Tame The Web




It’s total cheese to say: here’s your assignment if you choose to accept it. But, I kinda just did. Below you will visit many links. As you pay a visit, pretend you are stressed-out, Infectious Disease Researcher under a serious time constraint to stop a virulent Adenovirus strain. And you’ve been so busy over the years. So busy you’ve never slowed down to understand what those terms mean. You want an obscure article let’s say. One that could crack your case to stop this killer cold. And you just want to get on with, you know, your research stuff.*

After visiting those links, what would make it easier for you; what would make it faster; what would enrich the experience; was there any help; could you easily speak with a real, live librarian; what fatigued you; what was only clear if you’re a librarian? What would you call “Getting at the stuff that my local library doesn’t have so I can crank out my own research”?

What would you call it and should we be charging fees? Should we absorb a reasonable amount of the cost?

InterLibrary Loan
http://library.calvin.edu/services/ill
Interlibrary Loan (ILL)
http://tinyurl.com/3qdhot
Interlibrary loan services (ILL) and alternative delivery services
http://www.ub.uni-erlangen.de/Fernleihe/index-en.shtml
Interlibrary Borrowing Service
http://libraries.mit.edu/ordering/ilb.html
and
http://libraries.mit.edu/docs/index.html

Tired yet? Hang in there. It’s called link fatigue. It’s also among the reasons why so many web surfers scan information -as opposed to read all the information we put on web pages.
Document Delivery Service
http://ndsl.lib.state.nd.us/DocumentDelivery.html
IU Document Delivery Service
http://www.libraries.iub.edu/index.php?pageId=54
Document Delivery Services
http://www.lindahall.org/services/document_delivery/
Document Delivery Services
http://library.mskcc.org/scripts/portal/services/services1.pl
Integrated Document Delivery
http://www.usc.edu/libraries/services/idd/interlibrary_loan/

Focus now my tired, diseased researcher; I know you’re getting tired (maybe); this is where we really start to see some different pieces.
7-FAST On-Campus Document Delivery Service
http://www.lib.umich.edu/7fast/
British Library Research Pack
http://tinyurl.com/45awja
Loansome Doc
http://tinyurl.com/54cmw5
Interlibrary Loan Forms
http://library.uncg.edu/depts/ill/illforms.asp
and check these two out for sure:
Ordering Full text - Document Delivery
http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/docorder.html
Document Delivery Services (DDS)
http://www.lib.ipfw.edu/dds.html
Document Services
http://libraries.mit.edu/docs/index.html

Don’t we all just want to get materials that we need? Remember: what would the user call it.
Getting Materials:
http://www.lib.fsu.edu/services#materials
http://www.lib.fsu.edu/services/materials/feds

So, what would you call this service we provide my highly stressed-out, Infectious Disease Researcher?

TTW Contributor: Lee Leblanc

*based on a true story -changed to protect anonymity. It’s in the vault.

One of my goals for the summer is to get a handle on Drupal. I’d like to incorporate it into LIS753 Internet Fundamentals and Design at Dominican. I’d like to assign workgroups the task of creating a library Web site with the OSS app. How’s the learning curve folks?

I missed this presentation, but luckily Ellyssa Kroski, who just got a great review for her book in LJ, put up “Drupal & Libraries” from CIL2008 at Slideshare - complete with audio track:

http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2008/drupal-and-libraries-at-cil2008/

To get started, I’ll be listening and watching tomorrow in my office. Then, I’ll ask Blake for a sandbox. 

I recently had a Facebook conversation with Jeff Dawson, director of the Lester Public Library in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. I realized in our back and forth that his experience with creating and extending online presense for his library was the makings for a HOT TTW guest post:

For example, the entire town knew I went to PLA (I think I left town as you were coming in… ). We are now running 2 blogs out of LPL, Blogging LPL is sustaining an average of roughly 3,000 hits a month and rising (I know my mom isn’t the only one looking at the blog). Flickr is the BEST marketing tool, I post photos daily and use them in our blogs, the local paper has used some of them, I’ve been interviewed on the radio because of flickr and now run a biweekly column in the Sunday edition of the Manitowoc Herald Times entitled Library News. The TR City Manager has noted the flickr account in his weekly newspaper column and during televised City Council Meetings. Taking those traditional networking tools - radio, television, and newspaper and aiming them at our Internet Networking devices - MySpace, flickr, etc. just sort of happened and is totally cool!

