A little over a year after launch, AADL's Drupal-powered site has been upgraded to 4.7 from 4.6. Those familiar with Drupal's release schedule and changelog will know that this is a substantial upgrade that puts us in a good position to be ready for the touted and forthcoming 5.0 release (for which there is now a code freeze).

Drupal 4.7 sports a number of great new features. I'm most excited about the new search engine which does a much better job of indexing the site and allows users to do an advanced search. Searches now actually return meaningful results. Other features include a new Ajax-enabled content creation system with nifty improvements such as re-sizable text fields, collapsible elements, a file upload system that doesn't require authors to leave their work, and live menu updates. On the development side, these new features are accessible via the new form-handling system. In other words, coders can easily incorporate these new Ajax elements in their own work. Theme developers will be happy with the ability to create an infinite number of regions--nice to achieve that highly-polished CSS look. I think a couple new block types were added as well.

Another great feature is the wiki-style revision system that allows editors to roll-back their work and leave editorial log messages (a very useful feature in large, collaborative environments). Commenting benefits, as well, with the ability of site administrators to manage and moderate multiple entries at once. Finally, Drupal 4.7 supports free tagging. Not something we're using at this point, but, from my point of view, it means that the engine is there for future module work. I have a feeling I'll be using those hooks for some forthcoming feature upgrades on the website itself...

The upgrade was fairly smooth. Drupal ships with an update script which ran flawlessly, but that's the easy part. A fair amount of prep-work was done ahead of time to ensure that all of our custom modules were 4.7-compatible. Basically, this meant updating all of our form-handling code to handle the new system. We also segregated all of our own code and theme information from Drupal's using the multi-site capability. This means that we can easily keep track of our own work without it getting mixed up with the vanilla code-base. This wasn't completely necessary, but it was worth the work because it'll make all future upgrades much easier to do. Doing things this way is also in-line with my philosophy of never touching stock code unless you absolutely have to.

The long and the short of this whole upgrade means that our users will probably not notice a lot of difference, but we're now in a good position to work on AADL 3.2. And that they will notice.

For more info, check out these Drupal videocasts:

• An overview of screencasts
• What's new in Drupal 4.7
• Installing Drupal 4.7
• Upgrading to Drupal 4.7
• Contribute your own Drupal Videocast

[tags] AADL, AADL.ORG, Drupal, CMS, PHP, Library, Web [/tags]

Spending time by the coast tends to put me in a reflective mood and I often find myself replaying the previous year's events over in my mind. So while I was on vacation a few weeks ago, I found myself asking, how did we get to Library 2.0? Thus, I began to think about this post. The Library, as an institution, has touched its edge to the currents of a new technology. As a result, it's spawned what seems to be a rather pronounced, and disruptive eddy in the course of events that is all-things-library. But, as with all eddys in a larger river, the edge is constantly shifting, temporary and insecure. And yes, libraries are feeling a little insecure, right now.

But that's not necessarily a bad thing, is it? Insecurity? Severe cases can hinder and even cripple, but when you blend in other qualities, such as courage, vision, passion, and experimentation, the result can be something quite disruptive and impressive in its own right. What strikes me about the Library 2.0 movement is that it is born from, and exists in, a constant state of insecurity. The form it has taken, however, is far from insecure.

So what does that mean for Library 2.0, and why is it important? Insecurity is an indication of risk, which is something we should all tolerate a little of. There is no guarantee that the work we put in to adapting 2.0-related ideas will have a net positive effect on our organizations and so the willingness to experiment on our production environments becomes a necessary aspect of L2. That, of course, is terrifying.

So let's take a look at exactly why L2 is so scary and try to deconstruct the rational from the irrational.

"Patron's may complain" (see flickr complaints). Often times, we seem so afraid of risking a patron complaint that it keeps us from pursuing something potentially interesting. To some extent, I believe that patrons don't have all the information to know what's best for them. That's what we're there for--to create the services they never dreamed possible, right? At any rate, it's impossible to please everyone, all the time. Yet, even if an experiment fails and ticks off a group of our patrons, isn't that worth the right to experiment in the first place? I believe so. The government is not the only group of people who can inhibit innovation... our users can too. Keeping a vigilant eye on them may not be a bad idea (see Gwinnett CPL). I'm of the opinion that there is no moral equivalency between our mission and that of those groups that seek to ban "offensive material" and filter our Internet connections. They're wrong, we're right, period. Part of our mandate is to carry a community, even when a group of its citizens are acting like idiots.

"It may not work." Well, of course it may not work, whatever it is. That's the point of experimenting. And when it doesn't work in a production environment, you may be embarrassed or even chastised--so what? Failures tend to tell us more about ourselves than our successes do. It's quite possible that a miserable failure could lead to an even greater success. So analyze your failures, find out why you failed, where things went wrong, and what changes you can make. This is common sense, of course, but I think we tend to forget that the library environment is exactly the right place for experimenting because it is so forgiving. I think I've mentioned before that such an environment is our ace in the hole, as it were, with respect to our commercial competitors and our ILS partners/vendors. You will fail sometimes. Eventually, something you do will suck. Oh well. Get over it and try something else.

