Further, this week I’ve been setting up a WordPressMU and BuddyPress installation at classes | kenleyneufeld to be used for online instruction and my new course on Social Networking and Social Software.

First the “ouch” from the library gang. The realization that not enough assessment of our social services has taken place in the library environment. There has been anecdotal success but nothing concrete has been reported. In the past several years I’ve simply thrown stuff up to see what stuck and seemed a functional service. It’s worked reasonably well but as a Library Director I see a greater need for assessment. Assessment is Goal #1 in the coming year.

I was also inspired by the conversation to add a bit more personality to our social toolset in the library. We do this a bit, but we could do more. I’ve been hesitant to engage in true conversation with the @lurialibrary account, preferring to focus on information dissemination. Thank you Meredith Farkas for suggesting to add more conversation and personality. Conversation is Goal #2 in the coming year.

Since 2006, we’ve had our Moveable Type (MT) blog operational as the primary web site at Luria Library. This past year, I’ve been reflecting on our next shift for the web site. As a small operation without significant resources (both fiscally and technically), the task of making these changes typically fall up me and therefore change can be slow.

Given the work I’ve begun with WordPressMU/BuddyPress, and given the inspiration from the Library 2.0 Gang conversation, I’m thinking about a migration away from MT to WPMU/BP.

It is a powerful tool that could allow for connections and conversations to take place within the library domain. Discussion areas, Twitteresque tools, Facebook-style friending, and blogging all exist with the toolset. Further, blog creation with WPMU/BP is so simple and integrated, the library could end up being a host to campus related learning blogs for students and faculty. I’m already asked to help with this and the connections to learning and knowledge creation is a natural place for the library to participate.

I’m excited by the possibility, though a bit nervous about implementation. Further exploration and possible implementation of WPMU/BP is Goal #3 for the coming year.

Where are you going with social software in the coming year?

After you watch the video, head over to the Library 101 site and read the essays and other ideas.

Strange but GREAT and CREATIVE.

Though I created a Keynote Presentation (below) and demonstrated how one could use drop.io with groups, the majority of the presentation just came from the 75-minute conversation. All the relevant links are at the bottom of the post.

Building a Social Library

The benefit to a social library is we have an opportunity to reach our community with a variety of tools, most of which are free and easy to use. With a minimal amount of labor we can have a presence in many places where our community members exist already. It also sets the library how to be a leader, particularly in educational environments, and demonstrates value and expertise.

Typically in these types of presentations, the audience is overwhelmed with the options. This is especially the case when the focus is not on 1-2 tools. Therefore, I don’t worry too much about overwhelming the audience. In fact, I show a lot of options and then try to show how you can pull it all together with 1-2 tools. For example, if you use Posterous you can push content to just about any social networking site.

For the benefit of the audience, here are some the tools mentioned (bolded items had additional discussion) during the presentation:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Posterous
• drop.io
• Get Satisfaction
• uStream
• Friendfeed
• Librarything
• LinkedIn
• Flickr
• Seesmic
• YouTube
• Disqus
• Brightkite
• Yelp!
• Delicious
• Twine
• Socialmedian
• WordPress
• Google Reader
• Google Voice
• Meebo
• Slideshare
• LibraryH3lp

Great questions arose from the audience and I truly enjoyed myself. We attempted to use DimDim to audio/video/screenshare the presentation but that piece would have worked significantly better if someone had been assigned to monitor and support the offsite participants.

Over the past week, I’ve been reading the latest issue of Adbusters (#85); the entire issue is a “book” on economics. The economics of moving beyond our current established paradigm of economic thinking and theory. The premise is to kick over the neoclassical economics bucket because it is not sustainable in our global system.
Peter Victor wrote in that issue,

A mature economic system – just like a mature ecosystem – would be characterized by maintenance and renewal instead of rapid growth. Humans living within this system would be educated to repair rather than replace, and would continue to learn throughout their lives: schools, colleges and universities would be springboards for well-rounded lives rather than just for employment. The point of all this is not to replace the pursuit of economic growth with a target of zero growth.

I started to write and then picked up the September issue of Fast Company. An article, “Who needs Harvard?” (not online yet) immediately caught my eye because the of another theme I’ve been exploring over the past few years on the obsolescence of higher education. The concept of an edupunk, a growing movement toward high-tech do-it-yourself education, was pulled from this article.

