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.
