Libraries Interact and friends will be covering VALA 2010 live.

Feel free to come along to the planning meeting, or to offer ideas via the google group: http://groups.google.com/group/unconfwalib .

I wish that the iPhone didn’t have the word “phone” in its name. I understand *why* Apple decided on that name, but I don’t think of it as a phone. To me it’s a hand-held computer that I use to connect to other people and to run small applications that make my life easier.

It has limitations – not being able to cut and paste text, run more than one application at a time or use the camera to shoot video are problems.

When I travelled overseas, I used downloaded applications on my  iPhone to:

• get real time updates on my flight times and gates
• show me on a map how to get from where I was to where I needed to be
• record interviews for research
• calculate the tip I should give on a bill
• record expenses on the go (including a facility to photograph receipts and add them to my database)
• play movies on the plane
• read several ebooks whenever and wherever I was
• find the nearest wifi
• wake me up in the morning
• show me how long I had during conference presentations
• suggest a place to eat in the local area with the cuisine and price I wanted
• photograph books and see online what they were and how much they cost
• edit photographs and upload them instantly to Flickr
• keep me in touch with friends via Twitter when I was walking in the dark back to a rather seedy motel

The iPhone and phones that use the Android Operating System (which is *mainly* Open Source) allow users to download and install a plethora of programs to take advantage of not only the phone and internet connection, but the camera, microphone and accelerometer in the devices.

How do you think these may affect librarianship? How can library staff use them? How can we offer our services to our users with next gen mobiles? Do you have a favourite app that you use and would recommend to others?

Here are a few ideas to get you started.

• In February, Kenley Neufeld listed his Top 10 iPhone Apps for Librarians .
• Aaron Schmidt from the DC Public Libraries has released the code for an iPhone App that allows library users to search the catalogue, place holds and find opening hours ,DCPL iPhone application ready for download
• The University of Bath Library has added QR codes to records in the catalogue so that users can scan them using free software that will then show them the author, title and location of the item, QR Codes in the Library .
• The Abilene Christian University in Texas has produced a video showing a fictional account of what could happen if the entire campus of students and academics were connected using a next gen mobile, Connected

Three librariesinteract.info writers are giving papers at the Educause Australasia 2009 conference in Perth this week – Peta, Con and Kathryn. We are even doing a panel session together with our friend Penny Coutas, called Personal Learning Environments: What works for librarians .

Peta and I are live-tweeting the sessions we attend via our twitter accounts, @libsmatter and @petahopkins. We are feeding these tweets, plus a few comments from friends, into a CoverItLive widget for each day. You could follow us on twitter, but the advantage of CoverItLive is that the screen automatically refreshes with new content and that you can instantly ask questions / make comments and have them appear in the screen with our tweets.

I have embedded the CoverItLive widgets below. If you are interested in seeing all tweets and all photos that use the conference tag: “edaust09″, I have embedded a TwitterFountain in my blog a Librarians Matter, Educause Australasia 2009 Twitterfountain and more .
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Satisfied with the cost, the vendor’s service and how your users  perceive it when they compare it with the rapidly changing social web? Yes? No?

Add your voice to the confidential 2008 International Library Automation Survey being conducted by Marshall Breeding on behalf of Library Technology Guides .  He is interested in tracking how perceptions have changed since last year’s Perceptions 2007: an international survey of Library Automation .

Neil Godfrey, over at Metalogger, has made a detailed comparison of support and functionality for institutional repository solutions,INFORMAL comparison of some institutional repository solutions. It is a great starting point for anyone setting up a repository or wondering whether there is a better solution than what they are currently using.

He explains the comparison like this:

Over the last few years I have worked closely with a number of different institutional repository solutions, both open-source and enterprise products. There are several I have not had personal experience with, but I have taken opportunities to speak with a wide number of users of these products, too, as well as with representatives and producers of those solutions. I have also sought input from other users of repositories I am personally familiar with in an attempt to balance out my own personal impressions. The following comparison is based on feedback primarily from managers of the systems — whether they have live production systems or have done extensive testing on systems they expect to take live soon.

The products covered are:

• Digital Commons
• DigiTool
• DSpace
• EPrints
• Equella
• Fez
• VITAL

Following the conference on Open Access and Research held in September in Australia, and hosted by Queensland University of Technology, the following statement was developed and has the endorsement of over sixty participants.

Brisbane Declaration

Preamble
The participants recognise Open Access as a strategic enabling activity, on which research and inquiry will rely at international, national, university, group and individual levels.

Strategies
Therefore the participants resolve the following as a summary of the basic strategies that Australia must adopt:
1 Every citizen should have free open access to publicly funded research, data and knowledge.
2 Every Australian university should have access to a digital repository to store its research outputs for this purpose.
3 As a minimum, this repository should contain all materials reported in the Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC).
4 The deposit of materials should take place as soon as possible, and in the case of published research articles should be of the author’s final draft at the time of acceptance so as to maximize
open access to the material.

Ddin’t make it to Alice Springs for the Australian Library and Information Association’s Dreaming 08 Biennial Conference? Me neither.

I felt like I was *almost* at some of the sessions when I read some of Michelle McLean’s liveblogging from the event on her other blog, the Connecting Librarian .  

Michelle is probably the best liveblogger I know. Most of my liveblogging is dot pointed with lots of gaps for the reader to fill in and way too long. I have previously been in the same session as Michelle and amazed at the way she edits and writes in paragraphs as she goes. For me to produce what she has at the end of a live session would involve a couple of hours of serious editing.

Anyhow, this is what is there so far. Enjoy.

• ALIA Dreaming 08 – Weds PM Concurrent Session – Edgar Crook
• ALIA Dreaming 08 Weds PM – Concurrent session – Ruth McIntyre
• ALIA Dreaming 08 – PM Concurrent Sessions – Jason M Gibson
• ALIA Dreaming 08 PM Plenary – Anita Heiss
• ALIA Dreaming 08 – Weds AM Concurrent Session Public – Dr Vivienne Waller
• ALIA Dreaming 08 – Weds AM Concurrent Session – Public – Greg Honeyman
• ALIA Dreaming 08 – Plenary – Martin Nakata

We don’t often reproduce entire posts from other blogs here, but this one justifies it. Let’s add some Aussie content to the Porter / Lee King song!

From Micheal Porter at LibraryMan blog: YOUR Chance to Star in a Libraryland Music Video!!!

From the last post you can see that David and I recorded a snappy little library song last week. We are really proud of the work we’ve produced and now YOU get a chance to be in the video!! It is jumpy little ditty about library futures, technology and how we will succeed as libraries.

Please listen to this short snippet and then…..shoot a brief video of you singing along! Thats all it takes! You can use a web cam, or any other camera you like and send it to the email below. It should really only take a few minutes on your end, and after we get the videos, we’ll take the best and put them in the video we are hard at work on! Of course, please also feel free to send other video that might go along with the title/theme of the song “hi-fi sci-fi library” (costumes are very welcome by the way!:)
So join in the fun and star in a video with us! This is your official invite! We are looking forward to seeing YOU in our upcoming video!

Here is a link to the very short snippet to sing along with (you can download it even if you want). The “hi-fi sci-fi library” part is what we really need to see you singing.

If you have you have a webcam, you really should be emailing your video to: michael.libraryman *At Sign**gmail.com

Please send your clips in to the above address no later than August 24th, 2008.

We are really looking forward to seeing you in the video with us!!!!!!!!!

-Michael Porter and David Lee King

The School Library Journal in the US is running a “Learning 2.0 / 23 Things” program for …well…school librarians all over the world… All Together Now: A Learning 2.0 Experience . It is being led by Dr Michael Stephens , who has a knack for simplifying the complex in a way that inspires you to want to go out and try it.

The aim is to introduce people to a series of “Web2.0″ technologies using a series of self paced exercises, with reflexive learning by blogging about it. The advantage of doing the SLJ program is that librarians all over the world will be doing it at the same time, and that a community of learners will be created.

There are just 12 topics, starting on 21st July:

Blogs
Podcasts
RSS
Wikis
Flickr
Web Toys
Web 2.0 & Library 2.0
Social Networking Sites
Video Sites
Twitter
Tagging
Google Apps

It’s usually terrific fun and worth having a look at. If you are unsure about whether you can fit it in, check out these tips for 10 Ways to Find Time for 23 Things – including thinking about the implications if you don’t understand these tools and committing to the program just a week at a time .