Nebraska Library Commission gaming audit, one librarian’s response

For those that don’t know MPOW got audited recently and the state auditor determined that our spending of state funds regarding gaming was inappropriate. The report and our response can be found on the NLC’s blog. Those interested in the local reaction can check out this article and the 60+ comments on the Lincoln Journal Star Web site. (It’s also made the TV news in both Lincoln and Omaha, along with an AP article that’s been reprinted in at least two other states.)

I’ve got my opinions and feelings about how this went down and the results but for now I need to keep them pretty much in-house. However, I did get permission from one Nebraska librarian to reprint his letter to the newspaper and to the state auditor. I am reprinting in here in case the paper doesn’t decide to print it. (The only editing I did was to add the link to Amazon regarding the book he speaks of and to remove his phone number and e-mail address.)

John W. Seyfarth
Information Systems Manager
Sump Memorial Library
4612 Sutley Circle
Papillion, NE 68133

Feb 25, 2009

Mike Foley, State Auditor
P. O. Box 98917
State Capitol, Suite 2303
Lincoln, NE 68509

An open letter to the Nebraska State Auditor, Mr. Mike Foley

Dear Mr. Foley,

I am a librarian at the Sump Memorial Library in Papillion.  I read the Journal Star article about your recent audit of the Nebraska Library Commission, the audit itself, and the response by the Commission.  It appears to me that perhaps you and your auditors don’t have a good grasp of what the current missions of libraries are.  The most important is that we are the community center for lifelong learning, and we are not just books, magazines, or the Internet any more.  Gaming and social networking are legitimate activities that contribute to lifelong learning.  Perhaps you should read one of the most authoritative works on the subject, “Don’t Bother Me Mom—I’m Learning!” by Marc Prensky.  I have ordered a copy to be delivered to your office on my dime.  I hope you read it, and discover that the manipulatives that are used in gaming are not just “toys” as you hinted in your audit.  As you stated, one of the objectives is to attract youths into libraries, and perhaps introduce them to gaming, and the other elements that libraries provide toward facilitation of lifelong learning.  There is lots of learning that takes place with both gaming and social networking.  Much of it is related to the enhancement of personal communication skills.  And in my opinion, we really need better communications between the citizens of our country.  So, if you haven’t tried it, I encourage you to attend one of the gaming tournaments that will undoubtedly occur at one of the Lincoln City Libraries.  The commission’s role in all this is to help libraries in facilitating these activities, and the Internet vehicles are low cost methods to get this information out to Nebraska Libraries.

Furthermore, one of the issues in your report has to do with the fact that the commission paid sales tax on their two on-line purchases.  On line vendors generally don’t accept our Nebraska Tax Exempt form, and furthermore, the 5½% of the 7% sales tax that was paid in these orders goes directly back into state coffers.  Of the $29.26 that was paid on the state credit card all but $6.27 went back to the state, since it was state tax.  I have included a check for $6.27 in Mr. Foley’s copy of this letter written out to the Department of Revenue to cover the city tax that was missed out on by the State of Nebraska.

It appears to me that there are many bigger “fish to fry” by your state auditors that the gaming purchases by the Nebraska Library Commission.  As I am also a member of a local Nebraska Foster Care Review Board, I see the results of many very important unaudited issues every month.  If the Audit Agency is hurting for topics to audit, just take a look as the State Foster Care Review Board 25^th Anniversary Annual Report, and there is rich material to audit here, such as why almost 46% of the children in foster care have had to put up with at least four or more different case workers to manage their cases during their custody as state wards, or over 40% of children in foster care have been there over two years.

Sincerely,
John W. Seyfarth

CC:
Director, Nebraska Library Commission
Executive Director, State Foster Care Review Board
President, Nebraska Library Association

There's Still Room for You @ Library Camp

There are still plenty of seats available in Library Camp Nebraska one week from today. Sign up now! It’s totally free and totally fun!

Potential topics to be discussed currently include:

• The Social Web in the library
• Cheap and free tech tools
• Copyright & Creative Commons
• Public programs
• High Tech / High Touch: are they mutually exlusive?
• Get your free Web presence (for libraries that don't have one already)
• Privacy in a Social Web world
• Wildly impractical, expensive ideas for your library
• Alternative searching techniques (or, what's new & cool in the world of searching??)
• Ideas for library marketing on the cheap
• Ideas for new granting agencies/funding sources and/or grant success stories
• Demythologizing the "information wants to be free" (while information may want to be free, it aint cheap to provide it...)
• Community Outreach
• Mentoring
• Instruction
• Expanding the role of the library on campus (PR/marketing/collaboration)
• Exploring the future of library workers: What's the greatest need in Nebraska?...support for Master's level v. pre-professional training?

