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ITI Bloggers October 22nd, 2008
danah cheerfully contemplates her talk on social media and technology to a packed room of internet librarians.
Marydee Ojala
Editor, ONLINE: Exploring Technology & Resources for Information Professionals
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ITI Bloggers October 22nd, 2008
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ITI Bloggers October 22nd, 2008
The libraries at San Jose State University and San Jose Public didn’t even have email systems that talked to each other. But, when thrown into a joint library SharePoint implementation, they stepped up and worked together. Sarah Houghton-Jan and Shannon Staley shared their experiences of streamlining their libraries’ intranet management.
The project involved IT, a Web Team, and organizational input. They piloted several small sites. They chose to work within their existing intranet structure and grow carefully—it’s hard to move a large intranet over quickly (migrating can be quite time-consuming). They opened up site requests to the rest of the staff
Not all intranet content requires SharePoint for content management. Criteria for using SharePoint include the need for frequent updates, requirement for group collaboration, and other specialized information sharing.
Users can access sites through their own Windows login information. If home access is required, you need to create separate URLs. You can set permissions at the document level. Other key features include blogs, a master calendar, wikis, discussion boards, RSS and email alerts, surveys, task lists, etc. It’s easy to post. It is NOT easy to manage (it’s not intuitive)—just like every other Microsoft product!
It was a long and slow process to launch SharePoint. They recommend offering training materials well in advance. The presentation will be posted at LibrarianInBlack.net.
Paula J. Hane
News Bureau Chief, Information Today, Inc.
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ITI Bloggers October 21st, 2008
Who doesn’t have problems with money? Library budgets continue to shrink; resources become unavailable; and there aren’t enough people to do everything that has to be done. So I was particularly interested in the "Solving the Money Problem" session. Can money problems be solved? Well, some librarians have found out how!
What a great title and one guaranteed to get your attention! And Laura’s presentation was fascinating! She had no money, minimal technical skills, and a website that needed updating. Could it be done? She proved that it can! After looking at a variety of products, she decided to rebuild the Park County Library’s website with WordPress (the same platform on which this blog is hosted), in part because it is free. Because of her technical development limitations, she cut and pasted code from other sites and was able to put features on the site and train five library staff members to build and maintain portions of it.
After building the site, Laura did some usability testing by recruiting volunteers to do tasks on the site while she observed them and asked what they were doing and why. (The $16 for chocolate was used to reward the volunteers — the only money spent on the site.)
See Laura’s blog for her complete presentation and other resources.
It seems that money problems are everywhere! Sarah Houghton-Jan from the San Jose Public Library told us about The Broke Library’s Guide to a Better Web Presence, listing 20 steps to achieve that. You can see her presentation on her blog, where she has the list.
This was a great session, with lots of practical information well presented.
Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and IL 2008 Blog Coordinator
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ITI Bloggers October 21st, 2008
If you thought it was challenging to set up an intranet or a wiki in your public or academic library, think about trying it in a law library, where the management is very top-down, and everything is confidential and conservative. But these speakers manged such feats and lived to tell the tale. The process sounded like a long march of small but steady steps, but there was a happy ending.
Helpful things they did:
All of this advice is good in any situation where you’re trying to implement change that people are wary of.
~Kathy Dempsey
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ITI Bloggers October 21st, 2008
Deb Hunt runs the 23 Things for SLA and is on the SLA Board with Stephen so it was a logical progression from his in Track A (Enterprise Trends) on Tue to her presentation. Deb presented three case studies to illustrate how she has worked with organizations to upgrade their knowledge access. She urged librarians to become familiar with the 23 Things—so we can be prepared to lead our organizations.
Here’s Deb’s list of “universal challenges” faced by organizations:
The first case study was an environmental firm in the Sacramento, Calif. area. The company had a traditional library, both print and digital content, a diverse staff, and an Access database. Its project began in 2007 and is ongoing. Settled on SoftLink’s Liberty – the only vendor in her list that provided a hosted solution. The intranet now needs to be totally redesigned and marketed to staff. It will provide links to both internal and external sources that are searched frequently.
These are the sources she used to research solutions:
Captera’s software finder: www.capterra.com/library-automation-software
Marshall Breeding’s Library Technology Guides—http://tinyurl.com/4v3hrn
Computers in Libraries Oct feature: “Helping you Buy: Integrated Library Systems”
Her second case study was an architecture/design firm in the San Francisco area. Many were using Google to search for images (which weren’t usable when copyrighted) when the firm already had 40,000 images they could have used but weren’t. The company’s intranet was so badly designed that no one used it. Their Canto Cumulus image database couldn’t handle what they needed.
