Showing posts with label information previously withheld. Show all posts
Showing posts with label information previously withheld. Show all posts

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Internet Librarian 2009--Thursday

Hey, Folks,

This'll be the last of the "biggest blog posts in all the universe", and it'll cover Wednesday's program at IL2009. I'll have a few final thoughts, perhaps tonight or tomorrow, but that shouldn't be nearly as gigantic. In any case, here we go:

Keynote 3: Wednesday Morning

This was a wonderful keynote! Stephen Abram from Sirsi Dynix moderated a discussion where two high school students and a young college student from Monterey talked about their study, entertainment, and general life experiences. It was so heartening to hear their intelligent, sensible, and (gasp) totally understandable habits with regard to technology and learning. We were asked not to name the kids, since they're under legal age, and it wouldn't be nice to start giving them digital "tails" at that young age. Still, the thing to take away is that young people are not the mass of drooling barbarians that we sometimes think they might be. Far from it. These are canny creators and users of our most impressive technologies, aesthetic learners who also take pleasure from anachronistic pleasures like LP records and antique books. These are kids who might be smarter than we are, if perhaps in slightly different measures than we have been testing. To you teen-area librarians: you have some diamonds in the rough there. Never think you're not lucky.
*****
Library Mashups:

What are they:
-combinations of data from multiple sources that create something new

Terms:
--Web Services
-pass information between different programs/entities
--API
-application programming interface

Look at: programmableweb.com

Why use mashups?
-provide better servicds without high skill set or huge work load
-fill out a form
-copy and paste generated text into web page
-adds value to site
-your website becomes a one stop shop
-allows patrons to grab info and share it
-library "goes outward"

How to use mashups:
-ask vendors for APIs
-create mashups to mix library data with popular web services
-put your library "out there"
-post in one place, but have it syndicated to many
-no redundant labor
-create RSS feeds!

Mashup tools:
-Yahoo Pipes!
-pulls in data from multiple sources and "pipes" things together like a flow chart
-paste resulting code snippet into web page to create widget
-a little confusing at first, don't quit

Examples:
-thisweknow.org

Note:
-read terms of service for each vendor
-find more at programmableweb.com/popular

Mashups for libraries:
-map to branches
-a must
-uses google maps api
-collections on flickr
-upload, apply tags
-automatically creates dynamic image libraries
-do work once, then you're golden
-website mashup elements
-blogs
-wiki
-flickr
-google calendar
-delicious (online bookmarking)
-dynamic linking to bookmark sets that can be altered, edited
-again, cut and paste code
-drupal + yourlibrarysite.com
-opac mashups
-much harder
-proprietary apis not always available
-find others who have already done the work
-or hire a programmer who can do it

How to use them:
-put the library where the patrons are, like on facebook, with mashups and rss

Link: mashups.web2learning.net
*****
Project Drupal: UC Santa Barbara Library

Familiar story: bad, embarrassing website, but without the direction and surety to touch the old one

Then came Annie, who had some skills, but found the website pretty hard to work with.

Proposal: we should have a CMS!

This, to my dismay, is another case study. I was hoping that this would be more of a "nitty gritty" look at Drupal. Sigh.

The second speaker is, again, relating the dry details of what they did to create a better site than they'd had before. More sighing on my part. People near me are clearly disengaged. I think our brains are pretty full now, and it has to be pretty sparkly to get our attention. Ah, well.
*****
Pecha Kucha: Innovative Practices

This was a fast paced set of four presentations. Pecha Kucha is Japanese for the sound that conversation makes. The way it worked is that each presenter had about six and a half minutes to make their pitch. when time was up, they had to stop. No breaks.

I can't relate all the rapid-fire ideas, but it was exhilarating to watch. A neat idea. I think that we may want to, at some point in the future, try this. It may be that this would be a great idea to present our troubleshooting tips at SDD this year. No promises.
*****
Retooling Technical Services for the Digital Environment

I thought I'd drop in to see what was said here. Basically, this was a doom-and-gloom story about how we'd never have a staffing increase in support services, never get a new building built, and we'd face an ever-increasing, ever more varied and difficult work load. Fun stuff. This was the worst structure for a PowerPoint that I've seen in years. Three words: purple on blue. Still, there were a few things that we'll want to think of.

1) As tangible items give way to digital, ephemeral ones, we'll have to figure out how to catalog them, and how to best understand their part in the catalog of materials.

2) Budget cuts will probably play a part. Diversifying job skills to include many elements of support and public service will allow us to remain relevant.

3) Saying "this is all I do" is not really a reasonable response. If you're working in acquisitions, you may also have to do some work in serials, or cataloging. That's how it is.

4) As staffing levels are cut to the quick, redundant tasks will have to be abolished, and some elements of technical services may have to be folded together to make things work.

...and that was, as they say, the whole show!

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Internet Librarian 2009--Monday

Keynote Vint Cerf and Paul Holdengraber:

This was a great keynote, edgy and full of humor. Holdengraber, from New York Library, is a skillful, confrontational interviewer, and gets interesting, unexpected responses from his subjects. Although I couldn't go into all that was discussed, I think that the whole was inspiring and eye-opening.

