just listening and thinking about music (not to mention practicing instruments).  It is not a profession that easily welcomes external forces.  So I suspect the lack of Wikipedia engagement reflects a more troubling aspect of the practitioners of the music profession.

I don't have enough experience serving the (non-music) academic population at large, but I suspect that this isolationist behavior is typical of many academic fields of study.  It's easy not bothering to look up additional sources or citations.   As librarians, it's in our interest to counteract this apathy and closemindedness by reaching out and populating places like Wikipedia.

RBMS and the Future: Quo Vadis

Although I don't have any more detailed notes on sessions of the RBMS pre-conference, the issue of capturing the information has turned up on RBMS's email list (I've been a participant in the discussion). There are competing issues:

1. RBMS should use new technologies to extend the reach of the sessions, especially for those who can not afford to attend, and those who are not physically able to attend (e.g. web casts, pod casts, posting of slides, etc.)

However,

2. If new technologies are used, will that reduce the number of attendees at RBMS (and reduce the value of getting vendors)?

Being a relatively new member (only about 3 years, although this was my first pre-conference) while I'm concerned about attendance, the librarian in me wants to share information with everyone. There are numerous people in the world (not just librarians) who could benefit from at least seeing the PowerPoint presentations (I already argued that all of them should be made available on Slideshare). It is my belief that RBMS (and the field) will grow if the group expands its reach.

Of course, a main problem is the attitude "we've never done this before." And "we have to ask ALA for permission to change anything." (Those of you who are avid readers of Michael Stephens' Tame The Web blog will recognize the problems with these attitudes.)

Although others on the RBMS e-mail list have formulated the second issue, I think it's more complex. For the last 2 years, RBMS has capped their attendance at about 300 people. Fortunately this year they expanded to 350. Next year they plan on 400. It sounds good, yet they are worried about losing people. What they have not addressed is that when you have more people in attendance, you need bigger spaces which cost more. So as the pre-conference grows, it's still going to wind up costing more (which potentially will alienate the "younger" people, or those with out money or subventions).

But my feeling is that the RBMS pre-conference has to evolve. So many of the presentations are "unnecessary" in the sense that they are "stand-and-deliver" papers. Why not foster more interactivity, more exchange? If it's just a one-way flow of information, isn't such information more appropriate to a publication or blog? (And it's sad that the group's publication, RBM, is issued on a yearly basis. We'll be seeing these June 2008 presentations in published form around May 2009 - an unbelievably long time.)

The Ephemeral Archives blog (to which I'm an infrequent contributor) has already taken notice in a post, Old School, New School? which characterizes the conflicting forces - those who wants a more open and transparent organization, and those who feel obliged to ask permission of the parent organization, ALA, before taken one step.

Fortunately, some of the presenters have posted their PowerPoint presentation to Slideshare:

Karen Calhoun (OCLC): Metadata 2.0, Glocalization, and Being Where Their Eyes Are: What's So Special About Special Collections?

Barbara Taranto (NYPL): Selection: It's Not Just About Curators Anymore

Kathleen Burns (Yale University): Blog Boot Camp: A Primer in Blogging for Special Collections Staff


So - three small steps at opening up the RBMS pre-conference and reaching a larger audience.

RBMS Plenary Session 6: Into The Future

[Although I had my computer with me, it was extremely difficult taking notes on the first talk by Peter B. Kaufman, because he spoke like a television montage: tons of references cascading in a montage of things and ideas that get you all excited and make you forget the issue at hand. Nevertheless, what follows is what I could transcribe - it reads more like notes or a bullet list rather than prose.]

These words should not to be taken as an exact transcriptions of what was said. I take responsibility for any errors of transmission.

Friday, June 27

1. Peter B. Kaufman, president and CEO of Intelligent Television.
[See also his article Video, education, and open content: Notes toward a new research and action agenda which includes many of the points mentioned in his talk below.]

Libraries are critical to the health of the country as a liberal democracy.
The fourth estate [i.e. journalism and the commercial press] is bankrupt; [commercial] media has succumbed to trends that imperil freedom and democracy.

But public media is online and truth is available. While everything you do is based on a variety of decisions, ultimately what you do is based on your own freedom and that of our society. In this context, digitization is a moral imperative.

Libraries are producers. See Archibald MacLeish article from 1939, on libraries and culture. [probably: Libraries in the Contemporary Crisis, 1939]

Libraries are becoming involved with their communities. Columbia University is getting involved with its community, witness its interest in the Apollo Theater. [? I couldn't find any connection between Columbia and the Apollo. Maybe Kaufman just meant part of Harlem, which is a faulty point since Columbia is claiming eminent domain because it wants to build in that area; many residents are antagonistic to the idea.]

