Adding Value to Your Community

Patricia Martin – CEO Litlamp Communications

Presentation

Author of Renaissance Generation: the Rise of the Cultural Consumer and What it means to your Business

Ren/Gen – Renaissance Generation

3 indicators of a renaissance:

1. Death comes first (demise of the financial markets maybe?)
   
2. Facilitating medium – the Internet
   
3. Age of enlightenment
   

Psychographics of the population

• people who believe that Knowledge is Power
  
• learn baby, learn
  

The Ren/Gen is ready for this Renaissance:

• Embrace diversity – they are creative
  
• Idealists – they are self expressive
  
• Collaborators – they are sensualists – the only know what they can experience (with others)
  
• Fusionists – the bring together the diverse elements of who they are – engineer/attorney/poet
  

There has been an explosion of blogs (self-expression) and ebooks (non-traditional media), etc.

Depth of the shift – the impact is huge given the global economy

Businesses can capitalize through branding and getting buy-in and loyalty to their brand.

• Move from Me to We – give people a sense of belonging to the group, the tribe
  
• Empower creativity – give people the space to think for themselves
  
• Manage the human interface – remember that in the end customers are still people
  

Examples:

Launch of the new Ford Fiesta

Reached out to bloggers – chance to win a new car for 6 months – all expense by proposing a trip to take and then blog about it. Response came from a group of bloggers who weren’t interested so much in the car.

• Old Universe – Brand is the center of the Universe
  
• New Universe – the user is the center of the Universe
  

Outcome – let the bloggers share the car – led to shared financing.
Benefit – people gained a sense of belonging to a community.

Google – New products and improvements

They wanted to improve the users’ experience of Google so they identified their Superusers and asked them.
Best users are the ones who collaborate on building the rules

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs


The Human Interface

Jonathan Harris – artist and computer scientist

Stop the nonsense in the Internet – take the power to create a new world on the Internet.

What are people yearning for? The want to be wanted. (MoMA commission).
Curate the human interface
 
We have to come up with the story about the future!

The future – there will be screens everywhere – at the barbershop, the grocery store –
Return on Time will replace Return on Investment (because Time is Money after all)

The power of the story is the killer app!

Being able to engage our patrons to be a part of the shared story – is the ultimate human interface.

This Renaissance is an Uber-enlightenment – and the pre-cognitive folks - the visualization people

And why is the library so important in all this? The Library is the only reliable source for neutral information in most areas.

FINRA is trying to get public libraries active in the area of financial literacy – precisely because people trust that they will get neutral information from the library.

To sum up:

Add value to your community:

1. Put the User at the Center of the Universe
   
2. Let Users collaborate on the rules
   
3. Curate the human interface
   

Mobile Content

Megan Fox

Presentation

More interest in accessing data on a mobile phone than to call people
What info do people need on a mobile device? Not everything – but some things – ability to search the catalog, reserve items

DC Public library was among the first – open source code – also use Boopsie as a good resource to write code for mobile.

Library anywhere from Library Thing is available for libraries.

Library Vendors / Publishers

RefWorks is mobile
Ebsco is Mobile
Safari Books online
www.libsuccess.org
www.musingsaboutlibraries.org – Ready Reference apps
GetJar App World – a nondenominational source for mobile apps.
Can still send text searches to Google, Yahoo and some others.
Voice – you can give a voice search request to Google and others.
Touchscreen – drawing on maps
Bumping applications for paypal, Facebook
OCLS – shake it
Public transit, book recommendations,
QR Codes
Bar codes
Augmented realities – pulling in the social networks – recommendations by friends and friends of friends on a band, a restaurant, a movie, etc.

Take a look at the W3C mobile standards

Content Strategy and Writing for the Web

Aaron Schmidt

Remove Unnecessary Words

Do less (remove unused pages from the website)

Less is Less

Content Strategy: A way of looking at websites

• Content – any stuff you have online – html pages, images, mp3s, tweets, facebook updates
  
• Strategy – a plan to achieve a goal
  

Another definition - Planning for the creation delivery & governance of useful, useable and desirable content.

