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Welcome to Liblog 1 - a weblog of current web sites and stories dealing with the interface between technology and libraries. Sometimes the connection to the sphere of the library is tenuous... but in today's world, everything has an impact on libraries, on librarians... and on library users. If you find this weblog of interest, you may enjoy these other library weblogs as well.
Friday, November 02, 2007
Liblog @ IL2007 - Day 3
Closing Keynote: Gaming, Learning & the Information World
Elizabeth Lane Lawley, Rochester Institute of Technology
First off, she's my pick for the costume contest winner - she's dressed as her World of Warcraft character!
The boundaries between virtual worlds and the real world are blurring. "Gaming" is becoming a venue for networking, for learning, for many of the things that used to be confined to "professional" lives.
Why has gaming become so popular? Because gaming makes things fun! One of the things we can learn from games is how to make things fun for people:
- Collecting things - people like to get stuff, particularly if they can show it off to others
- Points - people like to "know the score"
- Feedback - people want to know that they are doing the right thing
- Communication exchanges - people like to be able to share with each other
- Customization - people like to have some control, to be able to add their own touches to the game
She plays World of Warcraft, and believes that ones of the reasons for its success is that it is did a live demonstration of the first five minutes (or so) of WoW, and compared that to the first five minutes of Second Life (by creating a new character in each). She likes WoW better, in part because SL doesn't give you the same ways to succeed that a game does.
In a game we happily do repetitive tasks, because doing so builds expertise, which in turn will make us more successful playing the game. Perhaps by adapting gaming techniques, we can make learning equally fun? Notes some ways that this is already happening:
- Tupperware parties, where people get rewards for selling to others
- Super Sleuth: solve a weekly puzzle at a school, student gets a reward of some type
- Summer Reading programs: after reading so many words/books, you get a reward
- Ebay feedback can be viewed as like collecting points. So too can collecting friends on social networking sites like Friendster or MySpace
Showed a slide of Nick Yee’s MMU Player Stages:
- Entry: newcomer euphoria, playing with someone
- Practice: ramping up, progression, solo to group
- Mastery: staying for friends, casual guilds, high end content, social/community leadership, competition
- Burnout: grind burnout (where the gap between levels becomes so great that it seems like you have to do things thousands of times to move to the next level), social/raiding burnout, restarts, nothing left to do
- Recovery: end-game casual, some do come back
How can we make the library a game, and make it so people want to come back? What can we streamline, or what can we add to have our customers avoid burnout? Recommends looking at Raph Koster's A Theory of Fun for Game Designers for some ways that we might be able to improve the Library experience, and make it fun for people to use.
Labels: Elizabeth Lane Lawley, Games, IL2007, Libraries, WoW
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Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Tech Tools For Library Outreach: Creating Community, Enabling Research, Promoting Learning (For Free!)
Chad F. Boeninger (Ohio University); Paul R. Pival, Univ. of Calgary [blog at: http://distlib.blogs.com/]
Outreach: The activity of an organization in making contact and fostering relations with people unconnected with it. To reach or extend beyond, to exceed reach.
Shifting gears: Getting Up To Get Into The Flow report: 'We need to stop thinking of our lovingly crafted sites designed specifically for our contect as the only way that people are finding our content.'
Blog to help promote presence - for example, of subject expertise. Can also be used for communicating with students. Showed Word Press plug-in that allowed for quick quizes (polls) that was used with class.
Chad has transitioned some content from his Business Blog into a wiki ("Biz Wiki") - finds it better for managing information. But also uses the wiki as part of outreach to his students - course outlines there, assignments (with links to help complete the assignments), etc.
Facebook - puts basic information into profile, helps give context to who is putting up the materials in Blog, Wiki, etc.
Paul - switched from proprietary software to using Meebo for reference. One of the best things they have done. One challenge with Meebo is keeping it updates while you are using other clients, or while you are away. One nice plug-in is "pigeon" which allows you to monitor multiple IM accounts from different sources, update theb status on all of them, and answer questions from any ofn them in the Meebo widget. http://pidgin.com.
Calgary has embedded a Meebo widget in the catalog - on every page, including those of search results pages. Help available all over.
Experimenting with video chat via Skype - Ohio doing this to staff a 4th floor desk from their main desk on the 2nd floor - has webcam so that librarian can monitor that desk remotely and interact with users.
Screencasting - Jing (http://www.jingproject.com). Works on Macs and PCs. Allows you to share stuff in real time if you want. Allows for either still images or video (5 minute limit). Provides annotation tools. Can embed result on web sites, or can share the result with others. Simple, great for quick-and-dirty demo stuff (but no editing.)
