Librarian in Black Blog – Sarah Houghton

I’ve been an Rdio user and fan for a year now.  For those of you who don’t know Rdio, it’s a streaming music service available on computers and mobile devices.  There is a monthly fee (two tiers) but you can listen to just about any music anywhere you want, when you want, from any artist — no owning the MP3s necessary.  I wrote a review last September and although I was quite the cheerleader then, I’ve become much more of an Rdio devotee as time has passed.

And then Spotify launched in the U.S. about a week ago.  I’ve used the free and paid versions of Spotify for the last week, both the desktop & mobile apps, and I now have a pretty good idea of the pros and cons of each service.  I compared the premium Rdio subscription ($9.99 a month) to the premium Spotify subscription (also $9.99 a month).

The overall verdict?  I don’t know!  I’m still thinking about which key features are more important to me–since neither service has everything I want.

I’m plotting ways to bring one or more of these services into the library, and have some ideas which may or may not be legal.  We shall see exactly what the Terms of Service say.  But for my own personal listening pleasure, here’s what I think.

Spotify

• Music selection (overall size) – Spotify offers 15 million songs while Rdio has 9 million songs.  Objectively speaking, Spotify has more music.  Although, see the first bullet point in Rdio’s section for more on how that actually works for my tastes.
• Sound quality - The big plus for Spotify is the quality of the streaming audio.  Spotify’s sound quality is noticeably better than Rdio’s.  What I hear most is the difference in the bass.  If I play Spotify loudly, the bass is there and sounds great.  If I play Rdio loudly, the lower register of notes is muffled or even missing.  As I listen to a lot of electronica, bass is rather key to my music enjoyment.  Various songs by Crystal Castles has that nifty audio trick where the sound “whoomp whoomps” from the right to the left.  I played Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” on both, and could hear a definite difference in the lower register of her voice.
• Free version – Spotify has a free ad-supported version that you can use, along the lines of what you’d see with free Pandora or Last.fm accounts.  You get ads between songs, some of which are annoying.  But hey, at least there’s a free version.  For the first six months of free service there is also a 20 hour per month listening limit, which decreases to 10 hours per month after six months.  Rdio has a 7-day free trial, but after that you have to pay.
• Integration with iTunes - I like that Spotify harvests you iTunes catalog and lets you play your locally-stored iTunes music from the Spotify interface.  Rdio will crawl your iTunes catalog and “add to your collection” all the songs you have that they also have.  But when listening to them, they come through streaming even if you have a higher quality copy stored locally.
• Discographies - I like that Spotify delinates between full albums, singles, and albums the artist “appears on.”
• Social – Spotify’s auto-connecting you with people you know through Facebook was easy (though I’d like integration with other services too…like my Google Contacts or Twitter).  Plus on Spotify you get the ability to browse their public playlists, top artists, and top tracks.  I like it, even though I learned that some of my friends really have awful taste.  Sharing of tracks on social sites (like Tweeting out what you’re listening to) is equitable between the two services.
• Immediate play - Spotify songs always play within a couple of seconds of you clicking or tapping on the song, on both the desktop and mobile apps.  Rdio generally takes 2-5 seconds, sometimes as much as 10 on the mobile interface.  I’m not that impatient so it’s not that big a deal, but it is a noticeable difference.

Rdio

• Music selection for my tastes -  Rdio has almost everything I’ve ever looked for.  It has enough that I don’t feel deprived.  On the other hand, Spotify had music that I hadn’t seen in Rdio (e.g. Cold Blood’s discography).  Spotify also had many remix albums, live albums, and compilations that weren’t in Rdio.  But for certain artists Rdio was oddly and inexplicably lacking in completion of their catalog.  For example, Rdio has Ladytron’s complete catalog.  But Spotify only has a few albums, big gaping holes in Ladytron’s discography.  Weird.  For me, I’d still lean toward Rdio for music selection for the stuff I tend to listen to.
• Mobile app interface - Rdio’s mobile app is just so much better interface-wise in every respect.  I have an HTC Thunderbolt in case anyone cares.  Spotify’s app has some really unintuitive and unnecessarily redundant navigation (“Menu” takes you to options to repeat, shuffle, your play queue, and track options…but if you click on the “Info” icon you get to a screen with options to repeat, shuffle, or add to playlist).The Rdio’s “playing now” bar is always at the bottom, which I prefer to the Spotify pop-up drawer (which confuses me sometimes…especially after running a search and being returned to the drawer, which you have to minimize to actually see your search results).  Rdio’s app is clean, straightforward, and just works for me.
• Desktop interface – Rdio’s interface on the desktop (or laptop) just works better for me.  First off, you don’t have to install anything – it’s all browser-based.  Spotify requires a download and installation, making it not work for many people at work who can’t install programs.  Rdio has a downloadable mini-program, but it’s not necessary and I prefer the browser interface anyway.  Simple things like the ability to tap/click on an album title to play the whole album (Spotify doesn’t do this).
• Music discovery – Rdio’s music discovery is far superior to Spotify’s.  On Rdio you can see what’s in heavy rotation among your friends or all Rdio users, browse new releases or top charts, review recommendations (based on what you listen to and what’s in your collection), and browse through artists similar to those you like.  I’ve found dozens of new bands this way.  Spotify offers some browsing and recommendations, but it’s harder to find, harder to use, and not as accurate.
• Reliability - Rdio rarely flakes out.  On rare occasion the network seems overloaded and a song will stutter a few seconds or stop.  Spotify seems to stop randomly every few songs — and stop for up to a minute, then just start again.  That’s getting really annoying and since I’m supposedly on Verizon’s “4G network” (which isn’t really 4G, but that’s another post) there’s no reason I shouldn’t get good streaming.  Logically, the higher sound quality and resulting larger file size is probably the reason.
• Sound integration with mobile device - If I have an audible notification (e.g. a beep to tell me I have a new text message), Rdio will pause momentarily, the notification beeps, and then I’m back to the song immediately.   Any time I get a notification Spotify stops completely and doesn’t start again until I manually re-start the play.  That’s super uncool.

