good

i've also used this servuce from Amazon...with great success. (I could hardly believe it...)

some other vendor also offered a "click here" for an instant message session with someone that was also just fine.

MUCH better than trying to find help on a website that doesn't use terms I can pre-guess...and much much more satisfying than the telephone tree that also often doesn't have the right choices. (anybody else have a package from Comcast for cable tv, phone, and internet? when you call comcast, you have to pick one service in order to enter the tree. "Bundle" is not an option. ????? )

Not long ago I was in one of the Apple stores, talking to a salesperson, and decided to buy something. Using a small portable device, she scanned the barcode on the item, swiped my credit card, printed a receipt, and we were done! No trip to the cash register, no waiting in line, great feeling of being catered to.

I agree that reference services on a Segway seems a bit far-fetched, but one of my library school classmates works at the Northwest Library in Columbus, OH, where they provide roving reference services using Ultra-Mobile PCs. UMPCs have all the capabilities of a laptop, but they are designed to be used while standing up, and are small enough to fit in a pocket. I think this is an avenue for reference that more libraries need to consider.

I agree the iPhone is completely revolutionary.

See the chronicle of higher education blog on how some students feel most successful when they've aggregated the maximum number of options possible...
http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/article/?id=269&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

And an additional comment: check out their GIS @ Purdue University Libraries website and click on the "About GIS" tab for an explanation of why GIS belongs in the library:

http://www4.lib.purdue.edu/gis/

In a recent C&RL News, Marianne Stowell Bracke, the Agricultural Sciences Information Specialist at Purdue, discusses her recent collaboration with their GIS Librarian:

"We didn't want to just do a straight digitization project, so in addition to digitizing the soil survey text and capturing the map as a PDF, we turned the map into a GIS layer that is compatible with GIS files of the same area today. It makes the map more of a living document rather than simply a recreation of a picture."

Check out the soil surveys at http://gis.lib.purdue.edu/Soil/.

I have been corrected by other attendees to the meeting who said I left out the all important word "historically" -- that libraries historically collected print materials.
Sorry about that omission. I have been scolded. :)
Lynne

I agree that even in the absence of full text searching, increasing the number of searchable TOC's would be a major enhancement.

The Pathfinder "Notes/Table of Contents" search is a great way to pull up items you wouldn't find in a Title or Subject search, but it covers only part of our collection.

I'm a little surprised to see library staff perpetuate the idea that what libraries do is "collect printed materials." We collect a lot more than that! And it also needs to be said - libraries have been on the web since before Google existed.

That said, thanks for contributing another great discussion! I'm really impressed by all the ideas coming out of these discussion groups.

A few more points:

• We see some faculty in the library less, but they are still using the library. We get more use electronically than we ever did in print.
• We do need to brand e-journals better. Some publishers are beginning to investigate dynamic watermarks on their PDFs - now if Taylor & Francis would just use better wording than "Downloaded by [CDL Journals Account]."
• It is great that we are adding TOC to the catalog - but how about searchable tables of contents? Will we investigate services like Blackwell Table of Contents Catalog Enrichment Services? Or provide full-text searching like the University of Michigan? Or will we partner with Google or OCLC to improve discovery? So much book content is invisible to our users.

Hi Chuck,
Your post came through under a Google alert that I have set. If you'd like to have further discussions with anyone at the Press regarding possibilities for partnering with the Press on digitizing collections, I'd be happy to talk to anybody in the library system about that. We have an interest in working with the libraries on this. -Erich

Do we have any in-house resources for the development of interactive computer/video displays for Library exhibits? Does anyone in the Library have experience with this? I am curating the “Mark Twain At Play” exhibit scheduled for October 2008 in the Bancroft’s new, larger, gallery space. I am very interested in creating a digital display that could be used by classes visiting the exhibit and that would give us a framework for feedback from visitors. I’m a little suspicious of the “game” idea but am open to discussion and brainstorming.

On statistical literacy: Instead of referencing my personal page at Augsburg, a more comprehensive source is www.StatLit.org. Check out "Information Literacy, Statistical Literacy and Data Literacy", "Statistical Literacy Workshop Using a web-based Learning Object," "Quantity Words Without Numbers" and "Percentage Graphs in USA Today." Best wishes on your New Directions.

As the e-book industry fusses over what an ebook reader will look like, we're seeing the emergence of books on cell phones. Some of these, are short and written for cell phone displays. But Eoin Purcell talks more about books -- real books -- downloaded to his "mobile"...much to his surprise and pleasure. http://eoinpurcellsblog.com/2008/02/12/more-about-novels-on-cellphones/

Thanks for the text cloud. I think this are quite intriguing. I find myself using them on another blogsite to identify then track back to topics that I'm interested in.

I notice that this is word based, not phrase based...so "open access" doesn't appear, by "open" and "access" do...takes a bit of knowledgeable sleuthing then.

Very cool in any case.

I like how it gives a quick (even if not perfect) feel for what terms are most on our minds.

There is much more than user-centered design at work here. It's also about manufactured reputations, both Apple's and Google's. Those reputations are backed by approximately a megagazillion bucks, not a fraction of which has ever been available to libraries. According to that little datum, then, libraries aren't even ROKRs.

I think there's also an argument to be made against the aesthetic effect of the iPhone. (Then there's the hideous audio quality of the iPod, but that's another story.) I am not pleased with the look and feel of this device, but my peculiar tastes are beside the point. The point is that, regardless of the iPhone's UI flash and mostly rectilinear profile, folks are willing to spend the time, money, and effort to learn to use it. The user as center only goes so far; the device is also a central focus--it has mass, it breaks down, it requires maintenance--yet we elide that circumstance when we praise its simplicity or intuitiveness.

Karen, I think your comparison is right on target. Couldn't help also noticing the dramatic difference between the two product photos. The Motorola photo shows the device. The Apple photo shows the device cradled in a human hand, beautifully lit with warm tones.

Prominent, professionally done "people photos" work well on other library homepages (UT Austin for instance)

What a good idea for us.
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/

Motorola designed the ROKR phone, not Apple. Apple's iTunes connection was all that Apple contributed.

This is happening with academic blogs too. Terence Tao, Fields Medalist and UCLA faculty member, also recently announced that he would be publishing a book based on his blog: http://terrytao.wordpress.com.

It will also be interesting to see how the blog comments vs. peer review experiment works with Noah Wardrip-Fruin's book on the study of video games, as reported by the Chronicle: http://chronicle.com/free/2008/01/1322n.htm