The New Digital Divide

The keynote speaker at IUG had some amazing facts and a perspective on how connectivity is changing the way we live. A lot of it was not new but he had real world examples of how he lives his life with technology and really served to underline for me how backward NZ may become unless connectivity is given a huge boost soon.

Larry Irving served under Bill Clinton as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information. He now consults and speaks about information technology.

He was the person who coined the term "the Digital Divide" in his advice to the Clinton administration in the 1990's.

Some of the facts he quoted which I found incredible:

The Library of Congress has been collecting and cataloguing information since before 1800. In all that time, they had amassed a huge store of every kind of printed, cartographic, manuscript and photographic material. In round figures, call it 200 years - now an equivalent amount of content is added to the internet every 15 minutes.

YouTube now generates as much traffic as the entire internet in 2000. They only started in 2005. By 2010, because of their cable and wifi connectivity 20 typical US households will consume as much bandwidth as the whole internet did in 1998.

He has an amazing array (to us kiwis anyway) of devices to live his life, none of which cost more than $500. I thought the coolest one was a slingbox which transmits your cable TV to you wherever you are in the world. Sounds kind of ridiculous, but then you realise what options they have as far as their cable delivery and content. Satellite like our Sky is only for people in remote areas who can't get cable. Since we have been here I have seen guys sitting in bar watching ice hockey on one guys laptop over wifi via his slingbox because the game had finished on TV and he had recorded it at home. (I assure you I was only in the bar to observe). I saw another guy standing in the queue at the subway station on his way home after a baseball game watching a highlights package on his PDA from the game he had just left.

It's all bandwidth - it doesn't matter what you come up with to do once you have it, if you don't have it you can't do anything.

Larry quoted a project called "Connect Kentucky" which is a little like our peoples network project. They mapped the entire state for broadband (which here means cable) availability, speed and cost. The results have been phenomenal. If you're interested please take a look.

News from Washington DC

The picture was taken on the 25th at the Korean War Memorial in the Mall when Stu and I did a tour of a few of the sights.

Not even slightly work-related but Stu and I had an amazing experience last night when George W Bush came to our hotel for the Press Gallery dinner. The security was unbelievable. Secret Service guys with curly earpieces just like in the movies, and huge black SUV's with tinted windows blocking the streets and all access to the hotel . There were lots of celebs and crowds of incredibly well-dressed people for an intimate dinner for about 1000. Bush, Cheney, Colin Powell and Jessica Simpson apparently. We didn't see any of them, but I did recognise some faces.

More work oriented posts to follow.

Hamish.

Load Profile training

While here in Washington, DC for the Innovative User Group conference, I am also attending Load Profile training. This is a 2-day intensive workshop on building data manipulation tables for importing records into Millennium.

The training content is excellent - an in-depth approach to a very useful topic - and the presentation is an effective mixture of lecture and hands-on. I only hope to have opportunity to put it in to practice before it falls out of my brain.

The most obvious use of this new skill is in improved import of bibliographic records from cataloguing suppliers - but there are other applications including migration from other systems, and data cleanup/enhancement not possible inside Millennium. If you are interested in hearing more about this, or would like to explore possibilities for a project, please get in touch with me

Cheerio for now,
Sarah Cox

Osmosis pilot - eLGAR holdings on the National Union Catalogue

National Library will be using a new piece of software, called "Osmosis", to pilot a new method of adding NZ libaries' holdings to the National Union Catalogue (NUC). In July last year, the National Library invited a number of libraries, including eLGAR, to be part of an initial trial of the new software. Porirua Public Library, Auckland University, AUT, Canterbury University and Victoria University are also taking part, along with the National Library itself.

Holdings on the NZ NUC will be automatically loaded to OCLC's Worldcat

eLGAR is scheduled to send its next extract of holdings to the National Library in July 2008. These records will form part of the pilot project. The last complete refresh of all eLGAR libaries' holdings on Te Puna was carried out late in 2007 - the first time since July 2005. Because the National Library is understandably reluctant to carry out any further batch loading of libraries’ holdings using their existing processes, holdings of the eLGAR libaries' will not be updated either manually (by us) or in batch (by the National Library) until they can be processed using Osmosis (i.e. in July). When our turn comes, a complete refresh will be carried out. From that point on, our holdings will be maintained on the NUC at regular agreed intervals, such as monthly or quarterly.

The records that were reported last year included:
· Book NF and graphic novels in English pre & post-June 2005
· ACL heritage records (books only)– fiction & non-fiction where identified with a 583 note
· Foreign language fiction (post-2005),
· Foreign language non- fiction (post-2005),

Further information about the OSMOSIS Project has been posted on the National Library website http://www.natlib.govt.nz/about-us/current-initiatives/osmosis-pilot. It includes brief pilot information, a timeline and links to related websites.
-- article supplied by Sarah Menzies, Cataloguer, North Shore Libraries

Around the Country in 20 Days - Rivkah Sass in NZ

Updating on the eLGAR co-ordinated visit to New Zealand of Rivkah Sass, our American Librarian visitor is currently in Masterton on the final leg of her three week trip around the country. Rivkah was brought to New Zealand as a result of 3M Innovation Award prize money won by eLGAR in 2006. As the investment of international travel from Omaha, Nebraska had already been made, eLGAR offered this inspirational speaker to our public library colleagues around New Zealand and was delighted at the number of regions that took up the opportunity to share in hearing an international conference speaker.

