The New York Times article, “The Coming Data Explosion” that ran on May 31 reports the coming data explosion that will result from the Internet of Things. The article also talks about “a sensor revolution”  quoting Marissa Mayer: “today’s phones are almost like people,” in that they have senses such as eyes (a camera), ears (a microphone) and skin (a touch screen).”  The result of ubiquitous smartphone use is that more and more data will be uploaded and made available to the web. Remember all the photos you take with your cellphone and upload to  TwitPic, pictures you draw with your fingers and post to Flickr, and video recordings  you make and upload to Facebook?  If you thought that was cool, now wait until you see a nanosensor that can sense all of these below.

* Vibration
* Tilt
* Rotation
* Navigation
* Sound
* Air flow
* Light
* Temperature
* Biological
* Chemical
* Humidity
* Pressure
* Location

With this kind of a nanosensor, your cellphone is also a thermostat, GPS, air flow detector, molecule reader, etc.  Can you imaging what kinds of applications will come out taking advantage of this type of nanosensors that detect multiple senses?  I have previously posted on this blog about a cool medical iPhone/iTouch app called Pocket CPR that gives you immediate sensory feedback to a CPR procedure you perform holding your mobile device. If I am pressing a patient’s heart not fast enough, it will tell me to go faster; if I am not pressing hard enough, it will tell me to do so. Even though this app is pretty rudimentary utilizing only the simple movements of up-and-down and the speed of a device, there is something marvelous about it. I think that is because the way the device is used in this case offers us experience that is entirely new to us.

The sensor revolution has the potential of transforming a mobile device into a de facto default device for our day-to-day interaction with the web.

I have heard about Joomla before but never tried.  I heard a lot about Drupal and WordPress at library conferences but not so much about Joomla.

Well, I spent a few days – three days to be exact – working with a Joomla site, and I am very much impressed.  Joomla is easy to learn, and I love the fact that it comes with so many useful modules which can be configured and used pretty much out of the box.  There are also many free template extensions that can be directly plugged in to create a nice web site.  I picked a template and an extension for the banner image, installed and configured the settings, did some CSS editing to customize the overall style of the site, added a bunch of pages with lorem-ipsum content, activated a couple of useful modules such as breadcrumb and footer.  That’s pretty much all I have done and Ta-da!

I am a web admin at work but we don’t use a CMS.  Now if we ever migrate the site to a CMS, I will shout for Joomla.  If you are looking for a content management system (CMS) that is free and easy-to-use, Joomla is definitely something to consider.  Interested?  Check out the Showcase of the library Websites built with Joomla.

(This is the site I have worked on, which is still in progress: https://library.hsc.usf.edu/scmla/)

So to cut to the chase, this is how it looks. My iPad.

I think I am relatively happy with it although I am not sure how successful it would be as a eBook reader and a PDF reading device, which are the features that I was most looking forward to test.  Actually, now that I have spent two days with it, I think I will use the iPad more for watching TV shows/movies (Surprise I rarely watch videos on the computer!) and surfing online. I am not sure if I will use the iPad for any type of serious work other than PDF reading.  But the App Store is showing all three productivity apps for the iPad with very high ratings.  So I am holding my judgment on this.

The iPad is not as light as I would like, but about half the weight of my small netbook, which can make a big difference when you are traveling.  It seems to be pretty sturdy but the screen is very glossy and gets a lot of glare used outdoors or under direct lighting.  It is quite fast and the battery seems to last long enough to last the working hours from 8/9 to 5 without recharging. The screen keyboard is usable when the iPad is in a horizontal position but is too sensitive. Lots of typos ensued when I tried to type. The keyboard inputs letters every time the fingers brush on it.  Personally, I am very much bummed about the fact that iPad doesn’t support as many international keyboards as the iPhone does. What this means to me is that I can’t write emails and create documents in Korean.  Although this may be a feature that is not widely used, the ease of switching keyboards for different languages was one of the features that distinguished Macs from PCs.

I don’t think the iPad will replace my smartphone.  Checking emails, Twitter, my calendar, to-do-list, making short notes, taking photos and videos will still be the tasks I perform mostly on my smartphone when I am not using an iPad already for something else.  But then there is a chance that I may use the iPad a lot.  Iin that case, I will perform these tasks on the iPad rather than on my smartphone.  It is to be seen later.

So the question boils down to this: would it be a good reading device?  Depending on that, I may or may not carry my iPad around.

