Internet Librarian 2009

Last Day in Monterey

2009-10-29T10:37:00.000-07:00

Ok, so it wasn't a "real" blog- more like a record of my notes while I was attending the conference- but I did manage to post interesting links and some of my thoughts for all the sessions that I attended. Overall, I had a very positive experience and learned new concepts and discovered new tools.

I think that the main take home message for me from this conference was that it's important to understand and live in the environments where people are creating and consuming information. It's not enough to simply be aware of emerging technologies, but to know the culture and have the communication skills to be able to participate in the virtual places that these create. In order to do this I think we need to be experimental and be willing to learn in playful and open "sandboxes" and not be afraid to make mistakes.

The more that we, as information professionals, place ourselves in the knowledge flow, the more opportunities we create to offer our services- to help people find the best information that's available and deliver it quickly and in a way that's accessible. We can also offer guidance for people to manage their information flows efficiently. As more and more data and information is being created and distributed on new platforms, we also have to have the capacity to search them deeply.

For my final report I would like to categorize the ideas I've taken from here into what can be implemented right away, what should be explored further for near-future application, and what we can anticipate to happen in the distant future for us here.

Thanks for reading everyone! I'll try to make some of my posts more hyperlinked- I didn't always have internet access so I was cutting and pasting from notepad. See you it Ottawa!

23 Things in the Community

2009-10-28T14:45:00.000-07:00

Jennifer Koerber, Boston Public Library

Take it from working with staff to working with the community

Originally for staff: Learning 2.0

learner-focused
asynchronous
exploration & play
cheap
scalable

Now, take it to the public - wherever they are

Why:

teach information literacy
enable life-long learning
workshops
increase awareness and access to our resources
help clients navigate their world

How:

Blogs: sequential, interactive built-in through comments, easy using free online tools, easy for participants to grasp, doesn't scale well, often results in abandoned blogs
Wikis: non-sequential, easier to navigate, discussion on every page, self-contained, less adventurous, less-intuitive
Ning: interactions galore, easily accomodate many media, centralized, scalable, BuddyPress, overwhelming for newbies, google ads
LMS: learning management systems, extremely self-contained, familiar to distance learning users, supports long-term commitment, modular, can be password-protected yet anonymous, more complex set-up

How long:

Fixed Duration vs. Continuous/Rollling

Other models: Twitter, Facebook...

Inspiration

Bobbi Newman

Don't forget to integrate face time

Customize to the community

Sean Robinson

Don't underestimate the power of play when learning.

I think that there is potential at NRCan to do this among staff and to our clients if we customized it properly.

Marketing on the Cheap

2009-10-28T14:38:00.000-07:00

Aspen Walker

We need to build a tribe of library-lovers

Here Comes Everybody

Tribes

From Awareness to Funding Report: free online

Talk to your supporters and fence-sitters- don't waste your time with the nay-sayers.

YouTube: Larry Adams, Douglas County Libraries Volunteer

Marcy Phelps, Phelps Research

Marketing: getting someone, who has a need, to know, like and trust you.

Building relationships and your brand awareness.

Drive traffic to library website.

Think strategically before thinking tactics.

Create some basic policies and procedures: Access, Content creation, Monitoring, Measuring return (ROI), Schedule

Latest issue of Online Magazine: article on social media metrics (ROI)

Tips:

Keep it business-like, but make it personal

Quality, not quantity

Resources available:

5 Tips for Stealth Marketing on the Local Web
A SWOT Analysis for Social Media in Libraries
Roadmap for Social Media Marketing
5 Tips for Getting More from Social Media Marketing
7 Deadly Sins of Social Networking Security
Top 100 Social Media Cheat Sheet for Business
Measure your Twitter Reach and another one
Blogging as a Special Librarian

There are some great tips in here we could use to market library services.

Technology: Pop Culture-Savvy or Overload?

