Library Camp 2008
Well, here I am at library camp at AADL. Library camp is fun.
MORNING SESSIONS
Session One: DRUPAL
The first session, right now is on Drupal. AADL has the mother of Drupal stuff, and that is a quote.
These are some drupal resources.
Drupal is very cool and very neat. Talking about Drupal is very boring.
Eli and John Blyberg are here. They are nice boys. Sorry about my nutty posting today… after this week. I think my brain is fried.
Session Two: ILS
Hopefully, this is going to be fun.
One person asked “What are going to do if WorldCat takes over ILSs. Eli says he thinks that OCLC is in as much peril as Innovative or sirsi. “We want to be in control of the interfaces that we show our patrons.”
Library Thing is giving away the ISBN resolver, and OCLC wants you to pay for it.
Steve Bowers explained the difference between an ILS and an OPAC. OCLC isn’t creating an ILS…so he isn’t afraid of OCLC taking over. Some libraries only need the OPAC, however.
Open source tends to be more patron centered, and my force tech services to do a few extra clicks, and they need to deal. 
Bad patron interfaces are explained away by librarians who say “they just need training”
“Bad user interfaces make smart people look dumb. Good user interfaces make dumb people look smart.”
ILS talk are very very … intense and almost emotional.
Steve Bowers got happy faces for his cool OPAC stuff, and then they asked what ILS he was using, and when it was discovered that he used Horizon… it was fun to watch the faces change.
Steve was talking about embedding videos, etc. into their pages. See, this is why Steve is a Mover & Shaker.
Session Three:Â Library 2.0 in a 1.0 world
What’s the point of Twitter
·        You can disburse messages to a group of people… like new acquisitions, etc.
RSS, Blogs, etc.
Having a public website is like having a public bathroom. Sooner or later, someone is going to crap on the floor. You don’t have to have elaborate policies, etc. When there is a turd on the floor, someone will let you know. Almost everyone online newspaper has an online forum.  It’s part of being a public entity.
It’s not about selling administration on the technologies, but on the package, on the package of things to interact and make things better for the public.
Library staff don’t necessarily have a vision of what they will be doing, if, for example, patrons are adding flickr, or OCLC eats everyone’s OPAC. They don’t know what their contribution is then.
The Skokie ten is a really good digestion of the 23 things of library 2.0
The number of comments on a blog is not indicative of its success.
You have to try out these new technologies, and then give them time… there will not be immediate success.
More to come…