Screencast-o-matic site (http://screencastomatic.com). Can capture anything in your browser.
Ohio using special software to manage their FAQs. Can create new articles, assign them to categories and assign them meta keywords, include images, etc. They are added to a database, which a search engine queries. Most viewed and recent articles are displayed in the public-facing interface. Automatically time-stamps updates, allows for simple user feedback - was this helpful? Also allows for questions to be submitted - these can be quickly added to the database with the answers provided, so that users are helping to add content to the database. Software uses php and MySQL.
Labels: Chad F. Boeninger, Free Tools, IL2007, Outreach, Paul R. Pival
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Building Web 2.0 Native Library Services
Casey Bisson, Plymouth State
available at http://MaisonBisson.com
"Bagged products" problem - what does it mean? What does "cookery" mean? How to put things into understandable terms?
Slide; Web 2.0 is made of people. Over 3/4 of americans have access to the Internet.
The web became something other than we predicted.
Analogy of cars and drive-in restaurants - people buying at drive-up windows, but parking to eat in their lots (as opposed to going into restaurant.) Cars compared to trains - cars give individuals control, where trains do not.
How can we deliver everything we know and value about libraries online?
Lessons From Web 2.0
We get one chance to prove we're not stupid, that the services we have are worth using. We've been trying to bend old models and tools into the new world, with generally poor results. We need to rethink our tools, adjust to new models.
Surfacing facets and subjects lets the user know what the librarian knows.
Search boxes are for answering questions. But, can the search box in the catalog do this? Maybe it can tell someone how many copies of books by J.K.Rowling we have, but how often are we asked that? Better to analyze the question and try to include in results other possibilities for answering the question. So if a query seems to be about anthropology, why not also include some guides to anthropology resources, not just books or periodicals?
Links are citations. Showed Cook memorial Library in New Hampshire page of gardening resources.
Library not the center of the universe - not even the information universe. People want to remix information, re-purpose it in many different ways. We need to build tools that can go beyond set collections of resources, that allow people to easily mix information from different areas. And not just from the library. YouTube example - easily allowing linking incredibly important; it enables inviting people into the catalog.
Valid, clean, semantic markup is essential.
Sites that allow comments essential! Best lesson of Web 2.0 is that our users are smarter than us. Example - Beyond Brown Paper site. By allowing user comments able to learn things that no one in library knew before - names of people, use for equipment, etc. Comments that add value to existing photos on the web.
Your website is not a marketing tool... it's a service point. People need to be able to do something on our sites, not just view them.
Scriblio (formerly WPOpac). - Casey is going to install a fresh version of Scriblio in 15 minutes or less. Has already tested the server so it works, has already downloaded for install Word Press.
Finishes installing Word Press (used by over 2 Million sites)
Scriblio is a set of plugins for WordPress that help you represent Library catalogs (and in many cases, the entire library website, making it possible to search everything at once.
Activates many plugins.
Scriblio is now installed, but data still needed.
Imports dataset from Cook Memorial - hardest part of the import is testing, correcting to avoid duplicate records.
Scriblio III Importer - can import records directly from the ILS without having to export those records.
Scriblio is data agnostic - should be able to work with horizon or other non-III data.
In less than 10 minutes, the system was installed and populated with data.
Using standard Word Press tools, able to drag-and-drop search box, facet display, etc. into catalog screen. Easily toggled between Cloud view and List view.
Do you have 11 minutes to create a social web catalog for your library?
Software and instructions available at scriblio.net. All free and open source.
Labels: Casey Bisson, IL2007, Scriblio, Social OPAC
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Mashups & Data Visualizations: New Breed of Web Applications
Darlene Fichter, Univ. of Saskatchewan
Web 1.0 - Realm of folks that knew HTML coding, of programmers
Web 2.0 - Everyone can participate - no need to know code; programming through widgets is DIY programming.
A mashup is a web application that uses content from more than one source to create a new service. Content typically sourced from an API and/or RSS Feed.
Mashup ecosystem relies on open content and open data, open sets of services and applications (APIs). And rely on us.
http://www.programmableweb.com/mashups
Approx. 50% of mashups`involve maps. Next biggest are photos and shopping.
Mashups are fast growing ecosystem. Don't have to get anybody's approval to provide a new API to the Internet Operationg System.
Content that can be repurposed and remixed gets used.
Questions of provenance and authority - when data comes from many different places, how to know what's valid?
Earthquake Mashup - uses yahoo Maps API and U.S. Geological Service data.
http://www.frappr.com/blogging/librarians - Google map API combined with community contributed content.
Google My Maps - can embed code in your library site, can be used for things like branch locations, historical buildings, locations in stories, etc.
