Interview with Library of Congress Digital Preservation Blog, The Signal

I was very honored last week to be contacted by Sue Manus, a contributor to The Signal, a blog by the Library of Congress dedicated to covering digital preservation news.  Sue wanted to know more about community digital preservation events, and I was happy to oblige!  

Last year when ALCTS held the first ever Preservation Week, I decided to create a presentation for our library to teach people how to preserve their digital photos.  Little did I know that someone from The National Archives at Kansas City was in attendance, and this year I’ve been invited to repeat the presentation there.  The Signal learned of this presentation via Twitter and voila- interview!

Personal Digital Archiving: An Interview with Jordan Fields of The Kansas City Public Library

Kansas City: Gigabit City

For all my Kansas City friends, I’m sure this is old news. If you’re not from around here (or if you’ve been living under a rock), life in KC is about to get a whole lot faster!

In 2010 more than 1,000 cities competed to become the future home of Google Fiber, a Google initiative to bring a gigabit connection to the homes, workplaces, and third places of a city- and Kansas City (Missouri and Kansas) won! Much activity has taken place in the KC community since last spring when the announcement was made, and in addition to experiencing the growing excitement, I’ve been fortunate enough to participate in a number of events. One of which was a daylong brainstorming session on how we can use a fiber connection. That session resulted in a guest blog post for the Social Media Club of Kansas City on how libraries might develop a need for that kind of speed.  Hope you like it!

For more official info on Google Fiber, see Google’s blog – http://googlefiberblog.blogspot.com/

If you’re interested in what SMCKC is doing, see their Gigabit City blog – http://gigabitcity.smckc.com/

From the Border

I rarely discuss my work projects here, but one has been so exciting lately that I can’t help but share. Last year KCPL was awarded a planning grant I wrote to inventory as many Civil War era primary sources as possible in a year. Perry Collins* and I were successful in inventorying 25,000 pages of primary sources from more than 25 potential contributing institutions.  Following that grant I wrote another- this time to digitize 5,000 pages of those we inventoried.  Once Congress finally passed this year’s budget, that grant received funding as well (we’re up to more than $150,000 in grant money so far).  For the past few weeks it’s been crazy as I hire new staff (Hi Hannah Ballard and Alesha Terry- welcome!), iron out the wrinkles in our workflow, and write another grant to fund an extra fancy website and some original research tools (shhh… top secret).

We have launched a small promotional site for the project at www.CivilWarOnTheWesternBorder.org where you can find a timeline of Civil War events in our region.  Our Library blog also did a feature on the project- you can read about it here.  I’ll be sure to post more when more is available to share.

*Following this grant Perry decided to get an MLIS and has just started a new job as a program officer for the NEH in the Office Digital Humanities.  Come work with us- we make good things happen!

Preservation Week!

Last week was ALA’s Preservation Week!

To celebrate, I gave a talk on preserving digital images at our central library and wrote a guest post on same topic.  Enjoy!

5 Tips for Preserving Your Digital Photos on KC Unbound.

Library Day in the Life- Days 4 & 5

Digital Projects Manager for the Kansas City Public Library

Three days of blogging in a row was probably a record for me, but an unexpected invite to the annual dinner for the Jackson County Historical Society threw me off my game.  Below are the final two days of my participation in the Library Day in the Life project.

Thursday, January 28th

8:00 -Email, checked in with our volunteer and had a brief discussion on various ways to identify authoritative sources.

9:00-9:05 Drooled over code{4}lib lineup

9:05 – 10:00ish Random discussions with various people on the process for posting the internship description, plus some email

10:00 to 11:10 Drafted message about future digitization projects

11:10- 11:25 Set up conference room for call between vendors, discovered documentation for using conference call was wrong, figured out how to work the phone

11:30- 12:45 Very eventful call between vendors in which one of my workflow issues gets solved and everyone comes together with a solution to several ongoing problems.