"Yikes, how do we keep up with our own growth?" If you have this problem, then you're already the envy of other libraries and you're finding little sympathy for this particular difficulty. Rapid growth of a service, while an indication of success, can be a major problem, especially if you're not equipped to deal with it. Rapid growth can bite you in a number of unpleasant ways. First is the "victim-of-your-own-success" syndrome where you've created the impression in the minds of other departments that your department can create and deliver pretty much anything. As a result, the line, "Oh, we'll just have [insert your department here] do it" becomes all-too-familiar. Of course you're already up to your neck in projects.
Manage people's expectations accordingly. The idea is to achieve superb customer service, but remember--that's the journey, not where you are right now. If you allow people to expect a level of service you cannot reliably deliver, you are actually providing poor customer service and misrepresenting yourself in the process.
The other potential pitfall is that a service will outgrow the ability of its infrastructure to support it. You need to always think about extensibility--how to practically manage and accommodate growth. Don't paint yourself into a corner. This could come in the form of outgrowing current server hardware, overwhelming staff with service requests, overtaxing existing collections, or something else equally vexing. Think about what success means to your organization in these practical terms.

Sustainability - Growth and sustainability go hand-in-hand. We ought to hone our soothsaying abilities enough to know what is sustainable and what is not. When we add a service, the worst thing we could do is to shut it off because we can no longer support it. That sets a bad precedence, and is not the type of expectation we want to foster in our users. How will they trust us enough to use new services if they've been burned in the past? Bear in mind, this is different from removing a service that doesn't work well. I'm talking about removing a service because we can no longer support it, fiscally or otherwise. Evaluate your capacity to carry a new service indefinitely.

"What about outside factors?" Like.. well.. DOPA? There is no way to ensure that we'll always have carte blanche to do what we want in the world. Take a moment, every now and then, to meditate on how blessed we are to live and operate in a free and open society. Then get real. There are certain things we cannot control, some things we can. DOPA is a great example of this because it's clearly a highly political piece of poor legislation that is as unconstitutional as it is unenforceable. We're also loosing the PR battle--I know this because I've heard, a number of talking heads on several different media outlets, complain about libraries supporting perverts and child porn. Yes, it made me angry, but pragmatically, it means we're getting our hats handed to us. Clearly, this is an issue that our leadership is more equipped to handle on a federal level. Locally, however, are we doing anything to explain our position to our own users who may be hearing the same things? My point is that when outside pressure is applied against our organizations, we need to know our patrons will stand with us. Will yours?

FUD - Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. It's subversive, passive, and crippling. Remember SCO's lawsuit against IBM over Linux? Well, everyone with a clue in the open source community knew it was bogus, but enough FUD was generated by the lawsuit that the growth and adoption of Linux decelerated significantly. When it comes to technology, I see similarities in the library world. Not necessarily due to someones lobbying efforts, but because a large number of our colleagues are very unsure about the impact of technology in our organizations. As a result, they feel threatened. It's a gulf we need to span. Those of us who are more comfortable with technology know that most of those fears are unfounded--it's our job to reach out and reassure our peers, to help them understand that while their role in a 2.0 world may be different, it's no less important.
FUD can come from almost everywhere. It's one of those things we need to be able to identify and stop before it gets out of control. It's stopped by the absence of ego and the presence of cooperation, education and understanding.

We should relinquish central coordination?? - In some cases, you bet. Especially when it comes to adding social-based services. The term "Radical Trust" has been tossed about in regard to this. In order for some things to be successful, we're going to have to let the reins slip a little (sometimes a lot) and let our users take over. Given our profession's obsession with authoritativeness, it's hard, I know. Get over it, and remember, authority and social participation are by no means mutually exclusive. The two can exist quite nicely in parallel.

So what happens if we don't experiment? Well, being a father of three young kids, I tend to think of it this way: It's 3 AM and your newborn has woken up with a particularly nasty diaper. You are really not in the mood to change it, but you think, "What will happen if I don't change it?" Besides being neglectful of someone you love viscerally, you know the alternatives are not good. In other words, changing the diaper is the only option. Let your mind go down the path of complacency. Let it go waaay down that path--five, ten, thirty years. If you care about the wonderful institution you work in, you don't need an answer to this question.

