I was so pleased to read such a thoughtful narrative on the pitfulls of joining CILIP. The reasons that ED put in his blog for leaving CILIP reflect precisely the reasons for me not joining!

Although the Head of our Library service thinks it would benefit my career to charter, there is no financial incentive for me to do so. My job does not require it, and many of the jobs that are available simply require experience and/or a postgraduate qualification in the area.

As I am now a growing number in a generation that have to pay £100+ to the student loan company each month, as well as a further £20 for Union membership, is it any wonder that there is no motivation to join?

Technically the implementation of OpenAthens LA is the easy part as long as your student/staff directory is organised, meeting the rules of the federation.

However the hardest part is purely cultural; helping students to understand why you are moving to single sign-on, what it means for them, as well as confusion over what Athens is/was!

Below is a list of questions sent by Chris Spencer, Library Procurement & Systems Development Manager at Bournemouth University. I thought of blogging my replies in order to share our experiences at Bath Spa with other Librarians.

1)      I presume you needed to register an additional entity id with the Federation to allow testing of LA without compromising existing user experience with Athens MD? How is this done?

Whilst we were testing we registered our IDP as ‘Bath Spa University TEST’ with the UK Federation. We thought that by adding ‘TEST’ in capitals students would realise they were taking risks by attempting to authenticate with this through the WAYF.

You can opt to be invisible in the Federation WAYF in order to avoid confusion, but this would involve a lot of hard work during testing as URL’s would have to bypass the WAYF but still prompt authentication to your services.

Now that we are live we have two entries with the Federation: ‘Bath Spa University’ and ‘Bath Spa University ATHENS’.

2)      Has parallel running caused any confusion for the users who have stumbled across the LA authentication route.

Yes. Students still try to log into LA authenticated resources using their Athens credentials.

However the LA log-in page was customised from the outset so that project information and contact details were available in case users failed to log-in. Since September I have probably answered around two to three email enquries a day from students/staff who are confused.

3)      Has the move to LA necessitated much editing to your web pages and documentation?

Our users were regularly updated on the project via our webpages and blog.

Whilst we were testing I set-up a brand new section within the electronic services side of our website, constantly adding services to the list whilst we were testing. Wherever we could we would invite users to test our new method through these pages, inviting comments to me via email.

However Athens and IP authentication was still our default and supported method of authentication during testing, and was therefore still very much at the forefront of our website. We only wanted users to test LA access whilst browsing the site or by clicking a link in an email.

Users were invited to test our system whilst browsing our site

4)      Have you opted to use a single authentication protocol (ie shibboleth module) or are you going mixed economy (ip, athens,shibb)? Have you gone for WAYF or WAYFless links?

Our supported method is now LA and IP authentication. As a result we tend to provide two links seperately from our website, for on and off campus users.

Where I can I have generated WAYFLESS url’s. I have done this using the following methods:

• Asking the service providers for WAYFLESS url’s
• Visiting the Federation site to see if they have instructions for particular service providers
• Visiting the websites of Shibboleth run institutions, before copying and altering their links to fit
• Using a Firefox add-on called ‘HTTP Headers’, allowing me to trace WAYFLESS URL’s during the authentication process.  URL’s generated using this method however have to be constantly monitored as they are not stable or supported by the service providers.

5)      How much promotion have you done? Any communication channels particularly effective?

We communicated the project to our users wherever we could:

• Four testing requests were sent out to all staff/students during our BETA testing phase
• Two all staff/student emails sent to warn users of our MD/LA transition
• Two further emails once the transition happened
• One message sent out to all Athens users, via the admin console
• A large poster, with fire and explosions to advertise the removal of Athens MD use from April 5th 2010
• The same poster, published on our foyer ppt display
• All Refworks users were contacted, video tutorials produced for instruction
• A ‘MyAthens’ panel was set-up to communicate the same general information with those who don’t check their email!
• Our Library blog

As a result it is hard to work out which methods were most effective, there were so many!

However I did recieve a large volume of response once the all staff/student emails were sent out, and the Google analytics stats that I installed in the log-in page reflected busy periods of activity once the emails were sent.

6)      Any strategies for ensuring that those off-campus users who by-pass library pages and go direct to resources make the right authentication choice for logging in?

The discovery issue was the most difficult part of the project.

The all staff/student emails were important to attract these users to our site. By setting up a panel in MyAthens I also hope to capture some of these users also.

Now that we have made our transition, I found it also important to notify members of academic staff that their VLE links may need updating. Links from the VLE to EbscoHOST or DawsonERA for example contained specific codes, prompting Athens access.

7)      Any lessons learnt so far?

When contacting service providers from the beginning be careful when mentioning OpenAthens LA 2.0! I found this caused confusion, particularly as many only recognise Athens or Shibboleth authentication.

Therefore I found it more useful to say the following:

We wish to test our Shibboleth installation with you. Our details are: {insert here}

We are in the UK Federation metadata as {your chosen WAYF name}

Some providers may want to know what affiliated values you are passing, but otherwise setting up testing is that simple.

8)      How easy is it to add new resources through the LA admin tool?

The great thing about LA is that as long as you are passing the right attributes, you only have to pass on your details to service providers in order to ‘add new resources’.

I did have to create a new attribute for OCLC’s Geobase, as they required a particular entitlement string that was relevant to their service only.

The only slightly tricky part is setting up permission sets in the admin tool, as you need to make sure that you are not frivolously sending out  to Service Providers who do not require them. However as long as you send out the affiliated attribute by default LA will work with many SP’s from the word go.

9)      Is the usage stats tool operating?

No. Expected this summer I believe. Can’t wait.

10)   Your general thoughts on the whole process

In terms of setting up and testing LA the whole process is easy. It just runs.

The major difficulty was often centred around discovery. We quickly realised that students generally do not access our resources by visiting the Library website. Instead, students would often use OpenURL linking via Google Scholar, click on links from courses in the VLE or visit service providers directly. As a result we heavily promoted our website as the place to visit to discover our resources and this has worked to a certain extent.

However it won’t be until the launch of University portal before we can have the confidence that we are reaching our users. The will provide a central location where students can make tution and housing payments, access email, Blackboard, as well as accessing our electronic resources. This will involve linking LA with our own implentation of OpenAthens SP so that students only have to log-in once in order to access all of their campus services.

The other difficulty was that only senior department members can send out all staff/student emails. That meant that despite my contact details being published in the email in case of queries, users would always tend to reply to the sender. This meant that our Head Librarian would recieve copious amounts of emails from confused users, who would ask questions on any Library related topic. This meant that even the task forwarding them on took some time to complete.

If I was to do a similar project then I would organise emails to be sent via a ‘no reply’ type alias. If this is not possible then a rule should be set-up in Outlook to forward all emails with a particular subject heading to the correct person.

I have just realised that I have not updated my blog for sometime, which for many is like not changing your underwear!

2010 I feel is going to be a steady year after all the ups and downs of 2009, which resulted in me being one kidney down and a wife up! We returned from our honeymoon last week which included a three day trip to Vegas, as well as a cruise along the ‘Mexican Reviera’. I feel fully replenished, ready for the tasks of the year:

Single sign-on

In Easter 2010 Bath Spa Library and Information Services plan to ditch ‘classic Athens’ authentication for all of our electronic resources, reverting instead to the new OpenAthens LA 2.0 product which we have been successfully trialling for some months now. In fact (and as you will see) our success has enabled us to be presented as a case study on Eduserv’s site.

Blackboard

I had some excellent discussion with some colleagues at other University Libraries toward the end of 2009 on how their services integrate with Blackboard. I begin this year by presenting some of these ideas to my colleagues, before putting them into practice in the summer.