Jeff agreed and sent me this, culled from his talk at PLA:

In Two Rivers I immediately set up Lester Public Library accounts for Flickr, MySpace, Bebo, Twitter, Ning, Facebook and YouTube. I also created a blog – Blogging LPL - for the library, they are free and I took responsibility for managing these online activities. We have a small dedicated staff and I didn’t want to add to their already full plates. I also wanted to brand Lester Public Library, Two Rivers, Wisconsin as quick as possible on these social networks because there are 3 Lester Public Libraries in the state of Wisconsin.

I presented our online existence to the Lester Public Library Board. The responses from the board varied from what a great way to get the library’s message to a new group of potential users and providing a safe place on MySpace – to - how can you validate this as a true library activity and when does it become a waste of your time. By making the board aware of these new services I was helping them understand the importance of these technologies as a marketing tool for our services and collections - not just for teens but for all our users. 

A significant change for Lester Public Library was re-writing our library mission. We moved from a four paragraph mission statement to four words: Read, Discover, Connect, Enrich (Read. Discover new things. Connect ideas and people. Enrich your life and community.). During my presentation of MySpace a board member asked why Lester Public Library is active on these sites, to which the President of the Board responded with – “It meets the requirements of our mission; we are connecting with our users.” 

Make a case for social networking from the library to your administration. Assure them it is not time wasted. From the marketing point of view alone, it is worth it. On our Lester Public Library flickr account we regularly post photos of library and community events. Our City Manager took notice and has mentioned our flickr photos in his weekly newspaper columns and during televised City Council meetings. Because of this exposure, I have been interviewed on local radio and now write a bi-weekly library column for the paper. By using standard networking tools, radio, television, and newspaper, we are directing people to a virtual library experience. 

We can help validate our virtual presence through their online tracking tools. For example, Blogging LPL is sustaining over an incredible 3000 hits a month since starting last June. And our flickr photos have been viewed over 49,400 times since last April (2007). 

For me it is a labor of love; it is fun, which is translating into fun for the entire community.

Jeff

It’s my belief that library users are expecting more from their web browsing experience. I’m not talking social networks, I’m talking interactive web design. These users are used to websites that allow for dynamically changing content (content that may not require a new page to load) and for a feeling of interactivity with the page. Dynamic content shifts on the page, animates, and morphs into something it wasn’t previously. Let’s look at some examples:

Jeep:

The rectangular information boxes nicely animate in and out upon click of the left or right arrows allowing for new information to nicely slide in to place.

Apple:

Apple’s start page uses the accordion effect to hide and show its content in the sidebars. Simply hover over, say, “Top Songs” and a top ten list shows up.

Vimeo:

Vimeo, a social networking site about sharing video, smoothly scrolls in new videos that users like every couple of seconds on their “Right Now” page.

I’d venture to guess that a lot of us don’t even think twice about some these nice effects that we engage with during our daily browsing. But we have to recognize that they add to our experience, our “likability” of the pages we view. Understandably, library web pages need to be focused on presenting accurate, useable content; however, we can do these things and still not dismiss the opportunities we have to organize our information in aesthetically pleasing and engaging ways.

One of these engaging ways that I have been very intrigued by is the use of Cover Flow to present resources. If you don’t know what Cover Flow is, take a look at your iTunes library in Cover Flow view by choosing “View” and “Cover Flow View - it looks like this:

It’s easy to make the jump from collections in your iTunes library to the collections in your actual library website. A couple folks around the ‘Net have been thinking the same thing I have and have commented about it:

• Superpatron (who was way ahead of the curve)
• The Shifted Librarian
• The Corkboard (me)
• and I’m sure a few more I’m missing…

To my pleasant surprise, Lee (fellow TTW contributor), led me to an excellent implementation at Villanova University’s Digital Library.

VU uses Cover Flow to display photos of some of their digital collections in a highly interactive way. While I personally had no reason to look further into their collection, the fact that I was able to engage with the collections by browsing intrigued me enough to look further at their collections. This “doorway,” so to speak, is an excellent way to get more views at different collections by catching the user’s eye from the get go.

