Follow up to Lee Rainie’s Keynote

Finally got around to taking the Pew User Typology quiz.

After receiving my diagnosis (omnivore?? I really don’t think so), I was led to this great graphic:

Who are you?

il2007: Mashups & Data Visualizations: New Breed of Web Applications

Darlene Fichter, University of Saskatchewan

The eyes only see what the mind comprehend.

Web 2.0

• everyone can participate
• rise of the amateur expert

DIY Programming

• 5 minute customization of applications
  • no longer the purvey of programmers

Mashup Defined – web application that uses content from more than one source to create a new service (via xml)

Mashup Ecosystem?

• Open Data
• Open set of servcies & applications (API)
• people

Programmable Web – Mashup Dashboard

• almost 50% of mashups involve maps
• 10% involve photos

Mashups and 2.0 impliations

• fastest growing ecosystem
• don’t have to get anybody’s approval to provide a new API to the internet operating system
• contenet can get repurposed and remixed

Mashup Tools

• Yahoo Maps
• Frappr
• Google Maps
• Yahoo Pipes
• Popfly

Example – earthquakes by mashing up Yahoo Maps and USGS data

Frappr

Google My Maps

• go to maps.google.com
• click on my maps
• add push pins plus notes to create a map
• embed the code in your library site
• Use for library branches, locations in stories, historical building tours

McMaster Aerial photos

• 5000 aerial photos of Hamilton, Ontario

Western Springs History

• western springshistory.org/map
• westernspringshistory.org/map/data.xml

Yahoo Pipes

What is this library?

• Syndetics – Book Covers
• Data – Top 20 New Books

Unintended Consequences

• Garbage in, Garbage out
• Client-side scripts that modify pages

Web Site Structure

• www.aharef.info web sites as graphs

facets

elastic lists demo: well-formed-data.net/experiments/elastic_lists

social data sites

• an individual should get value from your own contribution
• these contributions provide value to others
• the organization that hosts the service should derive aggregate value and be able to expose this back to the users.
• Social data sites examples:
  • Many Eyes -
    • view and discuss visualizations
  • Swivel
  • liveplasma

il2007: creating a taxonomy

Why we need taxonomies:

• we’ve got information overload and users don’t know what terms to use for searching.
• users have individual and multiple ways of organizing information.
• no control over terminology with full text searching.

What is a taxonomy?

• a controlled vocabulary
• relationships are one step broader or narrower
• it’s a browsable hierarchical structure
• it may include equivalent relationships
• used to consistently categorize information
• provides research terms for the user

The controlled vocabulary concept has a wide spectrum..

Considerations for developing Taxonomies

• avoid duplicating a vocabulary taht already exists
• construction methods vary – topdown (better for new), bottumup better for adding to existing), etc.
• dimensions of the taxonomy – perspective (research and development, or product based)
• Size of taxonomy – scope
• facets -
• intended use of taxonomy

Developing a taxonomy

• determine requirements
  • scope
  • purpose
  • subject or facet coverage
  • inventory content
• identify concepts
  • identify source materials
  • gather concepts
  • analyze search logs
  • analyze content
  • determine content types
  • identify existing taxonomies (existing metadata)
  • extract candidate terms
  • interview the Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) and the users
• develop draft taxonomy
  • establish common rules
  • reconcile terminology issues
  • use concepts universally
  • start broad, not deep
  • develop upper structures
• review with users and SME’s
  • provide a draft to review
  • conduct usability studies
  • build consensus
  • keep a history of decisions
  • involve stakeholders, SME’s and users
• refine the taxonomy
• apply the taxonomy to content
• manage and maintain taxonomy
  • establish ownership
  • establish governance process
  • create change control processes
  • develop a maintenance plan
  • review content for new concepts
  • develop user feedback process for new concepts
  • maintain lifecycle
  • include a process for input/feedback

•  Review the taxonomy to keep it up to date
  • schedule periodic reviews
  • create a candidate list of terms for consideration
  • analyze terms returned in error
  • sample newly added content
  • consider terms used excessively or infrequently (they are ineffective)

Testing the effectiveness of the taxonomy

• does the it provide appropriate search results?
• does it match user expectations?
• does it support the taxonomy’s stated purpose?
• Testing methods
  • heuristic evaluation (expert evaluation)
  • affinity modeling (card sorting)
  • usability testing
  • demonstrate and question
  • surveys
  • analyze logs/items returned in error
  • tag sample content
  • test relevancy

Effective strategies for taxonomy creation

• Find a strong sponsor
• build a multi-disciplinary team
• task IT with maintenance of the software

Process flow for term suggestion

• end user suggests
• fills out form – what and why
• librarian researches concept (does it already exist in the taxonomy?)

il2007: building your techie team, tips for training your staff.