WHY? – ask questions about everything on your website. Need a plan to make that happen

Lifecycle of a piece of content

• Request
  
• Create
  
• Edit
  
• Approve
  
• Publish
  
• Update
  
• Archive/remove
  

But content management includes style.

Who does this stuff? Is there a plan? Are their people who have/share these roles?
Request/create

• What do we want to say?
  
• What do our patrons need?
  
• Who are our patrons?
  

Creating personae – who are our patrons?

Ask questions about the patrons’ lives – not how do you use the library, or what they think about the library. Ask about their lives and discern from that how the library might be able to serve them.

Brainstorm common tasks

Group the unique tasks

Next – compare the personae and the user needs to the Website to see how the website is doing in trying to satisfy those needs.

How? Run a content audit and see everything that is on the website.

Check if the page is

• Accurate
  
• Useful – business need? Patron need?
  
• Used
  
• web-written
  
• on-message
  
• when was it last updated
  

Assign a scale to these items – maybe use Excel or similar – to report the scale. Have one person work on a single column – that way the scale will be applied uniformly.

After the audit is done – it can become a good tool to routinely

Write for the Web

Center for Plain Language

Plain Writing Act of 2010
 
Most use of the website is functional reading – mostly we need to provide people with answers to their questions.

• Should be conversational – friendly and informative
  
• No PDFs – convert the information into html
  
• Inverted pyramid writing – people look at the top of the page first – Put it at the top
  
• Have plenty of white space
  
• Separate and float headings and content
  
• Make pretty urls
  
• Don’t use all caps
  
• Write in an active voice
  
• One thought per sentence
  
• Sentence fragments are okay
  
• Text size is important – not too big nor too little
  
• Sans serif font
  
• Use adequate contrast
  
• The library – We
  
• The patron – You
  
• Skip the animation
  
• Create content templates
  

Cloud Computing’s Impact on Library Services

Roy Tennant
Internet Librarian – October 26, 2010

Over-hyped
What are some reasonable roles for Cloud Computing
Makes us think about technology and how we use it – and what some of our options are.
Technology that makes Cloud computing affordable
Inexpensive commodity servers – add them as needed

Virtualization

We used to need a separate box for each operating system and separate applications. Now we can slice and dice a single server that has multiple operating systems and applications that run on each of them

Companies like BitNami that host our system.

One simple download to install the various components of a bigger set of applications.

Wikipedia - Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices on-demand, like electricity.

• Infinite, immediately available computing power. No more technical requirements
  
• Computing power has become a commodity
  
• Amazon web services ec2 – Electronic Cloud Computing
  
• No commitment to hardware
  
• Inexpensive
  
• Ubiquitous information – from any device
  

 
Innovation – iPhone

An Agile Approach to Library IT Innovations

May Chang – Head of Library IT Services

Library Hi-Tech article - When to be Agile
Davenicolette.net/articles – 1995
Agile Manifesto
Individuals and interactions - Over processes and tools

Working software - Over comprehensive documentation

Customer Collaboration

Agile Principles

12 principles
Crystal Method
People differ in working styles
Alistair Cockburn – Crystal family of methodologies because every project is slightly different and needs of its own
Putting into practice
People
Tools
Marketing

Leader – change manager, ability to adapt to change, a facilitator rather than an ultimate authority

Members – cross-functional motivated, team player

Tools

Mind map instead of bullet points – so no one part is better than another
Thinking wall – white sheets – static cling to wall – write w/ markers – not restricted by the size and location of the white board

Task Board – use sticky notes

Think outside the box – but make it work inside the box
Website – make it work for new students – music, sound, movement – but parents, funders, faculty will also be looking at it – so need to provide some guidance

Mobile version
 
Roving Reference & Patron Notification
John Blyberg

Darienlibrary.org

Reference desk like a WWII pillbox –
Created a lightweight Reference desk – more open – inviting.
New space was wireless
Smaller tools – netbooks – to be roving to assist with reference as they walked the stacks and the reference room – wireless phones
Netbook is small – but still awkward – what else can you work with -
The OPAC is there – so make it an access point for reference staff.
But where is the staff? Users couldn’t find the lightweight reference desk – because it was so small in scale. And the staff was roaming – not at the reference desk. What to do?

