Author: Bohyun Kim

Aaron Swartz and Too-Comfortable Research Libraries

*** Update: Several references and a video added (thanks to Brett Bonfield) on Feb. 21, 2013. ***

Who was Aaron Swartz?

If you are a librarian and do not know who Aaron Swartz is, that should probably change now. He helped developing the RSS standard, was the co-founder of Reddit, worked on the Open Library project, downloaded and freed 20% (2.7 million documents) of the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) database that charges access fees for the United States federal court documents, out of which about 1,600 had privacy issues, played a lead role in preventing the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and wrote the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto.

Most famously, he was arrested in 2011 for the mass download of journal articles from JSTOR. He returned the documents to JSTOR and apologized. The Massachusetts state court dismissed the charges, and JSTOR decided not to pursue civil litigation. But MIT stayed silent, and the federal court charged Swartz with wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer and recklessly damaging a protected computer. If convicted on these charges, Swartz could be sentenced to up to 35 years in prison at the age of 26. He committed suicide after facing charges for two years, on January 11, 2013.

Information wants to be free; Information wants to be expensive

Now, he was a controversial figure. He advocated Open Access (OA) but to the extent of encouraging scholars, librarians, students who have access to copyrighted academic materials to trade passwords and circulate them freely on the grounds that this is an act of civil disobedience against unjust copyright laws in his manifesto. He was an advocate of the open Internet, the transparent government, and open access to scholarly output. But he also physically hacked into the MIT network wiring closet and attached his laptop to download over 4 million articles from JSTOR. Most people including librarians are not going to advocate trading their institutions’ subscription database passwords or breaking into a staff-only computer networking area of an institution. The actual method of OA that Swartz recommended was highly controversial even among the strongest OA advocates.

But in his Guerrilla OA manifesto, Swartz raised one very valid point about the nature of information in the era of the World Wide Web. That is, information is power. (a) As power, information can be spread to and be made useful to as many of us as possible. Or, (b) it can be locked up and the access to it can be restricted to only those who can pay for it or have access privileges some other way. One thing is clear. Those who do not have access to information will be at a significant disadvantage compared to those who do.

And I would like to ask what today’s academic and/or research libraries are doing to realize Scenario (a) rather than Scenario (b). Are academic/research libraries doing enough to make information available to as many as possible?

Too-comfortable Internet, Too-comfortable academic libraries

Among the many articles I read about Aaron Swartz’s sudden death, the one that made me think most was “Aaron Swartz’s suicide shows the risk of a too-comfortable Internet.” The author of this article worries that we may now have a too-comfortable Internet. The Internet is slowly turning into just another platform for those who can afford purchasing information. The Internet as the place where you could freely find, use, modify, create, and share information is disappearing. Instead pay walls and closed doors are being established. Useful information on the Internet is being fast monetized, and the access is no longer free and open. Even the government documents become no longer freely accessible to the public when they are put up on the Internet (likely to be due to digitization and online storage costs) as shown in the case of PACER and Aaron Swartz. We are more and more getting used to giving up our privacy or to paying for information. This may be inevitable in a capitalist society, but should the same apply to libraries as well?

The thought about the too-comfortable Internet made me wonder whether perhaps academic research libraries were also becoming too comfortable with the status quo of licensing electronic journals and databases for patrons. In the times when the library collection was physical, people who walk into the library were rarely turned away. The resources in the library are collected and preserved because we believe that people have the right to learn and investigate things and to form one’s own opinions and that the knowledge of the past should be made available for that purpose. Regardless of one’s age, gender, social and financial status, libraries have been welcoming and encouraging people who were in the quest for knowledge and information. With the increasing number of electronic resources in the library, however, this has been changing.

Many academic libraries offer computers, which are necessary to access electronic resources of the library itself. But how many of academic libraries keep all the computers open for user without the user log-in? Often those library computers are locked up and require the username and password, which only those affiliated with the institution possess. The same often goes for many electronic resources. How many academic libraries allow the on-site access to electronic resources by walk-in users? How many academic libraries insist on the walk-in users’ access to those resources that they pay for in the license?  Many academic libraries also participate in the Federal Depository Library program, which requires those libraries to provide free access to the government documents that they receive to the public. But how easy is it for the public to enter and access the free government information at those libraries?

I asked in Twitter about the guest access in academic libraries to computers and e-resources. Approximately 25 academic librarians generously answered my question. (Thank you!) According to the responses in Twitter,  almost all except a few libraries ( mentioned in Twitter responses) offer guest access to computers and e-resources on-site. It is to be noted, however, that a few offer the guest -access to neither. Also some libraries limit the guests’ computer-use to 30 minutes – 4 hours, thereby restricting the access to the library’s electronic resources as well. Only a few libraries offer free wi-fi for guests. And at some libraries, the guest wi-fi users are unable to access the library’s e-resources even on-site because the IP range of the guest wi-fi is different from that of the campus wi-fi.

I am not sure how many academic libraries consciously negotiate the walk-in users’ on-site access with e-resources vendors or whether this is done somewhat semi-automatically because many libraries ask the library building IP range to be registered with vendors so that the authentication can be turned off inside the building. I surmise that publishers and database vendors will not automatically permit the walk-in users’ on-site access in their licenses unless libraries ask for it. Some vendors also explicitly prohibit libraries from using their materials to fill the Interlibrary loan requests from other libraries. The electronic resource vendors and publishers’ pricing has become more and more closely tied to the number of patrons who can access their products. Academic libraries has been dealing with the escalating costs for electronic resources by filtering out library patrons and limiting the access to those in a specific disciplines. For example, academic medical and health sciences libraries often subscribe to databases and resources that have the most up-to-date information about biomedical research, diseases, medications, and treatments. These are almost always inaccessible to the general public and often even to those affiliated with the institution. The use of these prohibitively expensive resources is limited to a very small portion of people who are affiliated with the institution in specific disciplines such as medicine and health sciences. Academic research libraries have been partially responsible for the proliferation of these access limitations by welcoming and often preferring these limitations as a cost-saving measure. (By contrast, if those resources were in the print format, no librarian would think that it is OK to permanently limit its use to those in medical or health science disciplines only.)

Too-comfortable libraries do not ask themselves if they are serving the public good of providing access to information and knowledge for those who are in need but cannot afford it. Too-comfortable libraries see their role as a mediator and broker in the transaction between the information seller and the information buyer. They may act as an efficient and successful mediator and broker. But I don’t believe that that is why libraries exist. Ultimately, libraries exist to foster the sharing and dissemination of knowledge more than anything, not to efficiently mediate information leasing. And this is the dangerous idea: You cannot put a price tag on knowledge; it belongs to the human race. Libraries used to be the institution that validates and confirms this idea. But will they continue to be so in the future? Will an academic library be able to remain as a sanctuary for all ideas and a place for sharing knowledge for people’s intellectual pursuits regardless of their institutional membership? Or will it be reduced to a branch of an institution that sells knowledge to its tuition-paying customers only? While public libraries are more strongly aligned with this mission of making information and knowledge freely and openly available to the public than academic libraries, they cannot be expected to cover the research needs of patrons as fully as academic libraries.

I am not denying that libraries are also making efforts in continuing the preservation and access to the information and resources through initiatives such as Hathi Trust and DPLA (Digital Public Library of America). My concern is rather whether academic research libraries are becoming perhaps too well-adapted to the times of the Internet and online resources and too comfortable serving the needs of the most tangible patron base only in the most cost-efficient way, assuming that the library’s mission of storing and disseminating knowledge can now be safely and neutrally relegated to the Internet and the market. But it is a fantasy to believe that the Internet will be a sanctuary for all ideas (The Internet is being censored as shown in the case of Tarek Mehanna.), and the market will surely not have the ideal of the free and open access to knowledge for the public.

If libraries do not fight for and advocate those who are in need of information and knowledge but cannot afford it, no other institution will do so. Of course, it costs to create, format, review, and package content. Authors as well as those who work in this business of content formatting, reviewing, packaging, and producing should be compensated for their work. But not to the extent that the content is completely inaccessible to those who cannot afford to purchase but nevertheless want access to it for learning, inquiry, and research. This is probably the reason why we are all moved by Swartz’s Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto in spite of the illegal implications of the action that he actually recommended in the manifesto.

Knowledge and information is not like any other product for purchase. Sharing increases its value, thereby enabling innovation, further research, and new knowledge. Limiting knowledge and information to only those with access privilege and/or sufficient purchasing power creates a fundamental inequality. The mission of a research institution should never be limited to self-serving its members only, in my opinion. And if the institution forgets this, it should be the library that first raises a red flag. The mission of an academic research institution is to promote the freedom of inquiry and research and to provide an environment that supports that mission inside and outside of its walls, and that is why a library is said to be the center of an academic research institution.

I don’t have any good answers to the inevitable question of “So what can an academic research library do?” Perhaps, we can start with broadening the guest access to the library computers, wi-fi, and electronic resources on-site. Academic research libraries should also start asking themselves this question: What will libraries have to offer for those who seek knowledge for learning and inquiry but cannot afford it? If the answer is nothing, we will have lost libraries.

In his talk about the Internet Archive’s Open Library project at the Code4Lib Conference in 2008 (at 11:20), Swartz describes how librarians had argued about which subject headings to use for the books in the Open Library website. And he says, “We will use all of them. It’s online. We don’t have to have this kind of argument.” The use of online information and resources does not incur additional costs for use once produced. Many resources, particularly those scholarly research outputs, already have established buyers such as research libraries. Do we have to deny access to information and knowledge to those who cannot afford but are seeking for it, just so that we can have a market where information and knowledge resources are sold and bought and authors are compensated along with those who work with the created content as a result? No, this is a false question. We can have both. But libraries and librarians will have to make it so.

Videos to Watch

“Code4Lib 2008: Building the Open Library – YouTube.”


“Aaron Swartz on Picking Winners” American Library Association Midwinter meeting, January 12, 2008.

“Freedom to Connect: Aaron Swartz (1986-2013) on Victory to Save Open Internet, Fight Online Censors.”

REFERENCES

“Aaron Swartz.” 2013. Accessed February 10. http://www.aaronsw.com/.

“Aaron Swartz – Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.” 2013. Accessed February 10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#JSTOR.

“Aaron Swartz on Picking Winners – YouTube.” 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BvJqXaoO4FI.

“Aaron Swartz’s Suicide Shows the Risk of a Too-comfortable Internet – The Globe and Mail.” 2013. Accessed February 10. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/aaron-swartzs-suicide-shows-the-risk-of-a-too-comfortable-internet/article7509277/.

“Academics Remember Reddit Co-Founder With #PDFTribute.” 2013. Accessed February 10. http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/01/14/aaron_swartz_death_pdftribute_hashtag_aggregates_copyrighted_articles_released.html.

“After Aaron, Reputation Metrics Startups Aim To Disrupt The Scientific Journal Industry | TechCrunch.” 2013. Accessed February 10. http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/03/the-future-of-the-scientific-journal-industry/.

American Library Association, “A Memorial Resolution Honoring Aaron Swartz.” 2013. http://connect.ala.org/files/memorial_5_aaron%20swartz.pdf.

“An Effort to Upgrade a Court Archive System to Free and Easy – NYTimes.com.” 2013. Accessed February 10. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13records.html?_r=1&.

Bonfield, Brett. 2013. “Aaron Swartz.” In the Library with the Lead Pipe (February 20). http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2013/aaron-swartz/.

“Code4Lib 2008: Building the Open Library – YouTube.” 2013. Accessed February 10. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oV-P2uzzc4s&feature=youtu.be&t=2s.

“Daily Kos: What Aaron Swartz Did at MIT.” 2013. Accessed February 10. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/13/1178600/-What-Aaron-Swartz-did-at-MIT.

Dupuis, John. 2013a. “Around the Web: Aaron Swartz Chronological Link Roundup – Confessions of a Science Librarian.” Accessed February 10. http://scienceblogs.com/confessions/2013/01/20/around-the-web-aaron-swartz-chronological-link-roundup/.

———. 2013b. “Library Vendors, Politics, Aaron Swartz, #pdftribute – Confessions of a Science Librarian.” Accessed February 10. http://scienceblogs.com/confessions/2013/01/17/library-vendors-politics-aaron-swartz-pdftribute/.

“FDLP for PUBLIC.” 2013. Accessed February 10. http://www.gpo.gov/libraries/public/.

“Freedom to Connect: Aaron Swartz (1986-2013) on Victory to Save Open Internet, Fight Online Censors.” 2013. Accessed February 10. http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/14/freedom_to_connect_aaron_swartz_1986.

“Full Text of ‘Guerilla Open Access Manifesto’.” 2013. Accessed February 10. http://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txt.

Groover, Myron. 2013. “British Columbia Library Association – News – The Last Days of Aaron Swartz.” Accessed February 21. http://www.bcla.bc.ca/page/news/ezlist_item_9abb44a1-4516-49f9-9e31-57685e9ca5cc.aspx#.USat2-i3pJP.

Hellman, Eric. 2013a. “Go To Hellman: Edward Tufte Was a Proto-Phreaker (#aaronswnyc Part 1).” Accessed February 21. http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2013/01/edward-tufte-was-proto-phreaker.html.

———. 2013b. “Go To Hellman: The Four Crimes of Aaron Swartz (#aaronswnyc Part 2).” Accessed February 21. http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-four-crimes-of-aaron-swartz.html.

“How M.I.T. Ensnared a Hacker, Bucking a Freewheeling Culture – NYTimes.com.” 2013. Accessed February 10. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/21/technology/how-mit-ensnared-a-hacker-bucking-a-freewheeling-culture.html?pagewanted=all.

March, Andrew. 2013. “A Dangerous Mind? – NYTimes.com.” Accessed February 10. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/a-dangerous-mind.html?pagewanted=all.

“MediaBerkman » Blog Archive » Aaron Swartz on The Open Library.” 2013. Accessed February 22. http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mediaberkman/2007/10/25/aaron-swartz-on-the-open-library-2/.

Peters, Justin. 2013. “The Idealist.” Slate, February 7. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/02/aaron_swartz_he_wanted_to_save_the_world_why_couldn_t_he_save_himself.html.

“Public Access to Court Electronic Records.” 2013a. Accessed February 10. http://www.pacer.gov/.

“Publishers and Library Groups Spar in Appeal to Ruling on E-Reserves – Technology – The Chronicle of Higher Education.” 2013. Accessed February 10. http://chronicle.com/article/PublishersLibrary-Groups/136995/?cid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en.

“Remember Aaron Swartz.” 2013. Celebrating Aaron Swartz. Accessed February 22. http://www.rememberaaronsw.com.

Rochkind, Jonathan. 2013. “Library Values and the Growing Scholarly Digital Divide: In Memoriam Aaron Swartz | Bibliographic Wilderness.” Accessed February 10. http://bibwild.wordpress.com/2013/01/13/library-values-and-digital-divide-in-memoriam-aaron-swartz/.

Sims, Nancy. 2013. “What Is the Government’s Interest in Copyright? Not That of the Public. – Copyright Librarian.” Accessed February 10. http://blog.lib.umn.edu/copyrightlibn/2013/02/what-is-the-governments-interest-in-copyright.html.

Stamos, Alex. 2013. “The Truth About Aaron Swartz’s ‘Crime’.” Unhandled Exception. Accessed February 22. http://unhandled.com/2013/01/12/the-truth-about-aaron-swartzs-crime/.

Summers, Ed. 2013. “Aaronsw | Inkdroid.” Accessed February 21. http://inkdroid.org/journal/2013/01/19/aaronsw/.

“The Inside Story of Aaron Swartz’s Campaign to Liberate Court Filings | Ars Technica.” 2013. Accessed February 10. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/the-inside-story-of-aaron-swartzs-campaign-to-liberate-court-filings/.

“Welcome to Open Library (Open Library).” 2013. Accessed February 10. http://openlibrary.org/.

West, Jessamyn. 2013. “Librarian.net » Blog Archive » On Leadership and Remembering Aaron.” Accessed February 21. http://www.librarian.net/stax/3984/on-leadership-and-remembering-aaron/.

 

Effectively Learning How To Code: Tips and Resources

Librarians’ strong interest in programming is not surprising considering that programming skills are crucial and often essential to making today’s library systems and services more user-friendly and efficient for use. Not only for system-customization, computer-programming skills can also make it possible to create and provide a completely new type of service that didn’t exist before. However, programming skills are not part of most LIS curricula, and librarians often experience difficulty in picking up programming skills.

In this post, I would like to share some effective strategies to obtain coding skills and cover common mistakes and obstacles that librarians make and encounter while trying to learn how to code in the library environment based upon the presentation that I gave at Charleston Conference last month, “Geek out: Adding Coding Skills to Your Professional Repertoire.” (slides: http://www.slideshare.net/bohyunkim/geek-out-adding-coding-skills-to-your-professional-repertoire). At the end of this post, you will also find a selection of learning and community resources.

How To Obtain Coding Skills, Effectively

1. Pick a language and concentrate on it.

There are a huge number of resources available on the Web for those who want to learn how to program. Often librarians start with some knowledge in markup languages such as HTML and CSS. These markup languages determine how a block of text are marked up and presented on the computer screen. On the other hand, programming languages involve programming logic and functions. An understanding of the basic programming concepts and logic can be obtained by learning any programming language. There are many options, and some popular choices are JavaScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Perl, etc. But there are many more.  For example, if you are interested in automating tasks in Microsoft applications such as Excel, you may want to work with Visual Basic. If you are unsure about which language to pick, search for a few online tutorials for a few languages to see what their different syntaxes and examples are like. Even if you do not understand the content completely, this will help you to pick the language to learn first.

2. Write and run the code.

Once you choose a language to learn, there are many paths that you can follow. Taking classes at a local community college or through an online school may speed up the initial process of learning, but it could be time-consuming and costly. Following online tutorials and trying each example is a good alternative that many people take. You may also pick up a few books along the way to supplement the tutorials and use them for reference purposes.

If you decide on self-study, make sure that you actually write and run the code in the examples as you follow along the books and the tutorials. Most of the examples will appear simple and straightforward. But there is a big difference between reading through a code example and being actually able to write the code on your own and to run it successfully. If you read through programming tutorials and books without actually doing the hands-on examples on your own, you won’t get much benefit out of your investment. Programming is a hands-on skill as much as an intellectual understanding.

3. Continue to think about how coding can be applied to your library.

Also important is to continue to think about how your knowledge can be applied to your library systems and environment, which is often the source of the initial motivation for many librarians who decide to learn how to program. The best way to learn how to program is to program, and the more you program the better you will become at programming. So at every chance of building something with the new programming language that you are learning, no matter how small it is, build it and test out the code to see if it works the way you intended.

4. Get used to debugging.

While many who struggle with learning how to code cite lack of time as a reason, the real cause is likely to be failing to keep up the initial interest and persist in what you decided to learn. Learning how to code can be exciting, but it can also be a huge time-sink and the biggest source of frustration from time to time. Since the computer code is written for a machine to read, not for a human being, one typo or a missing semicolon can make the program non-functional. Finding out and correcting this type of error can be time-consuming and demoralizing. But learning how to debug is half of programming. So don’t be discouraged.

5. Find a community for social learning and support.

Having someone to talk to about coding problems while you are learning can be a great help. Sign up for listservs where coding librarians or library coders frequent, such as code4lib and web4lib to get feedback when you need. Research the cause of the problem that you encounter as much as possible on your own. When you still are unsure about how to go about tackling it, post your question to the sites such as Stack Overflow for suggestions and answers from more experienced programmers. It is also a good idea to organize a study group with like-minded people and get support for both coding-related and learning-related problems. You may also find local meet-ups available in your area using sites like MeetUp.com.

Don’t be intimidated by those who seem to know much more than you in those groups (as you know much more about libraries than they do and you have things to contribute as well), but be aware of the cultural differences between the developer community and the librarian community. Unlike the librarian community that is highly accommodating for new librarians and sometimes not-well-thought-out questions, the developer community that you get to interact with may appear much less accommodating, less friendly, and less patient. However, remember that reading many lines of code, understanding what they are supposed to do, and helping someone to solve a problem occurring in those lines can be time-consuming and difficult even to a professional programmer. So it is polite to do a thorough research on the Web and with some reference resources first before asking for others’ help. Also, always post back a working solution when your problem is solved and make sure to say thank you to people who helped you. This way, you are contributing back to the community.

6. Start working on a real-life problem ‘now.’ Don’t wait!

Librarians are often motivated to learn how to code in order to solve real-life problems they encounter at their workplace. Solving a real-life problem with programming is therefore the most effective way to learn and to keep up the interest in programming. One of the greatest mistake in learning programming is putting off writing one’s own code and waiting to work on a real-life problem for the reason that one doesn’t know yet enough to do so. While it is easy to think that once you learn a bit more, it would be easier to approach a problem, this is actually a counter-productive learning strategy as far as programming is concerned because often the only way to find out what to learn is by trying to solve a problem.

7. Build on what you learned.

Another mistake to avoid in learning how to program is failing to build on what one has learned. Having solved one set of problem doesn’t mean that you will remember that programming solution you created next time when you have to solve a similar problem. Repeating what one has succeeded at and expanding on that knowledge will lead to a stronger foundation for more advanced programming knowledge. Also instead of trying to learn more than one programming language (e.g. Python, PHP, Ruby, etc.) and/or a web framework (e.g. Django, cakePHP, Ruby On Rails, etc.) at the same time, first try to become reasonably good at one. This will make it much easier to pick up another language later in the future.

8. Code regularly and be persistent.

It is important to understand that learning how to program and becoming good at it will take time. Regular coding practice is the only way to get there. Solving a problem is a good way to learn, but doing so on a regular basis as often as possible is the best way to make what you learned stick and stay in your head.

While is it easy to say practice coding regularly and try to apply it as much as possible to the library environment, actually doing so is quite difficult. There are not many well-established communities for fledgling coders in libraries that provide needed guidance and support. And while you may want to work with library systems at your workplace right away, your lack of experience may prove problematic in gaining a necessary permission to tinker with them. Also as a full-time librarian, programming is likely to be thrown to the bottom of your to-do list.

Be aware of these obstacles and try to find a way to overcome them as you go. Set small goals and use them as milestones. Be persistent and don’t be discouraged by poor documentation, syntax errors, and failures. With consistent practice and continuous learning, programming can surely be learned.

Resources

A. Resources for learning

B. Communities

 

Present Your Slides without Access to the Internet with Free IPad Apps

Librarians often use presentation slides to teach a class, run a workshop, or give a talk. Ideally you should be able to access the Internet easily at those places. But more often than not, you may find only spotty Internet signals. If you had planned on using your presentation slides stored in the cloud, no access to the Internet would mean no slides for your presentation. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In this post, we will show you how to locally save your presentation slides on your iPad, so that you will be fully prepared to present without Internet access. You will only need a few tools, and the best of all, those tools are all freely available.

1. Haiku Deck – Make slides on the iPad

If your presentation slides do not require a lot of text, Haiku Deck is a nice iPad app for creating a complete set of slides without a computer. The Haiku Deck app allows you to create colorful presentation slides quickly by searching and browsing a number of CC-licensed images and photographs in Flickr and to add a few words to each slide. Once you select the images, Haiku Deck does the rest of work, inserting the references to each Flickr image you chose and creating a nice set of presentation slides.

You can play and present these slides directly from your iPad. Since Haiku Deck stores these slides locally, you need access to the Internet only while you are creating the slides using the images in Flickr through Haiku Deck. For presenting already-made slides, you do not need to be connected to the Internet. If you would like, you can also export the result as a PowerPoint file from Haiku Deck. This is useful if you want to make further changes to the slides using other software on your computer. But bear in mind that once exported as a PowerPoint file, the texts you placed using Haiku Deck are no longer editable. Below is an example that shows you how the slides made with Haiku Deck look like.

Note. Click the image itself in order to see the bigger version.

So next time when you get a last-minute instruction request from a teaching faculty member, consider spending 10-15 minutes to create a colorful and eye-catching set of slides with minimal text to have it accompany your classroom instruction or a short presentation all on your iPad.

2. SlideShark – Display slides on the iPad

SlideShark is a tool not so much for creating slides as for displaying the slides properly on the iPad (and also for the iPhone).  In order to use SlideShark, you need to install the SlideShark app on your iPad first and then create an account. Once this is done, you can go to the SlideShark website (https://www.slideshark.com/) and log in. Here you can upload your presentation files in the MS PowerPoint format.

Once the file is uploaded to the SlideShark website, open the SlideShark app on your iPad and sync your app with the website by pressing the sync icon on top. This will display all the presentation files that have been uploaded to your SlideShark website account. Here, you can download and save a local copy of your presentation on your iPad. You will need the live Internet connection for this task. But once your presentation file is downloaded onto your SlideShark iPad app, you no longer need to be online in order to display and project those slides. While you are using your iPad to display your slides, you can also place your finger on the iPad screen which will be displayed on the projector as a laser pointer mark.

SlideShark also recently added the integration option with a user’s Dropbox or Box account and the support for playing the embedded video in a PowerPoint file.

3. Adapter

Last but not least, when you pack your iPad and run to your classroom or presentation room, don’t forget to take your adapter. In order to connect your iPad to a projector, you usually need a iPad-VGA adapter because most projectors have a VGA port. But different adapters are used for different ports on display devices. So find out in advance if the projector you will be using has a VGA, DVI, or a HDMI port.  (Also remember that if you have an adapter that connects your Macbook with a projector, that adapter will not work for your iPad. That is a mini DVI-VGA adapter and won’t work with your iPad.)

4. Non-free option: Keynote

Haiku Deck and SlideShark are both free. But if you are willing to invest about ten dollars for convenience, another great presentation app is Keynote (currently $9.99 in Apple Store). While Haiku Deck is most useful for creating simple slides with a little bit of text, Keynote allows you to create more complicated slides on your iPad. If you use Keynote, you also don’t have to go through SlideShark for the off-line display of your presentation slides.

Creating presentations on the Keynote iPad app is simple and uses the same conventions and user-interface as the familiar Keynote application for OS X. Both versions of Keynote can share the same presentation files, although care should be taken to use 1024 x 768 screen resolution and standard Apple fonts and slide templates. iCloud may be used to sync presentations between iPads and other computers and users can download presentations to the iPad and present without Internet access.

The iPad version of Keynote has many features that make Keynote loved by its users. You can add media, tables, charts, and shapes into your presentation. Using Keynote, you can also display your slides to the audience on the attached projector while you view the same slides with a timer and notes on your iPad. (See the screenshots below.) For those with an iPhone or iPod Touch, the Keynote Remote app allows presenters to remotely control their slideshows without the need to stand at the podium or physically touch the iPad to advance their slides.

Do you have any useful tips for creating slides and presenting with an iPad? Share your ideas in the comments!

More APIs: writing your own code (2)

My last post “The simpest AJAX: writing your own code (1)” discussed a few Javascript and JQuery examples that make the use of the Flickr API. In this post, I try out APIs from providers other than Flickr. The examples will look plain to you since I didn’t add any CSS to dress them up. But remember that the focus here is not in presentation but in getting the data out and re-displaying it on your own. Once you get comfortable with this process, you can start thinking about a creative and useful way in which you can present and mash up the same data. We will go through 5 examples I created with three different APIs.  Before taking a look at the codes, check out the results below first.

