David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

David’s First Experiment with Screencasting

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I’ve wanted to play around with screencasting for awhile now, and recently when looking at job ads, it dawned on me – why not make a screencast of some bad website usability? That way, I can test out screencasting and at the same time, provide something marginally usaful to my blog, too.

So… here it is. In this screencast, I show and comment on some less-than-perfect usability on a college’s jobs page (basically, they let their jobs database get in the way of their design). I’m not sure how clear my points are, but then again it’s my first time doing this. It comes close to me thinking out loud.

For the screen capturing, I used Camtasia. Then I added a little video, titles, and editing via Windows Movie Maker, and then saved it as a Quicktime .mov file.

And let me add this: screencasting is COOL. I think screencasting could be extremely useful on websites – can you say quick, downloadable instruction sessions? Think about those subscription database tipsheets you make that explain, using text and screenshots, how to do a basic search. Why not turn those tipsheets into dynamic 1-2 minute videos that show how to do this earch, where to click, etc? And keep the original tipsheet, too – people learn in different ways, so the more reinforcement, the better.

Is anyone else using screencasting on their library websites?

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CSS Primer Using Dreamweaver 8

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For those library website designers out there who are just starting to experiment with using CSS instead of tables, this article is an excellent place to start.

The article explains how to set up Dreamweaver 8 for CSS styling, and then how to build a basic webstie using CSS for positioning rather than tables.

Have fun!

10 Reasons to Love Web 2.0 – from a Flickr Dude

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These are notes I took while listening to a podcast of Cal Henderson from Flickr, titled “From Web Site to Web Application – Ten Reasons to Love Web 2.0.”, who spoke at “The Future of Web Apps” conference. You can find it (and a lot of others) on the Carson Workshops/Summit website.

Cal’s definition of web 2.0: “Web 2.0 is a name for a bunch of new web-based applications.” Simple enough…

10 Reasons to love web 2.0:

1. Collaboration

  • sharing photos with a social network
  • collaborative metadata (tags)
  • Allows others in one’s social network to do the tagging for you

Me here – this is something library websites can offer to our users (ie., aadl.org as one example of collaboration).

2. Aggregation

  • shows latest information (he called aggregation a “slice”)
  • Also slice by tags, user, groups, and interestingness)

Me here – We can do aggregation – either with normal blog applications, like WordPress, or by custom-coding an RSS feed (like Kansas City Public Library).

3. Open API

  • Web services API…
  • SOAP, COBRA, REST (me – I don’t know anything about the last two…)
  • Flickr built an API because THEY needed it – it helped them in their work of building and customizing Flickr
  • It’s read-only data
  • allows people to build new things, do mashups, etc.

Me – OK… most of us probably can’t build an API – but never fear! I think many of the vendors we work with will eventually offer some form of API.

4. Clean URLs

  • “Don’t expose the guts of the application!”
  • Mod rewrite under apache – use it
  • Then – support the URL forever

Me – we can achieve this with our websites – but we’ll have to wait on the vendors… have you ever seen a SIRSI URL to a book? Egads!!!!!!!

5. AJAX

  • Jesse James Garrett named it
  • Javascript and XML mix
  • the underlying page doesn’t really reload – just the application (me – seems like a little thing, but really – that’s huge)
  • it remove’s page loads
  • streamlining

Me – we can do this, if we take the time to learn ajax and figure out what it can do for our websites.

6. Unicode

  • internationalization
  • localization – translation to other languages
  • store data in unicode – easier to translate should you decide to
  • UTF8
  • He said “this bit’s getting a bit nerdy, isn’t it?”

Me – What in the world is he talking about?

7. Desktop/Platform Integration

  • How do we pull out interactions?
  • based on API
  • RSS = read only API
  • desktop apps – the Flickr Uploadr interacts with the web app
  • Browser apps – bookmarklets
  • mozilla – toolbars, etc
  • integrating app with email – send photos via email

me – we can do some of this, too. Kansas City Public Library has RSS feeds and a “send article via email” thing. Other libraries have created bookmarklets and toolbars for their patrons. We’re just lacking the API part.

8. General Mobile Integration

  • WAP is dead.
  • XHTML mobile profile 1.0 (me – apparently, it’s really called that) – sensible standard. It’s a cut down version of normal XHTML
  • think in smaller chunks

Me – we can do mobile! Or… we HAVE to do mobile. Our customers are already there – shouldn’t we be, too?

9. Open Data

  • import/export of data
  • RSS = Export
  • Import = allows customers to easily escape if they want to
  • it’s your (the customer’s) data and you can take it with you
  • export to DVD – just built it on API

Me – ok, this is another hard one for us. But before we conquer this, we’d need to conquer the whole privacy of info thing first. Since we try to not save much patron information in the first place, we really don’t have that much to give back if requested.

10. Open Content

  • old way – once you upload it, Google owns it
  • New way – when you upload it, you still own in
  • Creative Commons license

Me – see my comments under #9 above… same idea here.

web 2.0, library 2.0

10 Easy Steps to a Horrible ILS

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I just read this article, and thought some of the points made really compare to the ILS discussion going on right now. First, a little explanation – the point of the original article is to point out rather obvious ways to ruin an ecommerce site. But, some of those points translate nicely to our beloved ILS systems, too. Here are some of the more “telling” points:

1. Use your Ecommerce Software’s [ILS System’s] Default Layout. Ouch! A large percentage of us libraries use the default layout. When we get brave, we add our logo image and maybe change a color or two.

We really need to customize the ILS we bought with our taxpayer’s/students/patron’s hard-earned money so it’s usable for our customers, don’t you think? And if we can’t do it, well then – we should expect our vendor to do it for us.

2. Don’t use thumbnails. SIRSI adds Syndetics info, which includes thumbnails of materials. So much nicer, especially when our competition is Amazon – at least it’s a step in the right direction.

4. Don’t smooth the Checkout Process. Sometimes this is easy for us, sometimes not. Make sure your ILS is easy to use when customers want to place a hold on an item. ANd make sure you’re using the most appropriate words, phrases and descriptions for your customers, too (ie., do your customers understand what “placing a hold” really means?).

5. Ignore the Market you’re “Targeting.” Who’s your target audience? Kids? If so, can they use your ILS system made for adults? Etc, etc, etc. Think about ways to help your target audiences find what they’re looking for.

8. Completely leave out Product Descriptions. Compare The Hobbit in your ILS system to The Hobbit at Amazon. Most likely, your version has author, title, subject headings, a call number, and (egad) a MARC record. Amazon, on the other hand, has all the normal ILS stuff (except for the MARC record, which they really don’t need), plus pictures, a “look inside this book” preview, customer tagging, reviews from publishers, and reviews from other customers.

Do you see a difference?

10. Never post your Address or Phone Number. What happens when a search leads to nothing in your ILS? In my library’s ILS, this phrase appears “… found no matches in the library you selected.” And then a search box is displayed so the customer can re-do their search. That’s well and good, but let’s go one further. Let’s add our email/chat/IM/telephone reference contact info there, too. This way, a frustrated customer can go one further – and you have just added some positiveness to an otherwise negative customer experience.

web2.0, library2.0