ITI Bloggers October 29th, 2007
.jpg)
The last session I sat in on today was called Advocacy 2.0. (See a pattern in what I’m attending?) Copresenters Aurora Jacobsen and Mary Beth Sancomb-Moran talked about how libraries can advocate via blogs and web sites to get the attention of politicians. (Or at least try to get their attention!) They’ve had some success in Minnesota.
One idea I found interesting was making a mashup for legislators. It contains links to legislators’ web pages, photos of them, and links to all the libraries in their regions so they could see how many there are and where they’re located. That’s just one more way to make the pols more aware of libraries. Another great attention-getter was putting their faces on READ posters and giving them as surprise gifts. (What could they love more than seeing their faces on more posters?)
Is it really OK to try to get legislative attention? Mary Beth assured the small group of listeners, "Every other nonprofit does this and we should too." Amen sister!
~Kathy Dempsey
Editor of CIL & MLS
Email This Post To a Friend
ITI Bloggers October 29th, 2007
Searching is changing. At least that’s one thing I took away from this session. Heather Dystrup-Chiang from Microsoft Live Search said that while 1 in 5 Americans search, they go to a variety of places after they are finished: other portals, news sites, and Wikipedia. And they’re not just doing lighthearted searches but are searching on topics such as health information or sciences. So Live Search wants to turn web searches into information searches and provide more and richer information. But there is lots of content that’s not digitized yet, and pain points abound.
I was very interested in a presentation by Ron Rodrigues of Thomson Scientific on new features of Dialog because I was a heavy Dialog user in my early years. My, how things have changed! Dialog Classic is now completely web-based and has added many new powerful features for the user. I won’t try to describe them all here; check out the web site. One thing is certain; I am very impressed with the new capabilities and wish I had them available 20 years ago!
Finally, the session concluded with Stephen Cawley describing new improvements to Elsevier’s Scirus product. Scirus helps the user to cut through the exploding "data smog" of information and find meaningful content. Browsing and linking have become effective ways of searching, and Scirus makes it easier for users to employ these new techniques.
Did you think that everything to know about searching was already known? These three presentations should convince you otherwise!
Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and IL2007 Blog Coordinator
Email This Post To a Friend
ITI Bloggers October 29th, 2007
Aaron Schmidt spoke to the Internet @ Schools crowd this morning on Gaming and Learning. To entice them, he emphasized the social nature of gaming, the fact that players are reading a great deal, and often doing the equivalent of research while gaming online and cooperatively.
A sampling of Aaron’s remarks:
Games reinforce:
- Risk taking and experimentation
- Collaboration
- Prioritizing
- Continuous partial attention/multi tasking
- Persistence
- Decision making skills
… all are skills we teach in schools (and "21st Century learning behaviors")
Games that are directly about learning? Among others, Aaron mentioned Big Brain Academy – who has the biggest brain! Cooking Mama—gets you measuring, timing … For the Nintendo DS dual screen, one game, Hotel Dusk, involves a lot of reading and moving around … uses the dual screen Nintendo DS as an "e-book reader."
Host a gaming event—to create good feelings about your school library. OK, if it’s too much for your library space, Aaron said, he’s known some school librarians to set up gaming events in cafeteria after school.
Interestingly (to me, at least), there was no sign of skepticism in the room. This group of school library media specialists buys in to the idea that it’s necessary to "understand the culture" of their learners and reach out to them; they appear willing to go to considerable effort (and expense?) to get kids into library, create good library vibes. There’s got to be more to it, though, and I’d say we/they all need to ponder "what’s the next step?" after that.
Got a comment about the usefulness of gaming in your particular library environment? School librarians … public librarians … legal librarians (well, maybe not the latter.)
–Dave Hoffman
Internet @ Schools co-moderator
ITI Bloggers October 29th, 2007
Kathy is right–you couldn’t capture everything Lee Rainie said in his keynote. But I managed to get several of his lists recorded, which were really interesting.
Here are 8 hallmarks of the new digital ecosystem:
- Gadgets are a part of everyday life.
- Broadband communication has become a standard part of the Internet.
- New gadgets allow people to enjoy media, gather information and carry on communication anywhere. Wirelessness is its own initiative.
- Ordinary citizens have a chance to be publishers, movie makers, artists, song creators, and story tellers.
- All those content creators have an audience.
- Many are sharing what they know and feel online, and that is building communities.
- Online Americans customizing their online experiences thanks to Web 2.0 tools.
- Different people use these technologies in different ways.
Here is what connectivity is doing to us.
- Volume of information grows; the Long Tail expands.
- Velocity of information increases; "smart mobs" appear.
- Venues of information intersecting with people multiply.
- Venturing (searching) for information changes.
- Vigilance of information changes attentivity behavior.
- Valence (relevance) of information improves.
- Vetting of information becomes more “social".
- Viewing of information is disaggregated and more horizontal.
- Voting on and ventilating about information proliferates.