Michael Stephens and Sarah Houghton-Jan

training has changed – the lecture model is gone.

there are new models — the EXPERIMENT model

Engage

• use real-world examples
• Stay relevant – give your staff something that they care about and make it fun (ex. librarian trading cards)
• highlight tips and tricks -

Xenogogue

• “a guide through a strange land”
• be available and accessible
• encourage student independence

Play

• encourage exploration
• allow fun to happen
• make exercises and discussions light-hearted

Explain

• have handouts, people like to have something to go away with.

Reward

• right answers
• participation
• completion
• presence

Imagine

• give them a chance to dream up applications for what you’re teaching

Mentor

• treat students like adults
• be available for questions
• pair students up
• expect success from all

Empower

New

• there is always something new
• there will always be something new
• Learn to learn,scan the horizon

Time

• enough time for training
• enough time for adapting

il2007: how to lose your new tech librarians, part 1

Jenny Benevento, Vocabulary Developer

SLIDES

Or how not to hire a new tech librarian every 1.5 years…

new librarians are leaving the field more frequently than in the past – what are we doing to cause this?

organizational culture drives our tech-savvy librarians away –

if you want to drive them away…

• you should ridicule tech milestones and celebrate your traditional services
• you should curtail their extracurricular activities
• you should discourage their provessional excitement and creativity
• you should adopt technology just because you think it’s cool or heard about it in an article
• you should talk negatively about tech companies that would offer your tech person a job they would love (in a heartbeat(
• adopt a kafkaesque system toward tech development decisions (put librarians who hate technology on the committee)
• adopt technologies as soon as they’ve stopped being relevant
• put them in teh basement -”they don’t like social behavior, don’t they?”

To managers:

• just because you’ve been promoted to management doesn’t mean you are a good manager
• your masters degree clearly means you know more than everyone
• your 20 years of life in this library mean you know more than everyone
• treat your techie as the most replacable person
• when you hire them, tell them they’ll be able to focus on technology and then
• don’t fund their projects
• you should tell them you want new technologies, but reject their suggestions
• have no plan for administrative rewards for their work
• go out of your way in public to state that you have no faith in technical staff or the direction they are taking you library
• don’t make an effor to understand anything about technology
• tell them “that’s not how we do it here, that’s not what we do here”
• you should equate all technical knowledge
• assume the techie can immediately learn any new skill without any support
• expect the techie to solve all technical problems in the library
• you should expect their projects to be finished immediately

What you should do….

• you can’t change everything, but you should realize that they can go elsewhere and you should try to meet them half way
• there are management classes and books that you can ingest – learn how to be better to your employees
• they’re different, just like everyone else. except maybe they have more employment options…
• passion for the profession – if you aren’t passionate about your job, no one will beneath you will be either. actually tech people have a reputation for being more passionate.

To the tech librarians:

• if your library doesn’t value tech, get out.
• when you leave, specifically state that you love libraries and that you would love to work there, but that the organization doesn’t value tech.

il2007: Organization 2.0…it ain’t what it used to be and it never will be again.

Rebecca Jones, Dysart & Jones Associates

this presentation will focus on the soft skills – problem solving and decision making as related to our new environments.

We are not in Kansas anymore – we have collaboration tools, and they have shifted the way that we are working. Collaboration is a tornado to our work process and to our hierarchies.

Our org charts are out of step with our 2.0 environments. The concept of where a job starts and stops and where our work starts and stops have changed.

blogs — how many people have blogs that are merged, personal and professional – what happens when someone says something about their organization on their blog? when are we on the job and when are we not?

Our technologies are giving us the opportunity to discover, and invent new ways to share, relevant knowledge with blinding speed (cluetrain manifesto, 1999).

will 2.0 solutions transform organizations? Yes and no.

