Connecting Librarian

So, having written 4 lengthy posts on the content of day 1, I realised that I hadn’t written anything much about what I got out of it. So here goes.

I want a USB stick with an MP3 player and FM tuner in the same piece of hardware.
I need to look up the e-government strategy and find out any implications for my library.
I need to have another look at the www.australia.gov.au website and link to it on my library’s website.
I need to have another look at the AGIMO website, for what’s new/changed.
I will investigate what the mobile web will mean for our electronic services and will have that as a criteria for our new website design.
Say in touch with the development of the semantic web.
Look up more on the governments’ water plan and get more info up on our website on water and the water crisis in Australia.
Investigate our policy on choosing between hardcopy and electronic resources and if we don’t have one, get one!
Use James Robertsons advice to avoid as many pitfalls as possible as we begin work on our intranet proper.
Check out the StepTwo website for relevant articles.
Look more at staff skills audits, particularly at the type of IT skills our staff need.
Investigate ways in which our new ILMS can tap into Web 2.0 type initiatives - ie. comments, and/or find others way to provide this type of interaction.
Don’t be afraid to experiment and fail - try and learn, try and learn.
Seek potential for external partnerships.
Keep aware of search engine trends.
Help our staff development move from training to life long learning - use Learning 2.0 programs.
Get usability testing as part of our new website design.

That’s a big to do list and just from day one!

Neil Infield from the British Library gave the late afternoon keynote on the new Business and IP Centre. This innovative program is changing how BL serves their customers and is drawing in people who have never used BL before.

Inspired by the Science, Industry and Business Library at New York Public Library, it came after surveying existing and potential clients who wanted access, advice and training. Investment came from London Development Agency, most of which went into building renovations, to make the space more suitable for this purpose and more welcoming to users. It reinvented the old Business and Patents reading rooms and made an unrivalled business collection available to those who needed it most.

New services include workshops, entrepreneur speaker events, new online databases, guides and leaflets on a wide range of business related topics, 30 minutes 1 on 1 info advice sessions and Ask the Expert session (1hr) with industry experts.

Cultural changes at BL included readers becoming customers, changing staff attitudes, working with the wider BL culture - on opening hours, support, registration, sercurity, working with external partner organisations. Role model to the departments? Depends on who you ask! Includes the creating of an networking open area, plasma screens for announcements etc, laptops for searching, sofas, displaying success stories, bright colours and a range of training rooms. Promotion included the 1st paid advertising ever by BL, posters on the Underground, radio spots and internal publicity at BL.

New approach is to be a collaborator, trainer, facilitator, advisor, problem solver, using a business process and getting out there. Need to be identifying new skills and knowledge for staff and customers. Need to be partnering with external organisations.

Cathy Slaven from QUT spoke on usability testing of their website. Using 5-6 students each time, they had four redesigns of aspects of their website before reaching the optimal result.

They used a link on their website for 2 weeks to recruit students for this test of their new user-centric design. 250 students applied, 22 were used, each of which received a $25 voucher for their time and efforts. The testing involved a PC, webcam, speakers and Camtasia studio to monitor mouse and screen movements. A faciliator led the session, which was observed by one or two staff. 10 test scenarios were conducted on tasks that undergrads were expected would undertake on the library website. The process involved an introduction, signing of a consent form, presentation of the gift voucher, protocal briefing (instructed them to think aloud), the tasks, debriefing interview and signing of a video release form (optional).

Cathy finished by showing some video which clearly illustrated the issues with the website, which weren’t really apparent to us, until we saw the students use them.

Dr R David Lankes from the Information Institute of Syracuse delivered the afternoon keynote on the Changing face of service. We are integrated library services - youth, cataloguing, reference, preservation, IT, instruction etc. We don’t necessarily fit together well, but we know we are a profession.

Service is more than reference and far from the only public service. Cataloguing is public, the website is the new branch and every part of the library must be customer focussed. The library is not the building and we are only half the library, the other half is our users - its a partnership. Most users see our systems, not necessarily us. Our websites are our newest branches and need to be staffed and resourced appropriately, providing the same services as the physical library.

Need to be a nimble and agile organisation, have to be innovative and do it quickly because information is changing so quickly. We need to be leading the information industry.

Amazon presents more useful data than our catalogues and they contain a lot more information on each item than our catalogues do. Their largest fields are pathfinders, open reviews, recommendations, disucssion tools, marketing and reviews. They have a finding aid, our catalogues are inventory systems. We need inventory systems, but thats not what we should be putting in front of our users. The new model for libraries needs to be as information collector and enhancer of the website (more relevant to academic than public libraries here).

