Last week while I was traveling Net Potter brought to my attention a discussion happening on Twitter about the echo chamber (#echolib). This is an incredibly important topic to be thinking about and discussion to have. I’ve been thinking heavily about the ideas of the Echo Chamber and the Bubble lately (well last longer actually).

Let’s talk about the Echo Chamber first – let’s face it most of us are preaching to the choir. Chances are if you didn’t believe in what I write and agree with me (most of the time) you wouldn’t be reading this blog. Chances are if I read your blog and/or follow you on Twitter I agree with you. I occasionally wonder if this is any different from a pack of high school aged “cool” kids, one of them says something and the others say “right on man”! We’re just puffing each other up. What about the unconverted? What if (gasp!) we’re wrong?

In December when I decided to take a two week break I quoted from What Matters Now: “The echo chamber we’re building is getting larger and louder.” – Connected, Howard Mann. I was thinking about and concerned that I am only preaching to the choir. That blogging and twitter are not making the difference I want (hope) to make.

When Seth Godin posted about libraries I loved watching the reaction that went across the web, I even wrote a long comment on Toby’s blog post*. But at the same time the little voice in the back of my mind said – “you are preaching to the choir” and indeed I got several “right on man”s from it. Not that I’m ungrateful for the words of encouragement and support from my colleagues, its always wonderful to hear they don’t think I’m an idiot. I do believe there are positives from the echo chamber – its good hear you are not alone, to have other like-minded people to share ideas with, this is important for motivation & inspiration. Just don’t forget there are others out there who don’t agree with you.

I’m worried though, that as Howard Mann, said “the echo chamber we’re building is getting larger and louder”. At the time I posted the comment I was just thrilled to put my 2 cents in. But later I wondered are the people who don’t agree with me hearing this? Chances are they don’t read blogs, or if they do they don’t read this one, or that they were out-of-town this week. Even if they did see it one of the disadvantages of the web is you don’t have to wait for the opposing viewpoint to finish speaking before you start your response and they don’t have to listen to your response. The web makes it easier to shout louder and longer. Shouting louder into the echo chamber provides support for what you’re yelling and diminishes the chance of  hearing a dissenting view-point. Or engaging in real conversation.

Are we, the twittering, blogging, technology inclined shouting into the echo chamber? Are we only  puffing each other up? Do we care that this defeats our purpose and goals? I guess it depends on your goals. (Some I’m sure, are just happy to have choir to preach to.) But for most of us, its not. If we’re too busy telling each other “right on man” who’s engaging in discussion with those who don’t agree with us? Because let’s face it, they aren’t reading your blog or following you on twitter.

Read more

• #echolib – how do we get library advocacy beyond the echo chamber?
• Library advocacy and the dangers of the “echo chamber”
• #echolib – the Seth Godin Uber-Echo Disaster

*I want to be clear that I have the utmost respect for Toby and believe his post on his blog and The Huffington Post were appropriate and well thought out. I am not disparaging them in any way, it is a just a recent incident I could use to make a point. I was and am thrilled to see so many great people responding to and thinking about this issue. You’ll have to forgive me, but I have to say it to them -right on man! :-)Similar Posts:

• What is Library Day in the Life and You Should Participate #libday6
• Challenge! Escape from the Echo Chamber
• Beware Your Information Bubble

For National Library Week we asked patrons what the library is to them. These are some of the responses so far, they go all around the pillar.

I also took individual pictures of them, go look at them, they’re awesome! You have to forgive me this is one of the last chances I’ll have to brag about all the awesome things MRRL does and I’m extra proud since this was my idea!

Some of my personal favorites

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There is no way to say this other than to just come out and say it.

Effective May 18th I will be the Digital Branch Manager of the Chattahoochee Valley Regional Library System.  This is a new position they have created for the purpose of planning, building and managing the Digital Branch, its going to be a lot of fun (and hard work!)  I’m excited, nervous and about 20 other emotions right now, but most of all I’m really looking forward to it!

For those of you looking at your atlas CVRLS is in Columbus, Georgia, which means I will be spending the next couple of weeks packing my things and relocating.  

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I’m in Minnesota this week teaching Reference in the Digital Age at multiple locations and Get Your Game On: Using Video Games as Outreach at one location.

So far Minnesota is beautiful and everyone it super nice!

I’ll be resuming your regularly scheduled and opinionated blog posts next week. Similar Posts:

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Aubri Keleman, Teen Services & Web Coordinator, Whatcom County Library System

Tao Gao, Live2Create Interactive

Aubri -

Rumba with Joomla

What is a cms and why is it wicked cool?  The webmaster doesn’t have to do anything

Pre-redesign

• collect stats
• review your brand
• collect photos – tell a story
• focus groups
• set explicit goals in priority order

redesign questions

• do staff and leadership know why a new website is needed
•  which cms is best for us
• what can we afford money vs time vs design
• how much staff time can we put into the redesign & upkeep;
• do you need to outsource or do you have the talent you need on staff
• how will decisions be made, who gets the final say
• who is the best for the website
• how will staff be involved in the redesign process
• what project management tool should we use – blogs and wikis, they used a wiki

 goal wc3 compliant

new page – www.wcls.org

results

• increased user feedback
• more content, more up to date content
• users spend more time on our site
• improved navigation
• w3c compliant
• flexibility

Problems

• you cant limit authors to just one page or section
• calendar
• migration

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CM Tools: Drupal, Joomla, & Rumba

John Blyberg

Ryan Deschamps

Ryan
ModX
How not to have to use drupal
Cms in general
Why joomla
Why switch to ModX

Good content mngmt system should facilitate division of labor, support overall development, ensure best practices and standards
Halifax public library now in modx looked the same in joomla
Its not about the front end, its about the cockpit, ask long as the front end performs its about making the lives of your staff happy

Why they choose joomla
Number 1 in market share
Huge community of support
Templates
www.opensourcecms.com – demo of anything, can see how the back end looks and works

why they switched to ModX from Joomla
painful upgrade
started looking useful stuff – code etc, wanted to look at new services, joomla is not that great for adding unique
nice interface but doesn’t help the development of the site

ModX
Has fine grain user access, can restrict access to specific pages
Resources

What he does like
Still needs work
Needs more documentation
Some syntax knowledge required

Joomla really good for an intranet, wouldn’t recommend for a front end site,
community engagement is more important that community size
application framework

John
If youre not thinking about cms at this point you are doing yourself a really big disservice
Drupal – named open source cms of the year for the last 2 years
Not as easy as joomla – steep learning curve

How drupal handles content
Nodes – not a page, not a post
Blog post could be a node, drupal considers that content type

Content creation kit (CCK) – allows you to create new content types
Taxonomy system – drupa allows you to create your own classification system for your content types
Drupal allows you to structure sites so that content is on more than one page, on front page and on book groups page for example

Templating system – php standard, html with php tags and code
Sopac is completely template driven
If you don’t like how something looks you can make it look exactly how you want it to

api system api.drupal.org
hooks
drupal website is the place to start if youre interested in having drupal in your system

sopac was built on top of drupal because they were confident that drupal was a viable product
thesocialopac.net

questions
if you were starting with drupal now would you go with 6 or 7? Answer 7 hasn’t been officially released yet, so use 6
learning curve problems – some people have a problem with the taxonomy system, even John runs into things he doesn’t know and has to go to the site and look it up
moving from one system to another, are there tools to facilitate a move from joomla to drupal? Ryan – probably but the tools might not be that trustworthy, always be looking forward, what is the next upgrade, how difficult is the next upgrade John – migration is not easy, he advises against if possible

mentioned not hacking the core code, can you explain – John if you tweak code & drupal upgrades the file that you changed might have changed so you need to compare, very time consuming

modx has snippets, allows you to change code from back end with out breaking it

how easy to migrate from an existing site in php to one  of these tools?  Manually migrating your content,

if modx went away where would you go? Ryan – drupalSimilar Posts:

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I promised some links to the people who were in my talk yesterday.

Library Learning 2.0 or 29 Things

Library Learning 2.1

Slides from my patron training classes are in my slideshare accountSimilar Posts:

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Social network profile management

Greg Schwartz
Michael Porter
Sarah Houghton-Jan
Amanda Clay Powers

Greg
Identity
Digital identity mapping – online interactions make identity much more complicated
Your next employer looking for your identity will do a google search
You do not own your online identity

Tip
-own your username
- if your name is unique and can grab everywhere use it, otherwise pick something
- checkusernames.com
- join the conversation , develop your identity by participation
- listen, pay attention to what other people are saying about you
- be authentic – your digital identity should be your real identity

Amanda Clay Powers
What are we doing here anyway
How managing identity online is like managing information
We know how to manage identity because we know how to manage information (really?)
Our place is to educate people about what they are doing
Peoples perception that librarians don’t know how to help them with their online interactions
Who else is in the position to coach people with this? Who else has the number of computers we do

Sarah
Being online as the library
Register for online sites with a generic email address, not the address of a specific staff member
Quick replies to users messages
Keep it open to everyone – let anyone being your friend, other than spammers

