A frequent complaint is that these services often draw users in through a streamlined mobile portal only to lead them to other site subsections or resources that are unwieldy on a smaller screen, or entirely unusable. As more content providers embrace the mobile medium, however, libraries will be better able to offer both smartphone users and traditional users an equal level of service.

Rental means just that: DeepDyve is not selling articles for you to own. You can read the article on the screen. You can’t download it, you can’t use a screen capture, and you can’t print it. You can take notes from the article you’re viewing-but only with those old-fashioned devices, pencil (or pen) and paper. The viewer is Flash-based and is a proprietary system developed by DeepDyve.

While I like the idea of being able to purchase articles one at a time instead of having to buy a yearly subscription if you don’t want one, it saddens me that services like this exist…and get subscribers.  If only their customers would get library cards (for free) and access the articles they need for free from the library’s website.  The success of a service like this speaks to the horrible job we’ve done as a profession of getting the word out about what we do.  How much outreach does your academic or public library do to local business organizations?  How much work have you done letting people know about the free content they can get online through your library website?  Compare that with how much money you spend on that content, and you’ll see a discrepancy I’m sure.  Let’s take this product launch as another kick-in-the-pants to refocus on marketing our digital resources.  Please?

You can view the Librarian in Black interview below, or view or download directly on Vimeo.  Does this interview leave you begging for more?  All 56 of the Shanachie videos are available online too!  And you should definitely check out the LBI Shanachie Tour website.  You can also follow them on Facebook & Twitter if you prefer.

The Librarian in Black interview from Jaap van de Geer on Vimeo.

* The Point Reyes Lighthouse is stated by the National Park Service to be the westernmost point of the contiguous United States, but it would appear there is one island further west in Washington (see comments for more)

They premiered the Library 101 video for the first time.  You can see the Library 101 website now.   Anyone can comment and add to the list of skills, resources, and ideas on the Library 101 site, so it’s now an interactive community project.  They also offer a Facebook page of which you can become a fan.

In addition to the video, there are a number of essays on what makes a Library “101″ today, including essays from Meredith Farkas, Stephen Abram, Cindi Trainor, Maurice Coleman, Roy Tennant, Helene Blowers, Janie Hermann, Jason Griffey, and yours truly   Check out the essays.

There is also a description of what Library 101 is, Library 101 skills, resources to help you build your skills up, and more.   The skills are divided into past, present, and future.  You can add your own content here too, so add away!

Incidentally, the website was designed by the same designers, SIDESHOWgraphix, who designed my website.

At the end of the session, they invited all audience members to begin participating by recording video live about what they want the world to know about libraries.

This was a shared session, and my half was about dealing with information overload – which is the devil.  I stand by that assertion.  I also stand by my assertion that information overload does indeed exist.  Anyone who says it’s a myth clearly isn’t as busy as the rest of us, or hasn’t studied the history of information overload over the last century’s progress, and/or simply hasn’t invited enough inputs into his or her life to know what it’s like to want to cry when you open your feed reader or inbox.

Anyway, you can view my PowerPoint on Slideshare and below.

IL2009

Speaker: Elizabeth Burns

Burns started by talking about texting, using mobile devices, and more often inspire poor reactions in libraries.  Some library staff believe that the public use of mobile devices in the library is a waste of time and distracts them from library resources.  Therefore some libraries ban cell phones.  Even worse, some libraries ban cell phone use by staff.  But if people are using these technologies, it shows that is an untapped option for service provision.  The Library Success Wiki can help you brainstorm good ideas for provoding more innovative, pop-culture-friendly services–roving reference with mobile devices, etc. Are we tech-friendly ourselves in our buildings?  Do we offer power?  Good, fast connections?  Are we helping to find people find digital media online?  Find free TV shows through Hulu?  She also touched on the problem of having one techie person in the library.  If they are the only person providing support for staff & patrons, they will burn out.  If they are the only ones suggesting technology projects, and are told “great – you do it!”, then they will burn out.  She suggests instead that you should form a group of trendspotters.  Don’t reinvent the wheel by having a bunch of local individual libraries doing their own thing when you can band together and do something better.  You have to practice these new technologies.  You have to fine tune projects after launch to continue to improve them.  Don’t invest all of your resources in one project, only to see a new trend emerge when you launch the other one too late in the game.  It’s play; it’s fun.  Expand your networks.

IL2009

This is my session for Internet @Schools this year about the status of internet filtering, how it works, our own libraries testing of four internet filters, and our successful battle against a city council member’s proposition that the library begin filtering all public computes.  SJPL remains an unfiltered library, and I am proud of that fact.  This presentation gives some information about that experience and what internet filters are like today.

You can view my presentation on Slideshare and also below.

You can also view the original materials from the San Jose Public Library’s filtering challenge, something we created for our community when the filtering proposal was initially made.  We’ve preserved it on the website as it continues to be an important resource for other libraries and we do still occasionally get inquiries from the public about the outcome and reasons for the city council’s decision.  Some of these documents may add some understanding for folks working on internet filtering issues at their own libraries.

• Internet Access Policy Review webpage from SJPL
• City Council member’s proposal to require filtering on all SJPL computers
• Public comments submitted by our users during the process
• Internet filtering proposal from Jane Light, SJPL Director (including detailed policy change options and their cost/staff impact, and a summary of the filtering review on the whole)
• Internet filtering Memo to the Commission (including our own study results, resources for more information on filtering, an informal survey of filtering practices at similar libraries, and a chart with the results of all major filtering studies done in the last decade)

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Speakers: Danis Kreimeier, Fred Cohn, Kim Bui-Burton, Stacey Aldrich, Kathy Gould

Customers expectations keep growing.  Resources keep shrinking.  We have to find ways to do new initiatives from within the organization.   Use the resources you have to do projects under the radar.

Tell people where you’re headed.

Give them the facts that support your proposal.

Tell them what actions you’re proposing & let them know you thought things over before deciding what to do.

Describe how your strategy fits in with other plans and strategies.

Explain how your strategy takes advantage of existing assets/resources.

Tell them how and when you’ll know whether this is successful.

Show your passion – that you are excited about the project.

Invite them to join you in the project—get them involved with things they can do to help the project.

Quote from Danis Kreimeier: “Once you get them involved, they can’t say no.  It’s like stepping on a puppy or something.”

There’s no such thing as a technology project.  Banish the phrase “technology project” from your vocabulary.  Use the word “business project” instead.  Business projects have technology components.

Challenging and changing times like this mean we have to approach business in a very different sort of way.  If we keep going the same way, we’re going to keep getting the same outcomes we’ve gotten all along.  Look for efficiency opportunities within existing projects and tasks.  Selling tech projects is really about marketing.  What are the buttons of the decision-makers that you can push?  What are the local business and community goals you are trying to reach?  Be careful of your perspective

They also opened it up for audience discussion, and asked us to present examples of when we have presented an idea to management and were turned down.  Some additional advice from that discussion: try to understand what it is that management has to lose if you did do the project, and figuring out how to align your goals with their overall goals.  Be proactive in having conversations around potentially touchy issues – “I already thought about potential problems with XYZ, and here’s what we could do if that happened.”  Use data to back up your proposed projects – how many people in your community are using such and such technology.  You have to understand that the line staff are feeling overwhelmed already, so how can we work through management to figure out what we can give up in current work to make space for the new work.  They also recommended charting your projects in four quadrants along the spectrum of high to low investment & high to low payoff.  High investment, low payoff = bad (of course).  But if you can even think of your projects that way and explain the cost-benefit-ratio of what you are putting out there, and tie it to dollars returned, management is likely to listen.

IL2009

This was my first session this year at Internet Librarian, focusing on some of the free/cheap online or otherwise digital services that any library can provide.

You can view my PowerPoint on Slideshare (and below).