2009-10-28T11:28:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Burns- Blog

Being where your community is

Smart Phones
Texting
iPhone Apps for Librarians
Library Success Wiki: Online Reference
Are You Tech Friendly? Be part of the community
What Your Customers Want: Hulu
New Ways, Old Content: let your client know what resources are available
Here They Come!
Do You Know How to Use the Tools? Don't rely on one person to be the "go-to person" because they will burn out
Trendspotting: form a group with a diversity of voices
Task Forces
Betamax: don't be afraid! it may not turn out to be the "one"
Twitter: A Waste of Time? or a Library Saver? Save Ohio Libraries

Sarah Houghton-Jan

Information Overload

Has always been there
Can devices mitigate? Maybe not
So many services to try- try one at a time
Remixing the Library

Top 5 Barriers

Perceived lack of time
Lack of interest or motivation
Not encouraged/threatened by management
Not knowing where to start
Frustration with past attempts

Top 10 Tips

Inventory your inputs
Inventory your devices
Think before sending/subscribing
Schedule yourself
Use downtime
Stay neat
Keep a master waiting list (of things that people owe you)
Weed, weed, and weed again
Teach others communication etiquette
Schedule unplugged times
Unplug at will

RSS & Twitter Tips

Limit your feeds and following
Use lists to organize feeds & Twitter friends
Use RSS when applicable
Use RSS to send you reminders

Interrupted Technologies

Phones, text messaging, IM, Twitter
Use these technologies when appropriate
Check when you want to
Don't interrupt yourself
Use your status message
Lobby for IM or Twitter at work

Phone

Use phone when appropriate
Turn it off
Keep your number private
Let it ring
Work=work, home=home

Email

Stop "Doing Email"
Start scheduling email scanning time (twice a day for half an hour)
Use email when appropriate
Deal with email by subject
Keep your inbox nearly empty
Filter your messages
Limit listservs
Follow good email etiquette
Delete and archive
Work=work, home=home

Print Media

Just because you can touch it, doesn't mean you should keep it
Cancel, cancel, cancel
Weed what you do have
Choose entertainment thoughtfully
Limit television viewing
Schedule entertainment time
Use your commute to your benefit

Time & Stress Management

User your calendar
Take breaks
Eliminate stressful interruptions
Look for software help
Balance your life and work to your own liking

Articles

Being Wired or Being Tired

Information Overload: we have met the enemy and it is us

How to stop your inbox from exploding

Library Mashups

2009-10-28T10:45:00.000-07:00

Nicole Engard

Resources

Programmable Web

NY Times Developer Network

General Examples

Library Applications

Locations using GoogleMaps

Collections on Flickr: accessCeramics, Library of Congress

Website Mashups: join any service with an RSS feed- blogs, wikis, Flickr, calendars, bookmarks,

chelmsford library subject guides, manchester.lib.nh.us, drupal from yourlibrarysite.com

OPAC Mashups: most JavaScript will work

Open Library

LexisNexis Academic

WorldCat Search API

LibraryThing APIs

To be where the clients are: Facebook pages- send your content by RSS and APIs

3 top ideas of Librarians:

mashup travel data from circulation data and various travel sources to provide patrons with better services
grab MARC location data to plot information on map about a specific title
getting ratings from LibraryThing, WorldCat, the catalogue, Amazon and display

Mobile Content Delivery in the Enterprise

2009-10-27T16:13:00.000-07:00

Britt Mueller and Julie Fleischhacker, Corporate Librarians

eReaders in the Enterprise

Quick Facts:

The pilot included purchasing 6 Kindles and over a year there was 120 borrows.
Pre-loaded content with ability for clients to download content themselves.
Mailing them to other locations was not a good idea- did not come back in good condition.
Was a really good way to bring people to the Library physically- better than any marketing initiative!
Two-week loan period.
Plastic-logic e-reader is anticipated (glass is fragile!)
Library is not in the business of lending devices, but people are just not there yet so they are lent out in the short-term- getting a foot in the door

User Behaviour:

People appreciated the fact they could try it out before purchasing themself
PDFs are still dominant
Consumer model: no library of e-content; people have to go to the vendor to purchase
Colour is still an issue: not available yet

Challenges

Content format variability
Ability to display colour, formulas and complex graphical layouts
Lack of historical content
Technical content not as available as mainstream titles
Multiple device delivery models
Content not always transferable to different devices
Purchasing models - individual purchase vs. enterprise subscription

Security

How do you control content once it is loaded on a device (ie. losing a device that has content behind the firewall loaded)
High risk to load proprietary info onto the devices
No method of locking the device
No control of content in regard to device loss

Only 2% of population has an eReader according to PEW.

Need to ask vendors to provide un-tethered content.

Aside: Business Abstracts

Managing Virtual Collections & Services

2009-10-27T15:14:00.000-07:00

JJ Jacobson, Danielle Kane, Karmon Runquist, Jennifer Hamilton, and Sarah Clark

3 C's: Community, Culture, and Conversations

Applications of Second Life (Caledon Library in Victoria City)

Interaction: socializing and communicating synchronously and asynchronously.

Library facilitates the conversation (collections, reference, exhibitions, and events).

Branding.

Often involves volunteers.

Speakers don't see value of opening a paid staffed virtual branch of the Library.

This is a really amazing way for librarians to learn about web 2.0 communication - not just second life - because it requires the use of all these tools. Consider volunteering for Caledon Library, or another similar library to be immersed in social media with people who are open to experimentation and on the leading edge.

Expanding Enterprise Roles

2009-10-27T13:32:00.000-07:00

Ruth Kneale, Jerry O'Connor-Fix, and Tom Reamy

What enterprise role does the librarian play?

The Embedded Librarian providing strategic intelligence

When people stopped coming to the Library, the librarians were embedded on teams. Monitored sources, and also provided analysis of material as well.

Provided Individual Information Plans: got their position info, their responsibilities and output included iGoogle with RSS.

KAPS Group: Tom Reamy

Knowledge Architecture: refining an infrastructure for knowledge flow in an organization

Two natural enablers are information science and educators.

KA is a bridge between KM and Library Science.

KA Structure:

Content

Community

Activities/Business Processes/Events

Technology

Create a taxonomy of subjects and disciplines and facets.

Don't create a single enterprise taxonomy, create multiple smaller taxonomies.

There is no right way to categorize.

This session was quite content heavy and difficult to capture a tangible take-away message!

New concept to learn about: Text Analytics

Social Media Application for Content Delivery

2009-10-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

Ellen Naylor, Donna Fryer, and Barbara Fullerton

Searching across social media (private companies)

radian6 - Canadian ~$100-1500 a month, pricing depends on results & # of projects

attaain ~ $150 a month

SamePoint

riskIQ

Social Studies Group

Do determine how important a post or tweet is, check out the "sphere of influence", or how many people follow/subscribe to that person's opinions.

May not have applications in the Library, but may interest people who do media monitoring and public opinion/relations, marketing, and recruitment.

Making Virtual Reference Multidimensional

2009-10-27T10:11:00.000-07:00

William Breitbach & Mike Demars, California State University

Linda Bedwell, Dalhousie University

"How I learned to stop worrying and love virtual reference"

Problems: communication, instruction, technical

Communication

Don't try to replicate the in person reference interview with virtual reference- you have to learn to communication appropriately in the medium. (So important!) IM is fast and informal. In order to learn this, programs like "23 things" I think can be very valuable to newbie librarians.

While using IM to communicate with patrons, you can use screen-capture technologies to show the client the steps on "how to". Make it quick! (less than a minute) and upload to a video sharing service (eg. NRTube). Also can use sharedcopy and screencast. Use copy url (a Firefox plugin) to share URLs and notes.

Technical

Embedded IM: meedbo. Pidgin was used as back-end to integrate IM apps on desktop.

Face to face and an IM Widget were preferred by far compared to over phone and email in an academic library.

Where was widget embedded: content webpages, databases "ask a librarian" in EBSCO, the OPAC, and subject guides. Be careful: too many pings can break the widget (happened in the OPAC at Dalhousie).

I think this would be a fabulous addition to our services, especially for the new employees coming from academic settings who may come to expect this type of service. There was an additional 1, 500 interactions at Dalhousie using the IM widget without any marketing. It's too bad this may not be technically feasible for NRCan :(

Alternatives to Meebo:

libraryh3lp

olark

Digging for Gold with Social Media

2009-10-26T21:00:00.000-07:00

Detailed presentation available on power points.

Basically is a 3 step process:

Discovery Phase
- Compile a source list

Evaluation Phase
- Systematically rank

Application
- Example of framework in use

I think this can be a great way to find relevant social media to add to subject guides, mine for information for environmental scans and find influential figures on particular topics. Very time intensive! A quartely analysis is necessary.

The Best of Resource Shelf

2009-10-26T20:58:00.000-07:00

Gary Price

Check out links to all the resources he presented here:

http://bit.ly/resourceshelf09

My Highlights:

Microsoft has a new Academic Search

Has only computer science material for now

Making reading articles alot easier for clients for news and magazines: Readability Bookmarks

Bing maps: really neat Bird's Eye View

Collecta: best social media search engine

Want to archive tweet streams? Check out Twapper Keeper (permanent archive by hashtag!)

ebrary: free to read over 20,000 recent books

Micro Interactions, Conversations, & Customers

2009-10-26T13:24:00.001-07:00

David Lee King

Types of interactions:
Comments: Blogs
Status Updates: Twitter, Facebook, MySpace

User-engagement Nirvana
1. say the stuff in your head
2. have to give to get
3. ask, and ye shall receive
4. listen
5. dangle a carrot
6. don't be dishonest
7. tools to help: to get statistics of your users

Julie Strange & Amy Kearns

Connections - Collaborations - Conversations
Building rapport- not simply pushing out information

Twitter Search
Can actually search sentiments across tweets about topics
And monitor searches
Libraries can search for conversations about them and actually insert themselves into that conversation.

Follow people back to enable direct messaging
Questions (both ways), announcements, statistics
Not just for planned events! ex. photocopier is down
Post your Twitter stream in your website.
Build meaningful networks- the only way to "get it"- community will help you

The Six Sweet Ways...
1. use it for reference
2. connect for customer service
3. broadcast news & events
4. solicit feedback
5. broaden professional network
6. harness the hive mind

Twitter Lists:
You can create list of users and make it public so people can follow people all at once.

Twitter Resources

Good ideas for people new to using Twitter professionally.

Search Engine Update

2009-10-26T11:46:00.000-07:00

Chris Sherman - search engine land

The guardian of the status quo: Google
New link "Show options": takes you to advanced search capabilities
Creating graphs with public data
Google Labs: what they are experimenting with
Flip: news
City tours: landmarks, create tourist walks
Google squared: structure unstructured data (a hint of where Google is trying to go)
Google trends: real-time snapshot of what people are searching, charts change in activity
Insights for Search: designed for search markerters (similar to trends)
Visualization API: another future looking feature, look at how data changes over time
Flu Trends: based on search queries only
(interesting- but not earth shattering- have lost there momemtum in leading org for search)

Emperor's New Clothes: Yahoo
Microsoft does all the heavy search lifting- the base result list
Yahoo will do all the rest- focus on browsing consumers

Assimilator as Innovator: Microsoft- Bing
Aquiring search technologies and integrated it into their own
Cool features: website previews, dynamic categorizing of results- ex. "reference" which goes to Wikipedia and gives every instance of the topic which would be helpful and integrates it.

The Shiny New Disrupter: Wolfram Alpha
"A Computational Knowledge Engine" using curated data sets
Ask it a question
Has really deep resources- iphone app is $50. Really sophisticated calculator.
Have the staying power to stay around and compete.

Social Media is a fad- no lasting value as a search medium for information professionals
Twitter is not a search engine- only uses your social network. Great for customer service, PR
Facebook is great for connecting individuals but problemanic for large organizations

Local search on mobiles are still not sophisticated enough to be worthwhile.
Last week deals where made with Facebook and Twitter to capture and use data: datastream from Twitter can provide more weight to news items.
Twitter searches are garbage.

Social Reference & Creating Connections

2009-10-26T11:20:00.001-07:00

Margaret Smith- New York University

Asking the "Hive Mind"
Ask Metafilter
FriendFeed
Wikipedia Helpdesk
Wikianswers

Blogs:
BobstRef
Reference at Newman Library

How to grow your own hive:
Is it internal to Librarians, or include clients?
What is the scope? Research, about the Library
What is the honey? Motivation for contributions (for questions and answers)

Staffing the hive:
Security, skills of participants, moderation.

Answer Board Librarians
Gradshare

I don't see very much potential to implement social reference at our library. I think it's a really neat idea, but "collaboration" is something that usually doesn't go beyond people fulfilling their immediate job description.

Pre-conference fun

2009-10-25T17:01:00.000-07:00

Well, I made it safely to Monterey last night and got to spend the today doing yoga at astanga monterey with some of the friendliest yoginis I have ever had the pleasure to meet, biking along the beautiful Californian coast line and checking out the Monterey Aquarium- which was fantastic! I'll also have to admit that I'm shamelessly enjoying the HD movies playing in my hotel room. I finally got to see the end of KPax! So sad :(

Well, down to il2009 business bright and early tomorrow. I'm determined to be the first person at NRCan to maintain a current blog while at the conference! Watching me triumph or crash or burn will be equally enjoyable I'm sure.