Jim Craner's blog

As a kid, one of my favorite stories was O. Henry's "The Ransom of Red Chief," about a ransom plot gone awry: the kidnappers are so overwhelmed by the young "victim's" mischievous antics that they end up paying the child's parents to take him back.  And readers of a certain age might associate ransom with a comedy of errors, perhaps John Goodman's character throwing a satchel of dirty laundry during a fake ransom drop gone awry in "The Great Lebowski."

Followers of our blog know that we're big fans of the Institute for Museum and Library Science (IMLS) library survey data releases -- these are the most comprehensive sources of data about public libraries in the United States.  So we were very excited this week to see that the FY2017 survey results have been released on the IMLS.gov website!

Not sure how to get started analyzing PLS data?  Check out this video where we introduce the data included in the survey and associated documentation.

When a disaster strikes, information can be just as valuable as water, power, or critical supplies!  Learn more about how your library can provide information and access following a disaster.

Providing Public Internet Access At The Library

One of the most critical requirements after a disaster is the restoration of communications with the outside world, and these days, that means the Internet.  While first responders, whether at the local, state, or federal level, may have their own data and communications infrastructure,  libraries can still provide access for responders, volunteers, and survivors.  Internet access is critical after a disaster for:

• filing government disaster benefits claims
• filing insurance claims and other paperwork
• communicating with friends/family outside the disaster zone
• coordinating volunteers and support from outside the disaster zone

Because Internet access is so important during a disaster, it may be necessary to expand opportunities for leveraging the library’s connectivity.

"Peer analysis" is a tool used in finance, management, and even sports -- and you do it unconsciously all the time.  We're simply finding the similar items in a large dataset by one or more dimensions, and then seeing how they compare in other dimensions.  In other words, if you're the director of a small library in Ruraltown, Nebraska, you don't want to compare your library's collection numbers to those larger library systems in Omaha and Nebraska.

If you haven't visited the Data.gov website before, you'll need to wait until the federal government re-opens to check out the thousands of free public government dataset that used to be available to explore and download.  And if your library or community uses that data for an application or project - you already know that you're out of luck!  (In the meantime, you can still read our 2017 Public Library Quarterly article about open data in the library.)

Our last blog post about accessibility focused on making sure that your website was easy to access by people that use assistive technologies, such as screen readers, which read aloud what's on a computer screen to users with low or no vision.  I recently attended a fantastic webinar on actual screen reader software itself by Kelsey Flynn of the White Oak Public Library District in Illinois, presented through the LITA webinar series.  Kelsey covered some of the basics of accessibility software, including deep dives into the five most popular screen reader titles.

Some of my key takeaways: