The Division of Government Information is delighted to be posting on the Future Ready 365 blog this week. DGI is a diverse community of knowledgeable information professionals who share an interest in government information and government librarianship. Our posts this week come from librarians in a variety of government library environments including federal, military, and academic. These DGI blog contributors share their insights on navigating the complicated landscape that today’s information professional must travel — from getting that library job to staying on top in a rapidly changing field once you’re there. Maybe you’d like to join us on the journey! Come check out the Division of Government Information at:  http://govinfo.sla.org/.

The late Gilda Radner created a character for Saturday Night Live named Emily Litella who would speak out on various topics. Unfortunately, Miss Litella didn‘t hear things quite right so she was against the efforts to remove violins from television programs. She was corrected that the effort was to remove violence from television programs. As this new information would sink in she would realize that it was very different from what she had been thinking and she would end her spots with an apologetic, “Never mind.”

I wonder what Miss Litella would have thought of e-braries and e-books and e-journals and e-patrons and e-librarians and who knows what will be next.

It started with e-mail and as that caught on we all started living in an e-world. And to no one‘s surprise this didn‘t simplify our life in the least. We have to make distinctions between e-mail and postal mail (or the pejorative snail mail), and e-journals and print journals. Having been a cataloger I can appreciate the many challenges this created to the folks describing our collections.

From everything we read and experience we know that a lot of users will still prefer print resources, but more and more will want information made available in a variety of electronic formats ported to multiple devices. And we, being the service industry that we are, will strive to meet that need explaining to our budget folks that it doesn‘t mean it is cheaper nor that we will reduce the footprint of the library.

The January/February 2011 issue of Information Outlook was all about mobile applications. Coincidentally in my current job that has been the current push as well. The agency is rolling out mobile devices to about 1,000 research staff and we want to let them know what the Library can provide for them on their new tool.

As in other instances, this is not something the Library can do on its own. We need the help of our IT folks – the ones who control access to what is on the mobile devices – to open the gates for the Library content. We have to work with our vendors to find a good solution for subscriptions that will work in our total environment – desktop, physical collection, and mobile devices.

It is exciting when you find a partner for a project who understands the value of what we are trying to deliver to our end-users. Often we have to educate in many directions – and we have to learn. What devices is our agency buying? What information resources have mobile applications? What is the pricing structure for the access? What products will we make available?

The Oxford English Dictionary may have a mobile app, and it would be oh-so-cool to have it, but how many of us would actually push that out to our mobile end-users?

We need to keep up with the wave of e-information. The demand is there and if we don‘t do it, someone else will. Like all the other tools for information access this needs to be part of our expertise.

The same way we went from print to dial-up, to software and then to Internet – we need to help our end-users get their information on their mobile devices and keep up with what the next platform will be.

Once you find the IT and Communications folks who are managing the mobile devices work with them to develop the Library application – pointing to the Library resources that staff can access on a mobile device. Talk to your vendors to make sure you are licensed properly to give access to your users.

Review and refine your list. If you already have a page on your website listing online news resources you have a head start! Just as we had to rethink presentation and writing for the web – we have to be even more concise on a mobile device. A segmented list of resources on a website is easy to navigate – on a mobile device keep to the basics until users ask for more.

If you have been around the Internet since the early days then you‘ll remember those Under Construction pages that we used to put up and use. Those are long gone – everyone understands that the Internet is under continuous development and updating. It is the same with mobile devices. People will expect additional resources and upgraded applications. Let the vendors take care of upgrading the apps. But don‘t worry if you have a great news resource that you have finally been able to contract. Roll it out. If it is a significant resource, then roll it out right away. If you have a couple new resources in the works then roll them out together.

Two agencies I worked for had a lot of agents in the field who were then still using dial-up access for the Internet when they were on the road. For that reason we designed our pages with as little graphics as possible and did our best to avoid anything other than html.

