Professional Development

ASIST 2009: Takeaways...

2009-11-19T07:38:00.000-08:00

Gentle Reader,

I have posted fuller entries on the presentations I attended at ASIST 2009, but wanted to bullet some of the highlights/takeaways. I also enjoyed the poster sessions and the notorious SIG/CON evening session, during which leading information scientists poke fun at their profession. I also highly recommend Vancouver as a destination.

Plenary session: an audience member asked Tim Bray, “Distinguished Engineer” and Director of Web Technologies at Sun Microsystems: “Managing all these blogs, IM, cell phones, blogs – how do we do that? Also what about the human aspect of it? People just use their Blackberries all the time and are being rude
- Tim’s answer to part 1: You just need to buckle down and figure it out
- Tim’s answer to part 2: The technology is not the problem, it’s a behavioral / human problem.
“STOP talking about the repository!!” - how major repositories are completely re-focusing and re-branding.
Bonnie McKay and Carolyn Watters developed and tested a tool that provides support for multi-session web tasks such as "preparing to take a trip".
Users in an online community can use a surprising array of sophisticated communication techniques, such as sarcasm, and “respected” users in a community can exert social influence through a pretty “thin” medium. (Rich Gazan)
To what degree can log data profile a web searcher? See Jim Jansen's book
Two major ways creators can increase the accessibility of Web 2.0 sites is to put in alt tags for images and don’t use the same phrase in multiple links on the same page
we sell microblogging short because of the widespread mockery of Twitter

New Modes of Information Behavior Emerging from the social web

2009-11-10T15:30:00.000-08:00

Isto Huvila, Uppsala University, Sweden, and Abo Adakemi University, Finland

Hazel Hall, Napier University, Scotland

Mari Kronqvist-Berg, Abo Adakemi University, Finland

Outi Nivakoski, Abo Adakemi University, Finland

Helena Franke, University of Boras and Goteborg University, Sweden

Moderator: Gunilla Widen-Wulff, Abo Adakemi University, Sweden

This was a great session overall, considering how Web 2.0 has changed information behaviors in organizations, or has the potential to do so. The biggest takeaway for me was a statement made by Dr. Hazel Hall, Director, Centre for Social Informatics, School of Computing Edinburgh Napier University. She had done a study of corporate environments (including the public sector). She found that microblogging (Twitter) was the least used of new Web 2.0 tools, and had the lowest perceived usefulness. Yet, when she listed out how different Web 2.0 tools facilitated communication, she found that microblogging actually does combine many of the features of others, and perhaps we sell microblogging short because of the widespread mockery of Twitter. For example:

- Microblogging offers social networking, but unlike other SNS, asymmetric relationships are possible. This could be useful in organizations because organizational relationships are often asymmetrical. Everyone can follow the CEO or Dean, but perhaps he/she does not follow everyone else.

- Microblogging shares the "brief and to the point" benefits of IM.

- Microblogging shares with wikis the public nature of conversations, which encourages collaborative building of new knowledge, and legitimate peripheral participation

- Microblogs provide easy linking to other resources, like blogs.

- Finally, Microblogs share features with CONVERSATION:

o Meta knowledge

o Problem reformulation

o Validation

o Legitimization of ideas

o For examples see search.twitter.com/search?q=#ASIST09

Assessing the Accessibility of Web 2.0 Web Sites

2009-11-10T08:16:00.000-08:00

Tyson McMillan and Lin Lin, University of North Texas

Tyson McMillan gave a dynamic presentation about his study of how accessible Web 2.0 sites are, using the Web Accessibility Barrier score created by Parmanto and Zeng (2005). This gives a quantitative metric rather than a pass/fail grade, as many accessibility tests do. The 176 sites in this work (88 Web 1.0 and 88 Web 2.0) had to be evaluated manually (Excel) so in order to keep scope manageable, this work evaluated only the home page of each site in this sample.

Two major ways creators can increase the accessibility of Web 2.0 sites is to

- put in alt tags for images

- don’t use the same phrase in multiple links on the same page

Cashing on the Wisdom of Crowds for Question Answering

2009-11-10T07:15:00.000-08:00

Chirag Shah, doctoral student, UNC Chapel Hill presented some of the most popular questions on Yahoo! Answers. Rich Gazan talked about how a social Q&A site operationalizes "trust."

Social Reference and Digital Reference: Online Question Answering Practices in Two Diverse Communities

2009-11-10T07:08:00.000-08:00

Howard Rosenbaum, Indiana University

Eileen G. Abels, Drexel
Marie L. Radford. Rutgers
Lynn Silipigni Connaway, OCLC
Chirag Shah, UNC Chapel Hill
Rich Gazan, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Pnina Shachaf, Indiana University

Eileen Abels gave an overview of the IPL. It is merging with Librarian’s Index to the Internet.
Marie Radford reported results from an IMLS-funded project which found big differences between adult and "Net Gen" users of virtual reference services. In her analysis, she found that Net Gen users were not treated as well as adult users. Once they use the services, most users said they would use the service again, although less Net Gen users: 82% = Net Gen, 92% = adult.

Why users don’t choose VRS
-          unhelpful answers
-          non-subject specialist
-          slow connections
-          scripted messages
-          cold environment

What would attract users to VRS?
-          faster and easier software
-          personalized interface
-          reliable cobrowser

Both face to face and VRS users want:

-          extended hours of service
-          access to electronic information
-          interact with friendly librarians
-          Relationships with librarians (this is why Tutor.com is successful)

What we can do?
-          Creative marketing. Promote full range of options and reassure young people VRS is safe
-          Build positive relationships whether F2f, phone, or online

To What Degree can Log Data Profile a Web Searcher?

2009-11-09T15:35:00.000-08:00

Bernard (Jim) Jansen, Danille Booth, Daehee Park, Mimi Zhang, Ying Zhang, Ashish Kathuria, Pat Bonner, Pennsylvania State University

Jim listed a slew of methods one can use to profile web searchers. Post-conference, Jim was kind enough to let me know about his book: http://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/abs/10.2200/S00191ED1V01Y200904ICR006?journalCode=icr

Takeaways: I talked to Jim after the session, noting that practitioners are struggling to make use of log data.

When Wrong is Right: Intentionally Bad Answers in a Social Q&A Community

2009-11-09T15:31:00.000-08:00

Rich Gazan, School of Information Science, Univ of Hawaii Manoa

Setting: Answerbag, 2003+, 1.6MQ, 8M answers. ?12Munique visitors/month, Multiple answers ranked by user rating, for collab filtering. Why are some intentionally bad answers to questions the highest-rated? Answers were...

- From a high-level submitter (69%), 53% across site

- Funny (or trying to be) – 43%

- Subversive (challenging quesiton premise) - 34%

- Social/sympathetic but unresponsive – 20%

- The only answer submitted – 14%

- Normative, trying to teach the asker something (54%). Hard to make this determination (i.e. What is 237 divided by 9, Romaine Lettuce

High-level users have more leeway to editorialize, but with public reputations, their intent can be better gauged by the community when posting non-responsive content

Intentionally bad answers can help people cultivate a more critical and refined view of information quality

Takeaways: This session was quite amusing, but in all seriousness, it revealed how users in an online community can use a surprising array of sophisticated communication techniques, such as sarcasm, and how “respected” users in a community can exert social influence through a pretty “thin” medium.

The Same, Yet Different: Comparing Studies of “Traditional” Digital Reference and Social Q&A

2009-11-09T15:30:00.000-08:00

Jeffrey Pomerants, Chirag shah, Jung Sun Oh, Sanghee Oh, UNC Chapel Hill

This research team is working on a comparison of Yahoo! Answers and the Internet Public Library. They presented preliminary analysis. References: LISR article “Research Agenda for Social Q&A” (JMU Users only)

An Analysis of Formally Published Usability and Web Usability Definitions

2009-11-09T11:10:00.000-08:00

Yu-Hui Chen, Carol Anne Germain, Ababe Rorissa

University of Albany

Usability has had an ambiguous definition since its emergence in the 1980s. This research team gathered formal usability definitions by collecting articles in the fields of HCI, Usability Engineering, and Web Usability. They found 440 articles, and read these to find definitions of web usability. For articles that referred to another source, they added those sources. They came up with 63 formally published definitions having

502 concept terms among them. From this they identifed 11 attributes and then coded their frequency. Overall, the top five attributes were the same across Computer Science, LIS, and a category where the fields overlapped: Learnability, Effectiveness, User characteristics, Satisfaction, Efficiency – THE MOST important because the top five terms were in over 75% of definitions.

Takeaway: Next time I need a definition of usability, I will likely cite their presentation! Also, I learned a lot from the audience critique of their research methodology.

Providing Support for Multi-session web tasks, Bonnie McKay and Carolyn Watters

2009-11-09T11:03:00.000-08:00

This research team created three prototype tools (looked like Firefox extensions) to support multi-session web task. Definition: Task which requires more than one web session to complete. Goal based, often with sub tasks, has a definable endpoint. Not routine. Can be expected or unexpected. An example is preparing to come to ASIST 2009: You must book hotel, book flight, taxi/shuttle, things to see, where to eat, register by Oct 20, and you do the entire task over several days. Some people try to bookmark all the site they are visiting, but this gets unwieldy. URL:http:// www.Cs.dal.ca/~bmckay

Takeaway: Their prototype tool looked like something I wanted to use! I plan to ask them if they would mind sharing. Also, the way they conducted their study was an interesting model. They had 12 university students use their prototypes for about two weeks, logged all their interactions with the prototypes, and entered regular logs about their tasks with feedback.

“It Challenges Members to ... :Diversity in Digital Project Teams

2009-11-09T10:02:00.000-08:00

Wendy Duff (Archivist/Lib)

Wendy Duff investigated how collaboration works on multi-disciplinary, multi-location digial library project teams. Her recommendations were:

- Embrace diversity by assuming differences. Face to face meetings to negotiate differences, establish new working vocabularies speciifc to the dig project, and establish project objectives, outcomes, and tasks

- Teams might consider more formal training directed to dig project teams needs

- Teams might incorporate team and self-reflection to ensure active learning from projects. “Collaborative state of mind” which sees the value in other perspectives.

The Ethics of Studying Online Communities

2009-11-09T09:00:00.000-08:00

Hsin-liang Chen, University of Missouri-Columbia

Sheila Denn, Simmons College

Kenneth D Fleishmann, UMD

Jean Preer, Indiana U

Barbara Wildemuth, UNC Chapel Hill

In this session, panelists outlined the issues related to using comments from online communities in research. Unfortunately (though not surprisingly), there are no hard and fast rules. It’s important to think through each of the IRB principles for these types of studies: autonomy, beneficence, and justice.

An interesting question from the audience was whether IRBs be collecting tools / standards for researchers? A: This panel thought it was not the IRB’s role; it’s the role of the faculty in the field.

Takeaways: I wish I could have taken away a checklist from this one, but there wasn’t one offered. Perhaps what I took away was an understanding of how individual each case is in this area, and the need to rigorously evaluate research protocols of social communities.

Information Seeking and Use in Diverse Organization Contexts

2009-11-09T07:01:00.000-08:00

Dr. Brian Detlor, McMaster University, Canada

Dr Chun Wei Choo, University of Toronto, Canada

Dr. Maureen McKenzie, Dowling College,

Dr. Don Turnbull, consultant

Brian Detlor provided an overview of the established research about information seeking and use:

- Male vs. female is not a predictor of difference, but a self-orientation vs. other-orientation IS. This is often conflated with male vs. female.

- The type of task makes a big difference in information seeking behavior.

o browsing vs. search

o recurring vs. ad hoc information need

o good-enough vs. best information

- He is beginning a study investigating the combined effects of individual differences and tasks.

Dr. Choo presented a model of information culture in organizations, which he has evaluated in a law organization, a health organization, and an engineering organization.

See Journal of Information Science, 32(6), 491-510

JASIST 59(5) 792-804

Asking Difficult Questions about Institutional Repositories: Factors for Success and New Directions for Development and Research

2009-11-08T18:00:00.000-08:00

Asking Difficult Questions about Institutional Repositories: Factors for Success and New Directions for Development and Research (3:30-5:00)

Catherine Mitchell, University of California
Carole L. Palmer, UIUC
Soo Young Rieh, University of Michigan
Moderator: June Abbas, University of Oklahoma

This panel was composed of one IR practitioners and two IR researchers. The IR practitioner, who leads the #1 ranked IR, stated that the traditional definition of an IR needed to die, and in fact the term “institutional repository” needed to die. The most important thing is to identify the core audience, then define a value proposition that actually appeals to those users (in this case, faculty), then target messages to them. Faculty are not interested in “repositing.” Both IRs are now refocusing on providing open access and scholarly publishing services. At the University of Calfornia, they are also focusing on putting publications in the repository that don’t currently have a home, such as working papers. They are completely re-branding and remarketing. They are also collaborating with the University Press.

The two researchers presented some results from grant-based efforts which aimed to identify IR successes. Carole Palmer found that two important success predictors were involvement of liaison librarians and using one’s local culture to build on strengths. Report of this group: (http://Hdl.handle.net/2142/8981) and Library Trends 57(2) 2008

Similarly to the practitioners, Soo Young Rieh concluded that libraries need to move from a repository-centric to a service-centric model, providing services such as help with copyright issues, consulting on author rights, and providing users with usage reports and hit counts from the IR to demonstrate how it increases visibility.

A comment from the audience came from the lead person at a web site that ranks and links to institutional repositories. He noted that many IRs to not set themselves up to be attractive publicly searchable and linkable web sites: for example their URLs are ugly; often the page the article is on lacks the institutional branding. He urged IRs to focus on end users which are just everyday people, not librarians or faculty at the institution.

Another comment from the audience was from a woman who had done a case study of a mandatory IR. She said this university had 80% of its publications in repository and she could not find one person who didn’t like it. There were a few grumblers but they still liked it overall.

Takeaway: “STOP talking about the repository!!”

Plenary Session 1, Sunday, November 8, 2009, 1:00-3:00pm

2009-11-08T17:00:00.000-08:00

The plenary speaker was Tim Bray, “Distinguished Engineer” and Director of Web Technologies at Sun Microsystems. Tim listed several important new realities he is tracking:

It has always been easy for anyone to build web sites – these days, it is easy and cheap/free for anyone to build a database driven web site, or a community web site. His example was Ravelry.com, which has 500,000 registered users and 900 new users each day. It was created in 2007 and has just one web developer. Ruby on Rails (and similar technologies like Python/Django) is what makes this so easy. Tim suggested that everyone in the audience read Programming Ruby 1.9 (with picture of pickaxe) – not necessarily to learn how to use it but just to get the philosophy.
REST (Representational State Transfer) allows us to create apps that allow other people to build apps that use our content, in ways we wouldn’t think of
Relational databases are becoming outdated for some applications, since new social sites (Facebook) would be too slow if they ran on a relational database. The new standard for this type of site is “eventually consistent” meaning that Facebook does not aim to have a perfectly up-to-date database all the time (unlike a financial web site.
While it’s true that only a small percentage of people have smartphones, there is a renaissance in the use of mobile SMS services (Sep 24, 2009 Economist: special report on telecomms in emerging markets)
We are creating more text than ever before
What is the Internet for? What is the killer app of the Internet? The answer has always been the same: Other People.

Biggest takeaway: an audience member asked Tim “Managing all these blogs, IM, cell phones, blogs – how do we do that? Also what about the human aspect of it? People just using their Blackberries all the time and being rude”

Tim’s answer to part 1: You just need to buckle down and figure it out

Tim’s answer to part 2: The technology is not the problem, it’s a behavioral / human problem.

CIL 2009 - Open Source Library Implementations

2009-04-01T12:04:00.000-07:00

Karen Kohn and Eric McCloy, Arcadia University

They have IT and library merged into one. IT and the library had different perceptions about:
- how big a hurdle it is to migrate data (library=huge; IT=not such a big deal)
- focus on database structure (IT) vs. focus on what reports we can get (library)
- ability to articulate problems - whose responsibility is it to figure out what's wrong?
- developers and librarians together in the room was very productive

2 Koha servers: test server for IT and library + implementation server
"Base Camp" -- PM software -- this is where they kept their priority list

CIL 2009 Wednesday, "Customized Content Portals"

2009-04-01T11:38:00.000-07:00

Richard Cox, Digital Technology Consultant
Lydia Kellam, Data Services & Government Information Librarian, University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG)

"Hacking Blackboard: Customized Content Portals"
Use web services, RSS feeds, service-oriented architecture (SOA) to deliver course content through a portal created and displayed within Blackboard.
"Library Resources for my Major" is the portal title

Push resources into dept. space, course space...
liaisons used admin tool to choose resources
i.e. Lexis Nexis to all PoliSci classes, or just one specific class.
no db authentication necessary

Issues:
- navigation issues (nothing in BB sidebar -- students have to go to Tools, and scroll down)
- promotional issues. Had to remind subject librarians.
- getting buy-in. Remind people this is not a replacement.

Students with declared major now get top 4 resources for their major, one of which can be subject guide
"For my courses" lists courses they are enrolled in, e-reserves
meebo widget for liaison

Students without a major get general course; email form if no IM widget

Faculty get very generic stuff at present

ASP.net application wrapped into security to verify student is logged into BB.
use active directory to pull contact info
pull from SCT banner (UNCG student info)
LiveMesh Microsoft LiveMsgr - to pull in IM widget. because they were the only company at the time that would let him query their service to see if there is someone online.
Blackboard /Oracle. They check to see
Do eReserves exist for the class?
Pull student info from Blackboard to minimize idiosyncracies

Challenges from IT perspective

When to pull student data from Banner; finding correct data in Banner
get liaisons to update resource pages.
double majors

Librarian Liaison perspective

how do we assess (100 hits/day according to GA - returning students)
outreach and marketing
mixed reactions from library liaisons

Future:

assignment calculator
rating system for student to rate the resources - he already knows if it's a staff member rating vs. student rating
mobile app - there would be a login again to get same info

Uses web services (JavaScript, XML) to get student info; has to connect live to Blackboard to verify student is logged in currently. Load was 8-10 seconds initially. Now 2-3 with caching.

CIL 2009 Wednesday, "Mobile Search"

2009-04-01T10:51:00.000-07:00

by Megan Fox
web.simmons.edu/~fox/mobile

Types of search tools, major players, harnessing the mobile advantage, text/SMS search

Mobile search devices will account for more searches per day than desktop (Google CEO) 10 619M searches per day by 2012. Iphone accounts for 50x the traffic than any other
Searchers want a fact or action, not results, when they search
50% of searches are one word

What are they looking for?

local search: movie search, restaurant
information search: definitions, jeopardy-type answers
rich content

Traditional search engines with mobile interfaces - you can search these with a desktop to get the experience even if you don't have a data plan. This will become the primary way people access the internet

m.live.om
www.google.com/m
m.yahoo.com

Mobile search engines aggregate information from other databases and present it in a categorized results list. So, Washington DC reveals weather, local news, events, web sites, mobile web sites, more results (photos, images, stock quotes, traffic, wikipedia, Yahoo Answers)

A search on Villanova produces sports scores first.

Mobile search Applications (Yahoo oneSEARCH)

pull content from web site into the 'results list'
put search box on 'desktop' of mobile device
can create icon for searches
will use your history to help future searches

Yahoo is going after phone/service providers

Google trying to rely on pullthru - hope people will love Google and take it from their local PC to their mobile. They mark mobile results using little phone icons.

They offer 'tabbed results' so you can skip to Web, Local, Images, Mobile as opposed to Yahoo's categorized-in-list

Use barcodes, photos, to launch search... Thrrum Cameraphone search
GotVoice - start search with voice command
Tellme -- a microsoft subsidiary
1800-CALL-411
GOOG411
Spoken/voice search - both Google and Yahoo! for Yahoo, Android, Blackberry
Shazam audio search - "name that tune!"
Vlingo - why tap when you can talk? - provides voice recog for applications

Google Book Search mobile app

in full version they scan the page and return pdf
in mobile, they use OCR

Clusty - discovery / browse search. Hm... this might help both mobile and desktop for disambiguation

Social search - allowing a human to answer another human, or uses link analysis
- hiogi

Abphone social mobile - rather than use PageRank, returns what people are looking at.

Boopsie - "Mobilize your library" - WorldCat app

Proximic - copy in a paragraph and get results; re-enter paragraph. In mobile environment

Visual Results - searchme, cooliris

SMS / Texting - Google 466453 (best)
Yahoo Text 92466 (fastest)
ChaCha - best for hard questions 242242

CIL 2009 Wednesday, "Mobile Usability: Tips, Research, & Practices"

2009-04-01T08:38:00.000-07:00

Christa Burns, OCLC Member Services, Nebraska Library Commission
Michael Sauers, Technology Innovation Librarian
Jim Hahn, Orientation Services Librarian, UIUC

Christa Burns talked about applications for searching Google, Yahoo, etc. and getting fast answers
Michael Sauers

Get a data plan
Text Amazon to check book price and even order a book
LibraryThing mobile
moblie.wikipedia.transcode.php
m.ebuddy.com - lite messenger that integrates into major IM's. Must refresh to see things.
new app for windows mobile - a google search on your home screen; almost as good as desktop for google maps, includes street view
barcode generators exist that output jpgs so you can put them on your phone and display them for readers to consumer (he's had mixed results)

Jim Hahn: studied use of mobile using a logging system which logged student searches
R1. How do students use Wikipedia on a mobile device?
R2. How best to design library services on mobile devices to support student success?

hdl.handle.net/2142/9574
sourceforge.net/projects/encyclopodia

Students used the devices mainly for recreational questions
Used the iPod 1-2 times per month, mostly in September

Wednesday, "Mobile Practices and Search," Megan Fox

2009-04-01T07:31:00.001-07:00

I attended this session with Megan Fox from Simmons College because I don't know a whole heckuva lot about this area! Too stingy for a data plan (Could I be a "desktop veteran?")
Slides: web.simmons.edu/~fox/mobile

15.6% of mobile subscribers are Internet users; 57% when including SMS -- Nielsen 2008
In U.S., 50% of traffic is from iPhone, followed by Blackberry
Globally, Apple has only 8.2% of smartphone market share

New phones are better cameras: face and smile recognition, 12 MP
Increasingly using multimodal input: visual (QD barcodes), audio, location (GPS), gesture

Surfing the Web using mobile phone browsers vs.
The "Real" Mobile Web - simplified pages vs.
Transcoded mobile web (Mobilized by WINK)
check out Amazon on all three -- the True Mobile page is awesome! But the iPhone app might be even better.

W3C mobile OK checker

"Snacking the Web" - the mobile web is a small amount of web browsed between desktop visits.
So what is needed most?

Best Buy: Find a Store, search for a product.
dictionaries, encyclopedias, statistics
check out Skokie Public Library's mobile web library page.
Library could check out iTouch to patrons pre-loaded with library apps
Kindle App for Iphone
Android "scan" app has barcode (old school barcode) lookup to find in stores.
Mobile search - an app is more powerful than using mobile web browser. Used for finding, not searching -- i.e. sports scores, facts, etc. User wants specific facts / answers, not results list.

SMS search: Google Text 466453 for best answer; YahooText (afternoon session on search is about this)

Wednesday Keynote, CIL 2009, "Imagining a Smithsonian Commons"

2009-04-01T07:27:00.000-07:00

Michael Edson, Director for Web and New Media, Smithsonian Institution spoke about his vision for the Smithsonian Commons. I was enjoying his presentation so much I didn't take great notes! Luckily he provided several links for us:
slideshare.net/edsonm
usingdata.typepad.com
smithsonian20.typepad.com

CIL 2009 Tuesday, "Cooperative Systems Trump Integrated Systems"

2009-03-31T17:00:00.000-07:00

As Content Interfaces Coordinator at JMU, I took away the most from Daniel Forsman, Jonkoping University Library. Their library has 200k volumes and 9556 students. He has added many features to their ExLibris catalog through web services.

Website: www.bibl.hj.se/eng
OPAC: http://julia.hj.se

Some of the features:
search on PHP:
There are more ebooks on PHP in the database Books 24x7
- they looked at logs and gave common searches to reference librarians to write answers/hints

on left, they have links from external web services
- LIBRIS (like worldCat)
- EbscoHost integration toolkit
- public catalog

google books covers
amazon
editorial reviews

Social Network Profile Management

2009-03-31T08:32:00.000-07:00

Greg Schwartz, Louisville Free Public Library, http://openstacks.net/os
Amanda Powers, Mississippi State
Michael Porter, WebJunction, libraryman.com
Sarah Houghton-Jan, San Jose Public Library, librarianinblack.net

Schwartz: Identity: What I say about me / What others say about me
Digital Identity Mapping

Own your user name (i.e. choose one name for all services). CheckUsername.com
Join the conversation about you.
Follow what others are saying about you (i.e. set up alerts)
Be authentic

Powers: Teenagers are growing up, creating an identity as they grow, and then need to manage information. Adults, too, though: for example, our first Wall posts might be our "blue eyeshadow." Librarians should help patrons make these developmental adjustments.
- Use the Friend Lists to manage social metadata.

Sarah: Library Social Network Profiles: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Identify:
1. register with uniform user names vs. random strange usernames
2. register with uniform generic email vs. individual emails
3. profile info on site is current vs. outdated
Communication:
1. Quick replies to users' messages / comments vs. slow/no replies
2. Personal in tone vs. institutional
3. Keep it open to all (minus ads/spam) vs. selective

- checkusernames.com to find a username that will work across sites
- openID, claimID - log in across sites
- ping.fm, hellotxt.com - update across sites
- atom keep: simultaneously update profiles

Michael Porter: WebJunction: a place to put "online resumes"; a community of library professionals. They have new social tools like individual profiles.
- use pictures
- show personality (esp in pictures)
- don't show TOO much personality (esp in pictures)

Computers in Libraries 2009: Tuesday, Best of the Web

2009-03-31T08:24:00.001-07:00

by Aaron Schmidt

This session, as advertised, was a bunch of "cool sites!' I will list them in a glop here and hopefully get to check them out later!! Note: I did not capture every site.

Browser stuff
- greasemonkey
- smart keywords - right click any search box (OPAC, wikipedia), then set up keyword, then it adds it to your browser
- HelvetiReader (nicer Google reader)

wikimedia commons - images to use for free
pictobrowser - enter flickr URL and it gives you code to embed and it gives you code for a slideshow
jing - screenshots and record screen casts
vimeo - like YouTube
postrank - put in bloog feed address and it tells you which posts are more popular than others
when to meet
color lovers.com
thematic power blog
zoho creator - like Google Forms?
What is Prezi?
lovely charts - make diagrams online
ever note
tada lists
logmein.com

Monday, CIL 2009: Library Facebook Apps

2009-03-30T08:17:00.000-07:00

by Joseph Ryan, Digital Projects librarian, NCSU. User Experience Advocate

NCSU Libraries Activity Wall: a short tour
- average facebook user has 120 friends
- 70% of users are outside of United States
- 35 languages
- Dana Boyd PHd on social networking sites – motivations of teens and adults

Common Reasons adults use SNS:
- professional networking
- reconnect with former classmates
- dating

Less common
- Comment on friends activity
- Regular profile aedits
- Add photos

Teens:
- socializing with friends
- regular profile edits
- comment on friends activity
less common
- professional networking

Pages
- friends (called fans)
- wall
- events
- photos
- contact info
- NCSU has one

Groups
- “old school”
- message boards
- anyone can create
- Library 2.0 Interest group
- facebookAppsForLibraries
- LibrariansandFacebook
- NextGen Librarians
- He doesn’t think this is effective for patrons

Applications
- Facebook API enables external software dev to integrate
- Causes, Super Wall, Top Friends, We’re related

Library APls
- In order of popularity…catalog, article database, metasearch… news, links, lib info
- Swem Tools (College of W&M – notify on map of where you are
- Eastern Illinois has live ref chat

Monthly Active Users
- most popular is Loughborough University Library – 139 MAU
- Causes, 25.7
- Average library app: 15 MAU

Why is use so slow?
- the library apps are not about connecting with people which Is what facebook is about

Traditional Use Case
- Person <-> Information
Facebook use case is
+ with people at the ends

Thesis: "focusing on helping people connect with each other, rather than providing another rentry point to library resource, may be more successful"

GOAL: help students in the library or planning to come meet up in an informal way
Secondarily, provide relevant info in temporal context

- ties into room reservation system!!