Libraries are spending more money than television on making their video available.

See The New Metrics of Scholarly Authority by Michael Jenson (Chronicle of Higher Education, June 15, 2008) for a list of new trends.

Growth of mobile devices: mobile phone are poised to replace the computer as main route to get online.

I encourage you to engage video. Video is where the action is. Growth of video recording occurs across the board. There is growing online demand for moving images. Cisco Systems predicts growth of 30% of downloads in 2008 to 50% by 2010.

Video is the new vernacular. See: On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt.

When you make your videos, engage a tv and film production crew, because they have the know-how of video techniques - they know what works.

Librarians are needed because they have to explain how to render material searchable.

In this context I recommend you re-read Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.


2. Jackie Dooley, Head of Special Collections and University Archives, University of California-Irvine.

Is there a moral imperative to digitize? Focus on value of the objects. Here is a list of 10 things to consider in digitization.

The Ten Commandments of Digitization:

1. Embrace the technological continuum of the book
2. Find yourself - why you love your work and what you bring to do it, and how it translates into the digital world
3. Digitize with abandon. Think wholesale vs. retail - not digitizing pages from a book, but the entire book. We need to stop doing the scholars' work
4. Educate yourself about the born digital
5. Make your work economically sustainable. (Forget item level description)
6. Follow the archivists' lead: Are there rare book parallels to "more product, less process?"
7. Make your data promiscuous: expose metadata and digital content
8. Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate
9. Revere the knowledge and opinions of the young
10. Pro-actively define our collective future

It's our [special collections libraries] time to join the centrality of the digital experience.
Should we think about shared rare book collections? You need to give priority to preserving some things, and not others.

Digital will not go away; on the contrary it will become central to what we do.

Think of Star Trek metaphor: the computer that told them whatever they want. That's what we want, the full knowledge of human experience.

Among the respondents of Merrilee Proffitt of OCLC (RLG Programs) who encouraged everyone to "digitize wildly and beat out Maury Povich and junk tv."

RBMS Plenary Session 5: If We Build It, Will They Come?

Before the fifth plenary session, there were some words concerning next year's RBMS pre-conference: It'll be a RBMS 50th anniversary conference celebration with a program devoted to nostalgia: "Seas of change: navigating cultural and institutional contexts of special collections." It'll be a critical look at where we have been, where we are, and where we are going, combined with self-examination. RBMS hopes to have new and emerging voices at the pre-conference, including new librarians, those with career changes, and underrepresented librarians.

As in my previous posts, the words following are not to be taken as an exact transcription of the speakers' presentations. There's no guarantee that I captured their words and at times, I was only able to get notes. I take responsibility for any errors.

RBMS Plenary Session 5: If We Build It, Will They Come?
Friday, June 27

Before proceeding with the 2 speakers, the session began with an introductory quote from Albert Manguel's A History of Reading:

It is the reader who grants or recognizes in an object, place or event a certain possible readability; it is the reader who must attribute meaning to a system of signs, and then decipher it. We all read ourselves and the world around us in order to glimpse what and where we are. We read to understand, or to begin to understand. We cannot do but read. Reading, almost as much as breathing, is out essential function...reading is at the beginning of the social contract.

1. Medieval Manuscripts and Digital Approaches - Matthew Fisher, Department of English, UCLA.
Let's take a trip down digital memory lane. In the early history of the web, medieval stuff was more elusive. An example of one page left from early digitization efforts in 1993: A brief description, and an isolated image - that's it.

The idea of a library exhibition is very interesting, but requires lots of time and resources, but presents a disconnect.

Catalogs are by no means are complete; they're not crowd pleasers. Medieval manuscripts are also elusive in catalogs, which often depend on titles, dates, and authors -- exactly those identifying traits that many medieval manuscripts lack. In the British Library catalog not all manuscripts come up when one knows that institution has them (e.g. BL and Piers Ploughman). Also consider the difficulty of locating them in a catalog because earlier English has letters that are not translatable to today's language. (He showed examples.)

Today we have things such as the Digital Scriptorum (a consortium project), an image database of images of medieval manuscripts. In a questionnaire showing user needs, the results showed that people seek specific manuscripts, and are looking for information in the script, although the site is for images. In the digital environment, text = digital text, i.e. that which can be searched. We're accepting the limitation of OCR of early medieval prints (which look like handwriting). The expectations of what can be done limits what scholars can do with them.

But most digital projects involving medieval manuscripts are like tearing leaves from books: the text is struck through and you're left with a catchword (which admittedly can be a fascinating study). But what about scholars whose interest is in alterations of the text? How does one encode such emendations and corrections in the digital environment? It leads to the question: What is the subject: the text, or the corrections?