Not to be outdone by academia, Cambridge Public Library in Canada has also put together their own version of Cover Flow for over 20 different categories of their collection (nice!).

You can choose your category at this screen:

and are given a nice Cover Flow output when you click on the purple icon:

Some of these fancy, schmancy animations and graphics do take some more advanced knowledge of Javascript or other coding languages, but luckily enough most of these tools have such a great following by web designers and wannabe’s like myself that there is a plethora of resources created to help you whip one up. I’ll admit that I have no experience with Javascript but was able to create a couple really nice accordions like within Apple’s start page. If some of the creators of these excellent Cover Flows are followers of Tame the Web, I’d be really interested to read what you used to create your tools and the effort that went into it.

Some Javascript libraries of note for further research:

• Mootools
• jQuery
• Yahoo UI
• Scriptaculous

Posted by Kyle (TTW Contributor)

TTW readers know I love a good “Ten Things” post! Run, do not walk to:

http://infonatives.wordpress.com/

Ten great things an online academic library can do:

1. Communicate with the academic community
2. Get proper subject librarians who know their stuff to generate the content for the library website!
3. Provide high-quality, easy to use tools to put the content the users created online in various formats (see 4)
4. Keep the content updated
5. Provide consistent interfaces, preferably a single consistent interface where possible
6. Present users with the resources they use, making things one click away
7. Structure information, making it customizable where this is appropriate
8. Make sure that everyone in the library is on the same page regarding services, ensure that users are getting the course offerings they want/need
9. Provide a library toolbar
10. Evangelize!

And Ten brainless things an online academic library can do:

1. Not actively talking (listening) to the academic community
2. Cut away the subject-specific angle and quality assurance in favour of a “streamlined”, centralized appearance
3. Go static
4. Implement technologies that help administration, but not the user
5. Bolt bits on the old design to make it two-oh
6. Federated search, but no training
7. Cut away the OPAC in favour of ancillary systems (for example eJournal and database repositories)
8. Rely on third parties with whom you have no trust relation to store important information
9. Focus on what’s new/important/good rather than what’s being used
10. Aquabrowser
11. [BONUS] Providing five databases when one would have sufficed

Well said. PLEASE click through and read the explanations for all of the points. I would urge academic library folk to look at these very seriously in a staff meeting.

In my book, this is gold:

… if you’re not actively working with the academic communities you serve — and I mean really listening to them, helping them do their work in their way — you’re not going to do a good job. Libraries and librarians are mostly good at librarying, unfortunately the rest of the world isn’t interested; stop it.

The same might be said for instructional support in many institutions. <cough> Firefox <cough>

 

 

Don’t miss the new virtual tour of the Allen County Public Library. They really show of their lovely spaces with flair and the maps/guides are useful for finding out about library services, community spaces and such necessities as parking.

Jenny Levine and I are joining forces to run a fundraiser for good ole LISHost.

Jenny just posted about it at TSL:

If you’re a regular online, you probably know or know of Blake Carver. Even if you’ve never met him, you know his work. He’s been running and maintaining the incredible LISNews hub since 1999. This contribution alone is why many of us admire him for his dedication and vision.

In 2002, Blake started LISHost, an affordable website hosting service for libraries and libraries. On the very rare occasion the LISHost server goes down, you can tell something’s amiss because half the known LIS world must house their sites there. I do, as does Michael Stephens, and we can both tell you from first-hand experience that Blake does a superhuman job of maintaining the server (especially security) and providing technical support.

I can’t think of a time when Blake hasn’t responded immediately when there was a problem, when he said no to a request to add software just for me, or when he didn’t come up with a creative solution to a problem no one else would have wanted to deal with. And for all of his hard work (truly, the man must not sleep), he charges next to nothing for the services you get.

So to thank him for all of his efforts, both on our behalf and for the profession, Michael and I are raffling off a Nintendo Wii to help show our appreciation in the form of a fundraiser. Please note that neither LISHost nor LISNews is in financial trouble, and this is not a call to “save” them. This is simply a way for us to acknowledge Blake’s efforts and thank him for everything he does.

