ILA 2010 Providing Advanced Technology for At-Risk Young Adults

Darren Thompson, Jim Nelson, Blue Island

At least 20 other nations exceed us in Math & Science.  To fight that, created something called The Tech Annex that has not only the tech, but artwork made by teens, to be inviting.  

Need people with skills to share.  They may already be on staff.

Difficult to engage kids who may have been told there are no possibilities for them.  Takes a lot of convincing.

Not a new idea: Transformation Lab, Denmark.  USC 2007 Library of the Future also shows a video of how different disciplines can help build the libraries of the future.

Video Production:

5 videocameras w/tripods, lights & reflector, green screen, wireless, non-wireless mics, reference monitors, Adobe Production Premium, Adobe Premier Elements, DVD, VHS players w/capture cards.  

Audio Production:
Mics, headphones, PA, mixers, keyboard, guitars, pedals, amps, electronic drum set, FL (Fruity Loops) Studio, Audacity.

Put it all on Youtube.  Lots of oral history done this way.

Google sketch.  Lego Mindstorms NXT for robotics-focused activities.  Helps with critical thinking, promotes an interest in Math & Science.

Digital photography, another way to engage--lenses, style of shot, exposures.  Animate them in stop motion.

Graphic & Fine Arts -- Wacom Bamboo Tablet, CS4, fine arts materials (markers, paper, pencils, paints, charcoals, etc.)

Cons--noisy, chaotic, teens get distracted, projects are lengthy, hard to manage equipment, hard to find staff who can effectively use the equipment.

Pros--Good for kids who can't take these classes, promotes create thinking, math & science, teens grow, nurture others, encourages collaboration, increased potential for new programs, staff & community can use equipment, promoting partnerships--good way to get support from local businesses.

Gaming is not part of it, unless there is a tournament.  Seems like game production would be another avenue, though.  IT only appears to complain about the noise.

ILA 2010 The Myth of "The Digital Generation"

Siva Vaidhyanathan


The invocation of a digital generation, the tools, how we act...these assumptions are bad for us.

Print is Dead a book by Jeff Gomez.  He asserts that people now Google vs. going to the library.  No evidence. Siva's classes are filled with 18 year old's who don't do digital well.  4 or 5 do.  120 don't and are lost.  Most live in extremes.  Even though they do it, they don't fully understand it.  Like driving a car, but not being able to fix it.  Makes us users/consumers vs. experts.  Using a computer vs. engaging in open-source software or write for Wikipedia, for example.  Print is Dead is a fallacy.  Students tell him they prefer a bound book to a Kindle.

This kind of talk willfully ignores the vast difference in skills, those that are not socially or economically privileged, ethnic differences, availability of broadband (nonexistent in rural America) etc.

The very idea of generations has no sociological  or historical precedent.
Experiences are so diverse that we all experience things very differently.  Generation X is arbitrary.  The baby boom was a demographic event.  What do they share in identity?  Medicare, that's it.  We're too diverse.  Attitudes change gradually.

Henry Jenkins "Talking about youth as digital natives implies that there is a world which these young people all share and a body of knowledge they have all mastered, rather than seeing the online world as unfamiliar and uncertain for all of us."


Exoticizing people is deeply troubling.  We're all immersed in digital tools.  What matters is what we do with them.  Playing with Facebook vs. building something.  Making a prepackaged PowerPoint presentation.


We start to market to these assumptions, young people adapt to this.  We shift to work on speed and size vs quality and utility.  Article about this here.


History is not static; it is worth studying youth.  We are connected with everyone in the world now.  Real time contact and information around the world.  Identity is changing.

ILA 2010 Goodbye Reference Desk, Hello Information Commons

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Patrons evloving, must evlove service to reach them where they are working. Evaluate, synthesize, create. Information Commons may be the way to work information literacy, technology, troubleshooting, subject specialists, added to collaboration, social aspects, creating a dynamic diverse service model. Ripe to move beyond academic libraries. Change in attitude & policy vs. huge outlay of money.