March 27 Focus group (N-4)
- All undergrads, 3 comm majors, candy, 20 minutes

Focus Group Likes: loved the idea of tool to form study groups in low-barrier way
- “has a lot of potential”

Things they didn’t like
-“Does it have to be a facebook app? All of them disliked facebook apps— “ a barrier to use; too noisy. “
- this seems like it would be useful, why would you put it on Fbook?
- Strong interest in org activities around courses, not physical location

What about a discussion board type thing with Courses as threads
- ENG 101 (Academic Writing and Research_ study group in Learning Commons A
But is there an easy way for students to identify what courses they are in? they cannot identify course ID, instructor, etc.
- needs to be easy to locate existing activities
- need to have multiple access venues
- Kiosk in lobby?
- Widget for internal / external app?

CIL 2009, Monday: Users in Academic Libraries

2009-03-30T08:13:00.000-07:00

Ken Varnum, Web Services Manager, University of Michigan
Daniel Wendling, MLS, UM, works with Content Management & wikis. Certified Usability Analyst

Wendling spoke about "Student Research Behavior" and showed an application he developed as a research project: http://www.ponder-matic.com

36% used www.google.com in their last course-related search for information
17.8% used www.google.com FIRST. So of 544 users, 17.8% used google first

ResearchPort
54% used ResearchPort (UMD's database / journal portal)
34.9% used it as their first site
68.9% of these 341 sessions via remote search
23.2% from UMD library computer
7.3 from UMD library

Check out his methodology in the conference book, p. 43!

Ken Varnum: MTagger

Assign keywords to “library stuff”: Catalog, Web pages, digital images, library publications
- open to anybody but is really open to U. Could have a friend of library id
- Inherits from: Delicious, PennTags, Flickr, Facebook, many others

What is different?
Collections
- MLibrary (library web pages)
- Mirlyn (lib catalog)
- Digital images
- Scholarly publishing
- Everything else
Integration with web site (as opposed to delicious) – control over user interface, authentication

How MTagger is used
- tags are generally tagger-centric
- Exception: librarians tag differently
- They build subject guides using this

Basic stats:
1357 total users, 603 actively tagging
3775 tags, 3159 uniques
2820 URIs tagged
not as broad/deep as they would like

Perceptions of MTagger
- interviews with users, non users, and librarians
- - personal motivations are stronger than social motivations
- preference for tag display alongside traditional search results
- tagging needs marketing campaign
- tagging is a librarian thing

Privacy
- tagging tied to UM single sign on – librarians concerned about this; only one student mentioned. s
- accountability & public face
- balance of anonymity and sharing
- most feedback on this issue from a single source
Usability Recommendations
- tag cloud display on pages
- tag cloud display in MTagger
- Handling of collections
- Workflow

Lessons leanred
- focus on outcomes of tagging, not process
- enable personal reference library
- increase flexibility of tag display/retrieval’
- contextualize the material that users bookmark

They are stepping back from the personal tie to tags.
- make tagging

Bigger picture:
- benefit to scale (delicious)
- benefit to academic focus
- mechanism needed for sharing tags across libraries

http://www.lib.umich.edu/usability/projects/MTagger.html

Cloud Computing, Andrew Pace and Roy Tennant

2009-03-30T08:02:00.000-07:00

I started this session taking careful notes, but it turned out to be a lot of stuff I personally had heard before and that I feel like I "get" already. I'll offer some links to sites they mentioned:

* Worldcat.org/devnet
* WorldCat facebook app – apps.facebook.com/citemeapp 5 different citation formats
* Indiana University image search – query expanded to terminology services (at OCLC?)
* UH Libraries News blog - a widget where you say what book you want to appear in sidebar and it pulls in the cover art from amazon, item info from WorldCat, and rating from librarything
* Mobile Web apps (WorldCat)
* CompareEverywhere (app to compare prices) Android Application

There was a great question from an audience member: Is OCLC Grid services free? This person was directed to check out OCLC's web site or their sales rep. I guess you can get test access via worldcat.org\devnet.

I came away from this session with my recurring OCLC headache. Why won't they respond to libraries with respect for our real concerns? Instead they show us pictures of dead possums in the road. (yeah, thanks). I think their points about the future of the cloud have merit, but they're not being good team players. Why does WorldCat local have no open architecture? Why can't I get any answers to my questions? Sigh. There is a huge disconnect, and it's too bad because I think there could be a lot of areas of agreement.

Computers in Libraries 2009: Monday, March 31, 2009 -- Lee Rainie Keynote

2009-03-30T07:18:00.000-07:00

CIL attendance this year: 2100+.
Tagline: "Information's pretty thin stuff unless mixed with experience." -- Clarence Day
Twitter Hashtag: #cil2009

Keynote by Lee Rainie -- Director, Pew Internet Project. "Finding Libraries: THe newest notes in people's social networks." Lee spoke last year at CIL2008

Lee started by talking about the twitter phenomenon and encouraged the use of the CIL hashtag. I was not a heavy twitter user before this conference but I quickly got addicted to searching the hashtag to see the latest tweets!! People had tips on which panels to go to, and instant reactions to speakers.

The bulk of Lee's talk, though, was about how libraries can be social nodes in people's lives -- not on facebook, but in real-life, perhaps with Web 2.0 channels but that is not important. A recent Pew study about "The Mobile Difference" presents new typologies for us to use rather than just "connnected vs. non connected." It is much more complex than that.

The way people think about their gadgets matters utterly! People can have the same profile otherwise (demographically) but have different attitudes

39% are motivated by mobility
- There are 5 very different typologies in this category
- being drawn into deeper use thanks to mobile connections
- wireless prompts them to use the internet more and feel better and betre about its role in their lives
- self expression and networking matters to them, but some have mixed feelings.

61% are tied to stationary media
- There are 5 typology groups that do not feel the pull of mobility (or anything) drawing them deeper into the digital world
- some have lots of technology, but it is relatively peripheral
- they have plateued on internet use or are on the outskirts of digital life.

There are 5 typologies in each group: so, it is not useful to say that someone is motivated by mobility or not motivated by mobility. Within these broad categories, the way people use and feel about tech. really differs.

I'll give just one example of one of the "Motivated by Mobility" typologies here.

Motivated by mobility - Group 1
Digital Collaborators - 8% of population
- With the most tech assets, Digital Collaborators use them to work with and share their creations.
- Lead the pack in every dimension: assets, actions, attitudes
- always-on broadband and always-present cell connection is key to their lives
- veteran users are enthusiastic about how ICTs help them connect with others and are confident in how to manage digital devices
- This is a Gen X group, not Gen Y. Not the youngest users.
Male 56%, 61% college-educatied, 53% make > 75K, 12 years online; married

Think about how to be a node in their network:
- be a place fort hem to jack in
- give a place to collaborate and share
- enlist help : get their coaching / feedback on experiments with tech you want to try

The Charleston Conference (Nov 5-8) - Report

2008-11-11T07:01:00.000-08:00

This was my first visit to The Charleston Conference and to Charleston, SC. Rather than hash through a presentation-by-presentation list, I'll talk about the issues that stuck with me from the entire experience.