12:45-1:00 grab a quick lunch from Mildred’s

1-1:30 Email while I eat at desk, get a call to see if I can fill as a library representative for a dinner at the Jackson Co historical society meeting TONIGHT (big annual get together with award ceremony), call husband to confirm that he can be my plus one

2:30-3:15 Meeting to discuss the future of how we will interact with a committee of local technology leaders

3:15 – 4:00 Downloaded and organized all documentation on our repository software for our new server administrator, mostly finished email for the day

4:00   Headed home early to get ready for dinner meeting

6:00-9:30 Lots of mingling, wine, and good conversation at dinner!

Friday, January 29th

8:00-9:00ish Finished email from yesterday and arranged conference call follow-up between vendors

9:00- 10:00 Sent out announcements to various job boards about the project coordinator position we’re trying to fill

10:00-11:00 Finally get the chance to organize and put away files from our last project coordinator who left us in early January to go to library school, then work with IT and our library board executive assistant on resolving issue of multiple conference calls today (turns out we only have one conference call line- whoops!)

11:00-12:00 Prep for and attend online meeting/ conference call with vendors (yay for quick resolutions!)

12:00-12:40 Lunch at home

12:40-1:00 Meet with our art director, Matthew Kemp, on how our vendor has implemented his design for KCResearch (which, by the way, is awesome)

1:00-2:15 Deal with email from the morning

2:15-4:15 Begin to watch video of our IR software being installed on our server so I can better understand it while occasionally stopping to look something up that I don’t understand (also occasionally answer email when it gets boring)

4:15- 5:00 Finish up email and do weekly review so I know what most needs my attention next week (because I will surely forget over the weekend)

5:00- Happy hour with library friends!

Library Day in the Life- Day 3

Digital Projects Manager for the Kansas City Public Library

7:45- Arrived at work, settled in, finally added myself to the Library Day in the Life wiki.

8:00- 9:30 Email, mostly project related as usual.

9:30-1:30 Researched “market research” to help me figure out how to write an internship description that I hope to post soon.  I’m looking for  a marketing/business intern to join us for the summer to help us learn more about how our patrons are using technology and their views of libraries.  We have an great resource at the library, the H&R Block Business and Career Center, so I went up there to see what they had that could help me out.  They have a whole index of generic job descriptions- AWESOME!  In the middle of writing a draft of the description, I was interrupted and took some time to arrange the last minute details for a conference call between vendors tomrrow the morning.  As soon as I got back to working on the draft, I had to stop again to write some content for a web form for another contractor (a follow up from the Monday 9:30 meeting).  From  12:15 to 12:40 I took a break for lunch.  When I returned I finished the web form content and then finished the draft job description.

1:30-1:45 Back to email, replying to the messages I recieved during the course of the morning.

1:45 – 2:10 Took a call from a community member interested in our Civil War project.  She shared a lot of family information and asked me some targeted questions; for example, which side of the Missouri- Kansas border I’m from (answer? NW Indiana- whew, dodged that one!) and other questions meant to suss out how we’re planning on framing the project.  I assured her that we’re working with organizations from both Kansas and Missouri, and that one of the main objectives of the project is to unite both histories and share primary sources reflecting a diversity of views on the conflict.

2:10 to 4:00 Continued to progress on workflow issues I started addressing earlier this week.  I identified a possible solution to one of the problems I was having, but, not being a server administrator (which, trust me, is a good thing), I couldn’t test my theory.  I also came up with a solution to the other issue I identified yesterday, but I’m not sure if it will be practical to implement since I can’t see how it can be done without changing thousands of records by hand.  We shall see.

4:00 to 5ish Final email round up for the day.  One series of emails led to an interesting phone conversation on patron privacy issues.  I rarely work directly with patrons, so I enjoy talking with other librarians that do.

5:00 to 6:30 Stayed late to attend a program, attempted to catch up on blog reading and drafted the first part of this post.

6:30-8:00 Attended fantastically entertaining talk by Jill Lepore on her book The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle Over American History at the library.