First Impression

Yes, you can see your finger prints all over when the light hits the screen. I took it out to the outside. Under the daylight sun, I could see my face and background reflected as if it were a black mirror. The iPad in a box comes with a power code/plug, a tiny little instruction, and nothing else. Not even a cheap wiping cloth.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with my iPad.  My plan was to think about it once it arrives.  Well, I had a very difficult time to get it to work and had to spent hours grumbling.  As soon as I unboxed the shiny new iPad, of course I plugged right into the power outlet thinking it will work automatically. It didn’t. Instead, it showed the sign that I have to hook it up to iTunes first. The instruction also said that I should first download the latest version of iTunes. This took a very long time. Finally, I was done, I hooked up my iPad.  I only got an error message saying an iPad requires Mac OS leopard or higher.  I got only Tiger on my Mac desktop and haven’t updated it.  Wouldn’t it have been so nice if Apple put that on the instruction sheet? So I took out my Mac laptop (I know I just have so many computers), which has Leopard, downloaded iTunes again and hooked it up. It worked.

But if the iPad is going to work for grandmas and grandpas, they will definitely need some help from their granddaughters and grandsons.

IPad as a Movie player: Thumbs Up

It is quite accurate to think that an iPad is a big iPhone with limited functionalities but with a bigger screen.  Initially my response to an iPad was lukewarm.  It didn’t seem to do anything special that I couldn’t do with my iPhone and a netbook.  Well, that was my thought until I downloaded the ABC player app and watched a few episodes of FlashForward and Modern Family.  IPad rocks as a video player.  The screen is awesome for playing a video and the lack of keyboard is a huge advantage in this type of use. I could watch a TV episode lying down on the couch holding it against a cushion. It gets a bit heavy on the wrist after a while, and you may want a holder.  But there is no sitting required to watch a video when you use an iPad.  This was something I didn’t think that I would use an iPad for.  I was impressed how well it works as a video player.  The Apple store is also selling a VGA cable to connect an iPad to a TV.  I am not sure if it can transfer the audio as well as the video.  But I think I may also try that in the future. Try the Netflix app and the ABC player app for this if you have an iPad already.

The only issue I found in video viewing was the shiny surface.  The touchscreen is the best if it is used indoors without direct lighting that will cause annoying glare.

For videos that are online, however, the iPad is unable to play any Flash files although it plays MPEG4 files well.

IPad as an eBook Reader: Better but…

I wasn’t terribly impressed by iBooks, which comes with one free book, Winnie the Pooh. (There are more you can download.)   There was the obvious advantage of having a larger screen and being a tablet rather than a computer with a keyboard.  But I could not zoom in and out freely in iBooks as I did using Safari.  IBooks only offer two font sizes.  Also, as a reading screen, an iPad is no different from a computer screen except that its surface gets a lot of glare which would make lunchtime reading outdoors challenging.  The iPad screen doesn’t use the e-Ink technology, as many noted, and so, is hard on the eyes for prolonged reading.  The iPad also seems to lack the accessibility feature of reading out the content of an ebook in iBooks or of a web page in Safari like the iPhone 3GS (although I am not 100% sure). The iPad also is equipped with much-touted iPhone OS’ accessibility features that allow zooming in and out of the screen itself rather than the fonts and make the content on the web read aloud.  In order to use this features, one has to go to the Accessibility tab on the Settings.  Make sure to double-tap with three fingers when you want to return to the normal screen after you turn on the zoom function.

IBooks also doesn’t allow highlighting and notes-adding feature that the Kindle iPad app offers.  And finding a free eBook for iBooks is not as intuitive as it could be. (One needs to go to the App Store first. )  I liked the dictionary function of iBooks a lot but was disappointed that there was no way to use the dictionary as a stand-alone app to look up whatever word I would like.  I thought this was very odd.  Overall, I was more impressed with the Classics app on the iPhone, which is pretty much identical with iBook except that iBooks lacks the page-turning sound (again, such a shame! the sound makes a big difference).

The iPad hasn’t yet changed my preference for reading a book in paper whenever possible.  I think eBook readers have still a long way to go to become even a remote competitor with books in paper.

IPad as a PDF reader: Promising but Awaiting Better Apps…

Reading PDF files is one of the big reasons that made me to get an iPad.  But in order to do that, you need to get an app.  The iPad allows you to read PDF files online but not to download them on the iPad, which seems to me to be ridiculous.  I purchased GoodReader which allows syncing with Dropbox, Google Docs, Box.net, etc.  It also allows you to directly search and download PDFs onto iPad from the web.

