Olin College, established with a $460 million grant from the F.W. Olin Foundation, focuses on innovative engineering education that promotes hands-on learning and global awareness. The college's library seeks to enhance learning through technology and is adapting to increased demands for online services while managing limited resources. Future directions include expanding partnerships in the 'global library village' concept, leveraging open-source tools, and exploring the evolving roles of technology in libraries.

1. Technology Nuts and Bolts for a Smaller (Library) World

2. Welcome to Olin College Dee in Second Life

3. Where did the idea for Olin come from? ♦ More than a decade ago, the NSF and the engineering community began calling for the reform of engineering education, recommending: hands-on learning global awareness entrepreneurial thinking interdisciplinary learning.

4. Idea, Part II To kick-start reform, the F. W. Olin Foundation pledged more than $460 million, one of the largest grants in U.S. higher education, to create and fund an innovative engineering college and provide full-tuition scholarships to every student in perpetuity. Franklin W. Olin Engineer, Entrepreneur, Philanthropist

5. Olin College Quick Facts Chartered: 1997 Location: Needham, MA, next to Babson College Setting: 70 acre suburban campus – 14 miles from downtown Boston Program: Undergraduate engineering Student body: Approximately 300 (about 75 per incoming class) Scholarship: four-year full-tuition (valued at $130,000) awarded to all Funding: F. W. Olin Foundation (in excess of $460 million)

6. Olin’s Mission “ to prepare future leaders through an innovative engineering education that bridges science and technology, enterprise, and society. Skilled in independent learning and the art of design, our graduates will seek opportunities and take initiative to make a positive difference in the world.”

7. Olin’s Library

8. Olin’s Library Our Mission: The library furthers Olin College's mission by selecting, developing, deploying, and managing resources and services that foster learning, discovery, and innovation. We strive to embody Olin's philosophy of continual improvement by leveraging emerging technologies & practices to serve Olin and the broader learning community.

9. Our Physical Space Designed to foster Thought Discovery Serendipity Play Tranquility Inspiration A break from temporal exhaustion… Available 24/7

10. Our Virtual Space Access to cutting edge electronic resources and tools Anytime, anywhere via Wireless campus VPN All students own same laptop

11. What about Web 2.0? Story I First job ~ 15 years ago Printers (dot matrix, oh my!) & copiers Computer layout

13. What about Web 2.0 cont.? Story I, cont. Today Wireless laptops Databases accessed across network from any machine Many personalization features available Printers/copiers same machines and networked

14. What about Web 2.0 cont.? Story II Later job ~ 13 years ago with early Internet instruction Telnet, FTP, Archie vs RSS, Google commands, personalization w/in databases

15. What about Web 2.0 cont.? Story III Summer reading ~ 5 years ago Where we are now Kevin Kelly’s vision Links Tags Annotations

17. Olin Library’s Tech Reality Current operating scenario: Decreased or squeezed budget(s) Increased expectations for service & speed Annual shifts in priorities toward more online content 3 full time staff + 38 hrs/wk student staff Where can technology assist?

18. Olin Library’s Tech Reality We care about technology mostly for the functionality. Technology & new vendor relationships Improved back-end workflow tools Tutorials and handouts Online training NELINET sandbox to transition tech from play/trial to productivity tool(s)

19. Olin Library’s Tech Reality Some of our current tools IM reference (no reference desk) Self check-out Wiki – http://silversmith.olin.edu/staff/FrontPage SurveyMonkey – http://www.surveymonkey.com Facebook – http://olin.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2214475979 LibraryThing – http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=appropriatetech LibGuides – Only in review stage; will enable changes across guides, compatibility with web site & Facebook – http://www.springshare.com/libguides/index.html

20. Olin Library’s Tech Reality Experimented with blogs early on Did not have staff to keep information relevant and current Will circle back as ability to feed info to blog develops further RSS Teach database RSS capabilities Do not maintain library RSS Two staff members on Second Life Very low key presence at this point Olin has presence via Sloan Consortium

21. Olin Library’s Tech Reality Each of our tech tools helps with one or more of the following: Staff productivity Service delivery Access quality Information currency and flow Outside of our daily jobs, these and other technologies are creating a larger library impact

22. Beyond us and workflow: A Global Library Village Libraries, and especially public libraries, have been great centers for Democracy in the US as well as many other countries, allowing self-education, access to wide assortment of materials, literacy training, etc. Impact of Glocal ? Web 2.0? Expanding partnerships amongst library types as well as museums, schools and other institutions?

23. A Global Library Village I Back to Kevin Kelly’s essay: Scan This Book! New York Times Magazine . 2006 What can be the impact of the scanned book/publication with links, tags, annotations?

24. A Global Library Village I “ Some of us have thousands of books at home, can walk to wonderful big-box bookstores and well-stocked libraries, and can get Amazon.com to deliver next day. The most dramatic effect of digital libraries will be not on us, the well-booked, but on the billions of people worldwide who are underserved by ordinary paper books.” Bill McCoy, general manager of Adobe’s e-publishing business

25. A Global Library Village I Open Content Material The original…Gov Docs Wikipedia & Citizendium Wikibooks PLoS Jamendo And so on

26. A Global Library Village II The $100 laptop project http://laptop.org/ Give 1 get 1 ($399) Software open source Library of basic material – encyclopedia, dictionary, etc. + ability to link out to material Combine power of Kelly/McCoy’s digital library with attainable hardware

27. A Global Library Village III Open Source & the web Open tools for writing, spreadsheets, databases, presentations, project management, etc becoming a reality Zoho -- http://www.zoho.com/ Google Docs -- http://www.google.com/google-d-s/intl/en/tour1.html

28. A Global Library Village III Open Source & the web Noodlebib – http://www.lib.utexas.edu/noodlebib/ Audacity – http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ LibraryThing – https://www.librarything.com Wiki & blog sites And so on

29. A Global Library Village IV Expand the community center definition of our physical space Web 2.0 technologies + library access to hardware + learning = Safe places for intellectual exploration Interact with Kelly/McCoy digital library Use Open Source tools & software Remix and produce new material (zines, blogs, videos and beyond) Create and/or print own book (PoD)

30. A Global Library Village V Odd shadows Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk http://mturk.amazon.com “ Complete simple tasks that people do better than computers. And, get paid for it.” Technology creates opportunity, humans supply labor. Matching colors in products, transcribing podcasts, programming, writing, etc. Wages range from $.01 – several dollars per assignment. Most are pennies. Fun hobby? Dark labor exploitation?

31. A Global Library Village V Mechanical Turk and Libraries? Tagging? Book reviews? Bibliographies? Simple reference? Quality control? Ability to create filters of qualified “Turkers” Take a social stand with pay? Stay within established system and view as extension of hobbyists & volunteers? How to pay within institutional budgeting processes?

32. Where do YOU think we’ll go tomorrow? Add your thoughts to the Smaller Library World wiki at: http://smallerlibraryworld.wiki.zoho.com/HomePage.html

33. Thanks! Questions? Dee Magnoni E-mail: [email_address] Phone: 781-292-2389 IM: dmlibrarian Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/p/Dee_Magnoni/214500346 Second Life: Ani Petrov