The theme of the Symposium is “The Mashed Up Library” and it will be moderated by Andrew Pace. It’s fun to be here on the first day of conference and seeing everyone connecting with each other, meeting new friends, etc. The energy is high as we wait for 1:30. In his introduction, Pace said “mash ups are a full fledged commuting platform and on the verge of replacing the personal computer as the dominant tool.”

The keynote speaker is Michael Schrage is a Research Fellow at MIT Sloan School for Digital Business. He is a columnist for Fortune, CIO Magazine, and MIT Technology Review in addition to author of two books. Michael challenges himself to be useful and usable in today’s talk. His big theme today is managing the challenge of an institution – institutional innovation – how to be innovative within an institution. It isn’t in our culture to be innovation, particularly in the library setting. This may be the case in many organizations, but I feel very fortunate in my college to be very flexible and innovative. I pretty much and try out just about anything, especially if it doesn’t cost a great deal of money. However, I know this is not the case in many places.

What is innovation? The conversion of novelty into value. I like this definition. Take Twitter as an example, it clearly began as a novelty for me 18 months ago and I have now found value in using it with the library and in my online classes.  Schrage further defines innovation as a means to an end. Finally, isn’t what the organization offers, it’s what customers, clients & users adopt.  From “creation of choice” to “value from use” is where we need to move. Don’t make it a novelty. Fantastic. This is certainly something to consider and explore as we try new things in the library settings. Am I focusing to much on the creation of choice? For example, we all assume that RSS is very useful and offers a choice to users. However, is it really being used? Certainly in some circles but I don’t see a widespread adoption in the academic environment.

Now on to the institutional side of the theme. Schrage believes we’re focusing on the wrong aspects of mash ups. Interoperability is the platform but it is not the data sets. On an organizational level, which vendors, people, etc. should we be interoperable with? The most important part of our network is the networker. He then asks us, what is the most important product of the library?

According to Schrage, competition – like innovation – is a means to an end. Years ago people were appalled that librarians would collaborate with Google. Are they a competitor or a partner? Let’s consider three examples. Movie theaters. Used book stores. Newspapers. They don’t know how to compete. A reluctance to creatively compete. What are the implications for the library? Libraries live in the most competitive industry in the world – the business of information – and we have historically been heavily subsidized and been a monopoly. Do we want to be seen as competitors? Are we going to step up? Should we?  Commit to competition or commit to subsidy.

I challenge this assertion. Should libraries be a business or a public good?

Schrage’s Four Assertions

•    Learning from our lead users. Who are the lead users?
•    With whom do we want to collaborate to create value? Why?
•    Marketing our best internal arguments/disagreements. What is our defining disagreement? Publicize it!
•    Establishing “Liberatories” that attract talent and inspire hypotheses.

Nice simple slides with pithy quotes and overarching themes that drive his presentation (with the exception of the mash up definition slide). Good use of the technology.

The keynote was followed by a panel that includes:  David Lee King is Digital Branch & Service Manager at Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library. Mary Beth Sancomb-Moran is Librarian at University of Minnesota-Rochester. Susan Gibbons is Vice-Provost & Dean at the University of Rochester.

Questions from board members:

• login issues – has this been resolved?
• Where is APA? Under related sites. Is that intuitive?
• Burying Council under governance because membership doesn’t have a clear understanding of what governance mean.
• What happened to the “Take Action” button on the current home page. Haven’t found a new location for it yet, but in discussion.
• •    Any press release will appear on the home page, but it is possible for them to ranked.

Working on style guidelines for content managers. This is the next big phase.  Site scheduled to go live at the end of August. There are more than 90,000 files to move around into the new site.

Next report is from the Development Office.  Time to go look for Blog Salon.

Over the next few days I plan to blog some of the activities, which is a slight diversion from my normal posts. Here is my schedule for the weekend. Enjoy.