This experience taught me something about our users. You need to take care of your biggest user group. By minimizing graphics we didn‘t hurt our onsite users with a fast connection. Our efforts helped them too. Government librarians are looking at a finite set of end users with mobile devices. Yes, they seem to breed like rabbits, but they are still expensive enough that not everyone in your organization will have one. So you don‘t want to license solely for the mobile devices. Even the mobile users will want to read the Wall Street Journal on their desktop or even in print. (Print? Remember that?)

To be good librarians we need to see what our patrons are doing and listen to their questions. We don‘t need to pounce on everything – but we need to be aware of trends so we can be ready to ride the wave and not get caught by the undertow.

So – there isn‘t an E in Library, but there is an E in Libraries and end-users and mobile devices. And there are two Es in people and those are the folks we are here to serve as librarians.

David has over 25 years of library experience having worked for federal banking agencies and other libraries. He earned his MLS from the University of Maryland in 2000 and has been a member of SLA since 1998. He has been active with the DC Chapter of SLA and the Government Information Division. He has worked in all aspects of librarianship – Reference, Cataloging, Web, Acquisitions and Electronic Resources. David started his blog – Library Buzz in 2004. He has written for the GovInfoPro Best Practices for Government Libraries and has been published in the One-Person Library Newsletter. In addition to working as a librarian, David plays trombone with DC’s Different Drummers.

Hello from Wisconsin! We are delighted to contribute a week’s worth of postings from the Midwest! You’ll see that Wisconsin isn’t just about the cheese—our chapter boasts 120 members from diverse environments: corporate, law, academic, and other settings, many of us from unique national companies and associations. Our state’s two library schools have renewed focus on special librarianship and growing interest from our student members is evident. We are an active, enthusiastic chapter and happy to contribute our thoughts on future readiness! It’s great in the Dairy State!

I remember Atari: Little square blob flies around the mostly blank screen while you and a friend wrestle with the joystick and its single red button to score points and win. Then came Mario (and a few more buttons)… Eventually, video games came with a mandatory start tutorial where you guided your character to jump and run around the screen to demonstrate you had sufficient skill to begin playing the game!

Remember when you could walk into a library and just use the card catalogue to find the stuff you needed? Simple, easy‐to‐grasp, low‐tech. And no, cataloguing did not spring fully formed from the ground; there was so so much work put into making that card catalogue system easy, usable, predictable, standardized… And finally we seem to have gotten through the dark ages of figuring out how to get our records web‐accessible in a way that makes sense to users. In many public libraries, records are now married to Amazon or LibraryThing records to better utilize the very familiar navigation that web‐saavy patrons intuitively understand.

Yes, one can also argue that a physical card catalogue requires training to use properly – how many kids these days would know how to use one? – and you’d be right. But it used to be the adage “teaching someone to fish and you’d feed him for a lifetime” held true. Nowadays, you can teach someone to fish but next week you’ll likely watch in frustration as they attempt to harpoon an angry bird with their fishing rod – the evolution is that fast and varied.

Example: This past month I ran two identical training sessions, one week apart, on the use of free online resources. My presentation had screen shots and hotlinks to the websites I was highlighting… During the second session, I was surprised to discover that one website’s entire layout had drastically changed, already outdating the information I’d passed along to the previous group! Also close to home: how many times have you run a training session on a digital resource and found that you need to explain how the print or save button will behave because it doesn’t behave as you would “normally” assume it would? (Yes, I’m talking to you, [Insert favorite subscription database with a wonky interface here]!)

Again, for the most part we’ve gotten through the messy period of databases finding themselves: the My Account button is now generally located in the accepted upper‐righthand location, etc etc… but there are still no standards. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve logged into a subscription resource only to spend more time trying to find the log out button than it took to locate, print, and deliver the article I sought. To their credit, many mainstream databases are currently ditching their old layouts (and even algorithms) to give people a Google‐y experience. Several major publishers that come to mind actually have touted in training sessions how “like Google” their simple layout is. (Though some have, sadly, buried Boolean searching in the process.) Overall, navigations are improving – partially as the web matures (long live the dynamic web!), partially as different tech for accessing the web matures (huzzah for smart phones!).