1. There was a lot of positive rhetoric about digital scholarship and libraries' potential role here to support faculty and cultivate the digital scholarship collection of the future. This was not really on my radar before the conference - I always thought to myself, "maybe at large research institutions"- but now I'm not so sure. Maybe it will be, or could be, something for all academic libraries to participate in.

2. KBART is a group dedicated to improving OpenURL standards and practice. Thank goodness! Representatives spoke from EBSCO, SFX, and JSTOR. It's good to see folks from the different parts of the supply chain working to improve the links between resources.

3. Thank goodness for catalogers. Heidi Hoerman gave a wonderful stand-in presentation when Tim Spalding couldn't make it, titled something like "Anti-social cataloging." It provided a nice counterpoint to Deana Marcum's earlier presentation about what the Library of Congress is doing with respect to cataloging. Heidi was bold and stated her conclusions directly: that the new RDA system would die a quiet death; and that instead, AACR2 would be revised. I found myself wishing that more of the audience participated in the Q&A period after both speakers. I know I am not a cataloging expert and so I wanted others to challenge these speakers' opposing viewpoints.

4. Way too much chatter about "us" and "them" in regards to the Young and the Old. I am 100% sure that no young person would be able to get far making equivalent statements I heard about young people from self-described "Old People." Maybe my experience working with such fine librarians of many years has deluded me into thinking that age is something each of us responds to as an individual. Roland Person, Darrell Jenkins, Jim Fox, Kathy Fahey, and plenty others at SIUC, you all formed strong impressions with me when I happened to be 24 years old. Library community, remember that "students" means young and old; that correlation does not equal causation, that young people can be inflexible and old people can be radical. The old can be impatient, have short attention spans, and settle for sloppy work even as the young can be careful, conscientious, and focused for an extended period of time. Geez.

5. Our users are willing to settle for "good enough." This statement was made by Tony Ferguson in some closing remarks in "Genius at Work: Top 10 Ideas I heard at the 28th Charleston Conference." Please don't have your users become doctors and operate on me, thank you. He also said "Amazon wins every time." Stop conflating the general user with scholars, people!

6. My own presentation seemed to go okay, although I'm looking forward to getting to repeat it with just a few more minutes' time to my own library on Nov. 20th. Yes, I will be writing an article with more of the meat I had to leave out due to time.

7. Grits do not have to be made with cream. They are fine with water or milk!!

The Charleston Conference, November 5-7, 2008

2008-11-04T08:57:00.000-08:00

Friday I will be presenting at The Charleston Conference. Here's my slides and the references to my slides:

Presentation, "Usability Studies of Faceted Browsing "
References for "Usability Studies of Faceted Browsing "

I had lots more material than I could fit in and plan to write an article based on this one...

Web 2.0 Unleashed - October 31st

2008-10-28T09:49:00.000-07:00

This Thursday I'll be headed to Pennsylvania for the Susquehanna Library Cooperative's annual workshop, titled Web 2.0 Unleashed!

The day will begin with a presentation from me: Life 2.0: The Ultimate Mashup
(there's a reason for the cheesy title!)

It will have this handout: Activities & Readings

And here's a link to example URLs: http://delicious.com/jodyfagan/slc

And the full Bibliography

ALA Annual Conference - Quick Overall Summary

2008-07-01T09:49:00.001-07:00

I attended ALA from Friday 6/27 through Monday 6/30 this year. Although Anaheim doesn't resonate with me personally (hot & humid), it was a good location for the conference, with a wonderful convention center and hotels clustered nicely. The Poster Session area was the best location it's ever been thanks to the layout of the exhibit hall.

My schedule had a nice blend of programs, product demonstrations from vendors, and coordinating the poster sessions. Two new events for me this year were reviewing resumes for NMRT and participating in an LIS editors' discussion group. I enjoyed having one of JMU's Amazon Kindles with me to read between sessions.

Did I do anything fun? I attended a historic baseball game! The Dodgers won the game without a hit -- only the fifth time since 1900 a Major League team has won a game without a hit. Also, our hotel room was upgraded to an apartment suite on the top floor since the hotel was full. Not sure I've ever been in a hotel room with a full kitchen, fridge, range, etc.

My only real disappointment was the lack of local ethnic restaurants near the convention center. One, Alerto's, had some wonderful food ... but otherwise the choices ranged from Outback to PF Chang's to hotel restaurants. Not bad, but hardly original.

ALA Annual Conference - Monday, June 30

2008-06-30T14:16:00.001-07:00

8am - Newsbank breakfast. Three great presentations!

A content one by Dr. Nicolas Kinellos, "Flappers, Women's Liberation and Sexuality: Hispanic Journalists' Attemts to Preserve Culture and Identity in the 1920s." Something new I learned was that in the 20's and 40's, when the U.S. was purposefully importing labor from South America, the dream of these laborers was not "the American dream," but actually to return home. They came to escape war and revolution in their own countries, and to make money, but they wanted to return home when they could.
"Embracing the change in the News industry" by Ken Doctor, News Media Expert, a former Knight Ridder executive. His advice for the future?
- Recognize that it is a new world
- Watch what readers read - statistically
- Apply journalism standards (report without fear or favor). These are not at all the same as media standards
- Vet content with trusted editors and aggregators.
a research report from Newsbank that they conducted with academic libraries. Did you know Americans spend 62 minutes daily on the news? Just not traditional newspapers. Do you know the #1 news web site? Yahoo! id you know that the most-used Access World News titles are those found in the same state as that library? 40% of views at a given institution are from titles that are in-state for that institution. And 50% of libraries surveyed have blogs in their top 25. Another interesting finding was that old news is still important at academic libraries: while 46% of use comes from articles that are one year old or more recent, 29% of uses are articles that are 5 years old or older.

10am - NMRT resume review service. I reviewed resumes.

12pm - check out of hotel. Now a vagabond.

12:15 - check in on posters again - going strong!

12:30 - ProQuest Lunch & Learn. PQ is getting several cool new Historical Newspapers we might want to check out, including the NY Tribune. Also, an enhanced CultureGrams.

2:30 - got to go clean up after the last poster sessions now.

4-6 RUSA Awards ceremony

9:30pm - fly home.

ALA Annual Conference - Sunday, June 29

2008-06-30T14:08:00.000-07:00

8am Readex breakfast - Dr. Nicolas Kanellos spoke about Hispanic Revolutionaries and demonstrated the contributions of Hispanic journalists in the US. Readex has a new Hispanic newspapers collection. All this was new to me. Meredith Farkas spoke about social software and academic work; Readex is promoting its Crossroads product to supprot this. It's a first chance to see how this works. August Imholz demonstrated why the FBIS is an important resource using the topic of coups. I think all three unintentionally demonstrated that historical research methods are changing and that these archival products in digital form open up really exciting new possibilities and workflows.

