Update: …and there it is!

[Technorati tag: cil2006]

• The principles of blog design and usability and how to put those principles to work on your library blog.
• What makes good blog content and how to write content and style guidelines for multi-author blogs.
• Taking RSS further, including how to incorporate RSS feeds into your website and building reading lists with OPML.
• Marketing your blog and RSS feeds.
• Social bookmarking tools such as del.icio.us, Furl, and Flickr and their use in libraries.
• Podcasting for content-delivery.

[Technorati tag: cil2006]

• ITI puts on a good show. A really, really good show. I’m not going to complain about the iffy wifi because you’ve probably already heard all about it, I will say that I was really impressed with how well they took care of the conference bloggers, iffy wifi notwithstanding. Of course, a good tech conference is not all about the wifi (really), it’s also about a great program, thoughtful sessions, and good parties. Check, check, and check.
• Blogging a conference makes the experience better. It just does. It certainly was a lot more work to summarize the sessions and add the linkage after the fact, but I’m glad I did it. It gave me a chance to check out the stuff the speakers pointed out as well as reflect upon what I’d heard. I feel like I really engaged with the content rather than having it simply wash over me. I hope you got something out of it too.
• 2.0 was big, yes, but not as predominant as I thought it would be, which is fine by me. What the 2.0 conversations did solidify for me is that our focus in a 2.0 world is really about making things better for our users, and that’s a definition I can get behind.
• IM is big! Both of the IM sessions I gave were followed by more than 20 minutes of questions and conversations with librarians who are doing it or planning to do it at their libraries. Contacts and business cards were exchanged like crazy, I really hope to hear from the folks I spoke with!
• Wikis are big! Thanks, in no small part, to Meredith wiki-girl Farkas (I mean that in the best possible way, Meredith!). Not only did a few of the speakers touch on their use of wikis during their sessions, but it was also easily the word I overheard the most in hallways and elevators throughout the conference. Cool!
• While “OPAC” may be a bad word, there was more interest in the catalogue and the ILS than I thought possible. Another manifestation of the way we’re trying to make things better for our users? I think so.  And there’s plenty of work yet to do.

[Technorati tag: cil2006]

Paul is a great speaker — funny, engaging & passionate. He began his presentation with an outline of the four topics he was going to cover:

• libraries and trust
• reaching out from the library
• library 2.0 platform
• shared innovation

Minor aside: the session overview is so crucial. It has the potential to hook your audience or lose them from the get-go. I’m often amazed at the lack of attention paid to the overview. But anyway. Paul’s overview was great — succinct, interesting, and had me looking forward to the rest of the session.

He began with a few high-impact slides, to the effect of: “how do people find stuff?” audience: Google. “How else do people find stuff?” You guessed it: Google – just different iterations of the same tool (google searchbar, google desktop, etc.). He then contrasted this with some findings from a couple of recent studies (OCLC’s Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources and a MORI study that I didn’t get the title of) that prove a few things:

• the number of active borrowers in our libraries has plummeted and continues to fall
• the number of people visiting libraries is on the rise
• 89% of people in the UK trust libraries (the #1 institution when it comes to public trust – more than the BBC!)

So, people are coming into our libraries, and they trust us, but they continue to use Google and other web 2.0 utilities to find things. Begs the question: where did we go wrong? A couple of places:

• we design user interfaces that suck
• we continue to alienate with our jargon

Paul’s response to this disconnect is Library 2.0. Here are the attibutes and goals of library 2.0:

• open the library
• push the library everywhere
• engage with actual and potential user communities
• disaggregate library systems – unpack the big ILS box, take what you need, leave what you don’t, build what you want, and…
• …put it all back together again – library system as lego: build what you want to build, not the picture on the box
• shared innovation – we need to work together, share experiences and innovations, learn from each other.

Paul went on to highlight some of the ways in which libraries and librarians are doing these things already (Casey Bisson’s WPopac, greasemonkey scripts, etc.), making their data work harder, not necessarily for a worthy cause, but often because it simply engages users. His point though was that we should all be doing this together — building a “Library 2.0 platform”, a platform that makes efficient use of our collective development efforts (i.e.: in aggregate, we have more data and more borrowers than amazon has buyers).

I really, really liked Paul’s vision for the Library 2.0 platform especially the bits about the platform needing to cross the vendor divide, because if this has any hope of succeeding, we need to be able to share our data and our ILSs need to be able to “talk” to one another without too much bludgeoning on either end. As Paul noted, we shouldn’t need to change our library systems just to take advantage of the networks that we’re building.

His call to action and conclusions:

• we need to do this together
• this will only work if we all collaborate and participate (that includes vendors)
• we need to share ideas, experiences, code, innovation
• get the discussion rolling at Talis’ Shared Innovation blog
• the library deserves to reach out beyond our walls
• vendor and library initiated silos just don’t make sense
• challenge current business models and assumptions (ditch the “that’s the way we’ve always done it” attitude; everything is fair game and up for grabs)
• share innovation

Paul has posted his presentation slides over at panlibus, definitely give them a read when you have a chance.
[Technorati tag: cil2006]

• each message is limited to 160 characters
• GSM is the basic standard for text messaging, although there are competing standards in the US
• there is a basic cost involved (usually 10 cents per message) for those who send and receive text messages

He then highlighted a few libraries that are using SMS for reference services, which I’ll list here for reference:

• Southeastern Louisiana University (using Altarama, costs approx $1300 per year)
• Curtin (over 70% of the student body are texters, so they jumped in!
• Helsinki university of technology (using a product called Liblet for patron messages)
• Swinburne University of Technology

Does a library need a vendor to make this happen or can they do it themselves? According to John, it is doable with a cellular modem and software (gnokki, SMSGateway for Windows, Ozekisms for linux and windows), but should they? John’s final analysis is that SMS is not “the killer app”, nor is it ubiquitous or life-changing. But as long as usage grows and as long we we can see it sticking around for the forseeable future, we should be offering the service. In closing: 500 billion messages a year, why aren’t we there?

Update: John & I have been chatting about this over email recently. He gave me permission to post his comment here — I think it’s an important part of the discussion:

I did want to respond to the comment about IM. It is true, as I said, that IM is getting more common on cell phones. The problem, though, is IM is a synchronous form of communication. One of the reasons SMS is popular, like e-mail, is it is asynchronous. That’s why places like Curtin and Southeastern, and etc. have incorporated SMS into e-mail because email is asynchronous as well. It meets that niche need. I think that many of the constituents who are presently texting will choose IM, as well, but for those who use this for its asynchronous characteristics, it has its place. As I said in the presentation, the mileage will vary. It’s simply another approach that has some potential. The only other thing I would stress is that Google is using SMS to provide access to its database (providing a 24/7 ready reference service). That’s great, but librarians and libraries have great info too. For some it might be good to wait, but for others it may not be.

[Technorati tag: cil2006]

Again with the poor note-taking since I was up on stage. Clara got our session going by outlining the research she’s been doing with the virtual reference logs for her VR consortium. The part that stood out the most was that her initial assumption, going into the project, was that the co-browsing feature of their VR software (they use tutor.com) would represent the greatest teaching potential, but, in fact, when she reviewed the logs, she found that the chat interaction was where the lion’s share of the teaching/learning happened.  Proof positive! This set the stage nicely for my portion, which focussed on the “virtual teaching moment” in IM. Here are the slides.
[Technorati tag: cil2006]

• it’s important to be more organized with an online course than a real-life course
• send positive feedback often
• it’s a good idea to acknowledge receipt of assignments as a courtesy to your students
• get personal — distance education can be a lonely place, connect with your students as much as possible
• set up a “lifeline” (I think that’s what she called it) thread on your discussion board for chatter unrelated to course content. it will replace the chatter that usually goes on between and during real-life classes. Distance ed students also need to be able to make that connection.

I’ll add more as I think of them.
[Technorati tag: cil2006]

Kathleen discussed the “one-shot” information literacy session and the limitations of such sessions: we have too much information to present so we have to choose what to include and what to leave out. Interesting. I’ve never thought of it that way. For Kathleen, a successful one-shot session has clear objectives, has a specific, associated task, and includes a hands-on component. Her suggestions for what to include in a one-shot session include:

• lots of how
• some what
• minimal why
• the smallest number of steps to get results

As for what to leave out of the session:

• advanced features (Boolean, nesting, wildcards, truncation– put all this stuff in the handout)
• evaluation of resources and results
• personal information about you as well as your opinion(s)
• jargon (marc, LC, etc.)