Full details @ http://librarycampnebraska.pbwiki.com/

Nebraska Learns 2.0 - It’s time to start learning!

Cross-posted from the NLC Blog:
It’s time to start learning! The Nebraska Learns 2.0 program starts today. The program is made up of 23 short online lessons called Things. The Things are designed to encourage staff to learn more about emerging technologies on the web that are changing the way people, society and libraries access information and communicate with each other.

In addition to learning new Things everyone who completes all 23 Things by January 30, 2009 will have a chance to win one of nine 8GB Creative Zen MP3 Players. These prizes have been made available through generous donations from ITART, NEMA, and NLA. Also everyone who completes the program before the deadline will receive 15 CE credits. More information about prize eligibility and CE credit can be found on the Nebraska Learns 2.0 website.

Here are a few things you may be wondering about.

• You do not need to register. However, to be eligible for prizes and CE credits you do need to blog your progress. Instructions on how to do this will be included in Thing #3 and Thing #4.
• There is no cost to participate.
• ALL Nebraska librarians, library staff, library friends, library board members and school media specialists can participate. (Other folks are welcome to follow along; however, we will not be offering any official technical support nor will you be eligible for the prize drawings or CE credit.)
• This is a self-directed learning program. No in-person classes will be offered.
• Have more questions? Check out the FAQ on the Nebraska Learns 2.0 website.

To start learning go to the Nebraska Learns 2.0 website: http://l2ne.blogspot.com/2008/09/thing-1-discovery.html

Announcing Library Camp Nebraska

Library Camp Nebraska
University of Nebraska – Lincoln
Wednesday 19 November 2008
Sponsored by
The Nebraska Library Commission and
the University of Nebraska - Lincoln Libraries

Library Camp Nebraska is the first of what we hope to be a series of unconferences throughout the state of Nebraska. So, just what is an unconference?

An unconference is the best part of a conference (conversing with your colleagues) stripped out and crammed into a fun and informative day-long event. Unconferences have no pre-selected presenters, just group discussions on the topics that you want to talk about with your colleagues. There are many different ways unconferences can be run. Library Camp Nebraska will be using the BarCamp model this time around.

Library Camp Nebraska will be held at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln Union on 19 November 2008. Participation will be limited to just the first 100 registrants and is open to anyone who is interested in dialogue and conversation about customer-friendly libraries, library 2.0 and how we can all improve our services and organizations to meet the needs of our communities. (There will be tech topics covered, but if you aren't a techie, come talk about something else.)

For more details and to register head over to the Library Camp Nebraska wiki at http://librarycampnebraska.pbwiki.com/. Please don’t wait until the last minute to register. Seating will be strictly limited to the first 100 registrants. No additional seats will be made available.

(Please feel free to forward to everyone.)

Configuring a public laptop: the result

A recent comment on my post about how to configure some public laptops reminded me and I'd not blogged the results.

First, in response to Scuba Steve who said "Giving public users administrator access is just stupid," I'll respond by saying that there needs to be a balance between security and usability. I've been in plenty of labs and on plenty of public computers where they're so locked down that I can't do the simplest of actions on that computer. When you sacrifice usability for security, you end up loosing in the end.

Granted, on its face, giving the public admin rights does seem risky. However, especially in Vista, when you don't have admin rights, there are a whole list of things that can seriously degrade your patron's experience. Remember, this isn't an office situation here, these are public-access computers. I think Steve would respond that this fact actually increases the risk more than in an office environment and I might tend to agree but it also changes the nature of the user. In an office, users are expected to do a certain list of things and therefore IT can anticipate how the computer will be used. Give access to the public and who know what they'll want to do.

Lastly, these computers are mostly going to small rural libraries who have minimal to no technical expertise on staff. Therefore, what security is installed needs to be manageable by non-IT professionals.