10am - check in on poster area; freshen booklets and clean up vendor trash.

10:30 - meet with Brad from Gale about Gale products

12 - 3: lunch and I did go for a dip in the pool.

3-6pm: Met with EBSCO's software advisory council. I thought it was interesting they develop a "User Experience Vision" for products - maybe that is something we should do. What do we envision the user's experience being? I also learned that EBSCO databases are indexed by Google Scholar in some way - I need to get more information on this.

ALA Annual Conference - Saturday, June 28

2008-06-30T13:48:00.000-07:00

Morning - set up ALA Poster Sessions area for 11am posters. The location of the posters in the exhibit hall is marvelous this year.

Lunch - attended EBSCO presentation. They announced a new foray into digital archives, starting with a 6500+ title periodicals collection. Nifty digital viewer interface! Als othey showcased EBSCO 2.0, of course! They are also beefing up a music-related product.

1:30pm - "There's No Catalog Like No Catalog," with Roy Tennant, Joe Janes, Karen Coyle, Steve Abrams, and Karen Schneider. Panel discussion. This was a good session, but one with few new ideas for me since I've been reading these folks' work. The real challenge seems to be decision-making and implementation. One non-direct quotable by Joe Janes (who was quoting a former audience member) was:

How does a book get better every time it gets read? How does a library get better every time it gets used? How can we support this kind of contribution?

Final thoughts: treat virtual branch of library like physical branch. Also, try to see user workflow as a continuum not a transaction.

Reading suggestion: Wilson, Patrick. "Two kinds of Power." ( Berkeley: University of California, 1968).

4pm - Science Fiction & Fantasy: Information Technology... with Eric Flint, Brian Saunderson, Cory Doctorow, and Vernor Vinge. Being a sci-fi fan,this group of speakers would have a hard time disappointing me. As it happened, this was the most thought-provoking session this conference. Brian S. opened my eyes about what fantasy has to offer besides a good read. Fantasies provide us the opportunity to put modern thinkers into 'Uchronias" -- idealized time periods. The characteristics of those uchronias inform us about our society's values. In Burroughs and Howard, our king figure was great with the sword. In Tolkein, the mage (Gandalf) joined the battle king (Aragorn) in importance. Today, the man of magic (technology, information) is reigning on his or her own as king-leader. E.g. Harry Potter. Our society craves a king-leader type who can master the magic. Cory Doctorow spoke to us about how, while the Internet is a copy-machine, it is an even better *enlightenment* machine where alchemists do not all drink mercury to find out what happens - we share, and move on together with benefit from one anothers' experience.

7:10pm - Dodgers beat the Angels 1-0 without scoring a single hit. Garlic fries were TERRIFIC.

ALA Annual Conference - Friday, June 27, 2008

2008-06-30T13:38:00.000-07:00

Morning: uneventful 5 hr flight from Dulles - Long Beach. I love Jet Blue. I also enjoyed JMU's Kindle as it had 2 full newspapers, 2 sample book chapters. I think I raed the entire Washington Post and the Independent! Note: the Kindle was great ALL conference - easy to pull out and catch up on news between sessions. The basic Web browser was a nice touch, but no email or other ssl connections.

12pm -- LIS Editors' Discussion Group - this event was a time for LIS journal editors to discuss common issues. The two major items for this meeting were the relative quality of LIS submissions and guidelines for LIS editors (editor expectations and responsibilities, author responsibilities, open access issues, etc). Several volunteers will be moving forward with the 'guidelines' idea, perhaps making something that we can all link to from our journal web sites. The group discussed several options related to the 'quality' issue that individual editors can implement on their own. Myself, I plan to create a 'resource center' for authors and provide more guidance on the JWL web site.

Innovative Users' Group, April 27-30, 2008

2008-05-04T09:11:00.000-07:00

Innovative Users' Group, 2008
Washington, DC

Sunday, 2-5pm
- WebPAC Design & Best Practices

Monday
- Opening Session
- Library Service LIVE! Navigating Your Online Service Center
- Encore: A University Library Perspective
- Enhancing the Virtual Catalog Experience
- User Interface Needs in the OPAC

Tuesday
- Ecommerce: Tips to Take to the Bank
- A View from the Top (get slides from site)
- Campus Integration with Today's Technologies
- Mashing Millennium into your Website with MAJAX

Wednesday
- Scoping: The Many Uses of Scoping
- Engaging patrons: I want to do this myself
- Creaing an Academic Subject Search for Your Catalog

Scoping: The many uses of Scoping in the catalog

2008-04-30T13:00:00.000-07:00

Lewis Cosmes, manager, Profiling Services

- based on fixed-length fields or location codes
- BCode1-BCode3
- language

Record types that can be scoped:
- bib records and attached records (item, orders, holdings)
- maybe resource records?
- course reserves records - could be useful for multicampus records
- authority records are scoped via the phrase indexes. If a heading in a scoped bib record matches an authority record heading, then the authority records cross references and scope notes will be included in the scoped WebPAC search.
- typically, each library in a multilibrary system has a scope for each building
- up to 512 location codes can be included in a single scope note.
- Scoping costs per-scope
- Fixed-field based scopes - bib record is the only one included. not attahed records, since they don't have these codes. So all items show. You can enable this "feature" for material type if you wish.
For the bib level, material type, or bib code, ALL attached records display.

-----Examples:
- Temple University, basic kword search, "View Entire Collection" limit
- Arowhead RockCat, expanded material types, i.e. DVD+VHS
- Langure College - has 3 different institutions with 3 difference interfaces, but just one Millennium system.

----CSDirect Scoping FAQ: /faq/scoping.html
gsm.iii.com/data03-7.shtml
106932, 106827, 101264, 101267, 101275, 101277

Which WebPAC pages can be scoped? OPAC menu, Search Help, Custom Web forms, patron verification, patron record display, bib record display, brief citation, varying web options by scope

To display scopes, you are using a token - you could choose to write your own HTML to allow use of radio buttons or other selection potions .

"Scope Authorities" should be run regularly -every time you load a 3rd party vendor!