Chad turned his attention to wikis, his talk was titled, “wikis in the classroom: powerful tools for library instruction”. He began by outlining his goals for instruction, which includes teaching tools to accomplish a project, teaching research/information literacy concepts, and begin a relationship and dialogue between librarian and student. It’s interesting that Chad’s goals are almost diametrically opposed to Kathleen’s, my guess that it has something to do with the fact that Chad deals with a specific clientele (business school students) that he probably gets to see/deal with more than once (if not in the classroom, then at least in the library?), making it important to build a relationship with those students.
Chad’s information literacy challenges include:

• most classes are 50 minutes long
• teach about 300-500 business students each quarter (15-20 classes)
• business school has 1700 students
• penetration of library instruction in classes is spotty
• front-loaded info lit may not be relevant later in the term or the academic career
• variety of projects means instruction must be scalable
• location of instruction can vary
• class requests may be spur of the moment

For chad, it came down to the traditional research/subject guide and the limitations of those guides: they are redundant (same resoureces listed in multiple guides), there is no interlinking, you have to edit the same content in multiple locations, searchability is low, and timely updates are difficult. So he turned to wikis! He set up The Biz Wiki in 2005 to replace the traditional subject guide using Mediawiki. He has also experimented with using the wiki to teach the resources and noted that he has found it to work better than class handouts.

Chad closed out his presentation discussing the obvious advantages of a wiki, which includes keyword searchability, flexibility, easily updated content, and the community-building aspect.  He did note that he hasn’t made use of the latter advantage yet as he is the only person who edits the wiki, but the potential to have librarians, faculty, and students build the content is amazing.

I heard this a lot during various sessions at the conference: wikis are great because they build community and a large contributing community will ensure that it’s self-correcting, etc. (the same advantages you hear about wikipedia). What surprises me, somewhat, is that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of libraries doing this yet – i.e.: opening up their wikis  to their user communities (think: radical trust!). If you’re doing this at your library, I’d love to hear about it.
[Technorati tag: cil2006]

A great session for gadget junkies. A few takeaways:

• the growth of the gadget/consumer electronics market is not slowing down
• e-book readers are back, and bigtime
• ultra personal PCs and ultra mobile personal computers (Microsoft’s Origami – just launched)
• accessing content via these devices is what libraries should be thinking about and doing
• plenty of commercial websites have mobile versions – do libraries? If not, they should.
• there are utilities available to help you create mobile content, not just repurpose your existing content
• ILS vendors are coming up with mobile versions of the OPAC, optimized for device access
• there have been all sorts of advances with search via your mobile device, using SMS especially (google sms, synfonic)
• then there’s Altarama – virtual reference via texting (converts a text message into email, delivers the email to the library, converts the email response back into SMS, delivers it to the patron). They’re also doing SMS for circ functions – overdue notices, for example.
• it’s really time for libraries to get in on this — the future is about content specific devices, not the devices themselves (ESPN phone!).
• we’re talking about always on, always connected, always accessible. Where does the library fit in to this future?

Megan closed out the session with some suggestions of sites we should monitor to stay on top of mobile developments: engadget, textually.org, gizmodo, teleread, and mobile read.
[Technorati tag: cil2006]

Truth is, I didn’t really blog this session. I still haven’t figured out the art of blogging a session of which I am a part, I can’t seem to get away from the double-edged sword of note-taking assisting in my general comprehension of what’s being said, and the general awkwardness of typing furiously when you’re on stage. Does anyone else find that awkward? I certainly do.

Michael started us off by talking about the results of the Librarians & IM survey he ran a couple of months ago, the results of which are positively fascinating. As I said, I didn’t take notes, so keep your eye on his blog for all the details, he did mention that he’d be posting his slides soon. General summary: IM might be all the talk and rage, but not enough of us are doing it. To use Michael’s words: there is still work to be done.

Aaron was up next and spoke about his experience doing IM at his library (the public library perspective). There’s been excellent uptake within his community and he highlighted some important stuff like the types of questions they receive, a couple of sample interactions (fascinating!), the all-important comparison with traditional virtual reference, and IM buddy lists.

Next up, me – on the academic experience. I took an evidence-based approach this time around, mostly because I’ve been looking forward to giving our log files a good, close read. I think it went reasonably well, here’s the presentation (note: I used S5 for my presentation this time, after months of wanting to use it and not having the time to try something new. I like it & will definitely use it again. Mouse-click anywhere in the main slide area to advance to the next slide or use the navigation that appears in the bottom-right of the screen. Also, the “Ø” in the same area there gives you a stripped-down, printer-friendly version, including extra notes).
[Technorati tag: cil2006]