Michelle is now talking about Library Thing (LibraryThing | Catalog your books online). This is an application I like, but haven't used very much.  It's a social bookmarking tool for books. The librarians in the room quickly got into a discussion about the value of some of the features for our own book collections--tagging and ranking. Ranking was out.  Most people did not see this as a useful feature for a library catalog. Tagging was met with more enthusiasm although the issue of control over the vocabulary did come up.  We mentioned Penn Tags (PennTags /).  Michelle mentioned that Library Thing might be useful for book groups. You can create groups around the book and discuss it via a discussion board. And that made me think that you could do that with a class and that you might get people from outside the class to join you, which might be very interesting.  Maybe I'll try this.

Susan Turkel is discussing issues related to library outreach and technology.  She first discussed the ways that technology helps with outreach.  Technology such as the RSS, blogs, connecting via Blackboard, email, and more are all ways in which librarians connect with their constituents.  However, there are challenges that technology creates for outreach. One of the biggest is the fact that all the databases have different interfaces and that can be intimidating to the people you're reaching out to.  There are also so many different resources that it's hard to know what to use.  People are asking about the use of MySpace and Facebook for library outreach. It feels intrusive somehow. Janet mentions that you could have a "character" account instead.

Now we're finding out how the library looks from the student perspective. She likes the subject portal (I do too!) and the lunchtime workshops (at Swat).  She thinks library instruction is most effective when it's attached to a class. Students are taught not to trust Google or Wikipedia or some of the other competing tools.  Students prefer to print longer items, but might read shorter items online.  Katherine mentioned that students would like to have course syllabi available via Tripod or some other web site. That led us to a discussion of OpenCourseware as one way of doing that and Liz Evans mentioned that they're looking into developing a similar capability within Blackboard.

Janet is discussing the issue of data management in terms of collecting digital material. Will we have enough space? How do we manage that?  A related issue is the collections, physical and digital, that many faculty have.  How can we help faculty better manage those collections and make sure they're useable by them and by others? Next, Janet discussed the issue of the way that librarians are viewed as scholars and colleagues in a way the IT people often aren't.  She wanted to stress that librarians should value that.  Then she moved on to talking about innovation and "just do it."  Are we stifling innovation with our infrastructure and should we be more nimble? The house of sand. Where are we now? What will the future of the library be? What's changing?  What do people expect from the library? How is a library valued?  Today's undergrads think they don't need a library.

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