Yes – it will empower employes and free up knowledge, decentralize decision-making process

No – our structures will stay in place. Hierarchies are a natural occurance, some people have more power than others.

Organization Structure Basics:

1. Past structures are not effective for the current environment
2. younger staff are more comfortable with technology and collaboration
3. younger staff are uncomfortable with top-down decisions
4. small agile groups move faster tahn large bureacracies.
5. in every org. there will be leaders and there will be followers.

1980′s and 1990′s we brought in “teams” – this is a cooperation:

collaboration and cooperation are not the same thing.

If you trace back customer complaints and problems – 85/15 – overwhelming majority of these problems come from the organizational structure itself and NOT the people.

Organization Design Principles:

1. Form follows function – what you are there to do will determine how you shape your organizatioal struction
2. Power structures (reporting relationships) determine loyalty
3. Collaboration decreases as distance increases
4. some relationships are weaker than others (we’re people!)
5. organizations are ecosystems – they need to be fed and watered, they grow and change – new titles for the same jobs do not represent real change.
6. stability signals staleness (& death)
7. clarity dissolves most, if not all, conflicts
8. hierarchies do work for some function.

Organizational forms are tools for shaping your work processes & employee relationships to support your strategic priorities. Structure should create an organizational focus on the right issues at the right time.

Sometimes you need to focus internally to better serve your public – focus on your structure and your training and your technologies. We’re not serving our public well if we are not set up well. (ex. airplane oxygen masks: put it on yourself first, then help others).

What is our library’s main focus?

community development? does our organizational structure reflect that?

What should we do?

organize the staff or staff the organization?

how do we want people working together? Ask not what the technology can do for the organization, ask what the organization wants the technology to do for the people.

You wouldn’t approach another problem according to the tools. You would have an idea of what you want and then select the tool for the job.

Form follows function – you need to be very clear on what your focus is and what you want to be doing for your customers.

forms and design involve drawing – strategic focus needs to be narrow to be accomplished.

New structure: use new and different positions (with different names) to work with the strategical plan. Your leadership will change according to your priorities.

If you want to focus on technology and training – change your leadership to emphasize this. Create client and staff development postion. create a web presence officer. Create an eContent officer (the web presence and the web content are DIFFERENT responsiblities). Employ a digital coach to help with transitions.

Hierarchies can lead to power-abuse…

Jon Husband, www.wirearchy.com – “a dynamic flow of power and authority based on knowledge, trust…”

Our traditional teams, in place & space, develop an inner authority based on the members’ commitment to shared purpose. In the new digital environment, power comes from information, expertise, and knowledge, the foundations of wealth and status 2.0.

need to establish ground rules (ex. what is the acceptable turnaround time?

“trust and the virtual team” -by charles handy — if we are going to be successful, we need to rely on trust and NOT control. The leadership needs to be communicating – clearly, consistantly, and effectively.

Administration needs to model colloaboration (not the same as cooperation).
Create a climate of trust.

good people in a poorly managed organization fail.

what we need for health: people have to want to be healthy. they have to initiate, communicate, collaborate, confident, entrepreneur, independence. people need to be rewarded for these things.

libraries – there is a dearth of resources on when things go wrong, but recommended article: Workplace Mobbing

———————

problems with our strategic plans: we’re taking on too much. your strategic plan should not have 5 priorities. DO ONE THING.

The best organizations with long term success focus on their focus.  

il2007: tools for webmasters

i lost my post on this — iffy connectivity and not enough vigilant saving. Luckily Karen Coombs blogged it over at Library Web Chic… check it out! good stuff to play with and apply in our work…

il2007 Keynote: Reference as we know it is gone. and it’s not coming back.

Joe Janes, University of Washington

no slides — slide free is a good thing. Thanks, Joe!

Opens up with a great idea: For those librarians who want things to stay the way they were, who don’t want to embrace technology and the digital environment, let’s have a session at ALA, title it something like, “remember the good ol’ days” or “let’s celebrate the NUC” – and then lock them up. and take them away….he stands before us as a person born to be a ready reference librarian, and he gets it, but it’s kind of over.