Honor the Past & Invent the Future

“The conundrum for companies is that good products or services aren't enough.”  Made To Stick By CHip & Dan Heath:

"Arriving at meaningful solutions is an inevitably slow and difficult process. Nonethless … better is possible. It doesn't take genius. It takes dilligence...”

Engagement – taking part, devotng effort & attention, being in gear. Understand needs, bring our gift to bear to take needs, map them into something more than users can imagine. The Cluetrain Manifesto, people are in conversation with information, “the human voice is unmistakable and can't be faked.”

Innovation – Book: How to Get Ideas. Be idea prone. Need thousands more than we ever implement. Be entrepreneurial, rebound from setbacks to success.

Value – Degree of importance, relationsjip between cost & expectation. Could be economic, social, utility, justice, impact, outcome.

7 Levels of Change by Rolf Smith:

LEVEL 1:Effectiveness DOING the right things

LEVEL 2:Efficiency DOING things right

LEVEL 3:Improving DOING things better

LEVEL 4:Cutting Stopping DOING things

LEVEL 5:Copying DOING things other people are doing

LEVEL 6:Different DOING things no one else is doing

LEVEL 7:Impossible DOING things that can't be done
Level 8 (added): Audacity – Doing things that just aren't done.

Several areas of the library serve different collaboative purposes. They meet the needs of academic patrons. Gaming center, social cafe, reference desk, but as just a small facet of a several area multi-floor library area. Twitter to share reference tips. Chat references are longer, more complex. Texting librarians. All ways of pushing out the commons. Suggestion board “what book would you like us to buy?” Jing captures a URL and sends it back.

Loyola University

Information Commons meant to be service oriented. A good partnership with IT is crucial. Wireless, Internet Access, Access to experts (librarians, IT). Three C's.

Collaboration – Group work, respond by having 30 group study rooms. Online reservation system. Large tables, Soft seating clusters. Physical, technological collaboration.

Connectivity – iPad, cellphone, constantly connected. Wireless, 222 computers, 50 laptops. Restaurant style pagers for when a laptop is turned back in.

Community – Cafe, etc. has made the library the de facto student center.

Had 2 reference desks. Had to cut the one in the library, put staff just in the IC. Decline in reference questions due to move, but also a shift to RUSA guidelines (no directional, facility questions) for stats. No longer have to answer tech questions—frozen laptops, printer problems, etc. IT person answers those while reference staff answers reference questions.

ILA 2010 The Googlization of Everything – Should We Care?

Siva Valdhyanathan – “The Googlization of Everything: How One Company is Disrupting Culture, Commerce, and Community, and Why We Should Care."

Copyrights, Copywrongs. The Anarchist in the Library.

Google is 12 now. It “got” the web in way no one had back then. Tamed the chaos.

Now—It is the largest, richest advertisement company in the world. Unmatched processing power, banwidth (beyond governments). Has computational capacity that could never have been predicted.

A Dangerous Level of Dependence

We are dependent on it. Daily habits, expectations---the lens through which we discover the world.

Missed opportunities, crowding out of other ways, we settle for what we get for free. We ned to imagine better ways of doing things. We are in the unfortunate situation where people prefer Google to the library—at least, those too rich to need to go to libraries. Google's imperitive is to enhance shareholder investment.

Should they be regulated? We don't do it well enough. Copyright, antitrust, privacy laws regulate it.

3 Levels of Content Delivery:

Search: “Rank & Link,” 3rd-party servers searched, ranked, linked. Businesses thrive & fail on this. There should be more transparency, though.

Host & Deliver: Gmail, YouTube, Blogger, Buzz—all have strong competitors. But Google has created its own universe from which trumps often better competitors. Power users must register to create & use content.

Capture & Serve: Street View, Earth, Book Search, Maps, etc. Google-izing the world.
Google Wants a Single Standard – It is the government of the web. It has been in trouble over Youtube videos, one in Itally of a young man being bullied. Highest level of responsibility. Street View breaks this. In trouble in Germany for this. The general exemption from intermediary liability applies more to the Search than especially the 3^rd, but also the 2^nd. “Notice and Takedown” is not good enough. Google is more a network than a conduit. Google wants to be held to a low level of responsibility. They make up for the failure of public institutions. Corporate responsibility—Whole Foods steps in to a gapwhere the food industry is killing us. Walmart stepping in to deliver water to New Orleans, saving thousnads of lives.n It shouldn't have come to that. Are we so weakened that Google is digitizing our books rather than all public institutions steeping in to do this better and for the benefit of all?