IL2009

Speakers: Angela Ballard, Cory Stier, and Robert Bastell

Angela Ballard started her talk by discussing a redesign of their website for the NCSU Libraries.  They wanted to make a good Friends/Giving site with online giving that was secure and standards-compliant and a design that was different from the rest of the website.  Most of the content owners were not convinced that they needed to revise their content — they felt that they only needed a design facelift.  Redesigns start with content strategies; the design comes second.  The purpose of their user studies was to highlight problems with the existing site and create a common language with the content owners to revise the site.  The web team knew there were problems with the content and needed to get user input on grouping and labeling.  There was a facilitator who did the usability testing, and an observer from the Friends of the Library sat in on each session.  There was also someone who was remotely managing the recordings.  They gave people sample tasks to complete, like wanting to buy a memorial brick in the honor of someone.  They had people start at the Support the Library webpage when testing them (Note from Sarah: I think this was because they were really testing this sub-site — but I would wager that few people would think to go to Support the Library to create a memorial brick.)  Angie then showed a video of a user, with the matching screencast, trying to complete the name-a-brick task…completely unsuccessfully, and clicking the mouse like a cicada on crack.  Users aren’t using the pages the way that the Friends thought they would.  Their site was rather text-heavy, participants didn’t make connections between content areas that they thought was evident, and the Friends were relying on the forms to convey a lot of information (improperly).  The users didn’t use search – they would use navigation instead, trolling through link after link after link.  With that type of user, you would have to provide really intuitive navigation as that is the only thing the users are relying on.  They also created a card-sorting testing activity, having users organize cards with navigation terms, but also asking them to duplicate cards when necessary, rename cards, and create their own cards with new labels.  As Angie said, if people duplicate a card across several categories, it might be important to put that item in your main navigation.  Something they found across the various users was people dividing up the giving activities into whether it was a one-time or onging gift, or even the monetary level of the gift.  The web developers came up with various types of sites — one with the organization & content that the Friends wanted, and some others that the web developers drew up.  Some of the user responses: Don’t make me scroll, keep navigation lists short, don’t have big blocks of text, etc.  Users wanted them to use images of students in library spaces to inspire giving.  In the end they went with an approach similar to the UCLA Giving pages.  Much of the navigation they created came directly from the card-sorting activities. They used Morae to record video of the usability participants.

Cory & Robert then talked about their work with the Red Deer Public Library.  Their old website was being run by one person, coding everything by hand and putting it up on the website.  They decided that they needed to expand their website development and looked at stand-along WYSIWYG software, like Dreamweaver and other Macromedia products.  There was the problem of the cost of licensing all of this software for so many different content providers in their library, plus the software was only available on a few select backroom staff computers which limited access and participation.  In 2007 they looked at the various content management systems and decided on Drupal.  Using Drupal allowed them to get content up on their website a lot quicker than in the past, plus everyone had a bit of ownership of the content on the website.  There was discussion about who was going to be involved among the staff in creating content.  Site Admins had administrative control to create user accounts, be in charge of templates, administer top level navigation, and decide on new functionality of the site (new Drupal modules)?  And then the rest of the staff were editors or content managers.  Editors were largely heads of departments — editors for the children’s pages, adult reading pages, etc.  The majority of the staff were creating site content directly.  The staff were trained on writing for the web, marketing standards, and other procedures.  One of the important pieces to consider is the decision on what types of content go where.  Staff may need a little help with audio and video, but if you have standards that makes it easier.  You need to decide how the site will be structured and how many levels are okay to have on each area of the site.  You also need to appoint someone to be responsible for what shows up on the main page (Sarah’s Comment: Make sure this person has all of the following: marketing, web services, and public service experience and exposure).  Some staff need help with formatting too.  They might be used to working with a word processor, but may not understand how that doesn’t translate well to the web.  They might not understand how fonts don’t appear the same on all computers, bolding may look pixelated, etc.  You also need standards for the grammar, spelling, tone and more (writing for the web!).  Standards for graphics and multimedia are essential — are you hosting these files locally or posting them elsewhere and linking to them from the site?  In their WYSIWYG editor, users can upload images but within the editor they can reduce the size.  Instead they are recommending that staff edit/reduce the graphic first in photo editing software and then post it to the website.  Staff also need help with accessibility — adding ALT tags, labels, etc.  Staff need to be told about the legal issues related to using copyrighted material, like taking a book cover from Amazon and re-posting it on the library’s website.  Decisions should also be made about what you’re going to archive from the website and for how long.  They are also training staff regarding search engine optimization.  They are “abolishing content with limited content” — if a webpage has one sentence on it, it gets deleted (as an example).  They are also pushing out the idea of “value over volume” — create a small amount of awesome content instead of a big site filled with useless information.  They also talk to the staff about a difference between content semantics and technical semantics.  Their new website is going to be completely standards compliant.  Hurrah!

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