Two days ago I taught the first of two public classes about Google+ at my library.  Three days after the private beta opened on June 28th, I scheduled the classes…figuring that by the time the class dates rolled around, I’d have something to say.  They became part of our library’s summer Tech Boot Camp class series–20 tech classes from July to September.

I didn’t realize that I was the first librarian teaching a Google+ class until people started pointing it out to me and asking for my class outline,  learning plan, slides, etc.  Good news: I’ll share what I have.  Bad news: I have only an informal outline, and no learning plan or slides.  I’m a public librarian, dude.  I fly by the seat of my pants with this stuff.

The class was a one-hour true introduction to the social network, giving people a tour of the profile set-up, privacy options, and many features.  We had 6 people show up for the first class, and I’ve had a dozen others contact me to tell me they’re coming to the repeat session on Monday.  For our small town library, that’s pretty good.

So here’s how I did the class.  It really wasn’t too difficult.

I distributed two printed handouts to the class:

• a graphic from Patrick Beja describing the differences between Google+, Facebook, and Twitter with the analogy of different kinds of parties.
• the Google Cheat Sheet created by Simon Laustsen (available in a dozen languages)

I first explained what Google+ is, how it was a private beta (& offered invites to all attendees), and I also explained how I saw Google+ fitting into the social media universe, that it wasn’t a replacement for any other site but rather a “next step” or evolution, and for now at least it’s one more place to be.  The single sentence summary was this: “Google+ is what would happen if Facebook and Twitter had a baby and all the negative traits of both parents were removed…at least for now.”

I pulled up my own profile (with a caveat that I didn’t know in advance what my contacts had posted).  I walked through how you set up you profile, and what shows up where (including how you can choose not to fill out certain fields).  I talked quite a bit about privacy settings located in both the Google+ Settings and the Edit Profile page.

The whole class talked a lot about Circles — a big issue was understanding that you choose who you put in your circles, but that others choose if they add you.  Google+ is more like Twitter in that regard–that the decision of “following” doesn’t have to be mutual.

We looked at the Stream, Photos, Huddles, and Hangouts…though not in great detail due to time constraints.

We looked at how to post to Google+ (including adding links, photos, or video) and how to decide who you’re sharing each post with.  People really liked the granular idea of sharing posts with specific people or Circles.  I posted to “Public” at the start of the class, and by the end showed everyone how we had 15 +1s and 12 comments.

We talked about Notifications, about which there were a number of questions–generally things like “Why on earth would you want a text message when someone adds you to their Circle?”  My response was “I wouldn’t.  Sounds like you wouldn’t either.  The nice thing is Google lets you choose.”

And we talked about how to use Google+ mobile and some of the more useful Google+ Chrome Plug-Ins (Facebook & Twitter stream add-ons, etc.)

The last 10 minutes of the class was questions and discussions.  I was interested to hear one class member say “After seeing all of these features I can totally see why it’s 100 times better than Facebook.”  Another was super excited because she’s only starting to learn about social media so she can participate in the spaces her teenagers are participating, and she’s on Google+ before they are…hitting that bleeding edge first.

We concluded with the idea that Google+ is changing every day and will likely continue to change, but that it’s worth being there to be on top of what’s going on.

What would I do differently?  I’d probably spend more time on Hangouts and Huddles and actually try them out live.  I would talk about how you mention people in posts with the little + symbol before their names (I just totally forgot to say that).  If I had time I’d build a resource list for people with more tips and tricks, but since these are so easily found with a Google search I just left the students with that tip for the time being.

The second session of the class is Monday afternoon.  I hope to learn more during that class too.