But I realized that in order for me to save trees, I need to be able to annotate on the PDF files that I read.  So I got iAnnotate for that purpose.  Both apps work well, and iAnnotate also supports downloading the annotated pdf file back to the computer although I have not tried this yet.  The only issue with iAnnotate is that it doesn’t sync with Dropbox or Google Docs and you have to manually  upload documents to the iAnnotate application on your computer.  I am hoping that iAnnotate adds the sync feature with Dropbox in the future.

I haven’t read much yet on iAnnotate nor GoodReader. But so far it seems to be promising.  And if I can get most of my PDF readings done on the iPad rather than printing them out on the papers or reading in front of my computers, it would be a huge benefit for me.  Just to store and read PDF files, the Evernote app also does a great job. This app is free and allows voice recording as well as creating notes. (This is how I found out that the iPad comes with a mic but there was no Voice Memos app on the default screen.  I realized that in order to use the built-in mic, one needs to go to the Apple App store and download Voice Memos for iPad. This app is free. I think in the future, Apple may add more default apps to the iPad.)

IPad for Online Reading: Excellent

While the iPad is so-so as an ebook reader and it is yet to be seen if it will be good for PDF reading/annotating, it works quite well for online surfing and casual reading onthe web. The USA Today app almost makes you feel as if you were reading a newspaper in paper again.  The BBC News app allows one to easily browse news and plays video in a news article.

IPad as a Gaming Device: Promising

I have only tried Scrabble on the iPad, but I think gaming on the iPad will be quite cool since it will provide a larger screen to fill with images and may well provide a more intuitive control for games. I think it would be addictive if a good role-playing game comes out for the iPad but any simple games will be fun as well.

Overall

I think that overall the iPad is an interesting device and that the large part of its success will depend on the apps that can take advantage of the unique features of this device.  I am disappointed, however, to find that Apple is offering a lesser version of the iPhone OS for the iPad with the limited number of international keyboards.

As also noted by many, the way Apple designed the iPad to run the silos of applications that do not talk to each other becomes glaringly annoying as one needs to save multiple copies of one and the same file to use it for different applications.  One copy for iAnnotate. Another copy of the same file for GoodReader. You get the idea of how inefficient and stupid this is.  The iPad also makes it a huge pain to import and export any files.  Why no way to exchange files directly between at least the iPad and the iPhone?

I am not going to even bother with commenting on the lack of built-in camera, which is obviously an intentional omission by Apple. (See  WePad for example, which runs Flash, comes with USB ports, a built-in web cam, an inbuilt card reader and expandable memory.)

Lastly, it will be interesting to see how publishers and news media will provide content to the iPad users. Already the TIME magazine packaged their weekly magazine as an individual app and priced it for $4.99 in the App Store.  This caused a lot of complaints from users who didn’t realize that they were purchasing only one weekly magazine.  The Wall Street Journal app also requires its users to create an account even for free content, which I found to be annoying and disturbing.

I felt funny realizing that what was a burning question to me only about four months ago seemed already close to some distant memory.  The presentation was part of my efforts to make sense of the challenges and difficulties I have encountered at my work as a new solo web librarian at a small academic library.  I was feeling overwhelmed because I was fully aware of many innovative things I wanted to try, but also there was a very clear limit to what I could do in reality.  Also I was somewhat depressed by the fact that some really awesome things other libraries were doing couldn’t be done for various reasons related to limited resources, funding, staff, etc.

Does the fact that I almost forgot about the presentation mean that I came to some kind of  conclusion on that topic?  Well, probably not.  I think it would be more accurate to say that I have rather gotten used to my environment.

However, now that I look back, I think I learned something about patience in getting things done.  Trying new things requires dealing with some procedures and forming a teamwork  whether it is with some university offices or within one’s organization.  Inevitably, it takes time and efforts – sometimes in a seemingly inexplicably large sum.  Unfortunately, there is no real shortcut in dealing with all the steps whether it is bureaucracy or paperwork.  So what becomes quite important is, more often than not, persistence.

