But check this out. I know the iPhone has a barcode app that is quite good. There are a couple other barcode scanners as well, and they all seem to be primarily designed for consumers who want to check product pricing. But Android has a barcode scanner as well, with one additional feature that is potentially game-changing, for us: it allows you to scan a book, and then do a full-text search on it, and it’s fast. As roving reference becomes more popular, tools like these are destined to become back-pocket necessities. Android’s barcode app brings full-text search capability directly into the stacks in a way that integrates seamlessly into the roving work-flow. Imagine the possibilities…

Step 1: Get a book and a Droid

Step 2: Download the free barcode app

Step 3: Scan in the book's barcode

Step 4: Search in the book

Step 5: View your results

Palos Verdes, working with Crafty Space, has moved to SOPAC2 and in the process contributed back to the project some much-needed multi-branch support which will be included in the forthcoming 2.1 release, later this summer.

This launch comes right on the heels of receiving the 2009 LITA Brett Butler Award for the SOPAC project.  So I’m feeling really good about SOPAC right now and especially about the community that is beginning to spring up around it–its users, the libraries, and a solid group of about nine people who are part of its active development group.

Be sure to visit the PVLD site and tag a few books for them.

In companion posts, Kathryn and Cindi have beautifully captured the spirit in which this was written. Be sure to read them.

Below is the resulting document (CC License). It’s meant to be grand, optimistic, obvious, and thankful to and for our users, communities, and the tireless librarians who work the front lines every day, upholding the purpose of the Library.

The Darien Statements on the Library and Librarians
Written and endorsed by John Blyberg, Kathryn Greenhill, and Cindi Trainor

The Purpose of the Library

The purpose of the Library is to preserve the integrity of civilization.

The Library has a moral obligation to adhere to its purpose despite social, economic, environmental, or political influences. The purpose of the Library will never change.

The Library is infinite in its capacity to contain, connect and disseminate knowledge; librarians are human and ephemeral, therefore we must work together to ensure the Library’s permanence.

Individual libraries serve the mission of their parent institution or governing body, but the purpose of the Library overrides that mission when the two come into conflict.

Why we do things will not change, but how we do them will.

A clear understanding of the Library’s purpose, its role, and the role of librarians is essential to the preservation of the Library.

The Role of the Library

The Library:

• Provides the opportunity for personal enlightenment.
• Encourages the love of learning.
• Empowers people to fulfill their civic duty.
• Facilitates human connections.
• Preserves and provides materials.
• Expands capacity for creative expression.
• Inspires and perpetuates hope.

 
The Role of Librarians

Librarians:

• Are stewards of the Library.
• Connect people with accurate information.
• Assist people in the creation of their human and information networks.
• Select, organize and facilitate creation of content.
• Protect access to content and preserve freedom of information and expression.
• Anticipate, identify and meet the needs of the Library’s community.

 
The Preservation of the Library

Our methods need to rapidly change to address the profound impact of information technology on the nature of human connection and the transmission and consumption of knowledge.

If the Library is to fulfill its purpose in the future, librarians must commit to a culture of continuous operational change, accept risk and uncertainty as key properties of the profession, and uphold service to the user as our most valuable directive.

As librarians, we must:

• Promote openness, kindness, and transparency among libraries and users.
• Eliminate barriers to cooperation between the Library and any person, institution, or entity within or outside the Library.
• Choose wisely what to stop doing.
• Preserve and foster the connections between users and the Library.
• Harness distributed expertise to serve the needs of the local and global community.
• Help individuals to learn and to use new tools to create a more robust path to knowledge.
• Engage in activism on behalf of the Library if its integrity is externally threatened.
• Endorse procedures only if they guide librarians or users to excellence.
• Identify and implement the most humane and efficient methods, tools, standards and practices.
• Adopt technology that keeps data open and free, abandon technology that does not.
• Be willing and have the expertise to make frequent radical changes.
• Hire the best people and let them do their job; remove staff who cannot or will not.
• Trust each other and trust the users.

 
We have faith that the citizens of our communities will continue to fulfill their civic responsibility by preserving the Library.

Yet, information technology has proliferated and become “humanized” over the last dozen years to the extent that we are now in the midst of revolutionary change. Some even see that change as a threat to the existence of libraries.

As information professionals, we occupy a significant amount of space at the epicenter of that change–but how are we really doing? Are we helping to direct that change or merely responding to it? Are we leveraging change, or simply managing it? As the world of information production and consumption undergoes a complete transformation, how is our place in society affected and what are our responsibilities? How do we justify our existence?

