Today was the 25th annual conference originally called ‘Oregon Online’ – it is now well known as Online Northwest. Besides Corvallis, Portland and Eugene have also hosted it; today’s version was the 13th in Corvallis. (It seems that the Oregon attendees much prefer the central location of Corvallis.)
From what I know the format of the conference has been the same – it opens with a keynote speaker; then follow two ‘breakout’ sessions each about an hour long; then lunch with some door prize drawings (the first one I attended I won one); and then two more breakout sessions. This makes for a comfortably long, informative, and entertaining day with many opportunities for networking with colleagues in the Northwest.
If there were a theme to this year’s conference, it has to How do we help the user? From Jared Spool’s keynote through the four breakout sessions I attended (I would guess from the descriptions of the other sessions they too) the users were the focus. Spool’s keynote “Why Good Content Must Suck: Designing for the Scent of Information” highlighted his company’s research into good design for Web sites which discovered that one’s ability to use the Web does not predict one’s ability to find information on a particular site – design components are the predictors.
“Building a Future for Remote Public Services” had as its primary assumption that public service is essential to every library’s mission. Caleb Tucker-Raymond explored his model for simplifying the librarians’ work in responding to the multiplicity of technologies now being used to communicate between and among people. And then he set technology aside to stress that the most important aspect of public service is that communication between user and the human being called ‘librarian’.
Kyle Banerjee and Terry Reese presented what they foresee coming down the pike in their session, “Next Generation Catalogs: Issues and Opportunities” wherein they discussed how we must not stop with changing the facade of our catalogs and their eye-catching displays; we must go beyond that to the true integration of all our especially electronic resources with the ILS in truly an interoperable context.
Two UW librarians presented their two ways of introducing Web 2.0 to their colleagues – A Tale of 2.0 Workshops: Two Approaches to Introducing Emerging Technologies. Alyssa Deutscher presented the way her campus did it over a summer quarter as a series of loosely linked exercises with discussion. Laura Barrett presented how her campus had a one-day workshop that covered those topics of most interest to the attendees. These sessions came out of a larger picture whose purpose was to prepare librarians to be able to guide users in the applications of the new technologies.
The concluding session was presented by three principals of the blog Infodoodads, who talked about how librarians can stay aware of the new Web gizmos out there.
Archive for February, 2008
Online NW 02222008 – Thinking Summarily
February 22, 2008Online NW 02222008s4 – Information Discovery for Librarians
February 22, 2008How can librarians stay abreast of the Web 2.0 world, especially since it seems to be changing so rapidly? One way is watch a blog that is dedicated to telling us about new things out there - Infodoodads written by a team of six Oregon located librarians.
Three of the six presented on how they came to be – what they choose to write about, how they market the blog, how they maintain freshness, as well as how they research and test the technologies they review. They also gave tips on writing for blogs, managing blogs, and finding the next topic.
Online NW 02222008s3 – A Tale of 2.0 Workshops
February 22, 2008University of Washington librarians in an effort to educate one another and prepare to educate faculty and students about Web 2.0 technologies set about doing so in two different yet complementary ways – a multi-session or multi-modular program during the slow summer quarter and a one-day relaxed workshop.
The modular approach was modeled after the Charlotte Mecklinburg Public Library’s 23 Things program. The basic format was introduction of the technology, discussion of its uses, practice with it, and then further exploration of/with it. This approach was done on a smaller campus reaching ten of the twelve librarians. Since it was spread over a quarter’s worth of time, participants could play/practice with the tools at their leisure in their offices, at home, and on the desk.
On the larger campus, sixty of the 100-plus librarians worked in a highly sophisticated lab setting encountering an overview of a given technology, its fundamentals of use and applications, and then hands-on practice.
They found that both novices and experts benefitted from the workshops, be they extended over time or limited to the one-day format. The approach of ‘23 Things’ scales well to any group and/or situation. And thus, the audience, while having differing needs and wants, can be ‘taught’ quite easily. The style of the approach must like most of the topics we had today depends muchly upon the culture of the audience. And as is true for any new venture or training, there must be evaluation, evaluation, evaluation!
Online NW 02222008s2 – “Next Generation” Catalogs
February 22, 2008This session was very informative vis-a-vis what seems to be the prevailing hopes for what the new ILS versions will be like. Terry Reese and Kyle Banerjee reminded us that the ILS is merely a specialized inventory control system and makes up a small segment of our electronic resources, especially in academic libraries.
Both Terry and Kyle preferred an emendation to their topic’s title – instead of catalog, platform. This change allows us to talk about interoperability and standardization across vendors. For example, MARC format has been a standard in the library business for decades, yet even some ILS vendors still do not produce as if they understood the format. (I wonder how much of that is due to the vendors’ proprietary instincts.) One basic problem with most of the platforms is accessibility – can your Iphone give you access to your library’s catalog?
Kyle did a dog and pony show of some of the attempts currently on the Web – most of them depend upon an underlying ILS for the data. Among those he showed us were Evergreen, AquaBrowser, VuFind, Endeca, Primo, WorldCat Local, and Encore. A side criticism of all of them he made is that rarely on their respective facades could you find any identifying marks of the host library.
They concluded their presentation with about ten questions to ask of ourselves and our vendors, the necessity of identifying the details involved, and acknowledging the limits. One very important thing to remember – continuing on the current route will lead many libraries into consortia that will become nothing more than server farms (not exactly what libraries are about).
Online NW 02222008s1 – Building a Future for Remote Public Services
February 22, 2008Caleb Tucker-Raymond, presenter
This presentation assumes three things – 1) public service is essential to every library’s mission, 2) the choices for remote contact are proliferating, and 3) we prefer not to outsource our services and even the ones we purchase we provide to the users without charge.
In order to allow users to access reference services from any technology and simultaneously reduce the library’s investment in and the librarians’ having to learn a multiplicity of tools, Caleb developed a model for providing a black box that would interpret these various technologies into a single interface for the librarians. H e quickly learned of the Carolina service where they use an XMPP server (apparently Jabber based) to do this translation.
Caleb then discussed basic issues to be considered – faced-to-face interaction seems still to be the best way of providing service (users respond best to the person, not the technology). Some principles to keep in mind – understand the culture of the library’s users, ask Do we need to do this technology at all, and ask May we control privacy instead of protecting it?
At the minimum – remember that email is still a primary form of communication, and, consider the possibility of putting the IM link into the catalog’s ‘not found’ pages.
Online NW 02222008kn – Why Good Content Must Suck
February 22, 2008Keynote – Jared Spool
At last someone who uses ’suck’ in a positive way!
To make our Web site work well, we must decide upon what content we will put there, design the content pages, determine how users will get to each page and then add develop those pages ensuring the link to the content page.
The old ‘rule’ that more than three clicks to navigate through a web site is not true (if it ever was)! If the homepage provides a link with trigger words the user uses, then the user will click on that link and follow it do the desired information or until the scent dies.
One more outstanding point – not all content is equal; each bit varies in importance from time to time.
More to come.