What is our purpose? Originally, we were tasked because there was too much information and people could not find what they were looking for. It is a notion of helping people, and it is still our notion. but are methods, our practice, our environment is not the same.

Now, there is a lot of information and people CAN find it, at least they can find something. And there are lots of places to get help. Because of these facts, traditional librarianship is not going to work.

(aside: pre-1910 there is no reference in the academic library, the purpose of the students was to learn how to use the information. librarians were for collection development/management)

GoogleBooks goal – to digitize all the books. every book ever, in all languages, from all continents. Everything will be digital at some point and that point is fast approaching.

horizontal searching - we are horizontal information consumers of digital information that we can access at granular levels. wholes and parts of all things always. and lots of them, simultaneously, and that’s how we like it.

James Wire, 1930 – description of the ref interview – in a chapter entitled reference as mind reading, he states that library users “will choke and die in front of you before they tell you what they want.”

Don’t whine about Wikipedia unless you’re doing something to change it. Don’t whine about Google because they are doing the job that we couldn’t do even if we wanted to (serve a billion people a day) and they’re doing it better than we could even if we could do it. So what’s left for us? a lot.

We have niches:

• deep divers: librarians are built for people who care or who can be made to care about particulars of information (the deep divers)
• there are people who prefer to be helped — the old time library regulars — but in the digital environment, they don’t know we are there.

Don’t try to duplicate the services of the keyword search engine. If you do, you’re slitting your own throat. Niches can be thought of as a diminishing or a focusing. I’m more likely to think of it as a focusing, as a positive thing.

Broader doesn’t have to mean shallower, it can mean richer. and it really boils down to an urge to be heard, to make an imprint. there is no end point to our new participatory information environment. part of the outcome is the participation. part of the outcome is the process.

If there are many of our users that are in online environments, then we need to be there, too. We need to help them make these digital environments and systems more usable (ex. second life – it’s all about creating things, if we can get librarianship into that world to help them make their creative works more usable).

Here’s what we need to do: get out of the library – and stay in the library. be somewhere and everywhere. every library needs to be somewhere and everywhere.

somewhere - place for story hour, study rooms, aa meetings, you need to be a community meeting place and a social space.

everywhere – web presence, outreach, in the spaces of our users lives. the concept of the library leaks out of the building. the concept of the library is sooo much bigger than the place. the only reason we have a place is because the stuff was physical. it’s not physical anymore.

biggest scandal in librarianship – we are not quantifying the use of our digital resources. Guaranteed: you have doubled your usage of electronic resources and you are not getting any money to support it and that is suicide. these numbers demand money to support it.

there is a segmentation of our population that we need to recognize and serve accordingly: -

1. for the people who are diving deep, who are into info and quality research, that is when we shine.
   • an aside – what do we do about print? currently print is our secret weapon, for the moment, but as the years go by it becomes less of a strategic advantage. the role of print will steadily decrease. put the reference books in the circulating collection. It might sting a little, but you’ll get over it. stuff doesn’t matter. good reference services is, after all, measured by “method over material.” (mudge, 1909)
2. 2. horizontal scanners – just move them forward, give them a budge, a tip, etc. transitory, brief encounters is what we should focus on.

On new librarians and veteran librarians -- need to work together to get this done. New librarians are really frustrated and they are right to be. (see first statement), but older librarians have things to offer, too.

our message needs to be that librarians help busy people save time and money (margaret hutchins, 1944). but people only hear one note from us (books, story hour). We have chords, but they don’t hear them. People ask for books from us, because they think that’s all we have.

Whatever services we provide to people online need to be better than what we provide in person. if they’re walking in the door, they’ve made the commitment. They’ve driven, they’ve parked, they know we exist and they are a user. By contrast, online users will leave us in a second. and this is where people live. We are getting more hits to our web site than we are getting visits to our physical space and we are turning them off. We are alienating more users every day than are visiting our physical buildings in a month.

We have to be better than that.

il2007: inspiration for your library redesign

Bennett Ponsford & Christina Gola, Texas A&M

why redesign?

• look at the old site? it was designed years ago by a committee of librarians and looks like it. designed around how librarians think folks should use information, but not around how our users think they should use information.
• problem with the default search – a federated search
• branches need their own presence to be defined by their own needs/communities

Questions to ask users:

• what are you looking for?
• how do you discover new resources?
• what formats are you looking for? what do you want for defaults?
• what 2.0 features do you want?