 

Library Day in the Life- Day 2

Digital Projects Manager for the Kansas City Public Library

Same drill as yesterday- I’ll summarize my daily activities so both librarians and the non-librarian curious can see what I do during a typical week.  If you want to read about other librarians participating in the project, check out the Library Day in the Life wiki.

7:45-8:00 Write up comments from ALCTS-CE midwinter committee meeting and send to the listserv.

8:00-9:00 Review what I need to do for the day, quickly get email back to zero, and then start reading and replying to longer emails from the second half of yesterday.  Most of these are project related, having to do with the fact that one project is delayed because Congress hasn’t finalized their budget, so we’re still waiting to hear about LSTA (Library Services Technology Act) grant money.  I also check in with a volunteer who has been coming in a few hours a week to help with some web research for the KCResearch project.

9:00-10:15 Draft abstract about our approach to digital libraries to submit to the MetLib 2011 conference.

10:15-12:00 Continue work from yesterday on workflows for externally referenced content.  I think I find the problem, then I realize instead I have actually identified a new problem- is that progress?  Hopefully I’ll have more time to address both issues tomorrow. Also check in with intern on the Civil War project to make sure she’s still finding everything she needs (she started last week).

12:00-12:40 Lunch and blog reading, some email.

12:45-1:00 Read over materials for grant meeting.

1:00-2:15 Meeting about which grants we plan to apply for to support digitization and preservation of our special collections.

2:15 Email check in and begin to draft ticket about workflow issue identified in the morning (no time to complete it).

3:00-4:30 Attended ALA TechSource webinar on eBooks.

4:30-5:15 Address new urgent vendor issue via email and phone conversations.

5:15-5:40 Finish email for the day.

 

 

Library Day in the Life

Digital Projects Manager for the Kansas City Public Library

For those of you not from libraryland, this post is part of a big annual project where librarians write about what they do.  Last year I read through the posts of some friends that participated and they were all interesting and not really what I expected.  Lately I’ve struggled with how to best summarize my job on this blog, and actually going over what I do each day seems like a good solution.  So….

Day One

7:45-8:00 Get to work, log in, start water for hot tea (it’s COLD in the ITS basement).

8:00-9:00 Hit the email until I’m back to my beloved zero inbox, taking care of some leftover stuff from Friday and non-urgent weekend emails.  I do a quick one over of my email folders that hold things that I need to do and things that I’m waiting on other people for (I fell in love with GTD last year, hence the morning email routine).  I then look over my schedule and to do lists for the week and make sure I’ve noted everything that needs to get done today before I leave for the day and before the end of the week.

9:00-9:30 Review the KCResearch interface progress before 9:30 meeting, set up laptop and AV in meeting room.

9:30-11:45 Meeting with our Drupal interface vendor for KCResearch to create a punch list of the last few things that need to be changed on the site before they hand it over to us.  Super-exciting since I’ve been working on this site for 18 months.  It still has a long way to go content-wise, but the interface is looking sweet!  Yay for faceted searching!

11:45-12:20 Check messages and realize that the library director’s assistant needs some documents for the director’s lunch meeting.  Scramble, make copies.

12:21-12:22 Walk across the street to my apartment (BEST COMMUTE EVER).

12:22-12:40 Quick lunch with some quality radio time.

12:40-1:00 Meeting prep for 1:00, quick email scan.

1:00-2:00 Meeting to go over all the technology initiatives for the library, working towards an ongoing digital strategy to be updated annually.

2:00-2:20 Meet with HR for final approval of project coordinator position for The Missouri-Kansas Conflict: Civil War on the Western Border, 1854-1865.  Please apply here!  Hurry, position closes 2/7/11 (due to grant timeline).

2:20-3:00 Follow up on notes from earlier meetings, mostly sending email.

3:00-4:00 Login to administrative interface for repository to work on workflow for adding new content to our repository.  Good success with uploading some XML records, but having issues with adding externally referenced content.  Start to look through documentation, but unable to locate solution.  If I can’t find it next time, I’ll place a help ticket.  Break around 3:30 when I noticed an email that job description was posted, brief twitter aside to advertise position.