McMaster Aerial photos - Google API combined with aerial photo index data to sho where locations photographed at various years were located.
http://www.westernspringshistory.org/map/
Yahoo Pipes - more powerful in many ways than other tools showed so far in presentation. Can embed logic into code. Showed a "Find A Library" mashup for Monterey that she said took her only a few minutes to create (by borrowing existing code and making her own modifications.)
Top 20 new books mashup combining their popular requested titles with their Syndetics book cover data. (Cambridge Public Library??).
Visualization Tools
http://www.time.com/time/covers/20061030/where_we_live/ - Time Magazine cover showing population density.
http://www.aharef.info/2006/05/websites_as_graphs.htm - web site structure presented as a graphic image.
Newsmap - http://www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/newsmap.cfm - shows concentration of news on various topics in various countries.
Elastic Lists Demo - http://well-formed-data.net/ - dynamically changing choices available based on dataset.
Social Sites for Data Visualization - allows any kind of data analysis, both curious and serious, statistician and citizens.
Many Eyes and Swivel - Social Data tools.
When search was hot, reference librarians became cool. With meta-data, catalogers became tool. Finally, now that visualization is hot data librarians are now cool!
Trendalyzer/Gapminder - transforms data into animations.
Labels: Darlene Fichter, IL2007, mashups
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Liblog @ Internet Librarian - Day 2
Tuesday Keynote: Reference 2.0: Ain't What It Used To Be... And It Never Will Again
Joe Janes, University of Washington
Cited article by Samuel Greene (sp?), Personal Relations With Readers from 1876 as start of notion of Reference Services:
Primary motivation for helping people is there is too much information out there, so people can't find what they are looking for. Librarians need to step in to help people navigate through all this information so they can find what they need.The first librarians to do this worked in special libraries, followed shortly after by public libraries; it was rare before 1910 for an academic library to offer reference services (students were expected to learn how to do such research for themselves.)
Now that there's lots more stuff and people seem to be able to find it on their own and lots of ways to get help. That being the case, Greene's reasons for performing reference service no longer apply.
So... what does that mean for reference service? When rethinking reference, it is worth assuming that eventually, everything will be digitized. Asymptotically digital.
(Relates how someone from Google talking to one of his classes casually mentioned that Google's partnering with Libraries on digitization projects was because Google wants to digitize all the books. Not all the books in those libraries; not all the books in English. All the books. And Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive estimated that with currently developed storage technologies, a box maybe twice the size of the lectern that Janes was standing behind would be capable of storing that information.)
In the digital world we have different ways of searching:
- Horizontal Searching
- Vertical Searching (Federated Searching)
{I suspect these two terms were accidentally reversed while taking notes. One refers to search across many things, while the other seems to be about search deeply...)
Both of which are/will be done at every possible level (piece? fragment?) that one can imagine. Increasingly we'll be looking for parts of things, rather than the thing as a whole.Quoted James Wyer's article, Reference As Mind Reading(?) on customers of reference services (sp ?) from 1930: "They will choke and die in front of you before they will tell you what they want."
We need to recognize how we (librarians/libraries) best fit in this digital information environment. We need to explore our areas of strength - there are still large niches out there that we can exploit:
- Lee Rainey's "Deep Dive". For people who care - or who can be made to care about - quality of information. We can't compete with Google et al on the Ready reference front, but for in-depth, quality research where the customer is willing to wait for better results, librarians are still the best resource in many instances.
- People who do not want - or are unable - to help themselves.
For people who are diving deep, for those who care - that's when we do the full-blown, machete-in-the-teeth reference interview, and show off what we can do that search engines can't. And for the moment our print resources are our "secret weapon" - stuff that isn't available to the search engines. (But that's not available "yet"; as time goes on the role of print will steadily decrease, and this will no longer be a strategic advantage for us.)
Cites article by Budge: Method Over Material. (How you engage people and how you help them is more important that the material you give them.)
For non-depth users, our mantra should be to "move them forward". Quick, transitory encounters are not meant for full-blown reference. A quick tip, a pointer to another resource, that is all that these encounters require; if the user needs more later, you can give it to them later.
For Rainey's bottom level, the non-information users... we should leave them alone. There are more than enough people who have information needs, we don't need to chase after those who don't.
Janes is exploring the idea of "individually communal". Rainey's Omnivores at the High End seem to be examples of this - connecting digitally with lots of people, but controlling those connections as to when/where/how they occur.
In the digital information environment, there is no "finish" to the products produced. Wikipedia, LibraryThing - they may eventually stop if interest/funding runs out, but they are designed in such a way that there is no end state.