Pagers didn’t work

Vocera – lavaliere communicators
Restaurant pagers – but that’s the reverse of what they needed

Life alert bracelets

Requirements

• use existing tools
  
• fit into workflow
  
• simple to use
  
• effective
  
• reliable
  
• Fast
  

Notify.io – software for a notification router – download and host on local server – open source software

Can use email, IM, or Prowl (an onscreen notification system)

Adding Value – CIOs

Michael Ridley – CIO, Director of Libraries, Guelph University, Canada

Presentation

iCampus – Enterprise IT – trying to create a system and controls

One Community – many neighborhoods

But there is Tech Populism – everyone is her own IT department. We select computers and apps etc.

The Community has Tribal Identities – Information professionals, students, faculty, admin, etc.

The Information Age

We love that because we are information professionals. This is our age. Except, the information age is over. That metaphor is maybe holding us back

The Age of Imagination

How do we change the rules to make a better place? Information isn’t enough.
Think differently about your organization – it doesn’t have to be a 19th Century organization. There is a structure but it is an Open Organization
Be experts at failure – try things. Our advantage is our ignorance of what the outcome will be and that ignorance is our bliss. We don’t know what the tools are or where we are going.

Donna Scheeder – LC – CRS

Understand your organization. Understand the decision-making process. How much room is there for risk and failure?
Enterprise-wide approach – keep the technologies running.
What do customers want? Can we astonish them with what we can do for them?

Reviewing files

I am changing jobs and I am going through my files to save or remove documents that I don't need to keep any longer. Among them are my reports from the 2010 Internet Librarian conference held in beautiful Monterey, California. So I will be posting them on here.

Search Engine Update – Chris Sherman
Track A – Information Discovery & Search

Presenter's website

There are effectively two search engines with a combined 90% market share – Google and Microsoft Bing. No serious challengers for the next 5 or more years. There will be niche players, but no challengers. Google isn’t the top search engine in other countries.

Google -
Google has gotten faster – faster results, faster crawling and indexing and faster “search suggest”
Caffeine Update – biggest overhaul to Google in more than 5 years
50% fresher results
Algorithmic improvements – to change the results
We will need to bookmark our results because we won’t be able to recreate our Google search results again

• Google Instant – Yahoo! Did this already
  
• Google Search Suggest – get suggested queries as you type
  
• Google images – improved display and scrolling to compete with Bing
  
• Image swirl – is a visual discovery tool to find related images, artists etc.
  
• Google Real Time Search –
  
• Searches from Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. More useful than Twitter’s own search engine.
  
• Caution – Google – don’t be evil – policy is to go up to the creepy line and not cross it.

Bing:

• Timesavers – “More on this page”
  
• Intent classifiers – determine how the result page will be laid out based on our search
  
• Site links – may be popular links – but also contact information for all results – not just the top result
  
• Suggesting links for more vague queries that might look at all sides of a question – Is there global warming?
  
• Product research – general search – suggest products – search on a specific model – provides reviews etc.
  

 
Bing entertainment

• To grow its entertainment distribution business
  
• Music movies, tv, games etc.
  
• More than 5 million full-length songs and lyrics, hundreds of tv shows more than 100 games – streaming – cannot download w/out purchase.
  

Bing Maps – advantage – allow you to post photos in Photosynth – combine maps with video and photos
Bing travel – shows when airfares are changing!!!
Bing University – ranks the universities
Bing Recipes

Wolfram Alpha
http://www.wolframalpha.com/
Integration – high quality factual responses to queries.

Yahoo

• Bing is running Yahoo search
  
• Yahoo doesn’t equal Bing – but they are aiming to change their results view
  
• Bing is the innovator now – Yahoo is in survival mode.
  

Blekko

• New search engine
  
• Use slash tags to filter your search results – it is a closed beta version –but they may allow people to access and trial the search engine (Mary Ellen Bates talked more about this Search Engine).
  

 
Practices of Search Engines

Targeting

Types of targeting:

• Device monitor
  
• Geographic – knows where we are and prompts local weather e.g.
  
• Demographic – age, gender etc.
  
• Behavioral
  

Targeting with ads – Ads match our interests
Buzzword for this is retargeting

How do you opt out?

• Google dashboard
  
• Microsoft advertising
  
• Yahoo Privacy – Interest Manager Beta
  
• Network Advertising Initiative – allows one to opt out worldwide
  

Other search engines

• Factual – giving structure to the unstructured web.
  
• Semantifi – natural language query
  
• Microsoft – Academic Search – indexing academic publications – heavy on computer science and engineering
  
• Ask isn’t really a search engine – back to doing Q&A – built a social network of experts – Still using Teoma – but not a search engine
  

 
Super Searcher Tips
Mary Ellen Bates
her slides

Yahoo Correlator – http://correlator.sandbox.yahoo.net/

A way of visualizing a search of Wikipedia – a filter w/in Wikipedia

A way to get an idea of where to go next – find the next place to find the answer

Tries to find relations between Wikipedia articles – taps into the intelligence of Wikipedia and find contacts and datamine Wikipedia. It is broad and controlled.

Bing Norelax – most search engines will assume with a search string with multiple words that not all words are important. To use a Boolean and norelax will allow you to force the AND for all the words

Example: Wifi security airport hackers norelax:hotspot

Google New – http://google.com/newproducts/ - where we can see what Google is working on and you can filter to look at just the product we want (news, Scholar, etc.)

Blekko – http://blekko.com/ - open invitation beta (friend them on Facebook)

• The slashtags – is a customizable search engine – This is an old concept use their tags or create your own tags. And they will disclose what sites are included in their customized tags
  
• Slashtags are not shared – and tied to your personal login
  

Twitter lists – create and publish an RSS of your faves – who does the guru monitor? Is this person on anyone’s list? Who else are on those lists?

Search via Google – pulling the Twitter feed and
Google search - Site:twitter.com inurl:lists

LinkedIn

Monitor our own company

Look at new people and promotions – and reach out to those people – what do you need right now to help you with your job?

Newsy.com
The Week meets YouTube – summarizes the weekly news – uses human editors
A summary of what people are saying about a current topic

SlideFinder.net
Allow you to search Powerpoint presentations – indexes individual pages – it is a way to find an authority on a topic – then find out more about the individual – download the slide

World Govt. Data from The Guardian
www.guardian.co.uk/world-government-data/
Find datasets on a particular topic – more granular than some other sites
Compares apples to apples – tries to standardize the measurement so we can compare the statistics from different countries

Factual.com
Searching datasets
Like Wolfram|Alpha, but Factual.com is a wiki – find datasets but others can comment on how they mined the dataset or displayed the data to make it more it more useable. Shows how they found insights into the data.

 
Google Fusion Tables
Upload your data table
Visualize the results – map, line-bar-pie-scatter charts, timeline
Find some way to tell a story with the data.
It is a way to provide a non-Google like response

Google Public data explorer
Public data and allows us to apply filters or charts and tweak to tell a story
Datasets you can play with
Google wants agencies to share their data

Create Intelligence
Google News Archive – burst of interest in this product between March and August – Factiva has something similar
“Our Competitor’s name is rarely mentioned along with ours.”
Us AND them – 942
Us NOT them – 59742
Not obvious in the search results – but is evident during the search itself
Gives us enough to give us a sense

Use QR codes
I had never heard of these - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code
Create a 2D code for anything!
You can install an app on a smartphone to read these codes and be linked to more information about the item. A barcode on steroids.