Libraries need to be part of the conversations going on in our communities. Getting in the grassroots level of creating creating knowledge. Catalogues also need to be 2 ways, allowing comments, tagging, reviews etc. Need to build systems to access any data point. Don’t have a book? Let the user suggest pruchase, ask a question or link to another title. CHANGE INNOVATE PARTICIPATE. Our purpose should be as stewards, facilitators and guides. We need to experiment and if we fail, learn and move on, until we get it right.

Amanda Spinks spoke on Web search trends. She has been gathering search engine data since 99 many search engines, excepting the 3 giants - Google, Yahoo and MSN. However, when one of these released some of their data for research, it only confirmed her findings.

Challenges - search will soon outstrip email as primary use of the internet
- web search is a social issue, how many people know how to search effectively?
- this becomes a productivity issue - wasting work time.

Reminded that no search engine covers the entire web and with differing crawling policies etc, there is only a 3% overlap in results.

How people search - use slightly more terms now than in 99, average of 2.8 now against 1.9 then. Boolean use is still very low - 2.1% in 2006. 56.6% of users spend less than a minute on a search results page, 69% only view the first page. Once they do reach a site from a search, 14% stay for less than 30 seconds. Searching on sex related topics was only 4%, top uses were commerce/travel/employment/economy - 30.4%, people/places/things - 16%, computers/internet - 13%. Biggest increase is in searches for online games.
Advanced features on web sites are poorly used and bad spelling is still a major problem.

Search is still a long way from being perfect, even with easy to use search engines.

Christine MacKenzie gave an overview of Yarra Plenty’s use of the Learning 2.0 program from Charlotte Mecklenburg. It was incorporated as part of their strategic plan to find information, enable learning, create content and celebrate culture. This is what their 2007 training program is based on. The outcomes expected from this is informed, connected, inclusive communities.

Managers need to provide tools for staff to learn. They needed another way to facilitate that - inspired by Stephen Abrams 43 things, it became about learning, not training. YPRL went ahead with this program because libraries are changing - participating, interaction, content creation and social networking are becoming the norm. Technology is not the story, what people are doing with it is. YPRL are moving to RFID in July, staff will be moving out from the desk to be with the users, carrying Tablet PCs.

23 Things was encouraged by Helen Blowers from Charlotte. Motivation was a USB drive and into the draw for a laptop for all those who successfully completed the program. Fun and engaging, for the 90 staff who completed it. Opened them up to opportunities, shows they can be life long learners - they also learned much about themselves.

It is now the start and basis of a module based training system, which will take YPRL on from here. Very inspiring stuff.

Katrina Hughes shared the results of a worldwide survey of hardcopy versus electronic resources in libraries. She had 1653 responses, including 639 from Australia and 544 from the USA - the rest came from 55 different countries.

The results were similar for all locations (Oz, US and world). To sum up briefly:
- libraries are still collecting both (80-90%+)
- because they are client preferred or packaged that way
- less than half of the libraries have a policy to help decide on which form if
limited to one. But if have to choose, electronic wins over
harcopy, in most, but not all countries.
- main reasons include ease of access, cost, clients needs and client preferences, but not as the same priorities in different countries.

The 3 main reasons for still using hardcopy - cost, ease of use or client preference and access issues. Something to think about, when considering our users demographics.

James Robertson from StepTwo design spoke on Intranets as Business tools. He went through the evolution of an intranet, the same pattern of which has been repeated in intranet development worldwide.

1. Born - comes out of a good idea and it begins.
2. Rapid organic growth - grows fast and haphazardly and as a result becomes difficult to manage or find things. Most info is published because it might be of use to someone, although 10% is vanity publishing. Common problems emerge, including navigation, findability, no organisational recognition, lack of use.
3. Redesign - to get it used, the intranet is redesigned and relaunched. This improves use, but only for a time and it eventually drops back again. Several redesigns and relaunches can occur in an attempt to boost use.
4. Usability and Information architecture comes into play then, so that the intranet team understands how people use it and how it should be set up. Another redesign and relaunch is the result, which promotes short terms use but again tapers off.
5. Useable but not useful. The intranet can now be used, but isn’t because it isn’t useful. It doesn’t contain the content that people need to do their job on a daily basis. This is where the staff are then consulted for their input on content, through interviews, observations etc. The end, to deliver an intranet that meets those needs.
6. That’s when it becomes a business tool, not just a publishing platform. The intranet will prosper whenit is tied directly to the way people do their work.