Content creators - and the desire to create - expressions of people wanting to be heard. "I was here, I mattered". Everything that happens in virtual worlds like Second Life is about creation - from the moment you enter, the first thing you need to do is to create your avatar.
If this is the information environment that many of our users are living in, we need to be there too - creating content, visible to others. And, we need to help make this new environment friendlier, easier to navigate and easier to use for our customers. And helping people make their creative works more visible.
Libraries came to exist because information was physically embodied - we needed a place to house that "stuff"! In the digital world, though, that "stuff" is no longer a physical object. Access issues change from the physical to the virtual. Whenever people interact with your "stuff", they are interacting with the Library. Hence the need to have much better tracking of digital usage - especially important as more-and-more of the interactions will be virtual, not physical.
We need to get out of the Library... while staying in it; we have to be both somewhere and everywhere! (Janes likes the image of the Library leaking out of the building.) Librarians need to be in the networked environment; we need to be role-models of how to make things better, more usable.
Library blogs are okay, but library's answering questions and participating on other people's blogs is better.
The service we provide in-person is extraordinary. But we need to do even better with the services we provide online. People who are in our buildings have already "committed" to using our services; online, they can leave in a heartbeat. To be relevant to people online, we need to be even better!
Looking to the future, we should be confident in our skills, but not complacent. We need to be telling the Library story, to let people know what we offer. And we need to be telling this story all the time.
More - and better - opportunities are ahead.
Promoting Play Through Online Discovery
Meredith Farkas, Norwich University and Helene Blowers, Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County
Farkas' Five Weeks To A Social Library grew out of several factors:
- Lots of people without access to continuing education programs
- Hands-on learning is important, and often the most effective
- Online courses can be run inexpensively
The course had 40 participants from all kinds of libraries. The too,s that she used for the course included Drupal, blip.tv. and opal.
Some of the lessons from the course:
- Playing with technology is necessary for learning technology
- Learning from peers can be more effective than learning from a "sage on a stage"
- Online learning can be as effective as in-person learning, and often at less cost.
Blowers' Learning 2.0 addressed the problem of what can be done to keep abrest of changes, given that new changes are continually coming. Learning 2.0 answers that question by suggesting we need to think of ourselves as players. Some of the lessons learned from Learning 2.0:
- In only 15 minutes a day you can explore something new
- Removing the "classroom" removes some of the barriers to learning
- The first step towards learning is exposure
- The people learning have as much to contribute as the people instructing
- Focus on the FUN; the learning will follow
How to Lose Your New Tech Librarian & Tech Training
Michael Stephens, Dominican University and Sarah Houghton-Jan, San Jose Public Library
Presentation as acronym - as you'll see :-)
- Engage staff by using real world examples, highlighting tips that they can use. The more relevant things are to the team members, the better!
- Xenagogue is a rare (some might say obsolete... but maybe not now!) word that means, 'a person who guides strangers'. As a techie you may be comfortable in technology land, but likely some/all of the members of your team may be on terra incognita. By being available when they need help, by encouraging them along the way, you help make them comfortable in this strange place.
- PPlay should be encouraged. Exploration of new technologies and new services should be fun, not a chore. Exercises and discussions don't have to be deadly dull - you can be serious while having fun at the same time!
- Explain why you are doing things. Offer handouts and online materials that put the reason for why things are done in context.
- Reward your team at every opportunity - for participating in discussions, for completing projects, for giving good answers. The more they are appreciated, the better they will become.
- Imagination needs to be cultivated. Encourage people to dream up new ideas, to explore new pathways.
- Mentor your people whenever possible. Create an expectation of success.
- Empower people. Whenever looking a new technology tool, use that tool to show people how it works, encourage them to use it themselves so they can know its strengths and its limitations.
- New things are always coming up... and learning how to deal with the changes caused by these new things is important. Perhaps have entire meetings/classes on how to cope with the stress of change....
- Time is something which we never seem to have enough of, but setting aside time for practice, for answering questions, for exploring... is essential. As a rule of thumb, training time needs to be set up to precede technology launches by several weeks, at least.
Labels: Helene Blowers, IL2007, Joe Janes, Keynote, LEarning 2.0, Meredith Farkas, Michael Stephens, Reference 2.0, Sarah Houghton-Jan, Social Library, Teams, Technology
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Monday, October 29, 2007
Liblog @ Internet Librarian - Day 1
The Transformative Library
John Blyberg, Darien Library
Bringing social elements to your library
Slide: triangle on left - Service (people) at top, Goods (books 'n' stuff) at bottom.
Circle on right - Three parts: Experience (participation), is added to the two parts that were in the triangle.The Three Social catalogs:
Pseudo-social - authority presented as collaboration (ie, III's Encore w/subject headings as a tag cloud like structure) But no feedback or real interaction with community. (Showed Michigan State univ. catalog as an example of Encore).