Hinchcliffe has a wonderful post describing the idea of viral feedback and network effects. He explains that the "physics of the web" have changed and evolved to the point where the game has changed, whether we like it or not. Every day, a higher proportion of our population begins to lead a life that has one foot in the physical word and the other online. In fact, I believe that the online world often allows people to express their true persona with fewer inhibitions than "real life". Online interaction often closes the gap between minds--a phenomenon that can be mutually beneficial to libraries and patrons. But timing is critical: we need to be gearing up to enter into this game during its disruptive phase--not after.

I was welcomed home with this nice little bit of information! I wonder how this will impact wifi use in our library and if people will even bother to use it anymore.

Word just came down that aadl.org has been honored by the ALA as "best website" for libraries with budgets of $6,000,000.00 or more. Kudos to all the fine people I've been blessed to work with--what a rewarding project!

We've got a lot in store for the rest of this year. In many ways, it feels like we're just getting started. Time willing, we can continue to serve our community by rolling out the new and exciting features they deserve.

We couldn't have asked for a better group of people at the 2006 Library Camp, last Friday. Many of the attendees were from in-state, but several logged a good number of travel hours to get here. It was for those, especially, that I was nervous, hoping that the format would yield some discussion worthy of their troubles. It did, and I had a great time.

I apologize in advance that I'm leaving out a lot of (probably important) detail in this post. During the talks, I chose to put my laptop away and not take notes--I wanted to be as engaged as possible. My mind is not exactly clear at this moment, either. The time between then and now has consisted of Easter preparations, Easter itself and the wholesale carnage that ensues when a two, five, and seven year old are all in various stages of a candy binge.

Getting Started

Friday morning began with coffee and bagels (thank-you Talis!) and a short meeting to put together the agenda for the day. As an open space event, this meant that the attendees themselves were responsible for the day. As we went through introductions, I jotted down some of the topics people were throwing out which generally came in the form of specific ideas or reasons for attending:

• How to get buy-in for new ideas.
• Gaming in libraries.
• Integrating searches. (Don't remember the specifics on this one)
• Personal digital asset management.
• How do we make it easier to find info/material?
• How can L2 make patrons happier?
• Disconnect between techies and non-techies (this is a big one)
• Web 2.0: where to go to now?
• If you build it, how do you get them to come?
• How to combine new technologies with the OPAC
• How do we make the OPAC better?
• How do we get the library out of the library?
• Which tools are other people using?
• Just attending to spy on us!
• How should libraries handle emerging technologies?
• Strategic planning? What should we be planning for?
• Alternative methods of circing material.
• Getting user feedback.
• How do we measure success?
• When explaining web 2.0, how do you answer "So what?"
• Just plain curious.

From the final schedule, you can get a general sense of which topics were hot. Feeling a little like a kid in a candy store after this exercise, I took part in the two "Bridging the Gap" sessions.

Bridging the Gap

The title "Bridging the Gap" hearkens back to a blog post of mine about some of the deep divisions between tech and non-tech staff in libraries. Priming this discussion took very little effort, because it seemed to be something that resonates strongly on both sides of the aisle. The group's numbers favored the techies (and, as I sometimes find, the techie non-techies or non-techie techies) but the discussion did not turn into a gripe session, as I had feared it might, rather a very candid discussion about where problems exist in our organizations and how to address them. A number of people had some very good things to say here and the time quickly slipped by.

There is a level of miscommunication and mistrust that seems to have saturated the relationship between library and IT staff. Many veteran librarians feel threatened by technology because they are not as adept at incorporating it into their profession as their greener counterparts. This feeling is entirely understandable. In fact, one library's approach was to ask existing managers if they were comfortable, willing, and able to facilitate the appropriation of emerging technologies. If they were not, then their position would be redefined. In other words, someone else would take their leadership position. While my initial reaction was to think this policy was harsh, I have to wonder whether protecting people's egos is worth sacrificing innovation.

Another participant has put a great deal of thought and effort into making the IT staff/rest-of-the-library relationship work. (I think it was Sean Robinson, Information Technology Manager for Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, IN) His approach was to radically transform the IT department in such a way that customer service became the modus operandi. By instilling simple policies like, "answer the phone with a smile on your face" to broader, more radical attitudes, such as "always say yes", he has been able to earn back a good measure of trust from his users. How did he find out what was bothering them? He sent out an anonymous survey via HR asking staff what they hated most about IT. Among answers like, "you never return my calls", or "it takes you forever to fix my problem", was a very interesting comment, "You guys have all the control". Even though it makes perfect sense, I had never really thought about the fact that we could be perceived that way--it's a completely valid observation. In many ways, IT departments do have "all the control". It stands to reason, then, that finding ways to put control back in the hands of staff can help to alleviate the problem. The "always say yes" policy is part of that initiative. My feeling is that, instead of blindly saying "yes", however, we can work together to achieve a shared vision. By improving communication, we can improve service through the combining of ideas, alternatives, and possibilities.

