ITI Bloggers October 21st, 2008

This guy wrote the book on Keeping Current—literally! It was published by ALA in 2003. All the links for his presentation are available at http://tinyurl.com/keepingup. Catchy, huh?

First story and lesson from Steven—listen to your peeps (clients) so you know what they want/need. Why should you keep up? To market yourself, for one. (Having fans is very important, says Steven—they’re important to your job.)

Remember, this is 2008, information should be coming to you automatically (RSS feeds, alerts, etc.). You shouldn’t have to go search for it. You should monitor new articles, press releases, and changes to web pages. Most importantly, he covered some of the tools to get the job done—ones he uses every day. He has something like 1,500 feeds (a daunting number in my estimation)—and admits he’s a speed reader. Here’s his list:

• Google Reader (or your RSS reader of choice) – he considers it the best; it has an email feature that he highly recommends
• Watch That Page (a “phenomenal tool” according to Steven; it’s free; one use is to monitor federal and state bills)
• WebSite Watcher (desktop-based software; $30 to license)
• Page 2 RSS (creates once a day feeds for pages that don’t offer RSS; http://page2rss.com)
• Reload Every (Firefox extension that reloads a page at specified intervals, even every minute, so you don’t get logged out)
• Feed Sidebar (Firefox extension that lists designated feeds on the left side of browser, with specified update times)
• Update Scanner (free Firefox extension that will scan pages for updates at specified intervals—get these fast than Google email alerts)

Check his presentation links for his list of favorite tools. He had time to cover just a few of them in his presentation.

• ScreenGrab
• Cool Iris (functions as a browser in a browser—great way to look through search results)
• Missing-Auctions, now called Invisible-Auctions.com (will search auction site using misspellings of terms, like library)
• CiteBite (lets you link directly to quotes on pages)

Paula J. Hane
News Bureau Chief, Information Today, Inc.
 

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ITI Bloggers October 20th, 2008

Scott Frey, reference library at Western State University College of Law, says he has both law and library background but claimed not to be a trained IT specialist. He started by asking why a librarian might want to develop a search engine for econtent. The obvious answer—to collect book resources from various sites onto one site. Other reasons might be to tailor a search tool for researchers that the librarian understands and to better understand both search engines and web pages, which could lead to better web research skills.

He also stressed why librarians can’t just rely on Google. While Google is fast and useful for all kinds of econtent, it makes mistakes with the OCR text and the metadata, and may not capture or display results the way librarians want. He listed some technology issues that might be involved—insufficient hardware or bandwidth, buggy software, security issues, and more. There are also bibliographic issues (even the definition of ebook) and legal issues (copyright, breach of contract, etc.) that must be considered. Then he discussed some of the component options (software for crawling, indexing, and searching—Nutch and Webglimpse are tools that do all three). His presentation slides also included a list of Web sources for full-text ebooks (available in the conference presentation volume and will be posted to the conference site).

Maria Armitage and Amy Barnes talked about their experiences of implementing new catalog search at Columbus Metropolitan Library. The library wanted a solution that could sit on top of their existing home grown ILS solution—and chose AquaBrowser. Search results are now offered with relevancy ranking and boosting of most popular items. It also provides faceted search navigation. RSS feeds can be customer customized. Fuzzy searches help users get to the desired terms—a “did you mean?”. Rollout took only about 3 months.

Their rollout to the public was not completely smooth, so they presented a list of lessons they learned.

• Don’t just use vendor defaults
• When things go wrong, fix it fast!
• Know your numbers – session and query data, etc.
• With faceted interface, little anomalies become magnified – "MARC magnified"
• Catalog users are not necessarily the same as web users – expect some surprises
• Buy-in is so critical, for both staff and customers (communicate, provide early looks, a transition, knowledgeable staff, etc.—and emphasize the WOW factor)

Future plans include adding federated searching, database integration, social networking tools, events, etc., as well as a kids catalog. 