Syndicated Social - Third-party data (ie, LibraryThing). (Danbury Library's catalog useed as the example).
Individually social (ie, Hennepin, SOPAC). Showed Ann Arbor district Library's catalog as example. Noted that primary users at AADL are teens - and just a few teens use it the most. Possible danger of the small dataset being easily manipulated.Need to ask yourself - do we want user contributed data corrupting our pure library data :-)
Think of it as a merger - creating a social catalog by combining the library data with the social data.If you include folksonomy, do you want it to originate from syndicated data like LibraryThing's? Or to reflect your own local community (in which case, how do you have the community generate enough data? How do you prime the pump?
What kind of development is involved? Encore is turn-key, LibraryThing is cut-and-paste, Hennepin is a lot of developers.
Labels: IL2007, John Blyberg, Transformative Libraries
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Integrating Libraries & Communities Online: Bookspace.org
Glenn Peterson and Marilyn Turner, Hennepin County Library
County of readers - on average, 17 items checked out per capita.
Goal of redesign - bring together relevant resources for particular genres/subjects
Easy to use for staff
Community able to contributeFiction page used as an example of what's on genre sections of Bookspace. Drills down to Humor section. A librarian's blog on each genre page. New Titles.
Who's doing all this work? Have a bookspace.org coordinator in their IT department, a hands-on developer. Coordinates workgroup of 5 librarians who do overall vision/planning. then 30 contributors who provide the content - have to post to blog at least once per month. Forms created to make publishing to blog easy - if they want to have a picture of the book with link to catalog, they just populate a ISBN form field! It is now part of their performance expectation (and evaluation).Customer Contributed Content:
Social features include: User comments on books and other titles. (Showed that Harry Potter and the deathly Hallows has over 230 comments on it!)
Can see what other titles users have commented on as well
Blogs
Book Lists - staff created, auto-generated, user-created (users can assign categories to their lists, automatically joining other lists in same category.)
Recent Comments - filterable
User profiles recently added - (so far, looks like only staff). Option to show what books you have checked out on a "wall of books" display.
Looking to add: Users who are reading this also read ______>br />
Ability to create "friends" who share your interests in reading.Database-driven
RSS Everywhere
ColdFusion (or ASP, PHP, etc.)Takeaways:
Drawn on library staff
Empower your users
Create opportunities for serendipity
Let users interact with each other.http://www.hclib.org/extranet for slides>
Labels: Bookspace, Glenn Peterson, IL2007, Marilyn Turner
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New Rules Of Web design
Jeff Wisniewski, University of Pittsburg
Wisniewski offered a look at the "old" rules that have now been replaced by the "new" rules:
Old Rule:Simple is better - New Rule: Complex information often requires a complex, feature rich site.
Old Rule:Content is king - New Rule: Design matters. In fact, a strong design can sometimes keep people on a site despite usability problems. Best designs are aimed to reinforce what users are doing.
Old Rule: All content is created equal - New Rule: Some content is more important, and it should be emphasized.
Old Rule: Rule of Seven (top level categories) - New Rule: Good organizations and good labels. 5-9 top-level categories is often best, but a well designed site can break this rule and still be successful.
Old Rule: 3 Clicks, No More - New Rule: If users believe that they are getting closer to what they want, they will click until they reach their goal.
Old Rule: 800 x 600 Screen Size - New Rule: 1024 x 768... but given the many possible ways that people may view your site, flexibility is best.
Old Rule: Web-safe colors - New Rule: Most people can use at least 24 Million colors now.
Old Rule: Provide text-only version - New Rule: Use properly designed xhtml and CSS and older browsers, others will be able to navigate your site.
Old Rule: Avoid CSS - New Rule: Use CSS properly, for layout.
Old Rule: Avoid Flash - New Rule: Avoid Flash Intro pages; but Flash can be very useful for doing tutorials and animations.
Old Rule: Mouseover Menus - New Rule: Only use if absolutely necessary - there are usability issues.
Old Rule: Never open new windows - New Rule: If you tell people you will be doing it in advance - like for external resources - it's okay.
Old Rule: Scrolling is bad - New Rule: People will scroll a long time if they feel that there is something worth scrolling to.
Old Rule: Above the fold - New Rule: Yes, the most important stuff should be. But see above.
Some old rules remain powerful, however. Basics such as having a home link in the upper left, a clickable banner, a contact us link on the top left - these are basic means of ensuring usability. Pop-up windows are still bad, and are blocked by default by most browsers today. And while there more broadband users than ever, people are still impatient... and there are still lots of people on slow networks. So designing a site to load quickly is still a good idea.