 

I. Pinboard API

The first example is Pinboard. Many libraries moved their bookmarks in Del.icio.us to a different site when there was a rumor that Del.cio.us may be shut down by Yahoo. One of those sites were Pinboard. By getting your bookmark feeds from Pinboard and manipulating them, you can easily present a subset of your bookmark as part of your website.

(a) Display bookmarks in Pinboard using its API

The following page uses JQuery to access the JSONP feed of my public bookmarks in Pinboard. $.ajax() method is invoked on line 13. Line 15, jsonp:”cb”, gives the name to a callback function that will wrap the JSON feed data in it. Note line 18 where I print out data received into the console. This way, you can check if you are receiving JSONP feed in the console of Firebug. Line 19-22 uses $.each() function to access each element in the JSONP feed and the .append() method to add each bookmark’s title and url to the “pinboard” div. JQuery documentation has detailed explanation and examples for its functions and methods. So make sure to check it out if you have any questions about a JQuery function or method.

Pinboard API – example 1

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Pinboard: JSONP-AJAX Example</title>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://jqueryjs.googlecode.com/files/jquery-1.3.2.min.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<p> This page takes the JSON feed from <a href="http://pinboard.in/u:bohyunkim/">my public links in Pinboard</a> and re-presents them here. See <a href="http://feeds.pinboard.in/json/u:bohyunkim/">the Pinboard's JSON feed of my links</a>.</p>
<div id="pinboard"><h1>All my links in Pinboard</h1></div>
<script>
$(document).ready(function(){	
$.ajax({
  url:'http://feeds.pinboard.in/json/u:bohyunkim',
  jsonp:"cb",
  dataType:'jsonp',
  success: function(data) {
  	console.log(data); //dumps the data to the console to check if the callback is made successfully
    $.each(data, function(index, item){
      $('#pinboard').append('<div><a href="' + item.u + '">' + item.d
+ '</a></div>');
      }); //each
    } //success
  }); //ajax

});//ready
</script>
</body>
</html>

Here is the screenshot of the page. I opened up the Console window of the Firebug (since I dumped the received in line 18) and you can see the incoming data here. (Note. Click the images to see the large version.)

But it is much more convenient to see the organization and hierarchy of the JSONP feed in the Net panel of Firebug.

And each element of the JSONP feed can be drilled down for further details by clicking the object in each row.

(b) Display only a certain number of bookmarks

Now, let’s display only a certain number of bookmarks. In order to do this, one more line is needed. Line 9 checks the position of each element and breaks the loop when the 5th element is processed.

Pinboard API – example 2

$.ajax({
  url:'http://feeds.pinboard.in/json/u:bohyunkim',
  jsonp:"cb",
  dataType:'jsonp',
  success: function(data) {
    $.each(data, function(index, item){
      	$('#pinboard').append('<div><a href="' + item.u + '">' + item.d
+ '</a></div>');
    	if (index == 4) return false; //only display 5 items
      }); //each
    } //success
  }); //ajax

(c) Display bookmarks with a certain tag

Often libraries want to display bookmarks with a particular tag. Here I add a line using JQuery method $.inArray() to display only bookmarks tagged with ‘fiu.’ $.inArray()  method takes value and array as parameters and returns 0 if the value is found in the array otherwise -1. Line 7 checks if the tag array of a bookmark (item.t) does include ‘fiu,’ and only in such case displays the bookmark. As a result, only the bookmarks with the tag ‘fiu’ are shown in the page.

Pinboard API – example 3

$.ajax({
  url:'http://feeds.pinboard.in/json/u:bohyunkim',
  jsonp:"cb",
  dataType:'jsonp',
  success: function(data) {
    $.each(data, function(index, item){
    	if ($.inArray("fiu", item.t)!==-1) // if the tag is 'fiu'
      		$('#pinboard').append('<div><a href="' + item.u + '">' + item.d
+ '</a></div>');
	}); //each
    } //success
  }); //ajax
II. Reddit API

My second example uses Reddit API. Reddit is a site where people comment on news items of interest. Here I used $.getJSON() instead of $.ajax() in order to process the JSONP feed from the Science section of Reddit. In the case of Pinboard API, I could not find out a way to construct a link that includes a call back function in the url. Some of the parameters had to be specified such as jsonp:”cb”, dataType:’jsonp’. For this reason, I needed to use $.ajax() function. On the other hand, in Reddit, getting the JSONP feed url was straightforward: http://www.reddit.com/r/science/.json?jsonp=cb.

Line 19 adds a title of the page. Line 20-22 extracts the title and link to the news article that is being commented and displays it. Under the news item, the link to the comments for that article in Reddit is added as a bullet item. You can see that, in Line 17 and 18, I have used the console to check if I get the right data and targeting the element I want and then commented out later.

This is just an example, and for that reason, the result is a rather simplified version of the original Reddit page with less information. But as long as you are comfortable accessing and manipulating data at different levels of the JSONP feed sent from an API, you can slice and dice the data in a way that suits your purpose best. So in order to make a clever mash-up, not only the technical coding skills but also your creative ideas of what different sets of data and information to connect and present to offer something new that has not been available or apparent before.

Reddit API – example

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Reddit-Science: JSONP-AJAX Example</title>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.0/jquery.min.js"></script>
</head>

<body>
<p> This page takes the JSONP feed from <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/science/">Reddit's Science section</a> and presents the link to the original article and the comments in Reddit to the article as a pair. See <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/science/.json?jsonp=?">JSONP feed</a> from Reddit.</p>

<div id="feed"> </div>
<script type="text/javascript">
	//run function to parse json response, grab title, link, and media values, and then place in html tags
$(document).ready(function(){		
	$.getJSON('http://www.reddit.com/r/science/.json?jsonp=?', function(rd){
		//console.log(rd);
		//console.log(rd.data.children[0].data.title);
		$('#feed').html('<h1>*Subredditum Scientiae*</h1>');
		$.each(rd.data.children, function(k, v){
      		$('#feed').append('<div><p>'+(k+1)+': <a href="' + v.data.url + '">' + v.data.title+'</a></p><ul><li style="font-variant:small-caps;font-size:small"><a href="http://www.reddit.com'+v.data.permalink+'">Comments from Reddit</a></li></ul></div>');
      }); //each
	}); //getJSON
});//ready	
</script>

</body>
</html>

The structure of a JSON feed can be confusing to make out particularly. So make sure to use the Firebug Net window to figure out the organization of the feed content and the property name for the value you want.

But what if the site from which you would like to get data doesn’t offer JSONP feed? Fortunately you can convert any RSS or XML feed into JSONP feed. Let’s take a look!

III. PubMed Feed with Yahoo Pipes API

Consider this PubMed search. This is simple search that looks for items in PubMed that has to do with Florida International University College of Medicine where I work. You may want to access the data feed of this search result, manipulate, and display in your library website. So far, we have performed a similar task with the Pinboard and the Reddit API using JQuery. But unfortunately PubMed does not offer any JSON feed. We only get RSS feed instead from PubMed.

This is OK, however. You can either manipulate the RSS feed directly or convert the RSS feed into JSON, which you are more familiar with now. Yahoo Pipes is a handy tool for just that purpose. You can do the following tasks with Yahoo Pipes:

  • combine many feeds into one, then sort, filter and translate it.
  • geocode your favorite feeds and browse the items on an interactive map.
  • power widgets/badges on your web site.
  • grab the output of any Pipes as RSS, JSON, KML, and other formats.

Furthermore, there may be a pipe that has been already created for exactly what you want to do by someone else. PubMed is a popular resource. As I expected, I found a pipe for PubMed search. I tested, copied the pipe, and changed the search term. Here is the screenshot of my Yahoo Pipe.

If you want to change the pipe, you can click “View Source” and make further changes. Here I just changed the search terms and saved the pipe.

After that, you want to get the results of the Pipe as JSON. If you hover over the “Get as JSON” link in the first screenshot above, you will get a link: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=e176c4da7ae8574bfa5c452f9bb0da92&_render=json&limit=100&term=”Florida International University” and “College of Medicine” But this returns JSON, not JSONP.

In order to get that JSON feed wrapped into a callback function, you need to add this bit, &_callback=myCallback, at the end of the url: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=e176c4da7ae8574bfa5c452f9bb0da92&_render=json&limit=10&term=%22Florida+International+University%22+and+%22College+of+Medicine%22&_callback=myCallback. Now the JSON feed appears wrapped in a callback function like this: myCallback( ). See the difference?

Line 25 enables you to bring in this JSONP feed and invokes the callback function named “myCallback.” Line 14-23 defines this callback function to process the received feed. Line 18-20 takes the JSON data received at the level of data.value. item, and prints out each item’s title (item.title) with a link (item.link). Here I am giving a number for each item by (index+1). If you don’t put +1, the index will begin from 0 instead of 1. Line 21 stops the process when the processed item reaches 5 in number.