One saving grace, oddly enough, may be the mergers. I recently attended a LawLibConversation on legal publishing mergers, where the panel discussed positive and negative outcomes of such mergers. One major benefit discussed at the time: the navigation of these interfaces can sometimes drastically improve after a merger.

Cue my “Future Ready” bit. Librarians – be a part of this conversation. As platforms boil down to certain standard looks/feels/tastes, it would behoove us, as people who know information seeking behavior better than most, to try to engage in this process when possible. And if it’s not possible to get in that door, we should at the very least make sure we’re on top of the industry buzz. E.g. I’m keeping an excited eye on responsive web design *hint hint*.

Megan Wiseman is the Librarian for Weiss Berzowski Brady LLP in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is currently the Vice President for the Law Librarians Association of Wisconsin and tweets @LibraryatLaw.

Howdy from the beautiful Rocky Mountains! The Rocky Mountain chapter of SLA is thrilled to contribute this week’s FutureReady365 posts. We are a small, diverse community of 150+ members spread across a four-state region (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and South Dakota). We have a medley of posts from public school, government, higher education and independent professionals that we hope will prompt conversations, comments and thoughts on being future ready. Happy reading!

Denver Public Schools’ Educational Technology and Library Services (ETLS) department is responsible for creating collection development policy for the District’s 140+ school libraries. For the past 6 months, deep discussion has taken place about how we want to begin introducing eBooks into our school collections. Like so many other school districts, DPS has only purchased a small number of titles, “drops in the bucket,” as Lisa Guernsey describes it in her School Library Journal article “Are Ebooks any good?” (June 1, 2011). And like the “tidal wave” she predicts is coming, ETLS is preparing for an eventual surge in eBook purchasing. To this end, Janne Cookman, senior library systems analyst for ETLS, drew up the following recommendations for our school librarians for purchasing eBooks. By creating consistency in purchasing decisions, workflow in our cataloging and acquisitions department would experience less disruption.

Following are the recommendations given to our school librarians:

eBook Purchasing Considerations

• Selection: Consider your overall collection development goals. Is this title or package a good fit? Will the electronic format enhance the reader’s experience? Do you expect the eBook version to get better usage (that is, be easier to access and circulate more frequently) than the print version? Does the district already offer something similar through its subscription databases (for example, TumbleBooks, Teen Health and Wellness, etc.)?
• Access: Currently Library Services supports access to eBooks only through MARC records in the LION/Encore catalog. The plus is all setup and configuration work with the vendor is done for you. The minus is LION/Encore always displays the item status as “available online,” even if the copy is being read by someone else at the time.
• Platforms: All eBooks are web-hosted on the vendor’s platform and cannot be moved to a competing vendor’s platform. Consider the management and training issues associated with having multiple platforms. How will you gather your circulation statistics? Do the different platforms have specific system requirements? Are the search, read, etc. features similar, easy to understand and use? Do the vendors provide online FAQs, tutorials and tech support?
• Vendors: Like print books, eBooks may be purchased directly from the publisher or from an aggregator. Aggregators partner with multiple publishers to supply content and provide a uniform platform. The major advantage of an aggregator is having a single interface to host all of your titles, and a single-point-of-management for selection, acquisition, cataloging and circulation.
• Hosting fees: If there are hosting fees, how much are they and are they paid up front, yearly, or built into the titles per copy pricing? For tracking expenditures, keep in mind that hosting fees are invoiced directly to ETLS and deducted from your school’s mill levy funds.
• Purchasing models: The options are lease or own. If the eBook content is leased, you will need to withdraw the records when the lease expires to avoid “dead links” and frustrated readers.
• Online reading: If online reading is through a wireless connection, consider possible bandwidth and network traffic issues. Other possible issues – Flash-based or proprietary online readers.
• Simultaneous Access: This applies only to online reading and the options are single-user, multi-user or unlimited simultaneous access. Single-access means the eBook can be read by one person at a time, just like a print book. Multi-access usually is 5 or less, and unlimited simultaneous access is unlimited.
• Downloading: This applies to offline reading. The majority of eBook fiction titles are single access. For popular fiction, consider buying multiple copies. Some publishers allow downloadable books to be shared, usually among an individual reader’s personal devices. For school libraries, downloading to shared-use lab or library computers is not recommended because it ties up single-access licenses for the minimum checkout period.
• Devices and file formats: These mainly apply to offline reading and can get very complicated. Adobe Digital Editions and .EPUB are the most flexible and compatible.
• Digital Rights Management (DRM) and Copyright protection: These apply to offline reading. Digital and copy rights are set by the publisher, not the vendor, and business models are highly variable. For some publishers, 10% copy rights means each user is allowed to copy 10% of the content. For others, it means 10% may be copied over the life of the eBook. Make sure you understand the publisher’s limitations.

With the state of eBook publishing still so much in flux, ETLS will need to pay close attention, and our collection development policy direction will need to remain flexible.

Charlie Leckenby manages Denver Public Schools’ professional library and assists with collection development across the school district.

Hello from the nation’s capital!  DC/SLA is excited to be contributing all of this week’s FutureReady365 posts (thanks to our future-thinking Communications Secretary, Chris Vestal).  We are a diverse community of 800+ information professionals, with members from D.C., Maryland, Virginia, as well as 30 other U.S. states and 12 countries.  You’ll see this diversity reflected in the range of future ready ideas presented in posts throughout the week.  We hope our posts will spark some thought and conversation and, of course, your comments. Most of all, we want to help keep the spark of the FutureReady blog alive  – a spark that’s become a fire, gathering us around it to brainstorm our way into the future. — Mary Talley, DC/SLA President (2011)

by Kristin Whitman

I am solo librarian at a company that performs scientific and technical literature searching for customers with intellectual property research needs. The most important aspect of staying future ready in my role is to anticipate how digitally accessible content, and product platform offerings from vendors, will improve in upcoming product releases – not just next month, but next year and beyond.

Unlike many librarians tasked with electronic collection development, my goal is not only provide access to the *best* sources of information on a certain topic, but also to the most *comprehensive* coverage of that topic. In addition, my users need product interfaces and content indexing that can support deep dives into this material. Because of these many requirements, I can never be satisfied with a subscription product that simply offers baseline coverage. I must constantly investigate the field of available products, and keep my eyes on the horizon for news of exciting new offerings that vendors may be plotting for next year’s release.

Accomplishing my collection development goals means developing positive relationships with vendor representatives, and speaking to them often. Maintaining an active role in relevant professional societies provides many opportunities to develop these relationships, which I value (personally as well as professionally – many of them are wonderful people!). I am always open to new vendor contacts: active participation at conferences increases my visibility helps make me a target for cold calls and check-in e-mails alike, which I welcome. And I almost always accept the opportunity to view a product demonstration. For me, conference exhibit halls aren’t just a place to drop my raffle tickets – basically, if you’re demoing a product, I’ll stand in line to see it regardless of the free swag incentive (but I’ll be happy to take your branded stress balls and sticky notes as well, thank you!).

In addition, monitoring industry news publications, both print and digital is an absolute must. I regularly check my RSS feeds for news across the field, and if I don’t take a peek at the frequent e-mail news blasts I receive from vendors, I’m doing my patrons a disservice. I never know when someone will come to me with a request for an unusual source or an unusual search function.  I strive to be one step ahead of these requests, and am always pleased to hear news that vendors are keeping one step ahead as well!

Kristin Whitman is a reference librarian at Landon IP, a leading intellectual property research company. She was one of the founding members of Intellogist (www.Intellogist.com), a publication which reviews search products, and is a contributor to the Intellogist Blog at http://intellogist.wordpress.com.