- inVention of information and visibility of new creators is enabled.
Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and IL2007 Blog Coordinator
Email This Post To a Friend
ITI Bloggers October 29th, 2007
I just had the pleasure of listening to another session this afternoon that also related a lot to library promotion.
Dean Frey of Red Deer PL in Alberta, Canada, told listeners about how he used Web 2.0 tools to reach out targeted communities such as people with developmental disabilities, seniors, teens, aboriginals, low-income people, etc. Since RDPL’s mandate is to reach every person in the community, the staff found ways to engage and excite everyone. They started arts programs, an election forum w/ candidate info, blogs, and more. There’s a great article in here somewhere for Marketing Library Services (and I already talked to Dean about writing it!). Stay tuned for that.
You can learn a lot about these programs at www.rdpl.org, but for now I’ll center on one point I found especially important. He told listeners how vaulable it was to hire a community development (ie, outreach) librarian, and how it led to so much PR and exposure. In fact, near the end of his talk Dean said "I will no longer hire anyone but community development librarians," adding that even tech people and paraprofessionals will have to have those skills. That’s how much targeted outreach has meant to his library.
Again, you can have lots of cool tech and fun programs, but if people don’t know about them, they won’t matter. So get onboard with outreach! Do 2.0 if you can, do 1.0 if you need to. The bottom line, though, is promotion.
~Kathy Dempsey
CIL & MLS Editor
Email This Post To a Friend
ITI Bloggers October 29th, 2007
Some of you know me as Editor in Chief of Computers in Libraries magazine, but I’m also the editor of the Marketing Library Services newsletter. http://www.infotoday.com/mls/default.shtml. Promoting libraries is my real passion, and unless people know about your services, then none of your great tech stuff matters.
So I was happy to start my day of regular sessions with one called Online Marketing for Libraries: Outreach & PR in a 2.0 World. Sarah Houghton-Jan and Aaron Schmidt recommended lots of strategies and tools that you can use to reach out to people so they realize the value of libraries. Many of their tips were simple and either free or low-cost. Some examples:
- search engine optimization - make sure lots of search engines, big & small, can find your site.
- list your blogs in blog search engines.
- write wikipedia and wikimapia entries about your local area.
- check social review web sites to see what people are saying about your library.
- have a presence on social networking sites.
- if you offer free wi-fi, list your org in wi-fi directories.
- use tools such as twitter, IM, and SMS to show your tech-savvy.
All of these actions are essential for comprehensive library promotion. Check the speakers’ web sites and blogs soon to see the full list of tools along with the URLs to get you going on everything. Don’t ignore this valuable information!
~Kathy Dempsey
CIL & MLS Editor
Email This Post To a Friend
ITI Bloggers October 29th, 2007
During today’s lunch break, we provided a (limited) number of power strips in selected areas of all conference session rooms, to accommodate attendees using laptops. We appreciate your suggestions, and we endeavor to do everything we can to make your experience here at Internet Librarian 2007 as pleasant and productive as possible.
The Conference Organizers
Email This Post To a Friend
ITI Bloggers October 29th, 2007
Popular speaker Lee Rainie of the Pew Internet & American Life Project energized the record-sized crowd with more fascinating facts from Pew’s ongoing studies.
Since this conferene is all about 2.0, he began by showing the crowd some blog comments about him and his previous talks. Some were pretty funny! Seeing what Internet users think is a cornerstone of his work, and he went on to reveal a lot of categorizations of people and statistics about them in today’s online world. Rainie admitted to being a fast-talking New Yorker, and assured the crowd that he’d have his talk and slides posted on our Web site so people could study them later. Good thing! I couldn’t have written it all down (or even typed it all out) in less than half a day.
When you find his talk later at www.infotoday.com/il2007, you’ll see his 8 Hallmarks of New Digital Media Systems and his 10 Major Tech User Groups. These categorizations of different levels of tech users (from "omnivores" to non-believers) reminded me of the Beloit Mindset lists that come out every year to give us an overview of what people in the next graduating class know and relate to. Definitely worth checking out!
The favorite quote that I took away from all of this came when he commented on how people used to just read news and content, but now they can simply create their own: "Now the audience is on stage." Bravo, Lee, for all that you & the Pew organization bring to our stage.
~Kathy Dempsey
CIL & MLS Editor
Info Today
Email This Post To a Friend
ITI Bloggers October 29th, 2007
Keynoter Lee Raine spoke to what could only be described as a capacity crowd this morning in Monterey. Here delegates overflow from the ballroom into an annex, where delegates could watch the address on screen.
Raine took time to speak with delegates after his keynote talk, in which he personified various types of information users.
Dick Kaser
ITI VP, Content
Email This Post To a Friend
ITI Bloggers October 29th, 2007
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to do conference registration? Here are some scenes of this morning’s registration at the height of the rush.
Checking the message board for tonight’s DineArounds
Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and IL 2007 Blog Coordinator
Email This Post To a Friend
Technorati
