Library and academic related services on Google Assistant and Alexa - a preliminary survey
2018 appears to be the year of the voice assistants and smart speakers. There are many reasons for this, but I suspect the entry of Google home mini in 2017 (following the Amazon's Echo Dot) at price points USD50 and below made it hard to resist for many people to buy it to give it a try , leading to smart speakers with voice assistants becoming one of the hottest Christmas presents of 2017.
Voice assistants naturally go with home automation, and it seems to me that smart automation is the next trend that bears watching. At CES 2018, as expected many product manufactors began to announce support for Google Assistant and/or Alexa - allowing the list of things you can control with either to grow rapidly.
Some companies in particular LG even went all in with Google assistant built-in for their applicances including TVs and Refrigerator, whiles others sided with Amazon's Alexa and yet others like Samsung started to incorporate their own voice assistants Bixby into home applicances. Throw in the Chinese Xiaomi voice assistant and you don't have to be a "trend spotter" to see the beginning of something potentially impactful.
Of course as someone who is more than a little interested in technology, I couldn't resist and bought two Google Home minis to play. Why not the echo dot instead? Well, I'm someone who is quite tied to the Google ecosystem and Amazon's presence in Singapore until recently was limited and it didn't seem to me that the Amazon experience could be replicated in Singapore. In fact, just after I purchased them last year, Google announced official support for Google Homes in Singapore this year.
I even went further and started doing home automation but that is a post for another day...
As a librarian, the logical question to ask is what library and academic services can be supported on these two platforms - Google Assistant and Alexa?
Librarians have been speculating about the potential of voice assistants for some time now, in particular the session at CNI Spring 2017 "Is the Researcher Human? Is the Librarian? Bots, Conversational User Interfaces, and Virtual Research Assistants" touched on some of this.
But in this post, I will do a quick survey of what library related Alexa skills or Google Assistant actions are currently out there.
Google Assistant vs Google Home - some points
It is important to note that you do not have to have a Google Home mini, Google Home, Google Home max or a third party smart speaker with Google assistant to use Google assistant. If you have a reasonable recent android phone, you most likely have Google Assistant baked in.
As far as I can tell the Google assistant in the android phone can do almost everything the Google assistant can do in Google Home and other smart speakers with Google assistant built-in. In fact, the one in the phone can be more capable. For example, you can't ask Google Home to send whatsapp or telegram messages but the one on the phone is capable of that.
Activating Google Assistant actions
While some Google assistant actions require you to first link up with your account to work , many of those I mention below don't and just require you trigger the action with the right phrases.
Currently most third party actions have to be activated by saying "Ok google, tell actionname to do XYZ, or alternatively say "Ok google, talk to actionname" after which you can say "do xyz." This can be quite clunky but there is a workaround using routines that sometimes helps.
For example, there is a third pary service action called Free Book Reader which allows you to listen to over 11,000 public domain audio books. Normally you would have to first wake up Google Assistant with "Ok Google" or "Hey Google" and then say something like "Ask Free Book Reader to read a tale of two cities".
This is quite troublesome as you always need to remember to say ask "Free Book Reader", so you can go into your Google or Google Home app, to create a routine. What are routines? They basically allow you to do IF this is said THEN send this command instead.
So for example, you can set up a routine like below, where saying "read a tale of two cities" will send "Ask Free book reader to read a tale of two cities" to Google assistant, and it will start reading the book.
Creating a routine
The beauy of routines is that you can set up multiple ways to trigger the routine and you can chain a series of actions.
So for example my "Good night routine" which is triggered by "Ok Google" then saying either "good night" or "time to bed", which will trigger a series of actions including
telling me about tomorrow's weather
telling me when my first appointment is tomorrow
telling me what reminders I have for tomorrow
offering to set an alarm
then turn of all the lights (this is the home automation bit)
But the thing is I can't imagine library users setting up routines for our library services unless it is used a lot.
A quick survey of interesting Google assistant actions
What does Google assistant offer currently that is library or academic related?
Up to recently, figuring out what apps or devices Google Assistant supported was quite difficult, but now you can use the Google Assistant actions Directory to search or browse for actions.
Here are some interesting ones I spotted. Though I have a Google Home mini, I will be using screencaps from my android phone so you can see what is going on.
Google Play Books - This allows you to command google to play your audio books in Google Play Books, you can command it to jump ahead or back.
Friendly Librarian - Search Google books by author, title or subject - this isn't as useful as it looks
Free Book Reader - 11,000 titles in public domain audio books - Similar to Google Play Books but for public domain audio books from Librivox
Internet Archive - Play music from Internet archive
National Library Board - Listen to book reviews
Real or Fake - a lot of libraries now consider themselves an active player in the fight against Fake news - the National Library Board in Singapore does this as well with the S.U.R.E (Source, Research, Understand and Evaluate) campaign an initiative by the National Library Board, and they have a game on Google assistant for users to try their skills to determine if a piece of news headline is Fake news or not. It's a simple game, you get to choose either local news or international news and you get challenged with 4 news headlines and you have to guess if they are fake news or not. It was more entertaining then I expected.
Information Hub Directions - I presume this works like a simple guide to give directions to people in the Holmes Student Center at NIU. There are a few other similar help desk type services available but all with very limited capabilities - perhaps just sufficient for directional questions.
A quick survey of interesting Alexa skills
The Amazon version of Google actions is Alexa skills. As Alexa started before Google Assistant, Alexa probably supports a greater variety of services than Google though the gap could be narrowing.
Alexa also has 'Alexa Skill Blueprints' which makes it easy to setup skills without coding.
Some of the template blueprint skills like "Game Show", "Triva" looks like it could be easily adapted for quizes by librarians.
In particular , the custom Q&A blueprint where you can type in responses seems ready made for help desks to create responses to common questions such as "Where is the printer?" , "Where is the book drop".
Not everything can be handled of course, because the template results only in static answers, so it can't answer a question like "Is the library open tomorrow after 8pm?"
So the same question applies here for Alexa skills , which are the equalvant of Google assistant actions, what is already out that there might be useful?
Be warned my understanding of Alexa is very limited since I don't have a Echo product, but it seems with the Alexa App installed I can get most of the functionality.
I will be using screen captures from the website to give you an idea of how they work.
Like Google Assistant, you can search or browse Alexa skills in a directory
Like Google assistant, Alexa has a bunch of skills dealing with books, e.g Book Buddy (allows you to ask questions about books such as number of pages, author etc), book recommender (recommend books based on titles, author or gentre or from New York Times), read free audio books etc
An odd one - Ambient Library Sounds - enjoy library ambient sounds - book pages turning, pens on paper, gentle rain, books turning.
There are also some info desk skills and skills relating to libraries . A common one would be something like the Library of Congress News skill which adds news to your flash briefing. Fairfax County Library LA public library and even a journal The American Society of Human Genetics have the same type of skill. Flash briefings are content from providers you have chosen to add and you can say "Listen to my Flash briefings" to hear them.
Libraries that have Alexa skills that add to Flash briefings
A variant is Pasadena Library Calendar that allows you to ask for events from those library. Similar ones exist for Universities like Princeton Calendar , iSchool University of Illinois Calendar etc
Pasadena Library Calendar Alexa Skill
Course Catalog for Miami Dade College skill - "ask Alexa a course number, and she will respond with the full course name, course description, any pre/co-requisites, and the credit count. "
TextbookCheck - Name a title or ISBN and get advise on cheapest price - But shouldn't it check library first? But maybe that's because they are using the next skill....
BookLookup - I almost missed this because it looked like so many other book related skills. But this is quite special because it looks for availability of epub versions of books from "epub format on libgen.io, a library repository". I suspect it's pretty easy to change this to point to Scihub :)
Librarything - requires linking - add books by title or ISBN, read backs recently added books
arxivML - search arxiv for papers, read abstracts of top 50 papers. There are other similar ones like Astro-ph
Reading a abstract from Arxiv.ML paper.
This is a interesting service, you can apparently search Toronto Public Library for books (by specific title or author) and it will tell you the availability. They even talk about possible further enhancements "like place holds, brief about your holds, list libraries events near you, etc"
Search Toronto Library for books
The most interesting bit? "This skill is not sponsored by Toronto Public Library, and uses the available public open data API." - The power of open data API!
Finally we come to the most interesting skill, I've seen so far, you can not only look for a book but also reserve a book.
At least in theory, I'm unable to get it to work unfortunately. Maybe those of you with Echos could try?
All in all, we can see that most of the skills and actions relating to libraries and academics are still in a very early testing phase. Other future developments to look out for include Overdrive building voice control into their Libby app, EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) API working with Alexa and Google Home etc
Though I can see the makings of a library smart assistant that
a) allows you to check for book availability and reserves for you
b) answers simple questions about libraries
c) has a calender and flash briefing features to keep you uptodate on the library matters
d) Put you in contact with a live person in the library
In fact, Demco®️ DiscoverLocal already does most of this!
But this isn't really a "killer app" that will make me want to buy a smart assistant, so clearly there is still quite a lot of space for innovation here.
Personal thoughts about Google assistant/Alexa smart assistants
I've been living in a home with 2 Google minis and using them a fair bit for over a month. What I've found is while they can be handy, my initial main use of them was to play music.
After I setup some home automation, my use of it expanded obviously. The thing I noticed is that even in the privacy of my own home, I use them less then I expected.
While the voice recognition of Google assistant in Google home mini was excellent ( I estimate 95-98 % accuracy for me), it still wasn't 100%. At times, even projecting my voice, Google assistant didn't seem to catch what I said (possibly a Google Home might do better than a mini?) and there was always some time delay between where Google Assistant recognised my voice and did the action to turn on a light.
As such, if the light switch was right in front of me, it was always easier to just reach out to press the button then use my voice.
In fact, at times, I found even if the switch was far away, I might go into my Google Home app or Alexa app to just tap on the remote to turn on or off the light rather than use my voice.
But when do I use voice? When my hands are full, and/or I am some distance from the switch. For instance I was recently mopping my room and I realized I couldn't turn off the light because the light switch was on the other end, so using voice command was perfect.
Or when I come back home, a single command, turns on some lights, plays some music, while I am undressing (hands full).
I'm not sure about the potential of currently deploying Google Homes or Amazon Echos in the library. The main issue is that I don't think currently people are comfortable using voice commands except in private places (I hear use of them while driving in cars is popular, as this is also often where your hands are occupied on the sterring wheel). much less somewhere like in a place like the library.
Can you imagine carefully projecting and enunciating your voice in a public place like a library to ask for opening hours? I'm not sure.
I also suspect currently a smart speaker alone isn't sufficient, and if you do want to use it as a kisok system you need something like Echo Show or Google Assistant equalvants of , the Lenovo Smart Display and the JBL Link View which comes with a screen as well.
Imagine asking a question on what books are available on topic A and getting all of the responses in voice. A screen to display things would be great isn't it? Or a question on directions when displaying a map would be the best answer. For personal use where you have set it up, Google Home would just pass the instructions to your phone's screen but in a public setting you can't currently link up with your user's phone this way.
That said, smart assistants do seem to be reaching critical mass and as they improve more of them will be in our users homes. Creating a library smart assistant with the right blend of functionality might be a good idea.
Well a good idea if you don't need to worry about privacy implications...... :)