Rich Content, Rich Presentation

All the material offered by this project is worthy of publication. The care shown to the physical collection extends to the virtual collection; the website design, photos, podcasts and interactive features are all expertly produced, informative, attractive and easy to use. I’ve enjoyed quite a bit of it and haven’t once had the impression that an element was thrown in because it might have value to someone or validate the use of public funds. Nothing has felt like an add-on or afterthought and the integral sense of balance and fit has kept me engaged. I would have bailed if the virtual exhibit was merely the poor stepchild of the physical one. Everything here has been worthy of my time and attention — and my recommendation to others.

Technology as the Means Versus the Ends

A History of the World in 100 Objects incorporates just about every technology in mainstream use today: multimedia, social media, interactive features, blog, online survey … and each is used appropriately and to great effect. The project architects clearly understand their means and ends; the exhibit is what they’re building and digital technologies are their tools. It’s like the project is a virtual house and video, timelines, podcasts, Facebook and Twitter are their skillsaws, levels and hammers.

There’s widespread confusion about this, particularly around social media. Loads of pixels have been spilled and plans laid for how to get more Facebook fans or Twitter followers with nary a mention of the reason for doing it — or how to assess whether or not it was worth the effort. I’m really interested to know what success metrics this project team has established and have sent an email inquiry to them. I’ll let you know if I receive a reply.

Exemplary Use of Multi and Social Media

The website is a multi-media extravaganza. Audio and stunning photography abound. The podcasts are beautiful soundscapes and just the right length. I’ve enjoyed the music, the sound effects and the narration as much as the information they convey. The photos are gorgeous and can be viewed individually or in slide shows, in one size or many and the interfaces to do so are are intuitive and elegant -  no distracting control panels or layers popping up everywhere. Videos present users talking about the objects they have contributed. While less formal than the photos, each is expertly produced and add to my sense of participation in the project.

Social media is used as part of a unified strategy to help users engage with the material and each other. It complements explicit outreach, such as the encouragement to “Make history – add your object now”. Facebook and Twitter help promote the site and let users conveniently weave the project into the stream of their daily lives. The blog provides informal narrative and engagement opportunities. The blog comments I saw were concise and on-topic, with pointers to related historic information or requests for new features/uses for the material. The Twitter feed and Facebook page had the same qualities and provide a nice platform for people around the world to share the experience of this UK-based program.

This is a great use of social media. The project’s creators have made it a prominent but not distracting part of the experience. Social media is positioned as informal narrative around the content rather than an integral part of it. This positioning, and the BBC and British Museum’s focus on delivering something of value implicitly model the type of enagement they’re seeking, and the public seems to be responding.

Each Page a Destination and a Portal

The “100 objects” concept is an effective organizing principle, for each item has individual merit as well as wider symbolism and meaning. This is reinforced technologically, with each object having its own page and each page being an intuitive gateway to the entire collection, to related topic areas and supplemental resources. Check out today’s object, the Throne of Weapons, a sculpture “made out of decommissioned weapons from the Mozambique civil war.” The page foregrounds a compelling visual and textual narrative including curator and visitor commentary. It also provides easy access to other objects in the collection based on facets including contributor, location, culture, time period, etc. Accompanying material, such as the podcast in audio and written form, is also readily accessible.

Going Local via the World Wide Web

In addition to the faceted search on the object pages, the website has a dedicated page from which to explore the locations of the collection’s UK contributors. Each link opens a rich pathway to exploration of the United Kingdom. Here again, the collection anchors the visitor experience and local context is seamlessly woven around it. I found myself drawn to this information and explored news, history, and things to do for various counties. Each local site shares the same display template and navigation, which helped me focus on the content rather than having to take time to figure out how each local site works. At one point, I drilled deep into a local site and was unclear on how to navigate back – so I typed “100 objects” into the search and immediately found what I was looking for. Now that’s good information architecture and ease-of-use.

Promote that Brand

The virtual project is accessible exclusively within a British Museum site or a BBC site.  Every part of the user experience, from the site display and navigation to the URL structures, reinforce those brands. This is really important.

Many public library sites I visit send me off to a 3rd party site like Flickr, Slideshare, etc. – which perpetuates the 3rd party brand instead of the library’s. In addition to disrupting the navigation and context, this can raise privacy concerns and cause me to abandon the content. (I don’t consume content on popular 3rd party sites that have aggressive user tracking and data collection policies.) Those concerns were not raised on the British Museum/BBC sites that were persistent reminders of the institutions responsible for delivering this wonderful value.

Let’s hope the team that put A History of the World in 100 Objects together does another one soon!

Slides from a recent presentation by Gautam Godhwani, CEO and Co-Founder of Simply Hired, help illustrate this point. They articulate a widely shared view that industry executives are building their strategies around: today you go to the information, tomorrow the information goes to you.

Information will be conveniently and affordably available and it will go to the user. We see glimpses of this now and companies around the world are designing and building better ways to do it every day.

Here’s the future of information, libraries how will you respond?

My participation so far suggests it will be a provocative, content-rich program offered in a new way, at a rock-bottom price—which is so important with the need for communication within the library profession so high and training/travel budgets so low. The proceedings will be recorded and available to registrants for a few months, so for the cost of a hardcover book, ($30 for individual, $60 for site access) libraries will get tons of information in a format they can refer back to after the event.

But … moving on to the unspeakable …

My job puts me at the heart of many information technology developments,¹ though before receiving LJ’s summit invitation I hadn’t thought all that much about eBooks and libraries. (Perhaps it felt too much like work.) After researching and reflecting awhile, my conclusion is that libraries will not enjoy the same success with eBooks as they’ve had with print books; it’s an entirely different domain with entirely different dynamics.

Library Journal staff and our panel have done some advance work before the conference and it’s given me a taste of what it will feel like to deliver this assessment. So far it has felt really crappy. Had me totally bummed out the other day, in fact. I coped by reminding myself I could be wrong. I also slipped into resignation, thinking “whatever is going to happen will happen no matter what I say or do“. Sitting with these difficult feelings and observing the way my mind subconsciously sought consolation gave me empathy for all the people whose livelihoods and professional/social networks depend on the existing library ecosystem.

Our library dilemma is really, really hard for everyone carrying water, in whatever way we carry it. As my advocacy work has spread beyond my local area, I’ve been thinking more about my role in all this. Perhaps the water I carry is to voice things others cannot say. Perhaps it’s to articulate the many ways (here and here, for example) that libraries matter. It may also be to offer ideas and catalyze discussions about how our libraries can play as vital a role in this age of info abundance as they did in the years when information was scarce.

So yeah, I was a pretty gloomy patron last Friday. Fortunately, a good night’s sleep helped refresh my perspective and reorient me toward opportunties for our public libraries. Tomorrow I’ll offer another example of a 21st century library service the public needs and would support while Google, Amazon, Apple and other well-organized stakeholders duke it out in the eBook domain.  Hope you check back for it.

¹I’ve held various roles in the technology field since its widespread emergence in the late 1970s. For the past four years I’ve been employed as a technical project manager by a prominent publisher. Most of my time these days is spent as the PM and SysAdmin for a physician community website, though I’m also working on iPhone and iPad initiatives as well. The cool thing about my job is that I’m in the middle of everything from conception, to prototyping & implementation through to support. I work with product development, technologists, operations, marketing and sales, and the executives who demand tangible contributions to the mission and the margin. I also sometimes work directly with customers, which is really illuminating.

John Blyberg, Assistant Director of Innovation & User Experience, supports a range of applications on the Library’s in-house server. Some organizations simply need a basic webhosting account, others use a blogging platform and a few require a CMS. He also provides consultation for organizations unfamiliar with web technologies to help them determine the best configuration to meet their needs.

The plethora of web technologies (and reconciling recommendations from consultants, peer organizations and personal connections) can be overwhelming for most folks. As a result, many NPOs and municipal agencies spend more time and money than they need to on technology services. The Darien organizations are extremely fortunate to receive webhosting and consultation free-of-charge from their library.

In my first article on a National Public Library Corporation, I suggested:

It would also benefit the public and libraries if [the NPL technology] solutions could be shared by other municipal agencies. The public would receive more convenient, consolidated access to their local governments and have their library to thank for it. Libraries might find agencies that currently compete with them for local funding becoming allies if they were using modules of the library’s information system to manage some of their administrative functions.

When we spoke, John actually highlighted this as a benefit by pointing out that people who use the webhosting are “influencers” and voters who may not necessarily use traditional library services. Way to go Darien Public Library — for finding a powerful way to serve the community and advocate for the library!

Key Findings

Percent Usage by Age Group

Via the Scholarly Kitchen

An opportunity arose to revisit the subject in Library Journal and I returned to form with some straight-ahead analysis and thoughts about new information needs in the digital realm. Check out my BackTalk in Learning from LC’s Twitter Deal.

Many thanks to Rebecca Miller for editorial guidance and feedback.

• The Cloudy Revolution: The iPad will speed the shift from desktop to Web-based computing.
• The Future of E-Readers Is Brighter Than We Knew
• Does It Matter Which Reading App You Use?

The info would be available to libraries via a well-conceived and executed data system that made it easy to incorporate online resources within their websites or to quickly assemble and brand materials. Just point and click. No vendors to evaluate, no purchase orders to process, no systems to maintain; it would all come as part of an annual membership with the NPL.

These collections would quickly become among the best in the world, for libraries all across the country would contribute to them.

