einna 2.0

7.  Create a blog post about anything technology-related that interests you this week.

Where do I start…I just got back from ALA this week!  There was so much interesting technology that I heard about, particularly at a session called “Wiking the Blog and Walking the Dog – Social Software, Virtual Reality, and Authority Everywhere.”  There were several speakers who talked about Library 2.0 best practices, SecondLife and social networking in virtual worlds, wikis and how to use them to be more responsive to your customers, and something called “The Social OPAC.” 

This was the idea I found to be the most interesting, as it is a concept that I haven’t heard much about before last week.  The presenter was John Blyberg, formerly of Ann Arbor District Library (MI) and currently of Darien Library (CT).  His presentation focused around creating an OPAC that is more focused on discovery rather than searching and stewardship rather than authority.  Not that authority is eliminated, it is simply combined with ways for users to give directtion to the OPAC.  He gave us the link to his blog where one can download software to make one’s library more of an interactive one, basically adding social software over the existing catalog.  This includes ratings, reviews, tags that the users add (in addition to the subject headings), and a reading history which is similar to Amazon’s other-people-who-read-this-book-also-liked concept (you must opt-in to this for privacy reasons).  There is also the opportunity for “marginalia” using the images of cards from a card catalog and the comments of users, in real-person handwriting.  It’s basically a way to do social networking through a library’s catalog, sharing thoughts about the books, movies, magazines, and any other offerings in an OPAC.  Most of what is being commented on and tagged are materials frequently used by teens, so it is a concept that is appealing to young library users.   You can go to the Ann Arbor District Library to see this type of OPAC in action.