David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

Kansas Tri-Conference 2007: Day 2 – Technology in Practice

By

Andrew Pace

Allowed the audience to pick his topic! How cool is that?

Question – “Do you have a really enlightened dean?” We do… their dean convinced NCSU’s faculty to give their yearly pay raise to the library… amazing!

“The second mouse gets the cheese” – likes to be on the cutting edge rather than the bleeding edge.

Showed some examples of Endeca searches, and discussed their localized relevance ranking

Endeca has a sort by most popular choice – cool

QuickSearch – from NCSU, goes live next Monday. They also have a mobile search interface

Kansas Tri-Conference 2007: Day 2 – Libraries, Vendors, and the Future of Search

By

Andrew Pace

Showed a timeline of library automation (that started on 1936!)

Where are we?

  • the rfp has not evolved
  • the traditional ILS system is a legacy system
  • new innovation requires new technology

Discussed the current state of the ILS

what ILS catalogs do well:

  • inventory control
  • known item searching

what ILS catalogs don’t do well:

  • any search other than known item
  • anything other than books and journals
  • logical groupings of results
  • faceted searching
  • relevance ranking
  • sideways searching (suggestions, expansion of searches and search targets)

NextGen library search tools: lots of them… including worldcat, clustered searching, endeca, open sources, etc…

a few words about nextgen and 2.0:

  • they are adjectives for libraries and systems
  • not our patrons – they are already there

To our customers, search looks like Google and iTunes and flickr

what is faceted navigation?

  • Sounds like boolean and limiting to me…
  • gave examples – narrow by category at amazon, clusty’s sidebar narrowing, etc

Needle Library, Haystack College is using ExLibris (look at it)

Existing catalogs are hard to use:

  • lots of topical searches and poor subject access
  • keyword doesn’t work well
  • relevance is really just system sort order in library catalogs
  • unforgiving on spelling errors or stemming
  • response time is bad

explained why NCSU wanted a new catalog…

showed a screencast of an NCSU catalog search

Most of their users are doing basic keyword searching – about 1/3 are choosing the refinements (mostly subject refinements)

usability testing:

  • relevance ranking is key
  • only 13% went to page two!
  • faceted navigation is intuitive
  • beware of library jargon
  • user behavior is influenced by previous experience

Interesting tidbits:

  • keyword searching up 230%
  • authority searching is down 45%

Future opportunities

  • integrate catalog with other tools through web services
  • enrich catalog with external web services – book jackets, etc
  • build cross application shopping cart functionality

Where are we headed?

  • interoperability – that’d be cool… right now, it’s the exception not the rule
  • web services
  • 3rd parties – will become a viable source for ILS type services
  • Re-integration (eventually)
  • continued mergers, market consolidation, etc
  • more vertical integration (portals, federated search, serials content management, etc)
  • more open source, local development, and 3rd party partnerships

“Open source is more like a free kitten, not like free beer.”

More thoughts on speaking at state association conferences

By

I just sat through a good presentation at this year’s Kansas Tri-Conference on creating online storytimes for libraries. The presenters are doing cool things at their library to the best of their ability, so that’s cool.

They could also do it better (couldn’t we all?). They found tools that would get the job done, and have stuck with those tools… which is fine. At the same time, there is more appropriate software to use, and the presenters misunderstood some things about emerging web trends (ie., one of the speakers mentioned the possibility of YouTube giving a computer virus to a customers’ home PC).

I was a good boy and listened (and I might email the presenters later) – but it got me thinking about the whole speaker fee, state association thing again. Certainly, it’s important to make speakers, even in-state, dues-paying speakers, feel like their presentation is worthwhile (ie., comping fees and providing honorariums).

But it just dawned on me that it’s also EXTREMELY important for people like US to speak at local and regional conferences. And when I say “people like us” – I mean YOU – readers of my blog (ok, myself too).

For example, if you are reading this blog, you are probably more of an expert on blogs and RSS than most of the other librarians attending regional conferences. Really. By the simple act of reading my blog, you are “an expert.” What do you know? For starters, you have a basic understanding of RSS, feed readers, blogs, updated content aggregation, and commenting. That’s more than most of the state conference attendees know (I’m making assumptions here, based on one session I attended… so take that how you will:-).

And your knowledge is worth sharing.

Now, hopefully you get your dues, travel expenses, etc. paid for or comped. But if you don’t, and you plan to attend a local conference anyway – why not speak? Why not share your knowledge with others? Why not start conversations, at your local level, to improve library services? That can be a good thing.

So my encouragement to you, dear reader – please go out and share your knowledge with other librarians! Let’s see what happens when we collaborate and spread the joy!

Kansas Tri-Conference 2007: Day 1 – Promoting the State Library Databases to YOUR Library Users

By

Sherry Backus

Intro to databases that libraries can access through the state

State is working on a federated search type thing for all databases they offer

Discussion of internet vs articles in library databases… (ie., teachers don’t want students using internet to find info – they want articles… that type of discussion)

Mentioned the John Kupersmith info about getting rid of library terminology

INFO for Kansas Blog – databaseskslib.blogspot.com – there’s a blog about the databases offered by Kansas

Showed some of the databases offered through the state

Any Kansas resident can use these

Asked for a topic to search (in Gale databases) – the topic suggested? Second Life! Cool. Then, the speaker mentioned that she has an avatar, but that her avatar is clueless…

Kansas Tri-Conference: Day 1 – IM (Instant Messaging): 101

By

Kristin Whitehair (K-State)

Gave history of IM

Gave a couple of examples of IM reference questions at K State

IM in Libraries

  • our users are using it
  • 42% of all online users use IM – Pew
  • 90% of teens using IM (AOL IM Trends)
  • all age groups are using IM

IM is:

  • immediate
  • real time 
  • point of need (answer question when customer needs the answer)
  • interactive

Virtual Reference vs IM – Advantages over VR:

  • easy – few requirements
  • free
  • widely used outside the library world
  • lite programs
  • cell phone and video features

Sacrificed Features for IM:

  • co-browsing
  • page pushing
  • statistics gathering

Discussed K-State IM reference statistics

Types of IM available:

  • client (downloaded)
  • web-based – chat widgets embedded on webpages
  • internal – staff IM

Gave example of Reference librarian who embedded Meebo widget onto her subject guide page and her own staff “who am I ” page

Internal IM: mentioned enterprise IM like GroupWise, opportunity for practice without contacting patrons

Popular IM Services:

  • Yahoo Messenger
  • Google Talk
  • MSN Messenger
  • AOL Instant Messenger (AIM)

Aggregators:

  • GAIM (recently renamed Pidgin)
  • Trillian
  • Meebo

Considerations:

  • staffing – how will you handle it
  • security – files, sketchy links, individuals with questionable intent…
  • dependability of service

staff training:

  • etiquette and training
  • traditionally casual and short messages
  • appropriate use
  • selecting a name
  • lingo