Yahoo Pipes API/PubMed – example

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>PubMed and Yahoo Pipes: JSONP-AJAX Example</title>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://jqueryjs.googlecode.com/files/jquery-1.3.2.min.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<p> This page takes the JSONP feed from <a href="http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=e176c4da7ae8574bfa5c452f9bb0da92"> a Yahoo Pipe</a>, which creates JSONP feed out of a PubMed search results and re-presents them here. 
<br/>See <a href="http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=e176c4da7ae8574bfa5c452f9bb0da92&_render=json&limit=10&term=%22Florida+International+University%22+and+%22College+of+Medicine%22&_callback=myCallback">the Yahoo Pipe's JSON feed</a> and <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=%22Florida%20International%20University%22%20and%20%22College%20of%20Medicine%22">the original search results in PubMed</a>.</p>
<div id="feed"></div>
<script type="text/javascript">
	//run function to parse json response, grab title, link, and media values - place in html tags
	function myCallback(data) {
		//console.log(data);
		//console.log(data.count);
		$("#feed").html('<h1>The most recent 5 publications from <br/>Florida International University College of Medicine</h1><h2>Results from PubMed</h2>');
		$.each(data.value.items, function(index, item){
      		$('#feed').append('<p>'+(index+1)+': <a href="' + item.link + '">' + item.title
+ '</a></p>');
        if (index == 4) return false; //display the most recent five items
      }); //each
	} //function
	</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=e176c4da7ae8574bfa5c452f9bb0da92&_render=json&limit=10&term=%22Florida+International+University%22+and+%22College+of+Medicine%22&_callback=myCallback"></script>
</body>
</html>

Do you feel more comfortable now with APIs? With a little bit of JQuery and JSON, I was able to make a good use of third-party APIs. Next time, I will try the Worldcat Search API, which is closer to the library world and see how that works.

 

The simplest AJAX: writing your own code (1)

It has been 8 months since the Code Year project started. Back in January, I have provided some tips. Now I want to check in to see if how well you have been following along. Falling behind? You are not alone. Luckily there are still 3-4 months left.

Teaching oneself how to code is not easy. One of the many challenges is keeping at it on a regular basis. Both at home and at work, there seems to be always a dozen things higher in priority than code lessons. Another problem is that often we start a learning project by reading a book with some chosen examples. The Code Year project is somewhat better since it provides interactive tutorials. But at the end of many tutorials, you may have experienced the nagging feeling of doubt about whether you can now go out to the real world and make something that works. Have you done any real-time project yet?

If you are like me, the biggest obstacle in starting your own first small coding project is not so much the lack of knowledge as the fantasy that you still have yet more to learn before trying any such real-life-ish project. I call this ‘fantasy’ because there is never such a time when you are in full possession of knowledge before jumping into a project. In most cases, you discover what you need to learn only after you start a project and run into a problem that you need to solve.

So for this blog post, I tried building something very small. During the process, I had to fight constantly with the feeling that I should go back to the Code Year Project and take those comforting lessons in Javascript and JQeury that I didn’t have time to work through yet. But I also knew that I would be so much more motivated to keep learning if I can just see myself making something on my own. I decided to try some very simple AJAX stuff and started by looking at two examples on the Web.  Here I will share those examples and my review process that enabled me to write my own bit of code. After looking at these, I was able to use different APIs to get the same result. My explanation below is intentionally detailed for beginners. But if you can understand the examples without my line-by-line explanation, feel free to skip and go directly to the last section where the challenge is.  For what would your AJAX skill be useful?  There are a lot of useful data in the cloud. Using AJAX, you can dynamically display your library’s photos stored in Flickr in your library’s website or generate a custom bibliography on the fly using the tags in Pinboard or MESH (Medical Subject Heading) and other filters in PubMed. You can mash up data feeds from multiple providers and create something completely new and interesting such as HealthMap, iSpiecies, and Housing Maps.

Warm-up 1: Jason’s Flickr API example

I found this example, “Flickr API – Display Photos (JSON)” quite useful. This example is at Jason Clark’s website. Jason has many cool code examples and working programs under the Code & Files page. You can see the source of the whole HTML page here . But let’s see the JS part below.

<script type="text/javascript">
//run function to parse json response, grab title, link, and media values - place in html tags
function jsonFlickrFeed(fr) {
    var container = document.getElementById("feed");
    var markup = '<h1>' + '<a href="' + fr.link+ '">' + fr.title + '</a>'+ '</h1>';
    for (var i = 0; i < fr.items.length; i++) {
    markup += '<a title="' + fr.items[i].title + '" href="' + fr.items[i].link + '"><img src="' + fr.items[i].media.m + '" alt="' + fr.items[i].title + '"></a>';
}
container.innerHTML = markup;
}
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?tags=cil2009&format=json">
</script>

After spending a few minutes looking at the source of the page, you can figure out the following:

  • Line 12 imports data formatted in JSON from Flickr, and the JSON data is wrapped in a JS function called jsonFlickrFeed. You can find these data source urls in API documentation usually. But many API documentations are often hard to decipher. In this case, this MashupGuide page by Raymond Yee was quite helpful.
  • Line 3-8 are defining the jsonFlickrFeed function that processes the JSON data.

You can think of JSON as a JS object or an associative array of them. Can you also figure out what is going on inside the jsonFlickrFeed function? Let’s go through it line by line.

  • Line 4 creates a variable, container, and sets it to the empty div given the id of the “feed.”
  • Line 5 creates another variable, markup, which will include a link and a title of “fr,” which is an arbitrary name that refers to the JSON data thrown inside the jsonFlickrFeed fucntion.
  • Line 6-8 are a for-loop that goes through every object in the items array and extracts its title and link as well as the image source link and title. The loop also adds the resulting HTML string to the markup variable.
  • Line 9 assigns the content of the markup variable as the value of the HTML content of the variable, container. Since the empty div with the “feed” id was assigned to the variable container, now the feed div has the content of var markup as its HTML content.

So these two JS snippets take an empty div like this:

<div id="feed"></div>

Then they dynamically generate the content inside with the source data from Flickr following some minimal presentation specified in the JS itself. Below is the dynamically generated content for the feed div. The result like this.

<div id="feed">
<h1>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/cil2009/">Recent Uploads tagged cil2009</a>
</h1>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthew_francis/3458100856/" title="Waiting at Vienna metro (cropped)">
<img alt="Waiting at Vienna metro (cropped)" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3608/3458100856_d01b26cf1b_m.jpg">
</a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/libraryman/3448484629/" title="Laptop right before CIL2009 session">
<img alt="Laptop right before CIL2009 session" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3389/3448484629_9874f4ab92_m.jpg">
</a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/christajoy42/4814625142/" title="Computers in Libraries 2009">
<img alt="Computers in Libraries 2009" src="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4082/4814625142_f9d9f90118_m.jpg">
</a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/librarianinblack/3613111168/" title="David Lee King">
<img alt="David Lee King" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3354/3613111168_02299f2b53_m.jpg">
</a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/librarianinblack/3613111084/" title="Aaron Schmidt">
<img alt="Aaron Schmidt" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3331/3613111084_b5ba9e70bd_m.jpg">
</a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/librarianinblack/3612296027/" block"="" libraries"="" in="" computers="" title="The Kids on the ">
<img block"="" libraries"="" in="" computers="" alt="The Kids on the " src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2426/3612296027_6f4043077d_m.jpg">
</a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/pegasuslibrarian/3460426841/" title="Dave and Greg look down at CarpetCon">
<img alt="Dave and Greg look down at CarpetCon" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3576/3460426841_ef2e57ab49_m.jpg">
</a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/pegasuslibrarian/3460425549/" title="Jason and Krista at CarpetCon">
<img alt="Jason and Krista at CarpetCon" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3600/3460425549_55443c5ddb_m.jpg">
</a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/pegasuslibrarian/3460422979/" title="Lunch with Dave, Laura, and Matt">
<img alt="Lunch with Dave, Laura, and Matt" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3530/3460422979_96c020a440_m.jpg">
</a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jezmynne/3436564507/" title="IMG_0532">
<img alt="IMG_0532" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3556/3436564507_551c7c5c0d_m.jpg">
</a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jezmynne/3436566975/" title="IMG_0529">
<img alt="IMG_0529" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3328/3436566975_c8bfe9b081_m.jpg">
</a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jezmynne/3436556645/" title="IMG_0518">
<img alt="IMG_0518" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3579/3436556645_9b01df7f93_m.jpg">
</a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jezmynne/3436569429/" title="IMG_0530">
<img alt="IMG_0530" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3371/3436569429_92d0797719_m.jpg">
</a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jezmynne/3436558817/" title="IMG_0524">
<img alt="IMG_0524" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3331/3436558817_3ff88a60be_m.jpg">
</a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jezmynne/3437361826/" title="IMG_0521">
<img alt="IMG_0521" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3371/3437361826_29a38e0609_m.jpg">
</a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jezmynne/3437356988/" title="IMG_0516">
<img alt="IMG_0516" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3298/3437356988_5aaa94452c_m.jpg">
</a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jezmynne/3437369906/" title="IMG_0528">
<img alt="IMG_0528" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3315/3437369906_01015ce018_m.jpg">
</a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jezmynne/3436560613/" title="IMG_0526">
<img alt="IMG_0526" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3579/3436560613_98775afc79_m.jpg">
</a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jezmynne/3437359398/" title="IMG_0517">
<img alt="IMG_0517" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3131/3437359398_7e339cf161_m.jpg">
</a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jezmynne/3436535739/" title="IMG_0506">
<img alt="IMG_0506" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3646/3436535739_c164062d6b_m.jpg">
</a>
</div>

Strictly speaking, Flickr is returning data in JSONP rather than JSON here. You will see what JSONP means in a little bit. But for now, don’t worry about that distinction. What is cool is that you can grab the data from a third party like Flickr and then you can remix and represent them in your own page.

Warm-up 2: Doing the same with JQuery using $.getJSON()

Since I had figured out how to display data from Flickr using Javascript (thanks to Jason’s code example), the next I wanted to try was to do the same with JQuery.  After some googling, I discovered that there is a convenient JQeury method called $.getJSON().  The official JQuery page on this $.getJSON() method includes not only the explanation about JSONP (which allows you to load the data from the domain other than yours in your browser and manipulate it unlike JSON which will be restricted by the same origin policy) but also the JQuery example of processing the same Flickr JSONP data. This is the example from the JQuery website.

$.getJSON("http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?jsoncallback=?",
  {
    tags: "mount rainier",
    tagmode: "any",
    format: "json"
  },
  function(data) {
    $.each(data.items, function(i,item){
      $("<img/>").attr("src", item.media.m).appendTo("#images");
      if ( i == 3 ) return false;
    });
  });

As you can see in the first line, the data feed urls for JSONP response have a part similar to &jasoncallback=? at the end. The function name can vary and the API documentation of a data provider provides that bit of information. Let’s go through the codes line by line:

  • Line 1-6 requests and takes in the data feed from the speicified URL in JSONP format.
  • Once the data is received and ready, the script invokes the anonymous function from line 7-11. This function makes use of the JQuery method $.each().
  • For each of data.items, the anonymous function applies another anonymous function from line 9-10.
  • Line 9 creates an image tag – $(“<img/>”), attaches each item’s media.m element as the source attribute to the image tag – .attr(“src”, item.media.m), and lastly appends the resulting string to the empty div with the id of “images” – .appendTo(“#images”).
  • Line 10 makes sure that no more than 4 items in data.items is processed.

You can see the entire HTML page codes in the JQuery website’s $.getJSON() page.

Your Turn: Try out an API other than Flickr

So far we have looked through two examples.  Not too bad, right? To keep the post at a reasonable length, I will get to the little bit of code that I wrote in the next post.  This means that you can try the same and we can compare the result next time. Now here is the challenge. Both examples we saw used the Flickr API. Could you write code for a different API provider that does the same thing? Remember that you have to pick a data provider that offers feeds in JSONP if you want to avoid dealing with the same origin policy.

Here are a few providers you might want to check out. They all offer their data feeds in JSONP.

First, find out what data URLs you can use to get JSONP responses. Then write several lines of codes in JS and JQuery to process and display the data in the way you like in your own webpage. You may end up with some googling and research while you are at it.

Here are a few tips that will help you along the way:

  • Verify the data feed URL to see if you are getting the right JSONP responses. Just type the source url into the browser window and see if you get something like this.
  • Get the Firebug for debugging if you don’t already have it.
  • Use the Firebug’s NET panel to see if you are receiving the data OK.
  • Use the Console panel for debugging. The part of data that you want to pick up may be in several levels deep. So it is useful to know if you are getting the right item first before trying to manipulate it.

Happy Coding! See the following screenshots for the Firebug NET panel and Console panel. (Click the images to see the bigger and clearer version.) Don’t forget to share your completed project in the comments section as well as any questions, comments, advice, suggestions!

Net panel in Firebug

 

Console panel in Firebug

Why Gamify and What to Avoid in Library Gamification

In my last post, “Applying Game Dynamics to Library Services,” I presented several ideas for applying game dynamics to library services. After the post, I have received a comment like this, which I thought worthwhile to further explore.

  • What about the risk of gamification – the fact that it can deprive people of internal motivation for serious activities by offering superficial external rewards?

We tend to associate the library with learning, research, scholarship, and something serious. By contrast, games make us think of fun. For this reason, it is natural to worry about a library or any library-related activities such as reading, studying, researching becoming frivolous and trivial by gamification. In an effort to address this concern, I will point out that (a) gamification is a society-wide trend (and as such, highly likely to become not so frivolous after all), (b) what to avoid in gamifying libraries, and (c) what the limit of gamification is in this post. The key to successful gamification is to harness its impressive power while being fully aware of its limit so that you won’t overestimate what you can achieve with it.

Why gamify?
SCVNGR plans to create a game platform as Facebook built a social platform.

Gamification is not just a hot topic in libraries or higher education. It is a much bigger society-wide trend. In a similar way in which Facebook has evolved from a single website to practically ‘the’ social platform and layer of the real world with over 900 million active users as of May 2012, now a game layer is slowly being built on top of the real world. Just as the social layer effectively fused social elements into the world, the game layer brings gaming elements into reality. A game layer that we can compare to Facebook has not yet emerged. Nor is clear how far gamification will penetrate our daily activities. But we can imagine what a semi-universal social platform is going to be like from location-based smartphone apps such as Foursquare and Gowalla. Instead of building a virtual world for a game, these apps gamify the real world. Our mundane everyday activities in the non-game context turn into gaming opportunities for rewards like badges, points, rankings, and statuses.

But why apply game design elements to the non-game context in the first place? The short answer is that people are more motivated, engaged, and often achieve more in games than in the real world. Why are people better at a game than in real life? It is because games offer an environment intentionally designed to provide people with optimal experience by means of various gaming mechanisms and dynamics. Games make people perform better in the way the real world does not. It was in this context that a game designer and game studies researcher, Jane McGonigal, stated that reality is broken.”1 Gamification aims at extracting those game mechanisms and apply them to reality in order to make the real world experience more interesting and engaging.

Gabe Zichermann’s definition of gamificaion as “the process of game-thinking and game mechanics to engage users and solve problems” expresses the goal of gamification well.2 In this definition lies a good answer to the question of why libraries need to pay attention to games and game dynamics. Game dynamics can raise library users’ level of engagement with library resources, programs, and services. They can help library users to solve problems more effectively and quickly by making the process fun. A good example of such gamification is the NCSU Mobile Scanvenger Hunt, which was described in the previous post here in ACRL TechConnect blog.

What to avoid in library gamification

Since games can induce strong motivation and spur a high level of productivity, it is easy to overestimate the power of game dynamics. Perhaps, everything we do will turn into a game one day and we will be the slaves of omnipresent games that demand ever more motivation and productivity than we can summon! However, not all games are fun or worth playing. Designing good game experiences is nothing but easy.

The first thing to avoid in gamification is poor gamification. Gamification can easily backfire if it is poorly designed. Creating a library game or gamifying certain aspects of a library doesn’t guarantee that it will be successful with its target group. Games that are too challenging or too boring are both poorly designed games. Naturally, it is much more difficult to design and create a good game than a bad one. The quality of the game – i.e. how fun it is – can make or break your library’s gamification project.

Second, one can over-gamify and make everything into a game. This is quite unlikely to happen at a library. But it is still important to remember that people’s attention is limited in amount. The more information we have to process and digest, the scarcer our attention becomes. If a library offers many different games or a variety of gamified experiences all at once, users may become overwhelmed and tired. For this reason, in pioneering the application of game dynamics to libraries, the best approach might be to start small and simple.

Third, a game that is organization-centered rather than user-centered can be worse than no game at all. A game with organization-centered design uses external rewards to increase the organization’s bottom line in the short term.3 Games designed this way attempt to control behavior with rewards. Once users feel the game is playing them rather than they are playing the game, however, they are likely to have a negative feeling towards the game and the organization. While a library doesn’t have the goal of maximizing profits like a business, which can easily drive a business to lean towards organization-centered gamification, it is entirely possible for a library to design a game that is too heavily focused on the educational aspect of the game, for example. Such gamification is likely to result in lukewarm responses from library patrons if what they are looking for is fun more than anything else. This doesn’t mean that gamification cannot make a significant contribution to learning. It means that successful gamification should bring out learning as a natural by-product of pleasant and fun experiences, not as a forced outcome.

Harnessing the power of game dynamics

Games are played for fun, and the fun comes from their being ‘not’ real life where one’s action comes with inconvenient real-world consequences. For this reason, when a goal other than fun is imposed on it, the game begins to lose its magical effect on motivation and productivity.  It is true that games can achieve amazing things. For example, the game FoldIt revealed the structure of a specific protein that long eluded biochemists.4 But people played this game not because the result would be revolutionary in science but because it was simply fun to play.

It is probably unrealistic to think that every task and project can be turned into a fun game. However, games can be used to make not-so-fun work into something less painful and even enjoyable to some degree, particularly when we lack motivation. In his book, Game Frame, Aaron Dignan cites the story of tennis player Andre Agassi.5 Agassi played a mental game of imagining the tennis ball machine as a black dragon spitting balls in an attempt to smite him. He did not hit 2,500 balls a day purely because it was fun. But by making the grueling practice into a game in his mind and tying the game with his own real-life goal of becoming a successful tennis player, he was able to endure the training and make the progress he needed.

In applying game dynamics to library services and programs, we can take either of two approaches:

  1. The ultimate goal can be simply having fun in some library-related context. There is nothing wrong with this, and at minimum, it will make the library a more friendly and interesting place to patrons.
  2. Or, we can utilize game dynamics to transform a more serious task or project (such as learning how to cite literature for a research paper) into something less painful and even enjoyable.

