David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

CIL2006, Day 1: The Video

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Day one at Computers in LibrariesHere’s my little video snippet of Day One at Computers in Libraries 2006. It was a good first day, as you can see in all the blog posts about it! Make sure to go and read about it.

This video includes (not neccesarily in this order):

  • The registration booth
  • My session
  • lunch with some cool bloggers
  • the federated search session in the big room
  • milling about before the dead technology session in the evening

BY the way – I actually have a purpose or two with these videos. I of course am playing, first and foremost, with my Treo (translation – testing out videocasting using mobile technology for possible future projects). But also – I hope these videos give you, dear reader, some idea of what the Computers in Libraries conference is all about.

cil2006, videoblog, vlog

CIL2006, Day 0: the Video

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subwayI’ll be tossing out some random video this week – they’re all snippets of my time at Computers in Libraries 2006.

This one an exciting narrative of my subway trip into Washington DC.

One thing I’ve noticed rather quickly with the Treo 650 video – it doesn’t pick up sound (as in, my voice) very well. I’ll have to see if I can figure that one out a little better (hmm… one of those earpiece/speaker combo things for cell phones?).

Anyway – enjoy.

CIL2006, vlog, videoblog

CIL2006, Day 1: Cool Tools Update for Webmasters

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This talk by Frank Cervone and Darlene Fichter is always good (translation: I always learn about new tools!). Here’s basically a list of most of the tools they mentioned, with a brief description of some of them. So go check them out!

PHP Editor – paginas.terra.com.br… professional-grade PHP editor

PHP Expert Debugger – run and debug php code

Firefox extensions:
– colorful tabs 1.1
– web developer 1.0.2
– editcss
– html validator
– screen grab!
– Copy plain text
– view formatted source
addons.mozilla.com

livehttpheaders

eyeonsite – client on local machine – monitor another server, sends email

link popularity check – checkyourlinkpopularity.com

widgets – konfabulator, flickr photos, personalized weather

a to-do-list widget!

widgets.yahoo.com

eXactMapper Lite – sitemaps – free, generates a sitemap.

web based organizers – zoho planner, remember the milk, backpackit

sticky brain

chronosnet.com… “and now I’ll drag this to my sticky brain” $40, for mac users

password keepers: roboform (COSTS), keepass (open source), agatra (web based)

superglu – several feeds, one page – superglu.com

MultiRSS – fancy RSS chicklet that supports 39 different feed readers

Wink – creates flash animation for simple things, like reference instruction sessions…

Powerbullet Presenter – a little more powerful version of wink – free!!!

file exchange utilities – dropload, yousendit, sendthisfile, mailbigfile – mail large files

Nvu – free open source web editor (wow – lots of comments on this product)

zoom in – zooms in and out of photos

web gallery creator – creates a web gallery – automatically creates the HTML

Thumbshots – liven up your web links – thumbnails of URLs…

altsoft xsl-fo debugger – debugs xsl stylesheets

meta tag expert – creates meta tags for web pages – will do dublin core or more traditional tags

zoomcloud, tagcloud – tag clouds… zoomcloud provides stats

google sitemap builder – it helps google index your site better. sitemapbuilder.net – a good google sitemap creator

map web visitors: gVisit, ClustrMaps – maps out web visitors

Google Maps and Library Site…

tinyurl.com/gg2vd – how to add a google map to any web pages in less thatn 10 minutes

Or – add directions – google directions. tinyurl.com/cfmbb – add directions to your site without api

yahoo pattern library – patterns – they published their soutions to common web design problems. Hmm… they include things like breadcrumbs, search results, tabbed navigation, product ratings, etc. – they have tons of data that says “this worked best for Yahoo” – it will probably work well for others!

antispam encoder

CIL2006

CIL2006, Day 1: Federated Search Engines – Lessons Learned

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Frank Cervone:

70% of all searches are keyword searches and they pretty much get article searches

Students don’t understand the concept of “metasearch” and federated

Federated product – good place to go for starters

students have strong expectations about how results should be displayed: relevance order – it’s the search engine model…

advanced users tend to head towards databses

If it’s not federated, it’s ignored. The hope is that people will click through to the native interface when appropriate

finding the right group of databases for subject areas is important

long lists of databases – students find them confusing and make them feel stupid

they group databases by “best bets” or the three major databases in any given topic area.

It’s critical that they work from the perspective of the patron.

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Jeff Wisniewski:

Webfeat – live since Sept 2004

majority of searches come from the quick find search on their website’s main page

They provide three access points: federated product, a-z list, and subject list

Google has set the speed standard – they get “it’s kinda slow” comments

Speed constraints – be selective – dont’ want a “earch all” when all equals 300+ databases

monitor usage stats, especially turnaways

implement a formal evaluation process

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Ying Zhang: MetaLib Implementations

spoke about her organization’s implementation of MetaLib

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Athena Hoeppner:

Usability aspects of their federated search product

Most users use the quick search feature

They believe customization would help – trying to label things differently

Metalib isn’t an ideal solution for them because of the lack of easy customization

They’d like to add lots of help features, add useful icons, and have the visual design mirror their website

CIL2006