I have a simple, unscientific test for determining if a web service or product has crossed over into the mainstream: I ask my friends and family — most of whom are not very geeky and generally represent average technology users, in my opinion — if they’re using the service. If they are, then its mainstream. If they’ve at least heard of it, then the service is heading toward the mainstream. Facebook is mainstream. Gmail is mainstream. Twitter is headed in that direction. RSS though, according to my test, is not.

I’ll have to do this test with family members next time I see them, but I can already guess their responses - they’re likely to not even know what RSS is.

I’ve been using an RSS reader since 2005 and can’t imagine life without it. Most of my professional reading is delivered to my desktop via RSS - thanks to RSS I no longer have to put up with flame wars and difficult-to-follow threads on email lists (I only subscribe to ONE email list, and it’s not a discussion list). I keep up with hundreds of interesting people using RSS, and can’t begin to quantify how much I have learned using this tool. I’d have to say that RSS is the one tool I can’t do without.

What about you, dear reader? Do you use RSS, and if so what is your choice of reader? Do you actually visit this blog, or do you read it via RSS?

I wish it was easier to tell what a person’s really like, from their written application and interview. This is so, so true:

I hire people for two reasons — and this is true — I hire people if they’re enthusiastic and if they’re nice. And to me nothing else matters… If they have those two things, we can teach ‘em.

Bobby Flay, at Learning2007 Conference. (As cited by Peter Bromberg on Library Garden.)

And it’s probably just me being churlish, but writing that you “love reading” is actually not a positive when you’re applying for a job in a library. I read your application, and I think: “Hmmph. I hope you realise you won’t have time to read while you’re at work.” (The moral of the story: read the job ad and the job description, then write your application accordingly.)

Clint Eastwood’s words made me think:

Take your profession seriously; don’t take yourself seriously. Don’t take yourself seriously in the process, because you really only matter to a certain degree in the whole circus out here. If a person is confident enough in the way they feel, whether it’s an art form or whether it’s just in life, it comes off - you don’t have anything to prove; you can just be what you are.

The stitches are to come out in ten days. In the meantime the vet’s orders are that she has to be kept quiet. For TEN DAYS.

This means no walks, no running around, no jumping, and no playing with Paco. Normally they love wrestling and play fighting and can get quite rough with each other.

Peppi spent the night in the laundry last night. Much scratching at the barricades, whimpering and general distress. Paco didn’t sleep much either. He made many trips to the barrier where he whined and tried to get a glimpse of Peppi.

I’m not sure how we’ll all survive the next ten days.

The only good thing about this is, so far Peppi’s been too anxious about being separated, to worry at her stitches.

Paco portrait

I had Wordless Wednesday this week so I might as well do Furry Friday as well.

This is my current favourite picture of Paco.

Peppi is having an eventful week this week, although, being a dog she probably won’t be giving it all that much thought - she fell in a drain on Wednesday and she’s getting spayed today. She is still so small and such a puppy it seems mean to put her through such a procedure, but it needs to be done.

Hopefully Paco isn’t too lonely while Peppi is at the vet today.

Perth Down Under from Jaap van de Geer on Vimeo.
(Please follow the link; for some reason the code is breaking the CSS on this blog, and I need to get ready for work, so I won’t embed the video.)

Read Erik and Jaap’s observations.

Bear in mind that it was a Sunday and I was completely not expecting to be interviewed and recorded on video. I’m surprised that I manage to make sense.

And I should have corrected Erik when he called me Conny. I prefer the Dutch spelling to Connie, though.

Jaap van de Geer and Erik Boekesteijn are from DOK in Delft, the Netherlands. Erik is head of ICT while Erik is head of PR, Marketing, Communications.

They started by telling us that libraries are disappearing all over the Netherlands and the US. What can be done about this? They are just two regular librarians who want to share their stories, and inspire other regular librarians to look at our communities and consider what we can do to build services and resources for the future. Apparently, in NL librarians are talking about web 2.0 but no one is really doing much about it, either!

It all started in London, apparently.  Erik and Jaap attended the 2006 Internet Librarian International Symposium there. They met Jenny Levine and Michael Stephens there - and clicked.

Probiblio, a Dutch library organisation wanted to know more about gaming in libraries, and these two enterprising librarians managed to get together enough funding to go on a trip to Chicago to learn more. They interviewed Jenny and other librarians in the Chicago area and created a movie/presentation: If you’re not gaming you’re losing. We saw highlights from an interview they conducted with a couple of librarians from Kankakee Library, where they have created a games programme for the young adults. This programme has meant that book circulation among the area’s teens has increased 70%. One of the librarians stressed that it is important to give kids clear guidelines so they know what to expect, guidelines that are not too strict, but also not too lenient.The library in Kankakee provides a safe environment for teens to come and learn “the socialisation skills necessary to be competitive in the technology motivated generation yof the future”. I found it impressive that the teens were coming to the library even in bad weather.

One of the Kankakee staff members admitted that he initially disliked the idea of providing gaming in the library, and felt that it was better to emphasise academic pursuits in the library.  Through his involvement in this project, he realised he could find ways “to slip in academic stuff for the kids” who were in the library to play games. One example of this was the use of journals to record kids’ thoughts - this improved teens’ reading and writing skills. They also made sure they put teen oriented materials around the gaming areas, and the kids of course started looking through these materials in between games. The librarian who hadn’t been a gaming advocate made the great point that “before you can work with someone, you must capture their interests and heart”.

The next interview was with Michael Stephens, who asked: how do all the new technologies and tools meet the needs of libraries and the missions of libraries for outreach, stewardship, service, access to info? Can the library facilitate access to technology for the 43% of kids who don’t have access to technology and who are not learning the skills that the other 53%, who are participating and creating stuff for the web, are?

While in the US, Erik and Jaap interviewed Paul Holdengräber from the New York Public Library. Paul was amazing to listen to; he talked a mile a minute in soundgrabs and still managed to make one think. I don’t know much about him, but from the interview I gather that he has been instrumental in creating a number of art institutes; he stressed that they were institutes, because the word “institute” is more of a verb than noun - an organisation that insititutes, initiates, and, when successful, irritates. He was interested in creating living museums, not places that were resting places for old masters. He was hired oxygenate the New York Public Library. He pointed to the two stone lions outside the library, representing patience and fortitude - how to make them roar? Paul wants to create a library without walls- less formidable, daunting, intimidating - more sexy! He acknowledged the how technology gaps in society and wants to bridge them. Should the library be taking over what school is not doing? For example, art education is underfunded and undervalued in the US (and in other parts of the world), because people don’t consider art essential, considering information to be more important than inspiration. We need inspiration, Paul Holdengräber stressed.

We were shown the “flight case” - this is a portable box that enables you to transport games and gaming consoles. My description is not doing it justice so take a look at this video. 19 libraries in the Netherlands have bought this flight case.

Erik and Jaap went to Jamaica earlier this year, to attend the Caribbean Library Association conference. They interviewed Stephen Abram, who was there as keynote speaker. Stephen’s points:

Change not bad: let’s see it as a time of renewal or renaissance
The world is very different now, with unlimited information, as opposed to the world of the past where information was limited
It’s more than just text
We need to understand end users’ learning styles (we librarians see ourselves as alpha users - others have styles that are valid also)
the library as part of community
Answering questions isn’t as important as transferring skills
info design - how do we build virtual environments that are engaging to visual learners? We mustn’t be prejudiced against different formats, such as youtube (A similar point was made by another librarian in Salt Lake City: it’s not about books, it’s about containers - containers for info and culture - what is the best way to transmit the info, the culture?)
How do we allow ppl to engage with us and our collections?
PLAY - spend 15 mins day learning - don’t worry about TRAINING!!!!!! (that’s what I noted, complete with exclamation marks) When it’s experiential, not so stressful (think 15 minutes a day as opposed to hours and hours of training) To understand web 2.0 you need to play to learn - you need to experience! The abstract view is not enough - cited the example of kids learning about sex but it remains abstract you don’t know until you do
Build relationships with people in diff disciplines

After showing us highlights of their US tour they talked about their library, where “people are the most important collection”.
DOK is an amalgamation of a library, music centre and art centre. The letters DOK stand for Discotheque - Openbare bibliotheek (public library) - Kunst (art) - all of which make up the Delft Library Concept Centre. The ideas for fundraising and value-added services were very interesting. DOK used to be the 3rd worst funded library in the country - now it looks like a great library.

Other interesting projects the Shanachies have been working on: Dark Ink, a game which aims to provide library content. Also the Agora project, which I think aims to collect local and personal histories. (Must find out more about these two projects.)

I’ve mentioned before that I love the Popular Penguins series, I think. The range of titles, the look and feel of the books, the low low price - what’s not to love?

And if you needed any proof of my obsession, here’s some photographic evidence showing the eleven titles I have bought to date:

1. Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson
2. The Classical World by Robin Lane Fox
3. Six Easy Pieces by Richard P Feynman
4. The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene
5. Congo Journey by Redmond O’Hanlon
6. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
7. Delta of Venus by Anais Nin
8. Empire by Niall Ferguson
9. Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders by John Mortimer
10. Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux
11. The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski

I bought books 7 - 11 yesterday afternoon, spending the $46.15 I had in book vouchers. What other books are cheap enough at present that you can get five titles for $50?

According to the Penguin site, the ten most popular titles (as at 14 November 2008) are:

Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain De Botton
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Love in the Time of Cholera by Garcia Marquez Gabriel (I’ve not seen this title around Perth shops!)
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

The bag in the picture I got in Auckland, from one of the vendors at the conference exhibition. The sales rep told me two interesting facts:

1. Penguin are going to release another series in 2009, and
2. They released Hegemony of Survival by Noam Chomsky in the series, before realising they no longer had the rights to it. So if you got yourself a copy, it could be a rare book in the future. (It’s no longer listed on the Popular Penguins site.)

In the background you can see our eeePC collection: one black and one white eeePC 1000h (the black one’s mine, the white, M’s) and the old 700.

We took them to Kings Park, where the guys enjoyed looking at our WA flora and fauna (including the cheeky magpies trying to get food off a woman who was sitting in the park). After lunch in the city we went to see the new iZone at MPOW (it’s terribly remiss of me but I haven’t put any photos up on Flickr yet! Thanks to Denise for her photos). The guys were suitably impressed and took lots of shots - plus video of me blabbing on about it, which should be interesting to see.

It was very good to meet Erik and Jaap, and to talk about the future for our libraries. In short, it’s all up to us.

Update: I should say that I left them after visiting Curtin; see Kathryn’s blog for more on what they did.