 

Gamification with little investment
Budge, a gamification website

Gamification is still a new trend. A pioneering gamification app, Gowalla lost to Foursquare in competition and was acquired by Facebook last December, and it is yet to be seen how Facebook will put Gowalla to use. Another gamification tool, Budge is closing down at the end of this month. For this reason, those who are interested in trying a gamification project at a library may wonder if the result will be worth investment.

In this early stage of gamification, it will be useful to remember that gamification doesn’t necessarily require complicated technology or huge investment. For example, you can run a successful game in your library instruction class with a pencil and paper. How about rewarding your library patrons who write to your library’s Facebook page and get most “likes” by other patrons? Or perhaps, a library can surprise and delight the first library patron who checks in your library’s Foursquare or Yelp page by offering a free coffee coupon at the library coffeeshop or simply awarding the Early-Bird badge? In gamification, imagination and creativity can go a long way.

What are your gamification ideas that can engage library patrons and enliven their library experience without huge investment? Share them with us here!

Notes
  1. Jane McGonigal. Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World.  (New York: Penguin Press, 2011), 3. ↩
  2. Gabe Zichermann and Christopher Cunningham. Gamification by Design: Implementing Game Mechanics in Web and Mobile Apps. (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2011), xiv. ↩
  3.  The distinction between games with organization-centered design vs. those with user-centered is from Scott Nicholson, “A User-Centered Theoretical Framework for Meaningful Gamification,” (pre-print) http://scottnicholson.com/pubs/meaningfulframework.pdf. ↩
  4. Elizabeth Armstrong Moore, “Foldit Game Leads to AIDS Research Breakthrough.” CNET, Sep. 19, 2011, http://news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-20108365-247/foldit-game-leads-to-aids-research-breakthrough/. ↩
  5. Aaron Dignan, Game Frame: Using Games as a Strategy for Success, (New York: Free Press, 2011), 80. ↩

Applying Game Dynamics to Library Services

There is a lot of talk about games at libraries. Public libraries in particular have been active in incorporating games in their programs and collections. Even for academic libraries, gaming is no longer a foreign topic. The 2012 Horizon Report sees Game-Based Learning to be on the 2-3 years horizon for adoption. That is not a very long time away from the present.

I am not going to talk about games here, of which I am a rather poor player in general. Instead, I would like to talk about game dynamics and how they can be applied to library services. I am really late for writing about this idea, which I heard about a few years ago. But probably now is as good a time as any as the Horizon Report this year mentions gaming.

A light bulb in my head lit up when I listened to the TED talk, “The game layer on top of the world” by Seth Priebatsch during my commute. (See the video below.) There, he talks about the game layer as something that is being built now after the social layer that Facebook has pretty much established. Just as the social layer has fundamentally changed the mode of human interaction and the way of our lives as a result, Priebatsch sees a similar potential in the game layer.

What has attracted my attention in this talk about the game layer was not so much the game per se as the impressive power the game dynamics wield to human beings.  Once you hear those examples of the game dynamics, their impact is immediately obvious. But until now, I haven’t had a conscious understanding about how successful well-designed games can be at providing people with such engaging and immersive experience.

According to Priebatsch, among those game dynamics are: (a) appointment dynamic, (b) influence & status, (c) progress dynamic, and (d) communal discovery. (He says that there are three more but he only mentions four in the talk.) Since he details what each of these dynamics mean in the talk below with clear examples, I am not going to repeat the explanation.

Seth Priebatsch: The game layer on top of the world

To simply put, these game dynamics are very powerful motivators for human action. Did you know that Farmville can change the behavior pattern of over 70 million people by simply changing a rule for how often a Farmville user needs to water the crop? The power of these game dynamics stems from the fact that they require meeting relatively simple conditions in return for attainable rewards. Games usually begin with simple tasks that award you with some goods and elevation in your status or level. Then gradually, the tasks become complicated for more challenging rewards. The game dynamics drive game players to plan and perform simple to complicated actions. These often motivate individuals to exert a significant level of diligence, creativity, and resourcefulness.

What is really cool about these game dynamics is that they are applicable to any human action in the real world, and not just in the gaming world. Sure, you can create a game to tap into people’s creativity and diligence. (In another TED talk, “Gaming can make a better world,” Jane McGonigal explores the possibility of harnessing the human energy and creativity spent on gaming to solve the real-world problems. See the video below.) But, you do not have to. You can just as easily embed these game dynamics outside the traditional game sphere. These dynamics tend to be quite effectively utilized in games. But they do not have to be restricted to online games.

So my question is whether these game dynamics can be applied to make library services more engaging and interesting to library users? Can libraries take advantage of these game dynamics to help library users to attain the goals that they themselves probably want to reach but often fail to? 

Here are some of my thought-experiments applying game dynamics to library services.

  1. Provide level-up experience for library users.
    Suppose your user logs into a library proxy system every time for browsing library’s databases, e-books, and e-journals. How about based upon the time spent and the number and frequency of log-ins, allowing the user to level up from ‘novice library user’ to ‘super researcher’?  Of course, you would probably want to use way more appealing terms such as “Paladin level 20 Killer Ninja Researcher” instead of “Super Researcher.”
  2. Award some status and powers associated with library use that can be admired (with the addition of visible tokens for them).
    Allow users to tweet, Facebook, and G+ their updated status and powers as they level up, so that it can be boasted to others. Status and power is meaningless unless it is looked up to by others in one’s own community. How about re-issuing library cards as in Judo with some sort of belt system: red belt, black belt, brown belt, white belt etc.? Add up some sleek mini-posters that celebrate some of those high belt status in the library space where everybody can see. Or even better something users can boast in their Facebook pages. It might just work to motivate library users to study more, read more, and research more.
  3. Show the progress bar in library catalog.
    The progress bar makes you goal-oriented. It gives you satisfaction whenever you move the bar one notch to the right. It makes you feel that you are moving towards something good. Why not show the progress bar in the library OPAC? If a user run a search, show the progress! If a user selects a record in the search results, move one notch up in the progress bar. If s/he clicks holdings or the links in the record, how about showing the Happy Face or a Dancing Penguin for a second before moving on? Humans have such a soft spot for positive feedback that if a required action is simple and easy enough, they might just do it for fun.
  4. Color-code the status of checked-out books.
    In the library’s “My Account” page, mark past-due books as red and newly checked-out books as green. Items that are about the midway of the check-out period can be in yellow. Or show it as an hourglass that loses its sand on the top part as you pass the due date of library books. This may make people more compelled to return the overdue items.
  5. Library currency to accumulate and spend?
    Let users to boast taking out and returning books from the library to others.  Maybe give them points per transaction? Social reading is already a big phenomenon. Combined with a library, it can create even more fun experience.  Maybe it can be just like Gowalla or Foursquare. Maybe users can trace their reading history and find others with a similar reading pattern. How about letting library users to accumulate and spend library points (or currency) for coffee at a library cafe? Now some students may seriously start reading.

Game dynamics are significant because they can be used to build a foundation for our willing participation in a project for our own optimum performance.  Libraries have been an indispensable means for individuals who aspire for learning, experience, and knowledge, and serving those individuals has been always a crucial mission of libraries. Game dynamics can be utilized to help libraries to serve such mission more effectively.

PS. Also check out the talk below by Jane McGonigal about her explanation regarding why people are so much more successful at games than at the real life and how we may perhaps harness that potential to solve the real life problems.

Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world

 

Big Type and Readability

The Big Type

Jeffrey Zeldman published a post that explains his choice of big type in his website/blog last week. If you are curious about how huge the type is in his site, see below my screenshot (or visit his site: http://zeldman.com). It is pretty big. Compare it to any Web site or this current site of mine. Yea, the type is huge.

zeldman.com

He says people either hate or love the big type and the simplistic/minimalist layout of his site or just spends time processing them. I found myself loving it because hey, it was so fr**king easy to read without any other distraction in the site. As Zeldman himself says, “It’s over the top but not unusable nor, in my opinion, unbeautiful.” And in my opinion, being fully functional counts to a great degree in favor of beauty.

Readability

The strange satisfaction that I felt while reading the articles in his site set in the big type has led me to realize how hard it is to read the main content of any common web page. It is usually so hard that the first thing I do before reading any Web page is to increase the font size inside a Web browser (thereby also removing the top navigation and all other things on both sides except the main content out of my sight). Sometimes, I also use the ‘Print’ preview, just to read, not to print anything (since this removes all ads and images etc.). Also handy is a plugin like Readability. Zeldman’s site was the first site where none of these actions was necessary.

The Web design convention with must-have items such as a top navigation, header image, navigation on the left, ads and numerous links on the right forces us to take out those very items by manually manipulating the browser in order to make the main content simply readable! This is an irony that is more than fully appreciated by those who build and manage Web sites in particular. We (the universal we as Web workers) follow the convention as something canonical because we want to build a Web site that is usable and pleasant to interact with. But while interacting with any such conventional site, our own behavior reveals that we try to eliminate those very canonical elements.

It’s not that we can or should eliminate right away all those conventional items. They are useful for various purposes. But the point is that no matter how useful they are, those things are also great distractions in reading. In a Web site or a page where reading is the primary activity, the readability of its content is a greater problem than other sites or pages. Zeldman’s Big Type experiment would be simply bizarre if it is applied without any modification to, say, the WSJ homepage. But it probably is not a bad idea to apply it to an individual article page in the WSJ Web site.