So here’s how it works. Everyone who donates $10 or more to LISHost by 11:59 p.m. on March 14, 2008, will be eligible to win the Wii. We’ll pull a name out of the digital hat, so-to-speak, and send you the Wii if you’re the lucky winner. To enter/donate, click on the button below. Your donation is your entry, as we’ll have a full list of names from Paypal.

I can’t begin to tell you, TTW readers, how helpful Blake has been getting this blog ported into WordPress — and he worked with me on it during the Holidays! If you’ve enjoyed the blogs and sites that LISHost serves, please consider a donation.

Some pretty neat ones.

I quickly posted on January 29th, “What are they doing right?” It was about the MCCL homepage. Which led to some lively comments. Some liked it. Some pointed to areas that needed improvement. Lisa, the web designer for the MCCL site responded about the design. Then something neat happened, one of the commentors, Brad, made a mock-up of the site as he saw it. Whether you agree with the new mock-up or the original site the larger point is: you’ve just seen how being transparent, being willing to do work and being willing to share ideas can lead in entirely new directions. Let’s not forget the speed at which this was done. It doesn’t take forever to get feedback on any kind of design you want to implement. Feedback is part of your project, right?

Brad wanted to expand his thoughts. Maybe Lisa will look at those ideas and use some. Maybe she won’t. But, at the very least some fertile web design conversation has happened. Even if only for me. Imagine if this was a larger project. Can we see how allowing people to comment & share generates new and interesting results? Are these lessons we can use within our own libraries? How much untapped talent could we harness by forming collectives for work on databases, OPACs, or websites? Share your work with your colleges. It makes you stronger.

I’m very impressed by both web pages. I’m impressed by everyone who slowed down to think about what they liked or didn’t like about library homepages. Furthermore, I’m impressed by the large amount of talent in the information landscape. Sometimes you can feel like a target, completely overlooked, or entirely mis-understood online, so I thank Brad and Lisa for engaging in a great dialog and helping other professionals think about what works, what doesn’t and why.

Checkout the original and the mock-up.

-TTW Contributor: Lee LeBlanc.

1. Use the website as a tool to feature resources and not visually overload the user.

2. Use purposeful design cues to help user navigate the site and not force the user to decipher what is important on the homepage.

3. Use the homepage as a starting point and do not try to put everything on the homepage.

4. Use descriptive bold headings to focus your attention and -not library-ese. Actually, this sums up library-ese.

“There are countless examples/case studies of libraries being the center of the communities in which they serve. What is the best example of “libraries building communities” that you have come across or experienced? What do you see happening in the future in empowering libraries to play even a greater role in their communities?”

For fifteen years, I’ve worked in a public library, mostly in positions relating to the Web or technology training. It’s with that background and paradigm I address this question. I love the examples of libraries building community via physical space and through interactions between users and librarians, but for my example, I’d like to point to the communities being built online.

For the last few months, I’ve been touring various parts of the US with Jenny Levine, presenting what we call our “Social Software Roadshow.” The Roadshow highlights how libraries can create online conversations, collaborative spaces, and, yes, community with inexpensive tools. We no longer need static, one-way Web sites for libraries, when the Read/Write Web enables us to interact with each other and our users. We point to concrete examples of libraries that have found new ways to improve existing services or built new services. Large systems to small libraries are included as are public, academic, special libraries and school libraries.

This is not cool for the sake of cool, or a push for techno-worship or a plea for librarians to give in to technoloust. Simply, these online spaces are where our users are living and interacting, and according to the recent Newsweek cover story, sites like MySpace will only grow. Libraries need a presence in these social spaces.

I believe the best example is the innovative online presence created by the librarians and IT staff of the Ann Arbor District Library, Michigan. Through the use of an open source content management system, several Weblog mechanisms that allow easily updated content to display on the front page, and a dedication to interaction with library patrons, AADL has created a thriving community within the cyber walls of their online branch.

On July 5, 2005, AADL launched a new Web site and a new catalog system. Posting to the Director’s Blog, Director Josie Parker said: “The Website launch is providing an additional forum for public communication with the library. This blog is one of several. The intention is to make regular postings here from administration that will encourage discussion about library policies and services.” The blogs include the mechanism for registered users of the library to comment - to enter into a dialogue with the director and other librarians. Key word here: Transparency.