Is it more damaging to prevent access to media or to expose them to our cultural norms? These choices are conscious decisions, but they are not necessarily black and white rules - illustrated by the movies the kids have seen. As parents, we certainly enjoy film, and have watched television in the past, but our interests have drifted elsewhere. We are also influenced by the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh and the Five Mindfulness Trainings. In particular, the Fifth Mindfulness Training states:

Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I am committed to cultivating good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family and my society by practising mindful eating, drinking and consuming. I will ingest only items that preserve peace, well-being and joy in my body, in my consciousness and in the collective body and consciousness of my family and society. I am determined not to use alcohol or any other intoxicant or to ingest foods or other items that contain toxins, such as certain TV programmes, magazines, books, films and conversations. I am aware that to damage my body or my consciousness with these poisons is to betray my ancestors, my parents, my society and future generations. I will work to transform violence, fear, anger and confusion in myself and in society by practising a diet for myself and for society. I understand that a proper diet is crucial for self-transformation and for the transformation of society.

Though I find myself occasionally second guessing our decision, I know it feels right in my heart. There is no real need for our children to watch television or go to the movies. Even the tamest of films and programs have elements of sexism, sarcasm, violence, fear, hatred, etc. The children will learn of these things soon enough and we don’t need to expose them to it purposefully. Another influential resource is the book The Plug-In Drug: Television, Computers, and Family Life by Marie Winn.

So, what do you think?

My email falls into five categories: personal messages, work messages, committee/volunteer-associated messages, news alerts, and mailing lists. I have all my email delivered to Gmail, with some message automatically assigned a label upon arrival (such as mailing lists and work messages). My first step is to quickly scan through the all messages in my InBox for anything that appears urgent. This means looking for personal messages and quickly scanning the first line as it appears in gMail - occasionally opening the message to verify the urgency. If it can be handled in less than a minute or two, I respond immediately otherwise I mark the message to unread and continue to scan.

Next: the mailing list messages - most can be deleted immediately. The bulk of these are great to read but, when a deadline looms (my 24-hours), the easiest thing to do is simply delete. I had the wisdom to turn off one of the heaviest lists (20-30 messages/day) to “vacation mode” before leaving. Using the automatic filtering to assign Labels in Gmail helps to facilitate management of mailing lists. Selecting the mailing list label, I mark the new messages and delete. For those messages that don’t have labels automatically assigned, I search for common senders or subjects and then assign an appropriate label to return to the message later. The purpose here is to eliminate messages out of my primary InBox and alleviate any possible stress. In normal situations, I keep my InBox as empty as possible and almost never more than 20-30 messages.

At this point my InBox still has about 120 messages, but I have eliminated (or sorted) 75% of the messages and can now address them as groups based on my time availability. (Unfortunately, I am writing this blog entry now instead of handling my email in my 24-hour window.) By scanning, deleting, and sorting I can have the appearance of managing the email and my InBox is not showing over 500 messages (a potential stressful experience). It is these remaining 120 messages that are going to take the bulk of my time to review more systematically and respond where necessary. What I might do at this point is skip around. Read a few messages in my InBox; skip to WorkBox; scan and delete some other labeled email; etc.

So, for those of you who like lists, here is a summary:

1. Scan all messages for anything that appears urgent and respond immediately
2. Use the Labels function in Gmail to archive messages out of InBox
3. Delete all (or most) mailing list messages.
4. Search for common senders or subjects to assign Labels and archive out of InBox.
5. Allocate time to review remaining InBox messages with the goal of bringing InBox to less than 20 messages as soon as possible.
6. Allocate time to review the sorted/labeled messages based on priority.

Bottom line: don’t stress and use the delete key liberally - be realistic about what is important.

In Ojai, our 100 mile range is from San Luis Obispo to Delano to Irvine to out in the ocean. A wealth of crops are grown in this region and we can probably have fresh fruits and vegetables year round. I have three major areas of concern with participating. First, protein sources. As vegetarians, bordering on vegan, we need to be certain our protein needs are met from beans, nuts, soy, etc. Since many of those items may not grow around here, we may need to use one of our three exceptions for a consistent protein source. Beyond the protein, there are the things that I just like to eat. For example, I enjoy coffee, tea, bananas, pasta, bread, oatmeal, granola, rice. Today, typical meals would be

Breakfast: smoothie (soy milk, flax oil, protein powder, blueberries, strawberries) and oatmeal (with brown sugar).