What not to do
Register with stranger usernames
Not replying
Outdated profile information
Slow or no replies
Institutional in tone

Under management and over management, over mgmnt is just as dangerous as under dangerous

Be personable – sarah got a gig via facebook
Checkusernames.com
Opened
Claimed
Ping.fm
Atomkeep

Michael
Libraryman is his online identity
Webjunction.org – community staff for library staff

Be fun, but not too fun
Things can be misinterpreted online
Share success stories

Audience participation
Question about dual identity –
greg Schwartz talked about keeping identity separate, that in being authentic those 2 lines start to blur
sarah – you don’t have control of how other people see your identity, she posted wedding photos thinking no one would find them, but within 4 hours they were located
Michael – its hard to control, you might be able to have a separate account somewhere, but not a separate identity, thinks as tools get refined we’ll see more levels of connections, more than just friends, family etc, we care about functionality, Flickr example – what if we could group friends and allow just certain groups of friends see specific photos
Amanda – might be a generational thing too

Not everything needs to be online

Greg – everything you ever do say whatever online may eventually be shown to everyone, you never know when it will become public

Library success wiki

Sarah – if its not personal its not effective even if it is an institutional site

Greg aggregate your life stream – people are not familiar with those tools on a mass scale

Sarah – integrate your profiles, put linkedin on flickr, etc, cross pollinate, include links to all the sites on your library website

Michael – It takes research and time to things well enough, you might have to let something slide to make something else work

Amanda – ppl are overwhelmed by information, Mississippi library 2.0 Summit – to talk about tools, whats working, how its working, you have to get ahead of the curve

Audience question – single woman, online interaction can be awkward, talking the other women near where she lives, she is more interested in connecting with other people for a purpose and not really share personal information as much, we might have personal differences, but we can collaborate online without bringing that in.
Do you really want all your colleagues to have access to all your past relationship information.Similar Posts:

• Continued Online Community Engagement
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Best of the web
Firefox
- Greasemonkey
- smart key words
- can use set up address bar to seach any site on the web
- customize google extension
- better gmail2 – takes ads off of gmail

google reader
-    helvetireader

• book city jackets
• wikimedia commons
• flickr image search
• pictobrowser
• skitch – screenshots, then allows for annotation, can upload directly to flickr
• jing – can do screenshots and screencasts
• screentoaster
• vimeo – look at the sign up process, even if you’re not going to use it, go through to look at sign up process, your libraries processes should be like this
• postrank
• copypastecharacter.com
• today’smeet
• when is good
• letmegooglethatforyou
• colorlovers
• tagcrowd
• wordle
• qature – real time aggregation of whats happening on twitter
• search.twitter.com
• tweetdeck
• vyew – free online web conferencing tool
• bacolicious
• wordpress theme called thematic very powerful
• ted.com
• googlevoice – get a number from google, calls will be routed to phone, voicemails will get transcribed
• googleforms
• zohocreator
• netnewswire – only for macs
• prezi
• 280slides
• lovelycharts
• typetester
• evernote
• zotero
• worldtimeserver.com
• tadalist.com
• hulu
• toodledo
• sendyouit
• emic4all – records in mp3,  audacity to edit
• logmein.com – remote support
• dropbox

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Control what you can

-    Brand – logo, identity
-    public website
-    opportunities for practice
-    best practices online

let go when you can
-    what is tied to your brand
-    where can you let go?
-    What needs to have a system wide project?

Trust
-    trust staff
-    give guidelines
-    provide opportunities to learn

Evaluate
-    honestly assess performance
-    find the right person for the job
-    accept that it will take time
-    accept that there will be mistakes
-    it is a learning experience

Communities have been around for years they do police themselves, think of book review on Amazon, some will be positive and some will be negative

Social media monitoring
Do we really need to talk about why again, everyone that matters is doing it
Customer service – when you get negative feed back go out and respond
Identify stakeholders

Technorati
Google search
Backtype
Discussion boards – niche communities
Boardtracker
Twitter
Friendfeed
Flock
Optiem
Techregime

Not about the tools, its about the community using the tools
Cultivating a culture of learning
Learning is not a spectator sport
Libraries are not a spectator sport

Stewardship –
Helping people manage info exchange
Creating a space for innovation

Open circle concept, it’s the public’s library

People assume their experience is unique, that someone else will tell that story.

Movement strategy – make it relevant, be flexible to accommodate buy in
Provide incentives

Blend online and face to face, you benefit more

Put together a mission statementSimilar Posts:

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