One thing that Vint Cerf, internet legend and Google Guru, spoke of was the phenomenon of "bit rot", the idea that, as time passes, we become unable to support old information, because the infrastructure of hardware and software disappears. If we let this happen, a lot of our digitized data will soon become unreachable, the info lost. This is something that we really have to consider, and find ways around. In some cases, there is no clear "upgrade path" to be seen. I think that every archival institution will soon come to grips with this in one way or another.

This keynote was actually the best part of the day, and most of the other programs, though cool, had a hard time following this class-A act.
*****
E-Learning Trends and Tools

Part One: Frank Cervone

Is there a clear path? No

Work/life balance is out of sync for many

Speed and convenience is paramount

30% of customers want instant attention

Multitasking is everywhere

Alerting is the new searching
-Information comes to us
-RSS feeds, Friends Areas

Only 15% of world's population is wired

Many libraries don't even have a website

--

Stratification of Education
-worldwide decrease of higher education
-majority of students (70%) are non-traditional (age, work, etc.)
-graduation rates: now @ 6 yrs or more.
-graduating in 4 yrs shows skew for race, w/ white having highest percentage

--

Old measures don't cut it
-money spent on a program isn't relevant
-outcomes are the thing

Gaming changes expectations
-students want to be engaged
-from textual learners to kinesthetic learners

Then, there's the topic of funding
-we're all doing more with less

--

Where do we go?
-what do learners expect?
-task-based teaching is the norm
-however, more broadly applicable, long term learning is the best (teach them how to figure out the next problem without needing help).
-learning needs to be authentic and engaging

Measures:
-must stand up to rigorous scrutiny

--

Outsource what doesn't add value: don't do what doesn't help your core mission

Outsource to add value: co-opt outside skills and take advantage of pre-existing resources

--

Message: change is inevitable and occurs in ways we don't expect

We need to plan for the future, be aware of the trends, and be ready to respond to changes

*****

Lori Reed

Libraries and e-learning and zombies

Message: make courses be interactive, so that student don't disengage (become zombies).

Old e-learning model: watch the video, read the text, take the test (correspondence, no interation)

Problem: no interaction, no useful learning.

Even now: boring lecture webinars are just as bad or worse than the videos of old.

Ongoing problem: prior bad experiences of other staff will bias the against e-learning.

--

How to get buy-in?
-give users a good experience

Nugget:
9/11 gave birth to the corporate distance e-learning trend

--

All these sites and services are just tools, even the snazzy web 2.0 stuff
-tools are only as good as the person behind them. There are no magic bullets here

--

Smiling and laughing means you're succeeding, and that there's learning going on.

Transformations:

reading to sharing
prose to bullets
data to games
diagrams to interactions
one way to two ways
two ways to groups
busy work to applications

--

web tools:

http://delicious.com/lorireed/elearning

--a pretty good program, with the first part being a bit more impressive than the second, but the second having fairly important, wide considerations attached.
*****
Notes: Online Learning Objects 101

Julie Hannaford; Cristina Sewerin

Modules for elearning

Re:search
1) developing a topic
2) determining the type of info you need
3) understanding sources relevant to your topic
4) retriving info
5) evaluating info
6) integrating info into your research report

Five modules with three levels of complexity.

Re:search--

easy to populate
pre-determined templates
content can be tailored
modules are collaborative

--this is a pretty dry lecture, and I'm not totally getting it yet--

Okay, this is a show and tell about their e-learning product* (yawn)

Their product is neat, but it's not really applicable to anything we're doing at this moment.

The idea here is that it gives the students a series of progressively more complex challenges, with integral discussions on why things are they way they are. Here, they're learning how to find, evaluate, and categorize info relating to doing research papers.

--the theory

Good instruction is course-related and applicable

When creating courses, the tools have to be easy to use, and not require technical "heavy lifting" to make things work.

If content creators can adapt figures and cases from other courses, this speeds and broadens the courses in general.

--yep, this is still just a big show and tell, and I'm still finding it a yawner.

Part two: long yawner about usability testing of same product. Not very informative or broadly useful.
*****
Integrating library resources into course sites at Harvard University

Michael J. Hemment

Guess the tag cloud: students create tags to indicate various experiences.

Not great: library catalog

Easy, helpful: Google

Funny, Smart: John Stewart

The big challenge: connecting students with library resources, convincing them that they should try the library before going on to other knowledge sources.

Before redesign: 10 clicks to get where they were going

After: 1 click!

Most important: putting info at the point of need

They use the ISITES LMS

Discussion of good qualities

We could use course guides on new website. We may not need such complex management, since we're not a university, but still, having guides up, in some form, could be great. Same with story times, events, etc.

"Meet the Catalog"

Harvard has two catalogs, classic and new

Video--Like "I'm a Mac..."

Idea: we could have two stylesheets/UI models for our catalog, a simple, old fashioned one, and one that has much more graphical content, more like Amazon. Patron could use either one, or switch at will.

Discussion of how to assess the usability. Not so different as other models. They use Morae and Survey Monkey

What's next:

Michael discusses things they're planning, like auto-populating guides with preexisting assets.