How to ask them?

• initial surveys
• discussion forums
• focus groups
• individual interviews
• etc.

Recruit users

• campus emails (best collection of responses)
• advertising in student newspapers
• facebook group
• blog
• discussion forum

Results: What are they looking for???

• our stuff – not our pages or our info. about our stuff.
• need info. about the library itself (how to info)
• differences between how the different user populations interacted with the web site — grad students/faculty use it more for tasks (renew, ILL, etc.)
• limited interest in tagging
• limited faculty interest in user-generated content (undergraduate more so)
• preference toward traditional communication with the library (email and in person).

Results: Free hand responses (discussion forum):

• intense hatred of our pop up windows
• frustrated – want search, click, full text — not interested in our options
• confused – can’t even describe where they get lost.

Results: Focus groups:

• where do you go first??
  • undergrads didn’t know about google scholar. faculty go to google scholar first. grad students are a mix between google scholar and databases.

What do they want?

• want the systems to be integrated – single log on catalogs, databases, article delivery, etc.
• We need to offer more ways to support self-discovery and shared knowledge (not just library or proprietary resources).
• Visual and “sexy” is good.

2.0 tools?

• undergrads and humanities suggested potential for wikis
• want rss
• want personalization – every user wants customization.

what should we offer for 2.0? how much education do we provide to support the tools?

Recommendations:

• help them find their stuff and get out of the wa
• let the user control the interface
• integrate their systems
• offer better personalization options
• determine your user groups need before you implement tools.

—————————————————————-

Erica Reynolds, Web Content Manager, Johnson County Library (NOTE: they have a web content team consists of 7 info profs. dedicated to web content)

she was talking waaaaaaaay fast, i’ll try to get notes/online content to update this section later…. they have a cool site and the right attitude – clearly they have instutional support and have made their web site a priority.

1.

2.

3. when you paint to sell, you paint people – what people are interested in is themselves, so give them that!

pictures and personal involvment gets promotion for your library.

allow users to post reviews and integrate it into your catalog

staff can post their favorite books  — offer it as an option, don’t make them.

4. enliven your collection through reorganization and presentation.

ex. need a story vs. novelist.

5. Technology Changes Everything

If a director is not blogging, we’re like “um, what are you doing?”

6.

7. a desire for beauty and serenity endures

more, but i couldn’t keep up…

Opening Keynote: Lee Rainie, 2.0 and the Internet World

INTRODUCTION (pres. of info today)
Numbers: 1385 conference attendees (pre-registered), 102 exhibitors.

retronym – old word needs to be updated to retain it’s original definition. example, acoustic guitar, bar soap, regular coffee, snail mail, classical music, day baseball, etc.

beginnings: internet librarian… nancy mellon-nelson (?), in june of 1993 (computers in libraries). a transformation is occurring in libraries… librarians in front of pcs…. communicating around the world…. the internet is desirable and the demand is growing.

a retronym for non-internet librarian = unemployed.
—————————————————–

Lee Rainie, Director, Pew Internet & American Life Project

Highlights statistics and findings from Pew studies and talks about current trends in web participation

User typologies include fanatic content contributors to irritated sufferers from information overload – what are the implications of these differences on libraries and library services

confession: when originally questioned as to who would use the internet? did not mention librarians, since then has been convinced that librarians not only use the internet, but are at the top of the food chain.

speakers and blogs – pointed out the praise (and criticisms) that he has enjoyed from bloggers. sent up positive news from blogs up to administration to get support for new technologies. this is a great suggestion and even the negative comments illustrate that information markets are self-correcting.

8 hallmarks of the new digital eco

1. media gadgets are ubiquitous – look at home media ecology (how media finds its way into our lives) in 1975 and home media ecology now.

2. internet is at the center of this revolution.  73% internet penetration level for adults. 93% of teenagers. at least 50% of the population have broadband at home.
brodaband users are contenet creators

3. new gadgets allow us to gather info and carry on communication anywhere, anytime. wirelessness is its own adventure — wifi users are a different breed of internet users and view information differently than both wired usrs and non-unsers.