CSDirect

2008-04-28T11:32:00.000-07:00

"Presentations" will include all Innovative presentations at this and other conferences - transcripts.
"Product Tutorials" - sitemap provides overview
Documentation feedback form is provided - be specific
Customer Information Resources - more robust than FAX. More topic-specific than tutorial
"Service Commitments" - formal change agreement. You can request status updates. You can put in comments if you need service faster.
"WebPAC Service Commitments"
IIITC Call Summary - shows what's open, with tracking numbers. Click on name of Innovative person to provide more info about problemn

Computers in Libraries, 2008

2008-04-09T09:50:00.000-07:00

Attendance - about 2500
Location - Crystal City, VA
--------------------------------
Monday

Lee Rainie, Pew Internet & American Life Project
- 56% of adults connect via cell phone
- 53% market share for libraries

need to do PR about how libraries have changed
focus on success stories and competence
awareness is our baseline inhibitor
give patrons more tools for telling their stories
solicit feedback to result in more ownership

--------------------------------
Monday
Jenny Levine, Hi-Tech, Hi-Touch
- the network is missing salespeople
- Low Tech, Low Touch is error messages when trying to authenticate at library, with no option for patron on Sunday am.
- Hi Tech, Hi Touch is new titles list with book covers as results list
- "Here Comes Everybody," by Clay Shirky
- suggests putting library contact info on No Results page for OPAC, (other systems)
- add librarian back in to systems
- Do our OPACs match our social capabilities?
- LibraryThing for Libraries in online catalog?
- Bibliocommons -- a social OPAC. Contributors are first. Uses adjectives for tone of book
- When implementing, to get staff more involved, don't frame the training session or implementation as the tool - frame it as what content / issue / connection is at the center of the tool. Its about the people not the tools

--------------------------------
Monday
Collaborating with Customers

I didn't get any take-aways from this session

--------------------------------
Monday
What's New in Federated Search
Frank Cervone, Jeff Wisniewski

- open source
- discovery tools like Encore
library.pitt.edu
C&RL Nov 2007 - Undergraduate Use
LibraryFind, dbwiz,MasterKey, Open translators
vufind - nice faceted browse
Primo (U of Iowa)
University of Chicago -Aquabrowser

Summary: integrate fed search but in a tabbed way

DeepWebTech - Explorit, research Accelerator
federatedsearchblog

Idea: make a Google Maps - Yahoo Pipes connector that takes Excel spreadsheet of contact info and maps people on Google Maps
--------------------------------
Drupal and Libraries
Ellyssa Kroski

- slideshare.net/ellyssa
- L-NET is prototyping subject guides based on vref transcripts (Caleb Tucker-Raymond)
- UMN usability testing of Drupal: groups.drupal.org/node9339
- IUPUI using Drupal with libX server - descriptions and categories of databases
- SimonFraser is using for calendaring of workshops / events module
- UAF is using DVD Browser - screenscrapers - SIRSI and IMDB and puts in Drupal db
- most popular X this week
- University of Saskatchewan
- OPAC related modules of Drupal exist
-- Bibliography module
-- display lists, export to EndNote
-- MARC record
-- Book review
-- Millenium
-- Lib Tech Report may 2008

--------------------------
Google Analytics
- free for up to 5 million page views
- use to enhance ILS stats
- use in combo with usability testing
- Google keywords, not actual search terms
- use separate accounts to track various types of pages.

-------------------------
Revitalizing the OPAC
Jia Mi, Cathy Weng

did study of 123 ARL libraries, including 5 ILS
Default Search: 66% keyword, 29% title
check out our display labels, order of elements for record types.
ITAL April 2008 is their article

ALA Annual Conference, 2007 - Summary

2007-06-26T10:11:00.000-07:00

Conference takeaway summary:

A list of new products I will be investigating more closely in the Fall

Inspiration for possible visual aspects to search interface design

EBSCO will be implementing functional accessibility improvements to go beyond ection 508 and are engaging in usability testing with the visually impaired (as well as other usability testing). They will release technical and descriptive information about these improvements for libraries who want to consider some of these improvemetns for their own sites

EBSCO will be testing AJAX-enabled improvements to their interface; it should be interesting to see how they use this new technology to good effect.

Expect to see more browser plug-ins from vendors to launch searches from general Internet surfing / browsing

Improving the poster sessions integration with ALA materials

Improving the experience of poster session submitters and attendees

Creating more opportunties for folks to get involved with poster sessions

Networking with editors of similar-scope journals such as ITAL in order to benefit authors, especially new authors

ALA Annual Conference, 2007 - Monday

2007-06-25T09:59:00.000-07:00

Today I enjoyed breakfast with a colleague, then checked in on the poster sessions (folks had stolen all our chairs, which I asked conference services to replace). The scene to the left is typical, but from last year. I need to get a smaller digital camera so I can bring it next year. Next I attended the Information Technology & Libraries (ITAL) Editorial Board meeting, which was open to visitors.

Although I now have a year's experience working on a journal, I knew organizational journals would be different. I've enjoyed working with Haworth, but I hadn't fully realized how great it is for the editor to be free of business-related concerns like advertising, production, and profitability, and to focus on setting direction, scope, and working with authors and referees. Even though ALA definitely provides huge support for its journals, the editor and the board still have input into the business concerns. I think this is an opportunity as well as a responsibility. In sum, I now know more about the trade-offs between commercial and organizational publishing. Oh, and I found out that volunteers for the ITAL Editorial Board are welcomed through LITA's committee interest form. (Note - I'm not sure hosting the journal site at the editor's institution is such a bad idea!)

Left at lunchtime and enjoyed the best service at the Subway in Front Royal. Thanks, guys!

ALA Annual Conference, 2007 - Sunday

2007-06-24T21:52:00.000-07:00

Today began with an excellent product update by Alexander Street Press, over breakfast. I am excited about their new Counseling database, as well as the Civil War statistical database (not yet published). My inner quantitative historian was marvelling.

I had hoped to attend a session on Drupal, an open source content management system, but travel did not permit.

I spent the afternoon in a focus group with Taylor & Francis, discussing e-books. It was great to hear the input from other focus group participants. Publishers are really wrestling with finding a good model. They are trying to figure out how to provide a cost-effective archival add-on to Europa.

Lastly, I attended the EBSCO Software Advisory Council, which showed some near-future features and far-future possibilities. In the near future, they will offer better Ask-A-Librarian support (I lobbied for them to allow meebo in EBSCOhost somehow), and advanced accessibility. In the far future, I'm optimistic we'll see a visual search that libraries will actually link to as a main entry point. The challenge seems to be finding a balance between the abstraction visual search provides, and the nature of the content itself (mostly text). Theyare also working on new search features and interface features, the details of which I cannot disclose...

ALA Annual Conference, 2007 - Saturday

2007-06-23T21:40:00.000-07:00

Arrived at the convention center about 9am. Registration was a zoo (duh). Went to set up things in the assigned poster session area in the exhibit hall, Hall C, only they weren't there. After some frantic exchanges with convention center staff, Pixey Mosley found me and showed me to where they had moved: Hall A, all the way to the back, aisle 3700. This was, in a word, a hike. Pixey and Candace Benefiel had done a great job setting up the new area, but I visited the ALA office to ensure permanent signage would be replacing my magic-marker redirect signs. Many apologies to poster session presenters and attendees who had to make a long, round trip hike. The story behind this story is that there was a fire code violation in the proposed location.

After visiting the exhibits and lunch, the Poster Session Committee met to discuss past, present, and future! Ideas that we hope to implement include

Investigating placement of the poster sessions in ALA materials such as the event planner, program booklet (they were in the exhibitor booklet this year), conference at a glance, and exhibit hall map.

Greater linkages to and from the ALA web site

Adding an "other poster session opportunities" section to the web site to clarify divisional poster sessions

Investigating Poster Session Committee Archives

Implement "Recognition of Excellence" certificates for each session

Evaluation form for presenters

More information about "how to do a good poster session"

Before the day closed, I connected with a new colleague I had only met virtually; and also with one of my JWL columnists, Candace Kail.

Here's my hotel, near Dupont Circle: