Connecting Librarian

Glenn Peterson, a fellow presenter at CIL took me through some of the behind the scenes. At the moment he is working on mashup between Google Maps and Flickr which will show their branches on a map with address and contact details. He is including geotagging, so that you get a Google image of the branch, which will also show nearby geotagged images.

They use Cold Fusion on their web server, which works well with Dream Weaver their HTML editor. Their database info is kept on Microsoft Access which has a nice interface, is easy to learn and to use. Glenn has also developed some Microsoft SQL databases, mostly for their most heavily used content. Their webs server is Apache – windows based, as are most of their servers, however some do use Linux. Four web servers are used – one for the public website and one each for the staff and public ILS access. The final one does their catalogue integrations and has access permissions which the web servers don’t. They also have a separate development server for the website which has the same structure as the production server.

Scripts have been written for many different functions (green with envy, green with envy), including one that saves the users login card number and pin on their computer so they are automatically logged in when they visit the library website. A script is also used to gather their patron comments and attach them to the catalogue records. It also brings together comments from all the different formats and editions of the same title, ie. Audio, large print etc. They use an OCLC list which returns all ISBNs which are related to any given ISBN, which they cache so on their server, to speed up processing time. Each comments page also brings in related information from Syndetics. Glenn has also been talking to the team at Library Thing about how they could use their tagging feature and their recommended list on the HCPL catalogue.

Glenn scripts in Cold Fusion Markup Language (CFML) to bring all this together. The script seeks out staff reviews if available before getting the Syndetics content, if not there then it seeks content from Amazon. It also links to booklists that include that title in it. They also have audio reviws to listen to (not podcasts at this stage, although they are looking to make them so), using a Flash audio player. It can also call in customer views from Amazon, recent comments and gives you the option of adding a comment. There are RSS feeds on the titles and comments. A script gathers the last 4 hours of comments and sends them in an email to a team of librarian on a rotating list, just to scan for the content and remove any inappropriate ones - this is rare.

Comments have a name link which if clicked will take you to other comments left by that person - a form of reader recommends. Would like to make those commenters links into a a list of profiles with more information about the commenter, including their booklists etc, bringing a social networking/building community capacity to the space.

They have bought Wii gaming consoles for the branches, testing the water with this.

Jody Wurl is the newest member of the Web Services Team and is a Teen Librarian. They have an online Teen advisory group who contributes blog entries, highlighted websites and polls to the HCPL Teen Links webpages and they have automatic RSS feeds for their teen events and new books. You can also change the colours on the teen website, I will leave it to you to find the Easter egg that uses this feature in a cute way on the site.

Teen Links has two sets of subject guides - Teen Topics (teen issues) and Do your Homework. At the moment, Jody does all the links but she is looking to get the same model as is used on Book Space, with multiple contributors working. There is strong interest in readers advising at Hennepin, so they have good teen reading lists.

The At Your Library part of their site needs work, so Jody hopes to get the soon to be developed teen advisory groups in the branches to possibly contribute a webpage and blog posts for each branch. Each library has its own webpage with community links, friends news, library events fed in from the calendar, library news - which can be submitted. Some information is hard coded - ie. hours, the photo, special services etc.

Ann Melrose, former children’s librarian and Web Services team member took me upstairs where we both were taken on a tour of Ridgedale Library, one of Hennepin’s regional libraries. Check out the Flickr photos. They are in a building, which also houses a county service center, as do their other 2 regional libraries. They have renewable floor signage, lots of study rooms and wifi throughout the building. Self-serve holds are huge. 116 public PCs, 14 catalogue only, only ever all booked out on a Monday night or weekend.

The amazing thing was their automated materials handling system. Anything returned to a chute, whether outside or at the desk, is conveyor belted up to the second floor, where this amazing locally made (Minnesota that is), shift, sorts, returns and delivers the stock to trolleys, either ready for shelving or to go to one of the other branches or holds, as appropriate. At least one staff member monitors the system, at peak time there are too. Check out the Flickr photos. In another HCPL branch, the conveyor runs under the floor at one stage, so you can watch the stock move along - the kids love it!

After the tour, Ann did an awesome job covering the children’s side of the web at HCPL. KidLinks is the latest iteration of their website and is coming about after extensive consultation with local Grade 5 kids. The graphic designer has created the layout, the programmers are working on creating it in the development server. They will be using Flash mouseovers and sounds. Launch date is June 4th.

Children’s book reviews area added with the same web tools as others at HCPL. In the summer they make it a competition - all reviews are added to their Access database and a randomiser draws the winners who get book prizes. Looking at having 5 x a week long summer book clubs this year, using Moodle. They must register to contribute and Ann will try to organise it so that all participants in each group gets online together at the end of the week to chat.

KidsLinks news is a monthly kids email newsletter, which has 2 book reviews, promotes events and has links to cute sites. It is created in HTML each month, but they use a script to send it out to all the subscribers in their database. Also doing a birth to six newsletter with relevant content for parents and caregivers in the same way. Looking to do RSS feeds on them.

Kids polls on the webpages changeover automatically every Sunday night. All questions are grabbed automatically from a database and Ann usually has a few in reserve. She is also able to reuse old questions after a few years. The kids love the polls.

It was an awesome day at Hennepin and I can’t thank the Web Services Team enough for their time and all they covered in such a short period. You guys are inspiring and I will be taking much from my time there, for quite a while to come. Thanks!

Had a great day at Hennepin County Public Library (HCPL) on the outskirts of Minneapolis, Minnesota. HCPL has a great team managing their web services. They have 4 librarians working on web development (all former adult, teens or childrens librarians), 2 programmers who are also librarians, an intranet staffer, a support staffer and an Office products trainer. All ILS and PC management are handled by their network services department, which is large to enable to manage all their PCs at their 26 branches.

Sharon McGlinn, manages their new Book Space, the adult reading area. It comprises booklists, forthcoming books (hugely popular), new materials, book club information, find a good book advisories. Sharon worked with 5 adult services librarians to develop the goals for Book Space, then worked with their graphic designer to produce the look and then with Glenn Peterson, one of their developers to get the required functionality.

Their webpages are mostly dynamic, database driven. They have one blog for the Book Space page, but their categorisation determines which genre page the feed will go to. Glenn has developed staff templates to simplify the adding the adding of blog content. Sharon keeps the site current by sending reminders out to staff, including suggestions for contributions - they need to keep the content dynamic. The challenge is to find people who will be passionate about the website and contribute to it.

Glenn Peterson developed a booklists admin function with their ILS, to simplify the generation of booklists. It uses the bibliographic numbers from the catalogue, cover images from Syndetics and a preview facility to see how it looks before going live. Book Space also includes topselling lists, book club info and user created booklists - only need a username and password to add one. Each staff generated booklist includes more the of the same type authors, related lists, awards lists, Syndetics content and live links to the catalogue. User generated lists pulls content from the catalogue, they can add comments and make it public or keep it private. Sharon then chooses appropriate user generated booklists to be rotated through the Book Space homepage as a highlighted list.

Where forms aren’t in use, they use Dreamweaver for webpage editing. Their website gets over 140,000 requests per week, with 12-15,000 individual visitors each month. They have submission guidelines for user created booklists, which now number more than 200 (in less than 2 months). They are now looking at their options as to how to manage these booklists, as it has turned out to be wildly popular.

Book Space also contains their audio book information, both linking to their audio CD collection and their downloadable audio - which they get through NetLibrary and Overdrive, so only for MP3 formats, not iPods. Their research books and authors sections links to relevant databases and websites. Book Clubs list needs to be further developed, Sharon is looking to get the book clubs themselves to contribute content. The book clubs can reserve the kits online, by title, by date of availability and more (another script from Glenn).

Christine Clifford took me through Reference services. They use Tutor.com’s “Ask a Librarian” software. It runs 24/7 – they contract Tutor.com to answer questions during the hours that HCPL staff are not available. Have offered this service since 2001 and has been 24/7 since 2002. They get between 350 and 600 questions a month, depending on time of year – email reference gets about 25 a day. They had 10 million visits to their website last year.

Librarians throughout the service are scheduled to monitor the service, with 55 currently on the list to provide the service, mostly one at a time, but two librarians at peak time, with backups as required. The schedule is posted on the Intranet.

They are trialing IM in house at present, using Microsoft Office Communicator between their Reference Work Group and Web Services Team, mainly chosen because it works with Outlook. They are testing Trillian for use with their future IM Reference service and are also looking at the Meebo widget – working through some issues with this at present.

Their Research and Reference page contains their subject guides. Each topic shows the most popular databases and websites for that topic first, then other content, which is automatically generated. To avoid the generalist databases coming on top with for all sub-topics, they skew the criteria so that only the most relevant content appears there. Topics are further broken down into sub-topics. A librarian is in charge of each topic and their image appears on the page with tips on information seeking on that topic or events etc, which are changed regularly. 42 librarians contribute to the 29 topics in this section.

The sidebar on each page contains pre-packaged catalogue searches, e-books links, news headlines, available classes, events, the facility to change topics or subjects via a drop down menu and more. They are looking to upgrade the 2 year old pages, with the recent purchase of a federated search tool. They are considering changing the librarians’ snippets to a blog, which will be easier to manage and enable archiving of the content.

HCPL has a number of web tools available to all staff, which have been developed in-house to make contributing content fast and easy, they don’t need to have any coding or HTML type skills.

Marilyn Turner, head of Web Services shared her experiences with getting their web services going and how they keep up the momentum. The Web Services department is located close to the ILS and Network staff. They have to work closely with them – systems need to be accessible, upgrades and backups need to be carefully scheduled (an issue when they first went 24/7 on Ask a Librarian). The Web Services Team also works as a bridge between IT and branch staff, whom they work closely with on content.

She recommends reporting on what can be done and to pick things that will make an impact with the staffing you have available. Take it on the road to decision makers to show the great things you are doing – eg. Online memberships, they now get 500 applications and amendments each month. Public libraries are there to serve all in their area, not just the people who come in the door. Need to have your web services staff at the table – have a representative on all teams, as web services covers all branch provided services. They have expanded ownership of the website by having librarians contribute content to booklists, subject guides etc and the simple web tools they use make it easy for them to do so. They have noticed a changed culture as a result of this, with librarians sharing ideas, content and inspiration. This is of huge benefit to library users, as shown in their increasing stats. Over 100 mostly librarians are contributing content to the website (150 librarians out of 500 staff at HCPL). Get started with new, enthusiastic people as contributors.

Internally, each department has its own blog – 5 divisions and the Directors office. Some sub divisions also have their own blogs, others just use the administration blog. They have found it to be a better communication tool than email, because it doesn’t have to be kept where it clogs up the email client, the posts are searchable and archived. They are also looking at using wikis for some of their manuals, rather than putting them up through their CMS.

Web Services is about providing the tools to make contributing easy. The focus is the content, not the technology. End of part one - that was all just until lunch. More in next post, so stay tuned.