So, I'll stress again, there needs to be a balance. Here's the balance I believe I've found:

There are two accounts, one for staff which is password protected, and one for the public which is not. (Don't librarians just love handing out passwords to people?) Both accounts have full rights to the computer as far as Windows is concerned. I've also installed Steady State with the following two restrictions:

1. The public account is "locked". This means that no matter what the user does to the computer, upon logout (or reboot) the changes are immediately removed.
   
2. Access to Steady State has been blocked for the public account. This addresses Steve's question "What would stop them from uninstalling/deleting SteadyState, Deep Freeze or any other restoring software you install?" In other words, in order to change or uninstall Steady State you must be logged in as the administrator.

As a result, staff can log in as staff and make any needed changes, install/remove software or run updates to the system as a whole without needing to touch Steady State at all. To make a permanent change specific to the public profile (i.e. add or remove desktop icons) they'll just need to log in as staff, unlock the public account, log in as the public, make the changes, then log back in as staff and relock the public account. (That may sound complex but it doesn't involve multiple reboots like Deep Freeze or Centurion Guard do.)

In the end I believe that I've found the balance that fits our needs. I've been running this setup in our lab for the past month and will be doing so for the next month before I actually set up the laptops in question. So far, this setup is working as needed.

Let me stress again: this solution fits our needs. Blanket statements such as it's "stupid" to do something in every situation just shows that your thinking is locked and unfortunately rules out the flexibility that's required to solve certain problems.

2008 WiFi Connectivity Grants

Seven months of planning has led the announcement of my first (as in totally my idea) state-wide project here in Nebraska. I'm totally stoked! IN the past 24 hours we've had ten libraries apply including one that chose the "less traditional" computer option.

Nebraska’s public libraries are invited to apply for WiFi Connectivity Grants, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to put WiFi into as many as 75 public libraries without such access. A WiFi router and a choice of portable computers will be provided to successful applicants to enable them to provide wireless Internet access in the library itself to their customers. Applications are due no later than 2 September 2008. Michael Sauers, Technology Innovation Librarian, is heading up this project as part of the Nebraska Library Commission’s effort to make 2008, “the year of WiFi in Nebraska.”

For questions contact Michael Sauers at 800-307-2665 or 402-471-3106, or Richard Miller at 800-307-2665 or 402-471-3175.

Configuring a public laptop: Which direction should I take?

Here in Nebraska we're going to be giving grants to give libraries who don't already offer public access WiFi a Linksys WiFi router and a choice between a Dell laptop and a Samsung Q1. The question I have deals with how I should set up the laptops/Q1s. Before I describe the options keep the following in mind: a) They both run Vista. b) The fact that one's an UMPC and one's a traditional laptop is irrelevant. (At least I think the hardware is irrelevant. If you think it isn't please explain.) and c) The computers will be made available for public use. So, which would you choose?

Option #1
Set up a staff account with admin privileges and a public account as a standard user. This way the staff can run updates and change settings and the public can't alter anything.

Option #2
Have just one user account but install Windows Steady State so that no matter what the public does, a reboot solves everything. To make changes permanent the staff would just need to turn off Steady State first.

I have my opinions but I'm trying to see if I've missed anything. What do you think?

Thing #8: RSS, part 1

This week's Things deal with RSS and Thing #8 has us signing up with Bloglines and subscribing to some feeds. Well, no problem for me there as I've already got an account which contains about 500 feeds. So, yep, I'm stuck for something to specifically blog about. Well, the thing's built in questions have come to the rescue!

What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?

Simple, the fact that they make keeping up simple. If I had to actually bookmark all of these resources and check daily for what's new, at best I'd go insane. With RSS, all I need to do is subscribe and all the information comes to me as soon as it can

How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your work or personal life?

My problem is that I use this all the time in both my work AND personal life so much so that sometimes it's hard to differentiate between the two. If I read a feed about cool technology, is that for work or is that personal? The answer is "yes".

How can libraries use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?

Libraries can use RSS in two ways. First librarians can use it to keep up with news and the opinions of other librarians. The libraries themselves can use it as a great way to distribute information to their users.

Thing #6: New Trading Card

New Trading Card
Originally uploaded by Travelin' Librarian

Thing #6 has us playing with flickr mashup tools. I created a trading card for myself way back when but I never really like the photo so I've taken this opportunity to create a new one. Hope y'all like it.

Thing #5 : Blogging from flickr

Miles Davis
Originally uploaded by jazz matrix

Thing #5 of our Learning 2.0 series involves playing with and optionally signing up for a flickr account. Well, got the account already (approaching 15,000 photos) and I'm pretty familiar with how it works. The last item was to blog a photo from flickr. So, I poked through my recent flickr favorites and figured I share this classic photo of Miles Davis. (I'm a big Miles fan!)

Learning 2.0, Thing #3

Well, it's NLCL2 time again folks and this is the first blog-based assignment. Thing #3 has us creating a blog and writing some posts. Well, I've got the blog already and I don't seem to have any problems coming up with topics lately. However, as part of the assignment we're supposed to blog about the 7 and 1/2 lifelong learning habits and "which one might be easiest for you and hardest for you & why?"

This is a hard one for me. I just skimmed through the list again and honestly, I don't find any of them difficult. My guess is that this is because it's my job to constantly learn new things and that I'm a trainer so I'm constantly teaching others. This does put me in a unique situation compared to many others on our staff but I know I'm not totally alone.

As for what's easiest, habit 7.5 most definitely: play. In some ways though this makes separating my work life from my non-work life somewhat difficult. I'm allowed to play at the office and many things I play with outside of work have job-related outcomes. I'm not complaining, I just have to force myself to separate some times.

Creative Commons @ MPOW

I don't usually cross-post between this personal blog and the office blog but a project I've been working on for about a month has just been implemented and I'm totally excited about it. Check out the details on the NLC blog.

Learning 2.0 starts today

I'm in my office this morning about an hour before everyone else start to appear. This in itself, isn't bloggable since that's my SOP. However, this morning I just put in the links to the first two of 23 things for the Commission's Learning 2.0 program. This week there's just some reading and thinking to do for the participants so there won't be too much excitement. Next week, they all start blogging. I'll be participating too so watch this space for my thoughts and comments on the learning exercises.

(If you're not an NLC staff member, which I'll assume you're not, you're welcome to participate in our program. Just follow along via the link above. Unfortunately, you won't be eligible for the prizes.)

One Laptop Per Child: Laptops designed for learning

The One Laptop Per Child (http://laptop.org) project's goal is "To provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves." To that end, the XO laptop is a machine created explicitly for children and learning. Karin Dalziel will demo the XO laptop, give a tour of the operating system, called "Sugar," and explain how features of the laptop are custom made for education.
Presented at the Nebraska Library Commission on 1 February 2008.

Click To Play

Interactive Conference Booth

In the Commission booth at the Nebraska Library Association conference this week there will be a lot going on. We'll have the laptops for e-mail checking and plenty of video games including DDR on the XBox 360, Guitar Hero II on the Playstation 2, and Wii Sports. (If you ask the right person, we might even hook up an Atari 2600 for some 8-bit old-skool gaming.) We'll also be running a series of library-related YouTube videos. Those of you who can't attend can view the videos here.

Is reference via Twitter possible?

Last night I had a "great idea" for an experiment: reference via Twitter! Our reference department already has a Twitter account (NLC_Reference) so all that needed to be done was to make sure someone was watching the account's e-mail address and to then let people know that they could send us reference questions via Tiwtter's direct message feature. We'd then receive the questions (short ones obviously) and direct message back the (again, short) answers. Well, it turns out things are always as easy as they seem.

Unknown to me, in order for person A (a patron) to send a direct message to person B (the Commission), person B needs to be following person A. Up 'till now, this account hasn't bee following anyone as we're just posting questions asked to show the diversity of questions we get at a state library. There really wasn't any need to follow anyone. But to accomplish this idea of mine the following would need to happen:

1. We market the fact that we're accepting reference questions via Twitter and tell people our username.
2. They follow us.
3. We receive an e-mail telling us of the new follower.
4. We go to the Twitter page of the new follower and start following them.
5. They receive notification that we're following them.
6. They can now send us direct message reference questions.

Granted this isn't exactly the most complicated set of procedures in the world but one must wonder if it's worth the effort for the limited exposure. (We've got a MeeboMe page which doesn't require a user to do anything in order to ask us a question.) Say they start following us late on Friday. We're not going to follow them back until Monday morning. The result is several days before they can even ask the question let alone receive a response. Also, we're worried that if people know we're "following" them they might try to ask us a question publicly instead of via direct message. Despite the fact we are technically following them, we'd have no intention of actually reading anything they post. Might then someone think we're ignoring them if we don't respond?

