Give Your Users a Tweet: Social Media for Libraries
August 20: SWON libraries – Blue Ash, Ohio

Give Your Users a Tweet: Social Media for Libraries
August 26: Wilmington Public Library – Wilmington, Ohio

Born Digital: How Kids Live in an Online World
September 3: International Paper – Cincinnati, Ohio

Tech News You Can Use
September 10: SWON Libraries online classroom

Websites Evolved: Content Management Systems in Libraries
September 17: SWON Libraries – Germantown, Ohio

Beyond Websites: Content Management Systems for Libraries
October 1: Kentucky Library Association – Louisville, KY

Integrating Web 2.0 Tools into Your Web Site
October 22: OELMA Annual Conference – Columbus, Ohio

My small contribution to the day was a lunchtime presentation on using Linux for back office stuff like web servers, mail servers, networking, etc. It’s a very general overview of the popular projects and tools out there for Linux. It’s mainly intended as a starting place for people looking to install a new service on a Linux platform. The slides from my talk are below.

Most of it is common sense, but common sense isn’t always common, right?

Recommended Online Drupal Resources

The Librarian in Black shares her collection of resources. It’s got some great links for people trying to wrap their heads around Drupal.

Is Dreamweaver being beaten by Drupal?

This article on oreilly.com doesn’t really answer the question posed in its title, but it does a pretty good job of contrasting static and dynamic websites. It gets a little technical, but provides a lot of food for thought.

more drupal, if you can stand it

Amanda Etches-Johnson wraps up her series on Drupal. Be sure to check out her earlier posts as well. It’s a great way to learn about what libraries can do with Drupal.

A n00b goes camping – Drupal Camp at Darien Library

DrupalCon was held in D.C. last week, but libraryland recently held its own Drupal event. Darien Library in Connecticut held a Drupal unconference. I watched a live stream on the web and it was a very cool event. Cindi Trainor attended in person and posted a very in-depth writeup over at ALA TechSource. She makes a great point that Drupal can be used for almost anything and is only limited by the expertise found in libraries.

Drupal Taxonomy Tutorial

This popped up in Cindi Trainor’s FriendFeed (FriendFeed is a great way to keep up with what others are bookmarking and sharing). Anyway, taxonomies are one of the more difficult concepts to grasp in Drupal. So it’s nice to have a tutorial like this that steps you through the process.

Service Providers For Libraries

This was posted on the Libraries Drupal Groups site. It’s a nice roundup of companies providing Drupal-related services for libraries. Providers like these make Drupal available to libraries even if they don’t have in-house support.

Software System’s Fans Gather to Talk Code

Even the NY Times has picked up on Drupal’s popularity. This article gives some good examples of companies and groups using this CMS for their websites.

Oh, if you are near Cincinnati there is a Drupal Users Group here that formed a few months ago. The group is shaping up nicely and is great for newbies and gurus. Meetings are at 6:30pm on the 1st Wednesday of each month at the Public Library’s main branch.

The post is based on Aaron Swartz’s rant against OCLC and WorldCat.  It is, however, a valid rant.  Libraries have tolerated OCLC’s “less than open” practices because there wasn’t much alternative.  Now that open alternatives such as Open Library and ‡biblios.net are growing, it will be interesting to see what happens.  With the growing popularity of open source in libraries, having open records and open cataloging will be very important.

Most of the slides are screenshots and the URL for the tool or example site can be found at the top of each of those slides.

Technology Trends
October 13
Wright Memorial Public Library
Dayton, Ohio

Mashup to Keep Up
October 24
Ohio Educational Library Media Association (OELMA) Conference
Columbus, Ohio

Breakout Session
November 18
Web 2.0 Exposed
Athens, Ohio

Web working isn’t for everyone, but it’s definitely for me.  Having my entire office in my bag and online in “the cloud” has given me a lot of flexibility and freedom.  The staff in our office have embraced it as well.  Everyone is connected via instant messaging which means they can see when I’m available and reach me whenever they need something.