Her SLA colleagues warned her off using the Google Search Appliance. She looked at other enterprise search solutions, using Captera again. The first choice, among an initial group of 43 possibilities, was Newforma’s Project Center—www.newforma.com. It’s only a partial solution—it’s only for project management and offers an architectural focus. Rather than hiring an IT person she convinced the firm it needed to hire a librarian/info pro.
Her final study was of the Exploratorium (www.exploratorium.edu) in San Francisco, where she also works. The organization began thinking about KM back in 2003. The library had kind of “died”—only open a few hours a week. Internal content existed in many diverse formats, both digital and print. They chose Canto Cumulus and created an internal database for staff and an external Learning Commons resource for educators. She recommends using library science interns for staffing. She stressed that there is no one solution for enterprises—even though the vendors will tell you they have it.
Paula J. Hane
News Bureau Chief, Information Today, Inc.
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ITI Bloggers October 21st, 2008
This afternoon in Track C, in a huge room that was crowded with people, a few presenters gave some good tips for recording videos and podcasts:
And here are some cool ways to use video:
What interesting ways has your library used video and podcasts??
~Kathy Dempsey
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ITI Bloggers October 21st, 2008
In Mary Auckland’s cybertour, she described the UK project of JISC that offers printed resources, events, podcasts, videoclips (including a debate on ebooks), and social networking. JISC works with the media to get coverage about libraries into the press (she showed a page from The Guardian) and provides information about designing spaces for effective learning. Just announced was that JISC will work with RLUK, Research Libraries UK, and with SCONUL, Society of College, National & University Libraries, on a 2-year horizon scan that will provide strategic leadership in higher education.
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ITI Bloggers October 21st, 2008
Track D today is all about solving problems, and it featured how librarians in various environments have addressed some of the problems they have faced. I sat in on the morning sessions on The Reference Desk, and (that perennial problem) Money (covered in a separate blog post).
The death of reference has been widely forecast for a while, but some libraries have found innovative ways to not only stave off its death, but to make it successful. Yale University Library has begun using text messaging to deliver reference services and has found it to be quite successful. According to Joe Murphy, General Science Librarian, text messaging is not just a communication service any more, but it’s a way to search for and share information. It lets users get information wherever they are and thus allows remote users of the library to avail themselves of reference service. The millennial generation has become addicted to text messaging because it is so easy and allows them to be constantly connected. Murphy says that text messaging is perfect for reference because:
Murphy has not found any viable web-based text messaging services yet, so he has produced an instruction book for librarians and users of the service.
Maui Community College faced a different problem: the complete loss of library services because of building construction. The librarians were moved to an office in an obscure campus building, so they used networking technologies such as Facebook, instant messaging, blogs, and contact widgets on their website to fill in the gap. Ellen Peterson, Public Services Librarian, said that to be successful, technology must be scalable. It must remove as many barriers to users as possible. She thinks that text messaging is an increasingly important medium for information transfer and, because of the proliferation of mobile devices, is rapidly becoming the dominant point of access to the web.
View Ellen’s complete presentation here.
The new Darien, CT public library building (which opens in January) will not have any reference desks. Instead, librarians will be roving around and using IM (instant messaging) to receive requests from users. Kate Sheehan pointed out that in public libraries, people just want fast information and answers to questions. The traditional model of the library as a gatekeeper is too far removed from people’s needs. Kate suggested that the answer to keeping reference alive is to get into the user’s shoes and understand their needs. Create a community, and then use the library to collaborate.
People are now using virtual reference in a different way than previously. Now, they are browsing and doing more preliminary research. Many of the questions are variations on the theme, "What do you have?" Kate thinks that in the future, virtual reference will become like someone standing in front of you and will be one of the standard ways to communicate.
Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today and IL 2008 Blog Coordinator
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ITI Bloggers October 21st, 2008
Joking that she’s from the government and she’s here to help, Donna Scheeder, who’s at the Law Library at the Library of Congress, ran her Cybertour on government information from her iGoogle page. The government is blogging; the blogs are listed at usa.gov. GovGab (blog.usa.gov/roller) is written by librarians. Donna also recommends using the government’s widgets and gadgets on your library’s websites. Members of Congress are using Twitter. Capitol Tweets follows who’s twittering. There’s a citywide data warehouse for DC . Other cities have this, too. The government has free ringtones. 2009 will see a government transition and the teams have set up a wiki to manage the process. Want to work for the government? Look at GovCentral. The Library of Congress puts podcasts on the web that you can download. MAPLight.org tracks money and politics. Opensecrets has information on money and politics. You can add this widget to your website. The Smithsonian also has blogs. They’ve also got a Smithsonian community. She’s ending the tour with the government’s main page, USA.gov.
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