The complete intinerary co-ordinated by the Programme Office included five speaking venues offering all staff the opportunity to attend an event anywhere within the Auckland region at a variety of times. We were also delighted that the invitation extended to our neighbouring colleagues was gladly accepted by librarians from Papakura and UNITEC. In addition to the collective talks Rivkah visited selected libraries to meet personally with staff and to see what New Zealand Libraries have to offer. She was most impressed by the quality and diversity of our services and by the welcoming friendliness of all our people. Congratulations!

After Auckland Rivkah travelled to Nelson for a breakfast talk to staff at Nelson Public before attending the South Island Manager's group meeting. Then in a whirlwind of stops it was on to Dunedin to address public and university librarians as well as local Councillors, Balclutha and Invercargill. The next day in Gore Rivkah was flattered that the Mayor of the town joined the library staff to hear her speak. Next it was up to Winton before Queenstown to talk to the Lakes District librarians and a much needed quiet weekend in the haven of Arrowtown. On Monday she flew to Christchurch for a tour of Selwyn/Aoraki and Christchurch libraries then Wellington to catch a train through the Rimatakas to Masterton. Currently Rivkah is being toured through the Wairarapa Libraries back to Wellington where she will leave us on Saturday. Phew! Quite a feat for our visitor but having spent some time with her in Auckland I can say that she has so much energy and enthusiasm for libraries and her comment was that she didn't want to miss a minute of the opportunities we had given her in New Zealand.

While Rivkah remarked that she felt that the trip would benefit her more than us, the feedback received from staff indicates what a two-way exchange it has been. Jane Robinson the librarian in Gore sent an email thanking eLGAR for including country libraries in the itinerary, remarking that smaller libraries often miss out. The Programme Office is delighted to co-ordinate opportunities that promote professional development for librarians and in particular eLGAR staff and we hope to be able to offer other programmes in the future.

Reciprocal membership goes live at Rodney & North Shore

Customers were ready to take up the offer of free membership across the Rodney/North Shore boundary on Day One, with 3 signing up at Albany Village Library and 3 at East Coast Bays Library. A small but interesting proportion of the 260 new memberships so far today.

Bucking the usual trend for library memberships, 5 of the 6 are blokes.

3 of them found at least one thing to borrow, 2 of them placed holds, 5 of them supplied an email address, but only 3 added a PIN.

see the Herald article of March 13

Reciprocal Borrowing

An article in the NZ Herald recently announced that North Shore and Rodney Libraries would have a reciprocal borrowing scheme where residents of both regions would be able to join both libraries free of charge. The scheme, which is really reciprocal membership rather than reciprocal borrowing means that residents have more choice in using the library nearest and most convenient to them and more choice in accessing both collections.

While the announcement was a little premature, all the details have been finalised between Rodney, North Shore and eLGAR, and the reciprocal membership scheme will start on Monday 14th April.

Google Maps

All the eLGAR libraries have now been mapped onto the eLGAR Google Map, which can be accessed by logging into Google with our account name and password.

So please feel free to review the map. For each eLGAR library, the address is shown along side a brief description (where known). You can add/change the description provided according to what you find suitable.

Currently, the map has not been made public, mainly because it needs to go through a review exercise. Once that is done, we can make the map public so that anyone searching for eLGAR libraries on Google will come across that map. You can also use it on your library sites if need be.

For more information etc, please contact Prateek.

Rivkah at Rodney & North Shore

Yesterday Rivkah Sass started her grand NZ tour with a library management seminar followed by a presentation to Rodney Libraries. Rivkah, American Librarian of the Year, is in NZ thanks to eLGAR and the 3M Innovation Award. Rivkah also presented to the North Shore Libraries yesterday evening.

Her wide ranging presentation includes Rivkah's thoughts on the need for librarians to be open to risks and challenges and try new things, if they don't work it doesn't mean the end of the world. It is interesting how some things are universal, challenges for here are shared by librarians around the world. Increasingly librarians are having to manage the expectations of staff, political and financial stakeholders, and customers. Rivkah also says "Omaha is Omaha" meaning we all need to serve our own community and there is no single solution that will fit across the entire Libray world.

The tour continues at Manukau and Waitakere today (Thursday) and Auckland City tomorrow. Next week Rivkah travels south as far as Invercargill, which must be about as far away from Omaha as it's possible to be.

Subscribing to our blog

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Please choose whichever option suits you best.

Thanks
Hamish