Over the past year, I’ve had to adjust some of the ways I work and and develop some new habits.  I now avoid paper unless it’s completely necessary, schedule tasks based on where I am on a particular day, and rely more heavily on free/online software.  Zen Habits recently posted 12 New Rules of Working You Should Embrace Today and I can definitely relate to most of them.  Rule #4 focuses on working outside the office, but I think many of the rules apply to web working in one way or another.

At MPOW, we purchased an iPod Touch to play around with.  I’m not an Apple fan in the least, but the browser on the Touch and iPhone beats anything else on a mobile device.  I’ve can effortlessly navigate and read almost every site I visit.  There’s no need to search for a “mobile-optimized” version of a site, turn off styles, or make any other alterations.

I know that not everyone has an iPhone, but we’re starting to see lots of other gadgets and software that strive to achieve the same experience that Apple provides.  The next couple of years will yield phones and media devices that put the full web experience in your pocket.  And that is why libraries have missed the mobile web.  We are moving away from the need for mobile versions of our websites, catalogs, and databases.  Most libraries have never catered to mobile users and soon there will be little need to do so.  The trend is slow now, but is accelerating.

So should you create a mobile version of your library’s website if you haven’t already done so?  I think it largely depends on your type of users.  Students are more likely to make use of the web on the go.  So school and academic libraries need to pay extra attention to mobile access.  My general recommendation, however, would be not to worry about making your entire website available to mobiles users.  Unless you have the knowledge and resources to build a site that gracefully adapts on its own for mobiles devices, just create a basic page with important links and information for mobile users and link to that page from your main website.  Put the link near the top of you home page so mobile users can find it easily.

It makes me a little sad to say that mobile websites will soon be obsolete.  I like the idea of having simplified versions of web pages.  There are fringe benefits to a mobile-optimized page as well such as speed and accessibility.  However, it’s nice that evolving gadgets are making more library resources available to users on the go.

O’Reilly has begun selling DRM-free ebooks.  So far only 12 titles are available, but they are planning to slowly roll out more.  You can also purchase both the PDF and the print verison together.

That’s all well and good, but I did say slowly and painfully, didn’t I?  Yahoo! just announced that it is killing its music store at the end of September.  That means the DRM keys will be gone and any music purchased from Yahoo’s store will no longer play on your computer.  They recommend burning the music to CDs before that date to get around the dead DRM.  As DRM continues to slowly die, we can expect to see more orphaned digital content.

I could tell that many in the room were seeing these tools for the first time. I’m always amused by people’s reactions when they first learn about sites like Twitter and Second Life. It’s not easy to explain the concepts and usefulness in a short amount of time. By focusing on collaboration, however, I was able to give some quick examples of how tools like micro-blogs, wikis, and IM can be used.

I was recently invited to guest blog about Ultra Low-Cost PCs like the Asus Eee PC.  The post is up now.

OnStar will soon include the ability for the police to shut off your engine remotely. Buses are getting the same capability, in case terrorists want to re-enact the movie Speed. The Pentagon wants a kill switch installed on airplanes, and is worried about potential enemies installing kill switches on their own equipment.

Microsoft is doing some of the most creative thinking along these lines, with something it’s calling “Digital Manners Policies.” According to its patent application, DMP-enabled devices would accept broadcast “orders” limiting capabilities. Cellphones could be remotely set to vibrate mode in restaurants and concert halls, and be turned off on airplanes and in hospitals. Cameras could be prohibited from taking pictures in locker rooms and museums, and recording equipment could be disabled in theaters. Professors finally could prevent students from texting one another during class.

Somehow I knew Microsoft would be involved in this.  Read on for Bruce’s impressive rant against devices controlling devices.  I’m in 100% agreement with him on this issue.

Libraries might like the idea of being able to silence cellphones entering the building, but there are just too many ways that something like this can be abused.  At least give me the ability to reject these “orders” being sent to my gadgets.  You hear me, Microsoft?