When redesigning your site, certainly look at other libraries... but be sure you look at sites outside of library land too! And don't think about redesign as something you do every couple of years. Major changes are tough on users, so an iterative, constantly being tweaked approach is one he recommends. He also recommends testing by putting up one design, getting feedback, then putting up a slightly different design and getting feedback on that. Comparing the two to see what users prefer.
Recommends a "graded" browser support, by tweaking CSS to display different levels of content based on the browser being used. This allows for basic, essential content to be displayed for all browsers, with additional content displayed based on the capability of the browser.
Recommends adding identified pictures of people to the site - this helps users make a connection to the library, and by identifying the people it helps to increase trust.
Inspiration For Your Website Redesign
Bennett Ponsford, Christina Hoffman Gola, Texas A&M University on usability testing and web 2.0 techniquews to spark conversations about the website.
Questions asked of users - how would you re-do our site?
What types of items desired? What formats? How do you discover new resources?What to do about subject and study guides/pathfinders? Students are doing more interdisciplinary projects now, and are finding the subject guides too specific. How to provide both connections to mother guides while still providing some depth.
Interesting result from survey - users said that they wanted the library website search to default to either books or everything. But when asked what the last things they searched for were, the answer was articles. Is the Library brand (books) so strong that they want it represented in the search even if that isn't what they normally look for?
Faculty are going to Google Scholar BEFORE going to the Library's databases.
People wanted systems integrated - only login once to access every resource.
Survey found that people want more ways to allow self-discovery and to share knowledge.
Survey says: Visual and "sexy" is good!
Survey - desire for personalization tools. Want customization of the web site - "my databases", etc. Asked for pictures of librarians too - want to know who can help them.
Less than 10% of students wanted to communicate with the Library via Facebook.
Recommendations:
Help them find stuff, then get out of their way!
Reaffirmed traditional design rules. Let users control the interface.Lessons from 4,000 years of art: design, philosophy, change, and endurance (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO.) - Johnson County Library
Erica Reynolds, Johnson County Library
Lesson 1: Have a back-up plan.
Lesson 2: Be bold. Be dynamic. Be human. - www.jocoteenscene,org - skins selectable by users
Lesson 3: When you paint to sell, you paint people. - So let people express themselves! - www.jocokids.org. Put a kids picture on your website and the family of that kid will send that link EVERYWHERE!
Lesson 4: Enliven your collection through reorganization and presentation.
"Need a story" vs. "Novelist" - Lots more hits from the former! Adapt your interfaces when the default does not work.
Need to fight the "Librarian gene" to throw everybit of information at someone.
Lesson 5: Technology changes everything.
Lesson 6: Experiment with small studies and prototypes. - Used card sorts when choosing terminology. Paper prototyping of user interface(s). (Test with audience you are aiming for.) Usability testing.
Lesson 7: A desire for beauty and serenity endures. - Keep things simple!
Lesson 8: We like surprises. And anticipating the surprise is even more delicious. - Have a button called "surprise" on the front page of the site. Led to things like "Did you check out one off 6 million items last year."
Lesson 9: A good guide enhances the experience exponentially.
www.jocolibrary.org/usability - slides etc. available
Lesson 10: (W W - anyone who has scored a baseball game can relate, I'm sure :-)
Lesson 11: Never stop innovating
Lesson 12: Be both prestigious and playful.
Labels: Bennett Ponsford, Christina Hoffman Gola. Website Redesign, Erica Reynolds, IL2007, Jeff Wisniewski, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Rules, Website Design
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Do It Yourself Intranet
Eleni Gogas and Donna Feddern, Escondido Public Library
Why change from Network drives to an intranet?
- No archiving, poor searching capabilities.
- Intranet improves Knowledge Management
- Allows people to get organized and stay current.
- City intranet too formal, not library oriented.
Why a wiki?
- Collaboration
- Informality
- Transparency
Picking a wiki
Needed WYSIWYG, Free (or at least affordable), better searching, web-based wiki farm, password protection, individual staff profiles, easy set-up/use/learning, blogging
Choice was jotspot. It matched all the criteria they were looking for
keyword searching of documents, rss feeds and email reminders nice.
But... jotspot has not been taking new users since they were acquired by Google. May need to migrate soon.Other possible choices - pb wiki, wetpaint (ads though), wikispot (less easy for newbies to use)
Organized wiki according to staff needs.
Built framework to encourage ideas and feedback
Important Stuff, Fun Stuff pages part of wiki oganization.