The decision isn't mine. I think I've explained everything accurately to our head of reference and she's going to mull it over. I'll keep you posted but any comments on this would be greatly appreciated.

Nerdvana

I think my office is finally set up to cover what I need. Ok, it took three computers and an additional DSL line to do it, but now I can really get some work done ;-)

I reject your gravity and substitute my own!

During Monday's debrief of Friday's NLC grand opening in Second Life we were discussing dancing on the roof. Being a child of the 80s I made some sort of comment to the effect of "too bad we weren't dancing on the ceiling". Well, Allana pulled it off and Christa tested it out.

Just stop by our building and try it out. Just look for the ball on the ceiling of the first floor.

You're Invited!

You're Invited to the Grand Opening of the Nebraska Library Commission in Second Life!

Second Life is the online virtual world built and owned by it's residents. More than 400 librarians from all types of libraries are using Second Life to provide programs, services and materials to their patrons in the virtual world.

For example, at the Nebraska Library Commission in Second Life, we have installed a rotating exhibit of photos from Nebraska Memories. The photos on display will be changed on a regular basis, so there will always be something new to see!

We will also be scheduling events and training in the upcoming months. Check back here and at our Second Life building to see what we have planned!

So, join the Second Life community by creating your own personal avatar (it's FREE!) and come visit the Nebraska Library Commission at our new building on Cybrary City.

NLC Vendor Day 2007

Yesterday several dozen librarians from throughout Nebraska joined NLC staff and about a dozen library vendors at the Cornhusker Marriott in Lincoln, NE for the second annual NLC Vendor Day.

Overall I'd say it was a success. All of the sessions were well attended and many great questions were asked of the vendors about their products. Both of my sessions, Second Life and Hot Topics in Technology" were also well attended.

More specifically to me, my use of YouTube as presentation platform seemed to go over very well. All of the feedback I received indicated that it worked well and gave everyone an idea of what it was like to be in Second Life without actually going there. (That, and I didn't use PowerPoint at all so that's a guaranteed plus.)

From the presenter's persepctive YouTube did leave a bit to be desired. Due to the fact that all YouTube video pages force you to scroll to see the whole video window and each time you move to the next video in a playlist you have to re-scroll, I decided to use the playlist that I embedded in my blog the previous day. This way I could scroll down once, click play, and let it run, pausing when I needed to address something specific. Unfortunately, I didn't test this plan fully in advance. It seems that embedded playlists will play the first four videos and then force you to click over to the YouTube site to play the rest. (For purposes of ad revenue I'm sure.) So, due to this I was back in YouTube, scrolling to align future videos on the screen. It wasn't a complete breakdown of the plan but it did catch me off guard, something I try to avoid during a presentation.

The only other comment I would make about this method of presenting is not to go over the 30 minute mark when showing video. I pretty much kept to exactly 30 but I started to get the feeling at the end that if I'd gone any longer I would have started to loose some of the attendees.

Overall I'd give the day a 9 out of 10 and my YouTube experiment an 8 out of 10. (My photos from the day can be found by clicking on the photo in this post.)

YouTube as Presentation

Tomorrow is the Nebraska Library Commission's Vendor Day and as part of the festivities I get 30 minutes to introduce Second Life. So, with the discovery of the video I posted earlier today I decided to take a different approach and assemble 30 minutes worth of YouTube videos and use them. (I'll most likely cut short the Vega song short as I'm using it more as an intro to the video on building her SL guitar.) I've still got handouts but I thought this would be an interesting experiment. The videos are presented for you below and I'll report back afterwards as to how the audience liked it.

Referenceing Twitter

The Nebrask Library Commission's reference staff are Twittering! Check them out at http://twitter.com/NLC_Reference.

Herding Avatars is like herding cats

NLC Group Photo Outtake
Originally uploaded by Travelin' Librarian.

The NLC Network Services staff got together this afternoon to take a group photo in front of our new building in Second Life. Getting everyone in the right clothes, in the right place, not tripping over each other, and finally into the right pose is no easy task. Oh, then there's the lighting issues... Look for the final result shortly on the NLC blog.

Work @ Your Library

Help us welcome our new staff member...

I guess I'm official. I've been blogged by the NLC.