Persistence is also an important virtue and one of the most valuable weapon in a solo web-services librarian’s arsenal.  I mentioned in the presentation that almost everything technology-related becomes the responsibilities of web-services librarian in a small library. So, it is unavoidable that things that need to be done pile up while one solo web-services librarian tries to get all the technology-related things requested as well as other things s/he deems to be important done.  Some of them cannot be done in the time frame desired and/or requested.  Some of them have to go down on the priority list, so that more important things, which keep popping up anew, can be taken care of. But if there are things that need to be done whether it is next month or next season, they have to stay on the list and a solo web-services librarian needs to find time for those.  This sometimes requires persuading others and enlisting their help.

Oh, and resourcefulness. That probably would make another blog post. So I won’t talk about it here.

Another thing that I have learned since the presentation is that one library can’t do all and each library’s environment is unique.  This seems quite an obvious thing to say.  But still many times, libraries waste a lot of time trying to replicate what has been done successfully at other libraries without realizing that there are very different dynamics at work.  Particularly for small libraries, it only makes sense to focus a small number of things that they can excel at rather than spreading thin their resources and staff in many different things.

From time to time, I think I should remind myself of these new lessons I have learned, so that I won’t get unproductively frustrated or disappointed and stay positive and efficient at the same time.

The question which still remains in my mind as an unanswered question is how a solo web-services librarian should deal with necessary R&D.  Unlike at larger libraries where there are multiple programmers and a large IT staff for example, it is extremely difficult for a solo web-services librarian to engage in any productive and meaningful R&D activities because there are so many daily tasks to be handled that come before R&D.  (Also remember many of these librarians are trained first as librarians and not necessarily magical in programming and writing codes?)  On the other hand, without R&D, a solo web-services librarian is likely to be burned out and  get outdated at the same time.  Sadly, I don’t see any systematic support for R&D in small libraries.

This is probably not an issue that can be solved by a lay librarian nor at the scale of individual small libraries.  My hope is to see some larger agencies that  support continuing education/R&D for library technology staff – maybe funded by multiple libraries – and those libraries again committing themselves to allowing time for such continuing education for their technology staff.  Oh, well, wouldn’t that be nice?

For what it’s worth, here is my past presentation at OPAL. I am glad SlideShare sent me the notice. Otherwise I would have completely forgotten about all these questions.

OPAL Program Archive: http://www.opal-online.org/archivelis.htm (Sep. 17, 29009)

I had one of those with a to-do list. To-do list apps are essentially personal information management (PIM) systems. Because you carry your smart phone all the time and it is always on, a smart phone is an idea platform for a personal information management system such as a to-do list app. You may not be at your office or in front of your personal computer all the time. But a smart phone? That is always with you permanently powered on.

In addition, the push notification capability of a smart phone allows a to-do list app to remind you of your tasks without your making the effort of actually looking them up. This way, your tasks are guaranteed to appear on your peripheral vision whether you are remembering or not.

(Image from Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/koalazymonkey/3596829214/)

You would think that there would be many easy-to-use to-do list apps in the market. I also expected to find a reasonably good free app in this category because it is something that can be so useful for so many people. Nope. This wasn’t the case unless I give up the feature of a to-do app that initially made me realize how useful it could bee on my smart phone, i.e., push notification. Also, many To-do list apps had a user-interface that is truly far away from user-friendly.

If a to-do list app requires a user to select priority, folder, due date, reminder setting, due time, repeat setting in six different screens after entering the task name, certainly the user will abandon the system. Similarly, if entered tasks don’t send out a push notification, those tasks may never become visible in users’ peripheral vision. So, the value of the PIM system significantly decreases. Also, even a smart phone is not always looked at. Users may have a stretch of time during which they are paying more attention to their emails, Twitter, or calendar on their computers. So the integration with these channels in data-input and reminder-push would significant increase the worth of a PIM system. In addition, nobody wants to work in a hideous-looking interface. So the user interface should be not only functional and efficient but also aesthetically satisfying.

Many information systems can benefit from considering these factors to increase their chances of being adopted and continuously used by users. In today’s environment of constant information overload, attention is a scarce commodity and information organization is a critical activity. Many information systems will need to cater to information consumers’ needs of efficiently organizing their information. How many information management system do we see that succeeds in meeting all these requirements?

P.S.   A good article to read :
Jones, E., H. Bruce, et al. (2008) – I Give Up! Five Factors that Contribute to the Abandonment of Information Management Strategies. It lists visibility, integration, co-adoption, scalability, and return on investment as five factors that contribute to the abandonment of information system by users.

