First there was the book – okay, first there were tablets and scrolls and things, and THEN there was the book.

Then came the ebook. AKA the e-book, eBook, Ebook, etc. We’ll get that all straightened out one of these days.

And now? Now there is the app-book. Courtesy of none other than Sir Stephen Fry, self-described gadget-head, auteur, and world-renowned actor. With the release of his new book, The Fry Chronicles, Penguin Books has simultaneously released an ebook version (as one might expect in this day and age), and also an interactive app.

The app is called myFry and is available for the iPhone and iPad. I could say more, but they have a video that is probably more enlightening.

If you want more info, FutureBook has a couple good write-ups here and here.

With the final votes tallied, and some close calls, libraries have come out on top in the recent Washington elections with a perfect 6 for 6 score.

In Cowlitz County, the levy for the Castle Rock Public Library succeeded with 62.34% of the vote, which is great because it needed a supermajority (at least 60%) to pass. The final tally was 298 votes for and 180 against. A levy failure in 2008 forced the library to rely solely on donations to continue operating until a new levy passed last year. While the library relies entirely on levy funding, it is hoped that donations will continue to help bolster the budget moving forward.

The Fort Vancouver Regional Library, which covers a section of Cowlitz County, as well as Clark, Skamania, and Klickitat counties, also succeeded, though by an even smaller margin, with 50.28% of the vote (they needed 50% plus 1 vote to succeed). Klickitat County showed the strongest support, with over 63% approval, while the other counties hovered right around the 50% mark. Part of the success may be attributed to the recent closing of all three Hood River County libraries across the river in Oregon, which could have helped energize Washington voters to avoid a similar fate.

In Clallam County the levy lid lift succeeded with nearly 60% of the vote (again they needed 50% plus 1 vote), with 14,299 votes for and 9,895 votes against. This success has immediate results for Clallam County’s four public libraries. The libraries in Clallam Bay, Forks, Port Angeles, and Sequim were all prepared to close for an unpaid furlough week from Monday, August 27th through Saturday, September 4th. Thanks to the success of the levy lid lift, however, they’ve decided to keep their doors open instead, which of course is great news for library users and employees alike.

In Spokane County the levy passed with nearly 55% of the vote (they needed 50% plus 1 vote). The levy lift will allow the Spokane County Library District to maintain its current level of operations and maintenance for the next three years.

In the closest race of them all, Ocean Shores voted to support their library with a scant 50.07% majority (1,069 votes for, 1,066 votes against). This will mean a .22 cent lid lift/levy for the Ocean Shores Library in the years 2011 and 2012.

In another kind of library vote, citizens in Port Orchard voted to annex into the Kitsap Regional Library. The vote passed with high (nearly 72%) approval, and will allow Port Orchard voters to weigh in on the Kitsap Regional Library levy lid lift proposal that is coming up on the November ballot.

In a tough economy, libraries are more and more the focal points in their communities. They offer technology training, help finding jobs, a community meeting space, and of course access to books and other materials for their users to check out. It’s great to see that Washington’s residents are recognizing the value of their libraries, and supporting them in a time when they can do the most good.

(With thanks to Emmett O’Connell for keeping track of vote results on his blog.)

Last Friday I had the pleasure of [virtually] being part of a panel at the WLA / PNLA conference in Victoria. The panel was called “Reference Service Innovations: Present and Future”, and my fellow panelists and I were given some excellent questions to consider.

Since I wasn’t sure how the technology would play out (I was a virtual presenter on a panel that was otherwise physically present AT the conference), I recorded the questions with my answers and sent them along so that I could be represented even if the technology failed. Thankfully, it didn’t, and I’m happy to have my thoughts recorded so that I can share them here with you.

The questions were provided by Heather McLeland-Wieser at the Seattle Public Library. These answers represent some of my thoughts on the future of reference service. I hope they’re of interest, and that you’ll share your thoughts as well in the comments.

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The Washington Library Association hosted a great webinar today with Mary Ross, who talked about how to effectively create audience-focused presentations. The tips that Mary suggests seem spot on, and I’m including them with my notes below in the hope that they will be useful to Washington library staff who want to step up the interactivity and quality of their presentations.

About 50 librarians attended the webinar, which seemed like a great number to me. If you were one of them, please share your thoughts in the comments below. Whether or not you were able to attend, what do you think? Are your presentations really focused on your audience? What could you be doing better to make sure your presentations are meeting audience needs? What are you already doing that’s awesome?

My notes from the webinar (after the break):

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I’ve been playing around with mobile chat solutions for Ask-WA for the last few weeks. Mobile’s the way to go for virtual reference, and Ask-WA is going there, one way or another. We’re beginning a text-a-librarian pilot starting next month and running through September, and I’m interested to see what sorts of interest levels that garners from our users.