Background note: Medialab is the creator of the library search and discovery platform AquaBrowser (www.aquabrowser.com). AquaBrowser is an ILS vendor-neutral, visual faceted search that connects to any number and type of data sources.  Medialab Solutions BV is dba AquaBrowser North America in the U.S. and is a business unit of R. R. Bowker (www.bowker.com).

Paula J. Hane
News Bureau Chief, Information Today, Inc.
 

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ITI Bloggers October 20th, 2008

Search expert Greg Notess had some words of wisdom for “datamining conversations” on the Net—and some cautions. This isn’t just about following on Facebook what someone had for dinner. Be aware of the public-ness and searchability of what’s now available online. It’s aggregating the information in a different way that can creep people out. And, remember—Once you’ve sent something out, even as a private email, it’s possible it could get shared.

He reminded the audience that we still have access to long-term discussions—Usenet discussions are still available as Google Groups (especially useful for conversations about computing in the ‘70s and ‘80s), whether you like it or not, these are still out there. More email discussion lists have moved their content onto the web. Some limit to members only for archive search. Some still do not have web-based search—but search is still possible.

Summize offers some incredible conversation search options. It added Twitter search and was then bought by Twitter (Search.twitter.com). He showed people in the other conference rooms at IL twittering in realtime about the wi-fi at the conference! It seems that the tag “IL2008” was the most active on Twitter this morning. Advanced search lets you specify geographic location – for example, within 15 miles of Bozeman, MT.  Notess says it’s fascinating to search the Twitter space even though he doesn’t Twitter himself frequently. He reminded users that you can set your Twitters to private – so only your friends will see the tweets. But check occasionally to see if it shows up – it’s not perfect protection. The same cautions apply to Facebook, which offers many privacy protections to users, but only if you take advantage of the settings.

He also reminded people to check other places where conversations occur – blogs (comments and trackbacks), and Web 2.0 sites (look at comments and ratings, responses). Lots of good tips and cautions. Thanks, Greg.

Paula J. Hane
News Bureau Chief, Information Today, Inc.
 

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ITI Bloggers October 20th, 2008

Information Today, Inc., the company that runs Internet Librarian, had a number of new books come out just in time for this conference. So at the exhibit hall’s opening reception, there was a long table full of authors waiting to sign their newly published tomes.

Left to right:

Stephanie Gerding (and Madeline!) were signing The Accidental Technology Trainer.

Rachel Singer Gordon was signing What’s the Alternative? Career Options for Librarians and Info Pros.

David Lee King was signing Designing the Digital Experience.

Barbara Galik was signing Virtual Worlds, Real Libraries (which she contributed to) in place of absent editors Lori Bell and Rhonda B. Trueman.

The three Shanachies also signed their hot-off-the-press book/DVD movie combo called ShanachieTour: A Library Road Trip Across America. (L-R: Geert van den Boogaard, Jaap van de Geer, Erik Boekesteijn)

The Shanachies will also be doing the fun evening session tonight, and you can buy their book (and their way-cool T-shirts!) on site.

~Kathy Dempsey

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ITI Bloggers October 20th, 2008

The Exhibit Hall opened tonight with a reception and high interest in the exhibitors’ offerings.  Here are some scenes from the event.

ITI authors assemble for a book signing.

The Shanachies sign copies of their newly published book, ShanachieTour: A Library Road Trip Across America.

As always, the e-mail stations were popular.

Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and IL 2008 Blog Coordinator

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ITI Bloggers October 20th, 2008

Marshall Breeding, a familiar speaker at many conferences, talked about web site analytics and the importance to using them to know your audience better.  In the academic world, it is disturbing that only 2% of the students begin their information searches at a library website.  The usage of library websites by students dropped from 30% to 20% between 2005 and 2007, a trend that Breeding finds alarming.  It is therefore important to do anything possible to make the sites better.