Lunch: sandwich (peanut butter/jelly) or grilled cheese; corn chips; salad

Dinner: stir fry (olive oil, garlic, tofu, greens, carrots, etc.) and rice

Other: almonds, coffee, tea, cookie, granola

It seems doable. There are some processed items that would be a challenge. The bread and oatmeal could be tough. My second area of concern is a transition away from organic produce. Our family have been regular organic produce consumers for well over a decade. We are believers in buying organic and have significant problems with conventional farming (both for health reasons and environmental reasons). In this proposed diet, there will be times when we simply will not be able to eat organic. However, does the change outweigh the benefits of eating locally? Food does not need to be shipping in from thousands of miles away. Packaging of food will be close to nil.

My third area of concern is our children. Do we pursue this diet as a family or will it just be the adults? The kids are already picky eaters and this change may be too challenging and too difficult. If they were a little older it would be easier, but with their young age (they will be 5 and 8 years old) it may be too much to ask. Of course, we can try the majority of their diet locally and supplement it with other sources near and dear to their hearts.

So, why would we do this? Last year I ordered frozen strawberries through our food coop, as I often do in the winter months, and was very dismayed to read the strawberries had been grown in China. This isn’t about China, but that Ventura County (where I live) is one of the top producers of strawberries, and I don’t need strawberries from half way around the world. So, my reason is for the environment first. Others include: To support of regional economy. Because we may all be eating locally within 25 years anyway (whether we want to or not!). To build community. To know and understand our food sources.

If we are going to do this diet, starting January 1, 2009, then we need to start preparing now. Going to the Farmers Market every weeked; canning foods; buying a larger freezer to store food; keeping the garden happy and healthy; etc. Food preparation is a labor intensive process that we have lost touch with in our society.

If you live in Ventura or Santa Barbara counties, and this interests you, please visit the Eat Local, One Year web site and sign on.

One thing I’ve observed since I bought an iPod several years back, is that it changes my listening experience. It took me quite some time to get used to “shuffle” because I am definitely a linear listener and have always appreciated the order in which musicians present their music. I feel a deeper connection to the artist and her work when I listen from start to finish. This is particularly the case with something like Pat Metheny, Porcupine Tree or Joe Henry - at least it is for me. I also found that when I first started going all digital mp3, I ripped at 128k which I now know is completely unsatisfactory. I am in the process of re-ripping my 600 CDs at 320k and the sound difference is very noticeable. It is thrilling to see bands like Nine Inch Nails ($5!) and Steve Jansen releasing music online in wave or high bit rate mp3 files. Thank you. This cheap, low-quality iTunes model is just that - cheap. If you are buying music online, search out the DRM-free, higher bit rate downloads or just go out and buy the physical media.

So what else am I listening to recently? k.d. lang (sweet voice, some nice song writing, but still growing on me); Robert Plant & Alison Krauss (wow, he can really sing a song); Daniel Lanois (one of the greatest producers in the world with a fine solo career, and high quality downloads); and, of course, Radiohead.

As I study and learn more, I have found myself turning to the more radical end of the Christian community. Though evangelical, the Sojourners community has offered much in the area of justice and peace. More recently, I was happy to discover a magazine founded by a Mennonite and an Anabaptist called Geez. Where were these people when I was floundering back in college? I have also found some inspiration from the Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries project here in Southern California. A few years back I remember reading The Heart of Christianity by Marcus Borg. Wonderful book and very inspirational. And more recently, I have delved into some of the sermons by Pat Moore, an Episcopal priest (and close family member). I believe protecting the environment, serving the poor, and living non-violently as core values taught by Jesus.

All this means to me is that I believe that I live a Christian life based on the values and teachings of Jesus Christ. I also believe in Jesus Christ as a great teacher and model for living and I would consider myself a disciple of his. If there were a church to practice in that could live with this ambiguity of belief, I would probably participate. I guess that I fear calling myself a Christian - and some of my Christian friends choose to call themselves Anabaptists - due to all the associated baggage and misunderstanding to what that means. So much damage, hatred, misunderstanding, and fear have been done, and continues to be done, in the name of Christianity that it can be very depressing. Therefore, it has been easier to say “potential Christian” and then engage people (you) in conversation about what that means. The irony of it all is that it is because of my Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, that I have been able to open my heart and mind to my Christianity. Ten years ago this would not have been the case.

According to Twine, it is “powered by semantic understanding, Twine automatically organizes information, learns about your interests and makes connections and recommendations. The more you use Twine, the better it understands your interests and the more useful it becomes.”

Social|median, the newer of the two, says it “is a social news service that connects people with personalized news and information.”

I’ve got to admit that these products were challenging to wrap my brain around. Though I am very savvy when it comes to technology, and have been a regular user and teacher of the internet since the early 90s, I’m a little confounded by Tween and social|median.  I love the concept and will continue to use both services. I think the real benefit won’t happen until they reach a critical mass of users. Since it has only been a week or two of playing, I’m still on the learning curve. Right now, it feels a little overwhelming and that my RSS Reader does a better job of pulling in content. However, with RSS I may miss something unless I heavily use the social aspects of RSS. Both products have a button you can add to your browser so that material can be clipped into the product, assigned a tag or a group, and shared with others.  Both Tween and social|median are designed to send me a daily email, sort of like a newspaper, with all the new content for the groups or tags I am interested in. Unfortunately, this has only worked with Twine though I’m pretty sure I have the setting correct in social|median (granted, they are in “alpha” with only 2,315 users). So, basically I’m getting a daily feed that is customized to my interests.

One side note, just signed up for brightkite, a location based social network. The idea is to use your phone to post your location (including a note or picture) and then use it to find others within your physical range. Very strange. It connects with Twitter too and can feed your location to your tweets.

The key thing here is that I’m having FUN and still have some of the beta geek from days gone by. Social|median just added 500 users on Tuesday, so if I hear of another opening, I will post it here. I do have 10 invites for Twine and 3 for brightkite; if your interested in either, post a message in the comments.

• Chair, American Library Association Committee on Education (ends in June, then become a regular member)
• Chair, Community & Junior College Librarians Section of ACRL (ends in June)
• Chair, Ojai Valley Green Coalition Transportation Committee
• Chair, Gold Coast Library Network
• Member, ACRL Standards & Accreditation Committee (ends in June)
• Member, Ojai Valley Library Friends & Foundation Board
• Member, Council of Chief Librarians (starts in July)
• Member, ALA Committee on Scholarship and Grants (starts in July)
• Manage the Order of Interbeing Discussion Forum
• Manage the Order of Interbeing Member Directory
• Assisting with the re-engineering of the Order of Interbeing Sangha Directory
• Leader of Ojai Sangha
• Teach online classes three times per year
• Stay at the homeless shelter once a week from November to March
• Personal mentoring

All these activities are worthy of attention. I love all these activities and I enjoy being involved. Some I do because I am a professional who sees the value of engaging with my profession and with supporting our work as a professional community. Some I do because it is important to part of my local and spiritual community. But we all know there are only so many hours in the day (probably the reason I’m usually up at 4:30am).

Another aspect of Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaching has to do with engaged Buddhism. He coined this language in the mid-1950s in Vietnam. One meaning of engaged Buddhism could be that we practice Buddhism (or mindfulness) is everything we do, not just on the meditation cushion. Every moment is a moment to practice being present. So, when I am involved with any of the activities in my life I try and be fully present for that activity and to do it with mindfulness and concentration. This is a teaching tool for me as I look at my life action.

Ironically, this level of volunteer activity is not really anything new for me. I am very fortunate to have a loving and supportive life partner who sees the value of my volunteer work, but she also talks with me about her frustrations. And so, I have been invited to look more closely at my life action. One practice friend thinks that I may do too much with the Order of Interbeing and that I could be of more service by focusing my energies elsewhere. I think he means that I can bring my practice of mindfulness into those other areas of my life where it may not exist. This is an intriguing idea. I like to be involved, to be needed, to collaborate, and to be in the know. Some of this is ego and some of this is pure. I honestly love being of service, probably as a result of my religious and family roots (I was a missionary kid). There are two aspect to my volunteer work that troubles me: (1) time away from my family, and (2) environmental aspects of travel. The second is relatively easy to resolve but not perfectly. The first one is more challenging, especially when I leave for a 3-5 day conference. To address both these issues, I am trying to transition to more local/regional volunteer work rather than the national organizations. But I’m having a hard time saying no to the ALA requests. I’ve built up a network over the past 15 years of membership and have made an investment in the organization and it seems odd to let go of it.

So, I return to my questions from above. What does it mean to be busy? To have commitments? Is it possible to have to many? I honestly don’t have the answers to these questions, but I do have some clarity and focus to allow me to explore them further. What do you think? How do you handle volunteer commitments in your life? What’s a comfortable level of involvement for you?