Chad's video:

Incorporating free services

He uses angel CMS

IM availablility for professors

Mashups: google pipes

RSS feeds
-feed to 2JS to test
-put it in your CMS

Desktop sharing for hands-on help

Jing-screencasting

Twitter for discovery and sharing

Eembedded librarian answers IMs from students

For technophobes
-go a little at a time
-assure them that it's not that hard
-prove that it works
-use a team approach

For tech-starved students
-tech is a supplement, not core curriculum
-on campus labs
-desktop sharing for help
*****
LOL Cats guide to...by the librarian in black

Talking to Patrons:

Be awake when talking with patrons. Make sure they're awake.

Most of the web 2.0 stuff is cheap/free, and not that hard to implement

<>

Put chat windows where patrons are upset!

Interact with patrons:

Comments pages EVERYWHERE!

Discussion groups/book clubs.

Using Blogs for recommendations

--make it easy to do
--make it easy to categorize entries

Ann Arbor does this, and they're wicked cool
Madreads (madison public library)

Social Networking:

Ask users where they are

Children will be in different places

lots of tools...

Also, event sites are good

Eventful; upcoming.org; going.com; craigslist...

Cheap advertising on Facebook? ten bucks for 5,000

Use multimedia: photos; podcasts; videos

flickr photostreams, for instance

Image generators can be fun

generatorblog.blogspot.com
Imagegenerator.org
imagechef.com

Podcasting & Videocasting

equipment isn't too expensive
free software available, hardware isn't that steep

screencasting-wink, camstudio
class websites-wordpress, blogger
live office hours-freeconferencecall
live webcasts-ustream.tv

Offer treats!

People like shiny things

ask them what they want

give them stuff if you can

Staff Avatars?
E-Interviews?

Tap the Google wonderland!

Open source software:

typefaster typing tutor
gnucash

What do the patrons need? find service, give it.

Free books

project gutenburg
audiobooksforfree.com
escholarship
google books


Free databases:



Respect your customers!

If you're working online, bad responses last a long time. Be courteous.

Offer users choices @ communications, workflow.

Good catalog

vufind
library thing
aquabrowser
bibliocommons
dndeca
worldcat local

Improving the catalog is BIG

Making changes is hard! Keep going, and keep pushing people in power to make changes (but smartly)

If you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough.

Sarah Houghton-Jan was presenter.
*****
Evaluating and Justifying Web 2.0 for Libraries:

Discussion of Web 2.0 concerns...

Issue: internal vs. external

What level of approval?

What about money? Are you authorized?

Big thing: public vs. private info

Individuals shouldn't do certian things on library related entities

Evaluation of Web 2.0

Not so different from any other process.

Return on investment

Relevance

Hidden complexity

Who greenlights?

Considerations: Authenticity, Veracity, Ability to correct; Is it viral?

--Much of this is stuff I've heard before. Not bad, just stuff like I've heard often before.

No real time for questions or discussion. Certianly a big lecture, really more than what the time would allow in some ways. A whirlwind tour.
*****
Marketing your digital presence

Joy Marlow

digital collections, your catalog and beyond

What is your digital presence?

get down to basics
think like a marketer

why do we host digital collections?

--values of above?

three primary customer segmentations

not intersted
not aware
savvy

Not aware is the most important group

--create personas

those not interested--they just don't care. They can't be sold the idea of digital collections
not aware--key group--maybe they just bookmarked the catalog, and think that's your only page; habitual
savvy--don't forget 'em

Marketing phases

ideation
focus group research
solution scope
implementation
customize
promote
revise
build the community

-build the digital community
comments
tags
contributions
ratings

Benefits

educational
promotional
low cost

Measurements of success

what is success--you need to have a clear idea

Marketing through the catalog

seamless integration between catalog and digital collection
open up digital collection to new users
results should appear right in catalog results page
when you click...you don't ever leave the catalog search area
consistent experience is important

catalog terminals: a marketing opportunity
-special page like a mini homepage

Parteners in the community with web portals
-digitize elements of history in the community, host digital collections online
-parteners do marketing for you
-partener with local broadcasting station.

Marketing through open access
-harvest your metadata

--Then, life hits!
-budget cuts, for instance
-marketing for SURVIVAL
-"save our library" page
-emargency splash pages
-remember to use banners to inform those who only look at catalog

Marketing for the future of the library
-geotagging with google maps

public library of cincinatti
-old panorama
-how much has changed?
-google earth overlay
-3d representation of where things are/were

...a long day, don't you think?




Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Oh, Yeah, P.S.

Stuff I forgot to say includes:

Myspace has a video area, too. You can watch TV shows (cut up into parts), and a variety of other videos. I know a guy who does this all the time, since his family won't let him watch certain FOX cartoon shows in the house.

Fancast.com is a pretty neat site, too. You can watch full television shows with only minimal commercial interruption. Basically, if a show would stop for commercials, just one 30 second commercial runs. It's pretty cool. Shows range from old stuff, like Twilight Zone and Dragnet, to shows from the last few years. In general, they have somewhere between a handful and a season's worth of shows. So if you get an urge to see Miami Vice (the TV show), you can feed the jones.