Image Management System

Last year we bought a range of products through Extensis, allowing us to catalogue a large number of images before publishing them online. So far we have catalogued hundreds of images and 2010 will see a whole lot more if the DACS licence is updated (fingers crossed).

Institutional repository

We currently sit within a small group of Universities in the UK that are yet to implement a repository. This year will see the development of the project, selecting a system and exploring our hosting options.

Last week I launced Bath Spa’s new Library blog, allowing Library staff to promote our services. The theory is to use the blog to expand on news items that we provide via our website, as well as enhance the visibility of our electronic services. In addition there are many electronic service projects that will be coming into fruition over the next few months, so I will be using it to keep students and staff up to date with new developments.

I was particularly excited to find that www.libraryblog.co.uk was available as a domain, so I snapped that up straight away! The bonus of hosting my own installation of wordpress also meant that I was able to customise the template, providing our own branding througout. A major thank you to JISC Digital Media, who helped me clean up the Bath Spa logo, as my offering was pixelated and jagged!

Bath Spa University Library blog

I cannot emphasise how useful the following tip is. Everybody should know about this feature, available in both Firefox and Opera! I was shocked recently at how many people at work either have never heard of this, or simply do not use it.

Librarians spend a great deal of time searching across the same web services day by day. Assigning a keyword for these searches cuts out the need to visit the site you need in the first instance, streamlining many of your tasks throughout the day.

Do the following (shown here in Firefox, very similar in Opera):

1. Visit a website you search all the time. My example is Amazon.co.uk, as I spend a lot of time here looking for books.

2. Within the search box of the website, right hand click and select ‘Add a keyword for this search’ (below).

3. A box entitled ‘Add Bookmark’ now appears. As I am using Amazon I have put ‘Amazon’ as the name, followed by a keyword of ‘a’. The keyword can be as little or as long as you like. However by keeping it short you will be able to make quick use of this service, something which become clear shortly.

4. Now you can search amazon by simply visiting your address bar, typing ‘a’ followed by your Amazon search.

This can be done for almost all search functions on the web. I have it set-up for Google (blogs/images), Amazon, eBay, ebuyer, incredibly useful for searching quickly across sites.

In February this year Bob McKee, chief executive of CILIP blogged a short article entitled All of a Twitter. The piece quickly took an authoritative tone, casting a bizarre paranoia over ‘informal’ librarians who network away from the closed environment of the CILIP site. A hip-hop beef quickly ensued as web consultant/librarian Phil Bradley posted CILIP: epic fail, declaring his disgust at CILIP’s stance, claiming they were placing a distance between themselves and potential members.

Bradley’s article became a triumph of debate, provoking a barrage of response from Twitter friendly Librarians equally disgusted at McKee’s outburst. Some of this response appeared to be born out of sheer frustration, as non CILIP members were unable to reply to McKee’s post through CILIP’s ’sanctioned’ blog environment.

The outcome of this debate was responded to positively by CILIP, who last week invited Phil Bradley and fellow guru Brian Kelly to present on the use of Web 2.0 technologies to enhance communication within the LIS community. The event also became a platform for experiment, encouraging librarians to discuss the topic over Twitter. Official Tweeters were also assigned, posting up key topics as they were presented at the event.

I have to admit that I was not overtly impressed by this concept. Discussion over the topic began almost 24 hours before the event, using #cilip2 hashtag. Participants were encouraged to use Twitterfall to follow the event, which presents tweets on particular topic in real time. Going back over the transcript of the event quickly reveals how silly this became, as participants with very little to say were using the hashtag, polluting official entries as the list of entries grew longer. The job of following the discussion became intolerable, especially as many of us only had the time to read back in our own time, after working hours.

I believe the use of Twitter to support this event was perhaps naive; the statistics reveal that 150 librarians provided around 1200 tweets. But without naming names a handful of librarians were clearly spamming, an issue which other discussion technologies can already cope with. Overall though the event was undeniably successful in bringing a quantity of professionals together, but quality was compromised.

