What open source software are you using and why?

What storage media should be used for backups?

What skills are needed in the libraries of tomorrow?

Are traditional library skills on the verge of extinction or on the verge of a breakthrough?

If you’ve heard of Second Life but wasn’t really sure what it was, or perhaps you’re feeling hesitant about learning “another” new thing, take heart. I’m here to provide information and guidance to this new social media tool. Check out this 3 minute YouTube video for a quick demo on Second Life and how it’s being used to teach university classes.

In a nutshell, Second Life is a software program that looks like you’ve entered a three dimensional (3D) world on your computer. It’s fantastic for demonstrating processes, displaying artifacts and information, interacting with other people, collaborating, building in accountability to distance education courses, teaching complex concepts, simulations and more. As if it couldn’t get any better, creating an account in Second Life and using their software is free!

Ok, there can be some costs involved. If you decide to use Second Life to create a museum display, hold classes online, run a simulation, etc., you’ll most likely need to rent some server space from the Linden Lab company. But to the public (your customers, clients or students), the use of the system is free. In future posts I’ll go into more depth about how to do a cost analysis and project plan for getting your business or institution set up in Second Life. If you’re already familiar with Second Life and need a little help getting your institution started now, shoot me an email at sjkmartin@gmail.com.

The key concept behind this 3D environment is that it’s entirely user created. You get to decide what you want to do with it. Several years ago I opted to create an interactive museum exhibit called the Black Abolitionist Digital Archive. Second Life visitors walk into a period court house, see portraits of black abolitionist speakers, link to the University of Detroit Mercy’sabolitionist digital research collection, watch informational slide shows and examine 3D artifacts. The most powerful aspect of the exhibit is the ability to reenact the actual speeches and have panel discussions with experts in the field. Communication is done through text chat or via microphone similar to a conference call. All this is done in the comfort of your chair at your home or office. Where else can you get access to that kind of information? If you already have the Second Life software downloaded, click on this slurl and it will open your software and take you right to the Black Abolitionist Digital Archive.

If you haven’t experienced Second Life yet, think seriously about giving it a try. My next posts will deal with interesting places and examples of how institutions and individuals are using the technology. Be prepared for some surprises!

A recent question posted on the AMP blog, “Is preservation cost-prohibitive?,” made me think about costs related to archives in general. As a former corporate archivist, I am painfully aware of budgets and bidding out work! Now that my shoe is on the other foot, and I am consulting in the field, the issue is even larger for me. When I was the “client” and was requesting bids for work, I (and my coworkers) were always concerned by the process. We knew many vendors were underbidding to get the work and that could pose a financial risk for them if they got the project. We also were forced to consider those bids because there was quite a bit of paperwork to do if the lowest bid was not selected. In the end, we could often work around it by choosing the firm with the most expertise in an area as long as their bid was not too much higher than the lowest one.

It’s easy for a client to forget about the hidden costs of operations related to projects. There are often random emails with questions, monthly or more frequent conference calls, technology testing or review, on-site meetings or visits, etc. All of these items take up staff time – and not just a little bit of it either – it really adds up. I think many clients might be shocked if they realized exactly how much time. Often a fair amount of this time can be billed back as project management time, but only if the client is willing or that category has been built into the project.

I recently took on some work that was priced out on a per-item basis. This method really made the most sense since there was a huge quantity of digital files to review. As any vendor would, I priced the project as low as I could while still hoping to cover any time required for emails, phone calls, meetings, technology issues, etc. Luckily for me, so far my pricing seems to be working for me and for them.

The project brought up another interesting financial concern though. The quantity of items is so high and the quality isn’t always great, that the client and I started to wonder if there was a better way to upload fewer items so as not to flood their database with useless information. I think I have found a workable solution, but the main issue with trying to cull out the bad items was the time required to do it and the cost associated with that. It’s a pure and simple appraisal issue along the lines of “More Product, Less Process,” although this time it’s “More Process, Less Product!” It’s been a unique budgetary issue for me and my client in that it could easily be cheaper for them to add thousands of images to a database rather than to review the images and pick the best ones – or more importantly, to delete the bad ones.

In the end, I employed some digital photo software that allows quick-ish review and refoldering of files so that I can at least remove the “worst of” images for the client. The system isn’t perfect, but in the end, I needed to present a plan to the client that would save them money. It didn’t make sense to have the project cost more money to give them fewer images even when fewer images was more desirable. Now the project is a mix of hourly review time and per item upload time (engineered never to exceed what the total upload time would have cost if no review was done), but the client is left with better quality images and a slightly cheaper overall cost.