4. ordinary citizens are culture creators (publishers, movie makers, song writers, etc.). we are not broadcast to any longer. the audience are the performers.

55% of online teens have myspace and/or facebook
20% of online adults have these profiles also

facebook provides their social dashboard – media is part of the communication and community building process.

33% of college students keep blogs and regularly post.
54% read blogs
12% of online adults have a blog
36% of online adult read blogs.
blogs are becoming harder to track — they are more integrated into sites and harder to distinguish and separate as its own activity.

19% of online young adults have created an avatar and use it to interact with others.
9% of online adults have done the same.

15% have uploaded video to the web.

5. all content creators have an audience. (see blog reader statistics above)

note – those bloggers that are covered in the nightly news. most folks are journaling in some way.

young people are writing their blogs for their 3 best friends and their 2 worst enemies.
they don’t want you to read it! (parents, college admissions, employers)

6. information sharing and evaluation — rating products, people, and services online.

has become sort of an obligation to their community to review/recount their experiences.

tagging – helping to offer/organize information — 34% of online young adults have tagged content (cp. 28% adults)

7. information customization — 40% of younger internet users customize news and other informtion pages; ~half are on specialty listservs.

question — by creating filters/bubbles, how much of the previous “common experience” are they blocking out?

8. different people use these technologies in different ways — these stats are general, of course. men v. women, old v. young, etc.,

user typology determination –
what do you have? (assets)
what do you do with them? (actions)
what are your attitudes toward these technologies? (attitudes)

TYPES:

omnivores — 8%
have the most gadgets, make a lot of stuff, share a lot of stuff
late 20s, male dominant, diverse races

connectors — 7%
have lots of gadget but they don’t make as much stuff. they are into the connections that they facilitate
late 30s, female dominant, diverse races,

lackluster veterans — 8%
frequent users of the internet and gadgets, but not thrilled with information and communications technology enabled connectivity. Don’t like being alwasy “on” if they had a choice they would use a land line
late 40s, male dominated

productivity enhancers — 8%
workers, they have positive views of technology because it helps them do their jobs and learn new things.
early thirties, mixed gender

mobile centrics — 10%
they love their phones
early 30s, minorities rule

connected, but hassles — 10%
mid 40s, female, white, middle income.
they find connectivity intrusive.

inexperienced experiementers –
50ish female dominant, diverse races, 15% bband at home.
occasionally try things out, aren’t connected, but aren’t opposed to it.

light but satisfied — 15%
fine with what they’ve got and don’t need very much more.
have technology, but it does not play a central role in their their lives. fine with tv and radio in tradtional formats. distant relationship to technologies and relaxed about it.

Indifferent – 11%
as a lifestyle choice, they don’t like this stuff.
they don’t like it, don’t need it and don’t want it in their lives

off the network group — 15%
mid 60s+, female dominant
no cell phones, no internet connection, and have a negative view of the internet

what we’ve learned –

large lowtech crowd — 49% (casual relationship to technology)
small technophile crowd — 8% (early adopters)

we are not yet in the mature phase of ICT adoption and use — lots of tech capabilities are idle in people’s hands and homes

take the quiz –http://www.pewinternet.org/quiz/quiz.asp

what does this mean??
it changes our relationship to information and it changes our relationship to each other
How? Ten ways:
1. volume — information grows, long tail expands
2. velocity — of information increases and “smart mobs” emerge. info is gathered and acted upon from ground up. (ex. peer to peer movie reviews)
3. venues of information sharing multiply. place shifting and time shifting occurs. absent presence and present absence.
4. venturing for information changes – search strategies and search expectations spread in the Google era.
5. vigilance for information transforms — attention is truncated. we exist in continuous partial attention and elongated “deep dives” (interest into particular subjects gets longer)
6. valence (relevance) – information customization. (the daily me)
7. vetting of information becomes more social – credibility tests are changing as people ping their networks.
8. viewing of information is disintegrated and becomes more horizontal – folks will scan the abstracts rather than read the articles. scanning…
9. voting and ventilating – content creation and collective intelligence increases
10. invention and visibility of new creators increases

think of yourself as a content creator.

Advice to library pros: Be confident in what you already know and how to meet people’s reference and information needs.