An enterprise approach should be used to analyze usage of all of a library’s resources:  Web servers, OPACs, e-resources, databases, and repositories, as well as the flow of use among them.  Server logs, referral data, and Google Analytics can be used for this purpose.   Proper analyties goes beyond simply counting pages. You need to identify sessions, categorize users, and determine use patterns. Measure interest by time spent on site, bounce rate, and page overlay analysis.

How do users get to your site? Track performance of the site relative to major search engines. Think about driving people into your site using search engine optimization techniques.  Tune your site’s structure and page content to maximized its exposure to search engines.

Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and IL 2008 Blog Coordinator

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ITI Bloggers October 20th, 2008

According to David Lee King, author of Designing the Digital Experience (published by Information Today) experience design is an approach to creating successful online experiences for people in any medium.  He told us about the three paths to experience:

1. The structural path, in which a better experience is achieved by focusing on the site’s ease of use.  Users should be able to focus on the content, not the navigation details.  See the books Elements of User Experience, by Jesse James Garrett and Getting Real, which can be downloaded free on the site 37signals for further discussion.
2. The community path, where a memorable experience is created based on participating in a community.  Conversations play an important part, and there are several types of conversations involved: 
       Commenting on blogs, etc.,
       Connections to other people, such as through "friending" on social networking sites,
       Invitations to participate in the community,
       A sense of familiarity through getting to know people by seeing their photos, etc., and
       Telling your story and letting people know who you are, what your interests are,  etc.
3. The customer path.  Extending the experience by providing an experience, not just a product.

 Libraries can design digital experiences. Here are some suggestions:

• Connect the user to the product and to other users.
• Create a fun and exsciting experience.  Learn how to interact on the Web and train reference librarians to do it.
• Read emerging books on marketing.  Conversations are the new ways of marketing.
• Change!  Think about the experience more than the content.

Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and IL 2008 Blog Coordinator

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ITI Bloggers October 20th, 2008

I’ve been spending my time in the marketing track today, and good ideas and tips have been flying.

The morning began with Nancy Dowd, marketing director of the NJ State Library (and my blog partner over at The M Word). She discussed 10 trends that can give your marketing a "second life," such as relating to people with stories, listening to customers and letting them run the conversations, and promoting your green-ness. She’ll be posting her slides on The M Word soon.

Then the crowd heard Aaron Schmidt and Sarah Houghton-Jan do a really useful tag-team presentation on making your web site more useful, findable, read, and used. They told the crowds about tons of websites where librarians should register their own websites so surfers and searchers can find them. And most are free & easy — you can’t beat that!

They’ll be posting their talk as well, and this dynamic duo has a related article coming out in the Nov/Dec issue of Marketing Library Services soon.

One of the afternoon speakers was Geert van den Boogaard, who discussed digital marketing at DOK, the Library Concept Center in Delft, the Netherlands. Geert wowed the crowd with things DOk does, such as greeting people via Bluetooth connections as they enter the building, and screencasting messages within the building on a Wii platform.

One thing that van den Boogaard emphasized was one of my own main marketing points: First, understand your patrons and what they want. That idea should be the foundation of all your marketing and promotion.

~Kathy Dempsey

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ITI Bloggers October 20th, 2008

 I moved downstairs to the online marketing session. Lauren Stokes, Las Vegas-Clark County public library, starts off with blogs. There are staff blogs and patron blogs. She finds she gets better feedback from the staff with the blog format. Read me Vegas is book discussion blog, with Tuesday Trivia and Random Thursday. Tie databases into discussion. Librarian’s Brain is for patrons. It has tutors, games, tips, lesson plans.

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ITI Bloggers October 20th, 2008

 Darlene Fichter, University of Saskatchewan, says that passion is the most important component of digital project on digitizing items relating to First Nations, Meis, and Inuit peoples. Participation from over 80 people and 7 archives. Funded by grants. Lots of flexibility and adaptability involved.

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