Showed it off at an all staff meeting
Trained supervisors first to help
Started with "Readers World" Sign Up Sheet - an introductory, simple way of introducing how to do editing of wiki pages
Suggestions For Others Considering This:
- Designate go-to troubleshooters
- Develop Guidelines
- Have Dept. Heads responsible
Issues and troubleshooting:
Bugs, Backups, Fear of Change, Staff Interest/Participation, TimeDonna Feddern
Examples of wiki use at Escondido - Teen Librarian Examples
Marketplace project - communication to let staff know why things are being done, encouraging feedback and ideas
Teen Book Talks page - "online filing cabinet
Teen craft Ideas shared via wiki (pdfs of projects)
Reader's Advisory Training for non-librarians that are working with teens
Room reserve tutorial
Blog as great place to brainstorm with collegues
Posting Pictures of people Who Have not Followed library rules - Security Alert blogSouthern California Fires example of how wiki could have helped their "work family"....
Labels: Donna Feddern, Eleni Gogas, IL2007, Intranets, wikis
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Blending In: Librarians in the Networked Community
Chrystie R. Hill and Michael Porter, Webjunction
Robert D. Putnam - Bowling Alone. Thesis that distractions of technology were separating people, and causing a loss of social interaction.
Participatory web - approx. 2003.
2006 - "You" and web 2.0 technologies - are person of the year
Community and collaboration on a scale never seen before.Why is social web "scary" to some librarians? Are we scared to admit that libraries are about building community as well as providing access to content?
Jean Preer, American libraries Sept. 2001 - "Libraries must be part of society's thinking about how we develop and nurture social as well as information networks."
OCLC Reports - Pattern Recognition, Perceptions, and the new Social Networks report
Michael Porter
Examples of Libraries and tools they are developing for being "Social Nodes":
- Atchison PL, Kansas - small library that has done a good job. Main splash page is a blog. Right Column interesting - has link to "What's Going On Around Town"
- Arligton heights Memorial Library, IL. - Have a video blog, Quick chat with librarians
- Christ Church City Librarian, New Zealand - What's New
- Allen County Public Library (Ft. Wayne, IN) - appealing splash page. Bottom Right Corner - "Community resources". Partnerships that create "social node". Allen County Profile with business info, demographics, etc. Trying to drive the economy. History Center Digital Collections. Area Artists database. All about connecting with the community. Day In The Life Of... photos.
- Clark County - Promoting Wi-Fi zone, tool bar, rss feeds, etc. All given their own prime real estate on home page.
- Orange County (Florida) - Has page with "Innovations". "Shop OCLS" page top sell library - and non-library - merchandise.
- Topeka-Shawnee County - Interesting way they did survey from their home page (folding page idea).
- South Carolina State Library - connecting librarians. Also pointed out Web Junction Connecticut as example of this
Flikr - different ways that groups can coalesce ("Men's Shoes" group)
Uh-Oh! 2 years ago nearly 30% of people used Library Web sites; now, only 20%. What's going on?
Facebook is an example - people are going elsewhere to get some of the same information that they went to library web sites for before. But also... there is no place for people to "connect" with the Library at most library websites. To show how "connected" one can feel, Michel showed his Facebook page - one of multiple pages length - which was just one days activity.Labels: Chrystie R. Hill, IL2007, Michael Porter, Networked Communities
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Monday Keynote - Lee Rainey, PEW Internet Project
2.0 and the Internet World
8 Hallmarks of the new Digital ecosystem:
- Ubiquitous gadgets are part of everyday life - interesting charts on home media ecology, showing how it has grown in last few years
- Internet especially broadband connectivity, at center of this revolution - 73% of adults use Internet (93% teens) with over 50% now on broadband. And broadband users create stuff
- New gadgets allow people to enjoy media, gather info, and create ... - wireless connectivity growing, and wireless users more likely to be content creators - 88% of college students own cell phones, 81% own digital cameras
- Ordinary citizens have chance to be publishers, movie makers, artists, story tellers - 55% of american teens have created profiles on social network sites (20% adults). Social networks are the social dashboards of teens lives - pictures, videos, etc. posted, mass messaging to networks of friends, etc. 33% of college students keep blogs and regularly post (adults 12%). 19% of young people online have created avatars thast interact with others online (8% adults).
- All those creators have an audience. Even more internet users are consuming this stuff than creating - 54% college students read blogs (35% all adults read them).
- Many sharing whatv they know and do online, creating communities - 34% of young adults online have tagged online content (28% adults)
- Online Americans are customizing their online experience thanks to 2.0 tools - 40% younger internet users customize news and other info. pages; half on specialty listservs. What does this mean in terms of balkanization of experience?
- Different people use these technologies in different ways - Assets, Actions, Attitudes toward gadgets show 10 types of users (one is non-user)
High End:
Group 1 - Omnivores (8% of population). Have most info. gadgets, participate online voraciously. Tend to be late 20's, male dominant.
Group 2 - Connectors. Don't crete at the same level as Group 1, but connect with others with their gadgets. Late 30s, female dominant.
Group 3 - Lackluster Veterans (5%). Frequent users of internet, less avid about cell phones. Not thrilled with ICT technologies. 40s, Male
Group 4 - Productivity Enhancers (9%). Like technology for how it lets them keep up. Gender parity.
Middle End:
Group 5 - Mobile Centrics (10%). - Love cell phones. Early 30s. Gender parity. Skews towards minorities.
Group 6 - Connected But Hassled (10%). - Have invested a lot in tech., but find it intrusive and somewhat of a burden.
Low End:
Group 7 - Inexperienced Experimenters (9%). 50-ish, Female dominant, Will give stuff a try.
Group 8 - Light But Satisfied (15% of pop.). mid-50s, gender parity, white. Traditional media occupies their time.
Group 9 - Indifferents (11%). 40s, gender parity, white. Despite having tech. stuff, dislike having to use it.
Group 10 - Off The Network (15%). mid-60s+, female, diverse (laening toward blacks). Don't have Internet, don't have cell-phones.
Surprises:
Large low-tech crowd (49%)
Small technophile group (8%)
Far from the "mature phase" of ICT adoption and use in U.S. (though lots of tech capability, much of it idle in people's hands/homes)
Demand "pull" dimension of technology adoption lags "supply push" considerably.
Connectivity changes relationships to info and each other:
- Volume of info grows - "long tail" expands.
- Velocity of info increases - "smart mobs" emerge.
- Venues of intersecting with info and people multiply - place shifting and time shifting occurs... "absent presence" occurs
- Venturing for information changes - search strategies and search expectations spread
- Vigilance for info transforms - attention is truncated ("continuous partial attention") and elongated ("deep dives")
- Valence (relevance) of info improves - "Daily Me" and "Daily Us" gets made
- Vetting of information becomes more "social" - credibility tests change as people ping their social networks
- Viewing of info is disaggregated and becomes more horizontal (Allen Renear, UI-Champagne-Urbana) - new reading strategies emerge as coping mechanisms
- Voting and ventilation of information - user ratings, etc.
- InVention of info and the visibility of...
Be confident in what you already know about how to meet people's reference and entertainment (enlightenment) needs.
Labels: IL2007, Keynote, Lee Rainey, PEW
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Other web logs with links to library issues:
- Lori Bowen Ayre's Library Technology Musings provides "Hopes, dreams, wild ideas and practical solutions for libraries."
- Marylaine Block's Neat New Stuff I Found This Week (and her Ex Libris E-Zine for librarians.)
- Tara Calishain's Research Buzz, "news about search engines, databases, and other information collections."
- Blake Carver and Steve Galbraith's LISNews.com, focuses on (as the subtitle puts it), "news for information professionals."
- Steven M. Cohen's Library Stuff, provides readers with information on the wonderful and exciting world of librarianship.
- Gary Frost's Future of the Book, looks at "preservation and persistence of the changing book."
- Michael Gartenberg (an analyst with Jupiter Research, a market research and advisory firm focused on emerging technologies and the Internet) is one of several Jupiter researchers producing an Analyst Weblog.
- Brend Hough and Liz Rea's NEKLS Technology Weblog, "50 Feet From the Cutting Edge in the Northeast Kansas Library System."
- Sarah Houghton's Librarian In Black, has "resources and discussions for the 'tech-librarians-by-default' among us..."
- Jenny Levine, the original bloggin' librarian, is back with the Shifted Librarian, working to make libraries more "portable... to serve our remote patrons."
- Alex Soojung-Kim Pang (one of the Institute for the Future's research team) is producing Future Now, which looks at emerging technologies and their social implications.
- Gary Price and Shirl Kennedy's ResourceShelf has "resources and news for information professionals" (including the latest scoops on what's what with the invisible web).
- Michael Stephens' Tame the Web includes, "current technology uses in libraries, training tips and various other interests concerning library settings."
- Sandra Stewart at San Jose Public Library is producing a Library Tourguide to Blogs and Technology.
- Jessamyn West's librarian.net, keeping track of the nifty reference sites - and library references - she finds.
- Stephanie Wright's TechnoBiblio, where librarians and technogeeks speak the same language.
Not a weblog, but a very funny look at libraries:
- Unshelved - Bill Barnes' and Gene Ambaum's library comic strip (formerly known as Overdue.)
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