H4: Technology Scouts: How to Keep Your Library and ILS Current in the IT World

Mary Jane Kelsey, Yale University School of Law
Katie Bauer, Yale University
Casey Bisson, Plymouth State University

Mary Jane Kelsey

Library catalogs have changed fast since the 1970s, and even though everything has moved onto the web, the changes are still coming fast. In order to keep up, we must think about ILS in widest view possible, because it's not just for bibliographic information anymore.

Why change? Because library users want change. Because libraries have to change in order to stay viable. And because we can change as ILS's offer new modules.

Young library patrons were born with joysticks in their hands, and they expect everything to be online. Thus expect library services to be online, too. They expect ambient findability, with the least amount of effort. Simply put, they won't use systems that require too much work.

And this drives librarians crazy. Many librarians try to keep viewing things as hierarchical, categorizable, and sequential. But that's not how information is anymore. Now, everything is "intertwingled" (e.g., a mashup of craigslist and Google Maps produces HousingMaps).

Administrators have similar expectations. They want web services that will save time and money and redeploy staff to higher functions. They expect a credible presence, which keeps reliability intact.

ILS vendors are finally beginning to provide products to make these things happen.

Here are a few examples of what Yale's Law Library has done...

• Implementation of an Electronic Resource Management (ERM) module that integrates fully with the ILS
• Using a WebBridge to suggest other resources for patrons to check
• Syndication of incoming RSS feeds into library catalog interface, including library news and legal news from Jurist
• Now producing RSS feeds going out of catalog (e.g., new acquisitions alerts)
• Library can communicate directly with users via portals and feed readers using RSS feeds
• Creation of a MiniCatalog module via AirPAC
• Spellchecking in the OPAC
• Added tables of contents, book jackets, and permalinks to the OPAC
• Creation of Firefox search plug-ins and LibX toolbar
• Place an icon in records on Amazon when the library has the book

Katie Bauer

Users now have a lot of options in searching for information. A recent OCLC survey shows that college students use search engines far more than library websites when performing online research.

This means it's time to start pushing library content out of library website and into places that the patrons already are. What users want is quick, simple, and seamless access. They want it to be easy.

One tool used at Yale to make this happen is John Udell's LibraryLookup, a javascript code that grabs an ISBN from an Amazon URL and plugs it into an OPAC search. This allows users to search for a book in the Yale catalog directly from that book's page on Amazon.

This leads to additional Firefox browser add-ons. The pros of these plug-ins include the ability to put a catalog search box in every browser window a user opens, providing users with complete control over when they can perform a catalog search, and the relative ease with which the plug-ins can be created. However, there are some notable drawbacks. For one, the plug-ins only work with Firefox. Also, to use the plug-ins, users must first download them. Finally, the user must take an extra step to search the catalog.

In addition to plug-ins, libraries can push content out into other realms using RSS.

Yale performed a study to discover where users are on the Yale webspace. The results of this study were then used to determine where the library would push its content. For example, students are using the university's course management system heavily, so Yale is now working on a prototype to push library content into the CMS via RSS. One such piece of content is an automated reserve book list for specific courses in each course's web space.

Yale is also now putting links to library resources into Google Scholar search results using SFX. The user doesn't need to configure anything in order for this to work. This same functionality can be added to Open WorldCat as well. The only drawback is that Google Scholar is very picky about what links it will include.

Casey Bisson

Library catalogs have been criticized a lot this year. The challenges that have generated these criticisms involve usability, findability, and remixability.

Recently, the Ann Arbor District Library (AADL) and the North Carolina State University (NCSU) Library have done things with library catalogs that everybody immediately wanted for their own institutions. AADL it inexpensively using open-source software, while NCSU spent a lot of money to develop a commercial solution. To attempt some of these same things, Bisson developed WPopac, a library catalog built using open-source blogging software (WordPress).

Usability is important, as is findability. How do libraries serve people who start their research with internet search engines? How do you increase the functionality of the OPAC for your users? You can improve findability by making content indexable by search engines and linkable. With linkable content, can much more easily track citations to your content and resources.

What about remixability? Flickr, an online photo sharing site, is an excellent example of content that is remixable. Flickr provides the content, and others build tools to manipulate that content for new uses. The tool builders don't have to invent Flickr, and Flickr doesn't have to invent the tools.

An excellent example of a tool built by someone outside of flickr to make use of flickr's content is the Crayon Box Colr Pickr.

In this new world, to make this kind of innovation occur in libraries, we must similarly separate the data and the data manipulation. Then the possible manipulations are endless because it's not limited by the interface of the data system.

Solutions to the challenges of usability and findability are imminent. Therefore, it's time we began focusing on remixability in our systems. To do this, we should look at the OpenSearch API, follow the development of WPopac, and ask our ILS vendors to keep the door open for experimentation (i.e., ask for APIs).

Casey's slides are now online at his blog, MaisonBisson.

If you're looking for coverage of last week's AALL annual meeting, Library Laws certainly isn't the only game in town. Here's a roundup of conference posts from some of the other bloggers in attendance...

Connie Crosby

• My First AALL Conference
• Live from St. Louis - AALL Conference (posted on Slaw.ca)
• AALL 2006 - Today's highlights

DennisKennedy.com (Dennis Kennedy)

• Meeting the Law Librarian Bloggers

LawLibTech (Cindy Chick)

• Desktop Search - The Ultimate PKM (Personal Knowledge
• Newsgator - Deliver News to Your Enterprise

MaisonBisson.com (Casey Bisson)

• The Social Software Over There
• Technology Scouts At AALL

Out of the Jungle (group blog)

• Betsy McKenzie: Time for AALL meeting!
• Marie S. Newman: Law Firm Library Survey

WisBlawg (Bonnie Shucha)

• Highlights from the AALL Annual Meeting

Also, be sure to check out the official AALL Gateway blog, which has numerous posts from before, during, and after the conference.

Looking for some audio?

Check This Out! (Jim Milles)

• Episode 035a: Live from AALL: Nightly Wrapup #1
• Episode 035b: Live from AALL: Nightly Wrapup #2
• Episode 035c: Live from AALL: Nightly Wrapup #3 - Lost to Posterity
• Episode 036: GenX GenY Caucus

How about some photos?

flickr

• AALL Gateway Pool

On Tuesday night a group of us tried to go to dinner at Grbic Restaurant in South City, but our clueless cabbie took us to an entirely different part of the city (where we ate at The Drunken Fish instead). While the driver stopped to examine his copy of the least detailed map of St. Louis ever published, we all got a chuckle out of this lawyer's phone number...

CS-SIS Breakfast Meeting: Connecting Big Dots

John Mayer, Center for Computer Assisted Legal Instruction

There are a number of "big dots" with problems to solve.

Legal Services Corporation (LSC) is an organization funded by federal government that gives money to organizations who provide legal aid to low income people. The federal government is currently shrinking, so LSC must find ways to become more efficient.

Courts are seeing an increasing number of people representing themselves. This forces judges to serve as law professors for litigants in their courtrooms.

Law libraries are being used less and less by lawyers, but more and more by the general public. This forces librarians to instruct inexperienced pro se patrons in how to perform legal research.

Law students, as always, need more on-the-ground experience while in law school to prepare them for practice.

There has to be a way to connect these dots and solve their problems simultaneously...

Recently, LSC decided to require legal aid organizations within a single state to join forces on a single website in order to receive funding. One example of this is probono.net, where organizations receive web space on the site using a content management system. Another is Illinois Legal Aid Online, a site for legal aid organizations in Illinois that provides information designed for three different audiences: pro se patrons, pro bono attorneys, and legal aid attorneys.

The Center for Computer Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) became involved in these projects through The Center for Access to Justice and Technology (A2J) at Chicago-Kent College of Law. A2J walks pro se users through the process of filling out a legal form rather than just giving them a blank form. The system takes things one question at a time, explaining information one issue at a time. To aid in the creation of these systems, CALI created A2J Author, which allows creators of A2J content to break a form down into a series of steps using a graphical interface to simplify the authoring process. When a law changes, or if a different jurisdiction reuses another's form, it is a simple process to make changes. As with CALI Lesson authoring system, an A2J author can view the entire form process as flow chart.

When an A2J user finishes a form, the system currently sends the answers provided into a HotDoc system that generates a completed hard copy of the form that the user can print and file themselves. The next logical step for CALI and A2J is automated electronic filing of these forms.

Currently, pro bono efforts typically involve courts, legal services, and legal education, but there needs to be a way to involve law libraries and lawyers in this process -- and to get law students involved while they're still in school. CALI is still trying to develop a way to make this happen.

So far, members of the organization have brainstormed many interesting (and sometimes humorous) ideas so far, but none have been workable. These include:

Virtual Legal Aid
A system for providing legal aid online that is similar to virtual reference service in libraries.

MyLawsuitSpace.com
A website where users could help one another with various legal problems. Of course, this leads to problems with the unauthorized practice of law, but people are already using the web for legal advice anyway.

Law students as "pre-authors"
Student writing explanatory text about the law.

Mentor eBay
Need legal help? Post your problem and price you're willing to pay for help. Attorneys then bid to take your case.

YouTube Law Guides
Online video tutorials about the law. (There is already one judge who is posting his sentencing hearings on YouTube.)