Whilst I feel Twitter was misused here as an open forum on the future of CILIP, the blog discussion surrounding CILIP 2.0 is superb. The transcript posted on the main CILIP blog is much more easier to follow, and the following articles provoke much more focussed debate:

Brian Kelly’s review of the event

A positive response to the use of Twitter

A much more balanced review, written by Katie Fraser

An article on how Twitter in this instance proved that Twitter is a useful tool for conferences, Amelia Luzzi

EDIT: I have corrected a typo, mispelling Brian Kelly’s name. Sorry Brian!

The Kindle 2

As many of you may be aware, the Library at Bath Spa University bought two eBook readers last month. Library staff are being introduced to the readers, who are then encouraged to feedback via a questionnaire on how useful the technology will be for students and staff at the University.

However the more I play with the Sony PRS-505, the more I get distracted by all the talk surrounding the Kindle eBook reader. The PRS-505 has impressed me; the battery life is superb and the device can handle a number of document formats. The screen is comfortable to look at and overall the device is robust and attractive.

However I think the Kindle could could really be the product that could revolutionise the eBook market in the UK, providing real advantages beyond simply being able to store a large number of books on one device. Increasingly it is products that combine a number of technologies that have become successful,  a ‘mash-up’ of services that harnesses the  Web 2.0 culture.

The Kindle appears to hit the nail on the head: a WIFI/3G connection which allows to users to purchase books without connecting to a computer, removing the need to download software you didn’t want in the first place. Users are able to subscribe to RSS feeds freely, as well as purchase newspapers and magazines over the device.

This product brings eBook readers out of the category of the ‘gadget’, and actually provides technology that will actually make a difference to the culture of its users. Imagine waking up in the morning to find the Guardian has already been downloaded and available for you to read, as well as alerts to blog updates. You read a book review which interests you, pick up the Kindle and read it.

The major hold-up for potential UK Kindle users is the mobile networks. In America users pay a flat fee for the Kindle and nothing more; the 3G connection is provided free by the mobile network. This is clearly highly complex for Europe, which contains many networks spanning many countries. Amazon has to strike a deal with as many of these networks as they can before they can release the Kindle – I do not envy this task!

I am extremely happy with Windows 7.

I downloaded the BETA version back in January when it came out, installing it on my old laptop as a direct replacement for Vista. Despite coming packaged with the Laptop I bought two years ago, Vista was running like Gordon Brown’s mind, slow and unable to react. This was despite numerous re-installs and a threat to retro step back to WinXP.

The installation of Windows 7 took forever, making me instantly regret making the choice. However after two months of using it, I haven’t looked back at all! It is important to point out that graphically the look of Windows 7 does not really differ to Vista. The themes are very similar and the Start Menu is near identical.

However everything is so much more smoother and customisable. As the screenshots show, I was able to make everything a glaring red with just a few clicks of the mouse. The quick launch toolbar found next to the start menu is also more user friendly; programs can be ‘pinned’ or ‘unpinned’ to it by a simple click and drag, removing the ‘open folder’ technique we all use in XP. The launch icons will also glow if the application is already open, as well as display small open application windows when you run your mouse over the icon.

Visually the system is Vista with a few improvements. However the major benefit is that it runs superbly even on system which struggled with Vista. My laptop runs on a 1.6 AMD dual core, 1gb ram, 120gb Sata HDD. This was only just good enough to run Vista effectively (despite having the Vista sticker!), but Windows 7 boots and runs twice as fast despite being the newer product.

I understand that Microsoft will release the same varience of systems that Vista provided, but will also turn their attentions to the Netbook world. If this product maintains its stability over to this platform, I really can’t see how anybody will be able to compete. It will really break my heart when I will have to stop using 7 in August, it means I will have three realistic choices: Buy a new laptop, revert back to Vista, or spend lots of money on the commercial release!