However, keeping it lively is much more difficult. How do you draw attention of library users to library’s social media accounts? How can a library provide the feeling that the library is there for you, its users? What it takes might be just the right amount of personal touch.

Jeff Swain recently wrote this blog post, “Thoughts on the CIC Tech Forum” which reflcts on this issue.  He says:

“So the question becomes, why should our audience care to follow us? And how do we stay connected with them through these medium? Do we make informal chit-chat or do we simply post official announcements? It’s not a simple question to answer.

I know I struggle with representing myself and my unit in these areas. When I joined Twitter and Facebook I joined as myself (Twitter: jeffswain; Facebook: Jeff Swain). Quickly I encountered the problem of separating my personal stuff from my work stuff. It all bleeds together in the either where everyone can connect. Now I also am the persona for our symposium and e-portfolio initiative. Well, how do I represent them? Is it strictly business or is it personal?”

I struggle with the same question as a librarian who maintains and updates various social media accounts.  How do you engage your audience? The whole point of having a library’s presence in social media is to interact with library users.  But most libraries use their social media tools as an one-way announcement mechanism. While it may work fine for library staff as an easy broadcasting mechanism, how do you ensure that those messages will capture the scarce attention of library users?

Image from https://blogs.psu.edu/mt4/mt-tb.cgi/94153

The problem is that people are much more interested in other people than in organizations, and in everyday miscellaneous stuff than in research and other library-related stuff. No matter how interesting library events are and how exciting new library databases can be, it just may not be interesting enough for library users to initiate a conversation with their library. Of course, there is an easy solution to this problem. Librarians can run library’s social media accounts as themselves with a little bit of personal voice added to them. But then, it seems that that is not quite a right thing to do because one individual cannot represent an organization properly.

While I am quite happy to babble about my daily activities in my personal Twitter account, I am often unsure about what to twitter for my library’s Twitter account. I don’t want to keep twittering about library events and research tools because I wonder that may simply bore my library users. But then what else can I twitter about that may be interesting to them without my personal interests mixed in? How should a library’s social media policy reflect address dilemma? What would users want from a library’s social media channels?

I wholeheartedly agree with these as a solo web services librarian. One of the challenges for solo web-services librarians is the scarcity of R&D time. It may be true that technologies are getting easier and cheaper all the time. But that doesn’t mean that there will be less things that the staff should learn and experiment with every day. Actually, more technologies usually require more human efforts for maintenance.

As a librarian who work in e-resources management (ERM), I am often surprised by the fact that most people are simply unaware of how much maintenance is required to make those electronic resources to be accessible by one-click as many library users expect. There is no magic in online resources that would make accessing them more easy and efforless than in print resources. There are systems to be configured, maintained, and updated on a daily basis, and there are people who are configuring, maintaining, updaing those systems every day. If a library user is clicking one link and is taken to the full-text page of an article immediately, that means that a lot of people spent a lot of time on making that happen wihtout an error. Technologies do not necessarily cut down on the work that the library staff have to do in order make those technologies work as expected. Many users take it for granted that links in OPAC records work. But they rarely think about how many times catalogers have been updating those links over and over again in order to keep them up-to-date.

In a similar way, technology librarians have the burden of learning new technologies, deciding on whether they would be a good fit for a given organization, implementing them the way they would get widely adopted, tweaking them in the way that they would fit better with either users or staff’s workflows, and supporting and maintaining them so that they would continue to be tools that boost productivity. Even if it were true that technologies get cheaper and easier all the time, it isn’t true that technologies simply work and work better and better all the time.

Most solo web services librarians know too well that they have to continuously train themselves and learn new things. But not often are they given sufficient time to do so. And that is because there are many more urgent day-to-day tasks to be taken care of.  It is important to complete those tasks in a timely manner. However, without sufficient time for R&D, learn, and experiment, technology librarians are likely to be either burned out or become less effective. On the other hand, they are likely to blossom when encouraged to experiment and take initiatives in new technologies. After all, they are the ones who love to work with technologies and want to show how those technologies can improve everyday work.

Imagine a library that can afford best technologies all the time regardless of costs. Still, that library won’t be the best unless it has techie librarian staff who would work on how to make those technologies fit and work in the way that would best benefit library users and staff. One can buy technologies any time, but dedicated and knowledgeable staff cannot be established in a day. The magic is in staff, more than in technologies.