There are many problems with connecting these big dots in a single legal aid project. For one, different jurisdictions and local practices make online resources problematic. With the internet, there is always the risk of unauthorized practice of law (though this warning may just be protectionist propaganda by local attorneys who perceive online services as competition for clients. The quality of online information is always questionable, so there needs to be some evaluation of authority (and aren't librarians in a perfect position to help with this already?). There are also a number of second order effects that will be created by the online system CALI envisions, including electronic filing and an increase in lawsuits, and these must all be taken into account. There is also the question of how to provide incentives to students to encourage them to participate. Paying them is problematic, which leaves course credit as the only other obvious alternative.

Librarians + Live Music x Open Bar = Conga Line

E3: Invasion of the Podcast People: Podcasting for the Law Librarian

John Mayer, The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction
Jim Milles, University of Buffalo Law School

The guys made this one easy on me. John already has his synchronized slides and audio up over at CALIopolis. And while Jim added a lot of new detail to his presentation to gear it more toward law librarians of all different types, the big picture was pretty much the same as his session at CALI, which I've already summarized.

God bless you both.

After 5 great days at the AALL Annual Meeting in St. Louis, I'm finally back home in Vegas. I've still got lots of conference-related blog posts and photos yet to come. I hope to slowly get everything up on the site over the next few days.

However, all the session summaries and pictures in the world still can't capture the truly great moments of this conference:

• finally meeting many of the law librarian bloggers I've been reading for ages
• getting to personally thank some people whose articles and websites helped make my job easier
• a long, geeky conversation about OPACs over drinks in the hotel bar
• a lunch with several people I'd never met before that turned into a thought provoking conversation about the future of the profession
• a chance encounter with a library educator that provided an unexpected opportunity to mentor library students
• reconnecting with a former classmate who turned out to be just as passionate about this profession as I am
• getting to attend a breakfast meeting because a library director I barely knew offered me his ticket
• bouncing my crazy ideas about library programming off a recent library school graduate on the plane ride home
• plugging this blog at every opportunity

And that barely scratches the surface.

My biggest takeaway from the conference is also the biggest surprise. Before I got to St. Louis, I didn't really care much about recruiting new people into the law librarian profession. Honestly, I'd never really given it any thought. Yet, now I can't stop thinking about it. There's so much misinformation (or in many cases, a complete lack of information) about this profession floating around at library schools and law schools, and we need to do everything we can to change that, to get the word out about what we do and why others should want to do it, too.

I also learned the hard way that while my new MacBook is a perfect tool for just about anything, it's not particularly well-suited to editing photos. All the pictures that looked so bright and vibrant on my laptop screen, looked very, very dark when I finally viewed them on a regular monitor. After I finish the rest of my blog posts on the meeting, I'll be re-processing the photos I've posted so far to make them look considerably better.

Stay tuned for more coverage, and I'll see you next year in New Orleans.

The law librarian bloggers gathered on Monday evening for drinks and conversation at Kitchen K...

 
 
Connie Crosby talks with a fellow attendee...

 
 
Jim Milles shows Connie Crosby his portable podcasting equipment...

It takes a lot more than a conference to stop these law librarians from watching Italy defeat France in the 2006 World Cup final...

C2: Let's All Wiki Wiki! Creative Uses for Wikis in Any Library

Deborah Ginsberg, Chicago-Kent College of Law

Simply stated, a wiki is a web application for online social collaboration. The typical characteristics of a wiki include the use of lots of hyperlinks, both internal and external. A wiki usually provides for the easy creation and editing of pages by just about anyone.

There are, however, two big caveats with wikis: 1) there is no editor to control content or authority (as evidenced by the Wikipedia entry on John Seigenthaler Sr) and 2) open editing leaves the pages open for spam.

Example: WikiNews (extensive use of hyperlinks and sources)

Many wikis have a revision history that allows users to track changes to a page and compare different versions of a page (often even side by side). Users can even choose to revert to previous versions.

Wikis also provide a means to host online discussions ABOUT wiki pages.

How are wikis being used in libraries? Patrons may be using them for research, either with a general wiki like Wikipedia or with more subject specific wikis (e.g., Psychology Wiki). There are already some law-specific wikis available, including JurisPedia and Wex. An example of a library-specific wiki is LIS Wiki. Some libraries are creating wikis for patron use, such as Butler WikiRef (includes reference resources and instruction). Libraries are even creating internal wikis, like the one for UConn Libraries IT Services.

There are lots of options available for creating wikis. Some considerations include deciding where it will be hosted, what software to use, and determining who controls what. WikiMatrix is a good tool for deciding which wiki service to use. It allows users to compare the features of various types of wiki software.

People often sell the idea of wikis to new users by emphasizing the fact that you don't need to know HTML to edit a wiki, but each wiki uses its own proprietary wiki syntax, which may be just as daunting as learning html (without being as universally useful).

Popular software and/or hosting choices for wikis include MediaWiki, PBwiki, JotSpot, and Edit This.

Ginsberg has created LawLibWik, a law library wiki that anyone can edit. She hopes that everyone in the profession will start contributing. It can be used to teach research skills to new librarians and to share knowledge with one another.