The second part of the discussion focused on technology and the patron. We talked a little about the OPAC here, knowing that another session was forthcoming on the very topic. The general feeling was that many of our OPACs simply do not return friendly results. One comment was made along the lines of, "patrons shouldn't need to be a librarian to search the catalog". I feel very strongly about this as well. A great example is the fact that most author searches require last-name first. Someone mentioned that they wanted Amazon or Google-type searches that would do spell-checking and suggest alternatives.

On the matter of getting technical expertise into libraries, Sean Robinson posed another good idea--that libraries "pay it forward". In other words, if one library has the expertise to accomplish something, then they could help another library complete the same with with the expectation that the second library would, in turn, help out another. I thought this was an incredibly inspired notion, and completely doable! I'll be the first to volunteer...

Low-hanging OPAC fruit

A discussion about OPACs doesn't take long to turn into a vendor-roast. Admittedly, there was a little of that going on here--mostly for the usual reasons, all completely valid. From an academic standpoint, access to research databases is also in need of attention. My thought was that, technically, the two things hampering innovation the most at this point are 1) the lack of a meaningful API into our ILS and 2) no standards-based, dynamic index for our research databases. Given those two tools, we could completely transform our interfaces into something truly new and unique.

The problems with our OPACs can be split into form and function. The OPAC interface needs a major face-lift while search functionality and results leave a lot to be desired (relevancy ranking, anyone?)

Alan Gray (Darien Public Library) offered a number of great thoughts on approaching vendors, suggesting that many of the open-source tools now being developed could somehow be leveraged in such a way that vendors would have to take notice and react. The problem with open-source solutions, however, is that even though the software is free, implementation can be impossible for a library without much of a tech staff and support is almost non-existent.

On the subject of open-sourcing code: While I write much of my code modularly so that it can be reused by other people, most of the code behind AADL's website is highly customized and cannot simply be dropped into place at another site. One of my goals is to get closer to the object model, so that the code can be reused. Much of the code written in libraries is highly site-specific and cannot be transplanted without a lot of work. Can we write code with portability in mind?

So what can we focus on now? Ryan Eby talked about the judicious use of iframes and javascript to embed dynamic content. Those have a number of drawbacks, however, and amount to "lipstick on the pig". He used III's screen file tokens as an example.

Many libraries would like to do a complete overhaul of their websites, like AADL, but are not able to due to technical or staffing constraints. Therefore, they fall back to shoe-horning new features in here and there at the expense of cohesiveness.

Web 2.0/Library 2.0 -- What's next?

I wasn't sure what this discussion was going to do, or where it would go. I think someone started the discussion by simply throwing out, "so, what now?"

We talked a little about physical spaces and the way they shape the library experience. Alan Gray filled us in on some of the amazing things Darien Library is doing in their new building to foster a closer relationship with the patron. Apparently, they are installing reference "pods" where reference librarians can have one-on-one sessions with people. They're also experimenting with some IP telephony products.

We heard from the folks at South Lyon who have been featured in both the New York Times and Library Journal for their use of the tablet PC. Hearing them talk, I couldn't help being reminded that it's not just the technology that transforms, but how it's implemented and how committed we are to making it work.

I spoke a little bit about how we handle tech support here at AADL. I mentioned that we have an internal IRC server with a support channel and a web client for our help-desk folks. This allows them to field problems directly to a large number of technical staff.

We talked, quite frankly, about the term Library 2.0, and it seemed to me that most people present had very little problem with the name itself and simply wanted to talk about the ideas behind it. As one person said, "we need to call it something..." We also addressed the "change-or-die!" ideology. Basically, I don't think libraries will wither away to nothing if we don't take advantage of emerging technologies and opportunities (the key being opportunity). I do think, however, that we run the risk of missing the boat and relegating ourselves to a myopic role in our communities that will be difficult to break out of if we don't take advantage of emerging trends--that includes popular culture. Someone else felt that perhaps we are making too much of this and that this kind of talk was part of a larger "culture of fear" that exists in America. It was mentioned that we need to continually reinvent ourselves, just like the business world does. Separating value from fad is difficult, but we shouldn't ignore the trends.

We spoke a little bit about rising circulation, harnessing the long tail, setting up a Netflix model for patron holds, and a few other material-related topics, such as circulating laptops.

Many thanks to Les Orchard who bailed me out and did a quick intro to del.icio.us.

Wrap-up

Honestly, I wish the entire day had been filmed, or recorded, or both. I was struck by how fast time went by. Because virtually everyone in every discussion played an active role, a heck of a lot was accomplished. Unfortunately, it doesn't lend itself to easy blogging because there were no slides, no prepared remarks and very little time to write. As we discussed at the end, the open spaces idea could translate very well to other locales, if you're so inclined, I'd suggest one in your area.

links:
Library 2.0 Wiki -> Library Camp 2006
The unLibrarian
Les Orchard's OPML notes (neat-o!)
Ryan Eby