The architects of education 2.0 predict that traditional universities cling to the string quartet model (where you can’t remove any of the players) will find themselves on the wrong side of history, alongside newspaper chains and records stores.

As I consider the current economic crisis in California, especially as it relates to the educational system, I clearly see our inability to sustain the unsustainable system of economics in this state. There is waste, yes. There are significant expenditures, yes. Programs and services are being cut, yes. For example, in my recent report for ACRLog,  California’s Community Colleges Crisis, I highlight the 100% loss of funds for electronic databases. The state determined that continued funding for this program was not sustainable.

The question on my mind today is about the sustainability of academic libraries, and perhaps the academy itself. The Academy have been protected for so long, a highly subsidized industry, and we are again being faced with significant cuts that will force us to ask how we are to continue? Are we a bloated industry? Are we ripe for innovation? For revolution?

Some will say that education is not an industry and that people have the right to be educated. We are not in the business of making money so we don’t follow the same rules as business. And yet, in the scope of history, public education is a fairly young enterprise and some have predicted its end in the coming century. At the very least, we may need to evolve in order to stay relevant and needed. My argument is not that education is unimportant, because it is critical, but more about how education can disseminated.

In the August 9, 2009 article In a Digital Future, Textbooks are History, the New York Times explores the end of the textbook.

The move to open-source materials is well under way in higher education — and may be accelerated by President Obama’s proposal to invest in creating free online courses as part of his push to improve community colleges.

How far off is the academy itself? No less than five businesses are discussed in the Fast Company article (2Tor Inc., Edufire, Grockit, Inigral, and Knewton) who are taking the lead in the future of education.

Now I need to take this out of the clouds (though I am very intrigued by these new companies) and bring it down to the reality of my day-to-day life.

My job is a Library Director at Santa Barbara City College in California. I work for an administration that has been very supportive of our library and our library services. Though our budget is small, compared to a university, we still provide a few dozen electronic databases ($75k/annually) and new books/periodicals ($125k/annually). Programatically, we do a lot serving 20,000 full & part time students with our 4 librarians and 5 classified employees. However, in the coming year we could potentially be cut up to 30% depending on my administration’s ability to find other funding sources.

What I want to hear from you, my dear reader, is what to do with the situation. A failing economic model, dwindling resources, and our relevance as educators and as libraries.

Here is my litany of questions for your consideration:

Can you have a library without money, without new books, without print periodicals, without subscription databases? What if the institution continues to fund positions (librarians) but not resources (books, databases, etc.)? Can we still provide a service that will benefit students? Do we benefit students? Faculty? How do we maximize our role given limited fiscal tools? How do we move the “library” forward in a potentially shifting educational environment? Do we have a place in startup companies? What should receive attention first (books v. periodicals v. databases)? How can we capitalize on the free resources and make them usable for our students? Are books, periodicals, and databases truly important for scholarship today?

I want my library to be a leader in providing top quality services in spite of dwindling resources, even if that means no books, no periodicals, and no databases. Let’s think outside the box, like an edupunk librarian. The knowledge and skills contained in the mind of each librarian is our greatest asset. This is what we can market. Help me make it happen.

Reference Desk Toolkit from Kenley Neufeld on Vimeo.

If I remember to video or audio my talk, it will be posted after Friday. In the meantime, here are the slides for my presentation:

One of the toughest decisions of my life happened in the past two weeks when I decided to end my love affair with motorcycle riding. I’m almost crying as I write this and look at the included picture. I’ve been riding since age 14 when our family had a little Honda 50 for dirt riding (or in the back alley’s of Fresno). From there I moved to a Honda Passport, Kawasaki KZ750, and finally to a series of BMW motorcycles. In all it is about 25 years of riding and a quarter million miles on a bike.

Why is this ending? I have been a very lucky rider. In the five accidents, I have never broken a bone or been seriously injured. This includes almost 10 years of riding in San Francisco. In the last decade I have considered selling the bike a couple of times but have never gone through with it. This time my gut tells me it is time. Earlier this fall another rider with my age and experience spent a month in the hospital after being hit at an intersection I cross daily. We get a lot of bikes in Ojai due to our fantastic curves, so accidents and deaths are not uncommon. On January 10, 2009 a fellow rider, sangha connection, and friend was killed near his home in Malibu. Peter Kollock is only a little older than I and rides the same BMW model. That same weekend, there was a death in Ventura and another on Highway 33 above Ojai.

All this has shaken me. I have two young children, and perhaps my decision would be different without them, but I want them to have a healthy and living dad as they grow up. I am saying goodbye to a dear friend and love but am embracing my responsibilities as a parent. It could be I’ll ride again when older, but for now it is goodbye.

What I have are my memories. Taking my young love, Leslie, on a motorcycle ride through La Jolla Shores on my KZ750 only to slip on gravel and spill the bike. We’re still together 18-years later! The ride from San Francisco to Saskatoon with Leslie on the back of my 1983 BMW R100RT. When we got there and looked at the map, Leslie couldn’t imagine driving all the way back to California, but we did. The ride to Fairbanks, Alaska along the Alcan Highway on my 1991 BMW R100RT by myself. What a trip! Riding to Durango, Mexico with my dad. The last big trip was with my dad and my dear friend Dana on my latest ride, the 2001 R1150GS. We rode through Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. It included a significant blizzard on the pass through the Rocky Mountain National Park; visability was less than 10-feet and the wind was howling. No choice but to move forward. The picture  above – a self-photo at Mt. Shasta – is a madman ride from Fresno to British Columbia, and back, in three days for a family reunion. Surprise. There were so many more trips and adventures to remember, but these are a few of the highlights.

Will I have regrets? Maybe. Is it the right decision? Yes. I thank my family and friends who have supported me in this decision and in my riding all these years. I will miss riding deeply. Adieu mon amour.

The Plum Village sangha has a practice called Beginning Anew that we used for the foundation of our talk, since the theme of the retreat was renewal. Rather than focusing on another person, as we typically do with this practice, the focus of attention was ourselves. Karen provided us with four meditations that we explored in the one-hour talk. Please enjoy the talk.

Four Meditations for Self-Renewal

1. Flower Watering/Sharing Appreciation. Looking deeply, I see many positive and wholesome qualities in myself such as…
2. Benign Regrets. Looking deeply, I regret that I have caused myself pain through my thoughts, speech and actions in the following ways…
3. Hurts and Difficulties. Looking deeply, I can understand my own hurts and difficulties with deep compassion and friendliness toward myself, without blame or criticism as follows…
4. Challenges and Intentions for the Future. For the future, I anticipate the following challenges and intend to practice mindfully and skillfully in the following ways…

The key here is to be kind and honest with yourself. If you can’t listen here, you can download the talk.

Typically we meet once a week for twenty minutes in my office. Fortunately, I have a large office and can easily accommodate up to eight people sitting in chairs or on the floor – though our numbers are usually around 2-4 people per week. Each semester I invite the community to “Meditation in the Library” by sending out a campus-wide email describing mindfulness meditation in a non-sectarian manner. Though many cannot attend due respective schedules, I often receive messages back from staff and faculty expressing a desire to participate and/or thanking me for providing the opportunity. In addition to the email, I usually place flyers up around campus and put an “ad” in the student web-portal. Since this has been happening for three years, the community is coming to expect the meditation.

The room is setup with chairs facing in one direction, though there is space to sit on the floor as well. We keep the lights off, but plenty of light comes in from the windows so it is not completely dark. If new people are present, I may start with suggestions on sitting posture and then begin a guided meditation focusing on the breath. We sit for 20-minutes and end with one sound of a bell. A person or two may engage in causal conversation at the end, but we generally have not sharing. There is one or two regulars and the rest of the participants are pretty transient due to the coming and going of college students and their schedules.

On occasion we have students participate for extra credit in their Personal Development course. This course is designed to help students be successful in college and one element of that deals with stress management. The classes with extra credit typically are those who have also invited me to come speak in class. Again, I attempt to keep the conversation non-sectarian but, when talking for 30-minutes to a classroom full of students, the questions of my personal practice often arises. In these class sessions, I present my experience with meditation and concrete examples of how meditation supports me in my work and in my relationships with other people. I provide details on sitting and breathing plus other opportunities to practice mindfulness. We end the class presentation with a 5-minute guided meditation.

Having the “Meditation in the Library” has been very nourishing for my practice overall. Reminders in the work environment, especially since others know that I have a regular practice of meditation, helps my energy level as well as bringing awareness to how I interact with others on campus.