As a pedagogical resource, these digital images are a godsend. The access they give is also a good thing. Is digital access to selections of a manuscript just a precursor to physical object? If so, why are we engaging in these objects?

The [name of unidentified project] is a catalog of digitized medieval manuscripts, a project of UCLA and Fisher. [See UCLA's Center For Medieval and Rennaissance Studies project page for more projects.]

Who knows what scholar is doing at any time? This is important information to find out, and scholars can't find it out. Just trying to provide access points to medieval manuscripts out there is a problem in itself (official library access points versus the access point needed and desired by the scholarly community). On this [unnamed project] there is no federated search, because Fisher prefers not.

CERL Portal - contains manuscripts and dearly printed material, but has logged in only 2,000 visitors. It requires catalogs to be in an OAI format (to communicate with other websites and portals).

What about research using digital collections? People can do what they want with them, despite what metadata a library provides. There's an issue of imposing limitations on what can be done. Why not have manuscripts in OAI? Why not allow users to provide links, tags, search on their own [user-generated] terms. Why not allow mash-ups, e.g. as the way people use Google maps [i.e. combining Google maps with other applications]. He wants to see mashups of medieval manuscripts. It's a way to foster dialog between patrons and keepers.

2. Strategies for teaching and research - Stephen Davison (Head, UCLA Digital Program):
He spoke about the Digital Library Program at UCLA. Their aims include:

• creating digital collections
• looking for synergies with research, teaching, ahd learning
• digital preservation
• development of access and use tools standards
  
• fostering cooperative projects: campus, statewide, national, international

What are we building within digital projects? Some? All? The "important" parts? Should we digitize complete objects or logical groupings? Should we produce a mirror of a physical collection or some other artificial grouping?

Whatever they may be, digital objects (whether items or fragments) are an important aspect of collection development.

What about the finding aid - should we tie to it, or provide another means of access? Some examples are: OAC (Online Archive of California), and CALISPHERE
(These sites provide different windows for different audiences of a single digital collection.)

Who are the collections for? The saying goes "will they come?" But who are they? (Concerning the Sheet Music Consortium, we've made assumptions of who uses it, but we're not sure; we are trying to design methods to discover who is using it.

There are methods where we can obtain feedback on our digital collections:

• digitization requests
• offers of metadata
• personal communications
• legal communications
• statistics

Digitization vs. digital projects. Providing access vs. providing service layers. [The new standard for OAI - protocol for digital exchange).

Currently we offer conventional access to digital files, usually through library catalogs. But we need to start thinking about web 2.0 features - using users to provide more information, more features, e.g. making guides more wiki-like, ability to tag, annotate, recombine, and do mash-ups. This upload of digital content by users will lead to the creation of new knowledge and understanding.

Popular culture is now a big focus of web 2.0 ideas - e.g. Frontera Collection of Mexican-American music (sound recordings).
(Topics related to American Orientalism - i.e. diverse populations in the US - are also popular.)

What about mass digitization of special collections? Some issues:

• a matter of time and money
• there should be careful digitization on a grand scale
• there are parallels to microfilm; but
  
• digitization is for broad access; it's not yet considered a mode of preservation

Aspects of digital library services:

• digitization occurs on demand
• provides access to details available in the master image not available to unaided eye
  
• feature web 2.0 attributes
• makes metadata harvestable
• encourages the "resue and exchange" of information
  

Proactive digitization (UCLA plans)

Digitization can foster scholarly collaborations. Some examples:

• Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative
• Hypercities
  
• Encyclopedia of Egyptology

There are some digitization issues here. A good example: Cuneiform tablets are not just text, but are three dimensional objects, making their digitization problematic. It's an issue that's being wrestled in the digital worlds of libraries versus museums.

With the Hypercities project (and others), Stephen foresees the growth of cooperative digitization and metadata harvesting among various institutions.

Elements of the virtual research environment:

• web 2.0 tools
• collaboration, or not, as needed (small working groups classes, open to public)
• gathering and sharing of metadata and/or digital objects
• publishing

In the question and answer period following the talks, Terry Belanger spoke briefly, and reminded all of the hullabaloo that greeted microfilming. In refererence to microfilm's passing, he said: "Digitization is the next thing; it too shall pass." Of course he got a big laugh, but many erupted into applause.

Another person's question was left unanswered: whether the scholarly use of digitized information has the same status as the actual study of objects.

RBMS Seminar: Teaching and Outreach in Special Collections

Also on Wednesday, June 25 of the RBMS (Rare Books and Manuscripts) pre-conference (see my previous entries), there were 3 seminars. I attended Seminar C, Teaching and Outreach in Special Collections: From K-12 to Undergraduates and Beyond. Speakers included:

• Lisa Berglund, Associate Professor of English, Buffalo State College
• Yolanda Theunissen, Curator of the Osher Map Library, University of Southern Maine [see their Outreach at the Osher Library ]
  
• Pablo Alvarez, Curator of Rare Books, University of Rochester [updated 2011:  now of University of Michigan]

The moderator was Jennifer MacDonald, of the University of Delaware, who stated that teaching outreach requires creative planning. The talks provided 3 examples: undergraduates, K-12 classes, and the general public. Again, these notes are my own transcriptions, and I am totally responsible for errors of meaning, therefore these notes should not be taken as a fully accurate transcript of the speakers' talks.
------------------------------------------

Lisa Berglund spoke on "Introducing Undergraduates to Rare Books and Manuscripts." A regular teacher (i.e. not a librarian!) she mentioned how she teaches book history in 2 contexts:

Small classes (like graduate seminars), and with large classes. Buffalo State College library has only 18 volumes printed before 18^th century! Many students never realize there is a rare book room at the school and many faculty don't realize as well. Unfortunately many faculty are oblivious or not creative enough to figure out how to use these pre-18th century volumes.

It's important to get any student involved with rare books, especially:

1. English literature students. Get them to see any 19^th century book (at least; if not an earlier example). Remember: most of their visual and tactile experience is only from the Norton Anthologies! Similarly, let them try to experience William Blake in an authentic context.
2. Communications students. Issues of dissemination can be interesting. [can't recall remainder]
3. History students. Engagement with texts of the past.

also:

4) Secondary faculty. When such people are in teacher training, their engagement with academic issues can be limited. Focus on this group, who will be flattered with the attention. They haven't had the experience of dealing with rare books. You can suggest ways to break down huge class groups. Think of digitized surrogates as a supplement.

Other concerns: rare book room hours are generally not convenient for students who study at night. If you can schedule classes earlier in the day, then they can visit the rare book room. (They can visit other destinations that supplement rare book study.) Work with faculty to get them to the rare book room, despite its hours.

You might be faced with the attitude: "I'm not here to learn, I'm here to get an education." Most students can't spend lots of time studying rare books, but the teacher or librarian can show that books are more than just texts.

You might want to think about to reaching out to other institutions' students. People at other institutions can excite and interest students. Just getting them to see what's out there can be extremely valuable. Think of community colleges that don't have rare books that will benefit from your resources.

Library tours are great but students need to TOUCH stuff. Let them touch these artifacts. If you hand out the gloves, they'll get really serious about their study. Don't be afraid to show them the fun stuff.

You can get them to recognize the difference between rare books and old books. You can teach so much from anything that's old and interesting. This is the time to use to use primary sources. Students are receptive to what happened to the book, because that kind of transition exists today (i.e. how computers and the web are transforming everything). If you put book history into the context of today's resources, they'll “get” it. They get works they've heard of. Ask questions about things which are different today (e.g lack of street addresses in old publishers' statements).

Lisa has found 3 assignments that work really well:

1. A 400-500 word report on "what I saw, and what I learned." They can get engaged if teacher encourages student interaction. Think of the collection as a commitment to culture.
2. Great assignment: Having each student examine a different 18th century book. It gets them looking and touching books. Then go back to library and talk about all their assignments together.
3. Comparison assignment: Choose a text you've read, and find a first edition (it can be online, or facsimile, or similar surrogate), and write a comparison of the experience of comparing the two. One student wrote a wonderful paper about Uncle Tom's Cabin, and how one is robbed of so much meaning and significant unless you read it in its original context.

Students can gain "ownership" of original research by examining unusual rare books. These will be particularly interesting to students interested in cultural studies, and pedagogy. "Seize the moment!" to get to these students.

Yolanda Theunissen spoke on outreach to the K-12 constituency, as done in the Osher Map Library of the University of Southern Maine. (See her article Developing and Promoting Outreach Services for Elementary and Middle Schools: Case Study of a Rare Map Library at a Public University in Journal of Map and Geography Libraries 3, no. 2 [June 14, 2007]: 5-22). 25% of her time is spent on outreach, including adults, and the general public. K-12 groups are just one part of that program.

It is a challenge to interpret materials to younger children. With few staff available to her, she takes a thematic approach - a gradual, phased approach. Very pragmatic. Have you developed kits or "trunks" that you can ship to schools? Do you have routine class tours?

Step 1: Take inventory of the resources you have. Get in the mindset: What will work with minimal effort for a K-12 class? Get something arresting that will grab their attention. (Think of a Duchamp ready-made sculpture, e.g. the bicycle wheel mounted upside down on a chair, or the toilet seat sculpture).

If you have traveling exhibits, create subsets or activities that will become a teachable activity.

Step 2: Add value. Recruit students with special interests. Some high school teachers wonder what to do with honor students (i.e. high-level students that teachers can't handle). Use them and mine their interests. If you have a publication (e.g. exhibition catalog), analyze it and do a value-added examination. How can you ensure that the books (or brochures) you create will be used? As you start thinking along these lines, it'll become second nature. Ask yourself “Is there something here that the student will respond to?”

Become acquainted with your new constituency. Make time to attend local/regional chapter meetings. Become familiar with the “teaching results” and how they get to be in compliance with the state's guidelines for learning.

Also other ideas: Team up with a teacher. Students will respect you more because they already have gained respect of the teacher. Do teacher training and learning with teachers and librarians together. Do group tours with adults. They're straightforward for high school age and above, but when you deal with below 5^tth grade, there are different issues.

When you have a class enter the room, figure out how to engage students to think right away (again, think of those Duchamp ready-mades and their "shock value"). Try to relate to their experience of the objects.

The benefits: to staff, you get recognition from administration. Ultimately, if you reach students, they are the potential donors when they're older.

Pablo Alvarez. We should be teaching history of the the book to a wider audience. They are historical objects. You can't have a text without interpretation. There are an increasing number of courses on the teaching of the history of the book. This encourages greater collaboration between faculty and special collections librarians. How can students do research if they've never been introduced to Special Collection ideas?

Alvarez has been successful with his class on the history of the book at the University of Rochester. He places an emphasis on how a knowledge of bibliography can assist and help collectors. It's learning about the printed word and its evolution - an evolution that takes you from scroll to codex, to the introduction of paper. The focus of the course is on the hand-made period before movable type. Alvarez touches on other topics such as the transmission of ideas, and the reasons why book makers did what they did. For example, in their copy of Copernicus, there are irregularities on title page: What do they mean?

Topics such as “continuity with the past” and “censorship” are good for a class, because students can understand and see how these topics relate to current issues. Having a class in the library presents a unique opportunity for students to handle Special Collections items. A close examination of books can reveal personal stories that can connect to the student (for example, issues of provenance and previous owners).

Reaching out to the community can lead to greater diversity. Take advantage of developments in bibliographic studies to do outreach.

RBMS Plenary Session 2: Permissions Limbo: Intellectual Property and Licensing Issues

Continuing my coverage of the Rare Books and Manuscript Division (RBMS of ACRL), here are my notes from the second plenary session, held on Wednesday, June 25, 2008. It was a talk given by Maureen Whalen Esq., Associate Counsel for the J. Paul Getty Trust.

I suppose this talk will be published in a future issue of RBM or perhaps a Getty publication. Nevertheless, I take full responsibility for any errors in transcripts. Unlike the first talk, there was so much that was new to me here that I didn't really get more than just notes. So this will read more like bullet points instead of logical prose. Yet I hope some of the links may be new and useful.
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We're dealing here with four things:

• rights & permissions
• confirming the institution has rights to digitize and distribute rare books and manuscripts
• beware the quit claim [?]
  
• obtaining permission to do so when required

Question of licensing rights to 3rd parties - do you have the right to outsource digital projects?

Let's clarify the term "rare books and manuscripts": We don't not mean necessarily "old" (as in the public domain). Some institutions place restrictions on the use of digital copies of public domain works.

One of the bulwarks of acceptance in the library digital world is the decision Bridgeman Art Library vs. Corel Corporation:
"This is one of the most relevant copyright decisions for museums in years. A Federal district court in New York in November held that photographic reproductions of two-dimensional works, which themselves are in the public domain, do not have the requisite amount of originality to be protected by copyright." [from http://www.panix.com/~squigle/rarin/corel2.html]

The Bridgeman case raises dilemmas: Should we restrict digital copies? Why? How? Is there "click-thru licensing"? Are there technical protection measures? Cease-and-desist policies?

Welcome to Permissions Limbo.

The question of thumbnail images: the law is moving in direction of considering thumbnails to be fair use. (They're not too big, not too small, but just right).

Section 108 has serves more as guidelines on preservation rather than other uses. More work needs to be done on it. Similarly the issue of outsourcing is unclear.

Concerning pending legislation considering orphan works (and for future copyright issues), we need to document efforts to reach or contact unknown rights holders. We need to do much better job of getting rights info in order to show that we're tracing rights holders with "due diligence." We need to capture knowledge of public and scholars on how to obtain info on holders of rights. It's everybody's job.

The more pro-active you can be with lawyers, the better.

Keep track of all your permissions info. The more organized your notes, the better off you'll be.

Concerning the use of web 2.0 at the Getty Center: We consider it the individual staff member's responsibility, not of the lawyers. Don't forget to read the fine print.

Important question to ask yourself on digital projects: Is the project sustainable?

If you outsource digital projects you must understand: What rights does the vendor want, what rights can the institution grant, and what rights does the institution retain?

See report prepared by intelligent tv for RLG projects. [Probably this: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november07/kaufman/11kaufman.html ]

Is access granted by the vendor, and if so, what are the service level agreements? What are the enforcement procedures? Also: Where does digitization take place? Concerning the metadata and catalog records: Who creates them and who owns them?

Who owns the digital materials? What rights does vendor want and for how long? How much investment by vendor? What is vendor saying about its needs for return on investment? And ask: are these statements reasonable?

If you take advantage of web 2.0 opportunities- read the small print and make sure you understand it. (Some people had problems with a chat program, not realizing that originally, the software corporation claimed ownership of all conversations.)

Whoever you work with, make sure that all rights to digital files and subscriber lists revert to the institution. Everything should come back to you.

Q. (from Peter Hirtle): What should Special Collection librarians learn from Google Books?
A. Google Books has helped sharpen our thinking about searching. Charles W. Bailley Jr. put together a bibliography of Google Book search which is worth looking at.

Criticisms of the Google Book project abound: its legality, confidentiality, image quality, metadata (how does Google link?), and proprietary nature.

Proprietary nature. Vaidhyanathan - critical of Google books. Is "privitizing" a public good?

Brewster Kahle says that the idea that only one company can control access to a digital copy is ridiculous.

Google licenses "ask" that users use material for personal non-commercial use only.

(See the Boing Boing website). Just because you can scan a public domain book does not mean it belongs to you.

What is our professional standard? see LRTS (Library Resources Technical Services) 38 (Jan. 1994) article on Guidelines for microreproduction. There is no mention of perpetual public access at that time!

Library practices, and not Google, should be the focus of the critics of Google. Are we making available material for all time?
Why it matters: 1. expense - proprietary means more expensive

($400,000 for historical newspapers - is it worth it for a public domain source?)

Stewart Brand: information wants to be free, but also information also wants to be expensive.

The changing nature of how information can be used. data mining, mashups.

The Bamboo project - any faculty members can reuse content for them. content must be freely available and open.

What about Microsoft's Photosynth - (demo) creating a (3-dimensional) image from multiple images (e.g. Flickr collection) - what are the rights issues?

Another example: Harvard University Library's Open Collections Project.

SCOAP - Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in particle physics.
Their purpose: redirect subscription funds to open access; so that "funding bodies and libraries contribute to the consortium, which pays centrally for the peer-review service. Articles are free to read for everyone." This is a form of open access publoishing in high energy physics.

Cornell: Cornell's program [? Perhaps their Open Access program]. Their attitude is: we can't control content but can think of ways of giving better services. Also the agreement between NARA and Ancestry.com: After 5 years NARA gets files back and can do whatever they want with them (hopefully they'll make them available for free).

Good Terms: Improving Commercial-Noncommercial Paternships for Mass Digitization: A Report Prepared by Intelligent Television for RLG Programs, OCLC Programs and Research by Peter B. Kaufman and Jeff Ubois.

Their recommendations: more open access, less restricted distribution, limited duration and survivability.

You must decide where you want to be when approached by a vendor - do you want to work with other libraries, or work with vendors?

Q. Few newspapers were copyrighted before 1960 (The NY Times is one of the few exceptions).

While at the University of Virginia, Christian Dupont was able to get them to drop the fee. Should we be making money from public domain materials? Does a library have legal right to charge licensing fee for public domain materials? (Open ended question)

(Although there is a rational for charging a licensing fee. The commercial should take some participation in preservation.)

Peter Hirtle: With a public domain image, you can charge whatever you want (depending what people will pay). Where you get into problems is in putting additional terms on the item (since you won't be able to enforce them). Whether that is legal is a question.

Maureen: The issue of charging is an institutional one. but restrictions on use of image are of questionable legality. I get upset when people put a copyright notice on public domain material. Even a credit notice, yet. The lawyer Simon Frankel of San Francisco talks about such fraudulent licenses.

The Library of Congress doesn't charge, since it's funded by taxpayer money.

What are the "standards" for republication of an artifact?

RBMS Plenary Session 1: The Big Picture

I had the good fortune to attend the RBMS (Rare Books and Manuscripts) pre-conference in Los Angeles, followed by the ALA (American Library Association) conference in Anaheim, California. I was able to take notes for some sessions, which I'll publish here in a series of blog posts, along with my impressions. Please note: These are my notes, and I take full responsibility for misconstruing of any statements made by the various speakers. I suspect some of these talks will eventually be published, either in RBM or other journals.

RBMS Plenary Session 1 (Wednesday morning, June 25, 2008): The Big Picture

Opening remarks by Christian Dupont, Aeon Program Director at Atlas Systems, Inc.

Special Collections sections of libraries have entered the digital age. New issues are facing rare books and special collections. We are learning to work and adapt together to a new and rapidly changing environment.

Let's consider how things have changed in last 50 years (since RBMS is now 50 years old). Let's celebrate the vitality of the organization. Let's witness its impact and how the section (of ACRL) has grown. We are currently seeking ways to accommodate the growth and interest in special collections. One way to achieve this is through our scholarship program. We know that scholarship recipients may remain members and become active on committees. Today, there are 22 scholarship attendees. These new attendees feed the interests of the organization.

Next year there will be even more scholarships. In honor of the section's 50th meeting, the location will be Charlottesville, VA - the location of first conference.

There is fundraising at RBMS and it is a part of what goes on. There is ABAA; the Booksellers' showcase (which looks more like a book fair). This year there are 24 booksellers in LA, the most we've had in recent years, and perhaps we'll have as many or more in Charlottesville, VA next year. Let these sponsors know they have your support and appreciation.

Remarks by Kris Kieseling, Director of Archives Special Collections at the University of Minnesota.
This year, the RBMS pre-conference took only 4 weeks to sell out, a good sign of the demand/vitality of the field. There are many angles with which to approach digitization in special collections. Alice Prohaska will outline big picture in her talk.

This years there will be no paper forms, but totally online evaluations for the preconference -- expect it in your email after the pre-conference.

Commercial plug: The sponsor of the morning plenary is the Bibliographic Society of America. It is a society which encourages study and research. Their members are librarians, dealers, collectors, students, etc. Please visit their homepage.

Alice Prochaska, University Library at Yale University.
(Her remarks are based in part on her observation of Yale's digitization of special collections.)

I'm concerned about generalities: How can one present the big picture of digitization? So I'll talk as one library director with just one perspective. This is a good time to be talking about special collections in the digital environment.

Special Collections librarians have a problem: there is a morass of unknowns. Some libraries have been digitizing, others have been evangelizing. Alice thought she used to have a clear picture of the world of special collections. So she asked some pertinent questions on her slide show:

• What are special collections?
• What will we mean by special collections in the future?
• In considering the environment in which digitization operates, the current range and scope of digitization in research libraries: where do special collections fit?
• The future: are we going to predict it, or invent it?

The future is about collaboration and discussing what we want and what is our future. But there's always been complications due to bureaucracy of many parties. Ownership in the digitial environment is no easier than in non-digital environment.

What ARE Special collections?

The words we use in addressing access to our collections are: discover, expose, disclose, unlock (etc.) -- as if each word holds the key to explaining what we do.
Preliminary record, collection level record, item level record, catalog, etc.
unit, group, class, piece, box, bundle

("It's easy to misunderstand words" and quotes Obama, and mentions Miss Malaprop.)

There is an ARL Working Group on Special Collections set up in 2007, pursuing the "hidden collections" agenda (of finding ways of bringing these collections to greater attention). Their report is due in October 2008.

Their Priorities:
1. encourage concerted action for collecting and exposing 19th and 20th century materials
2. identify criteria and strategies for collecting digital and other new media that currently lack a recognized and responsible structure for stewardship.

"These issues are closely linked. An enormous amount of valuable material in all formats remains uncollected and risks being permanently lost."

The focus of the ARL group is not meant to demean earlier items. It's just a pragmatic attempt to give the group a manageable task. There are already international efforts to digitize newspapers and books. A strong attempt has been made to encourage these items. Techniques include collections analysis, identification of gaps, make accessible otherwise hidden collections.

Discovery of material can occur in response to new scholarship. For example, the attention to e.g. printed ephemera is a relatively new exploration. Libraries used to eschew collecting this material. Just hobbyists would collect it and insist on its importance. There is still a hierarchy of materials: Materials relating to books and book arts will be more highly regarded, whereas playbills, posters, etc. will not be. But even philatelic collections pose research value. No two people will define ephemera in same way - we all have our own collections that require greater attention. The task of selection and preservation doesn't disappear in digital world, it just changes. Think of the issues with borne-digital items: digitized slides, or email correspondence -- what about legal implications of email? We need a concerted effort to find out about this material.

In speaking of digitization, we're mostly talking about taking analog materials and digitizing them. The activity of digitization frequently linked to the preservation of items.

The environment of digitization:

• collect carefully
• advocate against restrictions on access
• transparency over provenance and source of aquisition
• good practices in records management
• ensure discoverability and access
• address the hidden collections problem
• meet the digital challenge

For the digital environment, RBMS and the Society of American Archivists (SAA) are unique organizations for advice in these issues. As librarians, we can be effective only with the support of the community comprised of these and similar organizations.

Preservation issues form part of context; staff skills matter. Large institutions can handle big projects, but small institutions can't, so that means greater collaboration is necessary.

There are areas of growth in the need for Special Collections:

• The growth in teaching with primary sources and undergraduate research;
• local and family historical research. (don't underestimate needs of local communities)
  

But there are obstacles:

• political pressures to ends access to unique assets
• increased visibility and scrutiny
• nightmare digital challenge:
• intellectual property,
• increased visibility brings greater scrutiny,
• contested interpretations,
• packaging material to make it comprehensible out of context

Don't underestimate cultural patrimony issues which receives higher notice in the digital world. Greater exposure requires greater sensitivity to cultural issues.

Current range and scope of digital projects.
Local initiatives exists to support teaching, and collaboratie digitization programs in museums, galleries, and archives. For example:

See: Documents of the American South -- it's a good example of how digitization in a deliberate manner can be unusually beneficial.
There is mass digitization (e.g. the Google project) - whose impact is enormous. Formerly Google had contracts with just 6 libraries; now they use 40 libraries.
(See current issue of the Journal of Library Administration.)

Finally Google and mass digitization is beginning to move into the area of Special Collections. Quality of output is a concern: Google books is not always well presented and the metadata is inconsistent.

Even with copyrighted materials presenting only small snippet of a work is a concern about the presentation of books. To what extent does Google books skew our notion of a book? Their contracts prevent the library community from discussing the Google project among participants. But Google's influence is large.

Other examples of mass digitization: The Open Content Alliance - it's not as rich as Google, but still provides good products, since it has metadata which is better than Google. THe now-defunct Microsoft Live Book Search leaves a legacy of expectations. Yale had valued closer cooperation with Microsoft. Maybe soon we (not just Yale) can move into the regular scanning of Special Collections items in a mechanized fashion, with robotic machines (that won't harm the materials).

Scholars have increased appetites for digitized material and desire greater ability to search across collections. This impacts libraries' directions. Pay more attention to collection development issues. People will be more interested in unique holdings.

Issues for the future:

• translating a traditional mission into a digital environment
• there is no digitization without metadata - (this is part of the "hidden collections" agenda)
• access begets access (more staff should be devoted to digital work)
  
• more collection analysis
• more sharing among institutions
  

What is the future for born-digital items and collections?

• need for digital curation
• there are new relationships to users - how to connect to them
  
• new ways of working with users
• mirroring traditional fucntions in online(?) models
• coping with increasing volume
• identify digitization partners
  
• librarians should be prepared to wait for new technologies to help achieve more

Conclusion: Bringing Special Collections to the public will never cease to be a work in progress

That was the end of Alice Prochaska's speech, followed by questions, among them:

Q. Special Collections have been strong advocates for preservation of materials. What about preservation of born-digital items?
A. There is an ACRL working group concerning with this issue. Watch for upcoming report.

Q. What should we do with born-digital materials that are constantly changing (such as wikis or blogs)?
A. The recommendations of the working group (mentioned in the first question above) will be generic. They will point to need of development of expertise. Regarding the constantly changing nature of born-digital materials, yes, this is an area that is hugely challenging.

How a library can become a part of the community

I came across a nice site devoted to the history of Long Island's South Shore. Knowing a number of towns on Long Island, I know there are some places where families have lived for centuries, so one can't underestimate what a community can contribute to documenting itself.

What's so intriguing about the site is that it's not static. Instead, it's a wiki (using PmWiki software), enabling residents, historians and other interested parties to participate in sharing its knowledge of the history of the community. I believe that is going to be the future of the best websites (i.e. the ones that get the most hits) - their ability to be interactive, to enable participation, and their ability to change.

If that were not enough, I then realized the sponsor of the site: not some association, but the Dowling College Library Archives and Special Collections! Here is a library which takes an active role in fostering the community it serves (or at least offers a community project).

It's probably too much to ask most librarians (especially those with large collections) to assume such active roles in communities. But it does suggest the possibilities than can occur when librarians find a niche not covered by others.