Back to the question at hand: Is preservation cost-prohibitive? I guess it certainly can be – as can any archival procedure, but in the end, that’s what Archives are for – preserving and making available items of historical importance. Let’s just hope that all the holders of the purse strings continue to agree!

Is preservation cost-prohibitive?

To say those from the South are proud of their heritage is putting it mildly. Every year dozens if not hundreds of groups, towns and culture centers celebrate some aspect of Southern life from Civil War reenactments to living history villages to a wide array of festivals honoring everything from fruit and food to music and specialty local events. ¹

To help commemorate the South’s (and also America’s) illustrious background and to give a voice to the Southern perspective, the University of North Carolina has put together a digital initiative of primary and secondary sources on the Internet. Since 2004, Documenting the American South has been the premier location for education and research materials on Southern life not just on the Internet, but also in the world. The fourteen thematic collections offer wide range of digital materials that includes books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs. This vibrant digital collection consists of numerous large print, photograph and rare materials collections made possible by Southern Historical Collection, the North Carolina Collection, UNC’s Rare Book Collectionand the Davis Library.

What makes Documenting the American South such a rich resource is not just because of the various large collections that have been consolidated into a single landing point for research and discovery rather it is also because the scope, design and ease of use of the site that makes it such a valuable resource. In addition, the site is consistantly updated with new information and materials, making it not only a valuable resource for things past, but also for things present and future.

Documenting the American South has a number of discovery and mapping tools to help viewers explore the collection. This includes a Highlights section, a monthly update that explores content in the collection, which is also available via RSS. In addition is the Collections section, a listing of the digital collections by theme, also available for researchers and educators to use for finding materials that range from first person narratives, slave narratives to Southern literature and more. Specific content can also be found by using the Subjects, Geographical, Authors and Titles tabs in the top navigation bar. And if you still can’t find what you’re looking for, there is also a search option to search the entire collection by keyword to find exactly what you need.

UNC has also put together Classroom Resources, which includes kits, lesson plans and additional materials to help bring Southern life vividly into the classroom.

This is a wonderful treasure trove of materials, that is not only rich for discovery but also a valuable archive of not just Southern life, but American life as well.

1. In addition, Southern Festivals is a fantastic resource for festivals happening in the South. This site is organized by state, so if you’re traveling south this year and looking for things to do, this would definitely be one site you want to bookmark.

I’ve discussed Twitter in a variety of capacities on AMPed but mainly within the context of using mashable technologies that include Twitter, but I have not discussed a feature of Twitter that sometimes is overlooked – retweeting.

What exactly is retweeting? Retweeting is taking a tweet that was originally sent by one person that you follow and you in turn forward it on to your own followers, usually with an added comment so that the new tweet would look something like this:

Awww RT@stephenfry Plus *eyelidflutter* Steve Jobs said “Hi, Stephen” *swoon*.

In this case I’m commenting on a tweet originally sent by @stephenfry, whom I follow and in turn, I forwarded that tweet to my followers along with my comment. Because of the format of the tweet, it is generally understood that everything before the “RT” is by me and everything after the “RT” is by the originating author. And this is accepted as the norm in Twitter communication for since time immortal (or 2006).

It is exactly like email forwarding, with the exception that you cannot selective choose who your retweet goes out to, it has to go out to all of those that follow you or none at all.

When Twitter first came to being, it didn’t have an official re-tweet option, at least not on Twitter.com. A lot of the retweeting that went on was done by hand, meaning simple cut and paste with formatting to make it fit within 140 characters. As Twitter, and obviously by extension tweeting, became more popular, applications and websites like HootSuite, Seesmic and TweetDeck started building tools within their clients to make retweeting easier, thus no more cut and paste! One could simply select the option to retweet a tweet and the application would do the formatting for you.

But then, everything changed. In the fall of 2009, Twitter announced they were going to do something a little bit differently: change how people retweeted. This may not seem like earth shattering details but in the context of how people use Twitter and for people who use Twitter.com, it was a big deal.

Here is what they did:
For ages, applications were already incorporating ways for people to retweet content, allowing people to style how they disseminated the information as seen by my example above. Twitter.com, sometimes late to their own party, decided to shake things up by adding a retweet option natively into the website. What this option did is that if you were reading your Twitter timeline on Twitter.com and saw something you wanted to retweet, the retweet option would re-post the tweet for you but as it originated from the author, with no option to restyle it or adding commentary. So, if I retweeted my example from above to my followers, what they would see is the tweet as it was originally sent by Stephen Fry with “retweeted by” appended on. The interesting thing about this new option is that for those who ALREADY follow Stephen Fry on Twitter, they would not see my retweet since it already appeared originally in their timeline.

Applications and websites have started incorporating this option into their software, giving users a choice to do it natively or to add commentary.

Evan Williams, one of the co-founders of Twitter, explains the rationale behind the the new format and the ideology of how retweeting emerged organically.

So now that we’ve covered what retweeting is, how it’s used and how to use it, what exactly makes it powerful? There are a number of reasons (in no particular order):

1. It introduces new users to your followers that they may not already know. For example, there are a number of Twitter users who have become massively popular due to the viralness of retweeting, such as @ArchivesOpen and @UkNatArchives. The viralness of a Twitter account is not limited to an account that is for pure entertainment, as news & culture magazins, think tanks, research groups and individuals that I do not follow have appeared in my timeline, retweeted by people who think that information is interesting or useful.
2. It draws attention to a particular action, ideology or commentary that you believe in and want to share with your followers.
3. It illustrates something you agree or disagree with, but sharing the orignal tweet with your own commentary, thus drawing attention to something that may not have been noticed before.
4. Retweeting gives credit to sources, which again goes back to expanding your social network, either professionally or personally.
5. It creates conversations with your followers by them retweeting or responding directly to you about your retweet or by retweeting a tweet that originated from yourself.

This list is just the tip of the iceberg and there could be a series on the power of retweeting, but for now we’ll just cover the basics to lay the foundation on becoming a better tweeter. By understanding why people use retweeting, how to use it, what it does and why it can be so powerful gives you a better foundation to be a better tweeter and at the end of the day, isn’t that what everyone wants?

In March, Rachael Clark discussed the necessity of completing a needs assessment as one of the important skills used in developing a digital collection. I would definitely agree that it is a vital skill for any information professional. Cliché as it is, one of my go-to phrases is, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail,” and performing a needs assessment is an essential part of the planning phase for any project. This includes diving into the world of social networking.

The first decision to consider with your team is what kind of social media outlet will be most beneficial. There’s more to the world of social networking than microblogging on Twitter. You can get your professional persona out there with LinkedIn, share attention-grabbing images of your collection using Flickr or post a webinar on YouTube. Consider your needs, speak with people who are fully immersed into the world of social networks and learn from them. There are many options from which to choose. Do a bit of research into what will work best for your organization before you spend too many “hit and miss” hours. Time is money, folks!

Once you’ve decided on the tools of choice, you probably think that adding social networking to your organization seems like such a simple thing. Go to your social networking site of choice, register and start posting, right? But before you dive in, stop and consider what kind of benefit you’re expecting from these popular tools. Do you want to reach out to patrons? Are you interested in generating buzz about your company? Do you hope to gain new clients? Perhaps you just want to keep in touch with colleagues around the world. No matter what your purpose, you’ll be doing a little writing and though this is writing on a small scale, the importance of writing for your audience cannot be underestimated.

More things to consider when creating a needs assessment are, how often and how much of information is being shared? How often are you going to use this tool? You will need to think about quality and quantity if you want to reach people and make the most of your social networking tool of choice. For example, if you’re using Twitter or Facebook, you will want to build an audience of people who read and repost or retweet your updates. If you want to attract loyal readers,  frequent, appropriate and relevant posts and tweets are vital.

Decisions will also have to be made about who will be the social media guru of your organization. You may find staff resistant to using these tools or you may have staff members who are ready to make it their full-time job. The right person will have enthusiasm for this new way to communicate, but it’s important that he or she will be literate in the language of social networking. They need to know that it’s “tweeting” NOT “twittering,” and they need to have the ability to tell the difference between useless information and great things to know. Many social networking sites have users who are spewing a lot more garbage than gems. The person doing the majority of work with social networking tools will have to do quite a bit of filtering.

In this day and age it seems as if everyone and their grandmothers have at least dipped their toes into the giant pond that is social networking. If you take your time to examine your needs, then plan and execute a process to get the most out of the social networking tool of your choice, you will add volumes to the intellectual value of your organization.