In the meantime, I’ve been trying out QuestionPoint’s chat “Qwidget” via the iPhone (an iPod touch, actually, but same difference), and while it leaves some things to be desired, it’s not half bad, and certainly functional. Now that I’ve tried the experience, though, I want to start thinking about how we can design to better incorporate this mobile version of the service into our websites.

You may, or may not, know that if you have a Qwidget on your website, and someone browses to that page on their iPhone, they will see a button that allows them to launch the mobile version of the Qwidget and chat directly through their device. If they then hit the “+” button at the bottom-middle of their screen, they can “Add to Home Screen” and basically have a Qwidget App that connects directly to their librarians (in theory, though they could certainly abuse the system and connect to whatever library they wanted to in the same fashion).

For the most part, this works pretty well, but has a few limitations. For instance, you don’t get to decide what you want the button to look like, they all look the same and say “Please click here to launch our mobile chat widget.” and have a blue arrow pointing down. This is fine, and functional, and clear, but you may want some more flexibility, anyway. The rest of this post details some ways to test and tinker with your mobile chat Qwidget, without the benefit of actually having an iPhone, though you will need the ability to install applications on your computer (you’ll need Safari, at any rate).

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This story starts in Google Reader, where my pal Amy B shared this video by Jason H, and I thought, “Hey, that’s awesome, I wanna make one!”

So I did.

GoogTube has a “Search Stories” video creator that made it easy, and I made my very own why libraries rock search story video last Friday and started embedding it all over the place for the world to admire my genius.

But they couldn’t. All anyone could see was a note that read: “This video contains content from Funny or Die, Inc., who has blocked it on copyright grounds.”

I was sad that my genius would go unrecognized, but even more, I was quizzical about how a video I made using one of YouTube’s own, self-promoting, video creator wizards, would become blocked, immediately, on copyright grounds.

I sent a complainy email, and received a fairly quick but unhelpful response that my video was “live and has not been removed by YouTube.” This is true, to an extent, my video lives and I, at least, can watch it. But no one else can.

My video is a mythological beast. A unicorn. I’ve seen it, touched it, ridden it, but as far as the rest of the world is concerned, I’m a kook and the thing doesn’t exist.

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WNYC’s NPR show, On the Media, has a ten-minute story on Dave Eggers’ recent one-off publication, a newspaper-style printing called Panorama. This McSweeney’s publication is cited as “a celebration of the print form and a demonstration of why newspapers are still uniquely relevant in the digital era.”

Neil Gaiman talks about why he loves libraries. Celebrating National Library Week:

via Minnesota Public Radio

Yesterday I got to drive down to Camas, WA to provide QuestionPoint training for our Ask-WA project. In typical “spring in Washington” weather fashion, it dumped rain down on me as I headed down the I-5, and the sky broke into a beautiful, sunny, warm day about 30 miles north of Camas.

It was my first visit to the Camas Public Library. They have a lovely building, which combines 2003 renovations on top of a 1940s infrastructure, in a building that also used to contain the city hall and the fire department. The library still has some of its classic furniture (including the original reference desk), and many modern additions. I particularly enjoyed the sizeable art gallery the library keeps on its second floor, as well as the art installations throughout the building. The library also houses a large totem poll, donated by the local Georgia-Pacific Company Mill, which towers above the reading room on the first floor and is a sight to see. Unfortunately the photos don’t really do it justice, so I recommend going to take a look in person next time you’re in the area.

But the Camas Public Library is more than just a pretty building. They also have a presence on Facebook and Twitter, post to their own “Under the Cupola” blog, and are providing innovative services to their patrons through statewide projects and grants such as Ask-WA, Renew Washington, and Downloadable Audiobooks for Washington.

Check out the Camas Public Library website for more information, and go to our Flickr page to see more photos from my visit.

The Ask-WA(tch) blog series fell off the map in 2010 due to other priorities. To make it up to you, here’s a catch-up statistical analysis with our numbers for the first quarter (January – March) in 2010, and a comparison against the first quarter of 2009. Sorry, no catching up on kudos, comments, or ROCKSTAR librarians, but hopefully we can get that running again next month.

Statistics for Q1, 2010:

As you can see, some excellent growth so far this year, and surely more to come. Email requests are up slightly, while chat requests are up a phenomenal 15%. Our answering percentage is down slightly from 2009, though not because we aren’t trying. Our chat accepts are up, just not keeping basis with the growth of the service. The Qwidget has boomed in 2010 (no surprise there), with growth upwards of 20%.

2010 is looking to be a great year for Ask-WA, and I look forward to more growth and great service!