4:00 – 5:00 Complete tasks for the day, mostly project related email.  Get email back to zero.

5:10 Pick library holds on the way out.

Evening- some quality time with my feed reader, podcast while cleaning the kitchen, read through minutes of ALCTS CE Committee meeting, resolve to participate in Library Day in the Life and post!

eBooks and Libraries (or think twice before buying a kindle)

‘Tis the season for ebooks since, according to Consumer Reports, 10% of American adults plan to give an ereader as a gift over the holidays. From where I sit in my happy library bubble, it feels like the discussions of the role of libraries in the ebook arena have really ramped up as of late, so I thought I’d weigh in on the subject (I’ll try to keep it basic and brief).

Although some retailers/publishers are against libraries lending ebooks (or they “support” it as long as people are willing to jump through several nonsensical hoops) , many libraries (including mine) subscribe to services like Overdrive and Netlibrary that allow users to read ebooks, and most of the time they can be downloaded on to most computers and eBook readers (*cough* NOT KINDLES *cough*). This is possible because the services lending the books can control certain factors, like how many people can “check out” the ebook at a time and how long that ebook stays on your device after you download it. Although for now these services can be a little rough, I really believe they’ll get better and better over time.

Why no love for Kindles? Every major ebook reader with the exception of Kindle supports the Adobe epub and pdf formats. The ebooks must come in these formats for services like Overdrive to be able to use the restrictions required to lend them. With the Kindle, you can only get books from Amazon- end of story. Although Kindles were the first ereaders with a significant market share, I think as people begin to realize their limitations (and as tablet computers increase in popularity), the Kindle as a reader will die. Of course Amazon will still have the Peruseatron. To be fair, I’m not completely without Kindle love. I do use their app on my phone to read (free) classics, and overall I’ve been quite pleased with it.

This does not mean, however, that I think you should necessarily run out and buy a non-Kindle dedicated eReader right now. In my opinion, the future of eBooks will be all about the software applications, not the hardware. Different apps will offer different reading experiences. I might use a platform like Copia for reading and discussing a book with a book club, but use an Overdrive app to read a bestseller for free from the library. I can even support a local bookseller by purchasing an ebook from Rainy Day Books through Google ebooks. If I’m going to invest in an ebook reader, it needs to be able to support all of these experiences, which is why the rise of tablet computers is so fantastic. I don’t have one yet (I’m not an Apple girl, so no iPad for me), but some of the prototype Android tablets have really caught my eye.

A final word on ebooks and privacy (I am a librarian, after all). The Electronic Frontier Foundation put together a guide that clarifies privacy policies for all of the top readers and apps. Even if you’re not concerned about privacy, it’s an interesting read to see how the policies differ.

You can also check out my library’s guide to using our ebooks.

Happy reading!

UPDATE: NPR picked up on the privacy debate!

Digital Preservation for Dummies

When I started exploring digital preservation about two years ago, it seemed like you needed a PhD in the subject just to begin to understand it.  While it is really, REALLY complex, lately I’ve noticed more and more resources out there for beginners, both information professionals and just regular people.  This is fantastic since many of us are creating loads of digital content every day.  Does this mean we should each start saving every tweeted smartphone snapshot of our dessert from the hippest new restaurant for all eternity?  Um, no.  In fact, deciding what to save is part of the process, and anyone who claims to be able to save something for all eternity is definitely not to be trusted.  But I digress…

Below are a two of my favorite resources for digital preservation novices.  Have an additional recommendation?  Feel free to post it in the comments!

From the good old Library of Congress.  Non-professionals should check out the section on Personal Archiving.

http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/

I haven’t read through everything on this brand-spanking-new site for for North Carolina government employees yet, but I think it’s fabulous!  It uses easy to understand language, it starts from the very beginning, and its pretty.  What more could you want?

http://digitalpreservation.ncdcr.gov/