Scanning the AADL site, one finds both posts with a few comments and those with many. In the Teen area and gaming blogs, it is not unusual to see a thriving discussion with 200+ or 300+ comments. In sessions on Weblogs in libraries, Jenny and I have asked the audience: “How many of you can say you have a thriving teen presence inside your library Web site?”

How many libraries have actively engaged their users in this way? Many libraries have blogs, but the movement to turn on comments creates a whole different environment, that can scare some librarians or overwhelm others. Enabling comments, however, is one of the ways to utilize Web 2.0 technologies to create community. IM, wikis, and RSS feeds offer other opportunities to create community as well. This to me is the promise of Web 2.0 for libraries: creating new means to communicate, interact, collaborate and create inside library Web space as well as out in the community online spaces.

Libraries can play a greater role in their communities by building sites such as AADL’s, reaching out to users via instant messaging, feeding out content such as library holdings and library news to other community-based Web sites, and offering mechanisms for users to create or mash up library content. Before there will be success, however, there must be a commitment by the librarians to sustain successful services and participate in the ongoing conversation. A library’s Web presence can never be an afterthought or something that just one or two Web librarians contribute to. There should be a collective voice made up of the individual voices of the library staff. This involves a shift in thinking: can we let go of our most useful online services and information to actively be driven by our users through their comments, questions and input?

A trip through the technology blogs of the Biblioblogosphere and sites such as the LibSuccess wiki yield numerous case studies, advice and grassroots best practices for all of these technologies. We can explore how, for example, Butler University Library built a wiki of annotated reference resources for their librarians, faculty, and students, or the innovations by school media specialist Margaret Lincoln and the collaborative Weblog she set up to allow students at two different high schools the opportunity to discuss Elie Wiesel’s Night.

Browsing libraries’ and librarians’presence at the image hosting social site flickr yields a surprisingly thriving community of practitioners. We will find images of library programs, materials, buildings and the faces of this new breed of librarianship in 2006. Visit the grass roots READ posters initiative at flickr to see a mash up of librarians, library users and an effective use of 2.0 technologies.

We can examine Casey Bisson’s application of library catalog as Weblog, complete with user keyword tagging, comments enabled, and static URLs for every record. We can subscribe to RSS feeds of subject guides at Kansas City Public Library, or create our own RSS-enabled catalog search at Hennepin County Public Library that notifies us when our favorite authors or subjects are added to the library.

All of these examples point to the future of online community building in libraries: librarians will be able to enhance current systems or create new ones with Web 2.0 technologies to customize and build experiential environments. Library users will be able to meet within these systems and interact. They will have conversations. They will be human, as will the librarians - as they put a human face and give a human voice to the library via social software.

Links:

Ann Arbor District Library: http://www.aadl.org

Butler Reference Wiki: http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/butler_wikiref/

Flickr READ Posters: http://www.flickr.com/groups/readposters/pool/

Hennepin County Public Library: http://www.hclib.org/

Kansas City Public Library: http://www.kclibrary.org/guides/

LibSuccess Wiki: http://www.libsuccess.org

Newsweek: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12015774/site/newsweek/

Night Blog: http://nightwiesel.blogspot.com/

Word Press OPAC: http://www.plymouth.edu/library/opac/

---

This is a reprint from my article in the Spring 2006 SirsiDynix UpStream. I think it’s still holds up pretty well. Thanks to the folks there for letting me add it to my online portfolio. Please follow the link to read more from librarians discussing libraries and community, including Steven Cohen, Sarah Long and Jessamyn West:

http://sirsidynixinstitute.com/Upstream/

Look for a new issue soon!

This job is making the rounds on lists and such. Are you looking to design web services for teens? Take a look:

Hennepin County Library’s (HCL) Web Services department seeks an innovative, enthusiastic Teen Web Services & Technology Coordinator to design and deliver information services to teens in an on-line environment and to develop and support in-library technology initiatives for teens. HCL’s websitehad over 10 million visits in 2006 and includes the dynamic portal,
TeenLinks.

See the entire job description and apply on-line at
http://agency.governmentjobs.com/hennepin/default.cfm

Joel Husenits, Managing Editor at the Ohio Public Library Information Network (OPLIN), writes:

The Ohio Public Library Information Network (OPLIN) is using Google Co-op to power a search engine that searches all 251 Ohio public library websites. You can check it out at www.oplin.org/fal (we folded it into our existing “Find an Ohio Library” site). We thought other states and/or library systems might be interested in examples of localized custom search tools.

Thanks Joel. I did some sample searches, including the above for “blogs.” Seems fluid and friendly. Nice! Have other libraries adopted this technology?

Checkout this post at Library Garden for an interview with Eric Reiss:

http://librarygarden.blogspot.com/2006/06/dogmas-are-meant-to-be-broken.html

1. Anything that exists only to satisfy the internal politics of the site owner must be eliminated.
2. Anything that exists only to satisfy the ego of the designer must be eliminated.
3. Anything that is irrelevant within the context of the page must be eliminated.

http://www.aadl.org/node/2086

Launched on July 1, 2005, the new aadl.org has been selected by the American Library Association as the best library website in the nation for libraries with budgets of $6,000,000.00+. Skidmore Studio located in Royal Oak, MI worked with seven members of the AADL staff for five months in 2005 to determine the site goals, conduct usability studies with the public, determine a new site logo, and to develop simple administrative tools for maintenance. We wanted our site to be functional for all levels of computer proficiency, and we wanted to use interactive tools to facilitate communication with our customers.

A lot of folks have already linked, but allow me to point you to http://engagedpatrons.org/ from Glenn Peterson at Hennepin County PL.

And I agree with Sarah: It’s a HUGE deal!

From the site:

EngagedPatrons.org provides web services for public library websites. We enable you to offer events listings, blogs and more on your website, no programming required!

The pages you create on our site “plug into” your existing web site. We do the programming for you; you reap the benefits of being able to offer your users a more engaging and interactive web presence.

EP services are designed to be integrated into the look and feel of your website. To your users, it appears they have never left your site!

The service will give libraries ready to go and SEAMLESS weblogs, contact forms, RSS and more. And if your library qualifies — it’s FREE! No big fees to companies! No huge commitments of staff time! No…kerfuffle! This is just the ticket for libraries that may be struggling with how to implement 2.0 technologies. I think we all need to take our hats off to Glenn!

Read more at David King’s blog!

I wish I could have stayed! There is some great stuff happening down in San Antonio. Try these on for size:

http://www.librarywebchic.net/wordpress/2006/01/21/innovative-users-group/: LibraryWebChic blogs the Innovative User Group meeting.

http://litablog.org/?p=175: Karen Schneider discusses trends, librarians kicking “booty” and Library 2.0.

http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/archives/2006/01/20/20060120_oclc_symposium_extreme_makeover_rebranding_an_industry.html: Jenny’s HOT HOT HOT Coverage of the OCLC Extreme makeover Symposium. WHY did I not change my ticket???

http://www.plablog.org/2006/01/linda-braun-three-cs-of-teens.html: Beth Gallaway on “The Three C’s of Teens” via the PLA Blog. Hotness abounds here. Folks, it’s about CONTENT!

http://clioinstitute.info/blog/2006/01/interactive_website_features.php

Nice post at the Clio Institute Blog about interactive features. Lots of user-centered stuff here and an eye toward usability. These will make good discussion points for a meeting!

Chris Deweese shared the URL for his Lewis & Clark Library System “Weboratory” Blog, where he discusses some of the innovative projects he’s coding for his system. I wish every library consortium/system/state library could have a team of coders like Chris.

Here’s an route map for deliveries in the LCLS done with the Google maps API.

And how about TaBS? TaBS (TAgging, Bookmarking, Sharing) is a bookmarking tool for LCLS members. Using your CLeO account you can create a TaBS profile and then store your bookmarks in TaBS and access them anywhere you have an Internet connection.

I love the ideas about applications of video in library settings. One of these days we’ll see an official “video podcast” from a library show up in the next incarantion of the iTunes MEDIA Store.

David King has a great post about integrating video into Library Web sites. He lists ten things librarians might do with video, including:

Videocast of bibliographic instruction, downloadable when a student needs it
Tours of the library
Showing what a meeting room looks like

Wonderful ideas that make use of the medium. The BI videos could be very helpful for “training on demand.” At SJCPL, we purchased acces to Mac OS Training videos at Lynda.com and it’s been helpful. I’d love to see libraries produce some stuff in house or a group of libraries band together to share resources and design training for staff.

This morning, Greg Schwartz shares his #11 over at Open Stacks: Meet the Staff Videos Cool idea. When I was investigating UNT, I went through all of the meet the faculty videos to get a sense of what the professors were like. This idea translates well to medium or large library settings where new hires might not meet administrators right away.

For all of these eleven hot ideas I’d hope I could also download them to my iPod!

See this for the first 5 factors!

Watch Open Source applications closely

I didn’t bring this out as much as I should have in my post at ALA TechSource, but other folks did which I appreciate! I am fascinated by what’s happening with Open Source and, ILS Vendors forgive me, I would be tickled to see a project like Georgia’s Evergreen take off and be implemented in libraries everywhere, supported by a thriving community of OS Librarians. Think about it…pretty hot in my book. See ya Innovative…Hello Evergreen! Want customized RSS or other new features? Hold a hackfest and make it so.

For something like this to happen, we need to get serious with our skills, our communication channels between library systems and a shift to a global collaboration/sharing mindset. This could lead to such initiatives as IM networks between libraries and huge knowledge bases built on wikis. The tools are there. It’s up to us.

Give Reference staff some Web-based tools and let them provide content

Yes, please. Over the last 7 years, I’ve been witness in my library to the flow of web content moving from one department, to systemwide and back again. I like the idea of teams of librarians building pages together, and soliciting feedback from users. These tools are FREE people. Just staff time, and what better way for staff to spend some time than developing user-centered Web pages with any number of OSS tools?

Utilize web stats for leverage to create new user-centered services on the Web

David King never ceases to inspire me with his web savvy. The Librarian in Black rocks my world with each web-centric post as well as all of her content. There was similar point in the previous list. But this is important! What I learned from reading and listening to them is that there is gold in those Web stats: user patterns, top hits, entry, exit and the like. Someone on your staff must be the “master of the Web stats domain,” or you are simply building pages that may never be seen or used.

Embed your Library 2.0 services everywhere

Put your blog feeds and IM status wherever it makes sense. Give users a way to comment back from the pages they hit the most. Think about ways to make the catalog so useful, inviting, and ubiquitous, that your users have search success everytime.

Get IT and Librarians meeting and planning from the get-go

I was discussing this with my colleagues at lunch. The recent posts across the Biblioblogosphere have been intriguing. It prompted skagirlie to post this:

No individual dept is perfect. IT is often harder for librarians to relate to because by nature we’re user focused, and they’re shiny focused. Those of us like me have to be ever concious of our language when speaking with patrons vs. other librarians vs. the IT guys. It’s not easy, but it is well worth the effort. I have made it a point of establishing a working relationship with my reference department and my IT dept. This often leaves me as the go between to communicate how we want to serve our patrons and what IT needs to do to make that happen. Being able to speak geek and librarianese has made things happen faster and in more exciting ways. at http://blog.skagirlie.net/?p=3

Aaron has been busy! Take a look at the new Thomas Ford Memorial Library page as well as walking paper. Well done!

And, with much synchronicity, Jessamyn has been installing Movable Type 3.2 here at TTW and coding this new space with me standing by in awe. Please pardon our dust as we continue. This will be the third incarnation of TTW. Dare I call it 3.0?

Here’s a look back:

5 Factors for Library Web Site Redesign

This week, as part of Chicago Public Library’s Scholars in Residence Program, Stephen, Jenny and I spent time discussing strategies and planning for a public library Web site redeign.

I pointed the group we were with to this press release: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/9/prweb285788.htm that I linked to a few weeks ago concerning what factors large public libraries face in a redesign.

I also presented this brief list:

#1 Your web Site is a Cyber-Branch: Your Web site should be viewed as your location in cyberspace, the ___nth branch if you will. It should be staffed accordingly and not forgotten when major marketing or PR initiatives occur.

Stephen Abram made a point as well: staff it with some techie folk but have a seasoned librarian in charge to insure the site isn’t controlled exclusively by the tech folk.

I also pointed out that your PL Web site cannot be an afterthought. It should convey your mission, goals and objectives for services. It should be localized and useful.

#2 Have a Voice & a Face The library web site cannot be flat and lifeless. Find your voice and use it! It may be via blogs or other tools that make communicating a message oh so easy, but whatever you do, make your Web presence HUMAN.

Podcasts…image feeds…wiki pages can help.

Share stories. Highhlight your staff and their knowledge. Use your librarians as guides, and see # 8 in this recent post: http://www.tametheweb.com/ttwblog/archives/001862.html

#3 Don’t ignore the value of conversations: Cluetrain time! Markets…conversations…internally and externally. Participate! Offer a place for these conversations to take place or they will take place without you. In other locations on other servers. They will take place, I promise!

#4 Be Transparent: Whoever had the foresight and wherewithall to develop a site devoted to planning, with a domain I heart, at AADL, rocks! http://planning.aadl.org Put your planning out there for your users and your staff. Involve both in the decision making process.

#5 Prioritize your Resources: Mine your Web stats for trends and focus development on pages that get the hits. David King writes about this here. Balance requests for new pages with how useful they may be for your users. It’s ok to say NO to a request for a page that may never be visited.

The group assembled for the first presentation of the Public Libraries and Technology Track at Internet Librarian 2005 totally rock. If you are attending the conference, don’t miss this one because hot trends in web design apply to all types of libraries!

In addition, the topic of web redesign is HOT right now. This press release points out some fascinating statistics.

In planning for the presentation, I emailed the panelists a question. Because Michael Casey’s Library Crunch (add him to your aggregator now, I’ll wait) is one of my favorite reads these days, I asked the panelists this question:

What does the Library 2.0 Web site look like?

Glenn Peterson, Hennepin County Public Library

“Hi Michael, (I just heard Stephen Abram talk at our library so I may be WWUI (writing while under the influence):

Next generation library websites will meet users’ increasingly complex information needs by developing tools that allow users to refine their information seeking in ways that produce highly relevant search results. Libraries will develop more sophisticated federated search tools that highlight the resources in their physical and virtual collections. They will develop online pathfinders on high-interest topics (e.g. how do I start a new business?) And they will find ways for librarians to continue to support users in the virtual information-seeking environment.”

David King, Kansas City Public Library, & Dave’s Blog

The next generation public library website should be considered a destination, just like the physical library building is currently a destination. As a destination, the website should:

- provide original content (ebooks, articles, encyclopedia entries, local history content)
- provide support content (database and catalog tipsheets, calendar of events, library news, phone numbers)
- provide community content (community calendar types of things)
- provide staff/customer interaction (comments area, question area, ask a reference area) uisng chat, IM,
email, phone, and mailing address
- provide customer/customer interaction (online blook clubs, customer-based reader’s advisory [Amazon.com model]
- provide traditional library services like library catalog and databases
- Do all this for specific customer target areas (Seniors, Adults, Kids, Teens, etc)

Sarah Houghton, Marin County Public Library, & Librarian in Black

The next generation small public library website will be moving up to the same level the larger public library websites are at now: blogs, RSS feeds, dynamic reading/watching/listening lists, lots of online forms, with links to some user-friendly and computer-friendly lightweight virtual reference options (like instant messaging).

John Blyberg, Ann Arbor District Library

The others really gave a good summation of the type of content we can expect to be available on library websites. What we provide is really going to depend on where the chips fall after the RIAA and MPAA finish going through their withdrawals and settle on a business model that works for them. Laser-etched plastic is not the future, but audio/visual content is what patron’s demand.

In the meantime, good public library sites are going to be the ones that do two things well. First, they need to generate content that is attributed to the library. Second, they need to pull together existing information in new and interesting ways in a manner that makes the web site itself an extention of the library’s information store. That way, the website is only a component of a library’s offerings.

I shared this link with my class at Dominican:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html

Via Jakob Nielsen, there are many gems here. Pay attention to the “Writing for the Web” bit.

David King shared this with me via IM: this is the current front page for Kansas City Public Library. I applaud the folks behind this change! What this means to me is that KCPL is very aware of presenting timely, important information to their community. Not only are they linking to places to donate, but they are promoting library services as well with the “The Library Can Help” link. Just the text of the image implies the library is a clearinghouse for information, referral and support.

KCPL, my hat is off to you!