Think about the enormous power of libraries working together like this. It absolutely blows my mind. Systems like this are used by millions of people every day in corporations, real estate firms, hospitals … and I’m filled with excitement when I think about them for libraries. For now, I hope you enjoy these two selections from my imaginary architecture collection.

Falling Water – an appreciation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece

Virtual Tour of the Sistene Chapel

Announcements trumpeted across the principals’ blogs. Twitter’s dignified, concise and authoritative statement was a masterful elevation of its brand. With a mere 361 words they proactively neutralized privacy criticisms and positioned themselves as a generous benefactor for the ages. An excited utterance from the Library of Congress was also seen. “It boggles my mind to think what we might be able to learn about ourselves and the world around us from this wealth of data” declared the institution’s communication director!

As best I can tell, that widely cited post and much of the ensuing dialogue diminished the institution. Notwithstanding Washington Post and Wall Street Journal articles that tried to contextualize the acquisition, the shores were littered with dismissive commentary and good questions about content ownership and user privacy (here, here and here for example). One of the most damning from Sid Burgess of Oklahoma City was spied early Saturday morning:

I had observed these fateful partnerings before and wondered whether the library brand would someday become so deteriorated that no commercial firm would want to be associated with it.

An eerie silence reigned over the library blogosphere. As is their custom, librarians remained mute on this very active public conversation. I scanned leading library blogs to see what library experts and other luminaries, the library movers and shakers, had to say. Their digital record revealed an occupation with self promotion (Library Competency Success Stories) and boosterism (It is just ridiculous how awesome libraries are.) … Powerpoint slides, conference tweets and wordles … and deep thoughts on librarianship (What’s a Real Book?, Open Conversation: Being Human and All (Advocacy) in the Family). I found no mention of this library news that everyone else seemed to be talking about — save for Roy Tenannt’s literary contribution, If Shakespeare Had Tweeted.

A link to a ResourceShelf post on a prominent blog was a welcome site, although I cannot convey the dread that overcame me when I clicked upon it.
Chastened, I continued my journey. I came upon the ALA Media/Press Center and they were not speaking of this thing there, perhaps due to an abundance of other library news including Libraries adapt to help the unemployed and In Recession, Libraries are booming.

It was noted in hushed tones on the American Libraries blog where an April 19th post referred to “Two great pieces of writing from [privacy blogger] Fred Stutzman on the Twitter/Library of Congress deal” but did not link to them directly. I came upon them further downstream. In Twitter and the Library of Congress and Is it time to cancel your Twitter account? Stutzman seemed unimpressed with librarians’ stewardship and foresight. He writes in the first post: “Is the collection so important that it is worth compromising user privacy? I’ve got a feeling that there are certain assumptions around “public” content and the feel-good vibe of the Library of Congress that led to a lack of critical thinking about the implications of this move.” and notes the cluelessness of Martha Anderson, Director of Program Management for the LoC’s Digital Preservation Program in his second by quoting her interview with The American Prospect. Though Anderson did not know the specifics of whether users would be able to “opt-out” of having their tweets permanently archived, her general thoughts on libraries’ archival of web content seemed quite revealing:

And I think personally, this is me, don’t quote me as saying this from the library, as librarians we need to think more about our relationships to content creators, content-generating activities, in a way we used to think about things with publishers — we would get a relationship to a publisher through copyright, or that sort of thing. Now, the information base is different, and we really need to work on those kinds of relationships.

The beat of library drums in AL Direct guided me to my destination. How oddly comforting these scattered rumblings were. They dulled my senses and my mind relaxed — and then it appeared, the 76th item of 91 in the April 21st edition, well below the 2010 WrestleMania Reading Challenge and somewhat below Cookbook in hot water over typo about an unfortunate misprint in an Australian pasta cookbook; a thoughtful musing on this bizarre story: What we might learn from mundane details.

Remember libraries … from an ecological point of view, [that's] the virtuous way to go.

Daniel Goleman, author of Ecological Intelligence: The Hidden Impacts of What We Buy, during a recent interview with public radio’s Tom Ashbrook.

By way of introducing Life Cycle Assessment, a cradle-to-grave methodology for evaluating environmental impact, Daniel Goleman refuted the widely accepted notion that eReaders are more eco-friendly than books in a recent interview on public radio. Click to Listen.

If I were a library leader, I’d embrace environmentalism as a way to improve operations, provide vital information to constituents and set an example for the communities we serve. Here are some of the things I’d do:

1. Educate myself; there’s lots of bogus information out there.
2. Perform life cycle assessments on library operations and publish the findings on the website. Invite comments and questions to spur community involvement and resource sharing.
3. Establish a fundraising program through Gazelle, a firm started by a former eBay founder to recycle electronics. Most folks want to get rid of old stuff, help the environment and support their library without paying additional taxes. They’re also looking for convenience. Gazelle delivers all these things.

LCA graphic adapted from a Proctor & Gamble illustration.