If you’ve taught a class on Google+, or given thought about how to teach it, share your tips in the comments below.  Let’s crowdsource an actual learning plan *wink*

The library eBook scene, indeed the eBook scene for consumers too, is ever-changing and unpredictable.  Any library trying to plan more than one year out for eBooks is playing a losing game.  Don’t sign contracts for more than a year and don’t invest huge amounts of time in what might be dying models.

For the most part, right now libraries feel like we have two choices for eBooks:

1. paying beaucoup bucks for high-demand eBooks to third-party aggregator companies like Overdrive and 3M (for more on for-profit companies’ recent eBooks offerings, see David Lee King’s excellent post on what he saw at ALA Annual)
2. pointing users to the many free, lower-demand eBooks out on the web on sites like Project Gutenberg or Librivox

But there is a third choice, and it’s one that I think can change the landscape of library eBooks forever…and for the better.

Open Library is a project from the Internet Archive, a non-profit that has given us amazing web content like the Wayback Machine (historical snapshots of websites), the Audio Archive, the Moving Image Archive, and the Software Archive.  The Internet Archive is also technically a registered library, and they have long collaborated with local libraries for services and collections.  IA is based in San Francisco and I was lucky enough a couple of months ago to visit the headquarters for a stunning tour that included the “hands-down-most-awesome server room ever” and the most efficient book scanning workflow I’ve ever seen.

And that book scanning project has yielded Open Library.  Open Library is a digital library built partially from paper books from physical libraries.  Anyone can access the 1,000,000+ free eBooks through their website.  But wait, there’s more!  A new project with 1,000+ currently participating libraries, including mine, is the Lending Library, a swiftly growing collection of 100,000+ eBooks from the 20th century, including many popular titles (though not those from the most recent 15 years or so).  Did I mention that it’s currently 100% free for your library to participate in the Lending Library?  All you have to do is send at least one paper book to the IA for digitization.  That’s it.

Users can access the entire collection in-library or from home with remote access, as long as you set up authentication on your end through EZ Proxy, WAM, etc.  Books are added two primary ways: they are scanned in from discarded copies sent to the IA from member libraries -or- IA has arranged a lending agreement directly with the publishers.  Books do operate on a one-user/one-copy model, in keeping with copyright holder rights.

Here’s what it’s like on the user’s end: You click on the link from your library’s website, as you would for any other eBook collection, and log in with your library credentials.  Now Open Library knows you can borrow from the Lending Library.  If you access from inside the library, you will see this message alerting you that you have access to even more eBooks.

Browse or search for a book, then choose whether you want to borrow an “in-browser” version (which you view using the super smooth Internet Archive’s BookReader web app) or downloadable formats like PDF, ePub, Daisy, plain text, and Kindle.  One thing I really like is how all the various editions of a work are aggregated into one record.  Here’s what you see when you go to the “digital holdings” for the Scarlet Letter.

Each person can borrow up to 5 eBooks at a time for up to 2 weeks.  You can read these eBooks on the device of your choice: Mac or PC, laptop or desktop, tablet or smart phone. Read and smile: NO COMPATIBILITY ISSUES!

From Open Library’s About page:

One web page for every book ever published. It’s a lofty but achievable goal.

To build Open Library, we need hundreds of millions of book records, a wiki interface, and lots of people who are willing to contribute their time and effort to building the site.

To date, we have gathered over 20 million records from a variety of large catalogs as well as single contributions, with more on the way.

Open Library is an open project: the software is open, the data are open, the documentation is open, and we welcome your contribution. Whether you fix a typo, add a book, or write a widget–it’s all welcome. We have a small team of fantastic programmers who have accomplished a lot, but we can’t do it alone!

I <3 Open Library.  And I don’t <3 a lot of things.  So you know it must be amazing.  Here are some of the reasons that I think Open Library is a successful future model for library eBooks:

• Open Library is an eBook library built by libraries, with library collections, for libraries.
• A printed book in the public domain that is currently accessible to only one library’s users in a physical format gets turned into a digital book accessible to all participating library’s users. This is the ultimate in resource sharing.
• The Internet Archive is a non-profit organization, so if they can arrange more contracts with publishers directly the cost to libraries will necessarily be less than it would be with the for-profit companies we’ve been dealing with so far.
• It’s open: the code, the collection, everything.
• Reading is a smooth, device-neutral user experience.
• This solves the “last copy” syndrome in many libraries where we might hold on to an outdated printed item if it’s the last one in our catalog.  Send your last copies to the Internet Archive and share with other libraries while freeing up valuable shelf space at the same time.

Freaking awesome, period.

Libraries interested in partnering in this program should email info@archive.org.  You can read more about the technology behind the project and the librarianship that built this collection as well.  And to learn more as things develop, keep track of what’s new with the Open Library through their blog.

Mark my words.  This is the future of eBooks for libraries.