So the Intranet should not be seen as an internal website, but rather as a core part of business, with activities that are targeted to deliver the greatest value and to build momentum. These actitivities are based on organisational targets and constraints and should be delivered on regular basis, like software patches and upgrades (ie. Intranet 2.01 for a minor change, 2.1 for a major, 3.0 as an overhaul.) Its about an upward spiral, deliver a little, gain support, deliver some more…..

Lisa Tyson from University of Western Sydney spoke on librarians and IT staff and how they have to work together. Although they work on the same result, they come from differing views, library staff from client to system, IT from system to client. Their common goal is to provide format independent information to location independent users. Even if the library has an IT dept, library staff still have to have some IT skills, due to client expectations, prevalence of online content, ever improving ILMS’s, federated search and google addiction. The client expects the first person they talk to will be able to help them.

Identification of IT skill is mostly done inhouse, there is no professional skills list that covers IT related skills for librarians. UWS does an annual in-house skills audit that examines this amongst other skills. It also assists with training development. Developed inhouse, using Access and email, it personalises to each position, each set of questions asked from a bank of 130 questions. It involves some tech skills to set up, but clear instructions on how to do this are also sent. Of 120 staff, only 5 needed help to do this. Questions are reviewed after each audit and there is a sliding scale for assessment. The staff member can comment and on completion, is sent to their supervisor for comment, before being sent centrally to be collated. Each staff member gets the results of their audit, a copy is also sent to the supervisor, so that they can coordinate training requirements. A list of training options is also available so they know where they go to from there with their training needs.

We need library staff who can serve the client and can talk to IT staff about theat need.

And that’s just the morning session!

Well here I am in Sydney attending one of Australia’s premier library conferences, the Information Online conference 2007. It was a big day today, with 3 keynotes as well as other sessions. I will do my best to summarise here, what I have taken in lots of written notes. And to save everyone eye strain, I have split at least the first day into morning and afternoon sessions.

Special Minister of State Gary Nairn officially opened the proceedings, with some interesting information and a reasonable insight into what librarians are on about. Of most interest was the e-government strategy and the www.australia.gov.au portal, which is the gateway to all federal government websites. At present, 13% of people dealing with government do so only online, with Minister Nairn anticipating a figure of 30-40% will really redefine how government offers service. Blogs are also on their radar, as are other Web 2.0 applications and mashups.

The opening keynote was from Ross Ackland, Director of the Australian office of the W3C and the CSIRO ICT Centre. He gave a very interesting take on Where the web is heading, from both the W3C perspective and his own experiences.

W3C’s long term goals are the web for everyone, web on everything, knowledge base which is advanced data searching and sharing and trust and confidence - where there is collaboration, accountability, security, confidence and confidentiality. Next step for us as consumers is to use our portable devices as our purchasing power, moving on from credit cards. Although only 3 organisations in Australia are W3C members (CSIRO, Vision Australia and AGIMO), there has been significant technical input from Australia on W3C standars.

So from here its the Semantic Web - where the meaning of information is understood by machines, making searching more successful. Although it is not there yet, much work has been done on the foundations on which this will rest (ie. XML, ontologies etc). He believes that there is another 5 years before it is ready for market adoption.

In the meantime, he believes that Web 2.0 is providing great complimentary interfaces. They pave the way to the eventual rise of the semantic web, by getting users accustomed to collaboration, open interfaces and applications that can leverage multiple services.

The Mobile web has a W3C web initiative (2005) behind it, which has also been fully backed by all the major telecommunication companies. End user acceptance is the catalyst needed now. Libraries need to seriously think about delivering information to devices that are no longer sitting on a desktop. Think phones, PDAs and more.

Sensor web is the streaming data coming from wireless devices that sense environment, including environmental monitoring, home automation, security, personal health monitoring and entertainment. The monitoring devices are cheap, but how do we manage the streamed data that they will generate. Issues also arise in the searching, integration, translation and storage of such data.

He also spoke about how the Internet has a role to play in Australia’s Water Crisis, including bringing all water data together from very diverse sources, so that the best decisions can be made on how to proceed. (check out http://wron.net.au)

His predictions are that the Web will accelerate in development, with Web 2.0 being only the tip of the iceberg, that libraries have to stop building traditional websites, that mobile will become equal to the desktop and that anyone will be able to build web applications. Wow, sounds like its going to get even more interesting.