Zeldman’s experimental design with the big type reminds me of what the application, Flipboard, does. (See below the demo video if you are not familiar with the Flipboard app.) It strips off elements that are distracting to reading and re-formats the page in a way that is attractive and functional. Where the design fails to help one to read a Web page, an app comes to rescue.

Now you may ask how all these relate to libraries. My question is: (a) how much of the main function of a library Web site is reading, and how much is not, (b) what parts of a library Web site is to be read and not, and (c) how we can balance and facilitate those different uses of a library Web site. Rarely a Web site is designed solely for reading, but reading is an important part of almost always a certain section of any Web site. So this is an issue that is worth thinking about and matters to not only library Web sites but also any other Web site. Just asking these questions could be a good step towards making your Web pages more usable.

In the next post, I will discuss how we read on the Web and how to design and serve the content for the Web in a user-friendly manner.

When Browsing Becomes Confusing

During the  usability testing I ran a while ago, there was one task that quite baffled at least one participant. I will share the case with you in this post.  The task given to the usability testing participant was this: “You would like to find out if the library has a journal named New England Journal of Medicine online.”

The testing begins at the Florida International University Medical library website, which has a search box with multiple tabs. As you can see below, one of the tabs is E-Journals. Most of the users selected the E-Journals tab and typed in the journal title. This gave them a satisfactory answer right away.  But a few took a different path, and this approach revealed something interesting about browsing the library’s e-journals in the E-Journal portal site which is a system separate from the library’s website.

Browsing for a Specific E-Journal

1. In the case I observed, a student selected the link ‘Medical E-journals’ in the library homepage above instead of using the search box. The student was taken to the E-Journal Portal site, which also presents a search box where one can type in a journal title. But the student opted to browse and clicked ‘N.’

2. The student was given the following screen after clicking ‘N.’ He realized that that there are lots of e-journals whose title begins with ‘N’ and clicked ‘Next.’

3.  The site presented him with the following screen. At this point, he expressed puzzlement at what happened after the click. The screen appeared to him the same as before. He could not tell what his click did to the screen. So he clicked ‘Next’ again.

4. He was still baffled at first and then gave up browsing. The student typed in a journal title in the search box instead and got the match.

Lessons Learned

A couple of things were learned from observing this case.

  • First, this case shows that some people prefer browsing to searching even when the search could be much faster and the search box is clearly visible.
  • Second, a click needs to create a visible change to prevent a user’s frustration.
  • Third, what is a visible and discernible change may well be different to different people.

The first is nothing new. We know that some users prefer to search while some prefer to browse. So both features – search and browse – in a Web site should work intuitively. In this example, the E-Journal portal has a good search feature but shows some confusing aspect in browsing. I found the change from step 2 to 3 and step 3 to 4 somewhat baffling just as the student who participated in the usability testing did. I could not discern the difference from step 2 to 3 and step 3 to 4 right away. Although I was familiar with the E-Journal portal, I was not aware of this issue at all until I saw a person actually attempting to get to New England Journal of Medicine by browsing only because I myself have always used the search feature in the past.

But, when I showed this case to one of my colleagues, she said the change of the screens shown above was clear to her. She did not share the same level of confusion that the student experienced. Also, once I had figured out what the difference in each step, I could no longer experience the same confusion either. So how confusing this browsing experience can vary. I will go over the process one more time below and point out why this browsing process could be confusing to some people.

The student had difficulty in perceiving the change from step 2 to 3.  The screen in step 3 appeared to him to have unchanged from step 2. The same for the screen in step 3. from step 4.  Actually, there was a change. It was just hard to notice to the student and was something different from what he expected. What the system does when a user clicks ‘Next,’ is to move from the first item on the sub-list under N to the second item (N&H-Nai -> NAJ-Nan) and then again from the second item to the third item (NAJ-Nan -> Nat-Nat). This, however, did not match what the student expected. He thought the ‘Next’ link would bring up the sub-list beginning with the  next of the last entry, ‘Nat-Nat,’ not the next of the currently selected entry. The fact that the sub-list shows many ‘Nat-Nat’s also confused him. (This is likely to be because the system is bundling 50 e-journals and then extract the first three letters of the first and last journal in the bundle to create items on the sub-list.)   A user sees the last item on the sub-list in step 3 and 4. stay the same ‘Nat-Nat’ and wonders whether his clicking ‘Next’ had any effect.

Making browsing a large number of items user-friendly is a challenge. The more items there are to browse, the more items the system should allow a user to skip at once.  This will help a user to get to the item s/he is looking for more quickly. Also, when there are many items to browse, a user is likely to look for the second and third category to zoom in on the item s/he is looking for. Faceted browsing/search is an effective way to organize a large number of items so that people can quickly drill down to a sub-category of things which they are interested in. Many libraries now use a discovery system over an OPAC (online public access catalog) to provide such faceted browsing/search. In this case, for example, allowing a user to select the second letter of the item after selecting the first instead of trudging through each bundle of fifty journal titles would expedite the browsing significantly.

What other things can you think of to improve the browsing experience in this E-Journal portal? Do you have any Web site where you can easily and quickly browse a large number of items?

 

** Below  are the screens with the changes marked in red for your review:

2′.


3′.

4′.

 

 

Making Library e-Books on the e-Book Reader Visible

Browsing Experience in the Virtual vs. the Physical Space

However entangled our lives are in virtual spaces, it is in the physical space that we exist. For this reason, human attention is most easily directed at where visual and other sensory stimuli are. The resulting sensory feedback from interacting with the source of these stimuli further enriches the experience we have in the physical space. Libraries can take advantage of this fact in order to bring users’ fleeting attention to their often-invisible online collections. So far, our experience on the Internet, where we spend so much time, is still mostly limited to one or two sensory stimuli and provides little or no sensory feedback. A library’s online resources, often touted for its 24/7 accessibility anywhere, are no exception to this limitation.

Flickr - "augmented reality game bibliotheek deventer"

Think about new library books, for example. The print ones are usually prominently displayed at a library lobby area attracting library visitors to walk up and browse them in the physical space. By thumbing through a new book and moving back and forth from the table of contents to different chapters, we can quickly get a sense of what kind of a book it is and decide whether we want to further read the book or not. The tactile, olfactory, visual, and auditory sensory input that we get from thumbing through a newly printed book with fresh ink contributes to making this experience enjoyable and memorable at the same time.

Now compare this experience with reading a library Web page with the list of new online library books on a computer screen. Each book is reduced to a string of words and a hyperlink. It is hard to provide any engaging experience with a string of words and a hyperlink.

The Invisibility Problem of Library e-Books

Like many libraries, Florida International University (FIU) Library started an e-book reader lending program that circulates e-book readers. Each reader comes with more than one hundred titles that have been selected by subject librarians. But how can a library make these library e-books on e-book readers noticed by library users? How can a library help a user to quickly figure out what books are available on, say, a library Kindle device when those are specifically what the user is looking for?

Well, if a user runs a keyword search in the library’s online catalog, say, with ‘Kindle,’  s/he will find more than sufficient information since the library has already neatly cataloged all titles available on the Kindle device there. But many users may fail to try this or even be unaware of the new e-book reader lending program in the first place. The e-book reader lending program offers a great service to library users. However, the library e-books offered on the e-book readers can be largely invisible to users who tend to think that what they can see in a library is all a library has.

Giving Physical Presence to Library e-Books on e-Book Readers

The problem can be solved by giving some physical presence to e-books on the library’s e-book readers using a dummy bookmark on the stacks. This is particularly effective as it quickly captures users’ attention while they are already browsing the library stacks looking for something to read.

Users are familiar with a dummy book on physical shelves that marks a print title that is often looked for under different names or the recent change of the location of a title. Applied to Kindle e-books, a dummy bookmark is just as effective. A user can walk around the space where stacks are located and physically identify those e-books that the library makes available on a e-book reader in each subject section. By a visible cue, a dummy bookmarks create a direct sensory association between an e-book and something physical (that provides a visible and tactile feedback) in a user’s mind, thereby effectively expanding a users’ idea of what is available at a library.

When you pull out the bookmark, it looks like this. The bookmark includes the book’s cover image, title, author, and call number, which help a user to locate the title record in the library’s online catalog. But in reality, users are more likely to just walk down to the Course Reserves area to check out an e-book reader after reading this sign.

I tweeted this photo a while ago when I accidentally found out the idea was implemented while looking for some book in the stacks. (See the disclaimer below.)  I was quite surprised by many positive comments that I received in Twitter. Many librarians also suggested adding a QR code to the dummy bookmark next to the Call Number. The addition of the QR code would be an excellent bonus on the bookmark. It will allow users to check the availability of the title on their mobile devices, so that they can avoid the situation in which the e-book and the e-book reader device have been already checked out.

If you are running a pricy e-book reader lending program at your library, a dummy bookmark might be an inexpensive but highly effective way to make those e-books stand out to users on the library stacks. What other things do you do at your library to make your online resources and e-books more visible to users?

Disclaimer: I have suggested this idea at the E-resources group meeting where all FIU libraries (including Medical Library where I work) are represented. But the implementation was done solely by the FIU main Library for their Kindle e-book collection on their stacks. For those who are curious, I was unable to find the exact number of dummy bookmarks on the stacks.