Nancy Kranich – “The Googlization of Libraries: Should We Care?”

Is Google a Library?

Siva's question.

The Google Generaion is all of us. Simple, fast, 24-7. No more information literate than those who came before. Generation doesn't know the meaning of information they find. Study after study shows they prefer simple searching vs advanced, assume search engines understand queries, and find it difficult to develop effective search strategies. Younger people aren't visiting libraries in person. 89% of college students begin through Google or something like it. 2% at libraries (OCLC). How people learn about this information is usually not from us.

Think everything's on the web. And super-fast. Citations are DOA, would have to walk and get the article. No focus on privacy. No evaluation.

Evaulation – Young people cannot research, spend very little time on checking its accuracy, authority, lack of bias. Critical thinking is also lost. Safe libraries is a good example of a bad website.

Most collect information, hardly reading & digesting. Download, save, print out the information. Don't even use much of it.

Libraries – People are intimidated by them. The library is full, but the desk is empty. Often kids head to the public library instead of the academic desk.

Website – It is a gate that keeps people out. Per our organizational structure, despite what the user wants, how they will look for information. Simplify. One click access. Make it visible to Google. Open ourselves up to the net.

They Don't Understand Collections – Important to be where users are, but have to be useful.

Help Learners Get the Tools to Evaluate and Use Information: Librarians are not about “search” anymore. Must reorient to where users really need us. We should focus on evaluating and using, giving people the skills and guidance to help with what people find. We must help the overwhelmed navigate and critically assess the overwhelming torrent of news and information. Knowledge creation.

Libraries Must – make the Google Generation as knowledgable in how to evaluate as they are in using the tools.

Libraies – Don't bombard you with ads, unlike Google. One of the few places we are not used, seduced, tempted...every user is not a consumer. We are a public instution, not a firm.

Catalyze – Ratehr than being a system, we have a bigger impact in being this sanctuary. We have changed their lives for the better.

IBM & Microsoft were regulated. Will Google? These companies intersect very little. Will Google exist in 12 years? Will it be different? Less a creative force as it becomes a company driven purely by profit? Will the gated communities like Facebook demolish it? Will Apples Apps take away attention? Google books has only been going for 6 years. Too much responsibility for a company that may disappear. Blind faith is a bad idea. We navigate the world successfully with help from each other (librarians), not technology. First result is good for shopping, not learning. Google datamines and pulls up top results by what we'll buy – Wisconsin “Green” search brings up 8 Green Bay Packers sales sites.

Information Literacy – What is a better term for it? Libraries must partner with schools and other community organizations to figure this out.

Volunteers as a Service, Partnership, and Opportunity ILA 2010

Tobe Liebert, Hinsdale PL
What do MLS's want out of volunteering?  Keeping up skill sets.  Filling a gap in the resume.  A professional reference.
Starting Point?  Most libraries with volunteers have forms, policy manuals, etc. online.  ALA's Managing Library Volunteers good basic manual--not extensive, but process.  Could be 5-7 pages, good to have to pass along.
*Each volunteer application has a different set of questions.  Children's, Teens, Adults.


Where Does the Work Come From?  What Do They Do?
Core functions--shelving, staffing circ desk.  Some small libraries rely on volunteers do do all shelving, circ, etc.  Larger libraries generally use them for home delivery, book sale.  Daily operations.
Special Projects--definite starting and ending point.
Friends -- They tend to be sovereign and are supported by the book sale volunteers.
*Department managers generally contact with projects they need help with.  Occasionally, sending an email.  Department head will train--for example, head of adult services trains in shelf-reading.
*Patron privacy-- There is no concern for them doing circulation work, shredding, taking about patrons.  Depends on library.  But legally, it is OK.
Community Service--Can be better than expected.  Confidentiality, these people are embarrassed, sheepish.  Mustn't be major offenses.  Staff can know they're doing CS, just not why.  Coordinator knows why.  Ask "what are you serving for."  It's public--so they can't not tell you.  You can ask for paperwork.  We determine which kind of crimes we allow--anything relating to children & theft is an automatic "no."