Please join us on Thursday, March 26th at the Darien Library for a conversation with John Berry (Editor-at-large, Library Journal, New York, NY) and Kathryn Greenhill (Emerging Technologies Specialist, Murdoch University Library, Perth Western Australia) about revolutionary change, youth, service, and civic responsibility, and the future of libraries.

Come prepared to participate in group discussion following both speakers. In fact, come prepared to help sketch out the role librarians should play in defining the future of libraries.

Coffee and bagels will be served at 9:00 and we will begin the program at 9:30. Lunch will also be served and we will go until we’ve exhausted the topic (around 5:00). This event is co-sponsored by Darien Library and Connecticut Library Consortium. Attendance is free but please sign-up in advance on the futurelibs09 event wiki: http://futurelibs09.wikispaces.com/Attendee+List

Also available, are travel and lodging tips. We’ve secured a conference block in the nearby Doubletree, so be sure to check out the details on the camp wiki (Thanks to Amanda Etches-Johnson for setting it up). Be sure to put your name down for a lightning talk or birds of a feather session if you’re so inclined. We have three distinct spaces available for the camp–an auditorium, a conference room, and a technology center and we’re planning a combination of lightning talks, group discussion, and workshop-ing throughout the day. We’ll also provide several tours for those who want to spend a little time getting to know our new building.

If you’re not going to make it in person but still want to join in on the event, we will plan on Ustreaming at least two of the rooms all day and keeping the chat rooms and twitter up for questions and back-channel discussion (#drupal4lib).

See you on the 27th!

Fait accompli.

Our Surface arrived this week.  We’ve been talking about it internally for awhile as a theoretical purchase.  Now it’s a reality.  It’s already made Microsoft’s Surface Blog, too!  It’s actually surprisingly easy to get one.  I thought we’d have to jump through hoops, sign NDAs, and give up our first-borns.  Not so.

So what are we going to do with it?  We’re giving it to the kids.  We have a perfect little niche in the Children’s Room that was literally designed with power and data in the floor to accommodate surface computing.  Yes that’s right.  Designed for the Surface.

We decided to put it in the Children’s Room for several very basic reasons.  Kids will just “get it” immediately without any explanation.  Kids are tactile creatures who are very comfortable with hands-on activity.  If we can give them a piece of really cool technology they’ve never seen before and invite them to literally put their hands on it, I have no doubt they will not only be impressed, but empowered as well.  They’re not going to ask silly questions like, “why would you put one of these in a library”, because they intuitively know why.

By the way, you clean it with a mild dish-soap solution.

Details!

We’ve purchased the SDK (software development kit) as well.  When the dust settles from our move, we will certainly begin exploring some of the myriad possibilities.  I can already think of a number of ways to build interesting applications on top of Locum and Insurge.  We were all musing this morning about how cool it would be if we tagged certain picture books so that when they were placed on the Surface, a video-recording of a story-time with that book would pop up.  As far as I can tell, the Surface SDK takes advantage of Silverlight, so it should be fairly simple to quickly develop attractive and fun applications.

There are challenges.  I had always assumed that interaction between the Surface and physical objects was RFID-based.  That would have been perfect.  Instead, the Surface uses proprietary tags that look to be something akin to semacode in ultra-violet ink.  We’ll look in to getting some, but I doubt we’ll be getting B&T to process our books with them any time soon!

We would like to eventually put a Surface in our Teen Room and then Reference.  I’ve liked the whole Surface concept from the onset.  I think that anytime technology and physical space can be mashed up in a natural, intuitive way, a whole new realm of posibility opens up.  A platform like the Surface extends our horizon of influence.  It’s also freaking cool.  We’ll keep you posted!

I’m really proud of the people I work with. If it were possible to capture in a single word the confluence of physical space, library science, technology, focus on service, hospitality, and user experience that our new building embodies, it would be something akin to “masterpiece”.

But we’ve got miles to go before …

Here is the official announcement:

Darien Library will be hosting a “Drupal4Lib Camp” on  Friday, February 27, 2009 from 9 am to 4 pm.

The camp will be an  opportunity for libraries who are working with Drupal, or interested in  implementing Drupal, to get together, share experiences, solve problems, and  collaborate. This unconference will be a combination of a series of 10 min  lightning talks given by Drupal veterans in the morning followed by break-out  sessions in the afternoon.

Audio and video from Drupal4Lib Camp  sessions will also be streamed lived online.

There is no registration  fee. However, participation is limited to 70.  Please register for the  Drupal4Lib Camp at http://drupalib.interoperating.info/node/167