Recruiting--Video editing workstation available to patrons with Adobe Premier Elements.  Time consuming for librarians to teach.  A volunteer could set up times to meet them.  No success yet.  High school computer club or AV club is supposed to get back to him.  Avg adult volunteer would likely not be a good choice.


Controversy-- Library Journal Charlotte Mecklenburg article about how they kept branches afloat by using volunteers here
Fair Labor Standards Act -- a public institution does not have to count volunteers as employees as long as they are doing a different kind of work.  Cannot force employees to volunteer additional hours doing the exact same kind of work as well.

Liability -- Insurance will likely have a "volunteer rider" which should cover volunteers.

Amy Alessio & Dan Schnepf, Schaumburg 
Teen Core -- Every meeting, does something different: crafts, AV, very loose organization--These are mostly middle schoolers.
*James Kennedy was filmed by the teen volunteers, shot and edited film in about 1.5 hours.  Teens staff the study room to help the 4th-8th grade kids.  James also teaches improv.  Lots of hits.
Year of a Thousand Hours -- 1800volunteer.org.  People can volunteer from home.  Teens knit at home.  Taught 12 of the girls to knit, grew from there.  Knit cafe, every Monday night.
Teen Carnival -- Raises food for food pantry.
Student Advisory Trustees -- 2 teens sit on the trustee board.

High school – teens want to help the world. Move it back to local. Knitting project is one way of doing this.

Texting – It is complicated to be able to do it for free. Get permission from various service providers. Use phone calls, emails.

Food, gift cards, drawings, etc. to reward them.

Varying – Teens get bored. Have them work on collection development, learning, pulling information.

Make it matter – Help select magazines. Design programs. They can bomb, it's OK.

Allow a lot of leeway – They need to call in.

Staff – Every employee works with them. Keep expectations real.

Staff2 – Volunteers become employees. Some get their MLS, become librarians, pulls them in for the rest of their lives.

Diane Hnatkiewicz-Norris, Orland Park

Reaching Teens – PA announcements in library and schools up usage.

Junior High – Need to get out of the house. Junior pages has grown to 43 kids. They sign up to help with SRP, especially crafts with tons of set-up, clean-up. Chores must be delineated exactly or teens will get lost, chat.

General Teen Volunteers

*Sign-up – Takes a long time, but they learn new skills even as they sign up.

*Attendance – Records are kept.

***Readers & Leaders – Teens teach preschooler pre-reading skills using Every Child Ready to Read guidelines. Training involves moving eyes left to right, letter recognition, setting up and using different materials, documentation, assigning homework. 4-6 week programs in fall and spring. 12 teens, 12 pre-schoolers, fills up every time.

*Computer Lab Volunteers – Kids are able to do their homework, teen helps release print jobs, takes money, helps with documents. No training required.

***Teen Techies – Sharing skills/ideas in bartering system. Adult teaches guitar, volunteers teach Facebook, Twitter, uploading photos, etc. Put call out in newsletter. Friday nights, 6-7, drop-in. Training teaches patience, privacy, confidentiality, no cells, arrive on-time, call in sick, respect, don't exchange personal information,etc. People need one-on-one help. Adults can't give payment or gifts of any kind, though they are appreciative & kind. Register through e-vanced. Extending the hours.

***Book Buddies – Pairs teens with preschoolers and they simply read together, successful. Bilingual bookbuddies, teens teach younger kids another language.

Karin Slaughter: We Need Libraries

"Libraries are the backbone of our educational infrastructure, and they are being slowly broken by bankrupt municipalities and apathetic politicians. As voters and taxpayers, we have to demand that our local governments properly prioritize libraries."

Article here.

No Camping, No Wheeled Vehicles, Please

I feel like I've seen many of these rules broken already in my short tenure in the public library.  Great McSweeney's piece on rules that need to be in place in libraries here.

I guess I'll have to leave my firearms at home.